Watching You

by Arne Dahl

  It was an unassuming picture. A patch of wall lit up by the beams of at least three torches. Down in the corner, half a square metre of cement looked slightly lighter. He moved on to the pictures from inside the cell. He selected one in which the patch of blood had almost completely slid beyond the bottom right corner of the frame. He zoomed in on the concrete wall as far as he could.

  As usual he tried not to look at the time on the mobile phone. Time was marked by clocks and watches, that was one of the laws of nature. He got his Rolex out of the box. Half past three, the hour of the wolf. It was a bonus that he’d fallen asleep without his usual nightly whisky; he could drive at the risk of nothing more than a lack of sleep. And possibly hydroplaning.

  Berger dug out his toolbox from an unbelievably messy cupboard in the hall, tossed a couple of things in his rucksack and set off.

  7

  Monday 26 October, 03.32

  One of the very few advantages of the bizarre rank of ‘detective inspector with special responsibilities’ was access to a car. One of the many disadvantages was that it didn’t come with a place in the garage. When he reached the car down on the offshoot of Bondegatan, at least three yellow parking tickets had dissolved and seeped through the grille on the bonnet.

  It was always strange to drive through Stockholm without any traffic, he hadn’t reached the northbound motorway that fast since he was in uniform. He allowed himself the luxury of driving fast. He pulled off at Märsta, drove through it to the outskirts. The extensive forests of Uppland got closer and closer.

  To be on the safe side he parked outside the last apartment block before the more rural scenery took over. He walked through the rain with the rucksack over his shoulder, no umbrella; police officers didn’t use umbrellas, full stop. Without seeing a soul, he finally spotted the derelict buildings in the weak glow of the street lamps. He felt he could see just how porous the rotten wood had become.

  Blue and white tape had been stretched across the gate. Bracing himself, hand on metal, he swung over. It was surprisingly painless.

  The porch was barely visible. Berger was there again, behind the backs of the advancing rapid response team, Deer’s odd, whimpering breath behind him. The house was gradually conjured up out of the nocturnal curtain of water. He reached the bottom of the porch steps and wove through the web of police tape. While he was picking the lock, the moon suddenly broke through an invisible crack in the dark sky, sweeping the dirty white porch with icy blue-white.

  The sudden light made Berger jerk sideways, but when he opened the door, crouching down to one side of it, he was struck by one thing, and one thing alone. Sorrow.

  Sorrow at what must have taken place in there for almost three weeks. Which must have felt like three years to a terrified fifteen-year-old girl who had never harmed a fly. And who had then been taken to an unknown location in order to further develop her acquaintance with hell.

  Sorrow followed the beam of Berger’s torch, past the disarmed knife-throwing mechanism in the hall, grew stronger in the living room, became even more tangible in the bedroom, and, as he approached the thicket of blue and white tape over the hole in the floor between the fridge and the stove, carved its way into his brain.

  He removed the tape and could just make out the steps when he shone the light into the hole. He lowered himself down and crept through the labyrinth. The beam of the torch played across the walls.

  He crouched down by the roughly hacked entrance to the cell. The hole was larger now; he assumed that was thanks to Robin, who was without question the best forensics officer, but also the fattest. He couldn’t help a fleeting, misplaced smile as he slipped, much more nimbly than before, through the opening. Dust from the past powdered him as he snaked his way in.

  He had the same feeling as before. But this time Deer wasn’t there to hold him.

  Once again he got the feeling that the walls were screaming at what they had been forced to witness. He shook his head hard until all that was left was the sorrow that had already invaded it.

  Eventually he managed to hold the circle of light more or less steady. He moved it across the bloodstain on the far wall. He moved closer to inspect the wall on either side of the stain, then glanced at the two decaying wooden pillars a couple of metres from the wall.

  Ellen Savinger had sat here, as if in a cage with invisible walls. She had sat still. Wetting the same patch, on several occasions. He left the wall and went over to the posts. They framed the invisible cage, and together with the wall formed a block no bigger than two cubic metres. He ran his fingers along the grooves. They were at three different heights, the top ones at eye level, almost invisible. Then he went back to the bloodstained wall, took a chisel from his rucksack and held it against a well lit patch of wall.

  Because this looked the same as the entrance they had smashed their way through. There were definitely lighter patches in the cement, weren’t there?

  After all, that was why he had come out here, in the middle of the night, the hour of the wolf.

  Berger reached for the hammer. Then he set to work.

  A couple of centimetres into the wall he was on the point of giving up. Practically every other blow resulted in a recoil as brutal as if he’d been hammering away at solid rock. But then something appeared. A piece of metal, a hook, embedded deeper in the wall. Overcoming the resistance of his shoulders, he went on hammering.

  It took him almost half an hour to reveal the outline. It was a thick metal loop; was it called a mooring ring? And it was screwed into a deeper part of the wall.

  Berger put the hammer and chisel down, grabbed hold of the ring and pulled as hard as he could. For one bizarre moment he had both feet up on the wall, pushing with all his might. The ring didn’t shift.

  He picked up the hammer and beat all round it. More concrete came loose. It was clear that the composition of the wall changed ten centimetres in, where the ring was screwed in. Was this yet another false wall?

  He rolled his shoulders a few times and craned his neck until it creaked. Then he set to work again.

  He had no idea how much time passed, but slowly, slowly, dripping with sweat, he managed to cut around the rings, one after the other until there were six of them, three on either side of the stain formed by layer upon layer of blood.

  Berger stopped. His muscles ached as if they had suddenly realised the exertion they had been through. He returned to the two pillars and ran his fingers over the grooves in the rotting wood once again. They were at the same height as the mooring rings.

  He couldn’t make any sense of it. Had the Scum added another ten centimetres to the entire wall just to cover up the rings that were fixed into it? Hard physical graft, while fifteen-year-old Ellen Savinger sat shackled there? However, she had bled onto the wall, day after day, like the rings in a tree. If some sort of chain had been attached to the mooring rings then the whole wall would have had to have been almost ten centimetres further back at the start of her captivity. So how could the blood have seeped into a wall, day after day, if that wall hadn’t actually been constructed yet?

  Berger’s brain was perhaps not at its sharpest – lack of sleep and the brutal physical exertion had each taken their toll – but this looked like a genuine paradox. One of Escher’s impossible images, steps curling round for all eternity, a hand drawing the hand that was drawing it.

  But perhaps not. The cement had been a different colour where the rings were fixed. Perhaps the Scum had merely drilled deep to fasten his terrible mooring rings. Perhaps he knew there was a more solid wall back there.

  Perhaps there was no other meaning to the hidden mooring rings than the fact that they had been wrapped up. Like a present.

  Wrapped in a parcel. Inside a parcel.

  Whatever the rings had been used for, they were supposed to be found. The Scum was showing off again. Wanted to show how clever he was. Wanted to be admired. But who the hell by?

  Berger was feeling tired as he took a couple of pictures.
He tried one last time to imagine the scenario. He couldn’t, the images kept slipping away from him. He hoped he’d be able to drive home without hydroplaning his way into a hospital bed.

  Mind you, how long had he actually been down in the windowless basement? Before he checked the watch on his wrist he had time to worry that dawn had arrived, that the neighbours would have started to stir.

  It was ten to seven.

  Time wasn’t on his side.

  He slid out through the opening in the wall, up the stairs, and stepped out onto the porch taking several deep breaths. It was fortunate that the autumn had progressed to the point where the mornings had got darker. And the persistent rain, still falling just as heavily as before, was keeping any early birds indoors.

  He stood on the porch and looked down towards the gate. For a brief moment a considerably lighter image flared in his mind – ambulance, police vans, cordon, onlookers – before he took one last deep, damp-laden breath and looked down as the hand resting on the rail of the porch. His eyes settled on the knuckles of his right hand.

  The wounds actually seemed to have healed.

  8

  Monday 26 October, 07.26

  The fact that it was Monday wasn’t the only reason why the morning felt darker than usual. Autumn had settled in with a vengeance and when Detective Inspector Desiré Rosenkvist tapped in the entry code to Police Headquarters it felt like the middle of the night. But at least it had stopped raining. In fact it hadn’t rained since she had left home, waved goodbye to Lykke at nursery and then, feeling weighed down as usual with guilt, got in her environmentally unfriendly old car. When she snuck out onto Nynäsvägen ahead of the morning rush the carriageway seemed almost dry.

  Even so, Berger was wet.

  She said a quick hello to the rest of the team as she headed towards Berger’s corner like a pre-programmed robot. It also happened to be her corner.

  He looked like a wet dog, just staring straight ahead. They barely greeted each other, she sat down, as usual with her back to him, and started to tap at her computer. Even though she very obviously angled the screen away from him, she got the feeling that Berger didn’t care what she was doing.

  He really was staring blankly into space. It was his way of having a crafty nap. No one really noticed the difference between a power nap and deep concentration; the question was, did he? He was old enough to have done national service, and a lot of that involved trying to look awake even though you were asleep.

  Deer turned round and said: ‘The movement of rain clouds.’

  It was a sufficiently cryptic comment to rouse Berger from his trance. He turned towards her. She went on: ‘Micrometeorology, that’s a word suited to your class, Sam.’

  ‘We’re from exactly the same class, Deer. What are you driving at?’

  ‘There’s been a heavy autumn storm hanging over us for longer than we can bear to remember. But it’s capricious, and this morning it eased up, briefly, and slipped away towards Norrland. Check the times on this map.’

  Berger looked at the screen. A large thundercloud slid upwards as a clock indicated the time. The cloud moved very fast. As 06.00 approached, a map started to emerge, and he vaguely recognised the geography. Deer paused.

  ‘Skogås,’ she said, pointing. ‘Where I live.’

  Then the storm slid further north, uncovering the familiar outline of Stockholm. Deer paused again when the whole of the inner city was clear, then pointed and said: ‘And that’s where you live. Ploggatan, the north side of Södermalm. The rain cleared there at about twenty past six.’

  The storm moved on towards the north. When the timer reached 06.45 Deer paused it for a third time.

  ‘Are you with me?’ she asked.

  Berger nodded, reluctantly fascinated.

  As the heavy cloud moved on, the name Märsta appeared on the map.

  Deer turned to Berger, fixed her eyes on him and said: ‘For you to be that wet, Sam, you must have been pretty far north, very recently.’

  ‘Get back to work.’

  As he turned his chair away he couldn’t help smiling. His eyes settled on his wrist. For the third time in twenty-four hours he had neglected to protect his old Rolex from the wet, and now it really looked like some water had seeped into the casing. For the first time since 1957. An ominous layer of condensation was obscuring the left half of the glass, where the hands were.

  For the time being there was no time.

  He pulled a tissue from his drawer and placed the watch on top of it. Then he angled the desk lamp to shine on its face. Maybe the heat from the bulb would be enough.

  With great reluctance Berger looked at the time on his mobile phone instead. He glanced over his shoulder at Deer. She was immersed in photographs from the house in Märsta, as if she was on his tail. He shook his head quickly and pulled up the pictures on his mobile. The twins, Marcus and Oscar, it always started there. Marcus and Oscar Babineaux. And the vacuum that swelled inside him every time. Then he scrolled through towards the end, past the pictures from his first visit to Märsta – inside the house, the basement, the porch – until he reached the most recent ones.

  He turned and tapped Deer on the shoulder. She spun round at once, at if she’d been waiting for it.

  Without a word he passed his mobile to her. She glanced at him and took it. Then effortlessly she zoomed in on the rings set into the wall. Berger watched her, saw the frown spread across her forehead.

  After scrolling back and forth she handed the mobile back. ‘So what’s that?’

  ‘Mooring rings,’ Berger said. ‘Deeply embedded in the wall.’

  ‘Is it part of some contraption?’

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘We need to tell Robin.’

  ‘He’s on his way. We’re seeing him at half past eight.’

  Deer nodded. Then she said: ‘So no morning assembly today?’

  ‘There’s hardly anyone here,’ Berger said, waving his hand. ‘And we haven’t got anything new to say anyway.’

  ‘That’s new,’ Deer said, nodding at the phone.

  ‘Not until it’s been past Robin.’

  There ought to have been a meeting at eight o’clock, known as morning assembly, but most of the team was out in the field. Three of them were leading the door-to-door inquiries in Märsta, and their collective grumbling could be heard all the way to Police Headquarters. Syl was down in the media room, grumbling almost as much, as she scrutinised the news reports. Two officers were revisiting the handful of witnesses, before going back to Ellen Savinger’s poor parents. Only Maja and Samir were at their desks, Maja as coordinator, Samir with his sights on the subcontracting estate agent.

  Berger called Märsta. His three sets of boots on the ground had just set in motion their own team of uniformed boots on the ground. The previous day’s door-knocking was continuing, further and further from the crime scene, colder and colder.

  ‘No sign of activity in the house?’ Berger said, earning him a wry glance from Deer.

  Then Samir was standing there, trying to hide his youth with a steadily lengthening hipster beard. He leafed through some papers and said: ‘It actually looks like that dodgy estate agent has managed to dig out an email address.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Berger said. ‘Hotmail?’

  ‘Does that still exist?’ Samir said, running his fingers through his beard. Then he handed over a sheet of paper.

  Berger took it and passed it on to Deer, who took it and carried it over to Maja. Like a game of pass the parcel.

  ‘Dig as deep as you can,’ Berger said to Samir. ‘Even if the chances of finding anything at the other end are pretty slim.’

  ‘I don’t know where we’d be without such enthusiastic leadership,’ Samir deadpanned, then went back to his desk.

  It was hard to tell how much time had passed when a strikingly overweight man in an elegant three-piece suit appeared at the edge of the open-plan area. Because his suit was a nondescript shade of pale
violet, his two companions faded into the colourless background behind him. Berger stood up and went to meet him.

  ‘Robin,’ he said, holding his hand out. ‘Good to see you managed to get the dirt of the cellar out of your clothes.’

  Robin shook his hand and pointed at Berger’s knees: ‘You, on the other hand, still have a surprising amount on you considering that it’s been twenty-four hours since you were there.’

  ‘I’m surrounded by wannabe detectives,’ Berger complained, and gestured towards the next corridor.

  The three visitors followed him, and Deer brought up the rear of the quick march. Berger led them into an utterly sterile meeting room. They settled down around the bare table.

  ‘You know Vira,’ Robin said, indicating the woman with him, who didn’t look a day over twenty-four.

  Vira gave a doctor’s nod that instantly added ten years to her age.

  ‘So Medical Officer Höög has sent one of his assistants,’ Berger said coolly.

  ‘For the simple reason that there isn’t much to say,’ Vira said, even more coolly. ‘We estimate that the oldest blood has been there eighteen days old, the newest four. In total there wasn’t much more than three decilitres. But there are two types of DNA found in the whole house. Most of it Ellen Savinger’s. Rather less, Sam Berger’s. How’s the wound healing?’

  Berger looked at his right knuckles. ‘Toxicology?’

  ‘What?’ Vira said.

  ‘If you’ve already managed to get hold of the DNA, then presumably you’ve also conducted toxicology analysis. Checking for drugs in the various layers of blood. You must have figured out a timeline for the introduction of any poison or drug.’