The Bucket List Read online

  She wished him good night after he had promised to ring the buzzer if he felt dizzy again. John waited until the woman left the room before he shut his eyes. The fragmented memories from the Port of Baltimore had suddenly made sense when he saw the man’s face. Despite his body’s protests and the pain at the back of his head beginning to throb, he forced himself to go back to that container where he had been convinced his life was going to end.

  Abaeze was there together with the rest of the familiar faces. And Ganiru, of course. Always Ganiru. He’s the one who called the meeting. Now he led them through the labyrinth of containers to the northern end of the port. Finally, he stopped in front of one of them and removed the bar so that the heavy doors swung open.

  He nodded at Abaeze, who was nearest, to indicate that he should go inside. Then John and the others followed. They positioned themselves along the walls and watched as Ganiru tried to close the doors behind them. The lock system resisted, but once he nudged it with his hip the bolts slid into the right position and what little light was still streaming in as a result of the early spring sunshine was shut out.

  A second later, a weak light on the ceiling of the container was turned on. John looked up and saw a builder’s lamp hanging from a hook. Ganiru took a few steps forward and reached for the light source. He unhooked it and held it in front of him at chest height. Its cold, white glow illuminated his face from below and made him look like an angry ghost.

  “Sit down.”

  John glanced at the others. It felt strange to get down onto the dirty floor.

  “Sit down,” Ganiru repeated.

  This time, the men obeyed, sitting and leaning back against the corrugated steel walls. John felt the cold metal chill him through his shirt.

  “What’s this about?” Abaeze asked.

  If he had said anything like that to Ganiru, he would have received a couple of hard slaps for his trouble. But it was different for Abaeze. He’d been there longer and had a higher status within the group.

  “I never thought I’d have to say this, but one of you has talked.”

  John was grateful that his face was in darkness and couldn’t give away anything as Ganiru spoke. He’d had nightmares about the boss’s huge hands around his throat so many times: the thumbs pressing in just below his Adam’s apple, pressing until he couldn’t breathe.

  “How sure are you?” Abaeze said, this time in a lower voice.

  “One hundred fucking percent. We’ve had problems with deliveries being stopped by the DEA. So, I told you all about a phony consignment being shipped in by air. Guess which crates the pigs opened?”

  Ganiru swept the construction lamp around like a flashlight over his men. The beam moved from face-to-face, lingering for a few seconds on each one.

  “If anyone knows anything, now’s the time to speak up,” he hissed.

  When the boss’s dark eyes passed over John, he tried to raise his hand to his forehead to wipe away the sweat. It wouldn’t obey him. The signals from his brain weren’t getting through—somewhere inside him the system had collapsed.

  Ganiru again. The roar echoed inside the container.

  “Fucking answer me!”

  When no one said anything, he pulled his pistol from the shoulder holster under his jacket and put it on the floor in front of him. He gave the weapon a sharp kick, making it spin on its own axis. John followed the rotating barrel with his eyes. The pistol was on its final lap and the odds looked bad. Eventually, however, the barrel decided to move past him and stop at one of the other men.

  Ganiru picked up the weapon, put it back in the holster, and hung the lamp on the ceiling hook. Then he pulled the loser in the sick game of roulette up from the floor and dragged him toward the doors. Using his spare hand he opened the container and pushed the man so hard he fell onto the asphalt outside.

  Ganiru turned back toward the faces inside. He looked calmer now. He smiled cautiously, as if the game with the pistol hadn’t been meant seriously.

  “I’ll shoot one of you every ten minutes until I find out who squealed,” he said, going outside.

  There was a booming in John’s ears when the heavy doors once again closed and the light was reduced to the white glow of the construction lamp. A second later, two rapid shots were fired outside the container.

  The silence that followed was dense, as if all the men inside the four steel walls were holding their breath and no one wanted to be the first to exhale. Eventually, the absence of words was so oppressive that the man closest to the door spoke.

  “Take it easy—no one’s been hurt,” he said. ‘Those bullets are in the ground. I don’t believe shit about that seized shipment. No one in here is stupid enough to talk, right? Ganiru’s always been paranoid. He’s just testing us.”

  John was almost willing to buy it. He sounded so reassuring, so believable. Soon it would be over, and they’d all laugh about it. The boss would buy the drinks at the miserable place by Patterson Park that his cousin ran.

  John tried asking his brain to raise his right arm again. His nervous system remained on strike.

  “What do you think, Abaeze? You know him,” said a voice farther away in the semidarkness.

  Abaeze appeared to be deep in concentration and merely shrugged his shoulders, as if he didn’t care about anything other than his own thoughts.

  Then the lock mechanism rattled again. A narrow crack of daylight appeared, and it grew wider when the door was opened halfway. Something was pushed into the container and then the light disappeared again. Ganiru’s voice was faintly audible through the steel wall.

  “Five minutes left.”

  John saw several of the men leap up and form a semicircle around the body on the floor. Someone shook it to get a response, at first carefully and then more roughly. Then the face fell to one side and through a pair of legs there was an eye staring at John. The other had been shot out.

  The man who had just tried to calm down the others stumbled toward the far corner of the container and threw up in a series of noisy convulsions. The rank smell of bile and half-digested fajitas quickly spread through the cramped space.

  Several of the men began shouting and blaming one another for this or that. John remained glued to the floor and tried to get his thoughts into some sort of order. They changed tack every five seconds and it was impossible to connect them up into anything comprehensible.

  Abaeze stood in the middle of the container and tried to separate two men who had started throwing punches at each other.

  “If we don’t stay calm, we’re all going to die,” he shouted.

  The men reluctantly stopped fighting. They realized the only one with a chance of stopping Ganiru was Abaeze.

  “When he comes back, I’m going to tell him who squealed. I’ll never forgive myself for letting someone die before I put two and two together,” he said, sitting down again.

  The other men also sank to the floor. Then there was an odd silence in the container. Frightened men lined along the walls avoided one another’s gazes. Finally, someone dared to ask the question.

  “Who is it?”

  Abaeze shook his head.

  “When Ganiru gets here.”

  John wondered how much of the chaos whirring inside his head was visible on the outside. His breathing was so quick and shallow that he was panting like a child with fever. But no one noticed. Everyone was focused on themselves, calculating. Their word against Abaeze’s if they were the one named. Who would Ganiru believe?

  The container doors opened again, and the boss stepped nonchalantly over the dead body on the floor. Ganiru must have noticed how all their eyes turned to Abaeze.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” he said.

  Abaeze didn’t hesitate. His voice was powerful and layered with contempt.

  “He’s the one who talked,” he said, pointing.

  John saw the finger was pointed at him and immediately felt the other men’s gazes. Their eyes contained not only hat
red, but also a measure of relief. If he lost, they would win. First prize was the honor of getting to wake up tomorrow morning.

  But how could Abaeze know? If he did know. He could simply have chosen someone at random to avoid being accused himself. John had been with them for the least amount of time—that alone made him a suitable scapegoat.

  “Are you sure?” Ganiru asked.

  “Yes. He left his phone in the car one time when he went for a piss. There were a bunch of odd messages. I didn’t get it then—but now I know what they were about,” he said, directing a gobbet of spit at the traitor.

  John stared at the blob of saliva a couple of inches from his feet. He felt sick, but he managed to suppress the nausea. Would Ganiru really go for this? Did he really think that infiltrators communicated with their handlers like that?

  Apparently he did. He saw Ganiru aim his weapon at him.

  “You’ve broken my heart—what little of it that’s left.”

  John wanted to defend himself. To tell the psychopath so many shit-filled lies that he wouldn’t trust anyone ever again. But his tongue was just as paralyzed as the rest of his body. He couldn’t say a word.

  “Let me do it,” said Abaeze. “I’ll sleep better tonight if I can ice the bastard myself.”

  Ganiru nodded appreciatively.

  “He’s all yours.”

  Abaeze pulled John up from the floor. It was a humiliating way to die. He’d been trained to act under pressure but now he was letting himself be led to slaughter like a helpless animal. Ganiru held the doors open so that Abaeze could drag him outside. At least the final breath he drew would be of fresh air.

  “On your knees,” Abaeze ordered him.

  John was shoved over. He put out his hands so that he landed on all fours with his back facing Abaeze. He was also grateful that the rest of the men had stayed in the container. Death was a private matter and he didn’t want to share his last moments with them.

  He turned around and saw Ganiru hand over the pistol. He heard the metallic sound as Abaeze clicked the safety off. The barrel was pressed to the back of his head and his face forced to the ground. John followed a crack in the asphalt with his gaze until it vanished beneath another container.

  This was the end, the final chapter—he was convinced of it.

  The film playing in his mind paused when he heard the door handle. He opened his eyes and saw the policeman in the corridor helping the nurse push a bed through the doorway. It must be Abaeze returning from surgery. John looked for signs of movement, but the man did not seem to be awake.

  The nurse parked the bed next to John’s and connected the monitoring equipment to the patient. Then her pager beeped and she left John alone with the sleeping Abaeze.

  John studied the heavy body that barely fit into the bed. The man had to be almost six and a half feet tall and well over two hundred pounds. The skin on his face was so black it was almost blue. His nose was wide and the furrows on his cheeks were deeper than John had previously noticed. The thick arms resting on top of the blanket were by no means toned from the gym. The strength was wrapped in a layer of fat, but was no less impressive for that. John understood why Ganiru found him so useful. People struggling to pay their debts to Ganiru often found hidden reserves when Abaeze showed up to collect.

  Then there was a cough from the sagging mouth. John jumped. The cough was followed by several more and it was clear that the man was regaining consciousness.

  John considered whether to ring his buzzer but stopped himself when Abaeze opened his eyes and turned his head toward him. It took a few seconds before the giant man seemed to understand who he was looking at. Then he smiled weakly and said:

  “So, you’re alive, huh?”

  John returned the smile.

  “Yeah, and we both know who I have to thank for that.”

  4

  KARLSTAD, 2009

  Heimer tasted the freshly pressed juice and noted that the oranges weren’t up to par. They’d started carrying a new variety at the market and it wasn’t as sweet as its predecessor. He rinsed the juicer and poured two glasses of juice, handing one to his wife, who was sitting at the kitchen island. They usually ate breakfast there, since it was the only place with light from the east. On clear days, they could see the sun rise over the treetops.

  The window had been added to the plans at the last minute and Heimer was glad he had insisted. Given the location of the plot next to Lake Vänern, it was natural to try to let the water influence every room. But Värmland wasn’t just lakes—it was also forests. Heimer was pleased with that phrase. He’d used it to convince the architects to change the plans yet again. In exchange, he had promised it would be the last change that had an impact on plumbing or load-bearing walls—a promise he broke just a day later, when he had woken up with a fresh vision for the master bedroom and adjoining bathroom.

  He had never felt better than when they were building the house, and for once Sissela kept out of the way. He was the trained architect and she had respected that. Even if he hadn’t worked for many years, the knowledge was still there.

  Heimer looked at his wife as she raised the glass of juice to her lips. Her hands looked old. It was the one part of the body that no expensive miracle creams or plastic surgery could fix. If you wanted to know a woman’s age, all you had to do was study her hands. It was as reliable as carbon-14 dating.

  Then he thought of Emelie again.

  His thoughts only managed to turn to other things for brief periods before returning to her. It felt as if someone had put his rib cage in a vise and was slowly turning the screw to increase the pressure. He longed to be outside, running on the trail. He wanted to run so fast and so far that he would taste blood. Anesthetic for the brain through an exhausting physical challenge.

  “It’s half past ten,” said Sissela. “We have to do something.”

  Her voice was quiet but decisive.

  “This juice,” he said. “Isn’t there something off about it?”

  “It doesn’t feel right. The cocaine in her room …”

  “She’ll probably get in touch soon,” he interrupted.

  “I’m worried that she’s hurt herself again. Maybe she’s with Magnus—they’ve been hanging out a lot this summer. I’m going to call Hugo.”

  Heimer watched his wife disappear into the library with her phone. Hugo Aglin was AckWe’s finance director and one of the few colleagues of Sissela’s who spoke to him even occasionally. He had built a house not far from their own and a few times had asked for advice that Heimer was happy to provide. It was rare that someone from the company thought he was capable of anything other than spending his wife’s money. Most of them treated him like Sissela did—with affected enthusiasm for his eccentric interests. Offering encouraging applause for the child until the door was closed because the grown-ups needed to talk. Hugo was the only one of them he had shown around the wine cellar. The rest of the gang couldn’t tell a Barolo Riserva from grape soda, which meant they had no business being down there.

  It wasn’t hard to understand why Sissela was happy that Emelie had started to spend more time with Hugo’s son. He was—in every way—more suitable company than the girls in Striker Chicks with their arms around one another in the photo in his daughter’s room. Sissela usually referred to them contemptuously as computer nerds when Emelie was out of earshot.

  Heimer didn’t know what to think about Magnus Aglin. His slicked-back hair undeniably helped Tynäs to live up to its epithet of being “the Hämptons.”

  Sissela had been annoyed when the columnist in the local paper (Nya Wermlands-Tidningen) had put two dots on top of the A in the name of America’s colony of the wealthy, and—in her view—had ridiculed the place where they lived. Heimer however thought it made an amusing point. After all, the small headland with the waters of Lake Vänern on either side was home to none other than the newspaper’s owners.

  The other prominent resident of Tynäs was the dance orchestra conducto
r who had sold millions of records. It amused Heimer that they had bought the plot next door to his and built a house that made the musician’s previously impressive home look like a basic summer cabin. He had never objected, but during the construction there had been something strained in that otherwise velvet-soft baritone when they had greeted each other in the supermarket.

  The column in NWT had been titled “Different Worlds” and depicted not just the well-to-do corner of Hammarö outside Karlstad, but also the areas around the paper mill at Skoghall. The socioeconomic profile of that area was different and the residents had to put up with the smell of sulfur from the production of paper pulp.

  It wasn’t far from Tynäs to Skoghall—less than ten kilometers. But after having lived on Hammarö for many years, Heimer knew that the distance between the two was greater than that. The two places were like planets in different solar systems.

  He cleaned up the breakfast things, with just enough time to finish before his wife returned from the library.

  “Magnus was still asleep, but Hugo promised to speak to him as soon as he wakes up. The kids apparently had a party at the house yesterday and it’s quite possible that Emelie was there. He didn’t think we should worry.”

  Sissela sounded calmer now—more like a CEO and less like a concerned mother. Heimer decided it was the right moment to leave her on her own for a while. He needed to take that run. His body and head needed it.

  Fifteen minutes later, he headed out on his usual route. He checked that the GPS and heart rate monitor on his new Garmin wristwatch were activated. Then he put the earbuds in his ears and switched on his MP3 player. He was going to run a shorter route today, which meant he ought to manage to maintain a tempo of 3.40 minutes per kilometer.

  The first long stretch uphill was after just eight hundred meters and acted as a watershed. On good days, he enjoyed feeling the power of his legs as they flew over the ground, propelling him up the hill. On other days, he could feel the lactic acid by the end of the climb. Those days, he knew it was going to be a rough circuit.