Chapter 101
Exactly twenty-seven minutes have passed as they approach the roundabout for Storlien. Daniel has never driven so fast.
Every minute feels like an eternity.
If Filip isn’t already dead, they are facing a hostage situation. There is also a great deal to suggest that Mogren is mentally unstable, which makes him even more unpredictable.
The tires screech as Daniel turns into the hotel complex without slowing down.
Hanna has called the duty officer at regional dispatch and requested the immediate deployment of a SWAT team with an experienced negotiator.
RapidReach text messages have gone out to all key personnel who are usually brought in during a hostage situation like this.
Unfortunately the only police helicopter is being used elsewhere, so the team will have to drive up from ?stersund.
This means it will be three to four hours before they are on the scene—optimistically at around two thirty.
Daniel would like them here right now.
To be on the safe side, he parks some distance away from the entrance. Leffe is waiting for them behind one of the neighboring buildings.
“Do you think Filip is still alive?” Hanna asks Daniel as she unfastens her seatbelt.
“I hope so.”
He knows he sounds terse. That isn’t his intention, but the gravity of their position has pushed aside all superfluous words.
The hotel looms up a few hundred yards away. The sky is gray and overcast; the windows stare down, black and empty. Someone could hide absolutely anywhere in there.
Daniel’s heart is pounding as he stares at the complex. He thinks of other critical incidents in which he has played a part. In Gothenburg, where he worked to bring down criminal gangs, he was at serious risk on more than one occasion. These were difficult challenges in particularly exposed areas.
This could be worse.
He wishes there was a handbook for dealing with a perpetrator of Mogren’s caliber.
Even if Filip is inside the hotel, and still alive, he is still at the killer’s mercy.
In which case they are facing the enormous task of persuading Mogren to give himself up, to hand over his prey unhurt.
However, if he is in the throes of some kind of psychosis, it might not even be possible to establish contact.
Mogren has already killed twice. He has no reason to spare Charlotte’s son.
Daniel gets out of the car with a heavy heart.
This is no ordinary hostage situation where the kidnapper wants something in exchange. This is what is known as a victim situation: Mogren has abducted Filip for emotional reasons.
He has picked out his victim in order to do him harm, not in order to effect some kind of exchange. He seems to be living entirely within his own world of bitterness and old injustices. Otherwise he wouldn’t have taken his revenge on his own half sister and nephew.
How do you even reach a man like that?