Anders Roslund - Box 21 aka The Vault

He had to admit it, Grajauskas and Sljusareva were pros. They got on with it, took their kit off and acted randy as hell. But it was a relief not to have their sneering grins in your face all the time. And he was tired of being called Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp every time he showed them who was boss.

The first one would be here soon. It was just after eight in the morning.

Mostly they came straight from home, having left the wife who was starting to get fat, just wanting to experience something, an extra stop going to work.

He would watch the girls today. Exam time. Find out if their fucking was up to standard or if they needed some more tuition.

He’d start with the one in Grajauskas’s room. She looked a bit like her and he had put her there deliberately; it was easier on the old customers. She was tarting herself up, as she should, and putting on the bra and panties her client wanted her to wear. So far, so good.

A knock on the door. She looked at herself in the mirror. The locks were disabled now that he was keeping an eye, so she could open the door and greet the man outside with a smile. The client wore a grey suit of some kind of shiny material, pale blue shirt and black tie.

She kept smiling, used her smile even when he spat or, more like, let the gob just fall to the floor in front of her feet in their high-heeled black shoes.

He pointed.

His finger was straight, pointing downwards.

She bent down, still smiling as she had been told. Then down on her hands and knees, almost folding double as her nose touched the floor. Her tongue came out to take the spit into her mouth and she swallowed.

Then she stood up straight, her eyes shut.

The client slapped her with his open hand. She smiled and smiled at him, just as he had taught her.

Dimitri liked what he saw, gave the thumbs-up to the man in the grey suit, got thumbs-up in return.

She had passed.

He would book her up now.

Lydia Grajauskas didn’t exist any more, not even here.

He always felt a pang of fear when a plane touched down and the ground came into clear view, the snap when the wheels were released and the thump when they made contact. And it never got easier; rather his fear seemed to increase the more he travelled. In little planes like this one, only thirty-five seats and so cramped that you couldn’t stand up straight, take-off and landing were especially scary. He kept worrying until the bouncing changed into a smooth forward movement.

Sven Sundkvist breathed out again and went to find his car. If the traffic was reasonably light it took only half an hour to drive from Arlanda to central Stockholm.

Anywhere, just anywhere not to think about Ewert.

He was sixteen for a while and with Anita who he had just met and held naked for the first time and he was with Jochum Lang who stood at the top of a staircase in Söder Hospital and beat the life out of Hilding Oldйus and with Lydia Grajauskas lying on the floor in the mortuary next to the man she had hated and with one-year-old Jonas in Phnom Penh saying Dad just two weeks later and with Alena Sljusareva sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Klaipeda in her big red sweater telling him the story of a three-year-long humiliation and with…

With anyone at all, in order to avoid thinking about Ewert.

Roadworks outside Sollentuna meant that the cars were confined to one lane and there was a long queue. He inched forward in low gear, sped up a bit, slowed again, came to a halt. Everyone else was doing the same, sitting and waiting for the time to pass, staring blankly ahead. They probably had their own Ewerts to think about.

He gave an involuntary shudder, as you often do when you’re tense.

Then he decided to take the long way round by keeping south, via Eriksberg, where she lived. Lena Nordwall.

He needed more time to think.

The wooden bench was hard. In his time, he had sat on it for hours on end, enduring pointless court cases against refusenik villains. They were alone in the back row and the tired room was silent. Ewert Grens quite liked the old high-security court in the Town Hall, despite the hard seats and the chattering lawyers, because coming here was a kind of settlement, confirmation that his investigation had led to something concrete and the case could be closed.

He looked at his watch. Five minutes to go. Then the guards would open the doors, escort Lang into the room and tell him where to sit during the remand proceedings, the lead-in to a long prison sentence.

Grens turned to Hermansson, who was sitting next to him.

‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’

He had asked her to come along. Sven had disappeared without a trace, refusing to answer the phone; Bengt had been found dead on a floor, and he couldn’t offer Lena any comfort. He had wanted to be here with someone and that someone turned out to be Hermansson. He had to admit it, he really liked her. Her barbed comments about him and policewomen, or all women, should have infuriated him, but she had sounded so down-to-earth and calm, maybe because she was right. He would ask her to consider staying with the City force when her locum came to an end; he’d like to work with her again and perhaps talk to her more. She was so young that he didn’t want to come across as a dirty old man, because what he felt had nothing to do with the beauty of a younger woman, it was more a kind of surprise that there were still people around whom he wanted to get to know better.

‘Yes, it does. It feels good. I know what we’ve achieved, what with Lang and the hospital hostages and everything. Makes my time to Stockholm worthwhile.’

A courtroom is a bare, dull place without judges, magistrates, prosecutors, lawyers, accused and accuser and, of course, a curious public. The drama of a crime needs to be articulated, in terms of interference and vulnerability, a process in which every word adds to the act of recognising and then measuring the offence.

Without all that, no heart.

Grens looked around at the dark wooden panelling, the large filthy windows facing Scheele Street, the far-too-beautiful chandelier, inhaled the smell of an old legal tome.

‘It’s strange, Hermansson. Dealing with professional criminals like Lang is my job, I’ve done it all my life, but I still don’t understand any more now than I did when I started. Take the way they act up under interrogation or in court. Well, clam up. Whatever we say or ask, they ignore it. Don’t know. Never heard of it . They deny everything. I can see some point in their strategy, of course. For a start, it leaves it up to us to prove that they’ve done whatever we say they’ve done.’

Ewert Grens raised his arm, pointing at the wall opposite, at a door made of the same heavy, dark wood as the panelling.

‘In a few minutes Lang will come in through that door. And he’ll play the same lousy old game. He’ll say nothing, deny, mumble I don’t know , and that is, Hermansson, that is exactly why he’ll lose this time. This time that game will be the biggest mistake in his life. You see, I think he’s innocent. Of murder, that is.’

She looked surprised, and he was just about to explain when the door opened and four guards came in, followed by a uniformed and armed constable on either side of Jochum Lang, who was handcuffed and dressed in prison-issue clothing, blue and baggy. He looked up, Ewert Grens smiled and waved.

Then he turned to speak to Hermansson, lowering his voice.

‘You see, I have read the technical report and what Errfors has to say in the autopsy report. Oldйus wasn’t murdered. Lang broke five of his fingers and crushed one kneecap, as he was instructed. But no one had ordered and paid for death. I think Oldйus lost it and the wheelchair careered down the stairs and into the wall.’