Marked For Revenge. Emelie Schepp

just given a drink. When he reached for it, she saw a large, dark birthmark on his left wrist. He raised the glass to his lips and looked out the window again.

      He must be waiting for someone, she thought, as she got up from the table, carefully buttoning her winter jacket and wrapping her black Louis Vuitton scarf around her neck. She pulled her maroon hat over her head and gripped her briefcase firmly.

      As she turned toward the door, she noticed that the man was talking on his phone. He muttered something inaudible, downed his drink as he stood up and strode past her toward the exit.

      She caught the door as it swung shut after him and stepped out onto the street and into the cold winter air. The night was crystal clear, quiet and almost completely still.

      The man had quickly vanished from sight.

      Jana pulled on a pair of lined gloves and set out for her apartment in Knäppingsborg. A block from home, she caught sight of the man again, standing against the wall in a narrow alley. This time he wasn’t alone.

      Another man stood facing him. His hood was up, and his hands were stuffed deep into his pockets.

      She stopped in her tracks, took a few quick steps to the side and tried to hide behind a building column. Her heart began to pound and she told herself she must be mistaken. The man in the hood could not be who she thought he was.

      She turned her head and again examined his profile.

      A shiver went down her spine.

      She knew who he was.

      She knew his name.

      Danilo!

      * * *

      Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin turned off the TV and stared at the ceiling. It was just after ten o’clock at night and the bedroom was dark. He listened to the sounds of the house. The dishwasher clunked rhythmically in the kitchen. Now and then he heard a thump from Felix’s room, and Henrik knew his son was rolling over in his sleep. His daughter, Vilma, was sleeping quietly and still, as always, in the next room.

      He lay on his side next to his wife, Emma, with his eyes closed and the comforter over his head, but he knew it was going to be difficult to fall asleep with his mind racing.

      Soon he wouldn’t be sleeping much at night for other reasons. The nights would instead be filled with rocking and feeding and shushing long into the wee hours. There were only three weeks left until the baby’s due date.

      He pulled the comforter down from his head and looked at Emma sleeping on her back with her mouth open. Her belly was huge, but he had no idea if it was larger than during her earlier pregnancies. The only thing he knew was that he was about to become a father for the third time.

      He lay on his back with his hands on top of the comforter and closed his eyes. He felt a sort of melancholy and wondered if he would feel different when he held the baby in his arms. He hoped so, because almost the whole pregnancy had passed without him really noticing. He hadn’t had time—he’d had other things to think about. His job, for example.

      The National Crime Squad had contacted him.

      They wanted to talk about last spring’s investigation of the murder of Hans Juhlén, a Swedish Migration Board department chief in Norrköping. The case was closed and Henrik had already put it behind him.

      What had initially seemed to be a typical murder investigation of a high-ranking civil servant had turned into something much more, much worse. Something macabre: the smuggling of illegal refugees had led the team working the case to a narcotics ring that had, among other activities, been training children to be soldiers, turning kids into cold-blooded killers.

      It was far from a routine case, and the investigation had been front-page news for several weeks.

      Tomorrow, the National Crime Squad was coming to ask questions about the refugee children who had been transported from South America in shipping containers locked from the outside. More specifically, they wanted to talk about the ring leader, Gavril Bolanaki, who had killed himself before anyone could interrogate him.

      They’d be reviewing every minute detail yet again.

      Henrik opened his eyes and stared out into the darkness. He glanced at the alarm clock, saw that it was 10:15 and knew the dishwasher would soon signal the end of its cycle.

      Three minutes later, it beeped.

       CHAPTER TWO

      HER HEART WAS pounding and her pulse racing.

      Jana Berzelius breathed as quietly as possible.

      Danilo.

      A wave of mixed emotions flowed over her. She felt simultaneously surprised, confused, irritated.

      There was a time when she and Danilo had been like siblings, when they had shared a daily existence. That was a long time ago now, back when they were little. Now they shared nothing more than the same bloody past. He had scars on his neck the same as she, initials carved into flesh, a constant reminder of their shared dark childhood. Danilo was the only one who knew who she was, where she came from—and why.

      She had sought out Danilo last spring to ask for his help when the shipping containers filled with refugee children began appearing outside the small harbor town of Arkösund. He had seemed helpful, even favorably inclined, but in the end he had still betrayed her. He had attempted to kill her—unsuccessfully—and then disappeared underground.

      Ever since then, she had been searching for him, but it was as if he had vanished into thin air. She hadn’t been able to find a single trace of him in all those months. Nothing. Her frustration had intensified in proportion to her desire for revenge. She daydreamed of different ways to kill him.

      She had sketched his face in pencil on a white sheet of paper, drawing and erasing and drawing again until it was a perfect likeness. She had saved the picture, pinned it to a wall in her apartment as if to remind herself of the hatred she felt for him—not that she could ever forget it.

      In the end, she had given up on her search for him and returned to her everyday life with the belief that she would probably never find him.

      He was gone forever.

      Or so she had thought.

      Now he stood fifty feet from her.

      She felt her body tremble and stifled an impulse to throw herself forward—she had to think rationally.

      She held her breath so that she could hear the men’s voices, but she couldn’t make out a single word. They were too far away.

      Danilo lit a cigarette.

      The worn duffel bag lay on the ground, and the man with the birthmark was crouched down next to it. He pulled the zipper, exposing its contents. Danilo nodded and gestured with his right hand, and both of them went with quick steps through the alley and disappeared down the stone steps toward Strömparken.

      Jana clenched her teeth. What should she do? Turn around and go home? Pretend she hadn’t seen him, let him get away? Let him disappear from her life yet again?

      Silently, she counted to ten before stepping out of the shadows and going after them.

      * * *

      Detective Inspector Mia Bolander opened her eyes and immediately clapped her hand to her forehead. Her head was spinning.

      She got out of bed and stood there naked, looking at the man whose name she had forgotten, who lay on his stomach with his hands under a pillow.

      He hadn’t been completely with it. For twenty minutes, he had paced the room and repeated that he was a waste of space and didn’t deserve her. She had told him again and again that of course that wasn’t true, and in the end she had convinced him to get into bed with her.

      When he later asked considerately if he could massage her