The Joona Linna Thrillers 3-Book Bundle

  Joona’s swimming even faster now, picking up more speed as he kicks off another lap. He sees himself walking back through Palmcrona’s hallway and opening the door after the unexpected ringing of the doorbell. The tall woman in the darkness of the landing. The impression of her large hands. The fact she was hiding behind the door.

  Breathing heavily, Joona pulls up to the edge of the pool and steadies himself, resting his arms on the plastic grille over the gutter. His breathing slows but he can feel the heavy increase of lactic acid in his shoulder muscles. A group of policemen in bathing suits walk into the pool area carrying two rescue dummies: one a child and the other an overweight adult.

  Dying’s not a nightmare. The large woman had smiled when she said that.

  Joona heaves himself out of the pool. He’s filled with nervous tension. The Carl Palmcrona case won’t leave him alone. For some reason, the empty, light-filled room keeps coming back into his mind: the languid violin music and the slow buzzing of the flies.

  Joona knows in his gut that it is a suicide and is not a case for the CID. Still, he feels the urge to run back to the apartment, to take another look and examine it minutely to make sure he’s missed nothing.

  Initially he’d thought that shock had confused the housekeeper, fogged her mind, and made her suspicious, causing her to speak in that strange, disjointed way. Now Joona tries thinking in reverse. Maybe she wasn’t confused at all. Maybe she wasn’t shocked in the least but was answering his questions as clearly as she could. Edith Schwartz had hinted that Carl Palmcrona may have had help with the noose: that there were helpful hands, helpful people. In any case, she’d insinuated he was not alone in meeting his death. He was not the only person responsible.

  Something is not right.

  But he can’t put his finger on why he thinks that.

  Joona walks through the door to the changing room and unlocks his locker. He picks up his cell phone and calls Nils Åhlén, “The Needle.”

  “I’m not done yet,” The Needle says instantly.

  “It’s about Palmcrona. What was your first impression, even if—”

  “I’m not done yet.”

  “Even if you’re not done—”

  “Come by on Monday.”

  “I’m coming over now.”

  “At five o’clock, me and the missus are going to check on a sofa at the furniture store.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes,” Joona says, and disconnects the phone before The Needle can protest again that it’s too soon.

  After Joona has showered, dressed, and come out of the changing room, he can hear the laughter from the children’s swimming class.

  He wonders what’s behind the death of a man as important as the general director for the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products. When it came to the export of military equipment in Sweden, this was the one person who made all the final decisions regarding Sweden’s export of arms, and now he’s found hanged.

  What if I’m wrong? What if he really was murdered? Joona says to himself. I have to talk to Pollock before I go see The Needle. Maybe Pollock and Kofoed have had a chance to look at the material evidence by now.

  Joona strides through the hallway, runs down a staircase, and calls his assistant, Anja Larsson, to see if Nathan Pollock is still at the station.

  9

  all about hand-to-hand combat

  Joona’s thick hair is still wet as he opens the door to Lecture Hall 11 where Nathan Pollock is lecturing a special training group on handling hostage situations and rescue operations. Projected on the wall behind Pollock is the anatomy of a human body, and seven weapons are lined up on a table. They range from a small silver SIG Sauer P238 to a matte-black automatic carbine from Heckler & Koch equipped with a 40 millimeter grenade thrower. Pollock is demonstrating an attack technique on a young police officer. He holds a knife close to his body, then suddenly rushes the officer and marks his throat. He turns back to the group.

  “The problem with a cut like this is that the enemy can still scream. He can still move, and since only one artery is cut, it’ll take some time for him to bleed to death,” Pollock tells them.

  He walks up to the young officer again and puts his arm around the officer’s face so that his elbow covers the officer’s mouth.

  “If I do this instead, I can cover the scream, control his head, and slice open both arteries with one cut.”

  Pollock lets the young officer go just as Joona Linna enters the room. The young officer wipes his mouth and returns to his seat. With a big grin, Pollock tries to wave Joona over, but Joona shakes his head.

  “I just need a word with you,” Joona says quietly.

  A few of the police officers swivel their heads as Pollock walks over to Joona and shakes hands. The shoulders of Joona’s jacket are dark from the water dripping from his hair.

  “Tommy Kofoed took shoe prints from the Palmcrona scene,” Joona says. “I must know—did he find anything else unusual?”

  “I didn’t realize there was a rush on it,” Nathan says. He also keeps his voice low. “Of course we photographed all the impressions on the foil, but we haven’t had time to analyze the results. I absolutely have no overview yet—”

  “But you saw something,” Joona states.

  “It seems that maybe … when I entered the photos into the computer … there could have been a pattern … it’s too early—”

  “Just tell me what you think—I have to run.”

  “It looked like two different sets of shoe prints in two circles around the body,” Nathan tells him.

  “I’m going to see The Needle. Why don’t you come with me?” Joona asks.

  “Right now?”

  “I have to be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Damn, I can’t.” Nathan gestures to the class. “I’ll keep my phone on in case you have to get back about something.”

  “Thanks,” Joona says, and turns toward the door.

  “Hey … could you just say hi to this gang for a second?” Nathan asks.

  The entire class has already turned to look at them. Joona waves.

  Nathan raises his voice. “May I introduce Joona Linna? He’s the one I was telling you about. I’m trying to talk him into giving you some insight into hand-to-hand combat.”

  The room is silent and everyone is staring at Joona.

  “Most of you know more about hand-to-hand combat than I do,” Joona says with a small smile. “But one thing I do know is when you’re in a fight for your life, no rules apply. It’s not a game—it’s a real fight.”

  “Listen up,” Nathan says, his voice hard.

  “In a real fight, you’ll only win if you keep thinking. Be flexible. Take advantage of anything and everything that comes your way,” Joona continues calmly. “Maybe you’re in a car or on a balcony. Maybe in a room filled with tear gas. Maybe there’s broken glass covering the floor. There could be weapons all around. Is it a short fight? Or will you have to conserve your strength? Don’t waste time with fancy jump kicks or be cool with round kicks.”

  A few laugh.

  “And accept the idea of pain. When you’re in close combat without a weapon, you may have to take a real pounding to win as quickly as you can.” Joona finishes. “That’s about it … I really don’t know much more than that about this stuff.”

  He bows his head faintly and turns to leave the lecture hall. Two of the officers clap. The door closes and the room falls silent. Nathan Pollock is smiling to himself as he comes back to the table.

  “I originally meant to save this for another class,” he says as he taps on the computer. “This film is a classic—it’s the hostage drama from Nordea Bank headquarters on Hamngatan nine years ago. There are two robbers. Joona Linna has already gotten the hostages out. He’s also already taken down one of the robbers, the one who had an Uzi. There’d been a violent firefight. The other robber is hiding and still has a knife. They had spray-painted all of the security cameras, but missed one. Anyway, I
’ll play it in slow motion because the whole thing happens in just a few seconds.”

  Pollock clicks again, and the film starts in slow motion. It’s a grainy video shot from directly overhead and showing the interior of the bank. At the bottom right of the image, a counter ticks off the seconds. Joona moves smoothly sideways with his arms out, holding his pistol high. It almost looks like he’s underwater, his movements are so slow. The robber is hiding behind the open door to the safe. He holds a knife. Suddenly he rushes out with long, fluid strides. Joona points his service pistol toward the robber, directly at his chest. The robber doesn’t hesitate. Joona is forced to pull the trigger. “The pistol clicks but a faulty bullet is lodged in the barrel,” narrates Pollock.

  The grainy film flickers. Joona retreats as the man with the knife leaps at him. The whole thing is spooky and silent. Joona ejects the magazine and reaches for a new one. There is no time. Swiftly he reverses the useless gun until the barrel becomes an extension of his forearm.

  “I don’t get it,” says a female officer.

  “He’s transforming the pistol into a tonfa,” Pollock explains.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a kind of stick or baton. American police use something similar.

  Obviously, your reach is lengthened and if you must strike, the impact is intensified.”

  The man with the knife has reached Joona. Almost in slow motion, he strikes at Joona’s abdomen, the blade glittering in a half arc. His other arm is up and turns with his body. Joona does not look at the knife at all. He moves straight into the robber and instantly strikes him in the throat, right under the Adam’s apple, with the shaft of his gun.

  As if in a dream, the knife falls slowly, swirling to the ground. The man goes to his knees, clutching his throat, and then falls forward.

  10

  the woman who drowned

  Joona Linna is in his car, driving toward the Karolinska Institute, the medical research center in Solna, a suburb north of Stockholm. He’s thinking about Carl Palmcrona’s hanging body, the tight laundry rope, the urine on the floor.

  To the picture in his mind, Joona adds two sets of shoe prints on the floor circling the dead man.

  This case is not over.

  The department of forensic medicine is in a redbrick building set among the well-tended lawns on the large campus of the Karolinska Institute.

  Joona swings into the empty visitors’ parking lot. He sees that the chief medical officer, Nils Åhlén, The Needle, has driven his white Jaguar over the curb and right onto the manicured lawn next to the main entrance.

  Joona waves at the woman sitting in reception, who answers with a thumbs-up. He continues down the hallway, knocks at The Needle’s door, and goes right in. As usual, The Needle’s office is completely barren of anything extraneous. The blinds have been drawn but sunshine still filters in between the slats. The light is bright on white surfaces but disappears into the gray areas of brushed steel.

  As if to match his environment, The Needle wears white aviator glasses and a white polo shirt underneath his lab coat.

  “I just put a parking ticket on a white Jaguar outside,” Joona says.

  “Good for you.”

  Joona pauses in the middle of the room, his serious gray eyes darkening.

  “So how’d he really die?”

  “You’re talking about Palmcrona?”

  “Right.”

  The telephone rings and The Needle hands the autopsy report to Joona.

  “You didn’t need to come all the way here to find that out,” The Needle says before he picks up the phone.

  Joona sits down on a white leather chair. The autopsy on Carl Palmcrona’s body is complete. Joona flips through the file and eyes a few entries at random:

  74. Kidneys weigh 290 grams together. Surfaces are smooth. Tissues are gray-red. Consistency is firm and elastic. Renal capsule is clear.

  75. The ureters have normal appearance.

  76. The bladder is empty. Mucous membrane is pale.

  77. The prostate is normal size. Tissues are pale.

  The Needle pushes his glasses up his narrow, hooked nose and finishes his phone call. He looks up.

  “As you see,” he says, yawning, “nothing unusual. Cause of death is asphyxiation, that is, suffocation … but with a successful hanging we’re not talking about your typical meaning of suffocation. Rather, here we have closure of artery supply.”

  “So the brain dies when the flow of oxygenated blood is stopped.”

  The Needle nods. “That’s right. Artery compression, bilateral closure of the carotids. It happens unbelievably quickly, of course. Unconsciousness within seconds—”

  “But he was alive before the hanging?” Joona asks.

  “Right.”

  The Needle’s narrow, smooth face is gloomy.

  “Can you determine the drop?”

  “I imagine it was a matter of decimeters. There aren’t any fractures of the cervical vertebra or at the base of the skull.”

  “I see …”

  Joona is thinking of the briefcase with Palmcrona’s shoe prints. He opens the file again and flips to the external examination: the investigation of the skin of the neck and the measurement of the angles.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “Could the same rope have been used to strangle him before the hanging?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, first of all there is just one line and it’s perfect.” The Needle starts to explain. “When a person is hanged, the rope or line cuts into the neck and it—”

  “But a killer might know that,” Joona says.

  “But it’s practically impossible to reconstruct … you know, with a successful hanging, the line around the neck is like the point of an arrow with the edge on the upward side, right at the knot—”

  “Because the weight of the body tightens the loop.”

  “Exactly. And for the same reason the deepest part must be precisely across from the edge.”

  “So hanging was the cause of death.”

  “No doubt about it.”

  The tall, thin pathologist gently gnaws his lower lip.

  “But could he have been forced to kill himself?” Joona asks.

  “There are no signs of it on the body.”

  Joona shuts the file, drums on it with both hands, and thinks about the housekeeper’s statement that other people had been involved in Palmcrona’s death. Was it just confused rattling on? But what about the two sets of shoe prints Tommy Kofoed had found?

  “So you’re absolutely sure of the cause of death?” Joona stares into The Needle’s eyes.

  “What did you expect?”

  “I expected this,” Joona says slowly, tapping the autopsy. “Exactly this. But still, something’s not right.”

  The Needle smiles thinly.

  “Take it and use it as bedtime reading.”

  “Fine,” Joona agrees.

  “Still, I’m sure you can just let go of this one … it’s nothing more dramatic than a suicide.”

  The Needle’s smile disappears and he drops his gaze. Joona’s eyes are still sharp and focused.

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Of course I’m right,” The Needle replies. “And I can speculate a little more if you want … Palmcrona was probably depressed. His fingernails were ragged and dirty. He hadn’t brushed his teeth for several days and he hadn’t shaved.”

  “I see.”

  “You can take a look at him if you’d like,” The Needle prompts.

  “No, that’s not necessary,” Joona answers and slowly stands up.

  The Needle leans forward, a note of expectancy in his voice as if he’d been waiting for this moment.

  “Something more exciting came in this morning. Do you have a few minutes?”

  The Needle stands up as well, and gestures Joona to follow him along the hall. A light blue butterfly has managed to get into the building and i
t flutters in front of them.

  “Has the other guy quit?”

  “Who?”

  “The other guy who worked here, the one with the ponytail …”

  “Frippe? No way in hell we’d let him quit. He has a few days off. Megadeth was playing the Globe yesterday. Entombed was the lead-in act.”

  They walk through a dark room between autopsy tables of stainless steel, hardly noticing the strong smell of disinfectant. They continue walking to a much cooler room where bodies are being stored in chilled lockers, waiting to be examined by the department of forensic medicine.

  The Needle opens the door and turns on the ceiling lamp. The fluorescent light flickers once or twice before it’s fully on and can illuminate the white-tiled room and the long autopsy table covered in plastic. The table has double sinks and gutters for drainage.

  The Needle uncovers the body lying on the table.

  It is a beautiful young woman.

  Her skin is tanned and her long hair winds in a thick, shimmering mass across her forehead and shoulders. She seems to look into the room with an expression of both doubt and amazement. There’s an almost mischievous tilt to the corners of her mouth, as if she had been a person who easily smiles and laughs. However, any light in those large, dark eyes has long gone. Small brownish yellow specks are starting to appear.

  Joona moves closer for a better perspective. She can’t be more than nineteen or twenty years old. Not that long ago, she’d been a child still sleeping in bed with her parents. Then she was an adolescent schoolgirl and now she’s dead.

  A line, like a smile painted in gray, curves for about thirty centimeters across the woman’s collarbone.

  “What’s this?” Joona points at it.

  “No idea. Maybe from a necklace or the top of a blouse. I’ll take a closer look later.”

  Joona peers more closely at the quiet body. He sighs at the familiar wave of melancholy he feels when he faces death, the colorless vacuum.

  Her fingers and toes had been painted with a light, almost beige, rose.

  “So what’s the story?” Joona finally asks after a minute of silence.