Free The Long Shadow by Liza Marklund

the polished granite floor. The sun was shining through the glass ceiling several floors above, reinforcing her impression that she was still outdoors. She was forced forward by the flow of people, past exactly the same shops as there were in the shopping centres back home: Mango, Zara, Lacoste and Swatch. She found a floor-plan and realized she was standing by the entrance to H&M. She couldn’t see anyone who looked like a policeman in the mass of people, so she stood with her back to the plate-glass window to avoid being trampled.
    In front of her a huge Christmas tree reached up towards the roof, its bright green giving away that it was plastic. Christmas baubles, two metres across, hung from the beams in the roof, and a few palms leaned against a concrete pillar. They were so ugly that she presumed they must be real.
    ‘Annika Bengtzon?’
    There were two of them, and their appearance screamed plain-clothes Scandinavian police. One was very fair, the other ash-blond; they were both wearing jeans and comfortable shoes, and were very fit, exuding the confidence that only men in positions of unquestionable authority possessed.
    She shook their hands with a smile.
    ‘We’re in a bit of a hurry,’ Knut Garen said, ‘but there’s a tapas bar upstairs with an excellent view of the car park.’
    His colleague introduced himself as Niklas Linde, sounding as if he was from northernmost Norrland.
    They took the escalator up and pushed their way to a window table where, as promised, they were treated to a magnificent view of ten thousand cars.
    ‘Thanks for taking the time to see me,’ Annika said, putting her pen and notepad on the table.
    ‘Well,’ Knut Garen said, ‘this is the way it works. All contact between the Spanish police and the Swedish authorities has to go through us. We co-ordinate communication.’
    ‘To begin with, I was wondering if you know of a good interpreter,’ Annika said. ‘Preferably Swedish to Spanish, but someone who can translate from English would be fine.’
    ‘You don’t speak Spanish?’ Garen said.
    ‘
No mucho
,’ Annika said. ‘
Comprendo un poquito
.’
    ‘Carita,’ Niklas Linde said. ‘She’s Swedish, lives with her family down here, works with translations and stuff when she’s not interpreting. I’ll give you her number.’
    Garen took out his mobile. ‘This whole business with the Söderströms is just tragic,’ he said, as he looked up the interpreter’s number in his phonebook. ‘Breakins involving gas have been getting more and more common, but we’ve never seen one go so badly wrong before. Here you are, Carita Halling Gonzales.’
    She jotted down the woman’s landline and mobile numbers. ‘Will you be working on the case?’ she asked.
    ‘The Spanish police will be in charge of the investigation,’ Linde said. ‘We’re not actually operational here.’
    ‘We’re working on a different case at the moment,’ Garen said. ‘You might have reason to write something about that in the future. Greco and Udyco seized seven hundred kilos of cocaine from a warehouse in La Campana last week, and we think there’s a Swedish connection.’
    ‘Greco?’ Annika said.
    ‘The specialist Spanish unit that deals with narcotics and organized crime. We work with them a lot.’ He glanced at his watch.
    ‘I’ve got a few general questions about crime down here,’ Annika said. ‘I’ve read that the Costa del Sol isalso known as the Costa del Crime. Is that an exaggeration?’
    ‘Depends how you look at it,’ Garen said. ‘There are four hundred and twenty criminal organizations here, involved in everything from growing hash and smuggling cocaine to car theft, people-trafficking and illegal gambling. It’s estimated that there are about thirty contract killings in Málaga alone each year. The sex industry is huge, employing more than forty thousand people. There are at least a hundred known brothels.’
    ‘How common is the use of gas in