Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (114 page)

“Loyalty. The only thing that matters,” he says softly as he looks sternly at Axel. “I know you believe I have nothing you might want in payment, but—”

“That’s true,” Axel answers sharply.

“Still, I believe we can make a deal … I believe I have something you want desperately,” Raphael continues. He smiles, but there is no pleasure in the grimace. “For your loyalty I will offer something that you really, truly want. In fact, what you want more than anything else in the world.”

Axel shakes his head in disbelief. “
I
couldn’t even say what that might be.”

“Oh, no,” Raphael says smoothly. “What you want more than anything else in the world seems so simple … a good night’s sleep—”

“How did you know that?” Axel gasps, then stops short as he sees Raphael’s cool, calculating look.

“So then you already know that I’ve tried every possible way,” Axel says slowly.

Raphael gestures indifferently. “You will be provided with a new liver.”

“I’ve been on the donor’s list for years,” Axel says with an involuntary smile. “I call the doctors every time they have a meeting, but my liver damage was self-inflicted and my tissue type is so unusual, no donors can be found.”

“I have located a liver for you, Axel Riessen,” Raphael says in his sharp voice.

There’s silence in the room and Axel feels his face and ears flush.

“And in return?” Axel says, swallowing hard. “You want me to sign the export authorisation for Kenya.”

“More than that,” Raphael says. “I want us to sign a Paganini contract.”

“What is that?”

“There’s no hurry, there will be time to consider. It’s a major decision. But before you decide, I want you to go thoroughly through the information I’ve accumulated about this particular organ donor.”

Axel’s thoughts zip through his mind at blazing speed. Axel eagerly tells himself that he can sign the export authorisation and then, once he’s got his liver, turn on Guidi and testify against him. He’d be protected by the authorities, he knows, and perhaps he would have to change his identity and all that. But he would be able to sleep again.

“Why don’t we have something to eat?” Raphael asks. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”

“Maybe …”

“But before we eat, please phone your secretary at ISP and let her know that you are here.”

Saga has her phone against her ear as she stops for a moment next to the recycling bin in the hallway. She sees without noticing it the leaflike remains of a butterfly on the floor, mimicking life in the breeze from the ventilation system.

“Don’t you have anything else to do up there in Stockholm?” asks an officer with a Gotland dialect when she finally connects with Södertälje.

“About Pontus Salman,” she says irritably.

“Well, he’s gone, now.” The policeman sounds contented.

“What the hell are you saying?” she yells.

“Well, I talked to Gunilla Sommer, our psychologist, who brought him into the psychiatric ward.”

“And?”

“She interviewed him and decided, without reservation, that he was no longer a candidate for suicide. She felt he should be free to go, so she released him. Hospital beds cost money, you know.”

“Send out a description and bring him in at once!” Saga demands immediately.

“For what? A half-hearted suicide attempt?”

“Just make sure you find him!” Saga snarls and hangs up.

She jogs towards the lifts when Göran Stone steps in front of her and blocks her with outspread arms.

“So you want to get Pontus Salman to talk to you—right?” he teases.

“Right,” she says, and tries to push past, but he doesn’t let her go.

“Just shake your ass a little,” he says. “Or toss your hair so that you’re—”

“Move!” Saga commands. She’s so angry, her forehead begins to flush.

“Okay, sorry, I just wanted to help.” Göran Stone laughs nastily. “But for your information, we’ve just sent four cars to Salman’s house on Lidingö.”

“What’s happened?” Saga asks quickly.

“The neighbours called the police.” Göran smiles. “They’d heard a little bang-bang and some screaming.”

Saga pushes Stone roughly away and begins to run.

“Thank you so much, Göran!” Göran calls after her. “You’re the best, Göran!”

As Saga drives to Lidingö, she tries to keep her mind blank. But she can’t forget the sounds on the recording of the broken man who, weeping, described what had been done to his daughter.

Saga tells herself that she’s going to exercise hard tonight and then go to bed early.

People have come out of their houses and filled the street around Roskullsvägen, so she has to park one hundred metres away from Salman’s house. Curious onlookers and reporters crowd outside the blue-and-white police tape trying to get a look inside the house. Saga excuses herself in a tight voice as she pushes her way through. The blue lights of the emergency vehicles flash across the green trees. Saga sees her colleague Magdalena Ronander leaning against the dark brown brick wall and vomiting. Pontus Salman’s white BMW is parked in front of his garage. Its roof window is missing. Small, bloody glass cubes are scattered over the ground and sparkle on the chassis. Through the blood-smeared side window, a man’s body can be seen slumped sideways.

She recognises it as Pontus Salman.

Magdalena lifts a pale face to look at Saga tiredly. She wipes her mouth with a tissue. Then she blocks Saga from going to the door.

“No, no,” she says hoarsely. “You don’t want to go in there. Absolutely not.”

Saga stops and glances towards the large house. She turns to Magdalena to ask something but stops again. She understands, then, that the first thing she must do is call Joona right away to tell him they no longer have a witness.

Joona is jogging through the arrival hall of Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, located just outside Helsinki, when his phone rings.

“Saga, what’s up?”

“Pontus Salman is dead. He was found in his car outside his house. It appears he shot himself.”

Joona exits the airport building and hails a taxi. He directs the driver to the harbour as he sprawls in the backseat.

“What did you say?” Saga asks.

“Nothing,” Joona says.

“We have no witness now,” Saga says anxiously. “What the hell do we do next?”

“I don’t know yet,” Joona says. He shuts his eyes for a moment.

He feels the rocking motion of the car surround him, gentle and soothing. The taxi leaves the airport behind and speeds up to merge with traffic on the motorway.

“You cannot go out to Raphael’s boat without backup,” Saga states firmly.

“The girl,” Joona says abruptly.

“What?”

“There’s a girl. Axel Riessen was teaching her the violin,” Joona says, and he opens his grey eyes. “Maybe she’s seen something.”

“Why do you think that?”

“There was a dandelion ball in the whisky glass.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Try to find her,” Joona says, and snaps off the phone.

He leans back against the seat and pictures how Axel was standing and holding a violin as the girl came towards him with a bouquet of dandelion puffs. Then he thinks of the dandelion ball with its wilted stem drooping over the edge of the whisky glass in Axel’s bedroom. She’d been in such an intimate part of the house … maybe she’d seen something.

Joona goes on board the grey Finnish Coast Guard vessel
Kirku
, which the Finnish navy had acquired from the Swedish Coast Guard six years before. As he shakes hands with the vessel’s captain, Pasi Rannikko, he is reminded of Lennart Johansson at Dalarö, the one who loved to surf and called himself Lance.

Like Lance, Pasi Rannikko is a young, tanned man with clear blue eyes. Unlike Lance, however, Pasi takes his duties extremely seriously. It’s obvious that this unexpected run beyond Finnish waters is troubling him.

“Nothing about this makes me happy,” Pasi Rannikko says with a frown. “But my boss is friends with your boss … and it appears that’s all that was needed.”

“I hope to have something from the prosecutor before we get there,” Joona says soothingly as he feels the vibration of the ship pulling away from the dock and smoothly heading out across the water.

“The second you get your arrest warrant, I’ll contact FNS
Hanko
. It’s a patrol boat with twenty officers and six soldiers.” He points at a blip on the radar. “She can reach thirty-five knots and it won’t take her more than twenty minutes to get to us.”

“That’s good.”

“Raphael Guidi’s yacht has passed Dagö and is now just outside Estonia’s territorial waters. I hope you are aware that we can’t board a vessel in Estonian waters unless it’s an emergency or open criminal activity is observed.”

“I realise that,” Joona says.

The boat leaves the harbour with thudding engines.

“Here comes the entire crew,” Pasi Rannikko says with an ironic grin.

A broadly built man with a blond beard is climbing up to the captain’s bridge. He introduces himself as the first—and only—mate. “Niko Kapanen, like the hockey player.” He eyes Joona speculatively while scratching at his beard. Then he asks slowly, “So what’s this guy Guidi done?”

“Kidnapping, murder, murder of policemen, weapon smuggling,” Joona says.

“And Sweden sends a single policeman?”

“Right.” Joona smiles.

“While we contribute this old baby carriage of a boat.”

“As soon as we have the arrest warrant, we’ll almost be a platoon,” Pasi Rannikko says in a monotone. “Urho Saarinen on the
Hanko
can get here in twenty minutes if I just say the word.”

“An inspection,” Niko says abruptly. “I’m sure as hell that we can demand a surprise inspection—”

“Not in Estonian waters,” Pasi Rannikko protests.

“What the fuck …” mutters Niko.

“It will all work out,” Joona says mildly.

Axel Riessen lies fully dressed on a bed in the five-room suite he has been given on Raphael Guidi’s mega yacht. Next to him is a folder with complete information about a liver donor, a man in a coma after an unsuccessful operation. All the data is perfect—the tissue type matches Axel’s completely.

Axel concentrates so intently on the ceiling that he is startled by a knock on the door. It’s the man in the white uniform.

“Dinner.”

They walk together through a spa area. Axel glimpses low-lying green beds filled with empty bottles and cans. Plastic-wrapped towels are still stacked on white marble shelves, and behind glass doors frosted for privacy, he can make out a gym. A double door of matte-surfaced metal slides open as they walk past the relaxation room with its beige wall-to-wall carpeting, sofas, and chairs as well as a short but massive table of polished limestone. The lighting is odd—points of light and shadow slide across the walls and floor. Axel raises his eyes to realise they are beneath the yacht’s enormous swimming pool. The bottom of the pool is made of glass, and overhead Axel can see the bulk of rubbish and broken furniture outlined by a pale sky.

Raphael Guidi is sitting on one of the sofas. He’s wearing the same gym shorts as before, but now with a white T-shirt stretched over his belly. He pats the seat beside him and Axel obediently goes over and sits down. Both bodyguards remain behind Guidi like two shadows. No one says anything. Raphael Guidi’s telephone rings. He answers and speaks on and on in a long conversation.

In a short while, the man in white silently pushes a serving cart in. Without a sound he sets two place settings on the limestone table with plates, silverware, and glasses along with large platters of grilled hamburgers, bread, french fries, a bottle of ketchup, and a huge plastic bottle of Pepsi.

Raphael continues his conversation without even glancing at the food. His voice is a dull monotone as he discusses what sounds like details about production speed and logistics.

No one says a word. They all wait patiently.

Fifteen minutes later, Raphael Guidi finishes his call and looks at Axel Riessen calmly. He then starts to speak in a soft tone.

“Maybe you’d like a glass of wine now,” he says. “Since in a few days you’ll have a new liver.”

“I’ve reread this material about the donor many times,” Axel says. “It’s in wonderful order. I’m impressed. Everything seems to be perfect.”

“There’s an interesting thing about desire,” Raphael begins as if he hadn’t heard Axel’s words. “A desire you want more than anything else in the world; myself, I wish that my wife was alive today and we could be together again.”

“I understand …” Axel murmurs.

“But I have a quirk. I like to see desire balanced by its opposite,” Raphael says.

He takes a hamburger and a scoop of french fries. Then he passes the platter to Axel.

“Thank you,” Axel says automatically.

“The desire is on one side of the scale,” Raphael continues. “The nightmare is on the other.”

“The nightmare?”

“I mean to say … we live our lives with many outer trappings while inside … we have deep unfulfilled longings that we desire, and also nightmares that never come true.”

“Perhaps we do,” Axel says.

“You wish desperately to be able to sleep again, something very good, but what … I’m talking about the other side of the scale here … what is your worst nightmare?”

“I really don’t know,” Axel says with a smile, raising his brows.

“What are you afraid of?” Raphael says while shaking salt over his french fries.

“Illness, death … mostly pain.”

“Of course, everyone fears pain, I agree with you there,” Raphael says. “But as far as I am concerned, my worst nightmare, as I’ve begun to realise, concerns my son. He’ll soon be grown up, and I’m afraid he’ll turn away from me and pursue his own life.”

“So, loneliness?”

“Yes, I believe so,” Raphael says. “Complete loneliness is my worst nightmare.”