kill her. She knew that for a fact. She simply couldn’t let there be a next time.
Never.
Never.
Never.
She’d made up her mind. He would never be a part of her life again. She was finally going to put her past behind her.
Her hands trembled against the cold, hard porcelain.
The walls were closing in on her, and she was having trouble breathing. She understood that letting him go was the most important decision of her life. It meant letting go of her horrific childhood, her past, and moving on with her life—but she had lived her entire life with the uncertainty of who she was and had just begun to find answers.
She looked into the mirror. Her eyes narrowed.
There is no time for hesitation, she thought, turning around and yelling as if Danilo were standing there. She hit the door, aiming again, kicking, screaming.
Panting, she sat down on the floor.
Her mind was racing. Memories of him washed over her like a tidal wave. His face in hers, his ice-cold eyes, his hard voice.
I’m warning you.
“I have to,” she whispered. “I don’t want to, but I have to.”
She got up carefully and repeated this again and again, as if to convince herself that she was making the right decision. Slowly she stepped back to the sink and forced herself to breathe calmly.
From now on, everything is different, she thought.
From now on, I’m done with Danilo.
GUNNAR ÖHRN AND County Police Commissioner Carin Radler stood in front of the oval table in the police department conference room on the third floor. Gunnar glanced at the clock just as Detective Inspector Mia Bolander came into the room, almost ten minutes late for the meeting with the National Crime Squad.
“Sorry,” she said, mumbling an inaudible explanation. She sat down at the table, avoiding Gunnar’s tired look by fixing her gaze out the window.
He closed the door and sat down next to her.
Around the table sat Mia, Gunnar and Carin, as well as Anneli Lindgren, Henrik Levin and technician Ola Söderström. Mia noticed one more person in the room.
She guessed from his appearance that he was VIP brass.
“What about Jana?” she whispered to Gunnar.
“What about her?” he hissed back.
“She’s not here?”
“No.”
“Why not? Why should we have to be here if she doesn’t have to?”
“Because we were told to be here.”
“But she should be here. She was in charge of the preliminary investigation in the case, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?” Gunnar looked at her. “Do you want me to call her?”
“No.”
“Then be quiet.”
Carin Radler cleared her throat.
“Now that we are all here, let me introduce the commissioner of the National Crime Squad, Anders Wester.” Gesturing toward him, she continued, “He and I have had an internal conversation and I’ve called this meeting so that you will all be informed of what he has to say about the investigation that was carried out last spring.”
“Isn’t it better for us to spend our time working on new cases rather than closed ones?” said Gunnar.
Carin ignored him and sat down.
Mia smiled wryly. This was going to be interesting, she thought, her eyes drifting to Anders Wester. She examined his bald head, black-rimmed glasses and blue eyes. His lips were narrow and his face seemed relatively pale. His posture was less than impressive, with stooped shoulders and feet that pointed inward.
“Thank you,” Anders began. “As Carin said, we have already begun a discussion about the investigation you carried out last spring, and that is what I’m here to talk to you about today.”
“Get on with it then,” said Gunnar.
“It happens at times—” Anders straightened his shoulders a little “—that some districts attempt to lead federal murder investigations on their own, without the help of the National Crime Squad. Sometimes the outcome is good. Sometimes not so good. We have brought to Carin’s attention the mistakes that were made in last spring’s investigation.”
The room was quiet. Everyone exchanged glances, but no one spoke.
Then Gunnar scratched his chin and leaned forward over the table.
“Come on, you can say it! You think we did a bad job,” he said.
“Gunnar...” Carin said, holding up a hand to calm him.
“A mistake was made, yes,” Anders replied.
“A mistake?” Gunnar said. “What do you mean, a mistake?”
“It’s called a lack of cooperation. As you know, Gunnar, our purpose is to fight serious organized crime, and in order to carry out our purpose as professionally as possible, we have to cooperate on a national level. It sounds obvious, for most...”
“Listen. We did everything... There wasn’t any more we could do.”
“Except contacting us earlier. Playing special ops is not recommended. Not at the county level.”
“What should we have done, do you think?”
“You should have brought us in much earlier, as I said.”
“We let you take over.”
“Yes, but even that didn’t go according to plan.”
Gunnar chuckled.
“And whose fault was that?”
“Gunnar...” Carin gave him a look of warning.
Mia stretched her legs out in front of her.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Gunnar continued, “but we exposed a gang that had for many years been trafficking drugs via illegal refugee children. We captured their leader, Gavril Bolanaki, and everything was handy-dandy until you took over and started negotiating with Bolanaki.”
“You know very well that he had important information.”
“Oh,
