Europa Blues by Arne Dahl Read Free Book Online Page B

outsourced to private businesses, usually second-rate motels and hostels. There, you would find people with terrible experiences behind them, rotting away in some kind of limbo for years on end. Sara couldn’t quite understand how they were then expected to become integrated, functional citizens – nor how so many people actually managed it.
    She had tried reading up on the subject. It was impossible to avoid it. On 1 July, the national immigration authority would change its name to Migrationsverket. The idea was to enable a general oversight of migration and the movement of people, as well as the country’s immigration, integration and return policy. The latter was something new.
Provisional refugee
was a concept that had only recently emerged, above all in connection to the Yugoslav wars. Simply put, the Swedish government let people stay for a while, until it was safe for them to return home, and when they did eventually go back, it gave them a small contribution for not becoming the burden on the state they would otherwise have become if they’d stayed. In doing so, they gave the whole business an aura of voluntariness. An idea which was a pure fiction.
    The essence of this new migration concept was – if Sara had understood correctly – that returning was viewed as an equally crucial moment as integration. You could infer a great deal about contemporary society’s attitudes from that, she thought.
    The old Volvo had reached Slagsta, which lay squashed up like an artificial idyll against the shore of Lake Mälaren before you came to places like Fittja, Alby, Norsborg and Hallunda – names synonymous with a high immigrant population. In any case, it was home to the ugly Norrboda Motell, a long, five-storey building of classic seventies architecture. Both detectives stood speechless for a moment, each of them longing for a glimpse into the mind of the architect. That was, in all likelihood, precisely what they got the moment they set foot in its uniform corridors, clad in urine-coloured carpets and matching, age-faded institutional material on the walls and ceilings. So this was the first image that Swedes-to-be were given of their future homeland.
    It was probably a deliberate part of the national return policy.
    Just past the deserted reception, they found the manager’s office; it was nothing more than a motel room among others. Jörgen Nilsson met them with a nervous heartiness. Sara thought she recognised the type immediately. An idealist from ’68, someone who had wanted to fundamentally change society but instead found himself transformed into something resembling a prison guard-cum-bureaucrat. The grimace of bitterness writ plain on his face.
    Perhaps that was unfair. He was probably doing his best.
    Jörgen Nilsson gestured for them to sit down in his utterly anonymous office. He perched on the edge of the desk and began speaking with the energy of a self-righteous man.
    ‘Four rooms have been emptied. There were two women in each. Eight missing asylum seekers.’
    ‘What does “missing” mean?’ Sara Svenhagen asked innocently.
    ‘That they should’ve reported to me this morning,’ Jörgen Nilsson replied, looking at her with a surprised expression, ‘but didn’t. I went to their rooms – they’re next to one another – and realised they were gone.’
    Kerstin Holm felt obliged to explain.
    ‘We’re from CID,’ she said. ‘We don’t normally get involved in immigration cases.’
    ‘CID?’ Jörgen Nilsson blurted out, his face turning noticeably pale. ‘It’s just a few … women who’ve gone underground. It happens every day somewhere in Sweden.’
    ‘But it’s happened a few too many times here, hasn’t it?’
    ‘I’ve been completely cleared of all those allegations. They were bitter, rejected refugees, those people who filed reports against me. Completely baseless. You know that full well.’
    Sara Svenhagen shifted in her seat and said: ‘What were you planning on saying