Savage Spring (47 page)

Harry Karlsson looks at the people he’s got working for him. Young security guards, he knows many of them want to join the police, just like the two heavies in attendance today. Apparently there’s some sort of national alert out for the man who set off that bomb in Linköping.

Two cops seconded to the airport. Just in case.

But what are the odds of the bomber showing up here?

Low, but not impossible.

They haven’t been shown any pictures of the man, but evidently the police have been told what he looks like.

Why don’t they want to show us his picture? Or even give us the name of the man they’re looking for? Because they don’t think either we or the security contractors are reliable, that’s the reason, in which case they have to appreciate that we can’t do as good a job as we could.

They want to keep the information confidential.

Bleep.

Check that a pensioner isn’t carrying weapons on-board inside his shoes. Sometimes the harshness of the new security directives is absurd.

Then Harry Karlsson sees a change in the eyes of one of the policemen, and they both stiffen, and one of them gestures discreetly at Harry Karlsson, who goes over to them. The policeman says: ‘That could be the man we’re looking for. The one who’s just putting his toiletries in a plastic bag.’

Harry Karlsson looks over at the table with the bags.

A man maybe ten years younger than him, around forty-five.

Harry Karlsson is looking at him from the side, but he can still make out a scar above one eye. In spite of the scar, the man doesn’t look particularly tough or hard, but Harry Karlsson still feels the adrenalin coursing through his body, the way it does whenever a known criminal wanted by the police shows up at the security control, even though he must have been through dozens of similar arrests by now.

‘We’ll pick him up once he’s gone through the gate,’ the policeman whispers. ‘My colleague’s already called for back-up.’

Harry Karlsson looks at the other policeman.

He must have whispered into his headset without him noticing.

‘Don’t do anything, just keep the security guards calm, OK?’

Harry Karlsson nods, knows that at this moment police officers will be covering every exit from the airport, every escape route, ready to draw their weapons and fire.

The man, the suspect, has reached the metal detector now, he’s taken off his jacket, put his bag on the belt to go through the X-ray machine, then he walks through without any fuss.

Nice and calm now.

Calm, calm.

And then the policemen move towards the man.

It looks as if they’re about to draw their pistols.

Harry Karlsson catches their movement in the corner of his eye, and now watches as the man suddenly explodes, one leg flying out in a martial arts move, knocking the two policemen backwards, and the people in the queue scream. Harry Karlsson’s guards throw themselves to the floor to take cover, or simply out of panic, but there haven’t actually been any shots, have there? And Harry Karlsson leaps towards the man, but he skips aside, and Harry Karlsson feels his two top front teeth push into his jaw and break as he lands on the floor, chin first.

Shit, he thinks.

Shit.

This is going to cost a fortune in dental fees.

When Jokso Mirovic saw the policemen move towards him he realised instinctively that they had been waiting for him, that they wanted to get hold of him. He’d had a feeling that something was wrong the moment he checked into his flight to Phuket, but dismissed it as his own paranoia, he was used to situations like this, but the feeling only grew stronger as he was standing in the queue and caught sight of the police officers. He knew from experience that there weren’t usually any police at the security check.

But he had still dismissed it as paranoia, even though he knew he shouldn’t, knew you should always trust your instincts, but not this time: he simply had to get on this flight at any cost, there were no other options open to him. He had to look for the children now, and that trail began in Thailand, where they were kidnapped, the children’s passports had been left in the house, so maybe they were still in the country. But how the hell did the police know what he’d done, they couldn’t possibly have tracked him down, could they?

The metal detector.

And the old, overweight bloke in plain clothes who seemed to be the supervisor had looked nervous.

Sweating, and then everything happened very quickly, as usual, the policemen tried to draw their pistols when they got close to him, and he raised one leg high and then kicked out with his trainer, and twisted with his right foot, and the policemen, clumsy idiots with bulletproof vests under their shirts, collapsed unconscious to the floor as Jokso Mirovic watched.

Their pistols were still in their holsters.

What next?

Run.

If it wasn’t already too late. The place would be crawling with cops any moment, and now he’s running through the main hall that forms the heart of Terminal 5, rushing past tourists on package tours on their way to the sun, businessmen on their way to what they presumably believe are important meetings.

Which exit?

Keep running straight ahead, then into SkyCity and into the hotel there, then the exit to the garage where you can steal a car.

He turns his head.

Three cops, maybe fifty metres behind him, and there are two rushing towards him up ahead, they must have come from Entrance C.

I can’t get caught now, I mustn’t, otherwise this whole idiotic business has been in vain.

No guns drawn.

But he’s still back in the trenches.

Pursued by machine-gun fire and hand grenades and the cries of the Croats, and it’s as if everything is transformed in a split second to a single explosive present, a present that demands just one thing: freedom.

He goes into a slide when he’s five metres from the cops, gliding on his smooth cotton trousers, knocking them to the ground, and it works.

They fall.

Groan.

And he quickly gets to his feet and rushes on, but the little manoeuvre means that the other policemen are twenty metres closer now, then he’s out into the glazed open space of SkyCity, and the light is harsh, and there aren’t many people about now, just after lunchtime.

He swerves off to one side.

Takes the escalator up to the Radisson Hotel and races for the lift.

Inside.

Presses the button to close the doors.

And he leaves the cops behind him, they’re ten metres away as the lift doors close on him, and when they open again one floor below he runs down one, two more escalators, then catches his breath, sees his two children in front of him, Daddy’s on his way, Daddy’s coming, and he sees the Vigerö girls playing in the square, the other children, and he feels like screaming, howling, but he knows he can’t give in now, no matter what he feels, and then he stops.

Fuck.

Shit.

There must be at least five police officers barricaded behind the sofas in the lower lobby of the hotel.

Guns aimed at him.

He’s unarmed, ditched his pistol out in the car park earlier.

Shit.

‘Hands up!’

‘Down on the floor!’

Various options run through Jokso Mirovic’s head.

Carry on going forward, get shot, die, or get away and do what he has to do.

I’d never get past them.

It would be like running straight across no-man’s land towards an occupied enemy line.

And the police would shoot.

They know what I’ve done.

I’ll have to hope that someone else can do what I ought to.

But is there any police officer who could pull it off?

He remembers his friends in the war, the ones who died, the ones who had shown a courage he would never have thought them capable of.

Then he raises his hands in the air.

Shouts: ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!’

53

The underground is lit by cold, white strip lights.

A constant attack on the eyes.

The interview room is on the third basement floor of Police Headquarters, beside the lush green of Kronoberg Park in the centre of Stockholm. Even when she was at Police Academy, Malin thought the building was ugly: brutal 1970s architecture with tiny windows set tightly together in a façade of orange panelling.

They did their swimming tests in the Kronoberg pool. Struggling with heavy, waterlogged practice dummies, length after length, and there were several of them who couldn’t do it and had to leave the course after almost a year of study.

Harsh.

But not as harsh at this interview room, which is unbelievably shabby, the paint peeling from the yellow walls, the black plastic flooring has deep gouges in it, and from the ceiling hang fluorescent lights that give off an offensive glare, not the trust-inspiring, warm, soft light from the halogen lamps they have in the interview rooms of the station in Linköping, the sort of light that’s so good for interviews.

The wall mirror.

A few colleagues from Stockholm behind it.

Sven Sjöman called when they were on their way back to the hotel to change clothes. Malin and Zeke had both bought new underwear and white T-shirts from Åhléns, and Malin is now wearing them under her increasingly filthy dress. Sven told her that Jokso Mirovic had been arrested at Arlanda and was on his way to Police Headquarters in Stockholm.

They’d gone straight there, and to begin with the duty officer had been dubious about letting them conduct the first interview with Jokso Mirovic.

Surely the Security Police ought to do that? Or at least Stockholm themselves, seeing as he’d been arrested in their district, but Malin had given him an outline of their work so far, emphasising how keen they were to solve this case as soon as possible, to make sure the public weren’t put in any unnecessary danger, so the best solution would be if she and Zeke spoke to Jokso Mirovic straight away.

Now. Not later.

And the duty officer had backed down. But only after consulting the head of the Crime Unit over the phone.

And now Jokso Mirovic is sitting opposite them in the interview room, and the scar above his left eye is glowing pink. He seems to be waiting for Malin or Zeke to say something while he looks at his reflection, inspecting his thin face, as if someone else were sitting in this room, caught by their own actions, and not him.

Malin reaches for the tape recorder on the table.

Clicks to start it, then says: ‘16 May 2010, time ten past four. Interview with Jokso Mirovic regarding the explosion in Linköping on 10 May and the murder of Hanna Vigerö in Linköping University Hospital in the early hours of 13 May.’

Malin pulls out her mobile.

Plays the clip from the surveillance camera outside the bus station, and Jokso Mirovic sees his face and smiles, then Malin shows him the recording from the bank, and this time Jokso Mirovic doesn’t smile.

‘That’s you in both clips. We know that,’ Zeke says. ‘So you might as well confess and tell us how this all fits together, OK?’

Jokso Mirovic looks at them. First at Zeke, then at Malin, and she tries to catch his gaze, make sense of what she sees there, and she manages it, and finds a gentle desperation, the same desperation she felt the time Tove was in the hands of a killer and she was racing through the forests of Östergötland in her Volvo to save her.

The sort of desperation that knows calmness is vital. That knows panicking equals death.

He must feel like shit, Malin thinks.

As well he might, considering what he’s done.

But he’s tough. If he’s done what the rumours suggest. A hundred stab wounds, and testicles rammed down a paedophile’s throat.

He hasn’t been registered as living in Sweden since 2004, when he lived in Gothenburg. Since then he’s had Thailand listed as his place of residence.

‘Tell us,’ Malin says. ‘That’s the best thing you can do now. For your own sake.’

‘Don’t give me that bullshit. I’ll talk.’

Jokso Mirovic takes a deep breath, then he starts talking.

He leans closer to the tape recorder, to make sure that every word is clearly captured.

He doesn’t seem to want to put any emotion into what he says, just lets his mouth and tongue move, moving things forward. He talks with a slight accent.

‘I live, or rather lived, with my two young children in Phuket. As you know, that was where I was heading when you picked me up.

‘I’ve withdrawn from my earlier life. The children are three and six years old, a boy and a girl. The boy’s name is Marko, and the girl’s is Elena. Their mother’s dead, she died in a helicopter crash when our son was a year old, so I look after them on my own.’

Jokso Mirovic falls silent. Takes a deep breath.

‘You should have seen my children swimming in the pool of the house we live in on Phuket. They used to spend all day in there. You should have seen Marko the first time he dared to jump in on his own, you should have seen Elena. She was even happier than he was.’

Jokso Mirovic collects himself before going on in a more factual tone: ‘On New Year’s Eve a year and a half ago I met the brothers Henry and Leopold Kurtzon at Sri Panwa, a smart resort close to where I live. We got on well and spent a bit of time together. They were a bit like the sort of carefree people I used to deal with, and seeing them was almost a form of nostalgia for me. We seemed to have things in common, somehow.’

‘Go on,’ Malin says.

‘I’m just pausing for breath,’ Jokso Mirovic replies, and his eyes are empty and cold now, but deep down there’s a hint of something pleading.

‘Six months ago the brothers came to me with a plan. They were aware of my past. They must have got the impression I was capable of anything. Maybe they’d heard rumours about what I did during the war.

‘They wanted me to kill some children and their parents in Sweden. They said they wanted help and that I would be perfect for the job. I asked why they thought I’d be good, why I would do something like that, and they said they’d checked me out. I told them I’d given up any sort of criminal activity, and that I’d never killed anyone. And certainly not any children.’