Marked For Revenge

“Mia Bolander, police.”

“Wonderful, great that you could come right now,” the man said, introducing himself as Stefan Ohlin. “You had some questions?”

“Yes, about your testimony.”

“Come in. Sit down.”

Stefan pulled out a chair from a round table and gathered up the notes that lay on it.

“Group work,” he said. “The yellow group is learning about the Bronze Age.”

Mia nodded and looked at his reddish hair and beard, freckled face and hands.

“How long can we talk?” she asked.

“Fifteen minutes max. They’re at recess now.”

“I noticed. The playground is a lively place.”

He was silent for a moment.

“So...” both said at the same time.

“I’m sorry. You start,” Stefan said.

“Okay,” said Mia. “You were at Central Station yesterday?”

“Yes. I was waiting for my wife, who was coming on the commuter train from Linköping just before eleven o’clock. She’s also a teacher. At the university there.”

“But you were there early?”

“Yes, I’d met a buddy who just had a kid and left their house around ten in the evening. Because we live a ways out, in Krokek, there wasn’t any point in going home, which takes twenty to twenty-five minutes round trip, so I went downtown and waited.”

“What time was it then?”

“Well, what would it have been, around ten fifteen or ten twenty, maybe.”

Mia pulled out a small notebook, looking for a blank page to write on but didn’t find one. All the pages were full of scribbles. She began taking notes on the brown cardboard back.

“Where were you parked?”

“Right in front of the taxi stand.”

“And while you sat there waiting, what did you see?”

“Yes, that’s the thing. There was a car parked right behind me, and a man sitting in it.”

“Can you describe him?”

“I only got a quick glimpse.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Stefan thought, resting his chin on his hand.

“No, cars have never been my thing. But I would guess that it was a Volvo, an older model. Or a Fiat.”

Mia wrote again.

“Color?”

“Dark. Blue, maybe.”

“Hatchback?”

“No.”

“License plate?”

“The thing with memory is that it only gets worse with age. I used to be so good at remembering things like that, but...maybe a G in the beginning, and a U. Or maybe vice versa.”

“Any digits?”

“It started with a one, but then...no, I don’t really remember. I think there was a four and a seven.”

“Okay, so 147?”

“No, probably 174, I think.”

“Good,” said Mia. “Then we’re only missing the letters. Tell me about the driver...”

“Sure. I left my car to go into the convenience store. I wanted something sweet, I’m addicted to Daim bars, but anyway, when I walked into the shop, I ran into the driver, I mean, the man. He stood in the doorway with a lighter in his hand, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should go in...”

“So he never went in?”

“No, not that I saw. But I bumped into him accidentally and he dropped the lighter.”

Stefan glanced up at the clock on the wall.

“The children will be coming back soon.”

“Okay, can you describe the man for me now?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have hardly noticed him if he hadn’t been acting so nervous, as if he didn’t want to be seen. In any case, he was wearing dark clothes, had his jacket collar pulled up to his nose, was wearing a hat.”

“Did he have a mustache? Beard? Light or dark hair?”

“He had dark hair. It was sticking out on the sides. I thought he looked foreign.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was his hair that made me think that. And his eyes.”

“Which were?”

“Also dark.”

“A dark-haired man, possibly foreign. How old?”

“Oh, hard to say. Around thirty, maybe.”

“Anything else that stood out about him?”

“No...it was mostly that he was acting so nervous...but I hope I’ve been able to help anyway.”

Mia closed her notebook.

“Your observations are very important to us,” she assured him, getting up from the chair to leave.

“Wait!”

Stefan held his hand up in the air, smiling.

“GUV!” he said. “I just remembered the license plate. GUV 174.”

* * *

“We have a description of a man who might have picked up the girl,” Mia said into the phone.

Henrik Levin sat in his office with the phone to his ear. His gaze was fixed on his bulletin board as he listened to Mia tell about her meeting with the teacher at Vittra School.

“You’re saying that we’re looking for a foreign-looking man, with dark clothes and dark hair,” Henrik said. “I know that this isn’t going to sound good, but there are quite a few people who fit that description.”

“I know,” Mia said. “I’ll check with the convenience store and see if they have a security camera, since he poked his head in there. Maybe we’d get a better description.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“The teacher seemed a bit unsure, but ask Ola to search for license plate number GUV 174 or something similar. It should be a Volvo or Fiat, a dark color.”

Henrik combed his hand through his hair and shifted his weight in his chair, feeling a pang of hope.

“Bye,” Mia said, ending the call with a normal closing. No swearwords, nothing cynical, no sighing. Just “bye.” Henrik was almost shocked. What had happened to her?

“Did you get somewhere?”

Ola Söderström suddenly appeared, leaning against the door frame, smiling. His ears were sticking out from under his striped hat. He always wore a hat, no matter whether he was inside or outside, no matter what the season.

“Good thing you came by. I have some new information for you. First, I want you to look for a car with the license plate GUV 174.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Then, I have the feeling that the dead woman on the train, or rather, her passport, was fake. Björn Ahlmann said she was fifteen years old, but according to her passport, she was eighteen. And the train attendant thought her name was Noi, not Siriporn.”

“But Noi isn’t a given name, it’s a nickname. It’s common in Thailand, especially because first names can be so long.”

“How do you know that?”

“My cousin married a Thai woman. They met in Phuket. Love at first sight. They just clicked.”

Ola snapped his fingers.

“Even if the passport is fake, we shouldn’t underestimate its importance,” he continued. “I’ve sent a request to all of the airlines. I haven’t heard anything yet, but we can still hope that her name is on the passenger list somewhere. It would be good to know where they came from.”

“Both of their names should be on some list,” Henrik said.

“If they flew on the same plane, that is. They may not have.”

Ola scratched with his hand up under his hat.

“It might help that they looked Asian,” he said. “I mean, more people would have noticed her, or them, on the train.”

“Right,” Henrik said. “If you don’t find anything from the license plate, we have one relatively poor description of the man who was driving the car. Check it out, see if you can get anything from that. The capsules we found in the woman’s stomach were supposed to be delivered to someone, after all, and I’m wondering who.”

“I know where to look,” Ola said.

“Great. So get to it.”

* * *

The sound of the doorbell made Jana Berzelius jump up from the chaise lounge. It was late in the afternoon, and she went suspiciously toward the door. She wasn’t expecting any visitors; she never had any.

She padded silently into the hallway and looked through the peephole. She clenched her jaw when she saw the face of her colleague, prosecutor Per Åström.

He rang one more time, then knocked, too.

Slowly, she turned the dead bolt, leaving the chain fastened.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“You haven’t been answering your phone.”

“I’m really busy.”

“With what? Why are you avoiding me?”

Per threw up his hands.

“Look,” he said. “We haven’t seen each other in eight months...”

“We see each other multiple times every week at work.”

“You know what I mean. I want to see you again. There. That’s what I came here to say.”

“Great,” Jana said, closing the door and resting her forehead against it, eyes closed.

The doorbell rang again. And again. Short, quick buzzes as if a child were standing outside and wanted to come in.

She hesitated before opening the door again.

His eyes—one blue and one brown, characteristic heterochromia—met hers.

“One more thing,” he said. “Would you have dinner with me tonight?”

“No.”

“Great! Should we go to The Colander? The usual?”

“No.”

“Eight o’clock?”

“No.”

“Perfect! Should I pick you up?”

“No. I want someplace new.”

Per looked confused, pulled at his blond hair.

“Are you sick?” he said.

“Just need a change. Let’s go to Ardor, eight thirty. I’ll meet you there.”

Then she shut the door.

* * *

“I didn’t find any car with license plate GUV 174,” Ola said upon meeting Henrik Levin in the hallway. His arms were filled with file folders.

“As I suspected,” Henrik said with a worried look. “Mia said that the guy seemed a little unsure. Or the plate could have been fake.”

“Possible,” Ola said, thinking for a moment. “It’s too bad, though. This was the best tip we had to go on, right?”

“Yes, and we haven’t gotten any more info from the street,” Henrik said. “Our usual sources have been silent. Either they don’t know anything or they don’t dare say.”

“Typical,” Ola said.

“Yeah, but I still think something about it is strange. A young girl dies with her body packed full of narcotics—someone should have seen or heard something. It’s not usually the case that someone hides their tracks so well. This is no amateur we’re dealing with. They clearly have their eye on importing and distributing. Someone has to be willing to talk.”

“Had an eye, you mean. Obviously something went wrong with the girl on the train.”

“Absolutely, but as I said, they’re calculating for some waste, as in all import/export businesses.”

Ola held out the files.

“I did a little searching of my own and printed out all of the files on men with connections to drug trafficking. I thought someone must know something. Two of the files are thick as Bibles.”

“Great,” Henrik said, taking the files. “If we aren’t going to get anything from the streets, we’ll have to do our own digging.”

* * *

In spite of the growing blister on her skin, Pim continued fighting to get the ropes around her wrists to snap. Even with the chill in the room, sweat was running down her back.

Suddenly she heard footsteps outside the door.

She hurried to the corner of the room, overturning the bucket in the process. She picked it up and huddled with her knees to her chest, taking short, silent breaths, sitting completely still, listening.

The door slid open and a man stepped into the room. He was wearing dark clothes, and his eyes were as dark as night. He put a plate of food on the floor.

Pim looked at the food, then pushed it away.

He stood in front of her, stared, and then in a single movement ripped the tape from her mouth. The pain was immense. She wanted to scream, but she was too scared to make a sound. She didn’t say anything when he violently loosened the ropes around her wrists. She only rubbed one hand carefully against the smarting sore on the other wrist.

She heard him say something before the door closed behind him.

She carefully picked up the plate and looked at the sandwiches and plastic gloves. Only then did she think about the capsules that were still in her stomach.

She returned to the corner, picked up one of the sandwiches and forced herself to chew.

Touching one of the thin gloves, she looked at the bucket and knew what she had to do.

* * *

Henrik Levin turned slowly out of the general parking lot of the Ektorp shopping center. Next to him sat Mia Bolander in an oversize down jacket.

“He didn’t say shit,” she muttered, waving one of Ola Söderström’s files in Henrik’s face before tossing it in the backseat. She balanced the others on her lap.

“I don’t get it. He’s committed hundreds of break-ins and has been caught for possession a thousand times, and now he’s on disability for a slipped disk. And he’s not even thirty? And he’s got five kids. Completely unbelievable. Completely fucking unbelievable.”

“Yeah...” Henrik sighed.

“If they’d placed the camera at a smarter angle at the convenience store, we wouldn’t have to drive around chatting with criminals,” Mia said.

The afternoon traffic moved slowly down Kungsgatan. A bus stopped in front of them and released a single passenger, who immediately jaywalked across both lanes. Henrik considered honking his horn, but changed his mind.

“Who’s next?” he asked instead.

Mia flipped through a new folder, looking at the picture for a moment.

“Stojan Jancic,” she read. “Born in Serbia. Was sentenced for, among other things, a felony narcotics charge after being arrested for selling a mix of Ecstasy and ketamine. Three years in prison.”

She entered the address into the navigation system and closed the folder.

Twelve minutes later, they were there. Henrik made a U-turn across both lanes and parked in a spot reserved for visitors.

A streetlight flickered on when they got out of the car. The light stretched over a gravel field.

Stojan opened the door on the second ring. His hair was sticking out at all angles, his jeans were filthy and his T-shirt had large holes along the neckband.

“Come in,” he said after Henrik had introduced them and their errand.

Mia was quiet and kept her hands in her pockets as they stepped into the apartment and sat at the kitchen table.

Henrik leaned against the kitchen counter and took a notebook from his pocket. He squinted out the gray-streaked window that faced the parking lot.

“Your tattoo...” he said. “Does it mean something?”

“No, well, yes, well, fuck. I don’t know,” Stojan said.

He sat across from Mia and rubbed his hand across his neck, over the large cross and the black letters above it that spelled “Respect.”

“I mean, is it a sort of identification?”

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