LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      “My dad was in the police,” she said. “My grandfather too. They didn’t really talk that much about police work at home. Mom didn’t like it. She probably didn’t want me to hear their stories. But I still realized—worked out that what they did was something different, something you couldn’t really understand if you hadn’t experienced it yourself. That was probably what made me want to become a police officer. To start with, I thought it was all about adrenaline. About putting yourself in danger. It took me several years to realize that it was actually about something else entirely. About seeing people when they’re at their very worst. Drunk, distraught, furious, humiliated, beaten up, raped, or dead. About seeing that and trying to do something about it. About failing more often than succeeding, but still not giving up.”

      She fell silent, thinking about Sarac’s mutilated body. And his distorted grimace.

      Amante said nothing. But she was sure he was listening carefully—that he understood exactly what she meant. The light of the car’s headlights reflected off a pair of eyes at the side of the road. She noticed a fleeting movement and switched her foot from the accelerator to the brake, but the animal was gone. A cat, or maybe a fox?

      “You said you didn’t know all the details about Skarpö,” she said. “There were two other people who were found out there with Sarac. Right beside him, to be more accurate.”

      Amante turned to look at her. “Who were they?”

      “The first one was a woman, Natalie Aden. She worked as Sarac’s personal assistant after his car accident. Her intervention saved Sarac’s life. We should at least talk to her. Show her Frank’s picture and see if she recognizes him. But I think we ought to start with the second person. If anyone can identify Frank, it’s probably him.”

      “Who are we talking about?”

      “Atif Kassab. Seven years ago he was a notorious member of the Stockholm underworld. A nasty bastard. He retired and left the country with his mother. Didn’t show up again until last winter, at his brother’s funeral. Looks like someone managed to persuade him to go back to work.” She dimmed the lights as a car came toward them. “Kassab blew Superintendent Peter Molnar’s brains out on Skarpö, along with another three people, and took a couple of bullets himself. It looked like he wasn’t going to make it for a while, but thanks to Natalie Aden’s actions he survived as well.”

      Unfortunately, she added to herself.

      “Kassab said nothing when he was questioned, and kept quiet all the way through his trial: never said a word about why he was on the island or who had hired his services. He was given a life sentence—didn’t even bother to appeal against it.”

      “Strange.”

      Julia nodded. “Very. But there are plenty of things about Skarpö that are strange. Atif Kassab is being held in one of the ‘phoenix’ high-security units south of the city. It’s a long shot, but I suggest we go and see him as soon as possible.”

      “So we’re going to ask a cop killer for his help?”

      “Yes, to track down another one,” Julia said. “What do you think?”

      Amante didn’t answer, but from the corner of her eye Julia caught another glimpse of that cryptic smile.

       Six

      Phoenix. The bird that catches fire, dies in the flames, and is then reborn out of its own ashes with shimmering new plumage.

      The name couldn’t be more inappropriate. No one in the prison was transformed into a better version of himself and emerging as a new, well-adapted individual with sparkling new feathers, ready to be embraced by society. The majority would end up back behind bars within a couple of years, for crimes just as bad as the first time around.

      Maybe that was the cycle of repetition that the name hinted at? A sort of ironic wink: We all know how this is going to turn out, don’t we?

      Atif Kassab pushed his breakfast tray aside and laid three cards facedown on the table in front of him. He noticed himself looking up at the camera in the ceiling above him. One of several hundred. The phoenix units were built to house the most dangerous prisoners in the country, those deemed most likely to try to escape. No doors or gates led to the outside world; the only way out was through an underground tunnel that led to another unit. A prison inside a prison.

      He looked at the men at the other tables in the dayroom. Fifteen of them in total, an interesting mix of murderers, drug dealers, and bank robbers. They weren’t all particularly dangerous or likely to abscond. The state had overestimated the capacity needed in the phoenix units and had had to dilute their occupants with ordinary criminals to keep the smart new facilities from sitting half-empty.

      But a number of the men had no boundaries at all. In the wrong situation they could be lethal, both to themselves and those around them. The big, square guy at the table in the middle, the wall-eyed one called Rosco, was the current unofficial boss of the unit. Rosco had come over and introduced himself in the first few days. Shook hands

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