LITMIR.BIZ

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His head was starting to clear and the sharp pain in his arm had shifted to a rumbling ache.

      ‘I’m innocent and want a lawyer present,’ he said as clearly as he could, leaning over towards the tape-recorder to make sure that it didn’t miss a single syllable. ‘I want a lawyer, and I want to report that I was beaten up by that gorilla, the one you called Wiklander.’

      He gently touched his swollen nose demonstratively. He still had some tissue-paper stuffed up one nostril. Bolin gave no sign of having understood HP’s request.

      ‘A lawyer, I said,’ HP clarified once more, seeing as what he had said evidently hadn’t sunk in. Were all cops this slow?

      Bright-spark Bolin was still staring at him across the table. Then the police officer slowly smiled and there was something reptilian about the smile that scared HP considerably more than the two trolls in the car had managed to do. He suddenly remembered a Discovery documentary he had seen about poisonous snakes. How they sometimes settled down quite coolly to wait once they had bitten their prey as it used up the last of its energy in a meaningless attempt to escape.

      He shivered. Bolin leaned forward slowly and switched off the tape-recorder.

      ‘Listen carefully now, Pettersson,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You don’t seem to appreciate exactly how bad your situation is, so let me explain. You rode a moped to Lindhagensplan, stopped on the flyover above Drottningholmsvägen, and from a PE bag clearly marked with your name you pulled out a stone which you then threw at the windscreen of a police car passing below. Both police officers are now in St Göran, one of them in a pretty bad way, so with a bit of luck you may have graduated to cop-killer before the night is over,’ he concluded with another of his unnerving snake-smiles.

      HP had turned pale, but he continued to stay quiet.

      Oh yes, he’d realized that he’d hit a police car, the flashing blue light had been a bit of a giveaway even before he threw the stone. What the hell, did they think he was stupid or something? It was true, on the other hand, that he hadn’t really given much thought to the consequences. But so what?

      If you were a cop, you had to put up with a few risks, that much was obvious from the papers. Besides, it was hardly his fault that they were driving so fast, was it? Anyway, wasn’t the speed limit seventy along there? The Volvo must have been doing a ton, so in a way it was the cops’ own fault that things turned out so badly, wasn’t it? He glanced at the mobile phone on the table in front of him, just to one side. The screen was facing up and he was well aware of what was engraved on the other side. Number one hundred and twenty-eight, one of the chosen ones, that was who he was, and rule number one applied, no matter what world you moved in.

      But what was it Bolin had said about the PE bag, he had almost missed that? His name? Bolin must have read his mind, because out of nowhere he conjured up the striped bag and tossed in on the table.

      For a couple of seconds HP just stared at it, then curiosity got the better of him. He opened the bag. It was empty, apart from a bit of dirt.

      Suddenly he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There, on the inside of the lining, was a bit of fabric he’d almost forgotten. A scrap of cloth that his mum had sewn in during the short period when she was actually his mum and not just Maj-Britt the invalid and drunk. A printed tag you could order through school from some company, the sort all well-meaning mothers sewed into all their kids’ stuff so that it wouldn’t get lost. All mothers except his, because Mum had been replaced more and more by Maj-Britt, and this bag was the only thing she ever managed to sew a name-tag into, the bag he himself had made in sewing class.

       Property of Henrik Pettersson 08-6636615, it said in blue lettering.

      HP went icy cold. The last time he had seen the bag it had been hanging in the wardrobe in his bedroom, he was absolutely certain of that.

      ‘In other words, you’re not exactly the smartest criminal I’ve ever come across,’ Bolin declared, interrupting his train of thought. ‘Besides, we’ve got the stone and it contains two perfect fingerprints in two-stroke oil, and we’re convinced they’re going to match yours.’

      He leaned forward towards the deathly–pale HP.

      ‘So the way I see it, you’re pretty much in the frame for this, my dear Henrik. Is there anything you’d like to say about it?’ he concluded, then switched on the tape-recorder again.

      HP’s head was spinning.

      Who the fuck had been in his flat?

      Why had someone stolen the bag and hung it up on the bridge?

      The car that had rammed him had appeared out of nowhere, almost as if it had been sitting just round the bend waiting for him. And it had only hit the moped hard enough for the cops to be able to pick him up.

      But who would want to frame him that badly? Okay, he had a few enemies, but no-one in that league. So who could it be? Number fifty-eight?

      What if Mr Five-Eight was Swedish and had managed to work out who it was coming up fast behind him on the league-table? And sabotaged the assignment on purpose?

      No, that sounded too ridiculous …

      His head was aching from the collision, the punches and all the shit that was flying round inside it. He couldn’t make sense of any of this, at least not right now.

      He glanced over at the mobile again and decided to stick to rule number one, keep quiet.

      ‘I have no comment to make, and, like I said a few moments ago, I want a lawyer,’ he repeated, but this time his voice didn’t sound quite so confident.

      Bolin sighed and slowly switched off the tape-recorder again.

      ‘If you like, Pettersson, obviously that’s within your rights. There’s the phone, with the phonebook next to it. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’

      He gestured towards a small telephone table in the corner of the room, and stood up to go.

      ‘You’re damn lucky that officer Normén got away with minor injuries,’ he added as he got to the door. ‘There’s only one thing us cops hate more than a cop-killer, and that’s someone who kills female cops.’

      Something suddenly clicked inside HP and he could almost feel the blood rushing from his head.

      ‘H-hang on!’ he called to Bolin, who was on the point of closing the door.

      ‘What did you say the officer was called, the woman … the one who got hurt?’

      ‘Normén,’ Bolin said drily. ‘Rebecca Normén.’

      Fuck, fuck, fuck! a little voice in HP’s skull screamed.

      Twelve stitches in total. Four in one cut, five in the other, and a few single ones on her face.

      Rebecca looked at herself in the little mirror above the wash-basin in the examination room. Two white plasters on her head. A few bits of surgical tape elsewhere, a faint bruise on one cheek and bloodshot eyes from the powder on the airbag.

      Add a bit of nausea, a headache and a gnawing pain in her chest and the picture of her injuries was complete.

      Kruse was in a worse state. He remained in intensive care, according to Vahtola, who had looked in a while ago, and they were going to be flying his wife up the next day.

      And all because of her. She’d been sitting in the passenger seat – and she should have sounded the alarm. She should have listened to her instincts and ordered the convoy to stop at once and retreat. But instead she had hesitated. She had wasted a couple of absolutely vital seconds on worrying about making a mistake instead of focusing on doing the right thing. Kruse had managed to save the day by his own actions, but he had also had to pay the price for her mistake.

      Rebecca mechanically gathered together her things, the blue bulletproof vest that had probably saved her ribs, the baton and radio that they took from her before she was put on the stretcher.

      A

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