Box 21 aka The Vault Read online

  ‘What?’

  ‘Five fingers. A kneecap. As per the tariff.’

  ‘That’s what you pay for messing with our goods.’

  Slobodan was acting the boss. He was picking up bad habits, like his loud sighs and the way he waved his hands about to show how little he cared.

  ‘And?’

  Jochum had been doing the rounds with Slobodan since way back, before the little shit even got his driving licence. His bossiness was hard to take and Jochum considered telling him so.

  Not now. He’d make himself clear some other time.

  ‘The guy struggled, hung on to things. I couldn’t push him into the lift. Suddenly he got hold of one of the wheels on the chair and off he went. Down the stairs and into the wall.’

  Slobodan shrugged, started the engine again, revving it, turned the windscreen wipers on. Jochum’s rage was gnawing at his insides and he grabbed Slobodan’s arm, forced his hand off the wheel, pulled out the car key and pocketed it. He grasped the other man’s face with his hand, pressing his fingers into the cheeks, turning his head so that they were face to face, forcing Slobodan to pay attention.

  ‘Someone saw me.’

  Sven drove into Söder Hospital via the Casualty entrance, the way he often came on professional business. They were known here. Plenty of parking space too.

  They didn’t say anything. They hadn’t spoken since the alert, when Sven changed direction and headed for Vдster Bridge, away from his birthday celebrations that he had promised to be home in time for. Ewert understood how important it was to Sven, even though he didn’t understand why; he had rejected all that from his life. Or maybe it was actually the other way round. He found it hard to think of anything suitable to say, something comforting, and though he tested out several phrases in his head, they all sounded awkward and pointless. What did he know about missing a woman and a child?

  Everything.

  He knew everything about it.

  They got out and hurried up the ramp into Casualty. Side by side they marched towards the lifts. General Medicine, sixth floor.

  When they emerged, a woman was waiting for them, a doctor called Lisa Öhrström. She was quite young, quite tall and quite good-looking. Ewert’s eyes rested on her too intently and he held her hand for a fraction too long. She noticed and looked quickly at him. He felt embarrassed.

  ‘I let the visitor in,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t see them leave the ward together.’

  She pointed at the stairs, just next to the lift. A body was lying face down on the first landing. The blood had flowed out into a large reddish pool around it.

  He was still now, blood congealing around his mouth, his hand didn’t scratch his nose, his eyes didn’t flicker, his arms didn’t flap. This bodily peace was new. It was as if his damned twitchy fearfulness had leached away with his blood. They walked down to him, twelve steps. Ewert knelt and examined the dead body as if hoping to find something, anything. He knew of course that he wouldn’t. Lang was an experienced hitman who knew all about precautions like wearing gloves and he left absolutely nothing behind.

  They were waiting for Ludwig Errfors. Ewert had phoned him immediately. That decision had been easy. With someone like Lang, you had to get your side of it right. Errfors was not one for making mistakes. He was simply the best.

  A few minutes more, just enough time for Ewert to sit down on a step and think about the dead man. He wondered if Oldйus was the sort who had thought about dying. If he knew the speed with which his drug-taking hurried him on towards death? If he had been afraid? Or did he want to die? Bloody fool. It was easy to work out that with his lifestyle he’d end up like this, cluttering up an ugly staircase, before he was thirty years old. Ewert sighed, snorted at the unresponsive corpse.

  I’d like to know where I’ll end up, he thought as he got up and went over to Hilding again. Will I be in the way too? Will someone snort at me? There’s always some sod who snorts.

  Ludwig Errfors was a tall, dark man, about fifty years old. He arrived wearing his civilian outfit, jeans and a jacket, just as he always did in his office at the forensic medicine headquarters in Solna.

  He said hello and pointed at the body that until recently had been Hilding Oldйus.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m in a hurry. Can we get started right away?’

  Ewert made a small gesture.

  ‘Ready when you are.’

  Errfors knelt down to examine the body. He started to talk, with his face still at floor level.

  ‘Who is this?’ he asked.

  ‘Dealer, small time, heroin addict. His name was Hilding Oldйus.’

  ‘Why call me in?’

  ‘We’re after the butcher who did this. We’ve been chasing him for a while and need a proper examination of the corpse.’

  Errfors moved his black bag closer. After pulling on a pair of surgical gloves, he waved his white hands irritably at Ewert to make him go away. At least up to the top step.

  He felt for the pulse. Not there.

  Next, the heartbeat. Nothing.

  He shone a light into both eyes, recorded the rectal temperature, palpated the abdomen.

  His routine examination did not take very long, ten or fifteen minutes. Opening the body up, the real work, came later and took longer.

  Sven had escaped from the stairwell long ago and stood looking down the eternity of blue corridor that ran from the lift area to the ward doors. He remembered the last time he had seen Errfors at work. He had left the room in tears. It was just as tough for him now. He couldn’t cope with death, not like this, not at all.

  Errfors changed position, looking quickly from Ewert to Sven and back to Ewert again.

  ‘He can’t handle it,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Remember last time.’

  Ewert called to his colleague.

  ‘Hey, Sven.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The witness statements. I want you to take them now.’

  ‘We’ve only got Öhrström.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘And we’ve already talked to her.’

  ‘Talk to her again.’

  Sven cursed his inability to handle death, but was grateful to Ewert for understanding how he felt. He got up, walked away from the stairs and towards the end of the corridor and opened the door to the ward that Hilding Oldйus had left in terror just hours ago.

  Ludwig Errfors watched him go and then concentrated on the corpse lying at his feet; a human life turned into nothing much and soon reduced to a few notes on a form. He cleared his throat and started speaking into a Dictaphone.

  ‘External examination of a dead male.’

  He kept it brief, one set of observations at a time.

  ‘Pupils dilated.’

  Pause.

  ‘Four fingers broken on left hand. The haematomas indicate that the fractures occurred prior to death.’

  A couple of breaths.

  ‘The left knee appears to be crushed. Oedema indicates that the injury was sustained prior to death.’

  He was precise. Considered every word. Grens had asked for an unassailable report and he would get what he wanted.

  ‘The abdomen is contused in several places and distended. Palpation and percussion indicate the presence of free fluid, possibly due to an intra-abdominal haemorrhage.

  ‘Several injection punctures of varying age, some infected. Drug addiction is the likely cause.

  ‘Time of death estimated to be approximately thirty and no more than forty minutes prior to inspection of body. This is supported by a witness statement.’

  He carried on talking into the Dictaphone for a minute or two. The autopsy would take place later, when the body had been transferred to the forensic medicine building, but was not likely to change anything significant in his on-site report. He had done enough of those to know that.

  * * *

  Jochum took his hand from Slobodan’s face. The cheeks were marked with red blotches which moved when he spoke.

&nb
sp; ‘Did I hear you right, Jochum? Someone saw you?’ Slobodan slipped his fingers over the hot spots on his face and sighed. ‘Not so good. If there are witnesses, we’ll have to talk to them.’

  ‘Not witnesses. Just one witness, a doctor.’

  The interminable rain made it difficult to see out. When the warmth of their bodies and their breathing and mutual aggression hit the car windows from the inside, the condensation eliminated what little vision they had had before. Slobodan waved at the windows and pointed to the fan.

  Jochum nodded and handed the car key back.

  ‘I can’t go back in there,’ he said. ‘Not now. That doctor’s still there. And the cops are probably there too, now.’

  Slobodan waited in silence, watching the moisture slowly evaporate from the windscreen. Let the fucker stew for a bit. The power balance between them had shifted. Every time it tipped Slobodan’s way, Jochum lost the same amount.

  When half the window had cleared, he turned to Jochum.

  ‘OK. I’ll fix it.’

  Jochum hated running up a debt of gratitude, but he had no choice.

  ‘Lisa Öhrström. Thirty to thirty-five. Tallish, about one metre seventy-five, and slim, almost thin. Dark shoulder-length hair. Glasses, narrow with black frames, but she keeps them in the breast pocket of her white coat.’

  They had exchanged a few words, so he knew how she spoke.

  ‘Trace of dialect from somewhere up north. Light voice and a slight lisp.’

  Jochum settled back, stretched out his legs and turned the fan off.

  He watched in the rear-view mirror as Slobodan passed the automatic doors and disappeared into the entrance hall.

  She was singing. As always when she was upset and worried, she sang her song.

  Lydia Grajauskas

  Lydia Grajauskas

  Lydia Grajauskas

  She sang it quietly, under her breath, because she couldn’t risk being discovered.

  She wondered how long it would take before the unconscious guard came back to life. It had been a hard blow, but he was a big man and might be able to take quite some force. Maybe he had raised the alarm already.

  Lydia walked along the brightly lit corridor underneath the big hospital, her mind still full of how it had felt to press the gun to the guard’s temple when he hesitated. She was back in the world of the nine-year-old, in the room where her father was kneeling while the military policeman kept hitting his head and shouting that death was too good for weapon smugglers.

  She stopped and checked her notebook.

  The Polish nurse had let her have the hospital information booklet she had asked for, and Lydia had studied the maps of the various floors very carefully. Lying in bed, watched by the guard, she had made shaky copies in her notebook and added notes in Lithuanian.

  Yes, she was going the right way to the mortuary.

  She walked faster, with the carrier bag in her right, functional hand. She walked as fast as she could, but her hip ached and made her limp. The sound of each firm step with her good leg seemed to echo along the corridor and she slowed down again, didn’t want to be heard.

  She knew exactly what to do next.

  No Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp would ever again order her to undress and let a stranger look her over to decide which part of her naked body he had bought the right to touch.

  A few people had passed her, but didn’t seem to see her. She was aware of their eyes clocking her and felt they must know that she was in the wrong place, until she realised that she was invisible, because she looked like every other patient walking along a hospital corridor in her hospital clothes.

  That was why she was unprepared.

  She had relaxed and she mustn’t.

  When she saw who it was, it was too late.

  Perhaps it was his way of walking that she noticed first. He was tall and took long strides. His arms had a long reach. Then he said something, quite loudly, to his companion, another man. She recognised his light, slightly nasal voice. She had heard it from close quarters.

  He was one of them. One of the men who liked to hit her. Here, he wore a white coat. In a matter of moments they would be face to face; he kept walking straight ahead and so did she, and the length of corridor that separated them was brightly lit and had no doors.

  She slowed down even more, her eyes down, her right hand on the gun inside the billowing hospital coat.

  She almost touched him as they passed each other.

  He smelt the way he had when he pushed into her.

  One brief moment and he was gone.

  He hadn’t noticed her at all. The woman he had paid to penetrate every fortnight for a year usually wore a black dress and underwear of his choice. Her hair was loose, her lips red. He hadn’t ever seen the real her, the woman he had just passed in the corridor. Her face was bruised and beaten; one of her arms was in plaster. She walked in white slippers with the hospital logo stamped on them. He didn’t see her now either.

  Afterwards she was surprised, more than anything else. Not frightened, hardly panicked, but surprised, verging on angry. He just walked around here, like everyone else, and nothing showed on the outside.

  The last stretch of hospital corridor. Lydia stopped at the door she was about to open.

  She had never been in a mortuary before. There was an image in her mind of what it would look like, but she knew it was made up from scenes in American films she had seen in Lithuania. It was all she had to go by, and what she had based her plans on. From her sketch in the notebook she had an idea of its size and how many rooms there were. Now she was about to go in and she had to be very calm, stay calm and cope with both the living and the dead.

  She hoped there would be someone alive in there. Preferably more than one.

  She opened the door. It resisted, as if she was pushing against a draught, but there were no windows, she knew that. She heard voices, but the sound was muffled and seemed to come from the room next door. She stood still. They were alive and in there. Now it was up to her. She had the gun and the explosives that Alena had managed to get for her. Lydia had already knocked the guard out and found her way here. The voices told her that she had been lucky, there were people there.

  She took a deep breath.

  She had to do what she had planned.

  She would make sure that it would never happen again.

  There were at least three voices, maybe more. She couldn’t understand what they were saying, an odd word here and there perhaps, but it didn’t help. Her Swedish was nonexistent and it made her angry with herself now. She freed the gun from the tape and took it in her good hand. Slowly she walked towards the voices, through the empty room she had entered. It was long and narrow, a little like a hall in a flat, and unlit.

  Then she saw them.

  She stopped on the dark side of the doorway and watched. They were busy with each other, observing something which she couldn’t see at first.

  There were five of them and she realised that she had seen them all only a few hours ago.

  They had stood around her bed. One of them was a little older than the rest; he wore large glasses and his hair was going grey. This was the doctor who had examined her after she had been admitted. This morning he had returned with his four medical students to show them her injuries, shown her body to them, pointed at the wounds on her back and talked a great deal, about things like the cattle-whip and how wide and long the gashes were and how well they might heal, or not. The four students had listened in silence, wondering how many body defects they would have to learn about in order to understand and be able to treat them.

  The group was standing in the middle of the room, quite a bit away, but Lydia could make out more now. They were gathered round a trolley with a body on it, lit by the focused light from two large lamps in the ceiling. She guessed it must be a dead body, it was so pale and still. No breathing movements. The grey-haired man with the large glasses was pointing with the same kind of laser torch that he had used on h
er. The four medical students were as silent and grim-looking in front of the corpse as in front of a living human being who had been humiliated and wounded.

  Lydia hung back in the anteroom. They hadn’t seen her. Then she took eight steps into the room before they discovered she was there. She stopped two or three metres away from them.

  They saw her and yet did not see her.

  They recognised the female patient with the lash wounds who had smiled so sadly from her bed that morning, but this woman, who looked quite similar, had a very different aura. She wanted something. Her eyes demanded their attention. She raised her gun and pointed it at them while she took a few more steps forward. The overhead light illuminated her face, which looked badly hurt, but showed no pain. This woman was intense and calm at the same time. The grey-haired doctor had been interrupted and in a deliberate manner began a new sentence about some part of the cadaver, but soon stopped again.

  The woman had released the safety catch on the gun and raised it until the muzzle was pointing straight at his face. And then at the other faces, the gun moving from one pair of eyes to the next.

  Each time she held it long enough for every one of them to feel that terrifying cramp in the stomach which she knew from when Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp had aimed at her temple.

  No one spoke. They waited for her to say something.

  Lydia pointed to the floor with the gun.

  ‘On knee! On knee!’

  They knelt, all five of them, in a ring round the trolley containing the remains of what had once been a living person. She tried to gauge how frightened they were, but no one met her eyes, not one of them. The only female student and one of the men had closed their eyes. The rest stared straight past her or through her. They didn’t have the strength to do anything else, not even their teacher. Not even him.

  She was nine years old again, back in that room with the military police, the gun pressed against her head, and her dad, his hands tied behind his back, was forced to kneel, then to lie face down on the floor. She remembered how he fell forward, the thud when his face hit the concrete, a heavy fall, and that he bled from both nostrils afterwards.