by Arne Dahl
She grabbed Berger’s abandoned rucksack from one corner and went back out into the corridor, retracing her steps until she reached his cell. She sighed deeply and reached out the hand clutching her security card to the reader.
Then she heard a snorting sound coming from the other side of the door.
As if he were having nightmares.
24
Wednesday 28 October, 00.05
Berger was lying on the hard bunk in the tiny isolation cell, and he wasn’t alone. There was quite a crowd around him. The floodgates had opened, the memories were building up. Everything was hazy, yet so very clear. He could see the details of faces he hadn’t consciously thought about for decades. He saw his nursery teachers’ hairstyles. He saw his great-grandmother’s liver spots. He saw every player in his under-twelve football team. He saw his dad at his carpentry bench and his mum by the stove, as if they had merged with the age-old gender roles he had grown up with. Out of the walls came classmates from every year, relatives who had long since emigrated or died, gangs of friends enveloped in clouds of off-piste snow, colleagues with different ranks of uniform, a bared set of teeth approaching his bicep, a group of girls he had slept with all on the same day in Koh Phangan, and then a dark-haired girl from a bar in Barcelona whose face he couldn’t remember ever having seen. The women in his life kept popping up and sweeping past with impassive faces. Misogyny? Sam Berger? He loved these women, or at least he had at the time. Never misogyny, he thought as he tried to catch their elusive gazes. Then came Freja, their first encounter. Freja Lindström – the party where she suddenly showed up with her stiff business boyfriend, their immediate, obvious connection, the same raucous laughter at life’s peculiarities. Exactly the same sense of humour. Was it the similarities that led to the death of the relationship eleven years later? He felt like asking her as she walked across the floor of the cell – time after time, in an endless loop – and cast a fleeting, frightened glance over her shoulder when she caught sight of him. That was the walk towards security at Arlanda, the very last time he saw her. He was stopped at the barrier, guards were called, Freja shielded the twins with her body and gentle words; he heard their laughter, but they never saw him that last time. And he only caught a glimpse of them, and here in the cell he could just make out their hands in hers at Arlanda. But then the twins grew out of their freed hands and appeared in an accelerating succession of flickering images. The fuck that he knew created them, the quivering heat as he shot his sperm deeper that usual into Freja’s orgasm-rocked body. Sitting in the twin buggy, and only Daddy Sam could tell them apart, even Mummy Freja often said the wrong name, but never Daddy Sam. Swimming with their armbands in the Adriatic Sea; fishing for cod in the sea off Halmstad; testing each other on their homework while they pretended to play a video game; running the children’s race at the Midnight Marathon and waiting for each other the whole way, and crossing the line at exactly the same moment; singing so loudly that the neighbours in Ploggatan eventually filed a formal protest with the housing association; standing in their winter clothes in a ditch one spring, picking coltsfoot; and at Arlanda, as nothing but disjointed hands in their mother’s as she cast a frightened glance over her shoulder at him. And the other women in his life gathered around her, and the looks in their eyes were no longer impassive and elusive, but just as he dared to meet their gaze the women started to inflate like balloons, one after the other, and disappear in separate, soundless explosions. Towards the end Deer appeared, she inflated and disappeared. Then Freja inflated and disappeared.
In the end there was only one woman left.
Sam ran through the tall grass that reached his chest. He was following a blond halo of hair visible just above the grass, a floating halo moving over a green sea. He was panting. In the end he caught up with the halo; the long blond hair settled into place, and William Larsson turned round. Sam had never stopped, would never stop being astonished at his friend’s misshapen face, all its cubistic protruding nodules. They were standing eye to eye now; they exchanged a quick hug, breathless. Then William raced off again. Sam didn’t follow him. He went to the rock instead, the stone was smooth, but he held on. Cleared a circle of the filthy glass.
With a backdrop of rustling aspen leaves, which sounded louder and louder, he met the fifteen-year-old girl’s gaze. Their eyes locked until the little drop of blood ran down her forehead and into her eye, turning it red. And yes, he saw more among the stranded buoys and rusty anchors, among the mooring rings, hawsers and sails. He saw the whole, tirelessly ticking mechanism that he had seen so often, been impressed by, fascinated by. He saw the perfectly coordinated constellation of cogs and pinions and springs, axles and pins, shafts, flywheels and spindles, pendulums, clicks and weights.
But that wasn’t all.
In the middle of the mechanism stood the girl. Wrapped in chains. The powerful clock ticked relentlessly on, slowly, slowly pulling her apart.
Through the decades he met the girl’s gaze. He met Molly Blom’s pleading gaze. And he woke up.
And stared into Molly Blom’s far from pleading gaze.
She was crouching beside his bunk. ‘Get up. We’re in a hurry.’
She helped him, his legs felt unsteady.
‘A hurry?’ he said groggily.
‘Hands behind your back,’ she said.
He did as she said. She fastened a zip tie around them, made it plain that she had her pistol in her shoulder holster, and pushed him out through the door. In silence they walked through the dismal corridors. They reached the now familiar door to the interview room, but she walked past it. They turned a corner and passed another door, in all likelihood the door to the control room.
‘Where the hell are we going?’ he whispered. Given the number of surveillance cameras mounted in the ceiling of the corridor, hidden microphones seemed likely.
She didn’t answer, just pushed him straight. After a bewilderingly long walk, they reached an almost invisible lift door. She pressed the button, ran her card through a reader and tapped in a six-digit code.
She still didn’t say anything.
Berger saw the two of them in the grimy lift mirror. It was the first time he’d seen them together. Prisoner and guard. Crook and cop. Molly and Sam. Berger and Blom. Everything felt distorted.
‘Are you taking me up to the department now?’ Berger said. ‘To make me run the gauntlet in front of my betrayed and disappointed colleagues?’
‘I doubt even Desiré Rosenkvist is there now,’ Blom said just as the lift doors opened, revealing the pitch-black of night. She pressed a glowing red button and a merciless fluorescent glare lit up an unremarkable stairwell. Berger could just make out a street lamp through the window in the door.
‘Are we even in Stockholm?’ he said.
Without a word she pulled him after her, away from the door. She opened another door that led to a large courtyard containing a number of parked cars, among them a dark Mercedes Vito van. It flashed its lights through the rain as Berger heard the locks click. She pushed him in across the driver’s seat; he slid over the gear stick and handbrake and glanced over his shoulder into the back of the van. It contained a couple of aluminium suitcases. She placed her shoulder bag there, and beside it the rucksack containing his laptop, watch box, files, the framed photographs – he even glimpsed his mobile phone. When he turned round, about to speak, she held his Rolex Oyster Perpetual Datejust out to him. All the condensation was gone. The watch case looked completely dry. And the hands were pointing very clearly at eighteen minutes past twelve.
‘You like watches?’ she said, dangling the timepiece. ‘Clocks?’
‘William taught me,’ he said.
‘That’s why I need you,’ she said, tucking the watch into his jacket pocket and strapping him into the passenger seat with two large zip ties. He couldn’t move.
She started the engine, and as she began to manoeuvre the van out of its tight parking space she said: ‘I need you, but I don’t know if
I can trust you.’
A gate opened in the narrow archway and the van slipped smoothly out onto a deserted Bergsgatan. Above them Stockholm Police Headquarters loomed up like a medieval fortress.
‘We’re in Stockholm,’ he confirmed.
She drove fast. He approved.
‘What about Roy and Roger?’ he said.
She just shook her head.
They said nothing. As they passed Tegnérlunden the illuminated statue of the titanic Strindberg stared down at them from his block of stone. A couple of well oiled nocturnal wanderers on the pedestrianised zone of Drottninggatan failed to cross Tegnérgatan properly. Molly Blom blasted the horn, forcing them up into a bike rack. They drove across Sveavägen and turned into Birger Jarlsgatan. Still in silence.
Berger even managed to keep his trap shut when Blom did a handbrake turn into Eriksbergsgatan. But a few moments later he nodded through the window and said: ‘The Eriksberg Clinic.’
She glanced at him and took the next turn even harder.
‘The Botox,’ he went on. ‘You didn’t have to say anything. Why did you?’
‘I thought you were smarter than you are,’ Molly Blom said.
‘Was it true, about the migraines?’
‘Do you really think I want a baby-smooth forehead? But it does help.’
He frowned but said nothing more. He didn’t even say a word when they drove into Stenbocksgatan and double-parked outside number 4. She jumped out; he sat there, unable to move. She went round the van, opened the passenger door and looked at him all tied up. She had a knife in her hand. ‘So, am I going to regret this for the rest of my life?’
‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘If you’re thinking of stabbing me.’
She sighed and cut the two zip ties. But when he got out onto the pavement his hands were still fastened behind his back.
She pushed him ahead of her up the stairs, undid the locks and said: ‘You did well to pick all these.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Years of training.’
They went inside. She on switched the lights. A gentle, soothing glow spread across the flat. They went into the living room. The once immaculate white sofa was covered in stains. Ugly, rust-red stains. He felt like a villain. Like the villain he was. She led him over to the bay window and half sat on the desk, looking at the sofa.
‘You stood here,’ she said, picking up the various blocks of Post-it notes. ‘You’d seen these. Maybe you could already hear Kent and Roy down by the front door. Then what happened?’
Berger sighed and thought. Above the sofa hung the huge picture of the mountaineers.
‘I thought about how thick that picture was,’ he said, nodding. ‘How heavy it must have been for the removal men. Then I saw the scrap of paper on the floor and thought about the six different colours of Post-it notes. I picked it up and read it, pulled out the smallest evidence bag I had and shoved it up my backside.’
‘Fitting,’ Blom said. ‘Do you know how much that sofa cost?’
They walked towards the picture, and Berger said: ‘That’s probably why I wanted to mess it up.’
‘Hmm,’ she said.
They reached the sofa. He pointed at the floor.
‘That’s where the note was,’ he said.
She took the rolled-up, still slightly damp pink Post-it note from her pocket, unrolled it and said: ‘It’s probably best if we put it back in its place, then.’
She slid her hand behind the large photograph. There was a small click as a previously invisible crack opened down the snow-covered mountain. She leaned across the sofa. Then she folded back both sides of the picture. It was now twice as wide, about four metres from end to end, and inside an entire police investigation was mapped out in exquisite detail. Photographs, notes, receipts, forms, extracts from official registers, copies of certificates, airline tickets, and – above all – a confusion of Post-it notes in every imaginable colour.
Molly Blom attached the missing pink Post-it note with a magnet and said: ‘I shall try to forget where that note has been.’
Berger looked at the impenetrable pattern. He could tell that his eyes were the size of saucers.
‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘You really are crazy.’
‘Do you still think you’ve been chasing this piece of scum harder than anyone else?’ Blom asked, adjusting some of the notes.
Berger moved closer and looked to the left, where he found a photograph of himself from the start of Year 9. What struck him was the innocence in those eyes. Back then he hadn’t yet seen a girl get tortured by his crazy friend in a rotting boathouse. Or crept away with his tail between his legs. Or consciously tried to suppress the whole thing.
‘Who has framed photographs of themselves lined up in their bedroom? Who only has pictures of themselves in doing extreme sports? Who has migraines so terrible that they can only be treated with Botox? Who has nothing but protein drinks and plastic-wrapped fruit in their fridge? I’ll tell you: a manic person. A control freak.’
‘Not manic,’ Blom said calmly, pointing at one of the photographs towards the middle of the display, a young, uniformed Molly Blom on a podium. ‘Not manic, but determined. I’m a year younger than you, and I became a police officer two years before you did, and by then I already had an acting career behind me. While you were bumming about south-east Asia and taking random courses at university. Philosophy, wasn’t it?’
‘I thought it was going to give me the answer to all of life’s riddles,’ Berger said, looking at a photograph of the fifteen-year-old William Larsson. His face really was misshapen.
‘He vanished without trace after Year 9,’ Blom said with a nod.
‘What are we doing here?’ Berger asked.
‘There are gaps,’ Blom said, pointing at the display. ‘And you’re going to help me fill them.’
‘Well we’ve wasted a fuck load of time on this charade, time Ellen Savinger doesn’t have.’
Then it struck. All the tension he thought he’d seen in her face from the moment she fetched him from his cell erupted into sheer fury. She forced him up against the wall.
‘Now listen very carefully, you bastard!’ she roared. ‘We’ve just confessed, both of us, that we’ve been running unsanctioned parallel investigations. We’ve both confessed that we already know who the murderer is. We’ve already confessed that our pasts are woven together with his. We’re both utterly fucked. Do you understand? Can you get that into your head, you pathetic excuse for a cop?’
Berger felt himself just staring at her.
‘Your loop was supposed to conceal that,’ he said eventually.
‘There was some sort of glitch, I don’t know what. Some of our confidential conversation got picked up, and they’re now hard at work trying to dig out the rest. Do you understand what that means?’
‘Oh, fuck,’ he said.
They said nothing for a while, just looked at each other.
In the end Berger said: ‘As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t change that much. Things can’t really get much worse. I’m already suspected of being a serial killer. But things really don’t look good for you.’
Blom shoved him down onto the stained sofa and started walking round her flat. Berger watched patterns emerge inside her. He could see her weighing up pros and cons. He could see her making decisions that would affect the rest of her life.
‘You’ve already removed me from custody of your own volition,’ he said. ‘You brought me here and showed me your secret investigation. You’ve already made your decision. You’ve broken more laws than I have.’
She breathed out. Stared at him, blaming him for messing up her controlled life. And he could see that it made sense. Then, understanding just how much sense it made, something even heavier hit him. The features of his face all seemed to slump.
She saw it. And pulled back.
He huddled up and sank down with his hands still tied behind his back. He hid his face against his knees, pressed it against his knees.
She heard him whimper. She crouched down.
‘Oh, God,’ he gasped. ‘How many do you think there are?’
‘We’ve got five,’ she said. ‘I think there are seven.’
‘Seven fifteen-year-old girls,’ he said. ‘And none of them would have got hurt if I hadn’t been such a coward. If I’d rescued you William Larsson would have been caught. And he wouldn’t have come back now and become a serial killer. I – cowardly, pathetic Sam Berger – created him.’
‘But you’ve been aware of that the whole time, surely?’
He whimpered some more. With great effort she overcame her instincts and reached a hand out towards him. It landed on his shoulder. They sat like that for a while.
Then she said: ‘I feel pretty similar. I was a coward as well. I got free, but I didn’t say a thing to anyone. I didn’t tell anyone at all. I’ve lived with this on my own all these years.’
He snorted. ‘But even that was my fault.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I could have stopped him too.’
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much time, do we?’
‘I don’t know how far they’ve got with the recording from the interview room. My boss, August Steen, doesn’t believe me. He really doesn’t believe me. Kent and Roy could already be on their way up the stairs.’
‘Again,’ he said, and got to his feet. ‘No, fuck that.’
She stood up, stretched and said: ‘Well, one thing’s clear. This frame can’t stay here.’
‘But it must weigh a ton.’
‘It’s supposed to look like it does.’
Berger looked at Blom. She returned his gaze. Their eyes locked.
‘OK,’ Berger said eventually. ‘William Larsson is scattering clues to get me put away for his monstrous crimes. But does he know that you’re on his trail?’
‘There’s no reason to think that, no.’
‘There is.’
‘There is?’
‘How tall are you?’
