‘My daughter needs me!’
Ndeme was agitated. He slammed his fist against the table to emphasise each syllable. The grey and white acoustic boards on the ceiling of the small interview room didn’t do much to absorb the sound.
‘First we have a couple of questions,’ said Sara. ‘And there’s nothing to worry about. She’s getting plenty of help from the doctors.’
Ndeme had braked when Abeba had opened the door and thrown herself out, according to the surveillance team following them. This had, without doubt, saved her life, because there was a big difference between falling out of a car at thirty kilometres an hour and at eighty. But she had still taken a real beating on the asphalt and had been bleeding profusely from her many scratches.
The real question was what had made her risk her life like that. The officers in the car behind had been obliged to floor the brakes in a panic to avoid crashing into Ndeme’s metallic red Seat. They had seen to Abeba and ensured an ambulance was on the scene in the space of just a few minutes, and then Sara and Anna had asked them to bring her father to the police station in Solna.
‘Why did she throw herself out?’ said Sara.
‘She didn’t, she fell. That door’s been causing grief. I was going to take it to the garage, but you never get round to it, do you?’
‘What did you think about Abeba being together with Cesar?’
‘It was very good. Cesar was a good guy. It was terrible for it to end like that. He wanted to leave the gang but they wouldn’t let him.’
‘So you believe it was his own gang that killed him?’ Sara asked.
‘You know, you don’t leave those gangs so easy. “You owe us this, you owe us that.” They don’t want to let you go.’
‘What did you think about the fact that Abeba was having sex with Cesar?’ Anna interjected.
‘She wasn’t having sex with him! Careful what you say!’
‘She’s pregnant. Has she told you that?’
Ndeme said nothing.
‘Where were you going?’ said Sara.
‘To buy clothes. For the funeral.’
‘Was it the thought of the funeral that made her throw herself out of the car? I don’t think it was.’
‘She didn’t throw herself. It was the door.’
‘Anyway, the baby survived,’ Anna announced, while Sara studied his reaction.
‘Which baby?’
‘Hers and Cesar’s.’
‘She’s not pregnant!’
‘The doctors say otherwise.’
Ndeme looked furious, but he sat in silence.
‘You’re accusing my daught—’ he said, but Sara interrupted him.
‘What’s the PIN on your mobile?’ she said, holding up the phone they had confiscated from him.
‘No PIN. I have nothing to hide,’ he said, shaking his head in irritation. ‘You interrupted me. I said: you’re accusing my daughter of living an impure life!’
Sara pressed a button on the mobile and quite right, there was no PIN.
‘You can’t look at it,’ said Ndeme, raising a hand to stop her. ‘It’s my mobile. Personal privacy.’
‘My finger slipped,’ said Sara, opening his text messages.
Ndeme lunged across the table, knocking over the bottle of mineral water, which fell to the floor. With one hand he grabbed Sara’s top and with the other he reached for his mobile. Sara instinctively grasped the hand clutching her top and twisted it while following up with her other hand against his elbow. Then she twisted him into an armlock.
‘Violence against an officer,’ Sara said, bending him down towards the floor and leaning on his back, still with his arm locked. Together with Anna she raised him into a sitting position and secured his hands to the table using handcuffs.
‘Now I’m very curious,’ Sara said, picking up his mobile again.
‘This is harassment! Religious persecution.’
‘In that case God will punish us,’ she said, returning to his text messages.
Messages from the postal service and his voicemail and the City of Stockholm about parking. Sara noted the date was last Friday, the night Cesar had been murdered. And the message was to remind him that his parking ticket would expire at midnight that evening. The time of Cesar’s death.
She quickly scrolled through the other senders and recipients, who were largely his wife, his children, the odd colleague and a couple of relatives, judging by the names.
And there was a number without a name to it.
Sara opened the most recent message from the number.
She went back and read from the beginning of the thread.
‘What’s a peepshow?’ said Sara, looking up from the mobile to Ndeme.
‘Just a game.’
‘I’ve seen what people look like after they’ve been to a peepshow. What do you mean by “do myself”? Was it you who tortured Cesar?’
‘I didn’t do anything! Give me my mobile.’
Why so eager? Sara wondered. She went to find the video folder. There were only about ten or fifteen videos, and the oldest ones appeared to be innocent films of the family and house, judging by the previews.
But the last videos showed something else entirely. Sara clicked on one of them and saw Cesar’s pained, bloodied face accompanied by a terrible shriek. Downright mortal anguish. She saw an arm appear in shot with a knife in its hand – it stabbed over and over. Ruthlessly.
‘You’ve ruined her!’ a voice shouted – Sara recognised it as Ndeme’s.
The next clip showed more of the brutal murder – the protracted suffering. The murder cut his victim again and again, making him scream loudly.
Sara lowered the mobile and looked at Ndeme.
‘Just because he got your daughter pregnant?’
Ndeme shook his head.
‘I didn’t know that then.’
Sara let the words sink in. An uncomfortable, dark-as-night realisation dawned on her.
‘When did you find that out?’
No answer.
‘Where were you going just now? When she threw herself out?’
Still no answer. Sara checked the final messages.
Sara checked the map on her mobile and saw the address was at Gärdet, not far from where she’d found Nadia.
‘Where is this peepshow?’ she said to Ndeme. ‘Is it in Frihamnen? At the Free Port?’
When he didn’t answer, Sara lunged forward, grabbed him by the lapels and shook him for all she was worth.
‘WHERE?’
Anna put her arm between them and tugged Sara away, carefully so that it wouldn’t be clear whether she was distancing herself from the violence or keen to emphasise to Ndeme how close Sara was to going berserk. That tactic had worked before – presumably because it was based on a highly realistic possibility.
‘What were you going to do with Abeba?’ said Sara, but by now Ndeme had regained his composure and was looking at her with derision.
His phone beeped.
Sara checked the mobile.
The message was from the same number as the other peepshow texts.
It really was as bad as she’d thought. She looked at the man before her. A servant of God who was willing to kill his own child because she wanted to live her own life.
‘You were going to take your daughter to the peepshow? You were going to murder her in front of other people?’
‘She’s disowned. She has no family any longer. It’s better for her to go to God.’
Sara imagined herself locking Ndeme into a scissors position and slowly suffocating him to death. Then she looked at the mobile and thought for a moment.
‘And it’s tonight?’ She got no answer. ‘I asked you whether they’re doing a peepshow now?’
Ndeme shrugged.
‘Are there several victims each time?’
The same movement from Abeba’s father.
‘Where is it? Where do they do the peepshow?’
‘I don’t know. They blindfolded us and drove us.’
She checked the second to last message again. 37 greve von essens väg, 8pm.
Sara turned to Anna.
‘There might be others who are going to be tortured and murdered tonight. We have to stop it.’
‘How? He doesn’t know where it is.’
‘There’s only one way.’
Sara grabbed Ndeme’s mobile again and typed: