The Ninth Grave Read online

  THE NINTH GRAVE

  Stefan Ahnhem

  Translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlen

  Start Reading

  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About The Ninth Grave

  TWO COUNTRIES IN THE GRIP OF WINTER

  On the coldest day of the year, Sweden’s Minister for Justice steps out of his car and into a blizzard – and disappears. That night, across the Baltic Sea, a Danish celebrity finds a stranger lurking in her snow-bound home.

  TWO KILLERS STALK THE STREETS

  One is a surgeon who carefully dissects his victims. The other is a brutal predator who targets women. Police in Stockholm and Copenhagen are closing in on their suspects. But as winter darkens and more people die, their investigations begin to unravel.

  SOMETIMES MURDER IS JUST THE BEGINNING…

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About The Ninth Grave

  Ten Years Ago

  Part 1

  Two Days Ago

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Part 2

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Epilogue

  X

  Acknowledgements

  About Stefan Ahnhem

  About the Translator

  About the Fabian Risk Thrillers

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  Ten Years Ago

  IT WAS SO DARK he could barely see what was right in front of him. The prisoner transport vehicle lurched forward so vigorously on its way through the difficult terrain that the letters he was trying to write were almost illegible. But that couldn’t be helped. It was his last chance to record his story of the love affair that made him leave everything behind before the pool of blood under him got too big. He would describe how he was shot down and captured by his own people and how he was now on his way to almost certain death.

  He had found the pen in the Israeli military camp at the Huwwara Checkpoint that was in the uncontrolled part of the West Bank. The paper came from some empty diary pages he had found in Tamir’s backpack, along with the used envelope he could turn inside out.

  Once he was finished writing, he folded up the pages of the letter with his bloody hands, slipped them into the envelope, and sealed it as best he could. He had no stamp – or even an address. All he had was a name. But he didn’t hesitate to push the letter out through the thin crack in the truck and let it go. If it was God’s will, the letter would get there, he thought, giving in to fatigue.

  The envelope didn’t even have a chance to hit the ground before it was sucked up by the strong winds and pushed higher and higher up into the black, starless sky that was starting to resemble a storm above the Nablus mountains. The time between dull rumbles and flashes of lightning diminished and a feeling of rain was hanging in the air. In only a matter of seconds, the imminent rain would hammer the envelope down to the ground and transform the dry earth to wet clay. But no rain ever came, and the bloodstained envelope continued its journey over the mountains and across the border towards Jordan.

  *

  SALADIN HAZAYMEH WAS LYING on his sleeping pad looking up towards the sky, where the light of dawn was making its first hesitant attempts to peak out. The strong winds from the night’s storm had finally calmed down and it looked like it might be a beautiful day.

  It felt as if the sun had decided to clean up the sky for his seventieth birthday. And though his birthday was the reason for this ten-day-long hike, Saladin Hazaymeh was preoccupied by something else.

  When he first noticed it up in the sky, he thought it was an airplane several thousand metres above him, but then he decided it must be a bird with an injured wing. Now he had no idea what was floating down to the ground some fifty metres ahead of him, glistening in the light from the sun.

  Saladin Hazaymeh got up and noticed his usual morning back pain was gone. He hurried to roll up his sleeping pad and put it in his backpack. Something was about to happen – something of great significance – and he felt full of energy.

  It could only be a sign from the God he had believed in for as long as he could remember, telling him that he was on the right path. For this birthday, he’d retraced the steps of Jesus all the way from Jerusalem to the Sea of Galilee.

  Yesterday he had visited the holy grotto in Anjara and had hoped to spend the night there, just as Jesus had done with his disciples and the Virgin Mary. But the guards had discovered him and he had been forced to sleep under the open sky. But there was a meaning to everything, thought Saladin, hurrying off with a light step across the uneven land towards the olive tree, where the si
gn from God was caught among the branches.

  When he got there he saw that it was an envelope. An envelope?

  As much as he tried he could not come up with a logical reason to explain its origins. He finally decided that Heaven would have to do. And perhaps that wasn’t completely wrong. His inner voice kept repeating how important it was that he took care of it, like a mantra. It was how things were intended. That – and nothing else – was the real point of all his wandering.

  After a number of attempts, he managed to hit the envelope with a stone and catch it before it hit the ground. It was dirty and full of small tears and looked as if it had survived the end of the world against all odds. It was also heavier than he’d expected.

  All doubt had now blown away. God had chosen him. This was not just any old envelope.

  He inspected both sides for clues, but found nothing other than a name written in small, sprawling letters: Aisha Shahin.

  Saladin Hazaymeh sat down on a stone and laboriously sounded out the name, but it meant nothing to him. After some hesitation he took out his knife and carefully slit open the envelope. Unaware that he was holding his breath he pulled out and opened the letter, examining the long rows of handwriting.

  It was Hebrew, that much he could tell. But he could barely read Arabic, so how would he able to understand this?

  What was God trying to say? Was he punishing him because he never learned to read? Or was the letter not intended for him at all? Was he only an insignificant middleman whose sole purpose was to pass it along? He tried without success to dismiss the disappointment, while he folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. He continued his wandering northward toward Ajloun, where he reluctantly put the letter in a mailbox.

  *

  MANY WOULD SURELY THINK that Khaled Shawabkeh had behaved shamefully and was deeply immoral. He, on the other hand, did not feel guilty at all when he picked up the envelope without a stamp, sender or complete address. Letters where the sender had failed to do their part became his property. It was a practice he had applied without exception during the forty-three years he had worked sorting mail.

  At home he had many boxes filled with stray letters, one for each year. He liked nothing more than fishing one out at random and studying the contents that were meant for someone else. This particular envelope was something out of the ordinary.

  The oxidation confirmed that the journey itself must have been an adventure. Moreover, someone had already slit the envelope open, but left all the contents inside – for him and no one else.

  Exactly ninety-eight minutes earlier than usual, Khaled Shawabkeh arrived home and locked the door. He had skipped afternoon tea, even though he’d brought harissa cakes, and jogged the whole way home from the bus. Now he was out of breath and could feel the sweat trying to penetrate his tight polyester shirt. Dinner could wait. Instead, he poured a glass of wine from the bottle hidden behind the books on the bookshelf, sat down in the armchair, took out the envelope and solemnly coaxed out the letter.

  ‘Finally,’ he said to himself, reaching for the wine, blissfully ignorant of how the blood clot, which had been building up in his left leg for several years, loosened and followed the blood flow all the way up to his lungs.

  *

  EVEN THOUGH IT HAD been more than a year since Maria’s uncle died from a lung embolism, she still had not set foot in his house. Her two brothers had challenged the will and done everything they could to pressure her to refuse the inheritance. Even her own father had tried to convince her, arguing that Khaled Shawabkeh had gradually lost his mind over the years and had left his house in disarray. He also didn’t think women would ever be able to manage property.

  But Maria held her own and now, finally, she could put the key in the lock and go inside. In the negotiations she’d become estranged from her brothers and parents. The house would be cleared out and sold, and with the money she could afford to quit her job at the tailoring shop, move to Amman and start working her dream job at the Jordanian National Commission for Women.

  *

  IT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN possible. There was really nothing to suggest that the letter would ever reach its recipient. With all the obstacles, the probability was so slight it was impossible to calculate.

  Yet that was exactly what happened.

  One year, four months and sixteen days after the letter had been pushed through a crack in the prisoner transport vehicle and taken hold of by the winds in the black nights it ended up in Maria Shawabkeh’s hands. A few hours later, she had succeeded in piecing together most of the missing information.

  Three sleepless nights after reading the horrific story from the letter, she made a few Internet searches, put a stamp on the envelope, wrote down the complete address and left it at the nearest post office – without any idea of the consequences.

  Aisha Shahin

  Selmedalsvägen 40, 7th Floor

  129 37 Hägersten

  Sweden

  Part 1

  16–19 December 2009

  Many people will be horrified by the things I’ve done. Some will see them as revenge for all the injustices that have been committed; others as an unlikely game to trick the system and show how far one person can go. But the vast majority will believe that these are the actions of an extremely sick person.

  All of them will be wrong.

  Two Days Ago

  SOFIE LEANDER WAS SITTING in the waiting room at Stockholm South General Hospital waiting for an ultrasound. She was browsing through a well-thumbed copy of We Parents filled with page after page of beautiful, happy mums and dads and she wanted nothing more than to be one of them. But after so many fruitless rounds of IVF, she’d started to doubt that her egg production would ever get started.

  This was her absolute last chance. If the procedure didn’t work this time, she would have no choice other than to give up – something her husband already seemed to have done.

  He had promised to be by her side when she needed him, but he’d missed today’s appointment. She turned on her cell phone and read his message again: Have a conflict and unfortunately won’t make it. He treated the whole experience like it was shopping for milk on the way home from work. He hadn’t even said ‘good luck’.

  She had hoped that the move to Sweden three years ago would revive their relationship, especially since he had chosen to take her surname. She’d seen it as a declaration of love; proof the two of them were united, no matter what happened. Now, she was no longer so sure and she couldn’t escape the feeling that they were slipping further and further away from each other. She had tried to bring it up, but he persistently avowed his love for her. She could see it in his eyes though; or, more correctly, in the way he avoided her eyes.

  Now, the man who had once saved her life suddenly had conflicts and hardly looked in her direction. She wanted to call and confront him, to ask if he’d stopped loving her or if he’d met someone else. But she didn’t dare. Besides, she was sure he wouldn’t answer. He almost never did when he was working, and especially not now when he was in the middle of a new project – something so secret that he couldn’t even tell her what it was. Her only chance was a positive report from the doctor. If she could just get that everything would surely be fine again. Then she would finally be able to give him the child they always wanted and he would realize how much he really loved her.

  ‘Sofie Leander,’ she heard her name being called. She followed the midwife through the corridor and was shown into a small examination room with closed blinds, a large computer-like apparatus and a hospital bed.

  ‘You can hang up your coat on the hook and then lie down on the bed. The doctor will be here at any moment.’

  Sofie nodded and took off her coat and boots as the midwife left the room. Once on the bed, she pulled up her blouse and unbuttoned her trousers. She decided to try her husband anyway and ask what was so important that he couldn’t join her. As she was reaching for her handbag the door opened and the doctor came in.
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  ‘Are you Sofie Leander?’

  Sofie nodded.

  ‘Good. I’ll have you start by lying down on your side with your back to me.’

  Sofie did as she was told and could hear the doctor opening some plastic packaging behind her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about the whole situation that didn’t feel right.

  ‘Excuse me, I’m here to have my ovaries examined.’

  ‘Absolutely. We just have to take care of this first,’ the doctor said, pressing on her vertebrae.

  Suddenly she felt a prick in the middle of her back.

  ‘What are you doing? Did you just stick me with a syringe?’ Sofie turned around and saw something slip into the doctor’s trouser pocket. ‘Now I demand to know what—’

  ‘You don’t need to worry. This is purely routine. Are those your things?’ the doctor said, pointing to her coat and boots, but didn’t wait for an answer and set them by her feet. ‘We don’t want to forget anything, do we?’

  This wasn’t the first time Sofie had been in for an ultrasound of her ovaries, so she knew that this definitely was not routine. She had no idea what this was. All she was sure of was that she no longer wanted to be part of it and wanted to get away from the doctor, the examination room and the entire hospital.

  ‘I think I have to go now,’ she said, trying to get up. ‘I want to leave. Do you hear me!?’ But her body refused to obey. ‘What’s happening? What have you done?’

  The doctor leaned towards her, smiling and stroking her cheek, before stretching a respiratory mask across Sofie’s face. ‘You’ll understand soon.’

  Sofie tried to protest and scream as loud as she could, but the mask suffocated all sound. Before she knew it, the brakes of the bed had been released and she was being pushed out of the examination room and into the corridor.

  If only she could grab something, anything at all, and pull herself out of the bed to make everyone realize what was happening. But she couldn’t. All she could do was lie there, stare up at the ceiling and watch as the fluorescent lights passed by and doors opened in front of them.

  She saw so many faces: pregnant mothers and soon-to-be fathers, midwives and doctors. They were all so close, but still so far away. She heard voices and the sound of elevator doors opening and then closing behind her. Or were they opening? She was disoriented.