Free The Long Shadow by Liza Marklund Page A

break-ins?’
    ‘Extremely,’ Linde said. ‘The victims are often foreigners, as well as rich Spaniards, of course. It’s believed that the gangs identify their victims at the airport, follow them to their villas or apartments, then knock them out with gas when they’re asleep. There’ve been cases of people waking up to find their homes stripped bare, including the rings from their fingers. It often leaves them in a very bad way, and I don’t just mean the effects of the gas.’
    ‘Can I quote you on that?’
    ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘but not by name. I’m fairly incognito here.’
    She let her gaze linger on him: what exactly was his role? ‘And I understand that Swedes have been the victims of gassings before this,’ she said.
    ‘We have a hundred or so Swedish cases each year,’ Garen said, waving over another dish of
jamón serrano
.
    ‘What do you think about this particular break-in?’ she asked.
    The police officers looked at each other.
    ‘I mean,’ Annika said, ‘didn’t they have a gas detector? I’ve heard that everyone in Nueva Andalucía has one, these days.’
    ‘There are indications that this wasn’t an ordinary gas attack,’ Linde said.
    ‘I don’t know if we should …’ Garen said.
    Linde leaned across the table and lowered his voice. ‘The victims weren’t in bed when they were discovered,’ he said. ‘The woman was lying dead behind a door, and the man was found across a desk. The gas detector had been set off, and that probably woke them up. Someone switched it off.’
    ‘And the children?’ Annika said.
    ‘They were on the landing outside their parents’ bedroom. Their grandmother, a pensioner, was the only one found in bed. Maybe she couldn’t move too well, we don’t know.’
    Annika was thinking hard. She didn’t bother asking about details like the victims’ names and ages – the news agencies would have that sort of thing. ‘How did the gas get inside the house?’
    ‘Through the ventilation unit at the back of the building. The thermostats in the house were set at twenty degrees and it was cold last night, no more than eight, nine degrees. When the temperature outside fell, the heating came on and the whole house was gassed at the same time.’
    Annika looked down at her notes. ‘This might sound like a strange question,’ she said, ‘but what was the man doing on the desk?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say his name.
    ‘The desk was right under the air-vent,’ Linde said. ‘When he was found, there was a duvet beside him. It looks like he noticed the gas pouring into the house and tried to stop it with the bedclothes, which makes this case even more unusual.’
    He fell silent, and the two policemen looked at each other.
    ‘What?’ Annika said. ‘Why?’
    ‘Normal knock-out gases, like hexane, isopropanol and carbon dioxide, are invisible,’ Linde said. ‘If any of those had been used, he wouldn’t have been able to see it.’
    She made a note of the gases, guessing at their spelling. ‘So this time something else was used? What?’
    Linde shook his head. ‘It must have been stronger than normal, seeing as it killed them when they were awake and trying to escape, and it was probably visible. Like mist or smoke.’
    Annika shuddered. ‘So they died pretty quickly?’
    ‘Well, they were paralysed more or less instantaneously.’
    ‘The children too?’
    The policemen didn’t answer, and Annika could feel nausea rising in her throat. Was there anything else she needed to know? ‘Who found them?’ she asked, shuffling through her notes as she tried to suppress the urge to throw up.
    ‘The cleaner. She worked there five days a week and had her own key.’
    ‘And she definitely wasn’t the one who gassed them?’
    ‘If she’d wanted to rob them, she could have done it last week when the family was away in Florida for Christmas.’
    ‘So things were stolen as well?’
    ‘Everything of value. The safe’s missing. The thieves,