Zack Read online

  “It’s not deep, but it’s bleeding a lot,” Zack says.

  He tears off a long strip of his own top, then a smaller piece that he rolls into a ball and presses against the wound.

  “Here, hold this.”

  He ties the longer piece of fabric around her neck, making sure that the ball of cloth is pressed tight against the wound.

  “Say if it gets too tight. It seems a bit unnecessary to strangle you to death in order to stop the bleeding.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, and shoots him a look of gratitude. Then she squeezes his hand.

  “Thanks, I’ll be fine,” and Zack thinks that he’d take a bullet for her, and that she’d do the same for him.

  A heavy silence has settled on the yard again. Even the dog has stopped barking. It’s almost worse than listening to the gunfire. They sit there on high alert, expecting to see the barrels of rifles poke around the timber at any moment.

  “We’re police officers!” Zack shouts again. “Put your weapons down!”

  He takes off his Rick Owens jacket, puts it on the end of his pistol, and carefully raises it above the planks.

  He wonders how Mera would react if she could see this.

  Bam, bam, bam.

  Someone fires three shots in rapid succession. The jacket jerks and Zack almost loses his grip on it.

  Okay, they’re still on the roof. They don’t give a damn who we are. And they know how to aim. Fuck.

  He feels himself getting angry. He’s not thinking of staying there much longer, forced into a corner with an injured colleague in need of treatment.

  “Can you still shoot?” he asks Deniz.

  She nods.

  “Okay, cover me when I give the word.”

  He’d rather stay with her, but knows he has to move.

  Zack pulls his jacket on again, creeps as close to the edge of the planks as he dares, and gets ready.

  “Now!” he yells.

  Deniz fires shot after shot, and Zack sprints over to a fire escape that leads up to the roof.

  He doesn’t know if they’ve seen him or not, and makes his way up as cautiously as he can. Maybe he can take them by surprise.

  He’s holding his Sig Sauer out in front of him. Looking upward the whole time, ready to fire at the slightest movement.

  Further shots echo from the roof and Zack hurries up the last few steps. They won’t hear him now anyway.

  He sticks his head up above the edge. It doesn’t even occur to him that he might get hit.

  Five yards away, staring at the pile of wood, lie two men with big beards and black sleeveless tunics. The man closest to him is incredibly fat, and is clutching a double-barreled elk rifle in his hands. The second man is partially hidden by his huge comrade, but Zack knows he’s armed with at least a pistol.

  Zack’s just about to set foot on the roof when the bearded man with the rifle pulls his gun back to reload it. He snaps the barrel open and digs laboriously in his left pocket for more cartridges.

  And looks right at Zack.

  “He’s on the roof! Shoot the bastard!”

  The man with the pistol gets quickly to his knees behind his colleague’s vast bulk, but before he even has time to aim Zack is flying through the air toward him, and kicks him so hard in his muscular lower arm that the gun sails several yards through the air.

  Zack lands with his elbow right in the stomach of the fat man with the rifle.

  Punches him hard on the nose so that his head hits the felted roof with an unpleasant crunching sound.

  His body relaxes and he lies motionless.

  From the corner of his eye Zack sees the other man’s foot heading at full speed toward his chest.

  Zack parries the kick with his arms and a quick swerve of the hips. The man loses his balance and Zack smashes his clenched fist up into the man’s crotch.

  Their roles are reversed now.

  The biker is on his knees and Zack on his feet. The man tries to stand, still clutching his crotch with one hand, but he doesn’t have time to straighten up. The sole of Zack’s shoe hits him in the mouth, and he flies back and lands heavily on his spine.

  Zack feels the blood rushing through his veins.

  He doesn’t waste any time.

  He rolls the man with the pistol onto his stomach and twists one of his arms up behind his back. The man groans and starts to struggle, but then Zack pushes his arm up even farther.

  “You shot my colleague, you bastard. So shut the fuck up.”

  He forces the man’s arm up so brutally that there’s a cracking sound. The man screams and Zack pulls his handcuffs from his belt and locks the man’s arms behind his back.

  “Lie still otherwise I’ll rub your fucking face on the roofing felt.”

  But the man couldn’t move even if he wanted to.

  Zack pulls some cable ties from the inside pocket of his jacket. The man doesn’t protest when Zack crosses his legs and pulls one of the ties tightly around his ankles.

  Zack moves on to the big, unconscious man, rolls him over onto his stomach as well, and ties his hands behind his back.

  He looks like an ancient turtle.

  Zack is about to start on the man’s legs when he hears a screeching sound from the building below him, as if a sticking window were being forced open.

  “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” someone down there yells. “It was a mistake. You’re cops, aren’t you?”

  “Which we said loudly and clearly a number of times,” Zack says in a loud voice.

  Silence.

  What’s happening with Deniz?

  Then a hopeless lie:

  “We didn’t hear that in here.”

  There’s a refreshing breeze up on the roof, but the wind brings with it the awful smell of the garbage bags.

  “Deniz!” Zack calls.

  “Here,” she replies. “I’ve got them covered. There’s three of them.”

  Zack stands on the edge of the roof, with his pistol pointing downward.

  “Come out now. With your hands above your heads. One at a time.”

  Thirty seconds pass. Then three bearded bikers emerge from the building with their hands above their heads. Two are seriously big guys, the third considerably shorter and thinner. A man with rat-colored hair in a ponytail and a furrowed brow. Zack recognizes him at once: Sonny Järvinen.

  “Is there anyone left inside the building?” Zack says, feeling his anger growing.

  You just tried to shoot us.

  You bastards.

  “No, just us,” Sonny Järvinen replies calmly, smiling toward Zack.

  “The slightest movement and we’ll fire. My colleague and I have both got our weapons aimed at you.”

  Finally police sirens can be heard in the distance. A helicopter approaches. It circles low over the club before disappearing again. Zack remains on the roof until the first reinforcements have entered the yard. He calls some of his colleagues up onto the roof, then rushes down the fire escape.

  He feels like racing over to Sonny Järvinen and smashing his pistol into his skull, but resists.

  Goes over to the black garbage bags instead.

  They really do smell of dead bodies.

  The bikers watch him open the first bag, but their expressions don’t change. It’s impossible to tell if they’ve got something to hide.

  The smell of decay is so strong that he starts to retch.

  “It’s venison,” Sonny Järvinen shouts. “Our freezer broke when we were at a meeting in Copenhagen.”

  “Shut up,” Zack says, and looks down into the bag.

  Joints of meat, freezer bags.

  Hundreds of wriggling white maggots.

  “Okay, I believe you.”

  He moves away from the bags and wonders who the bikers had really been expecting. Presumably not two plainclothes detectives.

  But maybe someone who’s pissed off because the Brotherhood has murdered four prostitutes?

  Is that what this is all about, o
r is it something else entirely? He doesn’t know yet, and is far too angry for his brain to work properly.

  The three men from inside the building have been lined up against the inside of the wall. They’re searched and cuffed. The other two are on their way down the fire escape, surrounded by police officers. The fire escape shakes with each step the fat man takes.

  One uniformed officer leads a large dog out from the building. It looks like a mix of Rottweiler, Alsatian, and something else, the sort of creature a gangster with an interest in dogs could be imagined to breed.

  “Any guns?” Zack asks one of his colleagues from the rapid response unit.

  “No.”

  “Okay, check the building. I know they were armed three minutes ago. They can’t have had time to hide the guns very well.”

  “We were all unarmed,” Sonny Järvinen calls from over by the wall. “It would be interesting to hear how you’re thinking of proving the opposite.”

  Zack rushes over to Järvinen. Grabs hold of his vest and pulls him toward him so his face is close to Zack’s.

  Guarded eyes.

  “We appreciate that you were just sitting in there playing on your Xbox,” Zack says, “but we’ll take a little look anyway. And from now on you speak when I tell you to. Okay?”

  Sonny Järvinen grins when Zack lets go of him.

  Zack looks at Deniz. She’s sitting on a pile of planks and looks very pale. The strip of cloth around her neck is stained with blood, and the front of her top is almost entirely red.

  He goes over to her.

  “Do you know if there’s an ambulance on the way?”

  “No, I’m okay for a while yet.”

  “You need to get to a hospital.”

  She flashes him a glare.

  “I’ll go soon. Okay?”

  The gang members are put in the police van. The fat man takes up the whole of the front row of seats, and the van’s suspension sinks under his weight.

  “Leave Järvinen here,” Zack says. “We’ll take care of him.”

  Zack and Deniz sit with him on the plastic chairs in the yard as their colleagues search the building.

  Sonny Järvinen is wearing a black T-shirt under his club vest, and Zack can’t help being surprised by how skinny his arms are. At the same time he realizes what that means: this is a man who rules with his head.

  The gang leader has bags under his green eyes, but the look in them is alert and intelligent.

  “You must have been seriously jumpy to start shooting just like that,” Zack says.

  Sonny Järvinen gives a light shrug.

  “You know how it is when you get unexpected visitors.”

  “Who were you expecting?” Zack asks.

  “None of your fucking business,” Sonny Järvinen says, spitting on the ground in front of him.

  Zack gets up from his chair. He can’t hold back any longer, and slaps Sonny Järvinen across the face with his palm open, sending his chair flying and landing him on his back.

  “Zack, for God’s sake!” Deniz yells.

  “Now we’re going to take a little drive down to the station,” Zack says as he helps Sonny Järvinen up. “Just you and us.”

  * * *

  THEY LEAVE the industrial zone and drive past the huge stores by Bromma Airport. In the almost full parking lot the evening sun is painting the cars in bright colors.

  On Ulvsundavägen, just after they’ve passed Lillsjön, Zack turns off onto a narrow gravel track that leads to a forgotten patch of woodland squeezed in between the nondescript villas.

  He switches the engine off.

  Lets silence spread through the car. The feeling that now it’s just us and you, Sonny. Now we can do whatever we like with you.

  Zack turns toward Sonny Järvinen. He’s sitting in the backseat next to Deniz, who is still wearing her bloody top, with a small bandage around her neck. She’s refused to go to the hospital.

  Sonny is the butcher, the victim. Or vice versa.

  He fixes his eyes on Järvinen, who looks away instinctively.

  “Damn it, look at me!”

  And the bikers’ leader meets his gaze.

  “Here’s how it is,” Zack says. “You’re going to tell us what we want to know. Otherwise I’m going to pull you out of this car and shoot you in the back, and then Deniz and I will make it look like you tried to escape.”

  “You’d never do something like that,” Sonny Järvinen sneers.

  “You tried to shoot us. An eye for an eye,” Deniz says.

  Sonny Järvinen looks from one to the other. Decides that they’re probably serious.

  Nods slowly.

  “The Thai women,” Zack says. “You set them to work as prostitutes, and take a cut of the money. We know that. Did the women threaten to give you away, is that why you killed them?”

  Sonny Järvinen’s expression doesn’t change at all.

  “We didn’t kill them,” he says. “But it doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You seem to have your theory all worked out.”

  “Let me start from a different angle: two of your men are going to get locked away for the attempted murder of two police officers. They won’t be able to guard the club building for quite a few years. And it was completely unnecessary, you know that. But it wasn’t us you were waiting for. Was it?”

  “You never know who might show up,” Sonny Järvinen says. “We weren’t expecting anyone special today.”

  You’re lying, Zack thinks. Everything about you screams that you’re lying.

  “I want you to talk a bit about how you recruit staff from Thailand,” Deniz says.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Where do you find the girls?”

  “Which girls?”

  Zack leans over and grabs Sonny Järvinen by one ear, and twists it hard. The man’s scream echoes around the car.

  “No stupid fucking games, okay? Four women have been murdered.”

  Zack lets go, and Järvinen starts talking:

  “It’s not hard to entice women from Thailand to come and work in Sweden. Salaries are many times higher, they get one or two days off a week, and paid holidays. They’ll do anything for the chance to come here. I try to find good workplaces for them. And likewise, to help Swedish companies get good workers. Cleaners, kitchen staff, masseuses, you name it. In return for my work, I get an arrangement fee, all aboveboard, paid to Recruitment Solutions Ltd, which is owned by the club. It’s a perfectly legitimate business. You’re welcome to take a look at the accounts,” he says, not without a degree of pride.

  A woman walks past the car with walking poles.

  Disappears into the forest.

  Zack is astonished at how these biker gangs are run. They don’t hesitate to commit the most brutal of crimes in order to gain an illegal income for themselves and the club, but at the same time they’re almost bursting with pride whenever they manage to earn money legally.

  “How do the women find out about you?” Zack asks.

  “Via our local contacts in Phuket and Bangkok. Have you been to Phuket?” Sonny asks.

  “This isn’t a tourist quiz, okay?” Deniz hisses. “What were you doing last night?”

  “We had a club party in the yard. There are loads of witnesses.”

  Who’d say anything for your sake, Zack thinks.

  Considering all the beer cans in the garbage and the rings under Sonny’s eyes, it’s a perfectly plausible explanation.

  The day after, Zack thinks. Just like me.

  “Do you work with the Sawatdii massage parlor at Hornstull?” Deniz asks.

  “That dump? Fuck, no. They can’t even be bothered to provide the real thing.”

  Interesting, Zack thinks. Sukayana Prikon says she gets hold of her employees through Sonny Järvinen’s company, but Sonny Järvinen denies it point-blank.

  Someone’s lying, and it’s not even a good lie.

  The answer will be documented in the company accounts, assuming they haven’t
been doing business on the side.

  Has something gone wrong with their collaboration with Sukayana Prikon? Has she neglected to pay the arrangement fee, or give the Brotherhood their cut of the prostitution money? Did the women in the massage parlor threaten to give the game away? Or did the murdered women belong to a competitor to the Brotherhood, and now they’re scared of reprisals?

  “The real thing?” Deniz says.

  “Forget it.”

  “No, I want you to explain.”

  Sonny Järvinen stares ahead of him before saying:

  “I just mean that maybe not everything is what it seems to be. Take a look at the employees’ wages. They’re supposed to be on real slave contracts.”

  “Who supplies Sawatdii with staff?” she asks.

  Sonny Järvinen gives a theatrical shrug that Zack interprets as yet another lie.

  “No idea, actually. I just think it’s disgraceful, the way they’re exploited like that.”

  “Good of you to be so concerned about vulnerable women,” Deniz says acidly, fixing her eyes on him. “Because you people would never do anything like that, would you? Exploit women?”

  And we’re back where we started, Zack thinks, as he hears Sonny say:

  “We’re not involved in . . .”

  Zack sees Deniz’s hand fly up. The blow hits Järvinen hard on the cheek. He cries out, and Zack yells back:

  “You set Thai women up as prostitutes, and take most of the money. We know that. One more time: Did the women threaten to report you, is that why you killed them? Weren’t they paying you your share? Well? You killed them, didn’t you?”

  Sonny Järvinen says nothing.

  Stubbornness in his eyes.

  Are you thinking about the women you had murdered? Zack thinks.

  Or are you wondering how to get your revenge? Maybe Sukayana was telling the truth about working with you after all.

  We should have brought her in. Pushed her harder about who controls her business behind the scenes.

  But that will have to wait until tomorrow.

  “Go on, then, shoot me,” Sonny Järvinen says. “That’s not the worst that can happen.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m not saying anything else.”

  “Who are you so frightened of that you’re prepared to start shooting wildly in all directions?” Zack asks.