THE NINTH GRAVE
Stefan Ahnhem
Translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlen
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About this Book
About the Author
Table of Contents
www.headofzeus.com
About The Ninth Grave
TWO COUNTRIES IN THE GRIP OF WINTER
On the coldest day of the year, Sweden’s Minister for Justice steps out of his car and into a blizzard – and disappears. That night, across the Baltic Sea, a Danish celebrity finds a stranger lurking in her snow-bound home.
TWO KILLERS STALK THE STREETS
One is a surgeon who carefully dissects his victims. The other is a brutal predator who targets women. Police in Stockholm and Copenhagen are closing in on their suspects. But as winter darkens and more people die, their investigations begin to unravel.
SOMETIMES MURDER IS JUST THE BEGINNING…
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
About The Ninth Grave
Ten Years Ago
Part 1
Two Days Ago
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Part 2
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Epilogue
X
Acknowledgements
About Stefan Ahnhem
About the Translator
About the Fabian Risk Thrillers
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
Ten Years Ago
IT WAS SO DARK he could barely see what was right in front of him. The prisoner transport vehicle lurched forward so vigorously on its way through the difficult terrain that the letters he was trying to write were almost illegible. But that couldn’t be helped. It was his last chance to record his story of the love affair that made him leave everything behind before the pool of blood under him got too big. He would describe how he was shot down and captured by his own people and how he was now on his way to almost certain death.
He had found the pen in the Israeli military camp at the Huwwara Checkpoint that was in the uncontrolled part of the West Bank. The paper came from some empty diary pages he had found in Tamir’s backpack, along with the used envelope he could turn inside out.
Once he was finished writing, he folded up the pages of the letter with his bloody hands, slipped them into the envelope, and sealed it as best he could. He had no stamp – or even an address. All he had was a name. But he didn’t hesitate to push the letter out through the thin crack in the truck and let it go. If it was God’s will, the letter would get there, he thought, giving in to fatigue.
The envelope didn’t even have a chance to hit the ground before it was sucked up by the strong winds and pushed higher and higher up into the black, starless sky that was starting to resemble a storm above the Nablus mountains. The time between dull rumbles and flashes of lightning diminished and a feeling of rain was hanging in the air. In only a matter of seconds, the imminent rain would hammer the envelope down to the ground and transform the dry earth to wet clay. But no rain ever came, and the bloodstained envelope continued its journey over the mountains and across the border towards Jordan.
*
SALADIN HAZAYMEH WAS LYING on his sleeping pad looking up towards the sky, where the light of dawn was making its first hesitant attempts to peak out. The strong winds from the night’s storm had finally calmed down and it looked like it might be a beautiful day.
It felt as if the sun had decided to clean up the sky for his seventieth birthday. And though his birthday was the reason for this ten-day-long hike, Saladin Hazaymeh was preoccupied by something else.
When he first noticed it up in the sky, he thought it was an airplane several thousand metres above him, but then he decided it must be a bird with an injured wing. Now he had no idea what was floating down to the ground some fifty metres ahead of him, glistening in the light from the sun.
Saladin Hazaymeh got up and noticed his usual morning back pain was gone. He hurried to roll up his sleeping pad and put it in his backpack. Something was about to happen – something of great significance – and he felt full of energy.
It could only be a sign from the God he had believed in for as long as he could remember, telling him that he was on the right path. For this birthday, he’d retraced the steps of Jesus all the way from Jerusalem to the Sea of Galilee.
Yesterday he had visited the holy grotto in Anjara and had hoped to spend the night there, just as Jesus had done with his disciples and the Virgin Mary. But the guards had discovered him and he had been forced to sleep under the open sky. But there was a meaning to everything, thought Saladin, hurrying off with a light step across the uneven land towards the olive tree, where the si
gn from God was caught among the branches.
When he got there he saw that it was an envelope. An envelope?
As much as he tried he could not come up with a logical reason to explain its origins. He finally decided that Heaven would have to do. And perhaps that wasn’t completely wrong. His inner voice kept repeating how important it was that he took care of it, like a mantra. It was how things were intended. That – and nothing else – was the real point of all his wandering.
After a number of attempts, he managed to hit the envelope with a stone and catch it before it hit the ground. It was dirty and full of small tears and looked as if it had survived the end of the world against all odds. It was also heavier than he’d expected.
He inspected both sides for clues, but found nothing other than a name written in small, sprawling letters: Aisha Shahin.
Saladin Hazaymeh sat down on a stone and laboriously sounded out the name, but it meant nothing to him. After some hesitation he took out his knife and carefully slit open the envelope. Unaware that he was holding his breath he pulled out and opened the letter, examining the long rows of handwriting.
It was Hebrew, that much he could tell. But he could barely read Arabic, so how would he able to understand this?
What was God trying to say? Was he punishing him because he never learned to read? Or was the letter not intended for him at all? Was he only an insignificant middleman whose sole purpose was to pass it along? He tried without success to dismiss the disappointment, while he folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. He continued his wandering northward toward Ajloun, where he reluctantly put the letter in a mailbox.
*
MANY WOULD SURELY THINK that Khaled Shawabkeh had behaved shamefully and was deeply immoral. He, on the other hand, did not feel guilty at all when he picked up the envelope without a stamp, sender or complete address. Letters where the sender had failed to do their part became his property. It was a practice he had applied without exception during the forty-three years he had worked sorting mail.
At home he had many boxes filled with stray letters, one for each year. He liked nothing more than fishing one out at random and studying the contents that were meant for someone else. This particular envelope was something out of the ordinary.
The oxidation confirmed that the journey itself must have been an adventure. Moreover, someone had already slit the envelope open, but left all the contents inside – for him and no one else.
Exactly ninety-eight minutes earlier than usual, Khaled Shawabkeh arrived home and locked the door. He had skipped afternoon tea, even though he’d brought harissa cakes, and jogged the whole way home from the bus. Now he was out of breath and could feel the sweat trying to penetrate his tight polyester shirt. Dinner could wait. Instead, he poured a glass of wine from the bottle hidden behind the books on the bookshelf, sat down in the armchair, took out the envelope and solemnly coaxed out the letter.
‘Finally,’ he said to himself, reaching for the wine, blissfully ignorant of how the blood clot, which had been building up in his left leg for several years, loosened and followed the blood flow all the way up to his lungs.
*
EVEN THOUGH IT HAD been more than a year since Maria’s uncle died from a lung embolism, she still had not set foot in his house. Her two brothers had challenged the will and done everything they could to pressure her to refuse the inheritance. Even her own father had tried to convince her, arguing that Khaled Shawabkeh had gradually lost his mind over the years and had left his house in disarray. He also didn’t think women would ever be able to manage property.
But Maria held her own and now, finally, she could put the key in the lock and go inside. In the negotiations she’d become estranged from her brothers and parents. The house would be cleared out and sold, and with the money she could afford to quit her job at the tailoring shop, move to Amman and start working her dream job at the Jordanian National Commission for Women.
*
IT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN possible. There was really nothing to suggest that the letter would ever reach its recipient. With all the obstacles, the probability was so slight it was impossible to calculate.
Yet that was exactly what happened.
One year, four months and sixteen days after the letter had been pushed through a crack in the prisoner transport vehicle and taken hold of by the winds in the black nights it ended up in Maria Shawabkeh’s hands. A few hours later, she had succeeded in piecing together most of the missing information.
Three sleepless nights after reading the horrific story from the letter, she made a few Internet searches, put a stamp on the envelope, wrote down the complete address and left it at the nearest post office – without any idea of the consequences.
Aisha Shahin
Selmedalsvägen 40, 7th Floor
129 37 Hägersten
Sweden
Part 1
16–19 December 2009
Many people will be horrified by the things I’ve done. Some will see them as revenge for all the injustices that have been committed; others as an unlikely game to trick the system and show how far one person can go. But the vast majority will believe that these are the actions of an extremely sick person.
All of them will be wrong.
Two Days Ago
SOFIE LEANDER WAS SITTING in the waiting room at Stockholm South General Hospital waiting for an ultrasound. She was browsing through a well-thumbed copy of We Parents filled with page after page of beautiful, happy mums and dads and she wanted nothing more than to be one of them. But after so many fruitless rounds of IVF, she’d started to doubt that her egg production would ever get started.
This was her absolute last chance. If the procedure didn’t work this time, she would have no choice other than to give up – something her husband already seemed to have done.
He had promised to be by her side when she needed him, but he’d missed today’s appointment. She turned on her cell phone and read his message again: Have a conflict and unfortunately won’t make it. He treated the whole experience like it was shopping for milk on the way home from work. He hadn’t even said ‘good luck’.
She had hoped that the move to Sweden three years ago would revive their relationship, especially since he had chosen to take her surname. She’d seen it as a declaration of love; proof the two of them were united, no matter what happened. Now, she was no longer so sure and she couldn’t escape the feeling that they were slipping further and further away from each other. She had tried to bring it up, but he persistently avowed his love for her. She could see it in his eyes though; or, more correctly, in the way he avoided her eyes.
Now, the man who had once saved her life suddenly had conflicts and hardly looked in her direction. She wanted to call and confront him, to ask if he’d stopped loving her or if he’d met someone else. But she didn’t dare. Besides, she was sure he wouldn’t answer. He almost never did when he was working, and especially not now when he was in the middle of a new project – something so secret that he couldn’t even tell her what it was. Her only chance was a positive report from the doctor. If she could just get that everything would surely be fine again. Then she would finally be able to give him the child they always wanted and he would realize how much he really loved her.
‘Sofie Leander,’ she heard her name being called. She followed the midwife through the corridor and was shown into a small examination room with closed blinds, a large computer-like apparatus and a hospital bed.
‘You can hang up your coat on the hook and then lie down on the bed. The doctor will be here at any moment.’
Sofie nodded and took off her coat and boots as the midwife left the room. Once on the bed, she pulled up her blouse and unbuttoned her trousers. She decided to try her husband anyway and ask what was so important that he couldn’t join her. As she was reaching for her handbag the door opened and the doctor came in.
‘Are you Sofie Leander?’
Sofie nodded.
‘Good. I’ll have you start by lying down on your side with your back to me.’
Sofie did as she was told and could hear the doctor opening some plastic packaging behind her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about the whole situation that didn’t feel right.
‘Excuse me, I’m here to have my ovaries examined.’
‘Absolutely. We just have to take care of this first,’ the doctor said, pressing on her vertebrae.
Suddenly she felt a prick in the middle of her back.
‘What are you doing? Did you just stick me with a syringe?’ Sofie turned around and saw something slip into the doctor’s trouser pocket. ‘Now I demand to know what—’
‘You don’t need to worry. This is purely routine. Are those your things?’ the doctor said, pointing to her coat and boots, but didn’t wait for an answer and set them by her feet. ‘We don’t want to forget anything, do we?’
This wasn’t the first time Sofie had been in for an ultrasound of her ovaries, so she knew that this definitely was not routine. She had no idea what this was. All she was sure of was that she no longer wanted to be part of it and wanted to get away from the doctor, the examination room and the entire hospital.
‘I think I have to go now,’ she said, trying to get up. ‘I want to leave. Do you hear me!?’ But her body refused to obey. ‘What’s happening? What have you done?’
The doctor leaned towards her, smiling and stroking her cheek, before stretching a respiratory mask across Sofie’s face. ‘You’ll understand soon.’
Sofie tried to protest and scream as loud as she could, but the mask suffocated all sound. Before she knew it, the brakes of the bed had been released and she was being pushed out of the examination room and into the corridor.
If only she could grab something, anything at all, and pull herself out of the bed to make everyone realize what was happening. But she couldn’t. All she could do was lie there, stare up at the ceiling and watch as the fluorescent lights passed by and doors opened in front of them.
She saw so many faces: pregnant mothers and soon-to-be fathers, midwives and doctors. They were all so close, but still so far away. She heard voices and the sound of elevator doors opening and then closing behind her. Or were they opening? She was disoriented.