Everything’s connected. So what began with Aunt Vesa killing for my sake ended when she called and said Hamid had died, but the shooter had spared her. I hadn’t realized that what I had changed in my haste would reach all the way to my beloved aunt, the only one I have left. And something happened. Inside me. I broke down. I was thrown back. Except even harder. To those days and nights with dead people. To the place where the police officer I’m waiting for now, found me, gave me back my life—the man who’s been trying to save these children over these last few days, saved me too. I know, better than anyone, what it means for siblings to pay with their lives as a threat to their parents, to be used in that way. And when our plan right now couldn’t be carried out to the end, I changed my mind. It was too late to stop Zaravic from getting ahold of the documents, but there was still time to stop his revenge—and complete mine.

I think I’ll sit down again.

And just wait for Grens and Hermansson and Sundkvist to arrive.

With the children and Zofia.

It feels good, and I’m tired.

PART
9

Chapter 51

Howling, screaming sirens.

Flashing, rotating lights.

The whole world was angry noise and urgent lights until the car stopped in front of the apartment building and it became silence and stillness. When Ewert Grens, Mariana Hermansson, and Sven Sundkvist entered the apartment on the first floor they encountered a scene that also encompassed the same extremes. In one room, death and chaos, in the other, life and nascent calm. Two dead men and a shaken but unharmed family—and one police cadet who was a hero without even seeming to realize it. Grens rarely arrived at a crime scene so soon after the crime had occurred. His job as a detective superintendent usually meant showing up long after, searching for details that became the puzzle of circumstances and facts that made up the evidence. Perhaps that’s why he walked around feeling so uneasy even though everything had ended well. He didn’t understand what he was seeing because the acute threat had been averted.

But he understood the hatch and the hole in the closet floor that Hugo showed him, a very Hoffmann touch. Always alone, trust only yourself. He also understood Dusko Zaravic’s motives, that’s why he’d wanted to lock him up for three days, and why Hermansson in the middle of all that wreckage looked so proud as she spoke of her young protégé.

“What Amelia did must be absolutely unique. A cadet, Ewert—who read this investigation so much better than her superiors did. Who was in the right place. With just seconds to spare, she took the shots that saved four lives.”