3

He honked.

The bastard honked.

Sara was standing in the loading bay right outside their building’s street door on Kornhamnstorg, waving to Martin who was approaching in the rental van he’d picked up from the petrol station. Ebba had wanted them to hire a removal company, but Sara had decided they would do it themselves. There had to be some limits. She had been standing in the bay to keep it free for twenty minutes, but when Martin finally came into sight there was a black Audi right in front of him that wanted to pull into the empty space that Sara was standing in – despite the fact that she was waving at it to ward it off. The Audi simply pulled in closer and closer until the fender struck Sara’s shin. And when she didn’t move the driver honked. Bastard.

Behind the rental there was now a taxi waiting, and a Volvo behind it. They began to honk at the hold-up. Martin emerged from the van and gesticulated towards Sara.

‘Let him in. We’re blocking the road. I’ll find somewhere else.’

‘What did you have in mind? Ten blocks away?’

Sara waved at the Audi driver to move his car and received nothing but another honk in reply.

She sighed and pulled out her wallet.

‘No,’ said Martin, who realised what his wife was intending to do.

‘What? I was only going to try and bribe him,’ said Sara, looking innocent. ‘If that doesn’t work then I’ll give up. Get back in the van.’

Martin turned around and began to walk back to the cab. Sara produced her police ID and held it up to the driver in the Audi while simultaneously keeping an eye on Martin in order to conceal her actions if he did turn around. She waved angrily at the moron in the Audi to get lost. When he persisted in his parking attempts, she leaned forward and slammed both her palms onto the bonnet as hard as she could while turning her head to show the left side of her face. The side with the scars and burns. Then she stared right into the eyes of the besuited man behind the wheel with a look that suggested he was next in line if he didn’t move his vehicle. Finally he gave in – just an immature little boy in a fifty-year-old man’s body. Childishly flooring the accelerator, he pulled away.

Martin turned around in response to the sound of the engine and looked surprised.

‘He left?’

‘All it took was a hundred kronor,’ said Sara with a smile.

She found her double face often came in handy. Without it she would have difficulty even comprehending that it had all really happened. That she had been trapped in the Broman family’s burning garden shed while the terrorist Abu Rasil tried to transmit the codes that would trigger atom bombs from the Cold War. Bombs powerful enough to devastate vast swathes of Germany’s heartlands. That she had seen the double agent, Agneta Broman, be shot. That she had discovered that her childhood friend Lotta was the spy known as Geiger, while Lotta’s father Stellan – the nationally beloved TV personality – had been a monster who had raped countless minors. And had turned out to be Sara’s father to boot. A realisation that still disgusted her.

The fact that half of her face was covered in burns reinforced what she had always felt: she had two personalities. One beautiful and attractive, the other frightening and repulsive. A true Janus. Men who only saw the uninjured half of her face still approached her with their usual pick-up lines, just as they always had done, but then they would recoil at the sight of her scars.

Sara had begun to like her two-sided face, partly because it actually divulged something about her inner self, and partly because she realised she wasn’t dependent on her face and on being beautiful. She was Sara Nowak, even if she scared the people around her. In fact, she was more Sara now than ever before.

She was scheduled to have plastic surgery, but the doctors refused to make any promises. The scars might be there for good.

She was happy just to be alive. She didn’t care that people occasionally stared at her. Given the wounds inside her, the scars might as well be visible on the outside too. Perhaps it was time to take up more space – to stand for who she was. Not just in relation to others, but as herself. Not as a police officer, nor a mother, nor a wife, nor a daughter. But as Sara.

She had decided she was going to let her red hair grow out again. She was no longer an investigator on the prostitution unit, so she didn’t have to dye her hair brown to blend into the crowd. And besides, she had found it increasingly difficult to do that – to blend in; to just observe. She had ended up resorting to violence against johns in her custody, which had almost got her the sack. Not that it had got the men in question to reconsider, she thought to herself.

The violence she had been subjected to herself had frightened her. First there was Holmberg, the john who would have beaten her to death if Jennifer hadn’t stopped him, and then the fight with Abu Rasil in which she had been both burned and shot. She had been lucky not to come out of it all worse off.

But she was almost more scarred by the violence she had engaged in herself – shooting another person dead without hesitation. Using C.M. the neighbour’s expensive shotgun. How would things have panned out if she hadn’t thought of that?

She still dreamed of that night. The fire, the sound of the automatic weapon, the pain when the shots hit her, all the blood when she shot Abu Rasil, the aftermath . . .

While she had probably saved thousands of lives, Sara struggled to see herself as some kind of anti-terrorist force taking people’s lives without batting an eyelid.

She was grateful that she had found that strength within her, grateful for that side of Sara. But it had almost cost her life. Now she needed to recover. Accept the Sara who sought out calm, who looked inwards. It was time to stop and sum up who she was in life.

For instance, the first strands of grey were beginning to appear amongst the red, though so far she had just pulled them out. She didn’t want to be dismissed ahead of her time by a society that had so little respect for age and experience. But she was allowing the fiery red hair to grow out – a fire that before long would spread across her whole head. She looked forward to that. She didn’t want to hide any longer.

She’d enjoyed a beautiful summer after being discharged from hospital. Everything had been normal. No spies, no sexual deviants, no one dying. Just Sara and her family. She had slept, swum, read and dedicated energy to completely trivial matters like getting worked up over split infinitives and the unreasonably long pauses between the songs on Depeche Mode’s Ultra.

She was doing well. And she wanted to continue doing well. That was the most important lesson she had learned from the events of the early summer. That, and that family came ahead of everything else.

Martin had parked and opened the rear doors of the van. Sara peered into the empty interior. How many pieces of furniture had been carted around in here? New apartments, bigger to accommodate a new child, smaller because a spouse had died, two because they no longer wanted to live together. Or a first home. Moves filled with joy and anticipation, or sorrow and resignation.

Sara’s philosophising was interrupted by an annoying sound from her mobile: three shrill notes in a rising crescendo. She so rarely heard that sound that she had almost forgotten what it meant. A video call. She had ignored most calls of late, hadn’t been up to talking to telesales operatives or her colleagues. It had almost become a reflex to reject calls and then ignore her voicemail. Her best friend, Anna, had told her off on several occasions for this, but Sara wasn’t always able to deal with the world around her. Not yet. But this was a different sound, and perhaps this was why she paid attention to it.

‘Nadia would like to FaceTime,’ said her display.

The only Nadia she had in her contacts was one of the girls down on Malmskillnadsgatan. One of the many to have been lured from her home country and then forced to sell her body to pay off fabricated debts and to ensure that her family back home didn’t suffer the consequences if she didn’t. Sometimes the threat would be that a little sister would be subjected to the same thing if the woman didn’t do as the traffickers said.

While Sara was no longer involved in the prostitution unit, she still felt a responsibility for the girls she had met while working the streets in her former role. She’d had to stop, she knew. To make sure she didn’t do anything really stupid. But she couldn’t quite escape the feeling that she had let down the people who needed her most. So she wanted to help now, if she could.

Unless Nadia had pocket-dialled her, of course. That would be the most natural explanation.

But when Sara accepted the video call, she saw a bloodied face.

Nadia, battered and barely conscious.

Her mouth was moving as if she were trying to say something.

‘Where are you?’ said Sara when she realised the gravity of the situation. ‘Use the camera to show me.’ She swapped to English. ‘Show around you!’

Nadia turned her hand and surveyed her surroundings using the phone’s camera. She was clearly lying on the ground, by an open expanse of asphalt beside some kind of warehouse. Lots of large containers were stacked on top of each other, all covered in foreign names. Further away there were trees – an entire forest. And the Kaknäs Tower. And a rectangular red brick building with the word ‘Frihamnen’ on the side. The Free Port.

‘I’m coming!’ Sara cried out to Nadia. She ended the call just as Martin and Olle emerged from the building carrying a white-painted desk.

‘I’ve got to go,’ said Sara.

‘Now? In the middle of the move?’

‘I’ll be back soon!’ Sara shouted, running over to one of the taxis on the rank next to the bureau de change. ‘Frihamnen,’ she said, getting in next to the driver. ‘Quick as you can,’ she said, flashing her police ID.

With a police officer at his side, the driver wasn’t afraid to floor it. Thanks to some risky overtaking manoeuvres, rapid lane switching and speeds of up to ninety kilometres an hour, they reached Frihamnen in just a few minutes.

Using Street View, Sara was able to find exactly where Nadia was, thanks to what the woman had filmed. Sara directed the cabbie to the outer edge of the port, to what was called Warehouse 7.

They passed a gigantic red brick structure housing production companies and an auctioneer. Cars with the names of various TV shows on them in large lettering were parked outside. Sara wasn’t familiar with any of them. Warehouse 7 was in an area used for the transhipment of containers for international transportation.

Frihamnen was new territory to Sara and the world was distorted here. The sky seemed high above, but also gave the feeling that it was a lid over everything and the fact that the distances between the huge buildings were so expansive also skewed perspective. It was almost as if you could touch the old warehouses and massive silos, despite the fact that they were hundreds of metres apart. You felt both gigantic and microscopic at the same time.

Sara recollected that, once upon a time, there had been a thriving sex trade in Frihamnen. That had been thanks to seamen on visiting ships, family men who appreciated the seclusion. But that had been before the media companies had moved in. Now there were people working here around the clock and you were rarely alone, except perhaps at the remotest wharves. As far as Sara knew, sex workers were no longer active in Frihamnen. So what could have happened to Nadia?

She caught sight of her as soon as they pulled into the deserted turning circle, lifeless and bloody, behind her the looming wall of containers with the names of different shipping companies. But not a soul in sight. Sara jumped out of the taxi and ran over to Nadia.

Black eyes, bloodied eyebrows, a couple of teeth knocked out, split lips, big bruises on her arms and legs. Internal injuries? Quite possibly – Sara was in no position to assess that. Nadia needed to go to hospital right away. She dialled 112.

‘This is Sara Nowak with Västerort Police. I’m in Frihamnen with a badly injured girl. She needs an ambulance right away.’

‘Address?’

‘Don’t know. Frihamnen. Right at the edge. By the containers.’

‘We need an address.’

‘I don’t have an address! Frihamnen! At the edge!’

‘You need to calm down or I’ll terminate this call.’

‘Aren’t you listening to me?! She’s seriously injured! Do your fucking job and dispatch an ambulance!’

The operator hung up.

‘Fucking cretin!’ Sara yelled into her phone.

She wondered whether she could head down to the emergency services dispatch centre and find the bitch, but realised it was more important to help Nadia. She turned to the taxi driver.

‘She needs to go to hospital,’ she said.

‘No blood in car,’ said the driver. ‘You got to pay. Then you call ambulance.’

‘I just tried to do that. You heard how it went. And she needs to go to hospital.’

‘No blood in car. You know, this my job. If there blood in car, no customers want go.’

‘I’ll put my jacket under her.’

‘No.’

‘I’ll pay you a thousand kronor extra.’

‘You know, if blood in car I can’t drive for two days. Must wash car.’

‘Two thousand.’

‘OK. Get in. But jacket under.’

Sara looked down at Nadia.

‘Can you hear me. Nadia?’

It looked like her eyelids flickered, but Sara didn’t know whether Nadia was conscious.

‘We need to go to hospital.’

A barely perceptible nod. Then her eyes opened a crack. Nadia raised a trembling hand to Sara’s burned cheek.

‘What happened?’

Sara put her own hand over Nadia’s. She felt the rough surface of the burns outlined against her fingertips.

‘An accident,’ she said gently, and Nadia shut her eyes, satisfied. ‘But what’s happened to you?’

Nadia tried a couple of times before she managed to reply.

‘Peepshow.’

‘What do you mean, peepshow?’

Nadia struggled to continue, but before she said any more she looked around.

‘My bag . . .’

Sara saw the panic in Nadia’s bloodshot eyes. She reached over and picked up the handbag that had been lying right by her.

‘This one?’

‘In-inside?’

Sara opened the handbag and found a thick wad of thousand kronor notes. She showed Nadia the money and the woman relaxed. She took the handbag and pressed it to her breast.

‘Where did you get that cash?’ said Sara. She tried English. ‘Where is the money from?’

‘Warn Jenna,’ said Nadia without opening her eyes. ‘Please. No good.’

‘Warn her? About what? Nadia – about what?’

No answer.

Sara stood up to gather up the items that had fallen out of the handbag – perhaps when Nadia had been searching for her mobile to call for help. Makeup, keys, wallet, throat sweets, condoms, morning after pills, teargas, a flick knife, headphones and a fluffy little cuddly toy. And right by Nadia was her mobile.

Sara paused for a moment’s thought and then applied Nadia’s thumb to the fingerprint scanner. No good. She had more luck with her index finger. In the contacts there was a number for ‘Jenna’. But she got no answer when she tried calling. She tried calling the number from her own phone too. Same result. What if it was already too late?

While looking at the phone, Sara checked the call logs and text messages and took photos of the last twenty-four hours of communications using her own mobile. The previous call had been the evening before, and then there had been a series of unanswered calls during the night and morning, and last of all Nadia’s FaceTime to Sara.

Sara examined Nadia’s mobile. The same model Ebba had. And they were about the same age. They were just living in completely different worlds.