“And then you got caught,” Amante said.
“No, for fuck’s sake! Haven’t you been listening?” Eskil threw his arms out. “They accused me of stealing drugs.”
“The sleeping pills and tranquilizers that you gave Sarac.”
“That’s right. I understand the tranquilizers. I mean, the guy wasn’t well. But he already had a bag full of sleeping pills, so I can’t see why he wanted two more. But he said it was important—that he needed to have exactly twenty-five before he left. Otherwise he wasn’t going anywhere.”
“So it was the pills that got you the sack?” Julia said.
“Shit, you two are unbelievable,” Eskil groaned. “Aren’t there any entrance requirements for joining the police? I’ve already told you what happened. No one fired me. They couldn’t prove anything, so I was given six months’ wages in return for handing in my resignation. I didn’t want to work there anyway. You’ve seen what it’s like there. It’s a fascist setup. The staff have to give urine samples, all kinds of crap like that …”
“This mysterious Frank,” Julia said. “Tell us about him again.”
Eskil let out a theatrical sigh.
“Like I’ve already said a thousand times: he and Sarac had been on that island together last winter. Where a load of people got killed. That’s why he wanted to talk to Sarac.”
“And you don’t remember anything else about Frank apart from the fact that he might have had a slight accent, paid well, and acted like a cop?”
“No. I mean, it’s several months ago now. Actually, he did have a bit of a limp, even though he looked like he was in good shape.”
Julia started waving the bag of weed again. “What do you think about getting a sniffer dog out here?” she said to Amante. “Turn this apartment upside down. Maybe ask the neighbors if they’ve noticed drug dealing going on here.”
“Do you want me to call right away?”
“Probably just as well. Eskil here isn’t exactly a rocket scientist. I doubt we’re going to get anything else useful out of him.”
She turned toward Eskil and could almost see the cogs turning inside his head. Amante slowly got to his feet and pulled out his cell phone.
“Wait,” Eskil said. “Wait, for fuck’s sake! I’ve got something you might want to see.”
He started to dig about in the pockets of his dressing gown. He fished out a smartphone with a cracked screen and started to look through it.
“Here,” he said eagerly, holding the phone out to Julia. “Sarac made me take a picture.”
The screen showed a grainy photograph of a man with sharp features. He was half facing away and seemed unaware that he was being photographed.
“That’s Frank. See what I mean about him looking like a cop?”
Five (#ulink_d2d908f3-8031-5b5b-8e53-162cc6263634)
The rain started falling just as they passed the sports ground on the edge of the village. Tiny drops to start with, barely enough for Julia to switch the windshield wipers on. But gradually the rain got harder, wiping out the distinction between the summer’s evening and the forest spreading out on either side of the road.
“What do we do now?” Amante said. “Call Pärson and tell him that Sarac isn’t in the home after all? That we’ve got a picture of the man who lured him out and probably killed him?”
Julia shook her head.
“It’s too soon to talk to Pärson. This is the Security Police’s case now, and you heard me promise to let go of it completely. And seeing as it was Pärson who tried to convince us that Sarac was in that home, I’m not entirely sure where he stands. But regardless of who we go to with all this, it would be better to wait until we’ve got something more definite than a grainy digital photograph and a first name.”
“So what are you thinking, then?”
“I don’t know yet. I need some time to think.”
Besides, I’m still not entirely sure where you stand either, she thought. You seem a bit too eager to press on with this case.
“Sure,” Amante said. “We’ve got at least a four-hour drive home, so take as much time as you need.” He started fiddling with the car radio and managed to find three different commercials before he ended up with a soppy Whitney Houston ballad.
They were approaching a junction beside an old house. From a distance it looked almost abandoned, but as they drove past, Julia could see the ghostly glow of a television in one of the windows.
“Just think, people choose to live out here,” she said, mostly to give her brain something else to think about for a few minutes. “So far away from absolutely everything.”
“A surprising number of people are prepared to die for the chance to do that,” Amante muttered.
“What did you say?”
He looked up. Didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d spoken out loud.
“Just that a surprising number of people are prepared to risk their lives to get here. Hundreds of thousands of them.”
Julia saw an opening and decided to make the most of it.
“Lampedusa must be a nightmare. Isn’t it? I can understand if you’d rather not talk about it.”
“At its worst, there were two boats arriving each week.” Amante’s voice was lower all of a sudden, more monotonous. “Well, maybe not boats, exactly. Some of them were little more than a small hull and an engine. The bigger ships were even worse. No food, no toilets, hardly any drinking water. Cargo holds so packed that the air sometimes ran out down there. Did you know …”
The words seemed to catch in his throat.
“Did you know that dead people can stay on their feet if they’re packed together tightly enough? Rigor mortis turns them into statues. Men, women, children, whole families. If you listen carefully you can almost hear them still calling for help.”
He turned away. The radio went on playing the slushy song.
“Three thousand dead each year, but the EU is reducing the funding. They’d rather spend billions of euros rescuing banks than spend a few million saving people who happen to have the wrong color skin.”
“And you said that out loud to someone who didn’t like it?”
He smiled that little smile again. “More times than I should have. A lot more.”
“So what happened?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Not a damn thing. The boats kept coming, people kept dying.”
“And you were transferred?”
“You could put it like that.”
Something in his voice told her the conversation was over, and she resisted the temptation to ask any more questions. At least for the time being.
They passed a road sign. Just under three hundred kilometers until they were home. Sooner or later she would have to make her mind up. It would be difficult to carry on with this case on her own. Besides, she was starting to appreciate Amante’s company, albeit slightly reluctantly. The smile that was so hard to read. The unconventional way he went about tackling problems. The way he quickly adapted to different situations. But, perhaps most of all, the way he talked about the victims, the dead.