Box 21 aka The Vault Read online

  Lydia went over to the female student, the one who looked like her, with her reddish-blonde hair and thin body. The one who had tied the others up.

  ‘Police!’

  Lydia held the doctor’s mobile phone up in front of the student’s face. Then, after putting her hand on the explosive taped to the other woman’s shoulder as a reminder, she cautiously loosened the ties.

  ‘Police! Call police!’

  The student hesitated, frightened that she might have misunderstood. She looked around anxiously and tried to make eye contact with the greying doctor.

  He spoke to her, keeping his voice calm and steady, hiding his own fear. ‘She wants you to call the police.’

  The student had understood and nodded. The older man made his voice sound reassuring, he obviously had to force himself. ‘Do it. Just do what she asks. Dial one, one, two.’

  Her hand shook, she dropped the phone, picked it up again, dialled the wrong number, looked quickly at Lydia and said sorry. Then she got it right: one, one, two. Lydia heard the line connecting. She was satisfied and indicated to the student that she should lie down on her stomach. She took the handset from her, went over to the doctor and pressed the phone to his ear.

  ‘Talk!’

  He nodded, waited. His forehead was glistening with sweat.

  The room was silent.

  One minute.

  Then a voice answered. The doctor spoke with his mouth close to the phone.

  ‘Police.’

  Silence, waiting. Lydia stood at his side, holding the phone. The rest of them had closed their eyes or were looking at the floor in front of them, lost, far away.

  A new voice.

  The doctor replied.

  ‘My name is Gustaf Ejder. I am a senior registrar at the Söder Hospital. I am calling from the hospital mortuary, in the basement. I was here with four medical students when a young woman dressed as an inpatient came and took us all hostage. She is armed with a gun and is aiming at our heads. She has also put what I think is plastic explosives on our bodies.’

  The student called Johan Larsen, the young man who had collapsed a little earlier, shaking uncontrollably, suddenly shouted at the phone.

  ‘It is plastic explosive! I know! It’s Semtex. Almost half a kilo. There will be a big fucking bang if she detonates it!’

  Lydia’s first reaction was to swing the gun towards the shouting man, but then she relaxed.

  She had picked up the word Semtex and his voice had been so wild that the message would get across to whoever was listening at the other end.

  She took out the pages she had torn from her notebook and, with the phone still pressed against the doctor’s ear, lined up the pieces of paper on the floor in front of him with an almost empty sheet on top. It had just a couple of words written on it. Then she indicated that she wanted him to keep talking.

  He did what she wanted.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The woman wants me to read a name she has written on a piece of paper. It seems to have been torn from a notebook. It says Bengt Nordwall. That’s all.’

  The voice asked him to repeat what he had just said.

  ‘Bengt Nordwall. Nothing else. What she has written is pretty hard to read, but I am certain I’ve got it right. Her English when she speaks isn’t that easy to understand either. My guess is that she comes from Russia. Or maybe one of the Baltic states.’

  Lydia took the phone away from him and indicated that she wanted him to sit upright again.

  She had heard him pronounce the name she had written down.

  She had also heard him say Baltic.

  She was satisfied.

  Bengt Nordwall stared up at the sky. Grey, solid grey. The rain had followed his every step this summer. He sighed. This was supposed to be a time for winding down and relaxing, for gathering your strength for yet another winter. It would be one of those autumns again when, by mid-October already, people went into hiding in their offices, fed up with everything except their own company.

  Silence everywhere, nothing to distract you from the sound of raindrops pattering on the cloth of the parasol.

  Lena was sitting next to him, engrossed in a book. As usual. He wondered if she actually remembered the stories beyond the next day, let alone the next book, but reading was her way of unwinding. She would curl up in a chair, stuff a cushion behind her back and forget everything around her.

  He was sitting in the same place as he had two days ago when Ewert had been next to him on the garden seat and it had rained just as hard. They had both been soaked to the skin, but their conversation was more important. They were so close, a closeness that can only develop with sufficient time.

  He hadn’t guessed then that he would meet up with Ewert only the next day, outside that Baltic whore’s flat. Bengt could still see her. The skin on her back, torn apart by the whip. He felt bad, worse than uncomfortable. Not her. Not another terrible beating again. Not now.

  Their garden wasn’t big, but he took pride in it. It was good for the kids, somewhere for them to run around. The last two years he had worked part-time, he was fifty-five and would never again experience young lives growing up around him. He had just this one chance and wanted to enjoy the children as much as possible. They were older now, of course, and could do most things on their own now, but he wanted to be there for them and joined in their playing from a distance. This summer even the kids had got fed up with playing outdoors. The sodden lawn was left alone, no footballs slammed into the roses and no one hid in the lilac bush while someone else counted to a hundred. Instead they sat holed up in their rooms, in front of their computer screens, caught up in an electronic world he knew absolutely nothing about.

  Bengt looked at Lena again and smiled. She was so lovely. The long, blonde hair, her peaceful, intent face – a peace that he had never found. He remembered Vilnius. For a few years he had been the head of security at the Swedish embassy there and one day she had materialised at a departmental desk, a young and curious civil servant. He couldn’t understand why she had chosen him, but that was exactly what she had done: she had picked him, and somehow he, who had already been discarded once, had been lifted back into the realms of the eligible people who married and settled down.

  A washed-up policeman, twenty years her senior.

  He was still terrified that she might wake up one morning, look him in the eye, realise that she had made a mistake and ask him to leave.

  ‘Sweetie…’

  She didn’t hear. He leaned towards her and lightly kissed her cheek.

  ‘Lena?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s go in.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not yet. Soon. Just three more pages.’

  Rain. He had been certain it couldn’t be any worse, but now it got heavier and sounded like it would soon rip through the protective material above their heads. The lawn around them slowly surrendered to the water and became boggy marshland.

  Bengt looked at his wife. She was holding the book up in front of her face with both hands, hiding behind a chapter with three more pages to go.

  But the other woman was insistent.

  Lena was in front of him, but it wasn’t her he saw. Instead Bengt saw the other woman, her whipped back slashed, her skin ripped to shreds, congealing blood everywhere. He tried to push the sight out of his mind, but the image of the bloody whore wouldn’t go. When he closed his eyes it just got clearer; he saw her carried out on a stretcher, unconscious. He opened his eyes again but she was still there, her stretcher being manoeuvred through the splintered door. He cowered behind the feeling of unease, which then tipped over into a fear he didn’t want to feel.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Lena had put the book down on the armrest and was looking at him.

  He didn’t reply at first. Then he shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I can see something’s up. Penny for your thoughts?’

&
nbsp; Another light shrug of his shoulders, as carelessly as he could. ‘Nothing, really. I’m fine.’

  She knew him too well, knew that whatever it was, it was definitely not nothing.

  ‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen you like that. You seem scared.’

  The fucking awful welts on one of them, and the other one running round the flat screaming. Naked, beaten young bodies. Perhaps he ought to tell Lena. She had every right to know. The images haunted him. He had been utterly unprepared for it.

  ‘Your phone’s ringing.’

  He looked at her, at her finger that was pointing at his jacket pocket, and he scrabbled to find the phone. The noise was stressing him out. Only four rings, then it would stop.

  ‘Nordwall.’

  He held the phone pressed to his ear. The call didn’t take long, just a minute or so. He looked at his wife.

  ‘Something’s happened. They need an interpreter. I have to go.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Söder Hospital.’

  He got up, kissed Lena’s cheek again and then bent his head to get out from under the parasol. Out into the pouring rain.

  Söder Hospital. The Lithuanian girl. A mortuary.

  Fear sunk its claws into him again.

  The guard in the green uniform was sitting on the only bed in the room, with a bandage wound round his head. He had bled a great deal and the white fabric was stained a pale red. The nurse standing next to him had a Polish name on her ID tag. She had brought him two brown tablets that Ewert assumed were painkillers.

  The guard didn’t have much to tell.

  Lydia had been in the dayroom, quietly watching TV. The two lads from Ward 4 had been there too. The lunchtime news was on, some channel or other, he couldn’t remember which. She wanted to go to the toilet, no harm in that. Why refuse her? She was so small and frail, with one arm in plaster and a bad hip that made her limp. He hadn’t considered her dangerous, and besides, he couldn’t follow her when she went to the toilet, could he?

  Ewert smiled. Of course you bloody well should. Your job was to watch her: when she slept, when she went for a dump.

  The guard’s head hurt and he patted the bandage, touched the back of his neck. It had been a hard blow. She had flushed the toilet – he heard that, the water had rushed into the bowl twice. When she came out, she had signed to him that she wanted to go back to bed and that he should come with her. He didn’t think there was anything strange about that. He had followed her back here, to Room 2, and closed the door behind him, as per usual.

  And then suddenly she had a gun in her hand.

  He didn’t know how. All he knew was that she knew how to use it. He heard her cock the gun before holding it to his head. After a few moments, he realised that she was serious.

  It was a bare, shabby room.

  The guard had felt the back of his head gingerly, sighed and left. Ewert had stayed, sitting in the visitor’s chair and looking around.

  A metal bed. Next to it a bedside locker on castors. By the window a small table and a chair, the one he was sitting in. It was a spacious room, meant for four patients, but it had been cleared to let one badly abused woman recover alone.

  He sat in silence. His thoughts bouncing off the cold, white walls.

  He was waiting, mustering his strength. He needed it more than he had realised when the call on the way back from Arlanda Airport made them switch lanes and drive over the Vдster Bridge towards the hospital. Then it had been all about a sad murdered junkie and the chance he had waited for, to tie a crime firmly to the man who had ruined his life together with Anni. Now the situation had spiralled into a hostage drama with enough Semtex to blow parts of this crowded building to smithereens.

  Ewert Grens was a senior policeman and better than most at investigating murders. But big operations, that was different. It was a long time since he had stopped doing big operations, the mobilisation of cars and men while events were still taking place.

  So he had just stood there, with a fresh eyewitness statement against Lang in his possession, one floor below the room where another drama had unfurled: a prostitute had knocked her guard down and escaped.

  And seven floors above the mortuary, where the same woman had taken five people hostage, and slapped some light-beige death between their shoulders.

  He had a patrol car bring his police uniform from the cupboard at Kronoberg where it was kept.

  Soon he would be appointed Gold Command, in charge of both operations.

  Two human dramas had landed on his desk.

  On his way into the hospital, Slobodan glanced quickly back at the car. He could see Jochum Lang’s shaved, tanned skull and broad neck through the wet car window. Truth be told, he was fond of that fucking baldie, who had been like an older brother, someone you were maybe a bit scared of, but mostly admired. But it was about self-respect: at thirty-five a guy had to look after himself, get some respect even from those who didn’t expect it. Too bad if some folk had different ideas. Besides, this time it was Jochum who was up shit creek; he shouldn’t have let a witness see him when he was about to waste that screwball junkie.

  Lisa Öhrström. Dialect from up north. Between thirty and thirty-five years old. One seventy-five, dark hair, narrow black-rimmed specs, usually kept in breast pocket.

  Slobodan took the lift to the sixth floor, followed the empty corridor to the medical wards and stopped halfway along at a glass booth with a woman inside.

  Her back was turned; he knocked lightly on the glass, and she turned round. Not her. At least twenty years too old.

  ‘I’m looking for Doctor Öhrström.’

  ‘She isn’t here.’

  Slobodan smiled. ‘I can see that.’

  She didn’t respond to his smile.

  ‘Doctor Öhrström is busy. Can I help you?’

  This was the ward sister, or so her ID tag said. She seemed tense and her expression was worried.

  ‘The police have been here. They have just finished talking to Doctor Öhrström. Is that what it’s about?’

  ‘Yes, in a way. Where did you say I could find her?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s with her patients. And there’s more waiting. It’s been quite a busy day and we’re running late.’

  He stepped out into the corridor, pulled out a chair and settled down, a demonstration that he had no intention of going away.

  ‘I’d like you to fetch her, please.’

  He was sitting at a small table by the window in the room that had until recently accommodated an abused victim and was now a crime scene, using his mobile to issue commands. When the battery ran out he replaced it with a newly charged one and carried on.

  Ewert had called for all available patrol cars to come to the Casualty unit at Söder Hospital, a place he had judged to be a suitable distance from any potential explosion. He wanted all traffic from the ring road stopped. The hospital access route was already blocked and the chief executive had agreed to evacuate the area where the mortuary was situated. Everyone must leave.

  He stood up, glanced at Sven Sundkvist, who was just entering the room, and pointed at the door. Without a word they both went out into the corridor. The last few minutes had been intense.

  ‘I want an explosives expert.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Can you sort that out?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They were at the lifts and Sven turned to the one that had just arrived. ‘Going down? Or shall we use the stairs?’

  Ewert waved a hand. ‘Not yet.’

  He produced an envelope and handed it to his colleague.

  ‘I found this by her bed. The one thing in the entire room that didn’t belong to the hospital.’

  Sven took the envelope, looked quickly at it and gave it back, before walking into the nearest ward. He found what he was looking for on a shelf above the wash basin and returned, pulling on a pair of disposable surgical gloves.

&
nbsp; ‘Right. Let me see it.’

  He opened it. A notebook, blue covers. Nothing else. He glanced at Ewert, then started leafing through it. Some of the pages had been torn out, four were covered with tightly written script. A Slavic language of some sort, as far as he could see.

  ‘Hers, presumably?’

  ‘Presumably.’

  ‘I don’t understand a word of it.’

  ‘I want it translated. Sven, can you take care of it?’

  Ewert watched Sven restore the blue notebook to the envelope and then held out his hand, taking charge of it. He pointed towards the stairwell.

  ‘We’ll use the stairs.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘We don’t want to be stuck in a lift if something happens.’

  They started to walk down the steep concrete stairs and passed the big red stain that until recently had been Hilding Oldйus. The green-uniformed lads had carried off the rest. Ewert shrugged as they passed.

  ‘We’ll have to deal with that later.’

  After a few more steps, Sven stopped. He stood still for a second or two, turned and went back to the red stain.

  ‘Ewert, hang on.’

  He stared at the stain, his eyes following its edges. The blood had splashed high up on the wall.

  ‘What drives us? Look, the remains of someone who was alive not so long ago. What drives people?’

  ‘Sven, we haven’t got time for this.’

  ‘I don’t understand. I know something about how human beings work, up to a point, but I don’t understand it.’

  Sven crouched down; his body swayed a little and he almost lost his balance. He stood up again.

  ‘We know who Hilding Oldйus was. He had quite a lot going for him. He was bright, for instance, no question about it. But he hauled a burden of shame about on his back. Just like most of the rest of us fools. Shame, where does it come from?’

  ‘We’ve got to get moving. Bloody quick.’

  ‘You’re not listening to me, Ewert. Shame eats you up from inside. Shame drives a lot of people. We shouldn’t be chasing criminals, you know, we should go for the shame that make criminals commit crimes.’

  ‘I don’t have time, Sven. Come on.’