Vanished (8 page)

‘To the train,’ he whispered. ‘To get back home.’

She helped him across Tegelbacken over to the Central Station. He didn’t have a bean, so Annika paid his ticket.

‘Is there anyone to take care of you at home?’ she asked.

The man shook his head, the mucus bobbing from his nose. ‘I just got discharged from the hospital,’ he said.

She left him on a bench at the station, his head bowed and the bicycle resting against his legs.

The picture was big, dominating the middle of the spread. The main colour was a shimmering golden yellow, the subjects were in crisp, sharp focus. The police officers in their heavy leather jackets, all black in profile; the incandescent whiteness of the ambulances; grave-looking men in grey-blue holding little tools; the rubble; the stairs; the gynaecologist’s examination chair.

And the body bags: lifeless, diminished, black packages. So big they were in life, taking up all that space. So small they looked there on the ground, waste for ready disposal.

She coughed and shivered. During the course of the day, her temperature kept going up. The antibiotics didn’t seem to be helping. The wound on her forehead hurt.

I’ve got to get some rest
, she thought.
I’ve got to get some sleep.

She let the newspaper dip and leaned back against the pillows. The sensation of falling that heralded sleep appeared immediately: the backwards motion, the rapid intake of breath, trying to clutch at the railing. And then, the boy, his terror and his screams, her own infinite inadequacy.

She forced her eyes open. On the other side of the wall, conference delegates were laughing. She had arrived at the hotel at the same time as the busload of delegates and had managed to disguise herself as part of the group. It had helped her temporarily, but now it wasn’t enough. If her old medication didn’t kick in during the night, she would have to get professional help. The thought terrified her: the exposure would make her an easy target. She drank some water, her arm stiff and heavy, and tried to concentrate on the article again.

A showdown in the underworld. The Yugoslav Mafia. No suspects, but several leads existed. She turned the page. A picture of a taxi driver.

Startled, she tried to focus on the page as she struggled to pull herself up among the pillows.

The taxi driver, the guy who didn’t want to let her get into his nice cab. She recognized him. A reporter had talked to him. According to the article, he had picked up a woman at the oil dock that night. She had been soaked to the skin. The police would like to get in touch with her and see if she had any information.

See if she had any information.

She sank back against the pillows and closed her eyes, breathing rapidly.

What if there was a warrant out for her arrest? Then there would be no way she could go to a doctor.

She groaned, her breathing rough and erratic – the police were looking for her.

Don’t panic
, she thought.
Don’t get hysterical. There might not be a warrant after all.

Forcing herself to be calm, she consciously tried to slow down her pulse and breathing.

How was she going to find out if there was a warrant out or not? She couldn’t very well call the police and ask, within fifteen minutes they’d be picking her up. She could call in and try to milk them, pretend to have information and see if she could trick them into telling what they knew.

Once more she groaned, picking up the paper to read the rest of the article. There wasn’t much more, and there was nothing about any warrant.

Then she looked at the byline. The reporter. Occasionally, reporters embroidered the truth, speculated and made things up, but sometimes they knew more than they wrote.

She coughed violently. She couldn’t go on like this, she needed help. She picked up the paper and read the name again: Sjölander.

Then she reached for the phone.

Annika had managed to get her jacket half off when Sjölander called out her name and waved the phone at her. ‘Some dumb broad needs help. Can you take it?’

Annika closed her eyes. This was her turf.
Just go along with it, be game.

The woman on the other end sounded ill and weak, and she spoke with a heavy accent.

‘Help me,’ she gasped.

Annika sat down, overcome by emptiness again, longing for a cup of coffee.

‘He’s out to get me,’ the woman said. ‘He’s stalking me.’

Blotting out the newsroom by shutting her eyes, Annika leaned over her desk.

‘I’m a Bosnian refugee,’ the woman said. ‘He’s trying to kill me.’

Good Lord, was everything that went wrong in the whole damn world her responsibility?

The woman mumbled something. It sounded like she was passing out.

‘Hey,’ Annika said, opening her eyes. ‘Are you all right?’

The woman started to cry. ‘I’m sick,’ she said. ‘I don’t dare go to the hospital. I’m so scared he’ll find me. Could you please help me?’

Annika groaned silently and scanned the newsroom for someone she could transfer the call to. There was no one.

‘Have you called the police?’ she asked.

‘If he finds me, I’m dead,’ the woman whispered. ‘He’s tried to shoot me several times. I won’t have the strength to escape next time.’

The woman’s rough breathing echoed on the line. Annika felt a growing sense of futility.

‘I can’t help you,’ she said. ‘I’m a reporter, I write articles. Have you called Social Services? Or one of the women’s shelters?’

‘The free port,’ the woman whispered. ‘The dead men at the free port. I can tell you about them.’

Annika’s reaction was physical. With a jerk, she sat up straight. ‘How? What?’

‘If you tell me what you know, I’ll talk to you,’ the woman replied.

Annika licked her lips and looked for Sjölander without finding him.

‘You’ll have to come here,’ the woman gasped. ‘Don’t tell anyone who I am.’

Jansson was standing in front of Annika when she hung up.

‘The free-port killings,’ she explained.

‘Why didn’t Sjölander take the call?’ Jansson asked.

‘The call was made by a woman,’ Annika replied.

‘Oh,’ Jansson said and answered his phone.

‘I’m checking this out,’ she said. ‘It might take a while.’

Jansson waved her away.

Annika brought the
Yellow Pages
with her and, over at the front desk, Tore Brand’s son handed her the keys to one of the paper’s unmarked cars. She took the elevator down to the garage and located the car after a certain amount of confusion. Using the steering wheel to prop up the telephone book, she looked up the hotel. It was pretty far, and it was in another part of town she’d never been in before.

There wasn’t much traffic and the road was slippery. She drove carefully, not wanting to die tonight.

‘It will work out,’ she figured. ‘Things will work out.’

She looked up at the sky through the windshield.

Someone is watching me
, she thought.
I can sense it.

Thomas Samuelsson switched off the babbling newscast, got a heated debate instead, moved on and found a soap set in the southern states of the US, and ended up on MTV: ‘Give it to me, baby, uh-huh . . .’ He realized that he was staring at the girls’ breasts, their golden stomachs and flowing manes.

‘Honey . . .’ Eleonor pulled the front door shut behind her and stamped off the slush.

‘I’m downstairs,’ he shouted in reply, quickly changing channels – more news.

‘Christ, what a day,’ his wife exclaimed after coming downstairs, pulling her silk blouse free from the waistband of her skirt, unbuttoning the pearl buttons at the wrists and ending up on the sofa next to him.

He pulled her close and kissed her on the ear. ‘You work too hard,’ he told her.

She unfastened the clip in her hair and shook it free.

‘It’s that leadership course,’ she said. ‘You knew I was going there tonight. I’ve told you that several times.’

He let got of her and reached for the remote control. ‘Right,’ he said.

‘Any mail?’

She got up and headed back upstairs to the hall. He didn’t reply. Heard her nylon-clad feet rub against the varnished wooden steps: squish, squish, squish. Heard the rustling of envelopes being torn open, the drawer where the bills were kept being opened and shut, followed by the door to the cupboard under the kitchen sink where they kept the recycling bin.

‘Any calls?’ she said.

He cleared his throat. ‘No.’

‘Not a single one?’

He sighed silently. ‘Well, yes – my mother.’

‘What did she want?’

‘To talk about Christmas. I told her I’d talk to you and get back to her later.’

Eleonor came downstairs again – squish, squish, squish – holding a crispbread low-cal-cheese sandwich.

‘We were at their house last year,’ she said. ‘It’s my parents’ turn.’

Thomas picked up the TV guide from the coffee table and leafed through the movie reviews.

‘What about staying home this year?’ he said. ‘We could serve lunch here. Both sets of parents could come.’

She frantically chewed her sandwich, so rich in fibre. ‘And who’s supposed to take care of everything?’

‘There’s always catering,’ he replied.

She stood next to the couch, looking down on him with high-fibre crumbs in the corners of her mouth. ‘Catering?’ she said. ‘Your mother always makes her own pork brawn, my mother makes her special garlic sausage, and you talk about catering?’

He got up, suddenly irritated. ‘So forget all about it,’ he said as he walked past her without a glance.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ she demanded, addressing his back. ‘Nothing’s ever good enough any more! What’s wrong with our lives?’

Halfway up the stairs, Thomas stopped and looked at her. So beautiful. So tired. So distant.

‘Of course we’ll go to your parents’ place,’ he said.

Eleonor turned away, sat at the far end of the couch and switched channels.

His sight grew fuzzy and the hard lump in his chest got even harder.

‘All right if I air out the room?’ Annika asked and walked towards the window.

‘No,’ the woman hissed and sank back in the bed.

Annika stopped short, feeling stupid and insensitive, and drew the curtains again. The room was semi-dark, a grey and unhealthy atmosphere smelling of fever and phlegm. In one corner, she could detect a desk, a chair and a table lamp. She switched the lamp on, pulled the chair over to the bed and took her jacket off. The woman looked very ill. She needed to be taken care of.

‘What’s happened to you?’ Annika asked.

Suddenly the woman began to laugh. She curled up into a foetal position and laughed so hard that she started to cry. Annika waited uncomfortably, keeping her hands folded in her lap, uncertain how to react.

Another one fresh from the hospital
, she mused to herself.

Then the woman pulled herself together and, breathing heavily, looked at Annika. Her face gleaming with tears and sweat.

‘I come from Bijelina,’ she said quietly. ‘Are you familiar with Bijelina?’

Annika shook her head.

‘That’s where the war in Bosnia began,’ the woman said.

Annika waited for her to go on, expectantly. Only she didn’t. The woman closed her eyes and her breathing grew heavier. She looked like she was slipping away.

Softly, Annika cleared her throat and regarded the sick woman in the bed uncertainly.

‘Who are you?’ she asked out loud.

The woman started. ‘Aida,’ she replied. ‘My name is Aida Begovic.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Someone’s out to get me.’

Once more her breathing was shallow and rapid – she seemed to be on the brink of consciousness. Annika’s uneasiness increased.

‘Isn’t there someone who could take care of you?’

No reply. Sweet Jesus, maybe she should call for an ambulance?

Annika walked over to the bed and bent over the woman. ‘Are you all right? Should I call someone? Where do you live, where do you come from?’

Her reply was breathless.

‘Fredriksberg in Vaxholm. I can never go back there. He’ll find me in no time.’

Annika went over to her bag, pulled out her pad and a pen and wrote down the words
Fredriksberg, Vaxholm
and
stalker.

‘Who will find you?’

‘A man.’

‘What man? Your husband?’

She didn’t reply, only panted.

‘What did you want to tell me about the free port?’

‘I was there.’

Annika stared at the woman. ‘What do you mean? Did you see the killings?’

Suddenly Annika recalled the article in the paper, the cab driver that Sjölander had found.

‘That was you,’ she exclaimed.

Aida Begovic from Bijelina struggled to prop herself up in bed, pushing the pillows against the headboard and leaning back.

‘I ought to be dead too, only I got away.’

The woman’s face was red and blotchy, her hair was stringy and sweaty. She sported a good-sized wound on her forehead and one cheek was bruised. She looked at Annika with eyes like deep pools, black and unfathomable. Annika sat down again, her mouth dry.

‘What happened?’

‘I ran and fell, tried to hide, there was a lot of junk on a long loading dock. Then I ran, he fired shots at me, I jumped into the water. It was so cold, that’s why I’m sick.’

‘Who shot at you?’

Hesitant, Aida Begovic closed her eyes.

‘It might be dangerous for you to have that information,’ she said. ‘He’s killed before.’

‘How do you know that?’ Annika asked.

Aida laughed wearily, touching her forehead. ‘Let’s just say I know him well.’

The same old story
, Annika thought.

‘Who were the dead men?’

Aida from Bijelina opened her eyes. ‘They’re not important,’ she said.

Annika’s uncertainty gave way to a rush of irritation. ‘What do you mean, not important? Two young people shot in the head like that?’

The woman met her gaze. ‘Do you have any idea how many people died in Bosnia during the war?’

‘That’s not the issue here,’ Annika said. ‘We’re talking about the Stockholm Free Port.’