Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel (4 page)

A bell jingles as Lena opens the door, then again as the door swings shut behind her.

The shop is not much bigger than her flat, which in turn is the size of most of her friends’ kitchens. Two strip lights in the ceiling illuminate half a dozen shelves loaded with wares essential for the desperate or absent-minded: White bread, discount DVDs, canned beans, fruit-scented shampoos and microwave meals. Dirty snow streaks the linoleum floor. A whiff of incense hangs in the humid air. She is the only customer in the shop.

She walks over to the counter, faces the man whose eyes she met through the window, and waits for him to speak.

“Can I help?” he says. His voice is deeper than Lena expects.

Lena reaches for her inner pocket. “I’m Detective Lena Franke,” she says. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

He nods to the window. “I saw you come. I heard the shot.”

Lena studies the man. He doesn’t ask if someone has fired a gun; he already knows. She shows him her badge and puts it away.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Abbaas,” he replies. “Abbaas Kouri. What has happened to Molly?”

Lena hesitates. “I can’t give you that information right now.”

The man’s face falls, and he mutters what Lena suspects is a curse in what might be Arabic. Somehow, he knows what has taken place, or at least that Molly was hurt.

“Have you recently seen a man in a blue jacket?” Lena asks. “About my height, dark hair. In his early forties. No shoes. Possibly carrying a large dark bag.”

Abbaas starts to nod halfway through Lena’s question. In one of his hands is a wad of large notes, but the till is closed.

“I know who you’re looking for. I saw him not long ago. Ten minutes, maybe. He’s wearing shoes now.”

Lena tenses at the unexpected load of information. “Where did you see him?” she asks.

“Here.”

“What?” Lena looks around the shop in disbelief. Perhaps John came back to watch the scene, or maybe he left something behind. At least he might still be in the neighbourhood.

“Do you know where he went?” Lena asks.

“I am sorry.” Abbaas shakes his head. “I would tell you if I knew, but I have no idea.”

Lena runs to the door and flings it open. “He’s nearby,” she shouts to Agnes. “Get on the radio and call the patrols closer. He was here only ten minutes ago.” She leaves the door open and stalks back to the man behind the counter. “Tell me exactly what the man said,” she demands. “What he bought, everything he did. Think hard.”

“John is in trouble, isn’t he?”

“Please answer the question. Did the man say anything out of the ordinary?”

Abbaas takes a deep breath. “Yes.” He sighs. “You could say that.”

“Go on.” Lena takes out her notepad. Whatever John has done here will be a valuable lead. She gets the man’s name and phone number.

“What did the man do in your shop?” she asks.

“He bought my computer. Paid in cash. I got a good price.”

Frowning, Lena looks up from her notepad. “Why would he do that?” she asks. “Did he seem irrational? Or shocked?”

“No,” Abbaas replies quietly. “Not irrational.” He glances upwards at the ceiling, towards Molly’s flat. “I heard what happened to her. A neighbour came in and told me. You know that John and she were together?”

“How do you know?”

“He talked about her. John came to visit her often, and he used to buy her chocolate. Flowers too, when I have them.”

“I see.” Lena stares at her notepad. One day John is courting her, the next he arrives as a vengeful killer. It happens more often than she likes to consider.

“Molly was a regular too,” Abbaas continues. “She came many times every week. We talked about the weather, local gossip, things like that. Beautiful woman. Shy.” He searches for a word. “Frail.”

“Why did he buy your computer?” Lena asks, noting that Abbaas uses past tense when he speaks about Molly. The shop is hot and the incense pricks her eyes, but she needs to stay and make sure she learns everything the man knows.

“Look.” Abbaas’s voice is hushed. “John loved Molly very much. I could see it. Every time he came here, he was happy.” He shrugs. “We men don’t often show when we’re happy in that way, but with John, it was written on his face.”

“Sure,” Lena says. Then Molly had cheated on John, and John had cracked like an old vase. A scenario as tragic as it was common. “But the computer?” she pressed. “Why did the man want it?”

“I cannot say for sure.”

A realisation dawns on Lena, and she stops with her pen hovering above the notepad. Returning to a crime scene to gloat is one thing; coming back to buy a computer is a different matter. Add to that statements that describe John in a myriad of ways.

There have been two different men in Molly’s flat.

Once the thought comes to her, she is certain. John has been there, or at least near it, but so has someone else. And only one of the men is the shooter.

“One last question,” Lena says. “Did you ever see this Molly with other men?”

“Never.” Abbaas shakes his head. “Just John.”

“Right.” Lena takes a card from her wallet and leaves it on the counter. “Here’s my number and my email address. If you think of anything else that might help us find him, contact me. Another officer will come by later for a full statement.” She turns away and walks towards the exit, longing for the frigid air outside.

“I think John bought it for the footage,” the man calls after Lena.

Lena stops just inside the door. “What footage?” she asks and turns back. “On the computer?”

“Yes.”

“Footage of what, exactly?”

Abbaas grimaces. “I have a camera outside,” he says. “I don’t have a permit to use one, but I am often alone in the shop.”

“Go on,” Lena says.

“John came in and asked if the camera was real. Some shops have fake ones, but mine works. So I said yes.”

“And then?”

“He asked if it had recorded the last hour. When I said it had, he wanted to buy the footage. It was on my computer. A laptop.”

Lena nods. John wanted to cover his tracks, so he needed the recording in case it shows him leaving the flat. He took a great risk going back to get the film, but she has seen worse. Desperation is the mother of many moronic ideas.

This particular idea had compromised her work in a bad way. The film could have been useful, maybe critical for finding John, and now it was gone.

“You saw us arrive,” Lena says, “and you know the footage could be used as evidence. And you sold it, just like that?” Lena asks.

“No.” Abbaas pauses. “Not ‘just like that’.”

“Did John threaten you?”

Abbaas shakes his head slowly. “He was very polite. Always calm, like always. The reason I sold the computer to John is that he would have taken it anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lena demands. “You said a moment ago that he didn’t threaten you?”

Abbaas looks up and meets Lena’s eyes. “I came to Sweden in nineteen eighty-two.” He holds up a hand when Lena begins to interrupt him. “Please listen,” he says. “It’s important.”

After a moment, Lena nods.

“I was in a war for about a year,” Abbaas says. “Iran, then Iraq. First in
Mehran
, after that in the Zagros Mountains. I can see that you do not recognize the names. That doesn’t matter. But this does.

“I met many men who had lost everything. Women, too. Some eventually fled, just like I did. Others broke down and sat on the ground while they waited to die. A few stayed and struggled to survive. But some lost their minds, or maybe I should say their souls. They became very good soldiers. Fearless, efficient, merciless. We called them walking corpses, but never to their faces.”

“John is probably in shock,” Lena says, “and possibly violent, but he’s not suffering from a war trauma.”

“Shock, trauma, madness.” Abbaas shakes his head. “Those are only empty words. Different dresses for the same thing. The people who became good soldiers were once good fathers and loving men, but the war turned them into stone. I’m telling you this because I want to help John. I liked him. He was an honest man.”

“Why the past tense?” Lena asks. “He’s not dead.” She had almost added
in difference to his girlfriend.

“That,” Abbaas says, “depends on your point of view. Perhaps there is still time. Please, hurry to find him.”

“I hope to.” Lena points at her card on the counter. “Contact me if you can think of anything else, or if John comes back again.” She leaves the shop and finds Agnes waiting for her outside with a question on her face.

“Did he know anything?” Agnes asks.

“John was here,” Lena says. “He bought a computer.”

“In the corner shop?”

“I’ll tell you why on the way to his flat,” Lena says. “There’s more. I’m beginning to think that John isn’t our man. Or rather that he’s one of them.”

Stunned, Agnes looks up from her notepad. “They were a group?”

Lena shakes her head. “One man shot Molly and ran, and John set off after him. Now both of them are gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course not. But I will be, once we’ve pinned John down and brought him in.”

“But if John isn’t–”

“We want both of them. Gren will want to turn all resources to finding the presumed killer, but we have to get John too. Trust me.”

“I do. You know that.”

“Good.” Lena nods in approval but wishes Agnes was not so unquestioning. That blind faith will come back to haunt Agnes if Lena loses control of the case. Or of herself.

“No word from the patrols yet?” Lena asks.

“Nothing new, but they’ve tightened the search. I told them to concentrate on people leaving the area. And I’ve requested backup. Two cars will meet us at the flat as soon as they can.”

Lena turns to Agnes. “Call the forensics and tell them to make sure they cover every spot of the flat when they look for prints. Including the front door and the walls just outside it.”

“I’ll call them straight away.”

Lena nods absently. In her mind, she goes over what the shop owner has told her. Flowers and smiles, chocolate and frailty. Caring people reduced by atrocities to callous machines.

Some of those women and men would have been hanging by a thread before they fell. Maybe a few had managed to claw their way back from the slide into callousness and returned to daylight, healing themselves by helping others, one compassionate act after another.

Perhaps she could, too.

“Then let’s go,” Lena says. “The storm’s getting worse. Or at least colder.”

*

John

John walks down a series of stone stairs running through a patch of forest on a crest between Brommaplan and Abrahamsberg. Around him are clusters of low blocks, most of them hidden by hedges and pine trees.

He walks carefully while the wind rips between the trees at his sides. Every step is slippery and obscured under layers of snow. His bag is slung over his shoulder. The folded laptop computer is held tightly under his arm.

On his left, a train rumbles past. Its wheels screech and hiss as it nears Abrahamsberg’s station, but the train is still going fast. He turns away as shafts of light from the train’s windows sweep over him; the chance that anyone on the train will notice him is minimal, but he cannot take any risks.

While he walked, he watched the trains continue past Brommaplan without stopping. The police had ordered the trains to isolate the station. This surprises him, but it is not a major obstacle. He can find another way to reach his destination. Perhaps the trains will pick up passengers here, one stop away from Brommaplan.

Halfway down the stairs, John pauses to shove the computer deep into his bag; the snow might damage the hardware, and he needs it to work.

“You have to be careful,” says a voice behind him.

John pushes the bag behind him and turns around.

A short, plump woman almost twice his age leans on the railing a few steps away. She is breathing laboriously. A transparent raincoat hangs draped over her brown coat.

She peers at John from under the brim of her hat. “I’m sorry if I startled you,” she says. “It’s the snow. One can’t hear a thing. Not cars, not people, nothing. Everything’s so quiet.”

“You’re quite right,” John says and smiles at her.

The woman squints and looks at John as he turns back to his bag and pulls the zip halfway shut. When the woman does not move, John slips one hand into the bag and finds one of the knives.

A teenage boy with a large dog on a lead appear at the top of the stairs. The boy descends the stairs, hooting with laughter as the golden retriever bounces down before him, eyes wild and tongue lolling. The boy and his dog flash between John and the woman and disappear in the darkness at the foot of the stairs.

The woman shakes herself. “You take care now,” she says. “These stairs are treacherous. It’s very easy to fall down.” She turns away and continues her climb, one cumbersome step at a time.

“I’ll make sure to look after myself.” John takes his hand out of the bag and zips it shut. “You have a good evening, now.”

When the elderly woman is out of sight, John walks down to the street. In the distance, the light from Abrahamsberg’s underground station spills out on the snow. The train that passed John earlier slows down, stops, and opens its doors. Abrahamsberg’s station is not shut down.

John runs again, past yellow brick façades, green metal bins and rows of shrubs visible only as carpets of twigs above the snow. The rail crosses Abrahamsberg’s central street on a low viaduct. On the other side of the underground rail is one of Stockholm’s arterial roads, running parallel with the rails. Hundreds of cars clog the four lanes.

He pauses near a closed shoe shop and studies the station on the other side of the street. Inside the station are three turnstiles: two automatic and one manned. Two guards flank the gates and peer closely at those who pass through. Abrahamsberg is a small suburb; even though it is rush hour, the guards have time to inspect everyone that enters the station.

John scans the area. A fence topped with barbed wire separates the pathway from the rails. A woman’s voice from the platform’s PA speakers reminds passengers that no trains stop at Brommaplan. The station is the main source of light, but the whirling snow outside is a grey veil that renders people and buildings into dark shapes.

On John’s right is a fenced-off building site, distinguishable only as a hazy framework of reinforcement bars and cranes. Between the site and the train platform are trees and bushes. Running between them is a pathway, unlit and covered by deep snow.

John crosses the street to the pathway and continues until he is sure that the shadows hide him. Two chimes from the speakers on the platform announce the imminent arrival of a westbound train. A minute later, the train arrives, drops off a handful of commuters, and continues deeper into the suburbs. People trickle out of the station, all of them shielding their eyes while looking down at their mobile phones. No one walks down the pathway or looks at John.

John finds a stretch where the barbed wire has been cut apart, possibly by some graffiti artist. He waits and listens for the whisper of electricity that precedes the arrival of a train. A few people stand on the other side of the platform. Everyone is looking in the other direction. A camera is mounted to the ceiling over the platform, but it is positioned to cover passengers, not the fence.

John scrambles over the fence, slips just as he balances on its top, and crashes down on the other side. He lies still and makes sure he has not injured himself. No alarms have gone off. The people on the platform are still looking the other way. An arm’s length away is the live rail; one touch means instant and ozone-reeking death.

The rail gives off a metallic
ping
. A train is coming.

Crouching, John steps over the live rail, walks up a metal staircase, and enters the platform. Inside the doors where stairs lead down to the ticket control, an old man on a bench frowns at him and turns back to his magazine.

A train arrives thirty seconds later. When the train’s doors open, John walks in, finds a seat, and waits for the next stage of the hunt. Soon he will have what he needs. In the meantime, he will rest and regain some of his strength. He must last a little longer.

Slowly, John’s eyes close. Soon his head is rolling with the movement of the train. The car shudders, and his jacket shifts to reveal the notes tucked down his inner pocket.

In the seat next to where John is seated, three young men look at each other. They all wear plain black or green jackets, blue jeans, and trainers.

One of the men, ginger, freckled and wiry, points to his own chest. He mouths
pocket
and
glances at John.

His friends, a heavyset man with Mediterranean looks, and a slimmer and taller man with close-cropped black hair, follow the first man’s gaze. The three men look at each other and smile. No words are said. None are needed. The plan is already agreed and in motion.

“Next stop,” the ginger man whispers, and his friends nod in agreement.

In the pale man’s pocket, a knife is snapped loose from its sheath.

*