Stone Coffin Part 33

"In part it's the medical terminology. It was about Parkinson's research. We got that much. But the doc.u.ment was formatted so strangely that we couldn't make heads or tails of it."

"Is it about primates?" Lindell asked.

"To be honest, we don't know," Mrd said. "What made us more curious was a comment written in Swedish at the very bottom. Someone had written a note in large letters that said, 'I recommend not proceeding further. Insanity-may involve great risk and suffering.'"

"Was it signed?"

"No, it was just a scribbled comment," Mrd said.

"And where is this doc.u.ment now?"

Mrd looked worried. His fleshy face twisted into a grimace and he gazed out over the garden. Lindell followed his gaze and saw the j.a.panese tourists gathered around a small pond. They were wearing similar red hats and their heads moved obediently in the direction indicated by their guide.

"It's gone," Mrd said."At least as far as I can tell."

"Gone?"

"After the research director at the company died, our contact got cold feet. The person in question now refuses to talk to us and the doc.u.ment has been destroyed."

Lindell noted that Mrd had not said "he" but "the person in question." Did that mean it was a woman?

Mrd explained that his contact at MedForsk no longer wanted to talk to his friend in the animal rescue organization. He or she had said that the matter was now closed. The doc.u.ment had been shredded and the contact would deny all knowledge of its existence.

"You don't have a copy of it?"

"No, we never got one."

"Do you remember anything else?"

Mrd shook his head. A dead end, Lindell thought with frustration, and tried to think of a way out.

"Do you think it described illegal activities? Do you know if your contact at MedForsk felt threatened?"

"I don't know anything more than I already told you."

It suddenly occurred to Lindell that the contact may have been Cederen, but Mrd immediately dismissed this.

"I have to admit that I feel a bit nervous myself," Mrd said.

"Why are you telling me all this?" Lindell asked.

"To help my friend. When they did the thing at TV4 they didn't have the whole picture. They were just protesting against the primate experiments. Now they're being squeezed. I think they're being watched pretty closely by your side."

"Of course they are," Lindell said. "It's a serious crime to take hostages. And they also injured one of the employees."

"Yes, I heard about that," Mrd said in a low voice. "But they didn't mean to do that. They didn't even have any weapons. The whole thing with the bomb was something they had made up, an empty threat."

"I suspected as much," Lindell said.

The j.a.panese tourists left the garden, talking animatedly. They streamed out of the exit like liquid pouring out of a bottle.

Lindell and Mrd remained on the bench, lost in reflection. Mrd's initial cheeriness and enthusiasm had given way to thoughtfulness and perhaps also fear. He had seen Lindell's gaze and intense interest in the doc.u.ment and realized-if he hadn't already-that he was in a minefield.

"You don't think..." Lindell began.

"No," Mrd broke in. "My contact is going to deny everything. I'm sure of it."

"Fear?"

"Yes. Even terror, I'd say."

"Have you met your contact?"

"No, only my friend did."

"What was their relationship to each other? I mean, why did the contact reach out to your friend?"

"I don't know," Mrd said, and this time Lindell believed him.

"You said that after Cederen died, the contact got cold feet, but the doc.u.ment probably came into the light of day after the TV4 event, which took place after the death. How does that all hang together?"

"I may not have expressed myself in the best way. What you're saying is right, but clearly something happened that shook up our contact."

"What were you working on earlier?" Lindell asked.

Mrd smiled before he answered.

"I was an investigator at the National Food Administration. I wrote my dissertation on free-range hens."

Lindell smiled. Free-range hens, she thought. That's me. I'm a free-range hen.

"Wild birds?" she asked.

"Not really, but free to wander a floor. There was a law pa.s.sed at the end of the eighties that outlawed caged hens, but since then, there has been exception after exception. I know what the food administration is capable of, and that's most likely also true of the pharmaceutical companies. Nothing is more important than profit."

"That's why you're involved in this?"

"Profits," he repeated simply and nodded.

"What does the name Gabriella Mark mean to you?"

"Should I know her?"

Lindell was about to say that she was dead but decided not to scare him further.

"What about Julio Pieda?"

Mrd jumped when she said his name, and he stared at her with bewilderment.

"Have you heard the name before?"

"Not heard, but I have seen it," Mrd said. "His name was in the doc.u.ment with a number of others."

"Can you remember any of the others?"

"No, but when you said his, I remembered that I had seen it," Mrd said. "What is this all about?"

"We don't know," Lindell answered honestly. "But so far it has cost five people their lives, maybe more."

"Five people," Mrd said breathlessly.

Lindell let this sink in. Where should she go from here? She believed Mrd's insistence that the animal rights activists had nothing to do with the death of the Cederen family, as well as that the event at TV4 had been highly illegal but had not const.i.tuted a threat to people's lives. If Mrd was telling the truth, the activists would lay low for a long time to come.

The answer lay in the doc.u.ment that had disappeared and also in Spain. She was more and more convinced of this. She should get in touch with the prosecutor to figure out how to proceed.

Lindell's thoughts were interrupted by Mrd.

"If this case is as serious as you say, that five people have died, then our contact at MedForsk is in grave danger, isn't that right?"

Lindell nodded.

"That's why we need to get in touch with him or her," Lindell said. It suddenly struck her that Gabriella Mark may have been the contact and that she may have paid with her life for having poked around on her own. There was nothing to say that the information had remained within MedForsk. It might have been Cederen who had written the comment across the bottom, shown Gabriella the doc.u.ment, and expressed his concerns about what the company was doing.

"I want to meet your friend," she said. "He can remain anonymous if he wants. But it's absolutely necessary for me to speak to him."

Mrd shook his head.

"It can help to solve the murders and may prevent more," Lindell urged. "Just talk to him anyway. Try to get him to understand the seriousness of the situation."

"I think he understands that," Mrd answered quickly.

"One of the murder victims may have been his contact," Lindell said. "And he could be next."

She hated having to paint such a threatening picture, but if they were to get any further, they would first have to crack the question of who the source was, the leak at MedForsk.

"I'll talk to him," Mrd said.

There was nothing left of his cheeriness. He sat leaning forward, staring down into the gravel. A flock of sparrows swooped down and landed in front of his feet.

Mrd turned his head. He was sweating profusely.

"It's incomprehensible what people will do for gain," he said. "When I started to get involved in this, I thought that we could change things, that human beings were fundamentally reasonable."

He fell silent again and turned to study the sparrows. His gaze turned reflective, as if from these small creatures he could discern some wisdom.

"Dialogue was what we called it. We were going to create a dialogue, but how do you talk to murderers? Is it so strange that teenagers become desperate and burn slaughtering trucks and release minks? I started as a field biologist, studied to become an agricultural expert, and imagined a future in research, making the world a better place."

"But," Lindell prompted when Mrd paused again.

"But," Mrd resumed, "there are structures we are powerless against. You see, there is an invisible network of power mongers, politicians, industry and finance people, researchers and journalists who steer our thoughts. This happens in the shadows. We think that we live in an open and democratic society, but these people control us. You probably do a good job, but you're only skimming the surface. The real criminals go free."

"Are you thinking of environmental crimes?" Lindell asked.

She had read statistics about how few cases were prosecuted and how only a small number of these led to sentencing.

"Yes, in part, but the really large crimes, I would prefer to call crimes against humanity. Those criminals receive honorary doctorates and even the n.o.bel Peace Prize. Who works for justice?"

The question hovered in the air. Lindell had no answer. Normally she would have replied that it was the police and the judicial branch, but she realized that this would carry no weight with Mrd.

"Talk to your friend. I gave you my card. Ask him to call me. Tell him that it could save a life. We may not be able to change the world, but we can solve this together," Lindell said and put a hand on his shoulder.

He looked up at her and smiled for the first time in a long time, nodded, stood up, adjusted his wrinkled pants, and left without saying a word.

Lindell stayed behind for a couple of minutes. Did they already have their eyes on Mrd? Was even he in danger?

She looked around the garden.

She called for a cab, which was not something she did very often. It would have taken only a quarter of an hour to walk back to the station, but she felt drained after the conversation with Adrian Mrd, and the feeling that she was one step behind made her want to hurry back.

Ottosson, Lindell, and Fritzen, the prosecutor, had a long meeting in the afternoon to review the current state of the investigation. All three agreed that they should question all the employees at MedForsk as soon as possible, as well as inform the Spanish police of their developments.

They decided to bring in everyone in the company at once, with the exception of any essential personnel who would keep the basic functions going-feeding test animals, answering the phones, or whatever.

There would of course be protests from Mortensen, but the prosecutor was convinced that they would reach the best results by taking this approach and that all complaints would be ignored.

"What you have to do is to shake up the employees," Fritzen said."Maybe we'll rattle them so much that one of them will let something slip and will give us something to go on."

They planned the interrogations and decided who would play what part. Berglund would take on Mortensen. Lindell would be the spider in the web and walk between the various sessions. After a while all of the interrogations would be suspended and the detectives would a.s.semble to compare results and decide how to proceed from there.

They would focus on three things: if anyone had had contact with or heard anything about the two Spanish men; if they had any comment about the allegations of illegal animal testing; and finally if they were aware that by withholding any information, they were making themselves an accessory to the crime.

"We need to frighten them a little bit," Ottosson said. "Lay it on thick."

"Should we make them think they will be detained at the station?" Lindell wondered and glanced at Fritzen.

When he didn't reply, she continued. "We could just say that it is for reasons to do with the investigation."

Both Fritzen and Ottosson knew very well what she was referring to.

"You'll have to make that determination yourselves," Fritzen said finally."I'm not going to rule it out."