Marked For Revenge

She had cleaned up everything that revealed her background. It was meaningless to keep it. She should let it remain a secret, live her life as buttoned-up as the oxford shirts she wore in court.

She closed her eyes.

And turned off the light.

She stood still, listening to the sound of her heart pounding.

Her life would take another direction from now on, no longer driven by shadows from the past.

She felt a shiver go down her spine and wondered if it was relief she felt.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TRAIN ATTENDANT MATS JOHANSSON kept his eyes looking out the window. The late night’s intense calm had settled in on the X2000 between Copenhagen and Stockholm. It was the sort of quiet that made him relax.

He always longed for peace and quiet, which is why he and his wife spent every summer in a little red cottage in the middle of a forest in Småland. The cottage had a white veranda, and they sat there every warm summer evening and looked out at the majestic trees and the emerald green lawn. They puttered around in the garden each day, planted carrots and tomatoes. But this time of year there was nothing to do there, Mats thought. Not in cold, harsh Sweden.

He saw the clock turn 10:12 p.m., knew that there were ten minutes left before they would arrive in Norrköping and went with calm, steady steps down the aisle, keeping his balance as the train swayed.

When he opened the door to the fifth car, he saw a young woman standing outside the bathroom. Her hair was dark, shoulder-length and glossy.

She was pounding on the locked door and yelling, turning toward the people sitting closest to her, but no one would meet her panicked eyes.

The train slowed down with wavelike motions, and the brakes squeaked lightly on the rails.

The young, desperate woman yelled again.

Mats went to her quickly, and when she saw him coming closer, she rushed forward and grabbed his arm. Speaking in a language he didn’t understand, she dragged him to the locked bathroom door and gesticulated wildly.

He understood that something serious was going on.

The clock read 10:22 p.m. when he finally was able to force the door open.

He saw the toilet. To the left of it was a wall-mounted changing table. He stepped cautiously forward and saw a young woman propped up in a sitting position on the floor. Her fingers were bloody. Her face was pale and her lips were blue. Some sort of white foam dripped from her lower lip onto her chest.

Mats covered his mouth with his hands and stared in horror at the dead woman’s body.

* * *

Mia Bolander reached for the cell phone that was lying on the table. She scrolled through the status updates on Facebook but was irritated, as usual, by all the people who had posted pictures of freshly baked cakes, Christmas decorations and things as idiotic as pictures of future vacation destinations.

How the hell do they have the energy? she thought, releasing her phone onto her lap.

She drew her hand through her blond hair and yawned, sinking into the sofa. She cast a glance at the fifty-inch television that she had bought on a payment plan last spring and sure, it was a great deal, but now she was behind on her payments. Two months, maybe, but as soon as she got her next paycheck, she’d rectify that, for sure. It kind of sucked, though, paying so much for a TV that was now almost a year old. She’d rather put the money toward a new one, and had seen an awesome one with a curved screen. If she had only been a little less impulsive last spring, she’d have bought one like that instead.

Mia wound a blond lock around her finger. She was tired and not satisfied with how the day had gone. Nor her life, for that matter.

She was turning thirty-one in two months and had discovered new wrinkles on her forehead and around her eyes. The skin above her breasts also seemed less tight and made a fanlike pattern when she wore a tight sports bra.

She tried to convince herself that she still looked good, but it didn’t work. In spite of her regular workouts, with strength training three times a week, she didn’t feel attractive. She never slept enough, ate at odd times and drank too much.

All wrong.

She spent money on unnecessary things and was always broke. She had a tiny apartment and only occasional relationships with men who seemed all but normal. The last one had seemed loving and tender, but as soon as they went back to his place, he had shown a sick interest in her feet. A foot fetishist.

He’d had a corny name, too.

Martin.

He had satisfied her, but she never wanted to sleep with him again. Not with someone who wanted to suck her toes.

That was crossing the line.

She had spent just over half her life finding out what a mature sex life had to offer. She had lost her virginity when she was fourteen and spent the rest of her teen years experimenting with horny classmates and older high schoolers. She had a heavy make-out session with a teacher at an end-of-the-year party when she was in ninth grade, had a threesome with two guys in a bathroom and had on one occasion given blow jobs to three heavy metal dudes at a house party. In her twenties, she had tried bondage with a tattooed man from Falun. She had dressed up as a flight attendant, a nurse and an innocent girl wearing a corset. Whipped and been whipped. Had sex at secret clubs and in public places. Her sex life required a constant stream of new men.

She was, therefore, not interested in a long-term relationship, and had never understood how someone could be with the same person year after year. She had sat in the police department cafeteria and listened to her female colleagues gush about how their male partners were wonderful, insightful, exciting, generous, warm and romantic one day, then bitch the next day about their bad habits and how they left beard hairs on the sink and shit-stained boxers on the bedroom floor for days. She had heard them say that they had met the man they wanted to grow old with, have children with, that he was The One. Mia had never felt that way. She didn’t want just one.

She wanted many.

Preferably.

She looked out the window at the darkness outside. She rubbed her hands across her face and thought about brushing her teeth, but she felt too lazy and instead put her feet up on the table.

Her thoughts wandered to the two-hour morning meeting with the National Crime Squad. She’d had a hard time deciding in the last half hour if she should do something, say something. Anders Wester was an unpleasant man. He had criticized their work and been really hard on Gunnar. She had never seen Gunnar so irritated and tense.

But he had been the only one who had defended them, and the only one from the investigation who had said anything during the meeting. Maybe she should have said something, stood up for herself and her colleagues. But no one else had, either. It wasn’t only her responsibility.

Carin could have been more assertive in the conversation. But she surely didn’t dare, Mia thought. Not having just received a new position—in the new Police Authority, where everything would be changed for the better and everyone would take part and live happily-ever-after. What bullshit!

She lay down on the sofa, crossed her arms over her head and stayed there for a long time before picking up her cell phone.

She knew she shouldn’t. She knew she’d regret it.

Still, she looked for Martin Strömberg’s number.

But just as she raised the phone to her ear, someone called.

She saw from the display that it was Henrik Levin.

“Yes?” she answered.

“You have to get down to the train station. Right now!”

* * *

The X2000 to Stockholm with departure time 10:24 p.m. stood still on Track 1 at Norrköping’s Central Station. It had taken an hour to evacuate all of the travelers and get them on a bus to Nyköping where a regional train had been waiting to take them to their planned destination.

All of the platforms had been roped off, parking lot and building, too.

Henrik Levin stood at the police tape and watched as Mia Bolander parked her wine-red Fiat Punto at the intersection of Norra Promenaden and Vattengränden. He waved when she got out of the car. She pulled her white hat down over her ears and zipped her jacket all the way to her chin to keep out the cold.

“So what happened?” she asked, ducking under the tape.

“A young woman was found dead in a bathroom. Her name is Siriporn Chaiyen, Thai national. We found her purse with her passport and other possessions in it.”

“How old?”

“Eighteen.”

Henrik saw her raise her eyebrows.

“Come on,” he said, showing her the way to the train and the bathroom in Car 5 where Anneli Lindgren crouched down with tweezers in her hand. The small room was illuminated with bright lights.

Henrik and Mia stood in the doorway and studied the dead woman. She was young, with a characteristically Southeast Asian appearance.

“A suicide?” Mia asked.

Anneli looked up.

“No...” she said, getting up from the floor. “At first glance, it looks like an epileptic seizure, like she asphyxiated. But exactly how she died, I’m not sure yet.”

“So what are we doing here?”

“We can eliminate suicide,” said Henrik. “And it’s probably not an epileptic fit.”

“Who found her?”

“A train attendant, Mats Johansson,” Henrik said. “He is unfortunately in shock, but we were able to speak with him for a moment before he was taken to Vrinnevi Hospital. He said that he had been rushed by a crazy woman who had forced him to open the bathroom door. I know what you’re going to ask next—who was that woman?”

“Yes. But what, don’t I get to?”

“Well, you should, but I don’t know the answer.”

Mia gave him a questioning look.

“Why not?”

“She disappeared from the train.”

“And where is she now?”

“No one knows.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT SMELLED STRONGLY of bleach in the corridor of the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping.

Pathologist Björn Ahlmann looked up as Henrik Levin and Mia Bolander walked into the room. Björn stood at his stainless steel autopsy table with a serious look on his face. His eyes flashed a silvery blue.

The fluorescent lights cast their harsh light on the tiled walls, the double troughs and channels for drainage.

Henrik stood a bit from the table and observed the woman lying there. He thought how small and thin she looked. Above her breasts, her sternum was clearly outlined and her ribs stuck out under her smooth skin.

Her complexion was pale and her long black hair lay over her forehead and shoulders. It looked like she was gazing out into the room with a mixed expression of amazement and sorrow.

But there was no gleam in her small, narrow eyes.

“I saw the announcement in the paper. It was tiny, as if death doesn’t interest anyone anymore,” Björn said with a sigh.

“Everyone is probably too preoccupied with their own worries,” Henrik said.

“How did she die?” Mia asked. “Do we know now?”

“You didn’t have to come here to find out.”

Björn passed the autopsy report to Henrik, who glanced expertly through the main points.

“As you see,” he said, “the cause of death is asphyxia, a complete blockage of oxygen to the brain.”

“So she suffocated?” Henrik asked.

“Yes. The result of an overdose,” Björn said. “Heroin. She had fifty capsules in her stomach.”

“Fifty?” Mia asked, whistling.

“Yes, you heard right. Fifty,” Björn said.

“And the capsules?” Henrik asked.

“They’ve been analyzed,” said Björn, pushing his glasses up his nose. He nodded toward the report. “Everything’s in there.”

Henrik contemplated the lifeless body. The nails on her fingers and toes were painted pink. He took a deep breath and felt depressed, as he always did when victims were young.

“Anything else you can give us?”

“No, there’s nothing that sticks out. Besides that she was a teenager, fifteen years old.”

“Fifteen? On her passport it said she was eighteen.”

“I can only say what I know,” said Björn, giving him a serious look. His glasses flashed as he turned toward the body again.

“Christ,” said Mia. “Someone’s using young women to smuggle. That’s just shitty, plain and simple.”

“She wasn’t a young woman,” said Henrik. “She was just a child.”

* * *

It was hard to stretch out her legs enough as she ran up the steps, yet she increased her speed. Running the last bit quickly and easily, she slowed down toward the top, stopping and panting for a moment on the landing.

In her apartment, she did one hundred sit-ups. The back of her neck itched from sweat. Jana Berzelius pushed her hair to the side and stroked her fingers across the inscribed letters.

After a quick shower, she put on a discreet amount of makeup, though she had to do extra touching up in those places where her skin was still discolored. She looked at herself, turning first to the right and then to the left, checking to see if the bruises showed through the layers of makeup. She reluctantly dabbed on a little extra blush and decided that would have to do.

With her briefcase in one hand and her overcoat in the other, she went down to the basement. Her high heels drummed rhythmically as she walked quickly over the concrete in the garage. She unlocked her black BMW X6 from thirty feet away and placed her briefcase on the black leather passenger seat.

A shiver went down her back. She felt ready to work, again checking her face in the mirror, repeating to herself that no one would suspect anything through the makeup.

But she was still nervous. She hesitated a moment before pushing the start button and driving out of the garage.

* * *

Anneli Lindgren sat on the edge of the bed, her hair loose and not yet brushed. She opened her nightstand drawer and took out a pair of heart-shaped diamond earrings, weighing them in her hand. She carefully fastened them to her ears and stood, remaining there for a moment in her nightgown, gazing out the window. The wind rustled the frosty leaves on the trees. A rabbit bounded away, and she followed it with her eyes until it disappeared into a yard.

She lifted her hand to her ear, twisting one of the earrings and thinking about when she had received them. It was a long time ago now, during a period when everything had been different, free. She still remembered that time in his apartment, how she had looked at him with red, warm cheeks. He had opened a dresser drawer, taken out a plastic fastener and a soft whip, forcing her arms up over her head. She’d lain on the bed protesting, keeping her legs together, twisting away when he pulled her panties down. He’d hovered over her, kneeling, watching her attempts to get free. He had smiled when he began to caress her from her knees up to her upper thighs, smiled even wider when she had stopped protesting, spread her legs and let him enter her.

He had carried the package in his sport coat, then placed it on her naked stomach and said something that sounded like love. But she hadn’t been looking for love—she had only wanted to quench her desire. For once, at least, she had been able to give herself up to the desire she felt for him.

For Anders.

“The meeting starts in ten minutes.”

The door to the bedroom squeaked when Gunnar came in with a towel around his hips.

“Yep...” she said absentmindedly.

Gunnar laid his hand on her shoulder, and she felt the warmth from his damp skin. He gently caressed her neck, under her hair, over her right shoulder. She felt the shoulder strap of her nightgown slip off. When he then tried to caress her breast, she carefully pushed his hand away.

“What’s wrong? What were you thinking about?” he asked.

“About you. And us,” she said, leaving the window. “We have to get going. We can’t be late to this meeting.”

She opened the closet and grabbed the first shirt she touched. She just wanted to get out of the bedroom without him seeing the blush on her cheeks.

The blush of shame.

* * *

Jana Berzelius entered the conference room on the third floor of the police station in Norrköping. She sat at the oval table and glanced furtively at the team that was already seated there. Anneli Lindgren was taking down important details about the dead woman from the train; Mia Bolander was drawing ten pointy flowers in the margin of her notes. Ola Söderström was adjusting the screen of his laptop. Gunnar Öhrn was sitting with his hands folded on the table.

“Ah, so you also had to show up?” Mia said without raising her eyes.

“Yes,” Jana said, her head held high and her back straight. Her jacket was black, her skirt was knee-length and her hair was stick straight.

“But don’t you prosecutors usually wait until we’ve done the heavy lifting? Or at least until we have a suspect?”

“Not all do,” Jana said.

Henrik gave Mia a tired look, as if he wanted to tell her to skip the bullshit. She knew very well that preliminary investigations were led by the prosecutor if the victim was under eighteen years old.

“And not all come rushing into the initial briefing,” Mia continued.

“No,” Jana said. “But that’s how it is to be devoted to your work.”

“Thanks, I know what that means,” Mia said, glaring at her.

“Well, then,” Henrik said, tossing the autopsy report on the table, thus beginning his report on the preliminary examination that Björn Ahlmann had performed on the dead woman from the train.

“So you’re saying she had swallowed fifty capsules of heroin and cocaine,” Gunnar summarized when Henrik was done. Standing, he continued, “One capsule had begun to leak, and she died of an overdose. We’re dealing with an obvious case of narcotics smuggling, right, Ola?”

“Yes,” Ola said, opening the screen of his laptop. “The woman was a ‘bodypacker,’ a person who transports illegal narcotics within her own body. A courier, drug mule, pack mule...”

“Pack mule?” Mia repeated. “‘Bodypacker’ sounds more accurate.”

“I agree,” said Ola. “And that’s one typical name. But despite the fact that drug mules are a well-known problem, it’s hard to catch them. Every year, between sixty and seventy million people cross the Swedish border.”

“It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Henrik said.

“Right. Many more mules get through than are caught. Customs largely works based on intelligence. Sure, they are always trying to find patterns in the modus operandi, but these drug mules crop up everywhere, frequently change their identity and come from all different countries.”

“In this case, from Thailand,” Henrik said.

“But she could just as well have come from Japan. Or China. Or Malaysia or something,” Mia said, rubbing her nose.

Gunnar cleared his throat.

“Her passport was issued in Thailand, so we can assume that she is a Thai national. So, Ola, continue.”

“Lots of mules come via budget flights from Spain. Often what happens is that vulnerable people are recruited in the Málaga area. But a lot also come from West Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern countries and South America. A lot of narcotics pass through Holland. Schiphol Airport has such a huge problem that the border police sometimes don’t even arrest the drug mules. Instead, they just send them back on the next flight out. It is, as you might guess, a lengthy process to secure evidence against bodypackers.”

Ola crossed his arms and rested his elbows on the table, continuing.

“If they are arrested, the police have to decide if the mules should be X-rayed at the hospital, then further decisions have to be made about whether the suspects should be kept under constant observation until they have answered nature’s call. The swallowers have to use a nonflushing toilet, and then the jail guards have to dig around in the toilet to find the capsules and confiscate them.”

“Sounds lovely,” Mia said.

“We used to use an emetic to make them vomit. The mules would take a huge dose and then after just a couple seconds, the proof would come up. It was effective, but the Swedish Prosecutor-General decided sometime in the nineties that it shouldn’t be allowed anymore, that it violated human rights,” Ola said.

Jana straightened up, saying, “From what I know, it takes about five days for the capsules to pass through the body.”

“That’s right,” said Ola, “but it varies a lot. It can take as short as two days or as long as two weeks. Most use a laxative or enema, but not everyone has access to these, and it has happened that smugglers have died from injuries related to constipation. The most common cause of death, though, is leakage, as with our victim.”

Ola closed his computer.

“But drug mules, or rather those who employ the mules, are constantly learning better ways to smuggle. It’s not common to use cutoff rubber gloves or condoms anymore. Now, the capsules are machine-made, wrapped in multiple layers and coated with beeswax. Generally the mules are carrying between fifty and seventy capsules in their stomachs, and every capsule contains about ten grams of narcotics. The capsules are then divided into ‘balls’ of two-to three-tenths of a gram. One ball of heroin could cost one hundred fifty kronor on the street—a third of what it cost a few years ago.”

“But experienced drug mules can smuggle more than seventy capsules, can’t they?” Gunnar asked.

“Yes. Some mules swallow over a hundred capsules. Last year an Eastern European man was arrested at Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport. He had 1.2 kilograms of heroin and cocaine in his stomach. The street value was hundreds of thousands of kronor,” said Ola.

“Denmark is also a common stop. They fly into Kastrup and then take the train over the Öresund Bridge into Sweden. I would dare to guess that this is what happened here,” said Gunnar.

“I think so, too,” said Ola. “The dead woman wasn’t traveling alone. It’s common that the leader of the operation will send a number of mules, because they figure that a few of them will get stopped by customs. If he sends twenty, for example, maybe eighteen will get through and he’s made his money.”

“Fifty percent, then,” Mia said.

“No, not exactly. Eighteen of twenty isn’t half. It’s ninety percent,” Jana corrected, fixing her gaze on Mia without moving a muscle in her face.

Mia clenched her jaw.

“I was talking about our girls! Two girls were sent, and one of them died, so only one got through. Half. Fifty percent. Exactly.”

“There could have been more mules on the train,” Henrik said, clasping his hands around one knee.

Mia sighed.

“But we’re focusing all of our energy on the female friend who disappeared. And we assume that she is also a mule,” Gunnar said. “Otherwise she probably would not have run.”

Jana nodded at Henrik.

“Were there witnesses?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Henrik. “We have a number of passengers who have provided information.”

“And the train attendant? Where is he?”

Henrik opened his mouth to answer, but Mia spoke up quickly.

“He’s in shock.”

“I didn’t ask about his condition. I asked where he was,” Jana said without looking at Mia.

“He’s at Vrinnevi Hospital,” she said curtly.

“Have you talked to him?”

“Only briefly. I’ll question him after we’re done here,” Henrik said.

“If you’re lucky,” Mia said. “He’s being treated. He might have to go to therapy, delaying the investigation even further.”

Gunnar pretended not to hear her, walking instead to the whiteboard.

“According to the train attendant, the second woman ran straight out from the train, and this is confirmed by the security camera footage that Ola checked.”

“Exactly,” Ola said. “I studied the film from Central Station this morning. At exactly 10:23 p.m., a young woman runs off the train. Like the victim, she has Asian features, and I assume that she is the woman we’re looking for. On the film you see clearly that she runs from Platform 1 straight toward the parking lot and then disappears into the darkness.”