by Arne Dahl
He looked at his hand as it rested on the lock-pick. But it was no longer resting. It was moving. As if it only partially belonged to him. His hand was a little rodent, or a newborn rabbit, all pink and trembling, ready for a life as someone else’s prey.
The wounds on his right knuckles had opened up again. He felt exposed.
The rain thudded against the nearly pitch-black windows.
The lights, which were on a timer, went out. The character of the stairwell changed. A different sort of darkness fell on the previously mundane landing. He was in a different universe, the real universe, where darkness reigned. All light is an illusion, a reassuring veneer of lies to help us stay alive, to help us bear growing up. He was in a different era now, one that was still governed by barbarism, where the chimaera of civilisation had not yet made its entrance.
He was in a raw, unadorned world.
There was no getting away from it.
He could see the switch glowing red through the darkness. It was only a few metres away. All he had to do was pull the pick from the lock, switch the lights on and go back out into Vidargatan. Around the corner people were thronging under the artificial lights of Odenplan. It was all just half a minute away.
Yet somehow not. It seemed to be on the other side of the universe. Billions of light years away.
And Berger was here. Caught in the darkness. Captivated by the darkness.
He heard a click as the pick caught. He pulled out his pistol, raised his torch and opened the door.
There was a faint tugging draught, as if the air pressure was much lower inside the flat than in the world outside. And it was utterly dark.
He focused his attention inside the flat and listened. Not a sound, in fact no real sensory impressions at all. No smell. And no booby trap. A peculiar emptiness. Two rooms and a kitchen. He had a quick look around the bathroom. Clean but spartan. No stains in the bowl. No toothbrush. The kitchen was just as clean, but there was a mug in the sink with deeply engrained coffee residue. The dishwasher was empty. The bedroom: sheets on the bed, no bedspread, no duvet. And at this time of year you really needed a duvet. Finally the living room. No dust on the flat-screen television. The remote left neatly on top of the entertainment unit. A stereo that was a fair few years old. CD player. When did people stop using CD players? The leather sofa was hard, didn’t seem to have been worn in. He sniffed a couple of cushions on the sofa and a neatly folded blanket. They all smelled more of a factory than a home. And the books on the shelves were so commonplace that it was almost absurd: travel writing, international bestsellers, nothing that gave the slightest indication of individual taste.
When he had glanced through all the rooms he shone the torch over the walls. He was looking for two things: signs of alarms or surveillance cameras, and any shift in the colour of the walls. He found nothing. At least not in the subdued glow of the torch. Everything looked far too normal. The coffee mug in the sink was the only indication that anyone lived here.
It worried him. It suggested an asceticism which in turn suggested a degree of fixation, focus on a task that was more important than life itself. Life wasn’t just something that happened while you were planning something else. And in this instance there simply wasn’t a life to uncover – at least not here.
He pulled the floor plan from his pocket. Wandered round, trying to identify all the internal and external walls of the flat. It didn’t take long. Unless Nathalie Fredén had got hold of one of the neighbouring flats, there were no hidden compartments here. No labyrinths.
He pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and returned to the bathroom. He ran his hand along the skirting board and found a quantity of dust. Then he looked behind the shower curtain again. Nothing but a bathtub. A shower set at a height that would have been enough for him to wash his chest but no higher than that. No shampoo, no shower gel. And, again, no toothbrush.
No one lived anywhere without a toothbrush. Either you were away and had your toothbrush with you, or you spent most of your time somewhere else. Ordinarily at your partner’s home.
Which means that there’s somewhere else.
And possibly even a partner …
He’d had enough. There was nothing else to discover. No hidden corners. Nothing lurking just below the surface. Or at least nothing that could be found without the help of the person in question.
He sat down at the kitchen table, with a view in two directions: the hall and front door, and the window looking out onto the courtyard. The storm was whipping the almost bare branches of a scarcely visible aspen tree, but the clatter of the rain drowned out everything else. He positioned the torch so that it was shining straight up at the ceiling and put his service pistol down on the table in front of him. He ran his gloved finger over the shiny wood surface and smelled it. Finally, a smell: his own plastic glove. Nothing else.
He remained seated there beneath an umbrella of weak torchlight. Perhaps he was thinking. Perhaps time was merely passing. Although he glanced down at his Rolex every so often he lost track of how much time passed. Even if he had made a real effort, it wouldn’t have been possible to see the time; the face of the watch was by now almost completely obscured by condensation.
Berger didn’t particularly react to the footsteps out in the stairwell. The likelihood of their belonging to Nathalie Fredén was infinitesimal. She had flown the coop, all this shit was in vain.
He felt like crying.
He wished he could remember how.
Fifteen-year-old Ellen Savinger was lost.
The steps were right outside now. Inside himself he heard them shuffle past, carrying on to the next floor. Like a hope flaring up and then vanishing again, instantly forgotten, leaving nothing but a vacuum.
But inside wasn’t the same as outside.
When the key was inserted into the lock he was somewhere else.
Berger only just managed to turn the torch off before the door opened. A figure slipped in, darker than the darkness for a couple of seconds until it reached the switch and sharp light stripped away his night vision.
The woman was wearing an off-white raincoat, and she was squinting towards the kitchen, as if she could sense something she couldn’t see. And when she turned slightly her snub nose came into view.
He grabbed his pistol and roared: ‘Nathalie Fredén! Hands on your head!’
She jumped. Yet she didn’t really jump. He would never seriously be able to analyse that feeling.
When she put her hands on her head he pulled out his mobile phone and took a picture. He didn’t really know why.
‘Who are you?’ she asked in her deep voice.
‘The dentist,’ Berger said.
Then the surveillance officers crashed in with their weapons raised. The younger one forced Nathalie Fredén down onto the floor. The older one did a quick pat-down.
Berger watched the inverted form of events. He saw them reflected in the kitchen window. All sound had disappeared; he didn’t hear a word of what the surveillance officers were shouting out in the hall. There was a strange rustling sound instead. It came from the almost bare aspen tree out in the courtyard. He looked at the remaining leaves. They were trembling. The aspen leaves were trembling hard in the rainstorm, sending their rustling song into his ears.
As if someone were trying to get through from another time.
Berger turned his gaze to the flat again. Returned from the badlands. One word took hold in his head. Micrometeorology. He met Nathalie Fredén’s crystal-clear gaze from where she lay on the floor. Then he said: ‘You’re very dry.’
13
They’ve run a long way, first along the increasingly desolate road from the bus stop, then out onto the meadow with the unfeasibly tall grass that is now thinning out to the point where the sparkle of the water is coming into view. He feels almost breathless as he gets closer to the fluttering golden-yellow hair slowing down in front of him.
As his mane of hair settles back into place, the boy turns round and
is touched by a light so radiant he seems to be surrounded by a huge halo. It makes his face even more striking.
He’s never stopped being astonished at that face, will never stop being astonished.
They stand eye to eye and hug each other briefly, out of breath, panting. He leans over, hands on knees, can hardly get enough air, but he’s fifteen years old and his breathing is soon back to normal. When he looks up again, when his field of vision is no longer filled by green grass, he sees the other boy disappear into the copse by the shore, where the boathouse is, green-brown and ugly and quite wonderful.
He stumbles in that direction, hears the gulls screech in the distance, feels the high sea air sweep in and merge with the smell of grass. It carries a hint of decay on it.
He reaches the copse, makes his way through the increasingly tangled undergrowth, and there it is, the big boathouse. In one direction it stretches out into the lake, and there’s a door there; that’s where he sees the fluttering golden-yellow hair disappear. He heads to the other side, climbs up the always slippery rock to peer in through the window. It’s high because the boathouse stands on pillars, a short way off the ground.
It’s hard for him to find a foothold. The moss comes loose, taking his feet with it. In the end they find purchase. He stands still at last.
It’s tricky to see in. It’s completely dark inside the boathouse, and the window is extremely dirty. He can’t see anything at all. But he doesn’t give up. His sweaty hand gradually clears a small gap in the dirt. And in the end he can actually see in.
That’s when time stops.
That’s when it really does stop.
II
14
Monday 26 October, 22.06
Berger stepped inside. The door closed behind him. The room was extremely clinical. The woven wallpaper was as bland as the empty birch-veneer table. On a side table stood an unidentifiable piece of electronic equipment. There were no windows in the room, but there were two chairs. One of them was empty.
On the other sat Nathalie Fredén.
She was wearing the same simple, vaguely sporty clothes she had been wearing in her flat on Vidargatan, minus the off-white raincoat, and her clear blue eyes followed him the whole way from the door to the other chair. He sat down and studied her. It was only a few hours since they had last seen each other. Since then a prosecutor had been brought in and had instigated a preliminary investigation into her activities.
Without a word Berger removed a number of items from his rucksack. Three thick files, a laptop and a mobile phone. He opened one of the files and said as he leafed through its various contents: ‘I know you’re something of a mystery, and ordinarily that might have roused my interest. But right now I don’t give a damn about you. This is all about one thing. This.’
And he put a photograph down in front of her. It showed fifteen-year-old Ellen Savinger with a smile that hinted at a future of unlimited possibilities.
Berger watched Nathalie Fredén. She looked at the picture without the slightest change in her expression. Her face, which had shown itself to be so expressive before, registered no reaction whatsoever.
‘It’s all about this,’ he repeated.
She merely went on looking at the photograph.
‘Have I understood correctly?’ he went on. ‘You’ve waived your right to a lawyer?’
‘I don’t even know why I’m here,’ Fredén said in her dark, slow voice. ‘Let alone why I would need a lawyer.’
‘Is that a yes?’
‘Yes.’
Berger took a deep breath and turned to the electronic device on the side table.
‘Red light,’ he said, pointing. ‘When it’s lit the audio and video are on. So that everything is official and can be recorded. The light is off at the moment. Is there anything you want to say to me, and me alone, before we start doing this formally? Just between the two of us?’
‘That your mobile phone is already recording,’ Nathalie Fredén said.
It was lying upside down on the table between them. No lights, no sound. He smiled faintly, leaned over to the side table and pressed the record button. The red light came on.
He said the day’s date. He said where they were. He said who was present. He said: ‘Nathalie Fredén, you are primarily suspected of withholding information regarding the kidnap of Ellen Savinger, fifteen years old. I have now informed you of the nature of the suspicions against you. Do you understand these suspicions?’
‘Yes. But not what I might have to do with any of it.’
Berger put three photographs on the table in front of her. Two were enlarged, cleaned-up pictures from his mobile phone, taken from the porch in Märsta. The third was a press photograph that Syl had only just got hold of. It showed Nathalie Fredén even more clearly. Even the brand of her bicycle was clearly visible. Rex.
‘Is this you?’ Berger asked.
‘It looks like it,’ Fredén said calmly.
‘Do you know where that is?’
‘Not really. I cycle a lot. It looks like it’s raining.’
‘You cycle a lot?’
‘Yes. I like cycling.’
‘What, thirty kilometres to Märsta in the rain?’
‘Märsta? OK, now I know where that is. The police were there. And the media. This is a press photograph, isn’t it?’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘Cycling. A Sunday excursion north of the city.’
‘And what happened?’
‘I saw flashing blue lights and followed them.’
‘Has that happened before?’
‘What?’
‘That you saw flashing blue lights and followed them?’
‘Now and again, yes. When you cycle as much as I do.’
‘Can you give me an example?’
‘No idea. Now and again.’
‘Here, for instance?’
And then three photographs from the wintry forest between Karlskoga and Kristinehamn, all with Nathalie Fredén and her bicycle in their centre.
‘That looks like winter,’ she said calmly.
Berger looked at her very seriously for the first time. If he had ever been under the illusion that this would be easy – which he probably hadn’t – then that illusion had long since blown away now. He would have to delve deeper.
He looked into her blue eyes and tried to get a real sense of who she was. Either she lied very easily, always had a good excuse to hand, or she was almost implausibly naive. It was incredibly difficult to determine which.
Then it dawned on him. He’d had an idea at the back of his mind, but this was the first time he managed to formulate it. Nearly two years ago she had made preparations to end up here, right here, when she gave her name to the reporter. Now he understood. She is where she wants to be. But why?
In a different world he might even have realised how beautiful she was. And now, when he understood how difficult this was going to be, how deep he would have to delve to get anywhere, he realised also that he would have to get to know her better. This was his only chance.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s winter.’
‘I don’t know where that is,’ she said. ‘A lot of unexpected things happen when I’m out cycling. That’s part of the charm of it.’
‘Of these long bike rides?’
‘Yes. They can take weeks. I cycle all round Sweden.’
‘Aimlessly?’
‘Mostly, yes. I try to be a free person.’
‘A free person.’
‘Yes, actually. I don’t think you’re as cynical as you sounded when you said that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It shows in your eyes.’
‘So you consider yourself to be a free person?’
‘We all follow a whole load of laws, not least the laws of nature. No one can be properly free. But you can seek freedom. That’s much harder than being cynical. Cynicism is the cheap version.’
‘A whole load of laws … Financial as well?
’
‘Yes, those too.’
‘You have no income to speak of, no Swedish bank account. How do you finance your free life?’
‘It doesn’t cost that much. If it did, I wouldn’t be free. And I was given my bicycle by an ex.’
‘But a flat near Odenplan costs money.’
‘I inherited it from my grandfather.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Arvid Hammarström.’
‘And your parents?’
‘John and Erica Fredén.’
‘Erica, born Hammarström?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘Where were you born?’
‘Umeå.’
‘Which primary school did you go to?’
‘The Mariehem School, I think it was called. But why do you want to know so much about me? I thought this was all about that.’
She pointed at the photograph of Ellen Savinger.
There was something in the gesture that really got to him. Nonchalance, ambivalence, whatever. He shut his eyes for a couple of seconds. Controlled himself. As best he could. The tick of his watch seemed to grow stronger. It was as if his wrist were on fire.
He said, with as much restraint as he could muster: ‘She isn’t a “that”. She’s a girl with her whole life ahead of her. She’s spent three weeks shut inside that fucking house in Märsta, captive in that horrific basement, subjected to a whole load of unfathomable shit. I emerged from that basement and you were standing outside afterwards. And in Kristinehamn some eight months earlier, when the police thought that another fifteen-year-old girl had been buried in the forest, you were standing there as well. And you were standing here, outside a biker gang’s clubhouse in Västerås a year before that, when yet another fifteen-year-old girl was thought to be held, like a lamb to the slaughter, on the premises. How the hell can you just happen to be standing there at all three crime scenes?’
All the pictures had been revealed. All the cards were on the table. Yet really just one, one card that he had staked everything on. He ought to get something out of it, a reaction at the very least. He had to get through the wall. Even a small crack would do.
