The Home hotel was a palatial building in the most secluded corner of the Östermalm district. It was a brick-built fortress with turrets and towers and a small courtyard behind a wall. When the neighbourhood had been built, the plan had been to impress and Lärkstan was now full of embassies that appreciated the splendid buildings and wide, empty streets. It was no coincidence that Opus Dei had established their Swedish headquarters here behind railings and tall walls. In this corner of town, discretion was a point of honour.
Nine minutes and forty-five seconds after ending her call, Sara screeched to a halt in front of the hotel. Darkness had begun to descend on the city and an almost grotesque limousine – a stretch Hummer of the kind owned by pornographers – was waiting outside the entrance. The doors of the luxury hotel opened and Uncle Scam emerged wearing big black sunglasses and flanked by two enormous bodyguards. They were well over one hundred and fifty kilos each, Sara thought to herself when she caught sight of the men. But they were more fat than muscle – they only looked dangerous. Or so she hoped.
Sara and Anna got out of the car and approached the trio.
‘Uncle Scam,’ said Sara, showing her police ID. ‘Police. We’d like to talk to you.’
‘No,’ said one of the bodyguards, stepping in front of Scam to ward Sara off.
‘Yes,’ said Sara, continuing to deploy her best schoolgirl English. ‘We believe you’re a witness to a murder. We need you to come with us. We don’t want to cause a scene.’
‘No,’ the bodyguard said again, shoving Sara aside with his gigantic hand.
‘He assaulted a police officer,’ Sara said to Anna, indicating that they could now arrest the men. Using her left hand, she produced handcuffs while with her right she grabbed the wrist of the man who had pushed her. The bodyguard stopped and threw Sara aside with such force that she hit the floor.
She lunged for his feet, wrapped her arms around his shins and wrapped her own legs around his upper body.
With his legs locked, she was easily able to pull him over and he hit the ground with a loud thud, as if an elephant had fallen off the roof of a garden shed.
Sara threw herself quickly onto him and applied the handcuffs to one of his hands but then he recovered and pushed her off.
The other bodyguard made as if to intervene, but Anna pulled out her pistol and took aim.
‘Don’t,’ was all she said. And he stopped.
Sara jumped onto the back of her opponent, put her arm around his throat and forced him back down to the ground. With his throat in the crook of her arm, she squeezed as hard as she could, while applying pressure with her other arm at the same time.
‘Police brutality!’ someone shouted, and Sara glanced to the side, spreading her legs as wide as she could to ensure the man couldn’t topple her. The person shouting was one of a small group of young lads on the pavement across the street, all with their mobiles pulled out.
‘Get lost!’ Sara shouted, but they ignored her. Fucking brats. And this fucking colossus was still standing his ground.
‘OK, OK, OK,’ the bodyguard managed to gurgle at last, tapping Sara on the arm. He was tapping out. The sign that he gave up. Sara loosened her grip and dragged his hands together so that she could attach the handcuffs to his other hand.
‘What the fuck is your problem?’ was all Scam had to say.
‘I’m gonna take your gun,’ Anna said to the other bodyguard, raising her gun but keeping it at a safe distance from him while reaching with her other arm.
‘It’s just a toy,’ the bodyguard said, opening his jacket. ‘You guys have shitty gun laws.’
Anna fished the pistol out of his waistband and glanced at it quickly.
‘Airsoft gun,’ she said to Sara, pocketing it.
Then they handcuffed the other bodyguard and Scam, put all three in the back seat of Anna’s car and set off for Solna. But when they called Bielke, he was of an entirely different opinion.
‘Don’t bring him here,’ her boss said on the phone. ‘He’s got several hundred fans outside here. There’ll be a riot.’
‘But they already think he’s there.’
‘Yes, we’ll have to let the lookalike go. Otherwise they’ll storm the building. There’s already a bloody clip of us beating up his bodyguards online.’
‘Are you kidding? It only happened a couple of minutes ago.’
‘Yes, isn’t it special what you can achieve with a mobile phone these days?’
So instead, they drove as fast as they could to the Kronoberg remand prison, where the three detainees would be assigned a cell each along with a prison uniform. The only question was whether they had clothes in big enough sizes for the bodyguards, Sara thought to herself.
While the three men were being booked in, Anna told her that the internet was awash with the news that Scam had been hiding at a different hotel, that he had been arrested by the police and that he had been taken to Kronoberg. Aftonbladet were particularly on the ball and wrote about both the dramatic arrest and about the ‘rapper’s secret luxury hotel’ where he had been hiding out from his fans.
‘Lucky there’s a back exit in this place,’ said Sara, thinking about all the furious fans who were soon going to hate them. Including her own son.
Sara’s mobile began to buzz hysterically. She looked at the display to see that it was Westin from Aftonbladet, then Tillberg from TV4. When she didn’t answer, the text messages began to arrive in a deluge.
Then Bielke called again.
‘Don’t be angry – but they’re gone.’
‘Who?’
‘Everyone in Warehouse 7. When the company finally agreed to let us in, it was completely empty. We found the booths you mentioned, and the room with all the spotlights. But no bodies, no weapons, no blood. Well, nothing visible. I guess they’ve only rinsed the floor. We can’t carry out a proper investigation – Conny Mårtensson straight up refused that.’
‘But how did they get away? Weren’t you going to leave two cars watching the gates?’
‘I had four cars there! And dogs. And no one left the area through the gates. However, there was a ship that just sailed.’
‘And you let it go? Surely it’s Swedish waters in Frihamnen?’
‘We boarded and searched the vessel before it departed, but there was no one there. Just the Filipino crew. And none of the people you saw were Filipinos, were they?’
‘No.’
‘But the ship was loading containers until the last minute. From the Stirner Shipping area of the dock.’
‘Didn’t you check them out?’
‘Weren’t allowed to. They all had customs seals on them. International treaties, trade deals, and so on. We were up against some bloody powerful interests.’
‘So they loaded everyone into a container and left?’
‘That’s the only possible explanation. Unless you and Roger dreamt it all, that is.’
Sara swore out loud. Repeatedly.
‘That means Uncle Scam is the only thing we have to go on. Cornelius Crane Jr from the Upper East Side.’
‘And you’re not likely to get much out of him.’
‘Thanks for your vote of confidence,’ said Sara, hanging up.
‘Who’s the bloke you just brought in?’ The remand officer was looking at Sara and Anna in bafflement. ‘The whole street’s full of people shouting and screaming and with streamers and shit. And the TV and press are here.’
‘Just one of the biggest artists in the world,’ said Anna.
‘Shit,’ said the guard. ‘Like Carola?’
‘Yes, like her,’ said Anna.
‘OK, well they’re changed and ready to go.’ The remand officer’s statement meant the three detainees had been searched, provided with uniforms and taken to their respective cells.
Anna asked the guard to escort Scam to the interview room where they would be waiting for him.
Just as they sat down, Sara’s mobile rang. When she pulled it out to put it on airplane mode, she saw Hedin’s name on the screen, as well as several missed calls from her.
‘I can’t talk right now,’ said Sara.
‘I’ve found a picture you have to see,’ said Hedin.
‘Of what?’
‘I can’t say on the phone.’
‘I’ll be there as soon as possible.’
‘OK. But be careful. But say nothing to anybody. It’s . . . sensational. Lethal. Trust no one. No one, do you hear? Absolutely no one.’
‘OK. I’ll be careful.’
Sara ended the call just as the American superstar was led in.
‘Aren’t you Martin’s wife?’ was the first thing Scam said, apparently forgetting to sound like he was from the Bronx. Or perhaps he thought he’d receive better treatment behind bars with his dulcet Upper East Side tones. Sara didn’t answer.
‘Is he here too?’ said Scam looking around, despite the fact that he was inside a cramped interview room.
‘No.’
‘Then send him my best. And thank him for yesterday.’
They didn’t get any further than that. Uncle Scam smiled kindly and denied having been to any peepshow the night before, denied in the strongest of terms that he had seen anyone hurt or killed. And he cited Martin, who would be able to confirm that he had been in the club. He said that if they had no evidence they had to release him. The bodyguards had attacked Sara and Anna, so they were welcome to hang onto them. He hated men who harmed women.
Sara took out her mobile and showed him the picture of the wallpaper from the computer.
‘That’s you standing next to some of the murderers. And the girl in the background is dead now. Murdered.’
‘She wasn’t dead when that picture was taken. What happened to her afterwards isn’t my responsibility. People take selfies with me all the time. Obviously some of them are bad guys. Gangsters love me.’
‘You were at the murder scene. At the peepshow. Warehouse 7.’
‘Nope. Just a night club. Martin probably knows the name. Maybe that girl went with the others to a peepshow later on.’
‘We’re getting nowhere,’ Anna remarked in Swedish to ensure he couldn’t understand.
Sara looked at the photo on her mobile and thought for a moment. Then she glanced at Scam’s prison uniform.
‘If you have any more questions then I want a lawyer. But you really should let me go now. No hard feelings. You’re just doing your job.’
‘Wait,’ said Sara.
‘Where are you going?’ she heard as the door closed behind her.
She found the guards and asked them to show her Scam’s possessions.
Of course. His mobile. An iPhone 12 Pro.
‘You have to sign for that,’ protested the officer when Sara took the phone.
‘In a second,’ she said, jogging back to the interview room with Scam’s phone. In the meantime, she checked to see whether it was locked. It was.
She opened the door to the interview room, stepped over to Scam and held the mobile in front of his face. Then she hurried out again before the rapper was able to say more than, ‘Hey!’
The facial recognition had worked and she was into the phone.
She stopped in the corridor and examined the mobile. There were messages to and from Martin and a series of girls. And to his mother and father, so it seemed. Mum was proud of her successful son, Dad was more distanced.
And then the photos.
The most recent ones were from the hotel, and before that the camera seemed to have been used to snap all sorts of junk food and fizzy drinks.
But the pictures before that were from the peepshow.
Photos and videos.
Of Jenna lying strapped to the table and being abused and raped by three men. It appeared to have been filmed from inside one of the booths.
So he had been there. And they could prove it.
Sara sent all the photos and videos to her own phone.
She continued to scroll through these disgusting things until she came across one of the earliest photos from the peepshow. Before it had begun.
When payment had taken place.
In that photo there was a drunken man smirking as he held up his black American Express Centurion to one of the peepshow guards.
It was obviously the man footing the bill.
For the murder of Jenna.
And it wasn’t Uncle Scam.
It was her husband, Martin.