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Back Marked for Revenge Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. Cover
  2. Back Cover Text
  3. Booklist
  4. Dedication
  5. Prologue
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. Chapter Eighteen
  24. Chapter Nineteen
  25. Chapter Twenty
  26. Chapter Twenty-One
  27. Chapter Twenty-Two
  28. Chapter Twenty-Three
  29. Chapter Twenty-Four
  30. Chapter Twenty-Five
  31. Chapter Twenty-Six
  32. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  33. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  34. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  35. Chapter Thirty
  36. Chapter Thirty-One
  37. Chapter Thirty-Two
  38. Chapter Thirty-Three
  39. Chapter Thirty-Four
  40. Chapter Thirty-Five
  41. Chapter Thirty-Six
  42. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  43. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  44. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  45. Acknowledgments

Silence again. Henrik thought about these victimized girls. Unidentified girl with Asian features and a fake passport dead on a train. Unidentified girl with Asian features found dead in the water. And Pim, Asian girl with a fake passport who had been able to flee from her captor. Three Asian girls in one week.

And then there was a fourth, unidentified, with a scar on her forehead, who went by the name Isra.

“It seems like they’re in the process of getting rid of the girls,” Henrik said.

“And that’s why we have to take down this operation,” Gunnar said.

“I’ll see to it that this girl has Björn Ahlmann for the autopsy.”

“Yes, definitely. Do we know how long she’s been in the water?”

“Anneli thought just a day or so.”

“Then there’s no doubt anymore,” Gunnar said.

“About what?”

“That we have to hold a press conference. We have to inform the public before people start writing and speculating too much about all of this.”

* * *

Jana Berzelius had already spent almost an hour looking page by page through the court proceedings of the cases that were archived in her father’s binders. She sat on the floor with some of the binders spread out around her. Her father had gathered information carefully and systematically. In the binders, over a hundred court cases were documented, from 1989 on. Most were represented by Prosecutor, then Prosecutor-General, Karl Berzelius. Some of them she had read about on the internet and had felt a certain pride over. She’d been quite simply impressed by her father’s successes in the courtroom.

But what she saw in the margins bothered her. With a red pen, he had written small notes. Maybe it was only absentminded doodling that he’d done while he contemplated something. It was hard for her without being familiar with the cases and in such a short time to understand what his notations meant.

The clock was ticking.

She didn’t have much time to work with and closed the binders she had in her lap. She knew she should be concentrating on finding Danilo instead.

Focus!

Through the dormer window, she saw the snow whirling around.

She listened to the wind howling outside, feeling satisfied by the promise that they would see each other again, she and he. She would take back her journals and her most valuable possessions. And then she would silence him. Silence the only one who knew who she actually was. Silence him for good.

She got up, leaving the binders on the floor, and continued looking for a map.

Chapter Thirty

CHAPTER THIRTY

GUNNAR ÖHRN CLEARED his throat, closed his eyes and said a quick prayer that there wouldn’t be any intrusive questions from the press, but he knew that was like praying for a summer without rain.