Hes been shot through his chest and both eyes.
The back of his head is gone.
A dark puddle has spread out beneath him.
His hands are lying by his sides, as if hes sunbathing.
Saga raises her pistol again and checks the rest of the kitchen.
The curtains in front of the patio doors are swaying, billowing into the room. The rings on the curtain rod are tapping against each other.
Blood from the first shot to the mans head has sprayed far across the floor, and been trodden about by bare feet.
The prints lead directly towards Saga.
She quickly turns and sweeps her pistol around the room before walking back towards the double doors leading to the living room.
Saga startles when, from the corner of her eye, she sees a person crawling out from their hiding place behind one of the sofas.
She spins around just as the person stands up. Its a woman in a blue dress. Saga points her pistol between the womans breasts as she takes an unsteady step.
Hands behind your head! Saga calls out. Get on your knees, get down on your knees!
Keeping the pistol raised, Saga runs forward.
Please, the woman whispers, dropping the personal alarm on the floor.
She barely has time to show that her hands are empty before Saga kicks her from the side, just below her knee, so hard that both her legs are knocked out from under her and she falls to the floor with a thud, hip first, then her cheek and temple.
Saga is on her instantly. She punches her in her left kidney, then presses the pistol to the back of her head, holding her down with her right knee as she scans the room again.
Is there anyone else in the house?
Only the gunman, he went into the kitchen, the woman replies, gasping for breath. He fired and then went
Quiet! Saga interrupts.
Saga quickly rolls her onto her stomach and pulls her arms behind her. The woman submits to everything in a disconcertingly calm way. Saga handcuffs her with a zip tie, then gets to her feet and hurries into the kitchen, past the dead man.
The curtains are still billowing, blown by the wind.
Aiming the pistol ahead of her, she steps over a soot-smeared poker, checks the left-hand side of the kitchen, then moves behind the island unit towards the sliding doors.
Theres a round hole in the glass, made by a diamond cutter, and the door is open. Saga goes out onto the deck, and sweeps the lawn and flowerbeds with her pistol.
The water is still, the night silent.
Someone who broke into a house and carried out such a clean execution would never stay at the scene of the crime.
Saga goes back inside to the woman. She ties her ankles with more zip ties, but keeps one knee on the small of her back.
I need some answers, she says quietly.
I have nothing to do with this, I just happened to be here, I didnt see anything, the woman whispers.
Saga pulls the womans dress down to cover her bare backside before she gets up. Soon five SUVs will pull up outside and the Security Police will pour into the house.
How many gunmen?
Just one, I only saw one.
Can you describe him?
I dont know. He had a mask over his face, I didnt see anything, black clothes, gloves, it all happened so quickly. I thought he was going to kill me too, I thought
OK, just wait, Saga interrupts.
She goes over to the dead body. The mans round face is intact enough that she has no trouble identifying him. She pulls out her phone, moves a short distance away and calls the head of the Security Police. Its the middle of the night, but hes been waiting for the call and answers immediately.
The Foreign Ministers dead, she says.
8
Seven minutes later the house and grounds are swarming with members of the Security Polices specialist unit.
For the past two years the Security Police has dramatically increased the level of protection for members of the government, with bodyguards and modern personal alarms. There are different levels of alert, but because the terrified woman managed to press both buttons on the alarm simultaneously for longer than three seconds, a Code Platinum was declared.
The crime scene has been cordoned off, three separate zones around the Greater Stockholm area are being closely monitored, and roadblocks have been set up.
Janus Mickelsen comes in and shakes Sagas hand. Hes taking over command of the operation inside the house, and she quickly briefs him on the situation.
Janus has an almost hippie-like charm, with his strawberry-blond hair and pale ginger stubble. Saga always thinks he looks all peace and love, but she knows he used to be a professional soldier before he ended up in the Security Police. He took part in Operation Atalanta, and was stationed in the waters off Somalia.
Janus positions one agent at the door, even though they wont be keeping the usual list of people visiting the crime scene. Under Code Platinum regulations, no one can know who is informed or aware of events and who isnt.
Two Security Police officers walk over to the young woman Saga handcuffed. Her eyes are red from crying and her mascara has run down her temple.
One of the two men kneels down beside her and takes out a syringe. She becomes so scared that she starts to shake, but the other officer holds her tightly as the sedative is injected directly into her vein.
The womans cheeks turn red, she cranes her neck, her body tenses and then goes limp.
Saga watches them cut the zip ties, put an oxygen-mask over her nose and mouth, then lift the sedated woman into a body-bag and zip it closed. They carry the inert form outside to a waiting van.
The four other teams are already busy with their examination of the crime scene, scrupulously documenting everything. Theyre recording finger- and shoe-prints, mapping splatter patterns, bullet-holes and firing angles, gathering biological evidence, textile fibres, strands of hair, bodily fluids, fragments of bone and brain, as well as pieces of glass and splinters of wood.
The ministers wife and children are on their way home, Janus says. Their plane lands at Arlanda at 08.15, and everything needs to be cleaned up here by then.
The members of the unit have to gather information in one search. They wont get another chance.
Saga goes up the creaking staircase and into the Foreign Ministers bedroom. The room smells like sweat and urine. Leather straps hang from the four bedposts. There are bloodstains on the sheets.
A riding crop is visible on top of a chest of drawers, in the glow of a watch-winding case. Behind the glass a Rolex ticks silently next to a Breguet.
Saga wonders if the ministers wife knew about the prostitutes.
Probably not.
Maybe she just didnt ask.
Over the years you realise that you can put up with all sorts of cracks in your self-image and still cling to security.
Saga herself spent years in a relationship with a jazz pianist, Stefan Johansson, before he walked out on her.
Hes moved to Paris now. He plays in a band and hes engaged.
When Stefan is on tour in Sweden, he calls her late at night and she lets him come over. She knows theres no chance hell leave his fiancée for her, but has nothing against sleeping with him.
Saga knows she isnt easy to live with. She has a fiery temper and a tendency to overreact in certain situations.
She goes back downstairs to the bullet-riddled body in the kitchen.
The glare from the lights reflects off the ridged aluminium floor. It feels like shes standing on a silver bridge above a scene of bloodstained chaos.
Saga spends a long time looking at the dead mans upturned palms, the yellow callus beneath his wedding ring, the sweat-stains under the arms of his shirt.
The team around her are working quickly and silently. Theyre filming and cataloguing everything on an iPad using three-dimensional coordinates. Strands of hair and fabric are taped to transparent film, while tissue and skull-fragments are placed in test-tubes which are then immediately chilled.
Saga walks over to the patio door and examines the circular hole in the three layers of glass.
The alarm didnt go off until the chair was thrown at the window, when the acoustic detectors and magnetic contacts reacted.
So the chair wasnt thrown by the killer.
Saga thinks back to the look of terror on the womans face, her wounded wrists, the smell of urine.
Was she being held captive here?
Two men are covering the floor with large expanses of chilled foil, pressing it down using a wide rubber roller.
One IT specialist wraps the hard-drive from the security-camera controller in bubble-wrap, then puts it in a cool-box.
Janus is stressed. His jaw is clenched, and his freckled brow almost white and beaded with sweat.
OK... what do you think? he asks, coming over to stand beside Saga.
I dont know, she replies. The first shot to his abdomen was fired from a distance, and from a slightly strange angle.
Blood has been oozing from the Foreign Ministers stomach onto the floor.
A bullet leaves a ring of dirt around its entrance hole. There are two circles of powder dust on the mans shirt.
A bullet leaves a ring of dirt around its entrance hole. There are two circles of powder dust on the mans shirt.
The first two shots were from a distance, then there were two at extremely close range.
Saga bends over the body and looks at the entrance wounds in the eye-sockets, noting that there is none of the usual cratering around the openings.
He used a silencer, she whispers.
The killer must have used the kind of silencer that also muffles the flare, because there is no evidence of the percussive gases igniting. Otherwise the gas would have forced its way under the skin and left an obvious depression around the wound.
She straightens up and steps aside to make room for a forensics officer, who spreads a sheet of plastic over the dead mans face. He presses it against the bullet-holes in an effort to gather particles from the ring of dirt, then marks the centre of the entrance holes on the plastic with a marker.
He was rolled onto his stomach after his death, then over onto his back again, Saga says.
What for? the forensics officer asks. Why would
Shut up, Janus interrupts.
I want to see his back, Saga says.
Do what she says.
They all feel like time is starting to run out. They anxiously fasten bags around the Foreign Ministers hands, and lay out a body-bag beside him. They lift him up carefully and lay him down on his stomach in the bag. Saga looks at the wide exit wounds in his back and the messy void at the back of his head.