by Arne Dahl
‘Gundersen was a fighter,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t the sort of man who turned the other cheek. I think we can assume that he didn’t exactly preach the value of forgiveness.’
Blom nodded.
‘A man schooled in torture and violence,’ she said. ‘And some twenty years later the son returns, after plastic surgery and military training, and embarks on his revenge with a decisive blow against the worst of the bullies, Anton Bergmark. William tortures him with a hammer for two crazed, nightmarish days, transforming him into a person who no longer exists except in his own head. And even this crime is disguised, to make it look like a different sort of attack. But then he stops attacking the guilty and goes after innocent girls. Why?’
‘We’re outside the realm of logic,’ Berger said. ‘He isn’t interested in taking out his revenge on grown women. It was fifteen-year-old girls who witnessed his humiliation. That’s what stayed with him, and maybe made him completely incapable of interacting normally with women. They’re the ones who have to be wiped out. I agree that when it comes down to it, he’s basically a psychopath His mass-murdering father may have taught him how to give his actions a rational and professional veneer, but William’s motives are genuinely sick. If a man gets in the way, like Simon Lundberg in the cave, he just gets rid of him. It’s the girls that interest him.’
‘Seven layers of blood in the cellar in Märsta,’ Blom said. ‘He tortured all of them. And thanks to Anton we know William has both the ability and detachment to carry it out. He spent two whole days with him.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Berger said.
They paused. Looked at the increasingly bizarre pattern on the board. Thought.
After a while Blom said: ‘When his dad came to fetch his sixteen-year-old son, he would have informed the mother, right? Unless he just took him?’
‘Good,’ Berger said. ‘We’ve got two different pictures of Nils Gundersen. The obvious one: the tough guy. Deserts the Foreign Legion to become a mercenary. Fights in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq. Wanted for war crimes and for breaking international law. The less obvious picture is the dad who finds out he’s got a son, that the son is being bullied and having a hard time, and rescues him. Which of these two Gundersens did the mother, Stina Larsson, see? Probably the latter, don’t you think? The dad coming back to rescue his son?’
‘I agree,’ Blom said. ‘They probably had some degree of contact. In theory, Stina would have consented to the move.’
‘Which means that Stina’s sister, Alicia Anger over in Vendelsögården Care Home, might be able to tell us more.’
‘If we can find our way through the fog of language.’
‘It’s worth a try,’ Berger said, holding out his hand. It took a while before Blom placed her mobile phone in it.
‘Vendelsögården, Mia Arvidsson,’ a female voice answered.
‘Hello, Mia,’ Berger said. ‘I believe we spoke when I visited one of your patients, Alicia Anger, the other day.’
‘Possibly,’ Mia Arvidsson said drily. ‘Who am I speaking to?’
‘My name is … Charles Lindbergh. I’m the policeman who came to talk to Alicia yesterday I don’t know if you remember. I was wondering if it was possible to talk to her over the phone?’
‘Yes. And no.’
‘Can you expand on that?’
‘Yes, I remember. And no, it’s not possible to speak to her.’
‘I know communication can be a bit tricky …’
‘The communication difficulties I’m referring to are absolute,’ Mia Arvidsson said. ‘Alicia Anger is dead.’
Berger fell silent. Everything was silent.
Arvidsson went on: ‘The police have been here. They concluded that it was a natural but unconventional death. “A feeding error,” if I remember the phrase correctly.’
‘A … feeding error …?’
‘It’s difficult to describe,’ Mia Arvidsson said. ‘You’d almost have to see it for yourself.’
Berger reflected. Then he took a chance. ‘You don’t happen to have a picture?’
‘Yes,’ Mia Arvidsson said. ‘But it’s not something I have any intention of sharing.’
‘I’m a police officer. I’m not going to publish it.’
‘But the police have already got it …’
‘Not me,’ Berger said. ‘And I really do need to see it. Right away.’
He clearly heard the nurse sigh.
‘Have you got an email address?’ she asked.
Berger glanced towards Blom. She was already busy tapping at her computer. Then she turned the screen towards him and he read out an email address.
The email arrived three minutes later, to the newly created and very temporary email address. The picture showed Alicia Anger in her rocking chair in Vendelsögården Care Home. With the exception of one detail: she looked more peaceful than she had in life.
Out of her mouth hung a black sock, like a blackened tongue.
There was a caption as well, probably supplied by Mia Arvidsson: Given Mrs Anger’s eating habits and daily accidents at mealtimes, the likelihood that she simply mistook the sock for food and choked on it is so high that the case has been closed and written off as an accident.
Most likely a quote from the police report.
‘It could be true, of course,’ Blom said, looking at the grotesque picture. ‘She wasn’t exactly in full command of her faculties.’
‘Ingen ruaidh,’ Berger said. ‘Now “the red girl” is filling Odin’s horn with mead. But she was damn well murdered.’
‘By William?’ Blom said. ‘Why would he murder his own senile aunt?’
‘It happened this morning, apparently,’ Berger read. ‘So the day after Roy and Roger tracked us down. Are we really going to believe that’s a coincidence?’
‘His name’s Kent,’ Blom said. ‘And I’ve worked with Kent and Roy for a long time. I doubt they’d have murdered her.’
‘Even so, she wouldn’t have died if we hadn’t gone to see her,’ Berger said.
Then Blom’s secure mobile rang. It had never rung before. They both stared at it warily. Blom looked at the screen: Unknown. The story of her life.
Then she answered.
‘Yes?’
Berger was watching her. Her expression didn’t change; she just passed the phone to him without a word.
‘Yes?’
‘Sam,’ Deer’s unmistakable voice said. ‘We need to meet.’
‘Text messages aren’t good enough?’ Berger said.
‘The buttons on my backup mobile are too small. The bench on Norr Mälarstrand in half an hour. OK?’
‘OK,’ Berger said. ‘Bring Syl.’
‘Syl?’ Deer said. ‘Why?’
‘Tell her she knows why. And tell her it’s completely OK if she refuses.’
The conversation was over. Berger looked at the time. Just past four.
Molly said: ‘The bench?’
The park bench next to the little jetty along the northern shore of Riddarfjärden didn’t have the same feel as when Berger and Deer used to sit there to escape the occasionally oppressive atmosphere of Police Headquarters with coffee, conversation and a nice view.
Then it provided a breathing space. Now all it provided was a very wet space.
Even so, Deer was sitting there beneath an umbrella. And she wasn’t alone. Under a second umbrella they could make out a taller and considerably sharper profile.
Berger and Blom circled the bench for a while to make sure that Deer hadn’t been tempted to temper mercy with justice. There was no sign that she was being watched. They sat down on either side of Deer and Syl, without umbrellas.
They were pretty much alone between the sparse street lamps on Norr Mälarstrand.
‘You’re both wanted now,’ Deer said. ‘The Security Service issued an alert at lunchtime. Looks like they made their minds up. And apparently you, Nathalie Fredén, aren’t called Eva Lindkvist, but Molly Blom. It’s a fairly drastic step to reveal the identi
ty of an “internal resource”. That suggests serious criminality.’
‘OK,’ Berger said. ‘Are you wearing recording devices?’
‘Of course,’ Deer said in a perfectly neutral voice.
‘Why else did you summon me here?’ Berger said. ‘What was it that couldn’t be dealt with over the phone?’
She handed him a file.
‘I assumed you’d want hard copies of everything,’ Deer said.
Berger slipped the file inside his jacket and smiled.
‘I’ve trained you well, Deer,’ he said.
‘As we all know, you haven’t trained me at all,’ Deer said. ‘The DNA samples were a match. I got strands of hair from a number of places, and it all fitted. Seven girls with the names, birth dates and ID numbers that you sent in your text have been held in that hellish cellar in Märsta. One after the other.’
Berger nodded and glanced at Blom. She was nodding too.
‘Not just ghosts in the machine,’ he said after a brief pause.
‘I’ve got a couple more things,’ Deer said. ‘First a message from Vira. You remember Vira?’
‘Medical Officer Höög’s assistant? The twenty-one-year-old? Of course, crystal clear.’
‘On closer examination it turns out that the blood-thinning agent wasn’t a blood-thinning agent at all, but a sedative that isn’t available in Sweden.’
‘And the other thing?’ Blom said.
Deer turned towards Blom and looked at her for a few moments.
‘Security Service,’ Deer finally said, in a peculiar tone of voice.
‘Yes?’ Berger said, pouring oil on troubled waters.
Deer turned back to him and said, with the same sceptical expression: ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Sam? I don’t want to see you end up in prison. It would spoil my CV.’
‘Out with it,’ Berger said.
Deer cleared her throat. ‘Today, when the Security Service issued the alert, the explanations were so vague, so evasive, that I tried to look into it more closely. I had a quiet word with an old friend who works for the Security Service now. He said it had something to do with new information the technical team had managed to extract from an interview recording. Does that mean anything to you?’
Berger looked at Blom. She nodded anxiously.
‘Thanks again,’ Berger said. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘And why am I here?’ Syl asked, clearly concerned.
‘I presume Deer has explained the situation to you?’
‘For God’s sake, there’s an alert out for you as of today, Sambo,’ Syl spluttered. ‘The fact that I’m talking to you without arresting you makes me an accomplice.’
‘But you’re here anyway,’ Berger said.
‘I understand that it was you, Sylvia, who managed to find my name,’ Blom said.
‘Which we swore a solemn oath not to tell anyone,’ Syl said, flashing a cutting glance at Berger.
‘Anomalies,’ Berger said. ‘When you found the Security Service list during that unofficial search you mentioned anomalies. You found more than the list …?’
‘And then I closed my eyes,’ Syl said.
‘I want you to open them again,’ Berger said. ‘What sort of anomalies?’
Syl frowned and ran her hand through her thin, mousy hair. ‘There were signs that security had been intentionally weakened for an hour or so around the turn of the year. It looks like secret documents weren’t just accessed.’
‘But …?’
‘I don’t know,’ Syl said, shrugging. ‘Erased, maybe.’
‘So there were signs that things had been erased from the Security Service’s top-secret archive?’ Blom exclaimed.
‘Signs,’ Syl said. ‘Nothing more.’
‘Can you take a closer look?’ Berger asked.
‘We’ve already agreed a couple of times that this is all over now,’ Syl said. ‘And you were still a police officer then.’
Berger laughed. ‘Can you take a closer look?’ he repeated.
‘If you insist,’ Syl said sullenly.
‘Thanks,’ Berger said. ‘Well, we won’t detain you any longer.’
Deer and Syl stood up. Syl began to walk away, but Deer waited a moment longer, looking at Berger. Then she shook her head, turned and walked off beneath her umbrella. Soon they had both disappeared into the rain, as though swallowed up for good.
Molly Blom said: ‘I know their rota.’
‘What?’ Berger said, his eyes focused on the distant past.
‘The technical guys’ rota. I know it. I know where one of them comes out, and roughly when. We need to find out what they’ve managed to extract from our looped footage. We said things there that could wreck our whole investigation.’
‘So you’re thinking of adding “violence against a public servant” to our already impressive list of achievements?’
‘Anders Karlberg is a friend,’ Blom said. ‘I think we can talk to him. Without resorting to violence.’
‘A friend?’
‘OK,’ Molly Blom said, shrugging. ‘A bit more than a friend.’
35
Thursday 29 October, 17.45
They tapped in the code and entered the stairwell on Bergsgatan, walked past the lift that led down to hell, and stepped out into the courtyard where Blom’s Mercedes Vito was actually parked once more. Now under new ownership, she presumed. She pressed against the wall to her left to evade the security cameras and crept over to a brand-new Tesla. Berger crouched down beside her.
‘A Tesla. Wow,’ he whispered.
‘Anders really likes the latest technology,’ she whispered.
‘In bed as well?’
‘Well, he’s not in the same league as your Madame X, of course.’
Then they were mercifully silent for half an hour. The Security Service really had delved into his personal life. Berger couldn’t even be bothered to feel embarrassed.
They stayed crouched in the miserable courtyard until their joints seized up and their muscles started to cramp. Two people appeared and drove off in their own cars. Three.
When time seemed to have been rained into submission and washed away they heard a fourth set of footsteps. Blom looked at Berger’s watch and nodded. The Tesla’s doors clicked open. When the driver was behind the wheel, they jumped in, Blom in the passenger seat, Berger in the back.
‘Fucking hell!’ the slightly greying driver yelled after hitting his head on the roof of the car.
‘Why wasn’t an alert issued sooner, Anders?’ Blom asked.
‘Molly, for God’s sake,’ Anders Karlberg said, casting a quick glance over his shoulder at Berger. ‘Try to remember that I’m old enough to have a heart attack.’
‘I know,’ Blom said. ‘But I’m not old enough to be fired on less than clear grounds. What happened?’
‘Shit,’ Karlberg groaned quietly, and rubbed his bald patch. ‘And to top it all off you drag your partner in crime into my Tesla, too.’
‘I promise not to make a mess,’ Berger said, looking at the mud he’d inadvertently deposited on the seat.
‘You know me, Anders,’ Molly Blom said. ‘You know I’m not a criminal. Tell me.’
‘Oh, I know you, alright. You’re a tough woman.’
‘Come on, Anders.’
‘Something disrupted the recording equipment,’ Karlberg said. ‘It took a while before we realised we were dealing with a loop. A transmitter inserted a piece of code and created a loop that repeated every twenty seconds. To keep it simple let’s call it a virus. But the loop failed for a few seconds. We didn’t understand why that only happened once, even though the loop repeated more than thirty times. It turned out that it had been done with an impressively well concealed piece of code. We only managed to crack it at lunchtime today.’
‘And why did that trigger a nationwide alert?’
‘Because we realised that the glitch was intentional. A little miracle of coding. August Steen reckoned you’d done that on purp
ose. So that you’d get found out. Which got him wondering why. He needs to bring you in, Molly. You’ve got to explain what you’re up to.’
‘Hang on,’ Blom said. ‘The breach in the loop was intentional?’
‘Yes,’ Anders Karlberg said. ‘Almost like a microscopic alarm clock.’
Sam Berger crunched the gears as he put the clapped-out Mazda into first, accelerated along Norr Mälarstrand and said: ‘Wiborg Supplies Ltd?’
‘Yes,’ Blom said, shaking her head. ‘I should have guessed. Everything they do is usually so perfect.’
‘And the guy who made the gizmo at Wiborg is called Olle? So what do you know about this Olle?’
‘Nothing, really,’ Blom said. ‘Olle Nilsson. He’s worked at Wiborg Supplies for a while now. Smart, doesn’t say much, extremely professional. But I don’t actually know anything about him.’
‘But you still commissioned him to do an unofficial job?’
‘These guys are used to getting all kinds of jobs, more or less undercover, and they’re prepared to accept payment in all sort of odd ways. Technical geniuses, all too aware of the shadowy world they’re working in.’
‘But something made you pick Olle Nilsson over all the other technical geniuses.’
‘He seemed trustworthy, invisible, and quiet as the grave. No problem with unorthodox payment. I paid cash. No receipt.’
‘So it could have been him who added that so-called microscopic alarm clock to your device. The intention could only have been to blow your cover. Maybe even our cover. In which case Olle Nilsson must have some connection to William.’
‘We should certainly talk to him,’ Blom said. ‘It could have been a mistake.’
‘Hardly, though, surely?’
‘No,’ Blom said. ‘Hardly.’
They passed the roundabout at Lindhagensplan, Traneberg Bridge and Brommaplan in silence. The Mazda headed down the length of Bergslagsvägen until it reached the run-down Vinsta industrial estate. Berger glanced at the time as he pulled up in front of the apparently ramshackle Wiborg Supplies. It was almost seven o’clock, and there was no indication that there was any work being done anywhere in the desolate estate. They stopped on the loading bay and looked around the car park. There was no one there, no cars starting up. It was as deserted as the day after judgement day. Blom went over to a grubby keypad beside the door, tapped in a long sequence of digits, and the door, which itself looked remarkably analogue, slid open unexpectedly smoothly.
