Anders Roslund - Box 21 aka The Vault

‘Several injection punctures of varying age, some infected. Drug addiction is the likely cause.

‘Time of death estimated to be approximately thirty and no more than forty minutes prior to inspection of body. This is supported by a witness statement.’

He carried on talking into the Dictaphone for a minute or two. The autopsy would take place later, when the body had been transferred to the forensic medicine building, but was not likely to change anything significant in his on-site report. He had done enough of those to know that.

Jochum took his hand from Slobodan’s face. The cheeks were marked with red blotches which moved when he spoke.

‘Did I hear you right, Jochum? Someone saw you?’ Slobodan slipped his fingers over the hot spots on his face and sighed. ‘Not so good. If there are witnesses, we’ll have to talk to them.’

‘Not witnesses. Just one witness, a doctor.’

The interminable rain made it difficult to see out. When the warmth of their bodies and their breathing and mutual aggression hit the car windows from the inside, the condensation eliminated what little vision they had had before. Slobodan waved at the windows and pointed to the fan.

Jochum nodded and handed the car key back.

‘I can’t go back in there,’ he said. ‘Not now. That doctor’s still there. And the cops are probably there too, now.’

Slobodan waited in silence, watching the moisture slowly evaporate from the windscreen. Let the fucker stew for a bit. The power balance between them had shifted. Every time it tipped Slobodan’s way, Jochum lost the same amount.

When half the window had cleared, he turned to Jochum.

‘OK. I’ll fix it.’

Jochum hated running up a debt of gratitude, but he had no choice.

‘Lisa Öhrström. Thirty to thirty-five. Tallish, about one metre seventy-five, and slim, almost thin. Dark shoulder-length hair. Glasses, narrow with black frames, but she keeps them in the breast pocket of her white coat.’

They had exchanged a few words, so he knew how she spoke.

‘Trace of dialect from somewhere up north. Light voice and a slight lisp.’

Jochum settled back, stretched out his legs and turned the fan off.

He watched in the rear-view mirror as Slobodan passed the automatic doors and disappeared into the entrance hall.

She was singing. As always when she was upset and worried, she sang her song.

Lydia Grajauskas

Lydia Grajauskas

Lydia Grajauskas

She sang it quietly, under her breath, because she couldn’t risk being discovered.

She wondered how long it would take before the unconscious guard came back to life. It had been a hard blow, but he was a big man and might be able to take quite some force. Maybe he had raised the alarm already.

Lydia walked along the brightly lit corridor underneath the big hospital, her mind still full of how it had felt to press the gun to the guard’s temple when he hesitated. She was back in the world of the nine-year-old, in the room where her father was kneeling while the military policeman kept hitting his head and shouting that death was too good for weapon smugglers.

She stopped and checked her notebook.

The Polish nurse had let her have the hospital information booklet she had asked for, and Lydia had studied the maps of the various floors very carefully. Lying in bed, watched by the guard, she had made shaky copies in her notebook and added notes in Lithuanian.

Yes, she was going the right way to the mortuary.

She walked faster, with the carrier bag in her right, functional hand. She walked as fast as she could, but her hip ached and made her limp. The sound of each firm step with her good leg seemed to echo along the corridor and she slowed down again, didn’t want to be heard.

She knew exactly what to do next.

No Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp would ever again order her to undress and let a stranger look her over to decide which part of her naked body he had bought the right to touch.

A few people had passed her, but didn’t seem to see her. She was aware of their eyes clocking her and felt they must know that she was in the wrong place, until she realised that she was invisible, because she looked like every other patient walking along a hospital corridor in her hospital clothes.

That was why she was unprepared.

She had relaxed and she mustn’t.

When she saw who it was, it was too late.

Perhaps it was his way of walking that she noticed first. He was tall and took long strides. His arms had a long reach. Then he said something, quite loudly, to his companion, another man. She recognised his light, slightly nasal voice. She had heard it from close quarters.

He was one of them. One of the men who liked to hit her. Here, he wore a white coat. In a matter of moments they would be face to face; he kept walking straight ahead and so did she, and the length of corridor that separated them was brightly lit and had no doors.

She slowed down even more, her eyes down, her right hand on the gun inside the billowing hospital coat.

She almost touched him as they passed each other.

He smelt the way he had when he pushed into her.

One brief moment and he was gone.

He hadn’t noticed her at all. The woman he had paid to penetrate every fortnight for a year usually wore a black dress and underwear of his choice. Her hair was loose, her lips red. He hadn’t ever seen the real her, the woman he had just passed in the corridor. Her face was bruised and beaten; one of her arms was in plaster. She walked in white slippers with the hospital logo stamped on them. He didn’t see her now either.

Afterwards she was surprised, more than anything else. Not frightened, hardly panicked, but surprised, verging on angry. He just walked around here, like everyone else, and nothing showed on the outside.

The last stretch of hospital corridor. Lydia stopped at the door she was about to open.

She had never been in a mortuary before. There was an image in her mind of what it would look like, but she knew it was made up from scenes in American films she had seen in Lithuania. It was all she had to go by, and what she had based her plans on. From her sketch in the notebook she had an idea of its size and how many rooms there were. Now she was about to go in and she had to be very calm, stay calm and cope with both the living and the dead.

She hoped there would be someone alive in there. Preferably more than one.

She opened the door. It resisted, as if she was pushing against a draught, but there were no windows, she knew that. She heard voices, but the sound was muffled and seemed to come from the room next door. She stood still. They were alive and in there. Now it was up to her. She had the gun and the explosives that Alena had managed to get for her. Lydia had already knocked the guard out and found her way here. The voices told her that she had been lucky, there were people there.

She took a deep breath.

She had to do what she had planned.

She would make sure that it would never happen again.

There were at least three voices, maybe more. She couldn’t understand what they were saying, an odd word here and there perhaps, but it didn’t help. Her Swedish was nonexistent and it made her angry with herself now. She freed the gun from the tape and took it in her good hand. Slowly she walked towards the voices, through the empty room she had entered. It was long and narrow, a little like a hall in a flat, and unlit.

Then she saw them.

She stopped on the dark side of the doorway and watched. They were busy with each other, observing something which she couldn’t see at first.

There were five of them and she realised that she had seen them all only a few hours ago.