~Chapter Two~
Everyone at the station was in shock. One moment, they were setting up table and drinks, and in the next had Wallander screaming and throwing his phone onto his desk, pushing papers off of it in a tantrum.
"Kurt!" Ann-Britt called out, trying to get a hold on the detective inspector as he began hitting himself violently with his fists in self-discipline, bashing himself on the sides of his head.
Getting her smaller hands around his wrists, she held them away from his head. "Kurt, stop it! Stop it now! Kurt, that's enough!" She hissed, looking at Wallander in her caring eyes, trying to find out what was wrong, what he had heard on the phone.
His grey eyes were watery and he collapsed into her arms.
"I'm so sorry." He sobbed. "Ann-Britt, I'm so sorry, it's my entire fault. He's gone." He whispered as the young lady wrapped her arms tightly around him, swaying side to side in a motherly way.
Patting his head as it sat on her shoulder, Ann-Britt swallowed the hesitation and worry in her throat. "Kurt," She asked in a full voice, trying to keep it leveled. "What's happened to Magnus?"
Kurt bit his lip hard, trying to comprehend what had happened before. "He said…he was at the bank." The words came out in a controlled tone but the shock still shown through it.
Holding his shoulders tight, Ann-Britt set him down on a chair that Nyberg brought forward, keeping her eyes on the detective inspector's as she knelt down to keep level with him. "Okay, he said he was at the bank. What did he say next, Kurt?"
Mouth hanging open and trying to make words with his pale lips, he finally found his voice. "H-he was whispering, he told me they had guns." He cried out, biting his knuckles and breathing in a shuttering rhythm. "And then he just stopped, and then I heard a noise, like he dropped the phone or something."
Trying to keep the sickening fear in her stomach down, Ann-Britt nodded with wide eyes. "Kurt, what happened?" She pressed him as he began to stare at the floor.
Kurt's face twisted and he choked out words. "I heard a gunshot." And he fell into her shoulder again, literally shaking in her arms.
Ann-Britt paled and realized she was now holding her breath. Her eyes drifted to Martinsson's desk, staring at the laptop with a blue bow on it. The lump in her stomach consumed her, leaving an empty feeling, as if there was nothing to do but stand in the shock.
"He tried to help her." Kurt whispered, shaking her out of the haze.
"Her?" Ann-Britt frowned, pulling away and clutching Kurt's cheek. "What do you mean 'her'?"
"She told him she was 'sorry', that she had to do it." He whispered so fast that she barely caught the words.
"Kurt." Ann-Britt said in an affirmative tone. "Did they say anything else? Did Magnus say anything else before the gunshot?"
Searching his crumbling mind, Kurt nodded slowly. "He said her name, he wasn't whispering, like he was calling out to her, to us."
"What was her name, Kurt?" She asked in the same tone and he looked at her with careful eyes from the chair.
"Axelia Stulnasson." He said in his familiar low tone.
Prying herself off her knees, Ann-Britt marched over to Kurt's desk, grabbing his phone and hit 'Re-dial' and clutched it close to her face, murmuring to herself and twisting her fingers. One dial-tone later, she got what she was hoping for. The automatic message.
"The number you just dialed is out of service or off-line. Please try-"Ann-Britt shut the phone.
"Kurt." She called from the desk, not taking her eyes off the phone. "You said you only heard one gunshot?"
Wallander nodded from his chair, slowly re-composing himself. "Yeah, and then the line cut out."
The corners of her mouth lifted and Ann-Britt turned around.
"She didn't shoot him."
Twisting his wrist behind him, Axelia re-positioned the gun at the small of Martinsson's back, and stood up weakly; pulling his arm and making him stand up. If there wasn't a gun touching his spine, Magnus would be laughing at the situation. He was the victim and stood at 6'1, while the young girl being his captor stood at barely 5'2. Instead of laughing at the danger, he just ran his mouth.
"And everyone said that Nokia's were indestructible." The device let a spark fly from where the bullet hole was.
Axelia pushed the gun's tip at his back, making him move forward. "We have to go to the lobby. Please, I'm so sorry, but we have to go back."
He could run. He could easily get his arm out of her grasp and disarm her, run out the back. Glancing down behind him at the young girl he and the team spent many months trying to find, Magnus knew that even if he didn't disarm her, she wouldn't pull the trigger if he ran. Her dark lined eyes were red and fearful, begging, like she knew what he was thinking. Turning his head forward, he pressed his brows together in a pained expression and nodded, taking a step forward towards the lobby.
His captor let out a breath of relief.
"Thank you." She whispered, moving the gun away from his back so that it didn't dig into him.
He knew that if he left, those men in the lobby would kill her. They heard the shot; they know someone else was there with her. And he found her, finally she was found. Alive, but not the same girl in the photo. As he walked, he ran the case through his head; shock, happiness, sorrow, pity, fear, and worry added to the emotions of the girl he saw this morning as just another teenager at the bank.
Axelia Stulnasson was fifteen when she went missing. Blonde hair and green eyes, Axelia grew up in a good home; both of her parents were employed, clean records, paid off the house within a year of buying it, and sent her to one of the best high schools in Sweden. She took classes in dance, swimming, and singing. According to her mother, she spent a lot of time with her grandmother; learning how to bake, sew, garden, and paint. She was just a young lady with so much to offer when she disappeared. While walking home from school with a friend, through her neighborhood, neighbors said that they heard gunshots and saw a car take off down the road. When they left to go investigate, they found her friend, Stefan Johansson, bleeding out on a front lawn. Nyberg said that he was running when he got shot the second and third time, in the same direction as where the car took off.
He never made it to the hospital.
Stefan was sixteen and died trying to save his best friend.
After that, the team dug into every file and camera, trying to find out where she went or who took her. Interviewing her teachers, classmates, family members, anyone who knew her; no one could think of anyone who would take Axelia. Kurt asked her parents if anyone had been over to their house, or a new teacher had come, but they couldn't think of anything. No traces of anyone stalking them, Axelia hadn't received any e-mails from strangers; Magnus couldn't find anything at all. The team decided that there was no way that the abduction could have been pre-meditated, there was no evidence. Months passed, and her face was on every television, milk carton, flyer; everywhere. But no one saw her. She literally disappeared off the earth after that day. Her parents waited for days by the phone, waiting for a phone call or a letter or even an e-mail, but they received nothing. The people who took Axelia Stulnasson didn't ask for anything, they simply took two teenagers away from their families, one of them dead and after a while, the team began to think that she had the same fate.
Until today.
Turning the corner to the lobby, Magnus and Axelia saw the gunmen surrounding the hostages, who were now sitting in a clumped circle, terrified. The detective tried his best to keep his eyes off the body behind the till, but could still feel her dead gaze clouding him with guilt. Axelia just kept her eyes forward and on her gun, but she was rattled, shaken, a prisoner.
The gunmen turned around, facing the two with their guns and smirks on their faces.
"That must be him," the college student whispered to the leader, holding what Magnus recognized to be his wallet. He smiled. "It's about damn time, sweetheart. We were beginning to wonder if you'd run off."
The leader pointed at Magnus as Axelia step out from behind him, keeping her gun pointed at him. "Why is he alive?" he asked in a threatening tone.
Mouth hanging open, the young girl looked at him and back to Magnus, who put both hands behind his head and observed what was happening. "Peter, he-"
"Why is he still alive?" Peter spat, cocking his gun and pointed it at Axelia, who cringed and lowered her pistol. "We all heard the shot, why isn't he dead?"
He marched towards her and the young girl shook her head fearfully as he came closer and closer. "H-he was making a phone call, I-I tried to-"She yelped as he grabbed her by the hair, anger flaring in his face as he began to drag her over to the group, the four other men keeping their guns on Magnus. "-to stop him, but he didn't listen so I shot his phone!"
Grabbing her pistol from her hand and passing it to the college student, who put it in his pocket. Tears ready to fall from her face, Peter let go of her hair. Before she had time to react, the furious man took the butt of his gun and hit her harshly between the shoulders, making her collapse onto the floor in a startled heap. Instinctively, Magnus went to take a step forward but soon he was peering down the barrel of a gun. Pushing his gun behind his back by its strap, the sick man named Peter grabbed her frail neck and threw her face against the hard floor in fury, so harshly that it made Magnus flinch from just watching.
"Bullets are meant for people, not phones. Do you need me to demonstrate how that works?" He snarled into her ear, pointing in Martinsson's direction as she stayed on the floor, breathing heavily.
Lying on her cheek, Axelia looked at Magnus with watery eyes and shook her head. "No, sir."
If the detective's heart wasn't breaking before, it was shattered now.
"Good. Now get up." Axelia stood up as he turned around, but just when Magnus thought it was over, Peter turned around and slapped the broken girl across the cheek. "Don't make that mistake again, fånge."
When he turned back around to face Martinsson, the detective had to restrain himself from beating the man to a pulp. Even as the man stood inches away from the blonde's stern face. "You must be Magnus Martinsson. Do you enjoy my work?" He asked, gesturing to the scene behind him. "Have to keep her in line somehow. Did she show you her scars?" He laughed.
Trying to control himself, he just gritted his teeth and looked into the criminal's emotionless grey eyes, not saying a word.
Peter smiled. "I'll take that as a no. I take it you worked her case then, Detective Inspector Martinsson?" Martinsson frowned. "Have fun chasing a ghost and a dead girl?"
Blinking, Magnus finally opened his mouth with careful words. "I did work Axelia's case and she should know that we never stopped looking. And it is Detective Martinsson." He growled.
The man raised an eyebrow in mock surprise and took steps back from the fuming hostage. "Oh," he said, bending down to Martinsson's discarded bag from the bakery. He had forgotten it the moment he heard gunfire, dropping it to the floor without a second thought to get away.
"You didn't know?" He chuckled and flipped open the box.
"Well, then I guess congratulations are in order for the Ystad's new Detective Inspector Magnus Martinsson." The blonde's face fell; he didn't know what to think.
Peter picked up the open box and carried it over with a smile plastered to his face, satisfied with being once step ahead in everything.
In the box was a cake, covered in light blue icing and outlined with royal blue, Magnus saw the writing on it, written in golden letters:
Congratulations Detective Inspector Martinsson,
You've earned your new ranking!
Now answer the phone.
-Your friends at CID
Magnus looked up at Peter in shock, pale blue eyes wide and mouth ajar as the criminal smirked.
"Allow me to express my gratitude, sir."
He snorted and flipped the box forward, allowing the cake to fall and crumble at the detective inspector's feet.
The next thing he heard was Peter shouting 'fireworks' and guns went off, and four people crumbled to the ground.
The blonde looked up and spat in the bastard's face, his expression livid. "You sick, disgusting, son of a-"
And fell to the floor, Peter's fist still lagging in the air as Magnus felt blood begin to flow from his mouth and nose, praying that help was coming.
~Chapter Two~
Author's Note: About the cliff-hanger from Chapter One…LOKI'D! Read and Review! Next one should be up in about two days. Also, I hoped you enjoyed this chapter. Yeah, Peter was, at first, inspired by a few Unsubs from Criminal Minds, but then I saw Reservoir Dogs yesterday and was frightened by the character Mr. Blonde, and thought that Peter would likely be very similar to him in the 'Sadistic Bastards' category.