Leona Read online

  Copyright © Jenny Rogneby 2014

  Originally published in Swedish as Leona: Tärningen är kastad in 2014 by Wahlström & Widstrand, Stockholm.

  English-language translation copyright © Jenny Rogneby 2015

  First published in 2015 by Echo Publishing, South Melbourne, Australia. Published by arrangement with Partners in Stories Stockholm AB, Sweden.

  Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 267 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Rogneby, Jenny, 1974- author.

  Title: Leona : the die is cast : a novel / Jenny Rogneby.

  Other titles: Leona : Tärningen är kastad. English.

  Description: New York : Other Press, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016055169 (print) | LCCN 2017000228 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9781590518823 (paperback) | ISBN 9781590518830 (e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Crime—Sweden—Stockholm—Fiction. | Policewomen—Sweden—Fiction. | Robbery—Fiction. | Stockholm (Sweden)—Fiction. |

  Detective and mystery stories.

  Classification: LCC PT9877.28.O44 L4613 2017 (print) | LCC PT9877.28.O44

  (ebook) | DDC 839.73/8—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016055169

  Ebook ISBN 9781590518830

  Publisher’s Note:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Chapter Eighty-three

  Chapter Eighty-four

  Chapter Eighty-five

  Chapter Eighty-six

  Chapter Eighty-seven

  Chapter Eighty-eight

  Chapter Eighty-nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-one

  Chapter Ninety-two

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  No one had noticed her yet. Slowly and silently she crept along the narrow entrance mat toward the middle of the bank.

  Her steps were determined.

  Her gaze glassy.

  She no longer felt the sores and dried blood on her naked, slender body. Only her heart distracted her. She could hear every beat. 1-2…3-4-5…6…The beats were too fast and uneven to count. She hugged the teddy bear against her chest as hard as she could. The pounding felt softer then.

  The fluorescents were harsh and bright compared to the subdued bluish-gray light outside. She squinted. Just a few more steps.

  Right…left…right…

  She stopped in the middle of the lobby. Without moving her head she looked around the room, taking in the high counters, the computers, the people in suits. She stood still for a brief moment before she slowly and quietly bent down to set the tape recorder on the marble floor. She lightly pressed the play button and straightened up.

  A gruff male voice echoed throughout the bank: “My name is Olivia and I’m seven years old. Now listen carefully and do exactly as I say…”

  ONE

  My eyes felt dry. Fixed at a point, as often happens while your thoughts wander. I blinked twice to force my gaze away from the reversed block letters on the glass door to the conference room.

  VCD: Violent Crimes Division.

  Though renovations had only finished two months ago, the letters were already scratched. Above the words shone the yellow-and-blue police emblem. For my colleagues it stood for a feeling of belonging and community.

  Not for me.

  To me it symbolized confinement.

  Within the walls of authority I could never feel free.

  Despite my years as a police officer I had never been able to reconcile myself to being one of them. Just some cop. But work did play an important role in my life. In a way that no one yet understood.

  If it wasn’t for the fact that I, Leona Lindberg, at the age of thirty-four, knew that my constructed life would soon change, I wouldn’t have been able to stand it much longer.

  Anette, the unit’s admin assistant, looked at me from across the conference table. She smiled. I moved the corners of my mouth. These days it was pure reflex. It hadn’t always been that way. Until I was fifteen, I hadn’t realized that smiling gave me an advantage. By studying other people I had learned how to socialize. I nodded at Anette, who was pointing at her watch and shaking her head at the fact we all had to sit and wait. The usual weekend’s
crop of new cases was about to be doled out. My colleagues were chatting. Laughing. A few were complaining about the heavy workload, saying that they definitely couldn’t take on any more investigations. I sat quietly, trying to focus on something other than the conference table, but my eyes kept being drawn to the uneven cracks that angrily separated the twelve small tables, which someone had tried to push together into one. There were obvious differences of at least several millimeters in the heights. In more than four places one tabletop stuck out higher than the one next to it. Very irritating. My colleagues grumbled that the room was stuffy, but none of them noticed the gaps and uneven surface of the table.

  But I said nothing.

  That was the best policy.

  I had learned to keep such observations to myself.

  I looked out the windows, which ran the entire length of the room. Despite the sky’s gray blanket of clouds and the raindrops that were running slowly down the windowpanes, life outside seemed like liberation. Like so many times before, I resisted the impulse to just walk out and leave it all behind.

  I stayed where I was.

  The door didn’t open again until 11:47 a.m., when Superintendent Claes Zetterlund stepped in. He ran his hand through his dark-blond hair and shook his wet jacket vigorously before tossing it over the back of the nearest chair. My colleagues fell silent. Without a word he opened his black backpack and took out a folder. He set it down on the table and took a breath as if to start speaking. But I was there first.

  “I’m sorry for being late?” I suggested.

  He’d had several seconds to make his excuses. He could at least have mumbled something apologetic when he opened the door. It was only polite — that much I had picked up about everyday social niceties. When he didn’t speak I realized that there would be no apology. The look of surprise on his face confirmed my conclusion. He lost his train of thought. Held the inhaled air in his lungs, frowning and looking around to see who had dared to utter such a comment. In a matter of seconds the calm, relaxed atmosphere in the room had become as tense as Claes’s moody temperament. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Anette’s quick glance. Everyone was silent. Waiting for Claes’s reaction. His piercing eyes finally found their way to me.

  “What the hell is your problem, Leona? I’ve had a terrible morning. The murder last Friday, another rape in Tantolunden, two new cases of aggravated assault on former gang members on Sveavägen, an arson on Lidingö, and another robbery that a bunch of goddamned reporters are terrorizing me about. I’m not in the mood to take shit from anyone in here who doesn’t outrank me. Understood?”

  I kept quiet. I had made my point. Claes looked out over the conference table. There wasn’t a sound. Even a colleague with a higher rank would probably have chosen to keep quiet after that outburst. Claes could really become aggressive.

  “We’ll start with the robbery.”

  His voice was still too loud; he seemed to be having a hard time controlling it.

  “Robbery, Östermalmstorg. Nybrogatan 39.”

  I could see that the file he was reading from was thin. Not much had been documented. A statement and an interview or two at most.

  Suddenly “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC blared out of his pants pocket. He took out his cell phone.

  “Violent Crimes, Claes Zetterlund.”

  Answering the phone in the middle of a meeting might be considered rude in other professions. In our line of work you were stared at if you ignored calls. The public could be in danger.

  Claes always talked loudly on the phone. Almost as if he was making a show of it.

  “I can’t comment on that yet. We have too little informa —…Not yet…No, I said…You can damn well wait until…”

  He tossed the phone down on the table.

  “Damn it, they’re like a pack of dogs, those reporters. Who can take the robbery on Östermalm?”

  He looked around the room. No one volunteered, as usual. Everyone thought they had enough to do with their ongoing investigations. Besides, no one wanted to be stuck with a shit case. Giving us the chance to volunteer to investigate the cases that came in, instead of simply doling them out and ordering us to do them, was the department’s way of pretending that we had the opportunity to influence our own work situation. But everyone knew that if no one volunteered, Claes would just choose the person he thought was the most suitable.

  Claes, who knew that everyone avoided certain types of investigations, had a habit of saying as little as possible about the details of a crime before he assigned the case.

  So we were understandably suspicious.

  Of everything.

  We were especially wary of cases that were being watched closely by the media. So if you didn’t know what the case was about, you kept quiet. A robbery on Östermalm could mean anything, from a helicopter robbery to a mugging. Maybe some celebrity had been threatened with a weapon and had their iPhone, iPad, iPod, or some other iSomething stolen, and would now be crying about it in the newspapers, on their blog, and via Twitter and Facebook. Whining about getting their hair mussed and making sky-high claims for damages that no normal person could afford to pay, especially not the perpetrator. No one wanted to take on a case like that. Especially not now, just after the summer holidays, when everyone wanted peace and quiet to go through the hundreds of emails that came in while they were away.

  I was amused by the silence. It was funny that everyone considered themselves so busy, despite the long coffee breaks they took in the afternoons.

  Volunteering to investigate complicated cases that others avoided was a good way of gaining points. Unarmed robbery was normally not considered very exciting. The high-status crimes were homicide, kidnapping, aggravated robbery, rape, and other crimes where the victim had been seriously injured. Plus, most investigators hated having the media breathing down their necks. Major media attention on a robbery meant that it must be something spectacular, which interested me for a very particular reason. In a few seconds I would volunteer.

  But not yet.

  Claes looked around the room with raised eyebrows.

  “No one?”

  My colleagues were squirming. They looked down at the table. Up at the wall. Everywhere they wouldn’t meet Claes’s eyes. Everyone knew that at any moment Claes would dole out the case to whomever he liked. If you didn’t make eye contact the risk of being chosen was lessened. The performance made me smile. Claes had evidently noticed my smile and stared straight at me.

  I cleared my throat.

  It was time.

  “Okay, Claes, I’ll take it.”

  I sat up straight, to show I was serious. He nodded curtly. Anette, who often mentioned that the distribution of cases should be more even among detectives, looked first at me, then at Claes.

  “Leona, do you really have time? You already have the murder in Humlegården and the armed robberies from last week.”

  Anette was right. The Humle murder was a big job. Another case the others on the squad had avoided. Claes glanced at her sharply. He pushed the file across the conference table. If not for the uneven tabletop it probably would have slid all the way over to me. Now it stopped about halfway.

  I clenched my teeth.

  A colleague picked up the file. He handed it over to me with relief in his eyes. Claes looked at me.

  “This is a very different case, Leona. You’ll really get a chance to show your stuff. Now listen up, everyone!”

  It was an unnecessary request. The room was already silent.

  “At 10:37 a.m. today a seven-year-old girl went into SEB at Nybrogatan 39. It’s one of the few bank branches that still handles cash. Somehow she managed to get five bank tellers to hand over bags of banknotes. None of the eight customers who were on the premises intervened. The girl then left the bank with the money and disappeared.”

  Claes now had everyone’s attention. This was no ordinary investigation. Definitely not a shit case.

  “Because of the little girl and the media
’s interest in the case, the bosses higher up are on the rampage. Their orders are that the case should have top priority,” said Claes, looking at me.

  “You’re telling us that SEB was robbed by a seven-year-old? Was she carrying a bazooka or something?”

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything, but I couldn’t resist pointing out how comical it all sounded.

  “Why don’t you shut up, Leona, and let me finish.”

  I often had a hard time comprehending Claes’s choice of words and the way he constantly raised his voice. He seemed to have a relentless storm of emotions bubbling up inside him and affecting his mood.

  I wondered how that felt.

  “No weapon has been reported. The girl had a tape recorder with her and played a message. What exactly was said on it we still don’t know. The bank employees are being interviewed right now. According to witnesses the girl is about seven. She was naked and is also said to have had blood on her body. So far we have found no trace of her. She seems to have vanished into thin air.”

  People were murmuring indistinctly. A little girl had carried out a bank robbery?

  Naked.

  Bloody.

  The team had never faced anything like this before. There probably hadn’t been a similar case at any point in Swedish crime history. We had all been involved in strange investigations over the years, but even a few of the older detectives seemed moved. I turned to Claes.

  “A naked girl on the streets of Stockholm can hardly have gone up in smoke. Someone must have seen something. Has the dog squad been out there?”

  Claes avoided meeting my eyes. He acted as if the question had been asked from somewhere near the ceiling at the far end of the room. He looked up as he answered.

  “The dogs behaved strangely and were unable to pick up a scent. According to witnesses the girl went north on Nybrogatan. After that it was as if she was swallowed by the crowd.”

  “Someone must have picked her up in a car nearby. Or she could have disappeared up a stairwell. What do we have there?” I asked.

  “Cars in the area are being stopped. There have been no traces so far. Officers are going door to door. We’ll have to see what that produces.”

  He looked down at his papers.

  “The preliminary investigation is being conducted by the police, because so far we have no suspects, but considering the circumstances, with the girl and the media attention, the case will be randomly assigned to a prosecutor.”