Chapter Nine #3
“I need time to think about this,” she said.
“You’ll have to come into the kitchen and talk to my father for a few minutes.
I need to grab my phone. This is not as simple as my just leaving the house with you, you know?
” The look on his face showed that was what he’d been hoping for, but this was too big and she needed more information before she came to any conclusion.
The likelihood was, she was going to have to make another hard decision.
One that she didn’t think M?rten was going to like.
All of her earlier agreeable emotions, all the attraction she’d felt for this man only moments ago, now disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Why was her love life so doomed? Why couldn’t she have a simple relationship?
If she’d met Jiro in a bar some night in town, they could’ve gone home together, had wild, orgasmic sex, then she could’ve seen him off on the cruise, happy, satisfied and just a little bit in love.
No harm done, and no long-term commitment made.
But now, it all became terribly complicated, and there was no hope for either of them.
Pulling her features into some sort of composure, she led Jiro into the kitchen. “Fader, you remember Jiro?” she asked cordially.
“What’s he doing here so early in the morning?
Is this going to be a common occurrence with you two now?
” he replied in Swedish. Karl had not been happy that she and Jiro had decamped so early yesterday morning, leaving him in the care of Millie.
It seemed like his initial liking for Jiro had evaporated as quickly as it had formed.
Not capable of dealing with her father’s sharp tongue, she said to Jiro, “I’m just gonna get my phone and get dressed.
I won’t be long.” She pivoted toward the stairs up to her room, then turned back again, deciding to give him a warning.
“I’m sorry. He’s not in a good mood.” It was a weak explanation, but Jiro was a grown man; he’d just have to deal with Karl’s spitefulness the best way he knew how.
Five minutes later, she descended the stairs dressed in civilian clothes to find both men sitting at the table, chatting away much as they had done the other night.
Jiro had obviously worked his magic again.
Jiro looked up and then stood as he heard her footsteps.
“I helped myself to a coffee,” he said, holding up a mug. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Before she could answer, her phone jangled in her hand with an incoming call. Checking the caller ID, she swore softly under her breath. “I have to take this. It’s M?rten.”
Jiro stiffened at the mention of his name, probably wondering what she was going to say to her police partner.
And she was wondering pretty much the same thing.
But she couldn’t avoid this call. He might have something important about the case to tell her.
If they’d caught the guys who kidnapped Kenichi, then all this clandestine stuff might already have been resolved.
She went back upstairs to her bedroom and shut the door to take the call privately.
“Hej, M?rten, god morgon,” she said, making her tone bright and breezy.
“God morgon, Aurora.” M?rten’s voice was deep, familiar and completely normal, which was good news from her point of view. “Sorry to call you at home like this; I know you don’t start work until midday.”
She had to keep reminding herself that he knew nothing of what it transpired at her house this morning, and she just had to keep it together not to give any of it away. “Not a problem, M?rten. What's up?”
“Chief Rydberg has requested I go down to Malmo to help out with a gang-related bombing. Two people died in the attack. It’s getting out of hand down there. I am leaving this morning, so I wanted to let you know in person. Hopefully, I will only be gone a few days.”
“Oh. Okay.” Aurora tried to pretend she wasn’t taken aback.
This kind of thing happened all the time.
Inspectors got assigned, constables got moved to different cases, staff were allocated where they were needed most, and cases with high priority got more action.
And the bombings in Malmo were becoming more and more of an issue, as second and third-generation immigrants who’d been brought in as refugees transferred their gang culture and violent crimes to their new country.
It seemed as if the officers down there were stretched to the limits, and now they were reporting two or three bombings a day, often with the use of hand grenades, which was a relatively new development.
The government had started cracking down by trying to address the issues in the poorer areas, but everyone in the force silently agreed rampant crime was still out of control.
“What about our kidnapping case?” she asked.
It was stretching the truth to say it was their case.
Just because she and M?rten had been the first to speak to Jiro, and she’d been instrumental in recovering his father from the cabin in the woods didn’t mean it was their case.
Aurora’s jaw ached with the effort not to say the words on the tip of her tongue. “I’d like to stay on that if—”
M?rten cut her off. “I’m really sorry, but Chief Rydberg has handed the Nashimori case over to Inspector Dalstrom.
That’s another reason I called. I wanted to tell you myself.
Dalstrom has said he doesn't require your assistance. Which I find a little… unexpected,” he said.
M?rten would never come out and directly criticize a fellow inspector; in fact, he had told her more than once that Dalstrom was a solid guy—which she was now finding very hard to believe.
But she could hear the puzzlement in his voice as he wondered why she was being excluded from the case.
But M?rten wasn’t prepared to argue with the chief. Not at the moment.
“They hope to interview the old man when he comes out of his coma.” His unspoken words hovered between them.
It wasn’t when the old man woke up, but if.
“Rydberg still needs convincing that this was actually a kidnapping case. I know you have your theories on it,” he continued quickly, not letting her get a word in.
“But without Kenichi’s testimony, I think they feel this is pretty much a dead end. ”
“What?” She could barely believe what she was hearing.
Any thoughts she might have had about revealing to M?rten what Jiro had just told her this morning fled.
She certainly wasn’t going to take this to Dalstrom.
If she did and he fucked it up like he had done with the search the other night, then Taro could end up dead.
Potentially, Jiro could even end up dead.
And she wasn’t prepared to take that risk.
“But there are all kinds of leads we need to pursue. What about the footprints around the cabin?” They couldn’t just ignore that, could they?
There was definitely someone else out there.
“And what about the woman, Tory, who said she saw him talking to someone in the barbecue hut right before he disappeared? She might’ve seen the guy who was instrumental in his going missing.
I was going to talk to her today.” Aurora was kicking herself that she hadn’t done it earlier.
But with all the chaos surrounding finding the old man and taking him to the hospital, then getting reamed out by everybody for doing it without permission, Aurora hadn’t really had time.
But Tory was still one of the best leads they had.
Someone had abducted the old man, and this guy who’d been talking to him in the barbecue hut might well be top of the suspect list. He could also be the person responsible for sending the text to Jiro, but she wasn’t about to tell M?rten that.
“Is Dalstrom going to follow up with her?”
“I’m really sorry, Aurora.” She could hear the empathy in his voice; he understood that this case meant a lot to her, even if he didn’t know all the details of why.
He would know how hard it was to be removed from a case that you were invested in.
“But there is plenty to keep you occupied while I’m gone,” he continued, and began to reel off a list of the current cases they were investigating.
Of course there was always the obligatory paperwork to be done, some research on a cold case they’d reopened into the death of a child ten years ago when fresh evidence had to come to light, and follow-up interviews with witnesses to a mugging and assault the other day down at the train station.
She also knew that in M?rten’s absence she would probably be allocated front desk duty most days on her shift anyway.
Her heart sank, and her thoughts drifted so that she almost didn’t notice when M?rten stopped talking.
“Are you okay with all of that, Aurora?”
“Yes, yes, that’s fine.” She allowed the flat tone in her voice to leak through.
It would do him no harm to know she was disappointed.
But if he thought she was otherwise occupied, it would also throw him off the trail of what he was really up to.
Because in that moment she decided she was going to help Jiro.
“Let me know how it goes down in Malmo. Stay safe,” she added before she rang off.
She didn’t trust Dalstrom to follow up on anything after the way he’d handled the search the other night.
She’d mentioned her misgivings to M?rten yesterday, and while he’d been puzzled, he also reiterated that Dalstrom was a genuine cop with a good record.
Perhaps there’d been something else going on the other night, he’d suggested.
Some other pressures from work, or even from his personal life.
But Aurora had a suspicion that Dalstrom might come up with some half-assed theory that the old man had got lost and wandered off to the cabin because that was the easiest assumption.
Although how he might explain away the second set of footprints, plus the drugs in the old man’s system, was anyone’s guess.
Perhaps if Kenichi woke up and was cognizant enough to reveal what it happened, then Dalstrom might order a proper investigation, but it also might be too late by then.
She knew she’d made up her mind. But they still needed a plan of action. She took the stairs two at a time back down to the kitchen to let Jiro know she was in.