by Arne Dahl
Berger saw that she too could feel the walls scream. Feel rather than hear. He had been overwhelmed by it the first time. She was probably overwhelmed as well, but in her own way. And the question now was how many screams there were.
Was it a whole girls’ choir?
‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘It must be the same clock.’
‘A big, tower clock,’ he said. ‘Much more powerful than you’d think.’
‘Not me,’ she said sharply, and went back to the wall to the left of the bloodstain. She pointed at the hacked-out indentation around the middle mooring ring.
‘It’s hard to tell,’ she said. ‘There could be different layers, but it’s been very roughly cut.’
‘I apologise that my work doesn’t meet with your approval, ma’am,’ Berger said sullenly.
‘Well, we’re just going to have to be more gentle this time,’ Blom said calmly, pulling a hammer and chisel from a couple of her army trousers’ many pockets. She held the chisel against the centre of the bloodstain and turned to look at Berger. He nodded.
‘It’s more solid than you think,’ he said.
She hit the chisel with the hammer. Nothing happened. Again. A few chips broke off.
After a while she had cut out the sides of a square three centimetres across. Then inside it she started carefully chipping off as thin a layer of the wall as she could.
One centimetre in, the wall changed colour. Blom struck once more and a larger piece of cement came loose and fell to the floor, revealing a small section of wall that was clearly a brownish-red colour.
‘Bloody hell,’ Berger said, pulling an evidence bag from his jacket pocket.
Blom pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, broke off a piece of the rust-brown wall and dropped it into Berger’s opened bag. He sealed it and wrote Layer 1 on it in permanent pen. Then he put it back in his pocket and carried on watching as Blom worked.
After a good stretch of precision chiselling a new layer emerged. Two clenched fists, and the same procedure was repeated. But this time Blom passed the hammer and chisel to Berger, who took a moment before accepting the tools.
A while later he held up an evidence bag bearing the label Layer 3, shone his torch at it and said: ‘The only thing is, how are we going to get any DNA from these?’
‘I may have a solution to that,’ Blom said, watching the little plastic bag as it slipped into Berger’s pocket.
‘Let me guess,’ Berger said. ‘An external resource?’
He put the tools down on the floor and looked at his hands. It was strange: he had more calluses on his hands this time than when he uncovered the large mooring rings.
Blom picked up the hammer and chisel and went on working at the square. Soon a further rust-red layer appeared.
Time passed. Berger took over. He spent a long time chiselling.
Eventually they were both staring at a plastic bag labelled Layer 6 in very unsteady handwriting.
‘Six layers plus Ellen,’ Blom said. ‘Seven girls.’
Then the screams rose up from the cell walls again, and Berger actually thought he could make out seven voices. Seven voices from purgatory.
Berger tried to think rationally. It wasn’t altogether easy.
‘It’s not necessarily seven girls,’ he said. ‘There may be others. There could be more victims.’
Then they heard something. It was barely a scrape, but it still made Molly Blom go utterly rigid. With a quick glance at Berger she managed to hush him before he even thought about saying anything.
The front door opening?
Or just the sounds of the building, lingering from the ghosting hour?
Blom and Berger stood stock-still.
They heard nothing else. Just an echoing silence.
Blom switched her torch off and pushed Berger’s aside. Then they heard a faint scraping sound.
Like a foot on the cellar steps.
Berger silently drew his pistol from his shoulder holster and raised one finger in the air, then two, with a questioning look. Blom shook her head, as if she couldn’t tell either, and started to move towards the opening without making a sound. Even when they heard the next step, not far from the opening, they still couldn’t tell if they were dealing with one or two visitors.
Either way, only one person would be able to crawl into the cell at a time.
They took up strategic positions around the opening, both aiming their weapons at the hole. Berger switched his torch off. Everything turned pitch-black. There was the sound of someone getting down on their knees, lying on their stomach.
The sound of someone crawling through the opening.
Berger switched his torch back on and kicked the wall above the opening. The figure that had just slid into the cell was completely covered by greyish-white powder.
Blom yelled: ‘Don’t move!’
A cloud of finer dust settled slowly on the figure. Its face was entirely greyish-white until a pair of brown eyes opened with an expression of utter terror.
A deer’s eyes.
‘What the fuck, Deer?’ Berger cried out, lowering his pistol.
‘OK,’ Desiré Rosenkvist said hoarsely. ‘Now this really is a nightmare.’
‘Are you alone?’ Blom shouted.
‘Horribly alone,’ Deer said.
Berger took her hand and pulled her to her feet.
Blom finally lowered her pistol and asked: ‘What are you doing here?’
‘That’s my line, surely?’ Deer said, brushing herself down. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for ages, Sam, and Allan keeps saying that you’re still being questioned. What the hell is going on?’
‘Long story,’ Berger said.
Deer pointed at Blom. ‘Nathalie Fredén. Wow. And you’ve both got guns. Christ, this really is a nightmare.’
‘It’s hard to give you a short version,’ Berger said. ‘You’re going to have to decide if you trust me or not.’
Deer looked at him sceptically.
‘She’s a cop, then?’ she said. ‘All we heard from Allan was that she’d been released and you’d been taken in for questioning by Internal Investigations. But I can’t deny that I had a strong feeling that the Security Service was involved.’
‘I’m a cop, yes,’ Blom said, without putting her pistol away. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘A nocturnal thought,’ Deer said. ‘The wall. Why was it so thick? Wasn’t it a bit unlikely that the perpetrator had extended the wall by ten centimetres all in one go? Wasn’t it more likely that it was done in stages? Maybe Julia Almström and Jonna Eriksson were held against this wall as well.’
‘I’ve trained you well, Deer,’ Berger said, passing over one of the small evidence bags.
‘You haven’t trained me at all, Sam, and you know it,’ Deer said, then read the label. ‘“Layer 6”? Six?’
‘Six layers beneath this one, all with definite traces of blood. Seven girls have been held here.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Deer said. ‘What is this? Some sort of secret parallel investigation? By the Security Service? Have they recruited you, Sam?’
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ Blom said. ‘The question is, can we trust you?’
Berger cast a quick glance at Blom, and thought he got some sort of acknowledgement in return.
‘We don’t exist,’ he said. ‘You haven’t seen us here. You chiselled this little square out yourself. You took these six evidence bags to Robin at the National Forensic Centre.’
Deer snorted and shook her head briefly.
‘I thought this smelled funny,’ she said. ‘So you’re on the run?’
‘We’re working below the radar,’ Blom said. She still had her gun in her hand.
‘Sam?’ Deer said, questioningly.
‘Undercover,’ Berger confirmed. ‘Have you still got your old pay-as-you-go mobile?’
‘It’s at home. Not charged up, though,’ Deer said.
‘I’ll text you a list of four names. Check if they match.
Julia, Jonna and Ellen’s DNA is already part of the investigation, but you need to get hold of DNA from the other four old investigations: desk drawers, combs, toothbrushes, clothes, locks of hair, anything.’
‘To be honest, there isn’t much of an investigation now,’ Deer said gloomily. ‘There’s hardly anything left. My guess is that the Security Service is going to take it over soon.’
‘This will probably inject a bit of life into it. You’ll understand the connections when you get the names. Then you can follow them up. Reply to my text when the analysis is done. Never use official channels.’
Deer sighed and looked like she was thinking hard.
‘So it was true? This is a serial killer?’
‘And all seven victims seem to have been held here,’ Berger said.
‘I felt it the first time I came into this horrific little cell,’ Deer said. ‘A lot of things have happened here.’
‘We’re leaving now,’ Berger said, handing over the other evidence bags. ‘Like I said, you haven’t seen us.’
‘I don’t even know who you are,’ Deer said, going over to the wall. She inspected the carefully chiselled hole and shook her head. ‘Above all, I don’t know who you are, Sam. You lied to me. You really were running a parallel investigation. And you obstructed the real investigation. I can’t honestly believe you’ve got much of a future in the force.’
‘The only thing that matters right now is that you trust me, Deer. I’m going to have to apologise for the rest of it under more normal circumstances.’
Berger kneeled down and crept backwards through the hole.
Deer turned to Blom and said: ‘And I don’t actually know you at all. Who are you?’
‘Eva Lindkvist,’ Molly Blom said, finally tucking her pistol back in her shoulder holster.
Once they’d gone Deer put her hands to her ears and pressed hard.
But the screams only got louder and louder.
31
Thursday 29 October, 07.02
They waited for it. It didn’t take long.
It started as a creeping change. The world raised itself laboriously out of the darkness, split in two, then the red dawn managed to separate above from below, sky from water. Out of the gap between them, colours seeped through and spread across the surface of the water.
They were standing out on the jetty after a couple of hours’ sleep. Berger was feeling his bandaged left palm, and could tell that Blom was watching him.
‘What happened after you ran away?’ she said. ‘Back then. Twenty-two years ago.’
Berger shook his head. ‘When I had run some way through the grass your screaming stopped. I didn’t even turn back then. I ran home with my tail between my legs, and I hid. Nothing should be quite as worrying as a teenager overplaying normality. But my parents didn’t notice a thing.’
‘And William?’
‘I just avoided him,’ Berger said. ‘For the rest of term. And I still didn’t know who you were. I never saw you clearly enough.’
‘Do you think he hated us?’ Blom asked.
Berger looked into the sun as it grew with unexpected speed. ‘To understand any of this you have to understand who William was. We’re talking about a mother and son who were forced to move from Huvudsta, Hässelby, Stuvsta, Bandhagen, because the son was being bullied so badly. He struggled through life with his lumpy face; he clung to his clocks even though all hell kept breaking loose around him. Eventually something snapped. It could have been that snowball you threw at the pocket watch he was showing me, it could have been something else.’
‘That snowball,’ Blom said. ‘I didn’t throw it.’
‘You were there, weren’t you?’ Berger said. ‘You were in that gang when it happened. He loved his clocks, and attacking them was like attacking the most precious thing in the world to him. He loved wristwatches, pocket watches, wall clocks, but now he was building the most difficult one of all: a tower clock. But without a tower. Just a boathouse. So he set about modifying his construction, so it could be used to take revenge. The fact that it ended up being you, Molly, was probably just a coincidence.’
‘Not any more. Nothing’s coincidental now.’
‘On a completely different level, maybe. When he showed me his clocks he wanted to be admired, judged for his talents not his face. He wanted to share something. Going through the things he went through, well … what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Yet anyone who becomes a murderer is as good as dead.’
‘You mean it’s suicide by proxy?’
‘Yes, he just doesn’t have the right make-up, I guess.’
‘And what would be the right make-up?’
‘I don’t know,’ Berger said. ‘Forgiveness isn’t my area of expertise.’
‘That would have been the only solution, you mean?’
‘Maybe. Learning from evil in order to understand it and be able to counteract it, both within yourself and out in the world. I’ve failed to do that.’
‘I didn’t forgive either,’ Blom said. ‘Does anyone, truly?’
‘But you did manage to go on.’
‘By acting my way through my life, yes.’
‘That feels like what we all do,’ Berger said with a snort. ‘When I was a son I played the part of a son. When I was a father I played the part of a father. I’ll play the part of an old man too. Hell, I’ll end up playing dead.’
‘But not a police officer?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever played the part of a police officer, no. Have you?’
‘It’s the only role I’ve never played,’ Blom said.
They stood there for a while. The redness turned into morning light and spread relentlessly across Edsviken. Day had come.
‘That role will probably be over and done with soon,’ Berger said.
Blom nodded slowly; then in the end shook her head. She went back into the boathouse. Berger waited a while longer. Then he followed her.
Blom pulled on her tracksuit top and drank a protein drink as she looked through the previous day’s security footage. The screen was divided into four. Four rectangles displayed shots from around the boathouse, and nothing happening in any of them.
‘A quiet night,’ she said, zipping up her top.
She watched sceptically as he picked up his old jacket and slowly pulled it on.
‘We’re an odd couple,’ she declared, and walked out.
He caught up with her by the fence.
‘I’ll drive,’ she said.
He didn’t object: he had no great desire to drive a stolen 1994 Mazda with false plates all the way to Kristinehamn.
The rain held off, more or less, for the first 250 kilometres. They had just one significant exchange throughout the entire journey.
‘Tell me about mountain climbing,’ Berger said.
‘Mountain climbing?’ Blom said. The car wobbled on the irritating 90 km/h stretch near Örebro.
‘It seems to be your one real passion in life.’
‘You’re seriously suggesting we talk about our lives?’
He laughed. ‘Don’t bother, then. But it’s a bit uneven.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know you much better as Nathalie Fredén than as Molly Blom. Whereas you’ve already drilled pretty deep into Sam Berger’s boringly stable psyche.’
It looked as if the smooth forehead actually frowned, but it was probably a result of the sun suddenly breaking through the clouds.
‘Yes,’ she eventually said. ‘I like climbing.’
‘I always imagine that undercover officers would relax by doing something that didn’t remind them of work. Crocheting, maybe? Growing geraniums?’
‘You think climbing reminds me of work?’
‘Doesn’t it? Aren’t they both about precision and control on the brink of the abyss?’
‘In some ways,’ she conceded. ‘But when I’m dangling there with nature stretching out to infinity, the only thing I feel is a vast, overwhelming sense of f
reedom.’
He nodded. ‘I’m scared of heights,’ Berger said. ‘And I don’t really trust myself. I might get a sudden impulse and just let go.’
‘Tell me about the watches.’
He smiled. ‘The watches make me calm. There’s something remarkable about the way all those tiny cogs interact. I enter a different world and recharge my strength. Time is always the same there. Calm and straightforward. Because of the complexity.’
‘Oddly enough, it sounds a bit like mountain climbing,’ Blom said.
‘Mountain climbing with a safety net,’ Berger said.
They were silent the rest of the way to Kristinehamn.
At one corner of Södra Torget a moody-looking girl was sitting in the worsening rain. Her tattoos were clearly visible through her far-too-thin clothes. As she peered inside the car she looked extremely suspicious.
‘Sandra,’ Berger said.
‘Hmm,’ the girl said. ‘Who’s she?’
Blom held up her fake police ID. ‘Jump in the back.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Sandra said. ‘Isn’t that what Jonna and Simon did?’
‘Weren’t you in Australia then?’ Berger said. ‘Don’t worry, we are police officers. And we only want to talk to you. On the phone yesterday you said something about a secret hideout …?’
Sandra let out a deep sigh and got in the back seat. Blom drove off slowly and parked nearby.
‘Our cave,’ Sandra said. ‘It was our secret place when we were younger. I don’t know for sure if she ever showed it to Simon.’
‘You were close when you were younger?’ Blom said.
‘Yes,’ Sandra said. ‘We lived with the same foster family for a couple of years. The cave was where we used to hide from the world. Then Jonna was moved on and we didn’t see each other so much. I’ve only met Simon a couple of times.’
‘Do you think she’s likely to have shown Simon the cave?’
Sandra nodded. ‘I think that’s where they escaped to, every so often,’ Sandra said. ‘When there was too much shit going on. Like we used to.’
‘Have you been there recently?’
‘I’ve only just got back from Australia. I was away for nearly a year. And before that it had probably been a couple of years. I don’t run away any more.’
