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ABRAMS BOOKS - Mohlin Peter Mohlin

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275 pages

English

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A brilliant new Scandinavian noir series from Sweden introducing Agent John Adderley, already sold in 15 countries-now in paperbackThe Bucket List is the gripping debut novel by writing team Peter Mohlin and Peter Nystrom, launching a stunning new Nordic noir series featuring Swedish-American FBI Agent John Adderley. Like the best writers of the genre, such as Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbo, Mohlin and Nystrom combine a strong crime story with a novel of psychological richness and depth for an irresistible read. The Bucket List starts when undercover FBI Agent John Adderley wakes up in a hospital bed in Baltimore with extensive gunshot wounds. He knows he's lucky to be alive. And just a few beds away is the man who 24 hours ago pointed a gun to his head. Ten years earlier in Sweden, Emelie, the young heiress to (an H&M-esque) clothing empire AckWe has gone missing. When local police find blood and semen in a deserted area, they arrest a teenage boy. He denies the charges, and since the body is never found, he can't be prosecuted. Back to the present, Emelie's high-profile cold case file is sent to Agent Adderley, now living in Sweden (where he's not lived since he was a boy) in witness protection, hiding until he can testify against the drug cartel he infiltrated back in the States. Adderley is determined to solve Emelie's case, but, at the same time, he knows that the drug cartel has a price on his head . . .

Informations

Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	06 juillet 2021
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781647001964
Langue	English

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This edition first published in hardcover in 2021 by
The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS
195 Broadway, 9th floor
New York, NY 10007
www.overlookpress.com
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address above.
Copyright 2021 Peter Mohlin Peter Nystr m
First published in Sweden by Norstedts as Det Sista Livet
Translation copyright 2021 Ian Giles
Cover Abrams 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944983
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5218-6
eISBN: 978-1-64700-196-4
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
PART 1
2019 2009
1
BALTIMORE, 2019
He lay in bed looking up at the white ceiling. The contours of the discolored plasterboard panel were gradually becoming clearer. The stain looked like a ghost, or maybe a balloon. Something a child might have drawn.
John knew he was in the borderlands between sleep and wakefulness. He had no idea how long he had been drifting between the two worlds.
He tried turning his head to see where he was. A second later he was hit by a wave of pain. Its epicenter was at the back of his head, rippling out to the rest of his body. He closed his eyes and tried to find somewhere inside himself where he could take cover. There was no such place.
He waited until the worst of the pain dissipated and decided to take in the room using senses other than sight. It smelled of cleaning fluid-but it lacked the synthetic scent that products like that often had. No lemon or meadow flowers, just a clinical smell of cleanliness.
He discerned a beeping sound to his left. The noise was repeated at intervals of a few seconds and had to be coming from some kind of technical equipment level with his head.
Using one hand, he slowly gripped the steel frame of the bed and let his fingers slide along the structure until they encountered something that seemed to be a wire. He took hold of the cable and lifted it high enough for him to see.
At the end was a plastic cylinder with a red button. He pressed it and waited for something to happen. After just a few seconds, he heard the sound of a door opening and footsteps approaching. A woman in a white coat with her hair tied in a bun at the back of her neck leaned over the bed.
Are you awake, John? Can you hear me?
He nodded imperceptibly and received a smile in return.
You re at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, she said. We ve performed surgery on you to treat the gunshot wounds to your chest.
As he listened to the nurse s voice, he became aware of the postsurgical pain. It was different in nature-less explosive than the neck pain, more gnawing in its character. Like a second layer of pain.
The woman continued to update him about his condition. He had lost a lot of blood and had been unconscious when he was brought into the emergency room twenty-four hours earlier. They had then operated and the doctors had managed to stop the internal bleeding. The bullets-two of them-had missed his vital organs and passed through his body.
Water, he managed to say, taken by surprise at how feeble his voice sounded.
The nurse picked up a cup with a straw from the table and helped to put the straw to his lips. John was overenthusiastic and sucked up more water than he could swallow. He coughed and the white-clad woman had to wipe his chin with a napkin.
It s hard to drink when you re lying completely flat. Would you like me to angle the bed?
He nodded.
The nurse pressed a button on the wall and the head of the bed was slowly raised.
Finally, he had a view of the room. Next to the bed on his left was a stand on wheels holding intravenous drugs. John counted three transparent tubes supplying his body with a concoction of chemicals through an insertion in the crook of his arm. The beeping he d heard was being emitted by an instrument monitoring his breathing and oxygen.
The closed curtains in front of the two windows were thin and they let in more sunlight than he would have liked. The door into the corridor also had a pane of glass in it. It was inset at the top and big enough to let him see the policeman on guard outside.
John slowly turned his head and saw the other bed. He was apparently not the only patient in here.
As he saw the face, pain exploded at the back of his head again.
There-just a few steps away-was the man who twenty-four hours earlier had put a pistol to the back of his neck.
2
KARLSTAD, 2009
Voicemail again. Heimer knew she could see he was calling even though it was almost midnight. Her phone was practically glued to her hand and was always going off at every hour of the day. When one continent closed for business, another would open-and she was always available when the troops needed their commander.
But when he-her husband-wanted to get hold of her, she chose not to pick up. Sometimes he was tempted to borrow a phone from someone on the management team and call Sissela from it. Just to see if she picked up.
Heimer looked through the huge picture window and was surprised by how dark the water outside was. Emelie would be returning to Stockholm soon and summer would be officially over. He thought about how he barely recognized his daughter when he d picked her up at the station in June, a week before Midsummer. The transformation into a well-turned-out economics student had happened so quickly that he almost couldn t remember what she looked like now.
Sissela had naturally been overjoyed when Emelie started her course the previous autumn. All of the past was forgotten and the heiress to the family firm was at the finest of educational institutions. He d not been quite so convinced. He made an effort to patch up their relationship during the summer; he really tried to win back Emelie s trust after what had happened. But she refused to let him in.
He called Sissela again. Why the hell wasn t she picking up? If he called three times in an hour, surely she understood it was important?
Heimer sat down at the kitchen island and reflected on what a shitty day it had been. It had started with a quarrel over breakfast. Throughout the academic year, the reports from Stockholm had been good. Emelie said that she d passed her exams and was getting along well with the other students. Heimer had privately questioned the exam results with his wife. Their daughter had inherited his dyslexia and he knew how hard it had been for him during his architecture studies. But Sissela waved away his objections and asked why he didn t have more faith in his only child.
But yesterday the castles in the air had collapsed. A business associate of Sissela s who was close to the president of the School of Economics reported concerns about Emelie. Her attendance was poor and she d barely been seen in the corridors lately. Naturally, Sissela called the president and didn t let up until the poor devil had come clean about her daughter. Out of a possible sixty credits she could have earned during two terms, she d only managed twenty-four. She didn t even take her two most recent tests.
Breakfast had turned into a cross-examination in which Emelie was confronted with her lies. Heimer tried to get his wife to calm down, but it seemed as if she had already forgotten about their daughter s mental state in recent years-how close they d come to losing her.
The morning ended with Emelie s disappearing into her room and then leaving the house with a backpack. Just after that, Sissela also departed, leaving him in the wreckage of what was meant to be a family-left alone to clean up after others, as usual.
He spent the morning in the wine cellar trying to bring some order to it. He had been lazy about maintaining inventories over the last few months and their insurance was only valid if he kept the list of bottles updated. The project of rearranging the wine cellar had worked and when he had laced up his sneakers to run the twelve kilometers prescribed by his fitness program, he felt better. But this improved state of mind didn t last long. After dinner, which he cooked and ate alone, the final illusion relating to his daughter s new life fell apart.
Heimer had gone into her room. It hadn t been his intention to pry. He just wanted to spend some time there. After she moved to Stockholm, he did that sometimes just so he could remember how it had once been the two of them against the world.
Opening the top desk drawer was something he had done on impulse. It wasn t fully closed, and he d meant to close it. At least that was what he told himself. But instead, he opened the drawer and the stack of old schoolwork there put him on alert. It looked suspiciously planted. He picked up the papers and found a bag of white powder.
There was only a little left at the bottom and he ran his middle finger through it to collect some. He pressed his finger to his upper lip and immediately recognized the chemical, bitter taste of cocaine.
Since then, he had tried calling his daughter at least eight times without getting through. Somewhere, deep down, this was what he d sensed but hadn t wanted to see. The new Emelie was too perfect. Time after time, the therapists in rehab reminded them that the journey back from mental illness was long and often full of obstacles. But for his daughter, the stay at Bj rkbacken had seemed like a miracle cure. A nineteen-year-old girl, acting out and wi