You Are Next by Arne Dahl

Author:Arne Dahl [Dahl, Arne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473569256
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2022-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

III

26

Saturday 5 December, 19:22

The stolen old Volvo pulled into the abandoned industrial area. The weather gods were playing cat and mouse with them – the storm had withdrawn temporarily before cranking the stakes up a notch at the critical moment. But right now everything was dark and silent.

Dark as the grave.

Silent as the grave.

Berger was driving, and Blom was directing him from the back seat with Aisha Pachachi’s head on her lap. The seventeen-year-old wasn’t even whimpering – nothing other than tortured breathing crossed her lips. But she was clutching her teddy bear tightly.

She hadn’t been conscious for even a second.

But they had found her.

For a long time out on Fjärdlång, that had been enough. They had found her alive – the seventh of the girls. No more seven minus one.

They had basked in the sweet realisation.

Perhaps they had basked a little too long, because afterwards, something bitter had cut through that sweetness – the multifaceted, sour realisation that Carsten had got away. That he might return at any moment, that the speedboat they had heard might not have been his.

Then the next question: why wasn’t he there? Why hadn’t he tried to stop them? Aisha was Judas’s ticket to thirty pieces of silver. Why had he let her go so lightly?

And had he actually done that?

It had been Carsten himself who had provided Molly with the clue – he had wanted her to come there. But only her. There was naturally the possibility that he had fled when he’d seen that she wasn’t alone – and if that were the case, how had he seen them?

But did that really sound like Carsten? The man who had killed another person in cold blood, someone tied up, simply to frame Berger for the murder … The man who had seemingly, without hesitation, stuck a knife in the eyes of an inquisitive neighbour?

If Carsten wanted to hang on to Aisha Pachachi at any cost, he would have done it. Something had happened. Something had changed his plans.

The wedding photo with the sinister orange around the eyes contradicted the idea that Carsten had dropped his fixation on Molly Blom. On the contrary, it seemed as active as ever. But he had given up Aisha. Did that mean he had also given up Molly?

They had wandered around the small house on Fjärdlång sinking into a quicksand of questions, unable to find any answers that satisfied them.

And in the meantime, the clock had been ticking.

They didn’t know what condition Aisha was in. Had Carsten left her to die? Had he added poison to her drip? Had he found another, better route to Ali Pachachi and simply abandoned her? They didn’t know how long she had been there – it could have been since the Sunday before, perhaps longer. When they got down to it, they didn’t know when Carsten and Aisha had left Tensta.

There was, however, one question that overshadowed all the others: what were they supposed to do with Aisha? Call an air ambulance?

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