Anders Roslund - Box 21 aka The Vault

Ewert Grens, interview leader (IL): Do you remember seeing me before?

Alena Sljusareva (AS): In the flat. You’re the policeman who hit a stick on his stomach. Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp. He fell down.

IL: You saw me doing that, but you ran away all the same?

AS: I saw Bengt Nordwall too. I panicked. I just wanted to run away.

He was sitting on a hard bunk in a police cell, next to a young woman from a Baltic state; his back ached from sleeping for a few hours on the office sofa and his leg ached as usual. His breathing was laboured, he was tired and he didn’t want to be there any longer. He didn’t want to destroy the one thing he had left, his pride, his identity. He hated the lie that he had to live with, that forced him to carry on lying.

AS: I know now. Lydia is dead.

IL: Yes, she is.

AS: I know now.

IL: Before she died, she shot an innocent policeman dead. Then she killed herself, one shot through the head, using the same gun. A nine-millimetre Pistolet Makarova. I would very much like to know how she got hold of that gun.

AS: She is dead. She is really dead! I know now.

She had kept hoping, as one does. If I don’t know whatever it is, it hasn’t happened.

Alena crossed herself and burst into tears. She wept bitterly, the way you weep only when you finally understand that a person, whom you will miss, no longer exists.

Silently Ewert waited for her to stop, watching the tape unwind. Then he repeated his question.

IL: A nine-millimetre Pistolet Makarova.

AS: [inaudible]

IL: And plastic explosives.

AS: It was me.

IL: Me?

AS: I went to get it.

IL: Where from?

AS: The same place.

IL: Where is that?

AS: Völund Street. The basement.

Grens slammed his fist into the tape recorder, almost hitting her. How the hell had this broken, scared girl on the run managed to slip past the guard outside the building, raid the basement and carry off enough explosives to blow up a substantial part of a large hospital?

He frightened her, this man who hit out, just like the rest. She made herself smaller still.

He apologised and promised not to do it again.

IL: You knew what she was going to use it for.

AS: No.

IL: You handed over a loaded gun, without asking why?

AS: I knew nothing. And I asked nothing.

IL: She didn’t explain?

AS: She knew that if she did I would have insisted on being there.

Ewert switched off the recorder and removed the tape. The lie. Questions and answers which would never be transcribed. This cassette must vanish, just like the film of their shared story had vanished.

He looked at her, she looked away: didn’t want anything more to do with him.

‘You’re going home.’

‘Home? Now?’

‘Now.’

Alena Sljusareva got up quickly, stuck her feet in the regulation prison slip-ons, pulled her fingers through her hair and tugged at her blouse.

They had promised each other that they would go home together. That would never happen now.

Lydia was dead.

She was on her own now.

Ewert called a taxi. The fewer police involved, the better. He escorted her to the Berg Street door. An older man with his younger woman, or perhaps a father with his grown-up daughter. Few passers-by would have guessed at a detective superintendent from Homicide sending a prostitute back home.

Alena sat in the back as the taxi manoeuvred through the city afternoon traffic, from Norr Mдlarstrand to Stureplan, down Valhalla Way to join Lidingö Way, the route to the harbour. She would never come back here, never; she would never leave Lithuania again. She knew that; she had completed her journey.

Ewert paid the taxi driver and accompanied Alena into the ferry terminal. The next departure for Klaipeda was in two hours’ time. He bought her a ticket and she held it tightly, determined not to let go until she arrived in her home town.

It was so hard to imagine it, the place she had left as a girl of seventeen. She hadn’t hesitated for long when the two men had offered her a good, well-paid job only a boat trip away. All she was leaving behind was poverty, and little hope of change. Besides, she’d be back in a few months. She hadn’t discussed it with anyone, not even Janoz. She couldn’t remember why.

She had been a different person then. Just three years ago, but it was another life, another time. Now she had lived more than her peers.

Had he tried to find her? Wondered where she was? She saw Janoz, had kept an image of him in her mind that they had never managed to take away. They had penetrated her and they had spat at her, but they had never been able to get at what she had refused to let go of. Was he still there? Was he alive? What would he look like now?

Ewert told her to come along to the cafeteria at the far end of the terminal and bought her a coffee and a sandwich. She thanked him and ate. He bought two newspapers as well. They settled down to read until it was time to go on board.

The day was not over yet.

Lena Nordwall was sitting at the kitchen table and staring at something or other. When you stared, it had to be at something.

How long would it take? Two days? Three? One week? One year? Never?

She didn’t need to understand. She didn’t need to. Not yet. Did she?

Someone was sitting behind her. She sensed it now. Someone in the hall, at the bottom of the stairs. She turned; her daughter was looking at her, in silence.

‘How long have you been there?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Why aren’t you outside playing?’

‘’Cause it’s raining.’

Their daughter was five years old. Her daughter was five years old. Her daughter. No matter how hard she searched, she wouldn’t find another adult in this house now. She was the only one, alone. The responsibility was hers. The future.

‘Mummy, how long will it be?’

‘How long will what be?’

‘How long will Daddy be dead for?’

Her daughter’s name was Elin. Lena hadn’t noticed that she still had her wet, muddy wellie boots on. The little girl got up and walked to the kitchen table, leaving a trail of wet soil. Lena didn’t see it.

‘When will he come back home?’

Elin sat down on the chair next to her mother. Lena noted this, but nothing else, nor did she really hear that Elin kept asking questions.

‘Won’t he come home, ever?’

Her daughter reached out a hand and stroked her cheek; she could only just reach.

‘Where is he?’

‘Your daddy is asleep.’

‘When will he wake up?’

‘He won’t wake up.’

‘Why not?’

Her daughter sat there throwing questions at her. Each one made a physical impact; she was being bombarded with these things that crawled over her before boring into her skin, into her body. She stood up. No more attacking words. Enough. She shouted at the child, who was trying to understand.

‘Stop it! Stop asking questions!’

‘Why has he become dead?’

‘I can’t… it’s too much, can’t you see that? I can’t bear it!’

She almost struck the child. The impulse was there – it came in an instant, as the questions crashed against her head. Up went her arm. She could have slapped her, but she didn’t. She never had. She burst into tears, sat down again and hugged her daughter close. Her daughter.

Sven had laughed out loud as he walked back alone from the sad little restaurant to Kronoberg. It wasn’t the food, even though that was laughable, those small, fatty pieces of meat in slimy powder gravy. He had laughed at Ewert. He thought of his colleague marching round the table, kicking its legs and then stopping to curse the tape recorder and Lang’s threatening voice, until the waitress tiptoed over to ask him to calm down or she’d have to call the police.