Free Without a Trace by Liza Marklund Page A

interior of the house. There were lamp-hooks in the ceilings, but nothing strong enough to hold the weight of a grown man. And she couldn’t recall any items of furniture solid enough. ‘Possibly the upstairs landing. There’s a wrought-iron railing at the top of the stairs. It seemed a bit loose – they could have fastened the rope there.’
    Nina looked at Q, who nodded for her to continue. ‘He was also subjected to a
cheera
, or tearing, as it’s also known. That means that the legs are pulled apart until the muscles tear. Lerberg had suffered severe bleeding in his groin.’
    The secretary blew his nose again. Yes, he really did seem to be crying. Nina glanced at Lamia and Q, but neither of them seemed to have noticed the man’s emotional state. She picked up the third page of the forensics report. ‘The plastic bag that was found in the children’s room could have been used for a dry Submarino. That’s an asphyxiation technique – Lerberg showed signs of oxygen deprivation. He had also been severely beaten, primarily in the face – one eyeball had split.’ She was feeling slightly sick.
    Q nodded in encouragement. ‘What does this tell us about our perpetrators? Is it possible to trace their methods to a particular geographic area?’
    ‘
Falaka
is especially popular in the Middle East.
Cheera
is used in India and Pakistan, among other places, and the spread-eagle is also known as Palestinian hanging. It’s used in Turkey and Iran, for instance.’
    Johansson made more notes.
    Q stood up. ‘So a relatively uneducated guess would suggest that we’re dealing with an area south-east of Sweden?’
    ‘Not necessarily,’ Nina said. ‘These are tried and tested methods everywhere. The Submarino is also known as La Bañera, which suggests south-west rather than south-east.’
    ‘Unpleasant,’ the commissioner said. ‘What business was Lerberg in? Something to do with shipping?’
    ‘Coordination of maritime transport,’ Lamia said.
    ‘What the hell could he have been shipping that would have warranted such an excess of violence? Drugs? Money? Children? Nuclear weapons?’
    ‘He didn’t ship anything himself, just arranged the loading of different vessels and made sure they weren’t travelling empty between harbours,’ Lamia said.
    Q looked at the rain-streaked windows and sighed. ‘This is getting ridiculous. How the hell can there be so much water up there?’ He turned back to Nina. ‘I want you to find out what this is all about,’ he said. ‘You’re right, there must have been at least two perpetrators, but what drove them to this insane torture? Lamia, put in a request to see his accounts. And where on earth is the wife? Did they take her with them? If so, where, and why?’
    Nina quickly noted down what the commissioner was saying. When she looked up Lamia was typing again. Johansson blew his nose. Q was on his way out through the door.
    Nina assumed that the meeting was over. It had lasted exactly twenty-two minutes.
     
    The newsroom was suffused with the same grey light that had characterized it all year. Not just because of the climatic conditions outside the windows. Since the centre of journalistic activity had slipped from print to the online edition, the sharp edges of the newsroom had faded and dissolved. The daily cycle had disappeared – the room seemed to have stopped breathing. There were no longer any deadlines – or, rather, every moment was a new deadline.
    Annika put a plastic mug of coffee from the machine on her desk and caught sight of her reflection in the rain-streaked glass.
    Back in the Stone Age, when Annika had first been taken on at the
Evening Post
, two editions had been published on normal days: the early one, commonly known as the backwoods edition, and a later version, which reached the suburbs and areas around major cities. Under extreme circumstances an even later updated edition was occasionally published, but only for central Stockholm. The entire