Lars Kepler 2-book Bundle (112 page)

“Hello there,” Robert Riessen says as he sees Joona.

“Is Axel at home?”

“He should be, but I just got here,” Robert replies. “Has something happened?”

“I’ve been trying to reach him.”

“Me, too,” Robert says, and he lets Joona inside.

They walk up a half staircase and enter a large foyer dominated by an elaborate rose-coloured glass-armed chandelier. Robert knocks on the door and then walks right into Axel’s residence. They both hurry up to the private apartment in silence.

“Axel!” Robert yells.

They look around, going from room to room. Everything appears normal—the stereo system is on but no sound comes out, and a volume of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
is lying open on the dictionary stand.

“Do you know if he was planning to travel?” Joona asks.

“No,” Robert replies, but there’s an odd exhaustion in his voice. “He does so many strange things.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You think you know somebody and … well, who knows.”

Joona walks into the bedroom and takes a quick look around. He sees a large oil painting leaning against the wall with its back facing the room and a puffy white dandelion past its bloom placed in a whisky glass, and he notices an unmade bed and a book.

Robert has already left the room and started down the stairs. Joona follows him down and to the large kitchen.

Joona parks his car next to Kronoberg Park and walks to the police station while on the phone to the Södertälje police. Something is nagging him; he wishes he had been part of the group to bring in Pontus Salman.

His worry intensifies when the Södertälje officer explains that no one knows where Pontus Salman is.

“I’ll call you back,” the man says in a strong Gotland accent. “Just give me a few minutes.”

“But you did bring him in, didn’t you?” Joona asks.

“That was the plan,” the officer says doubtfully.

“I was very clear that he should be held.”

“No need to blame me,” the man says. “I’m sure all procedures were followed.”

He is heard to tap on his computer, mumble to himself, and then tap some more before he gives Joona the information: “Yes, he’s in custody here. We have also confiscated his weapon, a Winchester 490.”

“Good. Keep him there. We’ll send a car for him,” Joona says. The nearby Kronoberg Park swimming pool smells strongly of chlorine to Joona as he walks through the large glass doors.

He takes the lift up and strides quickly through the corridor. He’s almost reached Carlos Eliasson’s office when his mobile phone rings. It’s Disa. Time is very short, but he answers anyway.

“Hi,” Disa says. “Are you coming tomorrow?”

“You told me you didn’t want to celebrate your birthday.”

“I know, but I thought … just you and me.”

“Sounds good,” Joona says.

“I have something important to tell you, too,” she explains.

“Okay,” Joona says as he arrives at Carlos’s door.

“I—”

“Sorry, Disa, but I really can’t talk. I’m heading into an important meeting.”

“I have a surprise,” she says.

“Disa, I have to hang up now,” he says, and opens the door.

“But—” Disa says.

“I’m really sorry, but I just can’t talk now.”

Joona walks into Carlos’s room, closes the door behind him, and sits down next to Saga on the sofa.

“We can’t reach Axel Riessen,” Carlos tells him immediately.

“We’re afraid these murders are all tied to the export authorisation,” Joona says. “And we believe that Raphael Guidi is behind the whole thing. We need an arrest warrant for him as soon as possible—”

“Arrest warrant?” Carlos repeats, taken aback. “Just because Axel Riessen hasn’t answered his phone for two hours and has been delayed coming to work, you immediately assume he’s been kidnapped by Raphael Guidi—who, I might remind you, is a successful businessman with an unblemished record.” Carlos starts counting on his fingers. “Swedish police have nothing on him. Europol has nothing on him. Interpol has nothing. I’ve even talked to the police in France, Italy, and Monaco.”

“But I’ve talked to Anja.” Joona smiles smugly.

“You talked to
Anja
?”

Carlos falls silent before the entry of Anja Larsson, who closes the door behind her.

Without any introduction she begins. “During the past decade, Raphael Guidi’s name has come up six times. He was rumoured to be involved in illegal arms deals, illegal money deals, and unexplained deaths.”

“Only preliminary investigations,” Carlos objects. “That doesn’t mean—”

“Should I go on or not?” Anja says.

“Please, go ahead.”

“All suspicions about Raphael Guidi were squashed at an early stage in almost every case and so he was never really investigated.”

“So you have nothing,” Carlos says.

“His business earned 123 million dollars on Operation Desert Storm by providing Nighthawk jets with AGM-65 Maverick missiles,” Anja continues. She glances at her notes to check her accuracy. “But one of his auxiliary corporations provided Serbian forces with artillery rockets capable of bringing down these same planes during the Kosovo war.”

Anja shows them a photograph of Raphael in sienna-tinted sunglasses. He’s in sharply pressed blue pants, with a more comfortable-looking blue shirt hanging out. He smiles broadly. He’s between two bodyguards, posing in front of a smoke-coloured Lamborghini Diablo.

“Raphael’s wife was the well-known violinist Fiorenza Colini,” Anja tells them. “One year after their son, Peter, was born, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent all kinds of treatments, but died when their son was seven.”

She shows them a newspaper clipping from the Italian newspaper
La Repubblica
. Fiorenza Colini has a beautiful red violin at her shoulder with the entire orchestra of La Scala behind her. The conductor, Riccardo Muti, is poised beside her. His wavy hair shines in the spotlight. Fiorenza Colini’s slim body is a shimmering column in a gown of platinum trimmed with silver brocade and an edging of sparkling crystal. Her eyes smile beneath thick lashes. Her right elbow is lifted as if her bow is travelling down and her slender fingers are placed high on the fingerboard, searching for a difficult note.

Anja shows them another clipping, this one from
Newsweek
, in which Raphael Guidi, his newborn son in his arms, stands improbably and proudly next to the American rock star Alice Cooper. The headline reads billion dollar baby. And in yet another, Guidi, dressed in a soft, light-coloured suit, chats with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi while three blond women in micro bikinis lounge beside a rose-marble pool shaped like a heart.

“Raphael Guidi supposedly lives in Monaco, but if you want him, you have to go to sea, as far as I can determine,” Anja says. “He spends almost all of his time these days on his mega yacht,
Theresa
. It’s easy to understand why. Lürssen built it in Bremen fifteen years ago with every luxury that could be devised.”

A shot of the yacht, white and arrow-shaped, accompanies a feature on Guidi in French
Vogue
. In the photo the ship looks like a porcelain spear, and the article, entitled ‘Lion en Cannes’, breathlessly details a lavish film-festival bash thrown on board: “
À la ville comme à la mer: Raphael Guidi et sa femme, Fiorenza, prennent le temps de faire les présentations. Kevin Costner et Salma Hayek saluent Victoria Silvstedt, l’icône
Playboy
suédoise
.”

The men wear tuxedos, the women wear little, and the ever-present bodyguards planted behind Guidi wear their habitual stolid expressions. The article takes special pains to describe the dining hall, which features toucans in birdcages hanging from the ceiling, and a male lion, pacing back and forth in a cage of his own.

They hand the clippings back to Anja.

“Let’s listen now,” Anja says. “Belgian Intelligence has recorded a telephone conversation between an Italian prosecutor and Salvatore Garibaldi, who was a brigade general in the Esercito Italiano, the Italian army.”

She passes out copies of a hastily made translation, puts a USB flash drive into Carlos’s computer, leans over, and hits Play. The recording opens immediately with an official voice giving the circumstances, place, date, and time in French. Then a small metal click can be heard and a distant connecting tone. There’s a crackle, then a firm voice speaks.

“I’m listening and I’m ready to begin the preliminary investigation,” the prosecutor says.

“I can never testify against Raphael Guidi, not even under torture, not even …”

Salvatore Garibaldi’s voice disappears in a spurt of static. Then it appears again more weakly as if through a closed door.

“… med recoil brakes or completely recoilless rocket systems … and a hell of a lot of mines, antipersonnel mines, antivehicle mines, antitank mines … Raphael would never … like in Rwanda, he didn’t care. They used sticks and machetes—nothing with real money. But when the fight spilled over into the Congo, he wanted part of the action. He thought it would be a gold mine. First he armed the Rwanda Patriotic Front to be able to attack Mobutu forcefully. Then he turned around to pump heavy weaponry to the Hutus so that they could retaliate against the RPF.”

A strange peeping sound rises through the static. It hiccups and then his voice is clear again.

“The whole deal with the nightmare, I couldn’t really believe it. I was forced … forced to hold his sweaty hand … while I watched. My daughter, she was fourteen. She was so pretty, so beautiful … Raphael … he did it himself. He used the knife himself … he screamed at me that I was reaping my nightmare. He owned it … he owned my nightmare. I still … don’t ask me to think about it again … I can’t …”

There are strange sounds. Someone shouts in the background. Breaking glass can be heard. The sound recording sputters.

Salvatore Garibaldi is weeping. “How could anyone do anything like that … he took a fillet knife from his bodyguard … my daughter’s face … her beautiful, beautiful …” He continues to sob and then he screams that now he wants nothing more than to die. He wants to die.

More crackling and the recording ends. No one in Carlos Eliasson’s office says a word. Through the small windows facing Kronoberg Park’s green slope, a playful light falls into the office.

“This recording”—Carlos clears his throat—“proves nothing. Right from the start he said he would not testify, he was not going to be a witness. I imagine that made the case evaporate and made the prosecutor end the investigation.”

“Three weeks later, Salvatore Garibaldi’s head was found by a man walking his dog,” Anja says. “It was in a ditch by the Via Goethe, behind a racetrack in Rome.”

“What happened to his daughter?” Joona asks quietly. “Does anyone know?”

“Fourteen-year-old Maria Garibaldi is still missing,” Anja says shortly.

Carlos sighs and mutters to himself. He walks to his aquarium and contemplates his paradise fish for a long while before he turns back.

“What do you want me to do? You cannot prove that the ammunition is being diverted to Sudan. If Axel Riessen
has
disappeared, you cannot link it to Raphael Guidi. Give me the tiniest shred of proof,” he pleads, “and I will go to the prosecutor. But I need something concrete, not just—”

“I know it’s him,” Joona says.

“And I need more than Joona declaring that he knows,” Carlos responds.

“We need the authorities behind us to arrest Raphael Guidi for crimes against Swedish and international law,” Joona continues stubbornly.

“Not without proof,” Carlos says.

“We’ll find proof,” Joona says.

“You need to convince Pontus Salman to testify.”

“We’ve already picked him up, but getting him to testify will be very tough. He’s already so frightened he was about to commit suicide,” Joona says.

“If we arrest Raphael, maybe he’ll feel free enough to talk. That is, if things ever calm down,” Saga says.

“We still can’t arrest someone as important as Guidi without any proof,” Carlos reiterates firmly.

“So what the hell can we do?” demands Saga.

“Lean on Pontus Salman—”

“We’ve got to hurry. I believe that Axel Riessen is in danger,” Joona says.

They are all interrupted as Jens Svanehjälm, the chief prosecutor, strides into the room.

Air-conditioning has chilled his car, but that’s not what makes Pontus Salman’s hands shake on the steering wheel. He’s already crossing the bridge to Lidingö Island. A ferry to Finland is leaving its dock and beyond Millesgården someone is burning leaves.

A few hours ago, he’d been in his tiny flat-bottomed rowing boat trying to hold a rifle barrel to his mouth. The metal taste is still on his tongue, and he can still hear the scraping sound it made against his teeth.

A woman in a straggly blue punk haircut was jogging onto the dock with the detective. She’d called him gently in her middle-aged voice to come closer. She had to tell him something important. She was wearing bright red lipstick. She’d brought him to a small grey room. He found out her name was Gunilla and she was a psychologist. She’d talked to him deeply about what he had intended to do when he rowed out onto the lake.

“Why do you want to die?” she’d asked plainly.

“I really don’t want to,” he’d answered truthfully, surprising her.

She was taken aback a moment and then they began to really talk. He’d answered all her questions and became more and more convinced that he did not want to die. He’d rather run and he began to plan where he could go. He’d just disappear and start a new life as someone else.

The car had crossed the bridge. Pontus Salman looks at his watch and feels tremendous relief that, by now, Veronique’s plane must have left Swedish airspace.

He’d told Veronique about French Polynesia and now he can fantasise: he sees her emerge from the airport carrying her light blue carry-on. She’s wearing a broad-brimmed hat, which she has to hold down in the breeze. Why couldn’t he escape, too?