FRIDAY 7 JUNE

 

 

 

 

He had never liked the dark.

Winter darkness that lasted for an eternity had been part of his childhood in Kiruna, well to the north of the Arctic Circle, and police college in Stockholm had meant a series of night shifts, but he couldn’t resign himself to the dark, couldn’t get used to it. To him, the dark would never be beautiful.

He was standing in the sitting room, looking out through the window at the dense forest. The June night lay as deep under the trees as summer darkness ever can be. Sven Sundkvist had got home a little after ten o’clock with the video in his briefcase. First he had gone to see the sleeping Jonas, kissed the boy’s forehead and stood for a while listening to his quiet breathing. Anita had been in the kitchen doing a crossword. He managed to squeeze in next to her on the chair, and after an hour or so, only three squares in three different corners were empty. Typical, just a few letters short of posting the completed crossword to the local paper in the hope of winning one of three Premium Bonds.

Afterwards they made love. She had undressed him first and then herself; she wanted him to sit on the kitchen chair and she settled in his lap, their naked bodies so close, needing each other.

He had waited until she had gone to sleep. It was after midnight when he got out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. He carried his briefcase into the sitting room.

He thought it better to be alone when he watched the video.

Alone with the overwhelming feeling of unease.

What Anita and Jonas didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

The dark outside. Staring into it he could just make out some of the trees.

He checked his watch. Ten past one. He had spent an hour looking at nothing in particular. He couldn’t put it off any more.

She had told Ejder about two videotapes.

She had made a copy. Just in case. Someone might wipe one of the tapes, or record on top of her film, or simply try to lose the whole thing and replace it with an empty cassette.

Sven Sundkvist could not be sure that what he was watching was identical to the recording on the other tape.

He assumed that it was.

They look nervous, the way people do when they are not used to staring at the single eye that preserves what it looks at for posterity.

Grajauskas speaks first.

Two sentences. She turns to Sljusareva, who translates.

‘This is my reason. This is my story.’

Grajauskas speaks again, two sentences, with her eyes fixed on her friend.

Her face has a serious expression. She nods and again Sjusareva turns to the camera and translates.

‘When you hear this, I hope that the man I am going to talk about is dead. I hope that he has felt my shame.’

They speak very distinctly, careful to enunciate every word in both Russian and Swedish.

He leaned forward and stopped the tape.

He didn’t want to go on.

What he felt was no longer unease or dread, rather an overwhelming anger of a kind he only rarely had to confront. No more doubt. He had hoped, as everyone always does. But now he knew, he knew that Ewert had manipulated the tape and had a motive for doing it.

Sven Sundkvist got up, went into the kitchen and put on the coffee machine, a strong brew to help him think. It would be a long night.

The crossword was still lying on the kitchen table. He moved it to make room for a sheet from Jonas’s drawing pad, picked up one of the boy’s marker pens, a purple one, and drew lines, haphazard at first, on the white surface.

A man.

An older man. Massive torso, not much hair, piercing eyes.

Ewert.

He smiled at himself when he realised. He had in fact drawn Ewert in purple marker ink.

He knew why, of course. A long night was staring him in the face.

He had known Ewert for nearly ten years. To begin with he had been ordered about and shouted at – they all had – but at some point he had suddenly become aware of something like friendship with his difficult boss and had become one of the few who were addressed normally, men whom Ewert invited into his office and confided in, as much as he ever did. Later Sven had come to know Ewert Grens well enough to realise how little he understood him. He had never been to Ewert’s flat, and you couldn’t really know people whose homes you’d never seen. On the other hand, Ewert had been here, for supper or just for a cup of coffee, and had sat at this very table flanked by Anita and Jonas.

Sven had invited Ewert to his home, a place where he could be himself. Ewert had never reciprocated.

He looked at the drawing and started to fill in the purple man’s jacket and shoes with more purple. He knew nothing about the private person. He knew the policeman, DSI Grens, who was first in the office every morning, long before everyone else, played Siw Malmkvist songs with the volume turned up, worked all day and all night, often stayed overnight in his office to carry on with an unfinished investigation when dawn broke. He was the best policeman Sven had ever encountered, incapable of making simple errors and always prepared to pursue every case to its conclusion, regardless of consequences. To him, the investigation alone mattered, to the exclusion of everything else.

But now he didn’t know any longer.

He drank the rest of the coffee in his cup and refilled it. He needed more.

Another marker pen, a screaming shade of green this time. He used it for making notes in the space next to the purple man.

Ejder sees the video in LG’s carrier bag.

Krantz finds it at the scene, notes that it has been used. He records two sets of probably female fingerprints. One set is LG’s.

Krantz hands it to EG in the mortuary. EG takes charge of it, but does not record anywhere, i.e., not with the duty staff or the forensic boys.

SS finds a video in EG’s office. The tape is blank.

In the interview, Ejder states that LG told him that a copy of the video is deposited in a Central Station storage locker.

SS gets access to the locker, brings the tape home. SS creeps around the house at night, watches the video and can confirm that it is not blank.

He stopped making notes. He could have added, SS is too soft to carry on watching it, but instead he just sat and looked at the ink version of Ewert. What have you done? I know that you deleted evidence, and I know why. He scrunched up the paper and threw it across the table towards the sink. Then he tried to solve the crossword, testing one letter after another in the three empty squares, but gave up after a quarter of an hour.

He wandered back to the sitting room.

The videotape demanded attention.

He could have not collected it. Or not brought it home.

Now he has no choice. He has to watch it.

Lydia Grajauskas again. The camera slips out of focus, a few seconds pass and then the cameraman signals to carry on.

She looks at her friend, waiting for her to translate. Sljusareva strokes Lydia’s cheek before she turns to the camera.

‘When I met Bengt Nordwall in Klaipeda, he said it was good job and very well paid.’

Sven Sundkvist stopped the tape and fled into the kitchen again. He peered into the fridge, drank some milk straight from the carton and closed the door quietly. Mustn’t wake Anita.

He had not put it into words, but this was exactly what he had feared.

A different truth.

When the truth changes, lies emerge. A lie can only be dealt with when it is known to be a lie.

He went back into the sitting room and settled on the sofa.

He had just started to be part of Bengt Nordwall’s big lie.

He was convinced that Ewert had watched this very film and realised the same as he had. Ewert had watched and then wiped it, to protect his friend. Now Sven faced the same dilemma. Bengt Nordwall’s lie had become Ewert’s. If he himself did nothing, he too would have to live with it. He could do the same as Ewert: look away to protect a friend’s reputation.

He started the video again and fast-forwarded it to find out how long the film was. Twenty minutes. He checked the time. Half past two. If he started from the beginning and watched the whole of Lydia Grajauskas’s story, he would be finished before three. Then he could tiptoe into the bedroom, leave a note on the pillow explaining that he had a night job, get dressed and take the car into town. The drive took only twenty minutes.

 

 

 

 

It was nearly four o’clock when he opened his office door. Morning had already arrived, bringing light from somewhere out at sea, from the east, light that had followed him along the deserted stretch of motorway between Gustavsberg and central Stockholm.

He got himself more coffee, not so much to stay awake – his mind was alive with ideas, and sleep was simply not an option – but because he hoped the coffee would help him to sharpen up and get a grip before the buzzing in his head took over and crystallised into its own conclusions, the way thoughts do at night.

He cleared his desk by piling papers and photographs and folders on the floor. When he sat down at the bare desktop, the wooden surface seemed new to him. He had probably never seen it like this, not for years anyway; he had worked here for five or six years.

He took a ball of paper from his pocket. It was the drawing of Ewert, rescued from the kitchen sink. He flattened it out in the middle of the desk. Now he knew that the purple man had gone beyond the point of no return and tampered with evidence, in order to protect his own interests, to protect a lie that wasn’t his.

Absently retracing the outline of the man he had drawn, Sven Sundkvist felt an impotent rage. He had no idea what to do with this knowledge.

Lars Ågestam did what he usually did when he couldn’t sleep. He dressed in his suit and black shoes, put only the minimum in his briefcase and left his house to walk into work with the dawn – three hours through Stockholm’s western suburbs.

It had been an odd conversation, hard to follow too. As a rule he didn’t have problems understanding but this time Ewert Grens, a man he both admired and pitied, had insisted that on the one hand the police had no notion of Lydia Grajauskas’s motive for knocking out her guard, taking five hostages and killing a policeman before shooting herself, but that, on the other hand, her best friend Alena Sljusareva knew nothing that had any bearing on the case and could therefore be left to her own devices back home in Lithuania.

Sleep had been impossible.

At the time, he had decided to trust Grens after all.

Now, in the light of the rising sun, he walked with purpose. He had already phoned Söder Hospital to say he wanted to visit the mortuary once more.

He didn’t knock. Nothing odd about that, Ewert Grens never knocked.

Sven started and looked at the door.

‘Ewert?’

‘Bloody hell, you’re early, Sven. What’s up?’

Sven blushed, aware of how obvious it was. He stared down at his desktop, embarrassed and exposed. There he was, staring at his purple version of Ewert.

‘I don’t know. It seemed a good idea.’

‘For Christ’s sake, it’s just gone five in the morning. Normally there isn’t another soul around at this time.’

Grens made a move to step into the room. Sven Sundkvist glanced nervously at his drawing and covered it with his hand.

‘Come on, son. What’s on your mind?’

Sven was not much good at lying, especially not to people he liked.

‘Nothing special. There’s just such a lot to do at the moment.’

He was suffocating. Must be as red as a beetroot.

‘Ewert, you know how it is. Söder Hospital, all that. The media are on our backs. And you’d rather give all that a miss. But we need some kind of basic story for the press office.’

No more of this, I can’t handle it, he thought, looking down at the desktop.

Ewert Grens took a step forward, stood still for a moment, then backed out, talking as he went.

‘Good. I’m sure you know what you’re doing, Sven. And I’m pleased you’re dealing with the hacks.’

Söder Hospital was a huge lump of a building, usually ugly, but now in the early sunlight it was almost beautiful, coated in a pale red glow that cast its reflection on gleaming windows and roofs. It was nearly six o’clock when Lars Ågestam walked through the main hall, which was barely awake.

He took the lift down to the basement, the same route Grajauskas had taken two days ago, a badly injured woman with a plastic bag hidden under her hospital clothes, whom no one would beat up again.

The last part of the corridor was cordoned off with blue and white police tape, from roughly the point where Sven had been lying in wait, some thirty metres away from the door, but close enough to see that it was no longer there. Ågestam bent down under the tape, avoided the bits of broken wall, and made for the hole where the door had been. It was sealed with a criss-cross of tape that he ripped off.

A hallway, then the room where they had been found on the floor. Their outlines in white chalk were close. Her body so near his. Their blood mingling. He had died with her. She had died with him. Ågestam felt certain it had been deliberate, this final resting place of theirs, side by side.

It was silent down there. He looked around the room. Death terrified him; he didn’t even wear a watch any more as it just measured time. And yet here he was in a mortuary, alone, trying to understand what had happened.

The tape recorder. He placed it in the middle of the floor.

He wanted to listen to them talking.

He wanted to be part of it, afterwards, as he always did.

‘Ewert.’

‘Receiving.’

‘The hostage in the corridor is dead. No visible blood, so I can’t make out where she shot him. But the smell is odd, strong. Harsh.’

Bengt Nordwall’s voice. Steady, at least it sounded steady. Lars Ågestam had never met him and never heard his voice before.

He was trying to get to know a dead man.

‘Ewert, it is all one fucking big con. She hasn’t shot anyone. All the hostages are still here. All four of them are alive. They’ve just walked out. She has got about three hundred grams of Semtex round the doors, but she can’t detonate it.’

He noticed the man’s fear. Nordwall continued to observe and describe what he was seeing, but the tone of his voice had changed, as if he had understood something which the listeners upstairs had not and which Ågestam, a late listener, was trying to grasp now.

‘You are naked.’

‘That’s how you wanted it.’

‘How does that feel? What is it like to be here, in a mortuary, standing naked in front of a woman with a gun?’

‘I have done what you asked me to do.’

‘You feel humiliated, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘All alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Afraid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Kneel.’

Not even two days had passed. The recorded voices were alive still, even the Russian interpreter’s version. Every word was distinct. They were speaking in a closed room. She had made up her mind, Lars Ågestam was certain of that. She had decided from the start what would happen. She was to die there. He was to die there.

She would humiliate him and afterwards they would both cease to breathe.

For all eternity they would lie together on a mortuary floor.

Ågestam didn’t move from where Nordwall had stood, wondering if he had known that he had only a few seconds left, a fraction of a moment, and then nothing.

Ewert Grens couldn’t concentrate.

He hadn’t slept at all and told himself that he should’ve kipped down on the office sofa. There was too much on his mind that needed attention, stuff that had to be mulled over and over, interminably. Sleeping at home was not an option.

He had promised to have lunch with Lena, who wanted to carry on talking about Bengt. He said no at first, he didn’t want to. He missed his old friend, of course he did, but he was also aware that the man he missed was someone other than the Bengt Nordwall he had learnt more about recently.

If only I had known then what I know now.

Did you think about her? Did you ever? And when you came home, did the two of you make love? I mean, afterwards?

I’m doing this for Lena.

You are not alive.

When she had asked him again later, he agreed to have lunch with her.

Lena ate nothing, only played with the food on her plate and drank mineral water, two whole bottles. She had been weeping, mostly for the children, she said, it is so hard for them and they don’t understand, and if I don’t understand either, Ewert, how can I explain to them?

Afterwards he was glad that he had been with her. She needed him, needed to say the same things so many times that they gradually sank in and she could begin to understand.

He didn’t have the courage to grieve properly.

It felt right to watch somebody else doing it.

Lars Ågestam listened to the tape over and over again. He had stood in the middle of the room listening, and then sat with his back to the wall just like the hostages. He had lain down one last time where Bengt Nordwall had been, protected his genitals with his hands, and stared at the ceiling. He was aware of the white chalk outline, drawn around a body larger than his own. He listened to the whole exchange between Bengt Nordwall and Ewert, and was now convinced that Nordwall, who had ended his life just where he himself was lying now, had known exactly who Lydia Grajauskas was, and that they somehow belonged together, which was what Grens had sensed or maybe even knew and why for some reason he was prepared to throw away a whole life in the police force in order to protect the truth.

By the time he was ready to leave, Ågestam had spent two full hours in the mortuary. Suddenly he was panicking about death, had to get away, needed to eat breakfast in a large café packed with people who were noisy and hungry and alive.

‘I had this area cordoned off.’

Lars hadn’t heard him come in: Nils Krantz, a technician from Forensics. They had met, but didn’t know each other.

‘I’m sorry, I had to get in. I was looking for some answers.’

‘You’re trampling all over the crime scene.’

‘I am the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.’

‘I know, but to be frank I don’t give a damn who you are. You stick to the marker lines like everyone else. I’m responsible for any evidence here that’s worth having a look at.’

Ågestam sighed loudly, suggesting that he wouldn’t waste time arguing about trivia. He turned away, picked up his tape recorder and his notebook, put them in his bag. Time for breakfast.

‘You’re in a hurry.’

‘You gave me the impression I was to get off site as quickly as possible.’

Nils Krantz shrugged, started studying the remains of explosive round the door frame to the store and suddenly spoke in a loud voice.

‘Thought you might be interested to hear that the test results are in.’

‘What test results?’

‘From the other investigation, the one involving Lang. We did a body scan.’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What do you mean, nothing?’

‘We went over every square inch. No trace of Oldéus anywhere on his body.’

Lars Ågestam had been on his way out, but stopped when Krantz raised his voice. Now he felt empty, couldn’t muster the energy to move.

‘There you go.’

He stood still, looking glumly at Krantz, who carried on prodding the area round the door frame with his gloved hands. Finally he managed to pull himself together enough to pick up his briefcase and start off towards what had once been the door. He was just about to step through the hole in the wall when Krantz called after him again.

‘Wait.’

‘What is it now?’

‘Lang’s clothes, we did them too, of course. And the shoes. There it was. Traces of blood and DNA – Oldéus’s blood and DNA.’

After lunch, Ewert Grens had left Lena alone in the restaurant. She told him that she wanted to sit for a bit longer, ordered a third bottle of mineral water and hugged him. He had started walking towards Homicide when he changed his mind and took the slightly longer route via the police cells.

He couldn’t resist it.

It wouldn’t be enough to have a reliable doctor identifying him from photographs, even if she insisted with one hundred per cent certainty that he was the killer. If that same killer managed to threaten and frighten the witness once more, neatly timed for the identity parade, so that no identification was made after all, then the law said that he could go free to kill again.

This time was different. This time it would be enough.

Grens took the lift and got out on the second floor, where he told the guard he wanted a word with Jochum Lang, that he wanted to fetch him himself and take him to the interrogation room.

The guard led the way past silent, closed doors, stopped in front of number eight. Ewert nodded to the guard who then pulled back the little flap to let Ewert peer inside.

He was lying on his back on the bunk, his eyes closed. He was sleeping. There was nothing much else he could do, locked up for twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours, confined to a few lousy square metres without newspapers or radio or TV.

Grens shouted through the opening.

‘Hey, Lang! Time to wake up!’

No response, not a twitch. He had heard all right.

‘Now. Time for a chat. Just you and me.’

Lang moved a little, lifted his head when Grens shouted, then turned on his side with his back towards the door.

Irritated, Grens slammed the flap shut.

He nodded to the guard, who unlocked the door. Grens stepped inside the cell, saying that he wanted to be alone with the prisoner. The officer hesitated. Jochum Lang was classified as dangerous. He decided to stay put. Grens explained, as patiently as he could, that he would take full responsibility for the prisoner for the duration, and that if there was a cock-up, it would be his fault and his alone.

The officer shrugged, and closed the door behind him.

Grens took a step closer to the bunk.

‘Lang, don’t mess with me. Get up.’

‘Piss off.’

One last step and he was close enough to touch the body lying there. Instead he grabbed the edge of the bunk and shook it until Lang got up.

They stood facing each other. Staring hard. Staring.

‘Interview time, Lang. Get moving.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘We’ve found matches with his blood group and DNA. We have a witness. You’ll be put away, Lang. For murder.’

Ten or twenty centimetres between their faces.

‘Grens, you’re a stupid twat. I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. Perhaps you should take it easy, be a bit more careful. You know that policemen have hurt themselves falling out of cars before.’

Ewert Grens smiled, showing plenty of stained teeth.

‘You can threaten me as much as you like. Whatever. There’s nothing I can lose now that isn’t worth putting you away for good. You’ll be wanking behind bars until you’re sixty.’

It was hard to tell which of them hated the other more.

Each man looked into his enemy’s eyes, searching for something that should be there. When he spoke, Lang’s voice was low, warm puffs of air in Grens’s face.

‘I’m not taking part in any more of your interrogations. Period. Just so you know, you old shit. If you or any other pig turns up to drag me off to just one more chat show, I’ll hurt the poor fucker badly. Take my word for it. Fuck off now. And shut the door behind you.’

Sven Sundkvist had phoned home and tried to explain why he had disappeared in the middle of the night without a word, just leaving a note. Anita had been upset; she didn’t like the fact that he hadn’t spoken to her, especially as they had promised never to take off suddenly like that without saying why. They ended up having a row, and when Sven tried to make it better, it just made things worse.

He had been on his way home, feeling cross at the world, speeding a bit now that the queues had thinned out. He had just passed the stupid oversized boats moored at the Viking Line terminal, when Lars Ågestam rang and started to speak quietly.

He wanted Sven to come to the prosecutor’s office for a meeting after hours. Just the two of them.

Sven Sundkvist had stopped the car, phoned Anita again and made everything worse still. Now he was back in town again, alone, not sure what to do with all the spare time. It was in fact only an hour or two, but just then an eternity.

It was one of those mild, warm June evenings. He walked slowly from Kronoberg, circling the streets, not taking in the music from far away and the smells from the restaurant terraces and pavement tables. Life was all around him and he should have been smiling, should even have joined in for a while, but he didn’t, hardly even noticed.

He was beginning to feel tired after a long night and what seemed like an even longer day.

He couldn’t bring himself to think about the video and about the awful truth he carried with him.

Is that what did Ågestam wanted to go over?

Did he want to have a go at shaking Sven’s loyalty?

He was too tired for that kind of thing. No such decisions, not yet.

They met at the Kung Bridge entrance a few minutes after eight o’clock. Ågestam was waiting. He looked the same as ever: fringe, suit, shiny shoes. He shook hands and opened the door with his ID card. They didn’t say much in the lift. Time enough for that later.

They got out on the eighth floor and Ågestam ushered Sven into his office, where he caught a glimpse of the view of the city through the window, the summer night overpowering the day.

He found a chair and sat down. Ågestam went off for a moment to get them both a cup of coffee. He also brought a plate of biscuits, which he put down next to a couple of massive investigation reports.

‘Sugar?’

‘Just milk, please.’

Ågestam was doing what he could to lower the palpable tension, to tone down any hint of drama, but his efforts weren’t all that successful. Both of them of course knew that their meeting had nothing to do with sharing a nice coffee break. It was too late for a start; everyone else had gone home by now, allowing them to talk together in confidence, without being overheard.

‘I didn’t sleep well last night.’ Ågestam stretched, raised his arms above his head, as if to demonstrate how tired he was.

Nor did I, Sven thought. I didn’t sleep at all, what with that damned video and worrying about Ewert. Is that what you want to talk about? I still don’t know what to think.

‘I kept thinking about your friend, your colleague, Ewert Grens.’

Not now. Not yet.

‘I had to discuss this with you, Sven. I believe there’s a problem.’

Ågestam cleared his throat, shifted in his chair, but didn’t get up.

‘You know that Ewert and I are not the best of friends.’

‘There’s quite a few people who feel the same.’

‘Yes, I know. However, I thought it was necessary to point out that this has nothing to do with my personal feelings for him. I’m worried about Ewert Grens in his professional capacity. Especially as he is in charge of the police work in an investigation that I am ultimately responsible for.’

He shifted position again. This time he got up, glanced at Sven and started pacing the room, clearly upset.

‘Take yesterday. I had a very strange meeting with Grens. He was just back from the Baltic ferry terminal. He had put Alena Sljusareva on board a ferry back to Lithuania. Without checking with me first.’

He stopped and waited for a reaction. He didn’t get one.

‘Early this morning I went back to the hospital mortuary, in an attempt to understand. During the day I’ve interviewed some of your colleagues. One of them, Detective Sergeant Hermansson, a very sensible officer who was new to me, quoted statements by two independent witnesses confirming that a woman went into the toilet at the end of the corridor before Lydia Grajauskas went in, just before she started running around with a gun and taking hostages. Both witnesses describe a woman who could be Sljusareva. It’s easy then to suppose that it was Sljusareva who provided Grajauskas with weaponry. So why then was Grens in such a hurry to send her back home?’

Sven Sundkvist did not answer.

The video. He had feared this meeting would be about the lost evidence, removed by a serving policeman in order to protect a colleague. The video that he now knew about. The video that would soon force him to choose between speaking the truth and lying.

‘Sven, I must ask you this. Is there anything you know that I ought to know?’

Sven still did not answer. He had no idea what he should say.

Lars Ågestam repeated his question.

‘Is there something?’

He had to answer.

‘No. I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Ågestam began pacing the room again, breathing rapidly, nervously. He had barely begun.

‘One of the best officers in the force, so I should relax, shouldn’t I? Sit back and wait for the results of his investigative work, right?’

A couple of deep breaths before he carried on.

‘But I can’t relax because something is not right. Don’t you see? Which is why I lie awake at night. Which is why I feel compelled to go to work absurdly early and lie inside the chalk lines around the position of a dead body on a mortuary floor.’

He turned round and stopped in front of Sven, looked at him. Sven tried to meet the other man’s eyes, but stayed silent. He knew that no matter how much he said, it would never be enough.

‘Sven, I phoned Vilnius.’

Ågestam didn’t move away.

‘I asked our Lithuanian colleagues to locate Sljusareva. They found her in Klaipeda, back at her parental home.’

He perched on the edge of his desk and held up a bundle of papers, the documentation on the case he was talking about.

‘There is no transcript of the interview with Sljusareva that Grens claims to have carried out. He decided unilaterally that she should leave this country. What he says is all we know.’

His voice cracked, knowing well that he was about to say something he should never say, not to a policeman, not about a colleague in the force.

‘Ewert Grens is telling a story and it doesn’t hold water.’

He paused.

‘I have no idea why. I think Grens is tampering with the evidence in this investigation.’

Ågestam pressed Play on the tape recorder on his desk and the two men listened to the end of an exchange they had both heard before.

‘Stena Baltica? That’s a bloody boat! This is something personal! Bengt, over! Fuck’s sake, Bengt. Stop it! Squad, move in! All clear. Repeat, move in!’

No decision about choosing loyalty or truth. Not a word. Not yet.

‘Sven!’

‘Yes?’

‘I want you to go to Klaipeda. You are not to mention this to anyone, nor that you are going to interrogate Alena Sljusareva. You will report the results of the interrogation directly to me. I want to know what she really has to say.’