Nothing.
They must still be sitting there. She counted to sixty. One minute. One minute more and then she would make for the stairs to the cellar.
She had prepared herself for the heavy footfalls and a voice ordering her to turn round, get into the back of the police car.
Nothing. Not a sound.
She shook herself free of the command that was never made and started down the two flights of stone stairs at a measured pace. She had to be quiet, mustn’t get out of breath. She thought about the door on the fifth floor, that gaping hole. It had offered a kind of freedom.
She closed her eyes for a second; she could still hear the blows from the fireman’s axe on the door panel, a uniformed policeman outside was hammering the wood to splinters. Then a thud when Dimitri let go of Lydia’s body, and his footsteps as he ran towards the man who was entering the flat.
Alena had to stop to calm her breathing.
She had waited behind that door for almost a year.
It was beyond all comprehension.
Twenty-four hours of freedom to wander round the city was all it took to make a whole year seem strange and distant. If only she could make up her mind that none of it had happened, then she would never have been in that flat with its two large beds, she would never have stood in the hall staring at the electronic locks.
She carried on down to the landing outside the cellar door. Stopping, she turned to face the broken-down door up there and stuck a finger in the air, for the men who would no longer come and ring the doorbell.
The door in front of her was locked and covered in cold, grey, sheet metal. She wasn’t very strong, but could manage to open it with a crowbar. She had done it once in Klaipeda. At the time it had been an awful night, but now she thought of the whole episode as a bit of distant fun and games.
She put her shoulder bag on the floor and unpacked the things from box 21: the dresses, the plastic boxes with necklaces and earrings, the video, the ball of string. She placed them side by side on the floor. The crowbar was buried underneath it all.
The man in the hardware store had laughed.
It was the smallest crowbar in the shop and quite easy to handle. She jammed the teeth into the lock and pushed, putting her whole weight on it once, twice, three times. Nothing budged.
She didn’t dare to try harder in case she made a noise.
But she had no choice.
Once more she inserted the two prongs of the crowbar, jiggled it backwards and forwards against the door frame, tested and then pushed, using all her weight and all her strength.
The lock gave way with a loud crack. The sound travelled up the stairwell. Every tenant who was in could have heard it.
She curled up on the floor, as if it would make her less visible.
She waited. She counted to sixty again.
Her wrist ached. She must have pushed harder than her body could take.
The silence continued.
Then she counted to sixty again.
No doors opened, no one came downstairs to find out what the noise was.
She got up, packed her things.
The cellar door swung open easily. Ahead was a long corridor. Its lime-washed walls seemed to lean in over her. At the far end of the corridor was another door, leading into four passages, with the storage rooms belonging to the flats.
Supporting herself with one hand resting on the metal panel, and clutching the crowbar in her other hand, she steeled herself to break the lock until she suddenly realised that the second door was open. Someone had unlocked it. That someone must be in there and would come back out, lock up and leave.
She stepped inside. The air was stale and smelt of damp carpets.
Her eyes slowly got used to the dark.
There was another smell. Aftershave and sweat. Dimitri smelt like that, and the customers, some of them anyway. She stood very still. It was hard to breathe, the air she inhaled didn’t seem enough.
Somebody was in there.
Alena remembered the ferry and her ticket and looking down into the water.
Steps on the rough brick floor. Someone was walking about in there.
She was crying, the tears trickling down her cheeks as she felt her way forward, following the wall into the nearest passage and then along to a pen that stuck out a bit. She closed her eyes and sat down. She would not look until later.
She sat there for so long, she lost all sense of time. The person was wandering about, opening and closing doors, lifting things and putting them down, some must have been heavy. The noises tugged her thoughts this way and that.
Then she heard nothing more. The silence was almost worse.
She was shaking and weeping, hyperventilating, until she dared let herself believe that she had been left alone.
Standing up, her legs felt weak and her head ached. She didn’t turn on the light, no need to check the number on the door. She knew exactly where it was.
They had been left in the damp underground darkness for two days and two nights.
Their storeroom was in one of the middle passages. The walls were made of wood, painted brown, with a narrow opening at the top of the door that was too small for her to climb through, more of a ventilation space. A simple small padlock. She weighed it in her hand and took a deep breath.
The crowbar fitted in under the hasp hammered into the board nearest the door. She pushed as she had done before and stared in surprise at the padlock and hasp dangling free.
She stepped inside.
It was not yet midday on Wednesday 5 June. The sky was as dark as on a drowsy night in November and the rain, which had dominated the day since dawn, was still dancing on the tarmac.
Ewert Grens, who had asked for one of the plain cars from the police pool, opened the passenger door and got in. He wanted Sven to drive, as he did more and more often. Ewert found concentrating on the road tiring; the light irritated him and made his eyes run. He was ageing quickly and hated it, though the swift decline of his body didn’t matter much; he had lost his woman long ago. No need to look good for anyone else. But his failing strength and energy – that was something else. He used to be able to cope with everything. The engine inside him never stopped, forcing his body to keep up with his restless mind. Fifty-six years old and lonely. What use is the past then?
They were late and Sven drove quickly towards the Arlanda Airport exit. It had been an odd morning. A job that should have been over in a few minutes had turned into a couple of hours spent holed up in Terminal Five. The man, whom they knew as Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp, had been scheduled to board a white and blue Finnair plane to Vilnius, flight time less than an hour. Their idea had been to see him leave and conclude the report on his activities that afternoon.
Ewert stared at the dual carriageway ahead and didn’t register the irritation in Sven’s voice.
‘Got to hurry.’
‘What?’
‘I have to go faster. Any colleagues out and about?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
The Arlanda slip road was practically empty and Sven was driving well above the speed limit. He longed for
