The Long Shadow by Liza Marklund

Author:Liza Marklund [Marklund, Liza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2013-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

The cell had no window. The floor was the same colour as it was in the corridor, but the walls were darker, greyer. Annika stared into the room, at first unable to see the prisoner in his grey clothes sitting on his grey bed. She stopped short when she met his gaze from the far corner.

‘Good morning,’ Carita said, going to him and shaking his hand. ‘My name’s Carita, I’m an interpreter, but I understand that you speak Swedish.’

Johan Manolo Zarco Martinez got up slowly and reluctantly, his eyes on Annika. ‘You the reporter?’ he asked.

His accent was from the suburbs with a large migrant population. Annika held out her right hand. He took it and looked at her dubiously. ‘My lawyer said you were pretty,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t met you, has he?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ Annika said. ‘I’m afraid he was going on hearsay.’

‘You didn’t bring a beer or anything with you? They don’t check that closely.’

Carita sat at the end of the bed.

A low-energy bulb in the ceiling was casting a bluish light from above, throwing deep shadows under the man’s eyes and nose. Annika glanced round the cell. There was nowhere to sit apart from the bed. A faint whining sound was coming from the air-vent by the door. It was cold, but not as cold as it was in the corridor. She stayed on her feet, with her back against the door. An hour felt like eternity. ‘Your name’s Johan?’ she asked.

‘Jocke,’ he said, slipping back into the shadows at the corner of the bed again. ‘But you’re not going to print my name, right? I don’t want my picture in the paper. Mum still lives in Sweden, you know. My sister too.’

Annika knew he was almost twenty-six, but he looked younger. There was something naïve about him, something rather touching, or possibly just a bit crazy. ‘What would you like me to call you in the article?’ she asked. ‘You can suggest a name.’

He lit up. ‘Any name I like?’

Annika nodded.

‘Steel Bollocks!’ he yelled, then burst out laughing so hard he could hardly breathe.

She sighed and waited for the laughter to stop. ‘Are you okay with … Andreas?’

He stopped laughing and pretended to throw up. ‘No, fuck it, that’s totally fucking uncool.’ He thought hard for a few seconds. ‘Call me Bobby.’

‘That’s not a Swedish name. It’s English.’

He straightened his back indignantly. ‘What the hell? You said I could choose!’

‘A Swedish name.’

He slumped back against the wall with his arms folded. ‘Fredrik,’ he said.

‘Fredrik,’ Annika confirmed, unable to see why Fredrik was so much cooler than Andreas.

Martinez pulled his sleeves down over his hands and tucked his knees up under his chin. ‘Have you any idea how long I’ve been in here? I’ve told them I was supposed to drive the gear to Stockholm so I could get a quick trial, but the bastards tricked me. I said I wanted to be transferred to Sweden, but now they’re going to take me to the provincial prison in Alhaurín de la Torre.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.