To the Top of the Mountain

42

THROUGH THE GATES, you could catch a glimpse of paradise. But the walls were high and guarded by an armed cherub.

Which, in this case, was a surveillance camera, an entryphone and a metallic-sounding voice which said: ‘Name and business.’

She cleared her throat and looked at the four thick-skinned police assistants she had in tow. All stared up into the camera. It was like an audition for a TV talent show.

‘Detective Inspector Sara Svenhagen,’ she said. ‘Criminal Investigation Department. We’re looking for Rajko Nedic.’

‘Mr Nedic is not available at the moment,’ said the metallic voice.

‘Then we’d like to speak to someone else. Who is in charge?’

Silence. The gates of paradise slid open. The fantastic garden didn’t seem to have allowed a single conceivable shade of colour to get away, and the brilliant sunshine only served to make them brighter. Sara Svenhagen felt almost blinded by the display of colours and drugged by the richness of scents. It really was fantastic. The Garden of Eden.

A well-dressed little man in his fifties came out to meet them in the garden. He held out his hand to Sara. She shook it.

‘I’m Ljubomir Protic,’ he said in slightly broken Swedish. ‘I work for Mr Nedic. What can I help you with?’

‘Isn’t he home?’ asked Sara Svenhagen.

‘Unfortunately not,’ Ljubomir Protic said politely. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘That depends who you are.’

‘I’m Mr Nedic’s right-hand man, you could say.’

‘I thought that was Lordan Vukotic. Though he’s dead, of course.’

Protic maintained his polite smile, answering: ‘I don’t recognise that name, unfortunately.’

‘Are you close to Rajko Nedic, Ljubomir?’ asked Sara.

‘Very close, Mrs Svenkragen.’

‘Svenhagen. And not Mrs Sara. You can call me Sara, Ljubomir. We’re going to be talking a lot in the near future. And of course you’re close to him. If I’m not mistaken, you left Yugoslavia together almost thirty years ago. Two youngsters, Rajko and Ljubomir, hitching their way through Europe on the way to a golden future in Sweden.’

Ljubomir Protic looked at her, his smile beginning to falter.

‘What are you getting at? I have nothing more to say. I think I’d like to ask you to leave now.’

‘I think I forgot to say where I’ve come from. The child pornography unit, CID. It has nothing to do with Nedic the drug dealer. This is about Nedic the paedophile.’

His reaction was important.

Since her conversation with Gunnar, Sara had devoted her time to finding out as much as possible about Nedic’s organisation. The drugs squad had a lot to offer when it came to its structure. The most important new addition was Ljubomir Protic, who had known Rajko Nedic for practically his entire life but had only recently entered the organisation as Nedic’s right-hand man. From the outside, he seemed like the weakest link – but, on the other hand, there was an internal band of friendship that was even stronger.

His reaction was clear. He paled slightly. He tried to maintain his polite, obliging expression, but the colour of his face changed. It was the reaction she had been hoping for.

She turned to the other police officers.

‘Take him with you,’ she said, wandering through the gates of paradise.

Ljubomir was in an interrogation room. It felt strange. Just him and the walls. The moment he blew on them, they would come tumbling down. He knew it. And so he tried to refrain from breathing. It felt as though life was being blown out with each breath.

Eventually, there was almost nothing left.

He had been there for two hours now. No one had been in to see him, but he knew that someone was watching him. From somewhere within. And by this point, the great man would surely know where he was. He couldn’t really see any kind of future.

He remembered what the great man had drilled into him. A rule book to use in the event of a confrontation with the police. Always be polite and obliging. Deny everything with an expression of regret. Be aware of yourself and the smallest of expressions. Don’t say a single unnecessary word.

The great man had already made it clear to him that he was seen as a security risk. He knew roughly what he would be thinking by this point. Two hours with the police. He’s already told them everything he knows. Good job he doesn’t know anything.

But the great man didn’t know which police unit he was with. The paedophile police. And he really did know everything about that.

The door opened and the short-haired policewoman came in. Finally. She seemed so unassuming. Young. Having your life shattered by a young woman wasn’t so unusual after all, despite everything. And now she had been gathering her aces. Would he be able to keep calm – if that place was brought up?

She brought it up immediately.

Sara Svenhagen placed a pile of papers on the table and said: ‘By this point, he’ll think you’ve told us everything, right? Which means your life isn’t worth much. So you might as well tell us everything. About his paedophile den with the golden soundproofed walls, for example.’

‘Do you really think it’s that easy to crack the organisation?’ Ljubomir asked, sounding like he was reeling off a line he’d learned by heart. ‘Don’t you think it’s stronger than that?’

‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘When it comes to the drugs. Then it’s practically impossible to bring down. All the safety locks are still in place there. But this isn’t about the drugs. It’s about the back route into the organisation. Via Rajko Nedic’s sexual escapades.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sara,’ said Ljubomir. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Of course not. What do you think about child pornography, Ljubomir? What do you think of small girls’ vaginas, split to the navel by broken Coca-Cola bottles? What do you think of five-year-old boys whose anuses are so ruptured that the shit just runs straight out of them?’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Ljubomir, staring at her.

‘I’m going to show you hundreds of pictures of your employer in such situations, and you’re going to look at every single one of them, even it it means pinning your eyelids to your forehead. Do you understand?’

Ljubomir looked at the young woman with the cropped hair. He could see her determinedness and knew that it was over. He would fight it, but only because it was ingrained in him that he should fight. But it was over. He would start to cry. He would be forced to go to that place and see everything he’d been turning away from his entire life. It would all collapse in on him. He knew that when he looked into Sara Svenhagen’s eyes. And he knew she could see it.

‘Rajko Nedic, using the pseudonym “brambo”, has been particularly active in online paedophile circles. It’s only now that we’ve managed to identify him. In practice, he’s already out of the game. It would be good if you could tell us more, Ljubomir. What happened? Was he already a paedophile when you came to Sweden, two youths with the world at their fingertips? Was there something in his childhood that made him into what he is?’

‘I want a lawyer,’ said Ljubomir.

‘You wanted one two hours ago, too. The same applies now: you can’t. The only thing you can do is look at these pictures. Your employer put them online. He’s the most careful leader there is when it comes to the drugs trade, but he’ll happily share pictures of his penis inside small children with the world. I’ve been working with paedophiles for a long time, much too long, but this strange, almost overpowering desire to share their perversions is something I’ll never understand. It undoes all their caution.’

She pushed the pile of pictures towards him. He looked at it, and closed his eyes.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Well, you’re going to.’

She held up the first picture.

It was her.

Of course, it was her right away.

It went on and on and on, and though he was crying, it went on and on. All were of her.

He fell to pieces. He couldn’t do it. He slumped forward onto the interrogation-room table, his tears spilling onto the printouts, causing the colours to run onto the table in one big mess, covering his face. When he looked up he was a clown, a sobbing, colourful clown.

‘I could’ve stopped it,’ he wept. ‘She came to me each time. After every single time, she came to me, sat on my knee and called me “Uncle Jubbe”; crying and crying, beyond tears, just staring at me without tears, unable to say a word because she had no words for it, and every time, I thought: this has to be the last time, otherwise I’ll have to kill the bastard, but I didn’t do it, I didn’t do anything at all. I just looked away as she sat on my knee and said “Uncle Jubbe” but really meant “Help me, Uncle Jubbe, something’s happening and I don’t understand it and you’re so kind and you can help me.” But I wasn’t kind, I was the worst of the worst, because I turned a blind eye and saw nothing.’

Sara Svenhagen closed her eyes for a moment, thinking wordlessly. She handed a tissue to Ljubomir Protic. He dried his eyes and looked down at the mix of colours on the paper. It looked like a paradise garden.

‘Who is “she”?’ asked Sara Svenhagen.

Ljubomir looked at her through the haze, wronged.

‘Sonja, of course,’ he said. ‘My little Sonja.’

‘And Sonja is…?’

‘Rajko’s daughter. His daughter, for Christ’s sake.’

‘And that’s her in these pictures?’

Ljubomir grimaced. Then he nodded.

‘How old is Sonja Nedic now? Twenty?’

‘Yes,’ said Ljubomir. ‘Exactly twenty.’

‘What kind of life does she live?’

‘She’s got her own car and her own flat. Studying maths at university. She tried to kill herself a year ago. Slashed her wrists. Lengthways. She almost died. But lately, whenever I’ve seen her in the house, she’s seemed happier. I remember thinking: I hope she’s found someone now, someone who can make her happy, who can give her a bit of the childhood she never had. I really hope so.’

‘Can you give us anything else?’

‘Rajko had the same childhood. I know, because I sat with him in the same way. As a child. In the little mountain village in eastern Serbia. Failed to comfort him in the same way. That’s why we left. To get away from it all. He thought he could leave his past behind and become someone else. But as soon as Sonja arrived, it returned. He started repeating his father’s actions. And I just sat there. Again. Jesus. Uncle Jubbe.’

‘What about the rest of the family?’

‘There are two children. He resisted temptation with the son. He’s three years older and involved in the organisation now. But he couldn’t resist Sonja. And the wife ignores it even more than I do. She shops her way out of reality, and Rajko cultivates his garden to create a paradise that he’s never understood.’

‘Other children?’

‘There have been others, too. I don’t know where he gets them from. Now that Sonja’s grown up, there are others. Maybe he buys them.’

‘Anything else?’

‘It’s too late now. I’ll tell you everything I know, Sara. You seem to be a capable woman, but I should tell you that I don’t actually know very much. I can start with his “security consultants”. Two disgusting Swedes, former policemen. From the Security Service. They’re called Gillis Döös and Max Grahn.’

‘You can tell the rest to the drugs squad. They’re waiting outside. What I want to know is where his paedophile den is. The flat with the soundproofed walls, covered in golden cushions.’

Ljubomir smiled slightly behind his smeared, coloured mask.

‘He’s there now,’ he said. ‘In that place.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sara Svenhagen exclaimed. ‘And you didn’t say anything?!’

‘No, no,’ said Ljubomir. ‘It has another function now, that flat. Nothing to do with children.’

Sara breathed out. She said: ‘And where is it?’

‘By Hornstull. Hornsgatan 131. Four flights up. It has the name Ahlström on the door. But he has at least five men with him, so be careful, Sara. They’ve got lots of weapons.’

She nodded, looking at the man in front of her. Something had lit up in his eyes. Things which had been shut off and sealed up for years had been let out. Maybe he had, in some small way, repaid a tiny, tiny part of the debt to Sonja Nedic. His little Sonja.

She leaned back and closed her eyes.

Now Ljubomir could die in peace.

He was Uncle Jubbe again.

And now he was – finally – doing something about it.