Stalker

79

The central kitchen of the NBA on Kungsholmen in Stockholm smells of boiled potatoes. The cooks are standing at their stoves dressed in protective white clothing and hairnets. The sound of a slicing machine echoes off the tiled walls and metal worktops.

Erik asked Nelly to go with them to meet Irina Kaliova. It could be useful to have a female psychologist on hand when the woman finds out that her sister had been a victim of the sex-trafficking industry before she was murdered.

Irina is dressed like all the others, in a hairnet and white coat. She’s standing by a row of huge saucepans hanging from fixed hooks. She’s staring at a display panel with a look of concentration, taps a command and pulls a lever to tip one of the pans.

‘Irina?’ Joona asks.

She lifts her head and looks inquisitively at the three strangers. Her cheeks are red and her forehead sweaty from the steam rising from the boiling water, and a strand of loose hair is hanging over her brow.

‘Do you speak Swedish?’

‘Yes,’ she says, and carries on working.

‘We’re from the police, the National Criminal Investigation Department.’

‘I’ve got a residence permit,’ she says quickly. ‘Everything’s in my locker, my passport and all my documents.’

‘Is there somewhere we could go and talk?’

‘I need to ask my boss first.’

‘We’ve already spoken to him,’ Joona says.

Irina says something to one of the women, who smiles back. She puts her hairnet in her pocket, then leads them through the noisy kitchen, past a row of food trolleys and into a small staffroom with a sink full of unwashed mugs. There are six chairs around a table with a bowl of apples at its centre.

‘I thought I was about to get the sack,’ she says with a nervous smile.

‘Can we sit down?’ Joona asks.

Irina nods and sits on one of the chairs. She has a pretty, round face, like a fourteen-year-old. Joona looks at her slender shoulders in her white coat, and finds himself thinking of her sister’s white skeleton in the grave.

Natalia used the name Tina as a prostitute, and she was murdered and buried like so much rubbish because she was alone, had no papers, and no one to help her. She was used up by Sweden, and afterwards wasn’t even worth the cost of proper identification.

There’s nothing so hard in police work as having to inform a relative about a death in the course of an investigation.

There’s no way to get used to the pain that fills their eyes, the way all the colour drains from their faces. Any attempt to be sociable, to laugh and joke vanishes. The last thing to go is an effort to appear rational, to try to ask sensible questions.

Irina gathers together some crumbs on the table with a trembling hand. Hope and fear flit across her face.

‘I’m afraid we’ve got bad news,’ Joona says. ‘Your sister Natalia is dead, her remains have just been found.’

‘Now?’ she asks hollowly.

‘She’s been dead for nine years.’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘But she’s only just been found.’

‘In Sweden? I looked for her, I don’t understand.’

‘She had been buried, but couldn’t be identified before, that’s why it’s taken so long.’

The small hands keep moving the crumbs, then slip on to her lap.

‘How did it happen?’ she asks, her eyes still wide-open and empty.

‘We’re not sure yet,’ Erik replies.

‘Her heart was always… she didn’t want to worry us, but sometimes it would just stop beating, it felt like an eternity before it…’

Irina’s chin begins to tremble, she hides her mouth with her hand, looks down and swallows hard.

‘Have you got anyone to talk to after work?’ Nelly asks.

‘What?’

She quickly wipes the tears from her cheeks, swallows again and looks up.

‘OK,’ she says, in a more focused voice. ‘What do I have to do, do I have to pay anything?’

‘Nothing, we’d just like to ask a few questions,’ Joona says. ‘Would that be OK?’

She nods, and starts picking at the crumbs on the table again. They hear a metallic sound from the kitchen and someone tries the door.

‘Did you have any contact with your sister while she was in Sweden?’

Irina shakes her head, her mouth moves slightly, then she looks up.

‘I was the only person who knew she was heading to Stockholm, but I promised not to say anything. I was young, I didn’t understand… She was very stern with me, said she wanted to surprise Mum with her first wages… Nothing ever came, but I spoke to her on the telephone once, she just said that everything would be all right…’

Irina falls silent and drifts off.

‘Did she say where she was living?’

‘We haven’t got any brothers,’ she replies. ‘Dad died when we were little, I don’t remember him but Natalia did… and after Natalia had gone, there was just me and Mum left… Mum missed her so much, she used to cry and worry about her weak heart, and said she just knew that something terrible had happened. So I thought if I could find my sister and take her back home, then everything would be fine… Mum didn’t want me to leave, and she was alone when she died.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Joona says.

‘Thank you. Well, now I know that Natalia is dead,’ Irina says, getting to her feet. ‘I suppose I suspected as much, but now I know.’

‘Do you know where she was living?’

‘No.’

She takes a step towards the door, clearly keen to get away from the whole situation.

‘Please, sit down for a moment,’ Erik asks.

‘OK, but I need to get back to work.’

‘Irina,’ Joona says, with a dark resonance in his voice that makes the young woman listen. ‘Your sister was murdered.’

‘No, I just told you, her heart-’

Irina’s coat catches on the back of the chair, dragging it backwards with her. As the truth sinks in, she loses control of her face. Her cheeks turn white, her lips quiver and her pupils dilate.

‘No,’ she whimpers.

She leans back against the worktop, shakes her head, fumbles across the front of the fridge for something to hold on to. Nelly tries to calm her down, but she pulls free.

‘Irina, you need to-’

‘God, no, not Natalia!’ she cries. ‘She promised…’

She grabs hold of the handle of the fridge, and the door swings open as she falls, dislodging a shelf full of ketchup and jam. Nelly hurries across to her and holds her slender shoulders.

‘Nje maja ciastra,’ she gasps. ‘Nje maja ciastra…’

She curls up in Nelly’s lap and tries to hold her hand over her mouth as she cries, screaming into her palm and shaking uncontrollably.

After a while she calms down and sits up, but she’s still breathing unevenly between sobs. She wipes her tears and clears her throat weakly, trying to control her breathing.

‘Did someone hurt her?’ she asks in a ragged voice. ‘Did they hit her, did they hit Natalia?’

Her face contorts again as she tries to hold her tears back, but they run down her cheeks.

Joona takes some napkins from a pack on the worktop and hands them to her, then pulls a chair over and sits down in front of her.

‘If you know anything at all, it’s very important that you tell us,’ he says sternly.

‘What could I know?’ she says, looking at them in confusion.

‘We’re just trying to find the person who did this,’ Nelly says, brushing the hair from Irina’s face.

‘You spoke to your sister on the phone,’ Joona goes on. ‘Did she tell you where she lived, or what her job was?’

‘There are those men who trick girls from poor countries, who say they’re going to get good jobs, but Natalia was smart, she said it wasn’t anything like that, that it was real. She promised me, but I’ve been to the furniture factory… no one there had heard of Natalia, durnaja dziauˇtjynka… They’re not employing anyone, haven’t done for years.’

Her eyes are red from crying, and tiny red spots have appeared on the fair skin of her forehead.

‘What’s the name of the factory?’ Erik asks.

‘Sofa Zone,’ she says blankly. ‘It’s out in Högdalen.’

Nelly remains seated on the floor with Irina, stroking her head and promising to stay with her for as long as she wants. Erik exchanges a quick glance with Nelly, then walks back out through the noisy kitchen with Joona.