CALLING IT A phobia would be overstating it, but Lilja had never liked lifts. Especially not the old, cramped kind that might give up when you least expected it. But the decision had been made. She was taking the lift and the others were climbing the stairs, so the only thing she could do now was pray the rickety thing held together all the way up to the third floor.
Her new flat with the temporary strip of tape with her name on it lay straight ahead when she stepped out of the lift. But she wasn’t going home. Not any time soon. In fact, it would probably be hours before she was ready to go home.
Instead, she walked over to the door marked P. Milwokh, took a few deep breaths to compose herself and pushed the grey button next to the door, triggering an angry ringing on the other side.
It was absurd, really, that he was the one they were after, her own neighbour. But thanks to the unusual name, identifying him had been a cinch and even though he’d had a beard in his passport photo, they’d all agreed he’d been the one scoping out Ica Maxi in Hyllinge.
According to the Swedish Migration Agency, he was a Chinese citizen who had been granted asylum on 9 August 2010. Unusual enough in itself. But as a member of the political, qigong-inspired movement Falun Gong, he’d been able to claim political refugee status.
The harrowing story he’d told about being apprehended by the Chinese authorities on Sunday 15 September 2002 and placed in the Masanjia labour camp in the Yuhong district outside Shenyang in north-east China had apparently been enough to convince the Migration Agency.
The camp was one of several live organ factories in China, and he and thousands of other Falun Gong members had been imprisoned and forced to perform what could only be described as slave labour under horrifying conditions.
High-paying customers on the illegal organ market could, via Chinese websites, order organs that were then harvested from the inmates. During the seven years Milwokh had spent in the camp, he had lost his left kidney. When the decision to sell his heart and the rest of his organs was announced, he’d managed to stage a violent jailbreak and flee the country, all the way to Sweden, where he’d finally been granted citizenship under the assumed and slightly peculiar name Pontus Milwokh.
Lilja took her finger off the doorbell and studied the circular indentation on her fingertip while the ringing inside the flat subsided. ‘As expected,’ she said and turned around. ‘He’s not going to open the door.’
‘All right, then we’re going in,’ Klippan replied, emerging from the dark stairwell together with a locksmith and a three-officer arrest team.
Lilja nodded to the locksmith, who immediately started to drill through the top lock. While they waited, Lilja and Klippan donned bulletproof vests, checked their weapons and prepared to follow the uniformed officers into the flat.
Before long, the first lock was unlocked, then the second, at which point the locksmith stepped aside to make way for the head of the arrest team, who grabbed the door handle and pushed it down to let the other two in. But the door didn’t budge. It still appeared to be locked.
‘What’s going on?’ Lilja turned to the locksmith, who shrugged and went back to the door. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. This was the time to apprehend him. Now, before he could barricade himself in there with all his weapons, blow himself up or whatever else he might have in mind.
‘Odd. Really odd,’ the locksmith mumbled as he opened his toolkit and pulled out an extendable stick with a small rectangular mirror, which he inserted into the letter box. ‘Well, well, what do you know. Interesting. Very interesting.’
‘Could you get to it? We don’t have all day.’
The locksmith retracted his mirror and turned to Lilja. ‘There are espagnolettes.’
‘And what does that mean? That the door is barred from the inside?’
‘That’s another way of putting it.’ The locksmith nodded.
‘Okay.’ Klippan turned to the arrest team. ‘At least we know he’s in there then.’
‘Does this mean we have to destroy the door?’ Lilja asked.
‘Not entirely, but it’s going to need replacing, and I don’t know who’s paying for—’
‘Never mind that,’ Lilja cut him off. ‘We’ll take care of it. Just do what you have to do. And quickly, if you don’t mind.’
‘At least it’s not a security door,’ the locksmith said as he changed the bit on his drill with a practised motion and started drilling into the middle of the door. ‘Be grateful for that.’ Then he took out a reciprocating saw, inserted the blade into the drilled hole and enlarged it until it was big enough for him to push his hand through so he could open the espagnolettes from the inside.
The whole thing took just over a minute and then he stepped aside and let the uniformed officers throw open the door and storm the flat, closely followed by Lilja and Klippan.
Lilja didn’t know what she had expected. An ambush. A jumble of barricaded furniture. A hostage situation that gave them no choice but to let him get away. But the only thing that greeted them was silence. A silence that, together with the lack of furniture, the black ceiling and completely bare walls in the hallway, made it clear nothing was going to be as expected.
The uniformed officers seemed overcome with the same unsettled feeling and so continued into the flat at a considerably slower pace, making sure to cover one another. All communication was conducted in sign language as they secured each room in turn.
The ceiling, walls and floor had been painted black in the bathroom, too, as well as the bath, basin and toilet. Everything was bare and clean; the only thing sitting out was a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. Same thing in the kitchen. Everything was black, nothing was sitting out and the countertop, cupboard doors and handles were all spotless.
Lilja walked over to the balcony door, which was locked from inside, opened it and stepped out onto the black concrete floor of the balcony. Other than a stool and a small table, it was empty. She went back inside and joined Klippan in the living room, which, despite its size and extremely sparse furniture, felt completely claustrophobic with its black ceiling, black walls and black floor. Even the sofa, the curtains and the dining table and chairs were black.
‘There’s no one here,’ said the head of the arrest team, coming out of the bedroom. ‘The place is empty.’
‘But? I don’t understand.’ Lilja looked around. ‘The door was locked from the inside. As was the balcony door. He has to be in here.’
The officer shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But he’s not here. We’ve secured the whole flat. So unless there was something else you needed, we’ll be on our way.’
‘Hold on a minute.’ Lilja held up her hand. ‘Did you really check everywhere?’ She went back into the kitchen and opened one cupboard after another. ‘Like here, or here. Or why not here?’ She opened the fridge, which was black even on the inside.
‘Irene, seriously,’ Klippan sighed. ‘Do you actually think he’d hide in the fridge?’
‘If you ask me, this guy’s capable of anything. Like going to the trouble of painting the inside of his fridge black. Who the fuck does that?’
‘Irene, I don’t know.’
‘Me neither. What I do know is he has to be in here.’
‘But apparently he’s not.’ Klippan turned to the head of the arrest team. ‘It’s okay. You can go.’
He nodded and left the flat with his two team members.
‘Would it be okay if I left, too?’ said the locksmith, popping his head in diffidently. ‘I put in new locks, so you can lock the door while you wait for it to be replaced.’
‘Okay.’ Klippan took the keys the locksmith held out to him and waited until he’d left before turning to Lilja, who was going through the contents of the fridge.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Lilja said as she pulled out the vegetable drawer. ‘But we’re right. I know we’re right. He’s our guy. I mean, look. Guacamole, pickled herring, a pound of mince, a few organic tomatoes and a pesticide-infused cucumber.’ She turned to Klippan. ‘That’s pretty much exactly what he purchased in the surveillance video you showed us.’
‘Irene—’
‘The only thing missing is the taco shells, and I bet they’re here somewhere, freshly painted black.’
‘Irene, I’m not saying we got it wrong. But the thing is, he’s not here. So I suggest we look around and see if we come across anything of interest. If not, all we can do is wait until Molander has time to come out here.’
‘But if he’s not here…’ – Lilja pulled out her phone and dialled a number – ‘…then how do you explain the door being locked from the inside?’
‘I don’t know.’ Klippan spread his hands. ‘Hopefully Molander can think of an explanation. Who are you calling?’
Lilja put her phone on speaker and held it up.
‘You’ve reached Ingvar Molander of the Helsingborg Police Forensic Department. Please leave a message after the beep.’
She ended the call with a sigh. ‘He never picks up any more.’
‘I guess he has his hands full, like the rest of us.’
‘Doing what exactly? He started on Ester Landgren’s room more than three hours ago, and unless he’s found anything particularly riveting, he should at least be able to answer his phone.’
‘I’m sure there’s a good reason.’ Klippan turned around and walked over to the sofa. ‘Let’s have a look around instead and take it from there. Okay?’
Lilja didn’t move. She wasn’t ready to let her guard down. Not yet. Things had unfolded too quickly. It hadn’t even taken them ten minutes to conclude Milwokh wasn’t in his flat, even though there was no obvious explanation for how he could have got out.
After a while, she walked over to the bedroom, where the walls were, surprisingly, not all black, but rather covered with a greyish-blue 1960s’ wallpaper. Clearly this was the only room he hadn’t had time to redecorate to look like the ninth circle of hell.
Apart from a small nightstand, a wardrobe and a men’s valet over by the window, the neatly made bed took up most of the room. Bedrooms didn’t have to be spacious, of course, but this one was unusually tiny. She would panic if she barely had room to walk around her bed.
Suddenly, her uneasiness returned. She could feel it all over. Spreading from the pit of her stomach. As though she’d come too close for her own good. As though she’d be able to hear him breathing, if she could just be still enough. If her heart could just beat slower.
She looked down at her Dr. Martens, almost invisible against the black floor. It was a silly notion, of course. The arrest team had searched the room.
Even so, she was unable to shake the idea that maybe they’d been rushed and overlooked something. That he was hiding under the bed. That any moment, hands might grab her ankles and pull her feet out from under her.
He’d be on top of her before she could so much as cry out. Her pulse, her damn pulse was drowning out all other sounds when she finally got down on her knees and slowly bent down to check under the bed.
It was dark and she couldn’t see all the way to the wall, but once she got her phone out and turned on the flashlight, she could plainly see there was no one there. But she didn’t feel relieved. Where was Milwokh? He couldn’t have just disappeared like some Houdini.
She stuck her arm as far under the bed as she could reach and dragged a finger across the floor. Not so much as a speck of dust. He hadn’t just cleaned. He had scrubbed and scoured the entire flat clean of every last hair. There probably wasn’t a fingerprint to be found in here, and the toothbrush in the bathroom was probably completely devoid of DNA.
She stood up and heaved a sigh. The only place left to check was the wardrobe on the left side of the room. But it was the same as the bed. Why couldn’t she just trust that the arrest team had done their job?
Clutching her gun in one hand, she closed the other around the small door knob and opened the wardrobe. What had she expected? That he would be sitting in there behind the clothes as though they were playing hide and seek?
There were hangers with clothes in the wardrobe. But only a handful. As a matter of fact, it looked remarkably empty. And there were no baskets of socks and underwear, only a single rail at the top.
Without a clear idea of what she was looking for, she pushed the hangers to one side and turned the flashlight on her phone back on.
‘Irene! Where are you?’ Klippan called out.
‘In here! In the bedroom!’
‘I think I’ve figured out how he got out! Come and have a look!’
Lilja turned the light off and went back out to Klippan, who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, waving for her to join him.
‘There’s a balcony out here.’
‘I know, and I already checked it. The door was locked from the inside.’
‘The balcony door, yes. But not the window.’ Klippan pointed to the window next to the door. ‘See? It’s closed, sure, but not latched.’ He pushed the frame with his index finger and it opened. ‘Once he was on the balcony, he probably just pushed it closed as best he could and climbed down the drainpipe, one balcony at a time. Even I could pull that off, if I were a few pounds lighter.’
The window latches, that was what she’d missed. That meant he was still on the loose. Even so, she felt a measure of relief.
‘Maybe he saw us through the window when we drove up,’ Klippan said, and she nodded.
At least the puzzle pieces fitted together again. This wasn’t some supernatural being they were hunting, it was a flesh-and-blood human who was subject to the same natural laws as them.
*
Lilja’s and Klippan’s voices grew increasingly muffled further away from the kitchen. From the bedroom, they sounded like a distant murmur, the words impossible to distinguish.
The wardrobe door stood open, like Lilja had left it, and the handful of hangers were still pushed to one side, exposing the back and the small round hole just big enough for a person to stick their finger in, reach the narrow metal plate above the hole and push it aside to open what was in reality a secret door.
There, on the other side of the hole, behind double layers of soundproofing materials and a closed blackout blind keeping the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights from seeping out, was a windowless space of a few square feet.
On the floor lay a packed backpack. Next to it stood a desk with a computer, a notebook with a big X on the cover and a round board with an inch-high rim covered in green felt. A map of Skåne was pinned to the wall, divided into a twelve-by-twelve grid of squares, a few of which had been marked with tiny symbols.
The wall opposite was almost entirely hidden behind a built-in bookcase. Some of its shelves were empty, others were littered with everything from a large collection of dice and syringes to a severed ponytail and a dark-skinned, photorealistic mask.
Underneath the bookcase, on a narrow cot, lay Pontus Milwokh, waiting, completely still with his eyes open and his sword resting on his chest.