Free Box 21 by Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström

bite on the bait. The moment they accepted the false passports, they were transformed from hopeful teenagers into supposedly horny female slaves. Their passports cost money, of course, and the debt was too big for them to pay off outright. It had to be recovered from their earnings. A few of them would try to refuse, but would promptly be taught a lesson and would learn with time what a beating could mean. The girls were raped, over and over again, until they bled. With a gun pressed to their heads, they would be told to do it again and again – spread your fucking legs and do it, you’ve got to pay for your passport and the sea crossing. If you won’t fuck them, I’ll take you up the arse again! He, the persuader, who had beaten them and raped them at gunpoint, would sell themon afterwards, three thousand euros for every teenage girl shipped from east to west, who had learnt to groan with desire whenever someone penetrated her.
     
Ewert sighed and looked up when Sven came into the kitchen. He was ready to report on the contents of a cupboard they had missed the first time round.
     
‘Not a damn thing there either. No personal belongings at all.’
     
Several pairs of shoes, a couple of dresses and quite a few sets of bra and panties. And bottles of perfume and plastic toilet bags containing assorted make-up, a box of condoms, dildos and handcuffs. That was all. They had found nothing in the flat that couldn’t have been predicted if you started with the assumption that their life stories were all about sexual penetration.
     
Impatient, Ewert flapped his arms about.
     
‘These children without faces.’
     
These girls did not really exist. They had no identity, no work permit, no life of their own. They breathed, cautiously, inside a fifth-floor flat with electronic door locks in a big city which was very different from the one they had left.
     
‘Ewert, do we know how many of them we’ve got here in Stockholm?’
     
‘As many as the market demands.’
     
Ewert sighed again and bent forward to finger the wallpaper. The pimp had beaten her in here and her blood had congealed on the flowered pattern. In fact blood had splashed all over the place; even the ceiling was dotted with red spots. He was angry and tired and felt like shouting, but found himself whispering instead.
     
‘She’s here illegally. She’ll need to be guarded.’
     
‘She’s being operated on now.’
     
‘I mean afterwards, in the ward.’
     
‘It will take another couple of hours, the hospital tells me. Before she’s done.’
     
‘Sven, please get a guard for her. I don’t want her to disappear.’
     
Outside the house with the imposing façade the street was silent and empty.
     
Ewert examined the windows in the house opposite. Nothing new there; they looked as blank and as orderly, with the same sort of curtains and flowerpots.
     
He felt deeply ill at ease.
     
The beaten woman, the pimp in the shiny suit and Bengt and the rest of his colleagues, waiting for nearly an hour while she lay unconscious and bleeding.
     
He felt chilly and tried to shake it off, together with the bad feeling, but did not know how to get rid of something like that.
     
     
     
     
     
It was half past ten in the morning. Jochum Lang served himself from the breakfast buffet in Ulriksdal Inn. Typical Yugo tactic: treat someone to something expensive and then start talking business. They had driven through the northern suburbs, heading straight for the talk that was due to start any time soon. One more piece of omelette. A cup of coffee to follow. Might as well make use of the mint-flavoured toothpicks too.
     
Lang let his eyes sweep over the breakfast room, all white tablecloths and heavy silver-plated cutlery and conference delegates eating their fill. Women with red cheeks were lighting cigarettes, men sitting as close to them as they could, after pouring themselves yet another cup of coffee. He laughed at the encounters and expectations; he didn’t do things like that,