He Who Kills the Dragon

68.

Bäckström’s neighbor didn’t actually need to call the emergency number, since the police had been there all along.

Shortly after eleven that evening the white Mercedes, Alfa 3, had suddenly begun to move on Sandra Kovac’s computer screen. Earlier in the evening it had been parked on the top floor of the same multistory as the abandoned Lexus.

The surveillance vehicle containing Kovac, Hernandez, and Motoele had been in the vicinity and just a couple minutes later they were a hundred meters behind the Mercedes, which was evidently heading for Kungsholmen. Afsan was driving, Farshad was in the passenger seat, and Hassan Talib was in full command of the backseat.

Kovac had contacted Linda Martinez over the radio. Martinez had called for assistance from another unit that had been watching Bäckström earlier that evening and that was now taking a break in McDonald’s, just a few blocks from Bäckström’s local bar.

Detective Inspector Tomas Singh, adopted as a child from Malaysia, and his colleague Detective Sergeant Gustav Hallberg, who in spite of his name had been adopted from South Africa, had thrown themselves into their car and returned to the bar where they had left Bäckström a quarter of an hour before, happily attached to a large cognac. He was still there. Probably with the same cognac, since the glass on the table in front of him was now empty.

‘What do we do now?’ Hallberg asked.

‘We wait,’ Singh said.

Five minutes later Bäckström had called over a blond waitress, got up, pulled a sizable bundle of notes from his pocket, crumpled up the receipt, peeled off a five-hundred-kronor note, and shook his head when the waitress evidently tried to give him his change.

‘It doesn’t look like our colleague Bäckström is short of cash,’ Sergeant Hallberg concluded.

‘What the hell do you think we’re sitting here for?’ Detective Inspector Singh said. He had been in the job five years longer and was already a hardened young man.

As Bäckström stood up to pay, the white Mercedes had stopped twenty meters from the door of the building where Bäckström lived. Farshad and Talib had got out. Afsan had parked, turned off the lights, and stayed inside the car, as his brother and cousin disappeared through Bäckström’s door. Kovac pulled up fifty meters farther up the street, switched the engine off, turned off the lights, and rolled to a stop.

‘What do we do now?’ Magda Hernandez asked.

‘Bäckström is evidently on his way,’ said Kovac, who could hear their colleague Singh through her earpiece. ‘Tomas and Gustav are following him on foot,’ she said, nodding to Hernandez.

‘There’s something not right,’ Motoele said, shaking his head.

‘What do you mean, not right?’ Hernandez said.

‘Just a feeling,’ Motoele said. ‘I’ve got a feeling that Bäckström doesn’t know they want to see him.’

‘Dirty cop,’ Kovac said, and snorted. ‘Of course he knows.’

‘Bäckström has had his phone switched off since this afternoon,’ Motoele objected.

‘So either he’s got another one or they agreed on a time some other way,’ Kovac said.

Four minutes later Bäckström disappeared through the door of the building he lived in.

‘You can forget any ideas about sneaking in and listening through his mail slot,’ Kovac said, with a warning glance at Motoele. ‘We’re not taking any unnecessary risks.’

‘It’s fucking hot in the car. Is it okay if I open the window, Mom?’ Motoele asked as he wound down the rear window.

‘I thought people like you liked the heat?’ Kovac teased. ‘Just don’t catch a cold, Frank.’

‘So what do you mean, “agreed on a time”?’ Motoele said, as he heard a muffled crack in the distance. As he leapt out of the car and started running down the street there was a constant stream of cracks. Muffled cracks, the same sound he had heard thousands of times when he had been at the firing range with ear protection on, practicing with his own service revolver.

Afsan Ibrahim neither saw nor heard anything. He was listening to music on his iPod, humming in time to the music, enjoying it with his eyes shut until it all went wrong when someone suddenly yanked open the car door and grabbed him by the throat. He snatched at the knife between the seats out of sheer reflex. A moment later he was on his stomach in the street, with someone standing on his hand, kicking the knife away, and kicking him hard in the side when he tried to get up. The man grabbed his hair, pulling his head up, then broke his nose with a chop of his hand that made Afsan see stars. Then another, and another, then the darkness enclosing him, voices he could hardly hear any longer.

‘Stop it, Frank!’ Sandra Kovac shouted. ‘Do you want to kill him?’ Then she had pushed her colleague aside. She sat on the small of Afsan’s back, twisted his hands behind his back, and cuffed them, first the right, then the left.

‘Fucking hell, you’re mad,’ she repeated.

‘The Arab bastard was trying to stab me,’ Motoele said, nodding toward the knife in the gutter on the other side of the street.

‘Get a grip on yourself, Frank,’ Kovac said. ‘He didn’t have a knife on him when you let loose on him.’

Frank Motoele didn’t seem to be listening. He had just shrugged, drawn his pistol, and vanished through Bäckström’s door.