by Arne Dahl
‘I see,’ Berger said impatiently. ‘Who told you it was urgent?’
‘The police in Umeå. Apparently they’ve been trying to reach me since last night. They gave me Constable Berger’s telephone number.’
Berger had a feeling that a penny should be dropping. Sadly there was no penny, and no dropping.
‘I’m listening,’ he said simply.
‘I worked as a counsellor in Mariehem School in Umeå in the late eighties and early nineties.’
‘Ah,’ Berger said, hearing the rattle as the penny finally dropped.
‘I understand that you’re interested in one of my former clients?’
‘If you call a ten-year-old girl a client.’
‘What would you suggest, constable? Patient? Pupil?’
‘Anything but constable. That title disappeared from the police force in the early seventies.’
‘Which says quite a lot about my age,’ Britt-Marie Bengtsson said calmly.
‘They evidently had quite a job finding you,’ Berger said.
‘I remarried and moved to Bastuträsk after I retired.’
‘OK,’ Berger said. ‘As you know, this concerns Nathalie Fredén, who was in Year 3 at Mariehem School in the late 1980s.’
‘Poor Nathalie, yes,’ Britt-Marie Bengtsson said. ‘She came to see me because she was being badly bullied in class.’
‘That’s what I imagined,’ Berger said. ‘What happened?’
‘It remains a mystery why some people are picked out as victims, I’m afraid. Nathalie came to me of her own volition. She wasn’t at all happy. We met a few times, but nothing I was able to suggest seemed to help; the situation just got worse and worse. I had to turn to Hans-Ove for help.’
‘The school psychologist, yes,’ Berger said. ‘And evidently he managed to find a place for Nathalie in a psychiatric clinic.’
‘Hans-Ove?’ Britt-Marie Bengtsson exclaimed. ‘Really? Well, I never. He wasn’t exactly the most sensitive psychologist in the country …’
‘You didn’t know about that?’
‘No, and I don’t understand how things could have turned out the way they did in that case. Mind you, that’s no guarantee. The point was that her mother worked in the registry office, and back then all the records were kept manually. You could say it was before the age of computers. At least, they weren’t widespread.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Berger said, stopping on the pavement. The rain was lashing against him.
‘I’m waiting,’ Britt-Marie Bengtsson said obediently.
‘Just tell me what happened in your own words.’
‘Yes, well, it was all very unofficial. For the mother’s sake we accepted the official story. That little Nathalie had moved abroad to live with relatives.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Nathalie Fredén is dead,’ Britt-Marie Bengtsson said. ‘She committed suicide that summer.’
17
Tuesday 27 October, 03.58
Deer was waiting for him outside the main entrance to Police Headquarters. It was almost four o’clock in the morning, and her presence was balm for the soul. She didn’t say anything, but her brown eyes – which bore absolutely no resemblance to a deer’s – were sharper than ever. From her pocket she fished an earpiece that she fastened to his right ear a little too carefully. Then she looked him in the eye, acknowledging the less than perfect circumstances, and gave him a little pat on the cheek. Then she was gone. Without a word.
He didn’t want to have to pass his colleagues in the control room. He only wanted to meet one person. And she didn’t exist.
So he stood in the gloomy corridor, entirely alone, in front of a characterless door. His clothes were dripping.
He took a deep breath, ran his card through the reader and tapped in the code.
Nathalie Fredén wasn’t alone in the interview room. A guard was standing by the wall, and at the desk sat a woman with a laptop. When she saw Berger she sent an email with the characteristic little whooshing sound, closed the computer, then stood up and left with a nod, closely followed by the guard.
There was a ping from Berger’s own reserve laptop, which was facing away from Fredén. Before he sat down he opened the newly arrived email. In contained a sketch. The male face looked like an utterly bland mixture of the two older pictures of Erik Johansson. He glanced at the equipment on the side table and noted that the light was already glowing red. He turned the laptop round and sat down.
‘So you’re seriously claiming that this is your version of Charles?’
‘It’s not easy,’ Nathalie Fredén said.
‘Especially if the whole thing is a lie.’
She looked at him. Her eyes were sharp but expressionless.
‘Maybe you spent more time looking at his cock than his face,’ Berger said, slamming the laptop closed.
‘What?’ Nathalie Fredén said.
‘The show is over,’ Berger said. ‘Nice performance. But now it’s over.’
She watched him, and suddenly he found himself wondering how he could ever have been taken in by her feigned naivety. The look in her eyes now was something entirely different.
‘How come you were completely dry when you came into your flat earlier this evening? It was pouring outside.’
‘Was I dry?’
‘Bone dry. Like your performance. Your neighbours on Vidargatan aren’t going to be too delighted when the police – as we speak, in fact – wake them up to find out which flat you were hiding in while you waited. The real question is whether or not you were alone.’
She went on looking at him. She said nothing. He didn’t like that look.
‘What do you have to say about that?’ he asked.
‘I don’t understand. I came home. You were sitting at my kitchen table. Two men came in from behind and threw themselves on me.’
‘But you were dry when you came in. You came from another flat in the building. Who was with you, watching the feed from the surveillance camera in the hall?’
‘Was there a surveillance camera? In my flat?’
‘It’s gone now. Charles came to get it. Then he went home to Ellen and carried on torturing her.’
‘There was a surveillance camera inside my flat and you didn’t spot it?’
And that was when he saw the smile in the left-hand corner of her mouth.
Everything went black inside him. The way it occasionally did. It was something that came from deep down. He had learned to control it, but it demanded absolute stillness, what used to be called counting to ten. When he was younger he would sometimes wake up with busted knuckles and loose teeth, once with half his bicep bitten off.
The fucking bitch had been toying with him the whole time. He wanted to lash out. Hard. Wipe her out.
Instead he went into the darkness. Found a calm point. Returned to the still point of the turning world. Saw Marcus and Oscar in front of him. Remembered what sort of person he had been. Wanted to be that person again, to take strength from that, from the depths.
Time passed. He felt her eyes drill into his downturned head.
Then he looked up again and said with studied calm: ‘One beautiful day nearly a quarter of a century ago, a young girl went up to the hayloft of the farm where she lived with her parents. She’d rigged up a pitchfork so that it was pointing straight up, firmly anchored between the floorboards. Calmly and methodically she made her way up the steep ladder to the hayloft, and instead of jumping into the hay and bursting out laughing, she jumped straight onto the pitchfork. The doctors concluded that she lived another half an hour.’
Fredén’s gaze didn’t flinch at all, her face showed no emotion.
Berger went on: ‘The farm was outside Umeå, the girl was ten years old, and her name was Nathalie Fredén. She simply didn’t want to be alive any more.’
He looked down again, at the floor, looked deep down. Rage was building up inside him, red hot, white hot. He stood up quickly, grabbed hold of the laptop, heard i
t crunch between his fingers, felt the scabs on his right knuckles crack, lurched across the table and roared in a voice he hadn’t heard for years: ‘Who the hell are you really?’
She was no longer looking at him. Her gaze was steady, but focused elsewhere. Berger heard Deer talking soothingly in his ear, and he tore the earpiece out.
Then he saw what Nathalie Fredén was looking at. A glowing red light. Their eyes met briefly. The air between them was toxic.
He threw his right hand out towards the switch. Blood spattered the wall. The little red light went out.
Nathalie Fredén leaned towards him and snarled: ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know who I am.’
The door from the control room opened. Deer and Allan rushed in. Berger picked up the laptop and sent it crashing against the wall. Its keys shot across the interview room.
‘Take this piece of shit down to the cells,’ Berger yelled. ‘Total isolation, no contact with anyone. Now!’
Then he stormed out. He landed with a thud on his desk chair. Sat still in the darkness. Staring into space.
Soon he felt a light hand on his shoulder. After the initial irritation the hand connected directly with his heart, took hold of it, calmed it.
‘I feel the same, Sam,’ Deer said. ‘She’s bloody clever.’
‘Far too clever, for fuck’s sake,’ Berger snapped. ‘She’s a fucking professional. That’s the missing piece.’
He stood up. Realisations shot wordlessly through him.
‘Stay here,’ he said, and walked out. He ran through corridors and down stairs. Completely out of breath he ran through the media room and opened the door to Syl’s cubbyhole. Five-year-old Moira was sleeping just as peacefully as she had been before – she didn’t seem to have moved in her bed fashioned from a reclined office chair – but her mother looked different. Syl looked pale, her thin hair hanging in clumps, and she seemed to have been waiting for him for a long time.
‘You bastard,’ she said.
‘Wiborg Supplies Ltd,’ he said. ‘What the hell is it?’
‘It’s … not good.’
‘I bloody well knew I’d heard it before somewhere. The Security Service?’
‘I don’t know if it is the Security Service, but it’s where the Security Service’s agents get their material. They’ve got everything. And by that I mean everything.’
‘Even bicycles made by a mediocre brand like Rex. The Security Service’s fucking undercover agents. Fuck!’
Syl nodded and looked shaken. ‘When I made my way in through a hidden back door I found a whole series of anomalies. I presume that’s to do with the fact that the Security Service split from the Police Authority on 1 January. The whole set-up seemed rather chaotic. The whole network’s security was pretty weak, and I was able to work my way back through time.’
‘Anomalies?’
‘First and foremost a list,’ Syl said quietly. ‘Just a few clicks away. Clicks that probably mean the end of my career. Or worse …’
‘Come on, Syl. A list?’
‘The identities of their agents. Divided into “internal resources” and “external resources”.’
‘What the hell?’ Berger exclaimed. ‘They’ve got a list? What sort of amateur crap is that?’
‘Christ … I think I was sufficiently camouflaged,’ Syl groaned, glancing in terror at her sleeping daughter. ‘I must have been sufficiently camouflaged. There can’t be any footprints. There can’t be.’
Berger breathed out. Looked around. Saw nothing. Didn’t even see Moira in the stretched-out office chair. Definitely didn’t see that she had opened her eyes and was looking at him as if he were something from a nightmare.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK, calm down, Syl, take a few deep breaths and all that sort of thing. We’ll have to make the best of the situation. Have you got that bloody Botox list here?’
‘What? What are you on about now?’
‘Botox. The list of clients who’ve had Botox injections to treat migraines. That’s the only thing that can’t be fake. No wrinkles on her forehead. No one could fake that.’
‘OK. Yes, it’s here. What exactly do you want?’
‘Cross-check the Botox list with the list of agents.’
‘Ah,’ Syl said, a hint of colour returning to her face. She typed quickly, then abruptly let go of the keyboard.
‘What is this, Sambo? Is Nathalie Fredén from the Security Service? An agent?’
‘I don’t know,’ Berger said. ‘I have no fucking clue.’
They looked at each other for a moment. Then the computer let out a bleep. Syl turned sharply back towards it and typed some more.
‘I’ve actually got a name,’ she said in a thin voice. ‘From “internal resources”. Started Botox treatment for chronic migraines at something called the Eriksberg Clinic. April, eighteen months ago. Female, thirty-seven years old.’
‘What does “internal resources” mean? Is she on the payroll?’
‘Yes, “external” can be anything from mercenaries to pickpockets. “Internal” is police officers who work undercover. But in this case she also works with Internal.’
‘Now I’m not following.’
‘With Internal. Internal Investigations.’
Berger felt he was in free fall. There was no protection, no solid ground anywhere. The claustrophobic little room started to spin, and from the edges of his dizziness he saw Nathalie Fredén’s eyes focusing very distinctly on the little red light. He saw her lean towards him and heard her snarl: ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know who I am.’
And everything fell into place. Almost everything.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK. What’s her name?’
‘Molly Blom. Originally an actress, in fact.’
‘Home address?’
‘Sam …’
‘Is there a home address?’
‘Stenbocksgatan 4, Östermalm.’
Berger walked around Syl’s little room, filled with the smell of human beings. He was breathing heavily, trying to think. It didn’t really work. Even so, he said: ‘You need to get rid of every last trace, Syl. Nothing must lead back to you. This isn’t about you, and I won’t mention you. Get rid of it all, and go back to the daily grind. And take it nice and easy.’
‘But what the hell is this all about?’ Syl exclaimed.
‘It’s about me,’ Berger said, and walked out.
The last thing he saw was five-year-old Moira’s inquisitive eyes staring out from her improvised bed. They followed him through a Stockholm in which the rain refused to stop tormenting him. There was still no trace of any dawn. It was just as dark as earlier in that peculiar, impossibly long night.
Berger’s car threw cascades of water at the city’s few nocturnal pedestrians. He spent more time looking in the rear-view mirror than ahead. So far he couldn’t see anything.
But he realised they were there.
18
Tuesday 27 October, 04.47
Stenbocksgatan was a forgotten side street between Engelbrektsgatan and Eriksbergsgatan, right next to Humlegården. He parked a couple of blocks away and soon found number 4, an imposing brick facade with bay windows. The actual entrance was low and not particularly difficult to get into. As he put the lock-pick back in his pocket he looked around the rain-streaked darkness of the street.
Nothing.
Even so, he knew his time was limited.
Answers, he needed answers. He wasn’t sure if he could formulate a single question, but he knew he’d recognise an answer. Perhaps the answer would formulate the question for him. Anything at all that could turn the tide. Because his life was on its way to becoming a different life.
He just didn’t understand why.
He quickly found the name Blom on the list of residents and set off up the unremarkable stairs. He had his lock-pick out again as he walked up the last few steps. He turned and looked back. He had left some serious puddles behind him.
As if that made the slightest differenc
e, he thought as he fiddled with the pick.
The person who lived there was no ordinary citizen; he felt that at once. The locks were unusually difficult to pick, three of them, one on top of the other. For a fleeting moment he actually feared he wasn’t going to succeed, for the first time in his career. But then the third and final lock clicked and the door slid open. He closed it behind him, locked it securely and stood still for a moment. He looked at the pile of post by his feet. Two days’ worth of newspapers, no more. Molly Blom had been home two days ago. A couple of windowed envelopes, nothing personal.
The flat was scarcely more furnished than Vidargatan, but the atmosphere was completely different. Where Vidargatan gave off a sense of abandonment, Stenbocksgatan seemed to be a lived-in, almost comfortable abode. The occupant was happy there, if she was actually capable of feeling happy anywhere in the world.
He didn’t really know where that impression came from, but he decided to validate it. He validated all his impressions, storing them up in case they could serve as ammunition during the undoubtedly less than pleasant days ahead.
The kitchen seemed to have been refurbished recently, not cheaply, and of course it was clinically clean. He opened the fridge but all he found was a large selection of protein drinks and some cut fruit wrapped in cling film.
That was the overriding impression as he walked through the two-room flat: order, cleanliness, neatness, absolute control.
In the living room was a perfectly white sofa. He ran his hand over the soothing and doubtless very expensive fabric.
Anyone daring to have a white sofa had to be certain of being immaculate. On the surface. And probably not have many visitors. Or at least carefully selected ones, just as clean, just as proper. If there were any lovers, then they were neat lovers.
The bathroom seemed almost sterile, including the obviously expensive spray shower, and everything smelled faintly perfumed with a sophisticated scent. On a chest of drawers in the airy, fresh bedroom were a number of framed photographs. He picked them up, one after the other. The first was of three people wearing bathing suits with exactly the same striped pattern. Between two beaming and very evidently upper-middle-class parents stood a thin girl of about ten – the age when the real Nathalie Fredén had killed herself – and there were certainly external similarities with the class photograph from Mariehem School in Umeå. Including the snub nose. Three more photographs showed the adult Molly Blom in various sporting settings, always on her own. In one she was running, presumably a marathon, and in the others she was wearing climbing equipment. In one of the climbing pictures she was dangling from a rope by a sheer rock face, waving happily at the camera.
