That very same moment Jana cast herself to one side and pulled Phobos down too. They landed on the floor, she rolled round, pointed the Glock at Danilo and fired too, but she missed.
Danilo tripped over Gavril’s dead body and lost his gun. He withdrew himself quickly out through the door. She was still on her back, breathing heavily with her gaze and gun aimed at the door. Then she got up and looked around for Phobos. To her horror she realized he was gone.
She went out to the hall, her eyes peeled all the time. She listened for sounds. In the hall she pressed her body against the wall, pointing her gun up the stairs, then to the side, then up the stairs again. When she reached the first step she heard a sound. It came from a door behind her. She crept up, waited a moment before opening the door. It led down into a cellar. A lamp hung over the stairs. She hesitated a moment. If she went down those steps she would be a perfect target in the light. Then she heard a click by her side, and twisted round. Behind a door she caught sight of a fuse box.
She smiled to herself.
Now we’ll play a game, she thought.
An amusing game.
*
Jana Berzelius turned off the main switch and took a deep breath. Then she took one step forward and found herself stepping straight into another world. Straight into a memory. She was immediately transformed into the little girl in the cellar. The girl who wanted to survive. It was all happening again. But this time she didn’t struggle against the dark. She embraced it. Now she was in control.
She stretched up her head and listened for sounds. It was still silent.
Numbingly silent.
She took a step forward, stopped and listened again. Yet another step, and still one more. After three steps she ought to be by the stairs.
Jana stretched out her hand to feel the banisters. She counted her steps in her head. One, two, three. Now she felt the banister in her hand. In her memory the handrail was rough and cracked. Now it was polished and smooth. Her feet worked their way slowly down the steps. On the last step she let go of the banister and felt with her hand in front of her. Then she heard a sound. Somebody was moving. Somebody was by her side.
Who? Danilo or Phobos?
She slowly turned her head to be able to register new sounds. But there was only silence. It was far too quiet. Perhaps Danilo stood and waited behind her back? A thought made her want to get out. To just get out of there.
Then she heard it.
The breath.
The signal.
She reacted instinctively and pointed the gun at the sound. Then she felt a powerful blow to her arm, lost her balance and fell backward. She ended up lying on the floor, perfectly still. Danilo was close now.
She made an attempt to lift her arm and point the gun up the stairs but the pain stopped her.
He suddenly kicked the gun out of her hand and she heard how it slid across the floor, behind her.
“You’re not the only one who likes playing games in the dark,” he said and kicked her hard in the side.
She groaned.
“It’s fun, isn’t it? Well? It’s good fun, right?”
He kicked her again, so hard that something broke in her forearm and she shrieked in pain.
“It’s time to finish this,” he said and immediately sat astride her with his hands joined in a stranglehold.
She just managed to raise one hand and with her nails she clawed at his hands to make him let go. But he didn’t. He pressed harder. She gasped for air. In the compact darkness it was hard to tell if everything was going black, but a nasty and familiar sensation came creeping up on her. She knew that she was close to losing consciousness.
Her other hand was firmly wedged under Danilo’ legs, and her fingers worked desperately to get a grip on the knife that was on her hip. With a final effort she got a grip on the knife handle with the top of her index and middle fingers, and quickly coaxed the knife out and stabbed it straight into the back of Danilo’s thigh. He cried out and immediately loosened his grip on her throat. She took a gurgling breath and then quickly swung up one leg. Danilo was knocked to one side and she pushed herself up. She pulled the knife out of his thigh and put the point of the blade against his chin.
“I told you that I prefer knives,” she hissed loudly at him.
But she didn’t have the advantage for long. He kneed her in the back and she was thrown to the side, landed on something hard and immediately realized what it was—the gun! She quickly picked it up with one hand and pointed it right out into the darkness. She heard his steps on the stairs and followed him. One step at a time up to the top.
Now she heard him breathing from the other side of the room. Although it was already black around her, she closed her eyes to focus. Then she fired a shot.
For a second time stood still.
After that she heard somebody groaning.
Her arm was quivering with pain but she ignored it. She felt her way back to the fuse box. All the while she had her focus on the groaning. With a quick movement she switched the electricity back on. She turned round to see the victim on the floor.
It wasn’t Danilo.
It was Phobos.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FIVE
THE HANDOVER OF Gavril Bolanaki to the Security Services had taken place at nine that morning. At the same time they had held a joint press conference in the police station with the Security Service in charge.
Gunnar ?hrn had felt stressed by the crowd but with the help of the press officer he had nevertheless managed to convey what a good job he and his team had done. When he left the press room he had felt a certain emptiness.
The rest of the morning he had been busy successively informing the Security Services about the case. Dumping all the papers onto their table and leaving was not his style. When he realized that the case really was over as far as his team was concerned, he felt the emptiness even more. Now there was nothing more they could do.
At four o’clock, Gunnar had gathered the team together in the conference room. Henrik sat up straight in his chair and stared hollow-eyed in front of him. Anneli Lindgren sat leaning with her arms on the table. Ola S?derstr?m chewed his pen. Mia balanced her chair on its back legs. Her hair was carelessly put up in a tuft. She looked pleased. It was a victory for her that the case was finished, and she smiled at the fact that she would no longer have to meet her antagonist, prosecutor Jana Berzelius.
“It’s a pity,” Gunnar had said, and looked out over the room.
The walls were now empty. The maps and the pictures of the victims had gone. The whiteboard had been wiped clean, the projector turned off.
“There are a lot of questions that still haven’t been answered. And to top it all we’ve received a negative answer from Interpol. In their database there is no information about missing people from Chile.”
Gunnar looked disappointed. The chances of identifying the victims from the containers now seemed to have vanished. But when he described Anders Paulsson’s suicide, one could sense a feeling of relief. The relief lay in the fact that Gunnar hadn’t wanted to hand over yet another murder case to the Security Services.
“Why did he shoot himself?” said Ola.
“Moral qualms, presumably,” said Gunnar. “Conscience. The same with Lena Wikstr?m. Nobody can live with crimes like that on their conscience.”
The silence settled over the team like a lid.
“Well then,” said Gunnar. “There is only one thing left to do.”
“Thanks for everything,” said Mia and got up from the table.
“Where are you going?”
“Aren’t we finished?”
“No, we are not. There’s still one thing left to do.”
Questioning looks from all were directed toward Gunnar.
“We’re going to the docks.”