2
What struck Paul Hjelm first was how long it had been since he’d sat in a patrol car with flashing blue lights and a wailing siren. Now he was squeezed into the backseat between two uniformed cops and a plainclothes detective who looked exactly like him. He leaned forward and placed his hand on the driver’s shoulder just as the car burned rubber, pulling out abruptly onto Botkyrkaleden.
“I think it’d be best to turn off the siren,” Hjelm said.
The driver reached out his hand to push the button, but that didn’t bring silence; the squealing tires and the furiously accelerating engine kept the noise level high.
Hjelm studied his plainclothes colleague. Svante Ernstsson was clinging to the little strap that hung from the roof.
Then he thought about the fact that he often thought things that he shouldn’t be thinking.
Which just made him think about them all the more.
It was only a month since Ernstsson had climbed unharmed out of a demolished police cruiser on Tegelangsvagen after an absurd high-speed chase down in the Fittja industrial area. Now Ernstsson laughed faintly as the car flew across the busy freeway at Fittjamotet, careened to the left through the long curve toward Slagsta, and passed the intersection. Tegelangsvagen stretched off to the right; Ernstsson kept his slightly rigid gaze fixed on the left. After that he relaxed just a bit.
Hjelm thought he was seeing exactly what his partner saw and feeling exactly what he felt. After almost seven years of working closely together in one of the country’s toughest police districts, they knew each other inside and out. And yet he realized that what they actually knew about each other was minuscule. Was that really all he had learned?
Hjelm felt completely empty. That was why he had stepped into his colleague’s fleeting terror-to escape from himself for a moment.
The day had started in the worst imaginable way. The bedroom was utterly suffocating; the early spring sun had played over the blinds for a while, trapping the stuffiness. With a stiff, persistent morning erection, he had crept closer to Cilla, who as unobtrusively as possible had wriggled in the opposite direction. He didn’t notice, refused to notice, crept closer with his stubborn, stifled urgency. And she slipped away, inch by inch, until she suddenly got too close to the edge of the bed and fell to the floor.
He bolted upright, sitting up in bed wide awake, his erection abruptly lost. She quietly got up off the floor, shaking her head, wordless with fury. She stuck her hand into her panties and fished out a pad soaked with blood, holding it out toward him. He gave a slight grimace that was both apologetic and filled with disgust. Then they noticed that Danne was standing in the doorway, a look of obvious horror on his pimply fourteen-year-old face. He ran off. They heard a key turn, and Public Enemy started rapping full blast.
They exchanged looks. Suddenly they were reunited by a bewildered sense of guilt. Cilla dashed out of the room, but knocking on Danne’s door was pointless.
Then they were sitting at the breakfast table.
Tova and Danne had left for school. Danne hadn’t eaten any breakfast, hadn’t uttered a word, hadn’t exchanged a glance with any of them. With her back to Paul, Cilla said, looking at the sparrows on the bird feeder outside the window of their row house in Norsborg, “You’ve witnessed two births. Why the hell are you still disgusted by a woman’s bodily functions?”
He felt completely empty. The car passed the Slagsta allotment gardens on the right and the Brunna School on the left. It made a sharp left turn down toward Hallunda Square; for a moment he had Ernstsson in his lap. They exchanged tired glances and watched as the truncated but crowded stretches of Linvagen, Kornvagen, Hampvagen, and Havrevagen flew past outside the window. The street names-
Over by the square three police cars were parked with their doors wide open. Behind a couple of the doors crouched uniformed officers with their weapons drawn. They were pointed in all different directions. The rest of the cops were running around, shooing away curious bystanders, baby buggies, and dog owners.
Hjelm and Ernstsson pulled up alongside the others. The officers were helping with what would later be called “the evacuation of the area.” Hjelm was still sitting halfway inside the vehicle while Ernstsson got out and went over to the next car. Squeezing out of it came the disheveled figure of Johan Bringman, who stretched his creaky back.
“The immigration office,” he managed to say in the middle of his stretching. “Three hostages.”
“Okay, what do we know?” asked Ernstsson, peering down from his towering height at Bringman’s hunched form and unbuttoning his leather jacket in the late winter sun.
“Shotgun, third floor. The majority of the building has been cleared. We’re waiting for the hostage negotiators.”
“From headquarters at Kungsholmen?” said Hjelm from inside the car. “That’ll take awhile. Have you seen the traffic on the E4?”
“Where’s Bruun?” said Ernstsson.
Bringman shook his head. “No idea. Maybe he’s waiting for the top brass to arrive. In any case, it was a clerk from the office who managed to get out. Come on out, Johanna. Over here. This is Johanna Nilsson. She works inside the building.”
A blond woman in her forties got out of the police car and went to stand next to Ernstsson. She held one hand on her forehead and the other to her lips, chewing on one fingernail, then another.
Ernstsson attempted to comfort her by placing his hand on her shoulder and said in his most reassuring voice, “Try and take it easy. We’re going to resolve this situation. Do you know who he is?”
“His name is Dritero Frakulla,” said Johanna. Her voice broke but her words were firm. “A Kosovar Albanian. His family has been here a long time, and now they’ve been sucked into the general wave of deportation. They thought everything was fine and were just waiting for their citizenship. Then all of a sudden they were informed of the opposite. I assume that’s when things went wrong. The rug was pulled out from under them. I’ve seen it so many times before.”
“Do you know him?”
“Know him? For God’s sake, he’s my friend! It was my case. I know his children, his wife, even his freaking cats. I’m probably the one he’s after. He’s a timid man-he’d never hurt a fly. But I lied to him.” She raised her voice. “Without knowing it, I was lying to him the whole goddamned time! The rules kept changing and changing and changing. How the hell are we supposed to do our job when everything we say gets turned into lies?”
Hjelm got wearily to his feet. He took off his heavy denim jacket with the sheepskin collar, unfastened his shoulder holster, and tossed it inside the car. He stuck his service revolver into his waistband behind his back and put his jacket on again.
He felt empty.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Svante Ernstsson and Johan Bringman in unison.
“I’m going in.”
“The hostage team will be here any minute, for fuck’s sake!” Ernstsson shouted at Hjelm as he crossed Tomtbergavagen. He ran after him and grabbed his arm. “Wait, Paul. Don’t do anything stupid. It’s not necessary. Leave it to the experts.”
He met Hjelm’s gaze, saw the blank look of resolve, and let go of his arm.
Hjelm slowly made his way up the stairs to the immigration office. He saw nothing, heard nothing. The air was stifling in the dreary, deserted building. Everything was concrete. Concrete with thick, plastic-like paint that seemed gray-tinged no matter what color it was. The walls were covered with chips of flecking paint like halfhearted decorations. A strange heat, shimmering as if in the desert, sucked up the stench of urine, sweat, and alcohol.
