The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4)
Page 23
He had a haughty look and Bublanski became aware of his own Jewishness – which tended to happen whenever he encountered this sort of malevolence and air of moral superiority. Lindén wanted to show that he was better, because he put the boy’s physical well-being first rather than offering him up for police purposes. Bublanski saw no choice but to be as amiable as possible.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said.
“Is that so?” Lindén said.
“Oh yes, and it’s kind of you to see us at such short notice. We really wouldn’t come barging in like this if we didn’t think this matter was of the utmost importance.”
“I imagine you want to interview the boy in some way.”
“Not exactly,” Bublanski said, not quite so amiably. “I have to emphasize first of all that what I’m saying now must remain strictly between us. It’s a question of security.”
“Confidentiality is a given for us. We have no loose lips here,” Lindén said, in such a way as to imply that it was the opposite with the police.
“My only concern is for the boy’s safety,” Bublanski said sharply.
“So that’s your priority?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” the policeman said with even greater severity. “And that is why nothing of what I’m about to tell you must be passed on in any way – least of all by email or by telephone. Can we sit somewhere private?”
Sonja Modig did not think much of the place. But then she was probably affected by the crying. Somewhere nearby a little girl was sobbing relentlessly. They were sitting in a room which smelled of detergent and also of something else, maybe a lingering trace of incense. A cross hung on the wall and there was a worn teddy bear lying on the floor. There was not much else to make the place cosy or attractive, and since Bublanski, usually so good-natured, was about to lose his temper, she took matters into her own hands and gave a calm, factual account of what had taken place.
“We are given to understand,” she said, “that your colleague, Einar Forsberg, said that August should not be allowed to draw.”
“That was his professional judgement and I agree with it. It doesn’t do the boy any good,” Lindén said.
“Well, I don’t see how anything could do him much good under these circumstances. He probably saw his father being killed.”
“But we don’t want to make things any worse, do we?”
“True. But the drawing August was not allowed to finish could lead to a breakthrough in the investigation and therefore I’m afraid we must insist. You can of course ensure there are people present with the necessary expertise.”
“I still have to say no.”
Modig could hardly believe her ears.
“With all due respect for your work,” Lindén went on doggedly, “here at Oden’s we help vulnerable children. That’s our job and our calling. We’re not an extension of the police force. That’s how it is, and we’re proud of it. For as long as the children are here, they should feel confident that we put their interests first.”
Modig laid a restraining hand on Bublanski’s thigh.
“We can easily get a court order,” she said, “but we’d prefer not to go that route.”
“Wise of you.”
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “Are you and Forsberg so absolutely sure what’s best for August, or for the girl crying over there, for that matter? Couldn’t it be instead that we all need to express ourselves? You and I can talk or write, or even go out and get a lawyer. August doesn’t have those means of communication. But he can draw, and he seems to want to tell us something. Shouldn’t we let him give form to something which must be tormenting him?”
“In our judgement—”
“No,” she cut him off. “Don’t tell us about your judgement. We’re in contact with the person who knows more than anyone else in this country about this particular condition. His name is Charles Edelman, he’s a professor of neurology and he’s on his way here from Hungary to meet the boy.”
“We can of course listen to him,” Lindén said reluctantly.
“Not just listen. We let him decide.”
“I promise to engage in a constructive dialogue, between experts.”
“Fine. What’s August doing now?”
“He’s sleeping. He was exhausted when he came to us.”
Modig could tell that nothing good would come of it were she to suggest that the boy be woken up.
“In that case we’ll come back tomorrow morning with Professor Edelman, and I am sure we will all be able to work together on this matter.”
CHAPTER 16
21.xi – 22.xi
Gabriella Grane buried her face in her hands. She had not been to bed for forty hours and she was racked by a deep sense of guilt, only made worse by the lack of sleep. Yet she had been working hard all day long. Since this morning she had been part of a team at Säpo – a sort of shadow unit – which was investigating in secret every detail of the Frans Balder murder, under cover of looking into broader domestic policy implications.
Superintendent Mårten Nielsen was formally leading the team and had recently returned from a year of study at the University of Maryland in the U.S. He was undoubtedly intelligent and well informed, but too right-wing for Grane’s tastes. It was rare to find a well-educated Swede who was also a wholehearted supporter of the American Republican Party – he even expressed some sympathy for the Tea Party movement. He was passionate about military history and lectured at the Military Academy. Although still young – thirty-nine – he was believed to have extensive international contacts.
He often had trouble, however, asserting himself in the group, and in practice the real leader was Ragnar Olofsson, who was older and cockier and could silence Nielsen with one peevish little sigh or a displeased wrinkle above his bushy eyebrows. Nor was Nielsen’s life made any easier by the fact that Detective Inspector Lars Åke Grankvist was also on the team.
Before joining the Security Service, Grankvist had been a semi-legendary investigator in the Swedish police’s National Murder Squad, at least in the sense that he was said to be able to drink anybody else under the table and to manage, with a sort of boisterous charm, to keep a lover in every town. It was not an easy team in which to hold one’s own, and Grane kept an ever lower profile as the afternoon wore on. But this was due less to the men and their macho rivalry than to a growing sense of uncertainty.
Sometimes she wondered if she knew even less now than before. She realized, for example, that there was little or no proof to support the theory of the suspected data breach. All they had was a statement from Stefan Molde at the N.D.R.E., and not even he had been sure of what he was saying. In her view his analysis was more or less rubbish. Balder seemed to have relied primarily on the female hacker he had turned to for help, the woman not even named in the investigation, but whom his assistant, Linus Brandell, had described in such vivid terms. It was likely that Balder had been withholding a lot from Grane before he left for America.
For example, was it a coincidence that he had found a job at Solifon?
The uncertainty gnawed at her and she was indignant that no help was coming from Fort Meade. She could not get hold of Alona Casales, and the N.S.A. was once again a closed door, and so she in turn was no longer passing on any news. Just like Nielsen and Grankvist, she found herself overshadowed by Olofsson. He kept getting information from his source at the Violent Crimes Division and immediately passing it on to Helena Kraft.
Grane did not like it, and in vain she had pointed out that this traffic not only increased the risk of a leak but also seemed to be costing them their independence. Instead of searching their own channels, they were all too slavishly relying on the information which flowed in from Bublanski’s team.
“We’re like people cheating in an exam, waiting for someone to whisper the answer instead of thinking for ourselves,” she had said to the whole team, and this had not made her popular.
Now she was alone in her office, determined t
o move ahead on her own, trying to see the bigger picture. It might get her nowhere, but on the other hand it would do no harm. She heard steps outside in the corridor, the click-clack of determined high heels which Grane by now recognized only too well. It was Kraft, who came in wearing a grey Armani jacket, her hair pulled into a tight bun. Kraft gave her an affectionate look. There were times when Grane resented this favouritism.
“How’s it going?” Kraft said. “Are you surviving?”
“Just about.”
“I’m going to send you home after this conversation. You have to get some sleep. We need an analyst with a clear head.”
“Sounds sensible.”
“Do you know what Erich Maria Remarque said?”
“That it’s not much fun in the trenches, or something.”
“Ha, no, that it’s always the wrong people who have the guilty conscience. Those who are really responsible for suffering in the world couldn’t care less. It’s the ones fighting for good who are consumed by remorse. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Gabriella. You did what you could.”
“I’m not so sure about that. But thanks anyway.”
“Have you heard about Balder’s son?”
“Just very quickly from Ragnar.”
“At 10.00 tomorrow morning Chief Inspector Bublanski, Detective Sergeant Modig and a Professor Edelman will be seeing the boy at Oden’s Medical Centre for Children and Adolescents, on Sveavägen. They’re going to try and get him to draw some more.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed. But I’m not too happy to know about it.”
“Relax, leave the paranoia to me. The only ones who know about this are people who can keep their traps shut.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I want to show you something. There are photographs of the man who hacked Balder’s burglar alarm.”
“I’ve seen them already. I’ve even studied them in detail.”
“Have you?” Kraft said, handing over an enlarged and blurred picture of a wrist.
“What about it?”
“Take another look. What do you see?”
Grane looked and saw two things: the luxury watch she had noted before and, beneath it, barely distinguishable between the glove and the jacket cuff, a couple of lines which looked like amateur tattoos.
“Contrasts,” she said. “Some cheap tattoos and a very expensive watch.”
“More than that,” Kraft said. “That’s a 1951 Patek Philippe, model 2499, first series, or just possibly second series.”
“Means nothing to me.”
“It’s one of the finest wristwatches in the world. A few years ago a watch like this sold at auction at Christie’s in Geneva for just over two million dollars.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, and it wasn’t just anyone who bought it. It was Jan van der Waal, a lawyer at Dackstone & Partner. He bid for it on behalf of a client.”
“Dackstone & Partner? Don’t they represent Solifon?”
“Correct. We don’t know whether the watch in the surveillance image is the one that was sold in Geneva, and we haven’t been able to find out who that client was. But it’s a start, Gabriella. A scrawny type who looks like a junkie and who wears a watch of this calibre – that should narrow the field.”
“Does Bublanski know this?”
“It was his technical expert Jerker Holmberg who discovered it. Now I want you and your analytical brain to take it further. Go home, get some sleep and get started on it in the morning.”
The man who called himself Jan Holtser was sitting at home in his apartment on Högbergsgatan in Helsinki, not far from Esplanaden park, looking through an album of photographs of his daughter Olga, who was now twenty-two and studying medicine in Gdansk.
Olga was tall and dark and intense and, as he had a habit of saying, the best thing that ever happened to him. Not just because it sounded good – he believed it. But now Olga had come to suspect what he was actually doing.
“Are you protecting evil people?” she had asked him one day, before embarking on a manic pursuit of what she called her commitment to the “weak and vulnerable”.
It was pure pinko left-wing lunacy, in Holtser’s opinion, not at all in keeping with Olga’s character. He saw it as her attempt to stake out her independence. Behind all the talk about beggars and the sick he thought she was still quite like him. Once upon a time Olga had been a promising 100-metre runner. She was 186 centimetres tall, muscular and explosive, and in the old days she had loved watching action films and listening to him reminisce about the war in Chechnya. Everyone at school had known better than to pick a fight with her. She hit back, like a warrior. Olga was definitely not cut out to minister to the sick and degenerate.
Yet she claimed to want to work for Médecins Sans Frontières or go off to Calcutta like some Mother Teresa. Holtser could not bear the thought. The world belongs to the strong, he felt. But he loved his daughter, however daft some of her ideas, and tomorrow she was coming home for the first time in six months for a few days’ leave. He solemnly resolved that he would be a better listener this time, and not pontificate about Stalin and great leaders and everything that she hated.
He would instead try to bring them closer again. He was certain that she needed him. At least he was pretty sure that he needed her. It was 8.00 in the evening and he went into the kitchen and pressed three oranges and poured Smirnoff into a glass. It was his third Screwdriver of the day. Once he had finished a job he could put away six or seven of them, and maybe he would do that now. He was tired, weighed down by all the responsibility laid on his shoulders, and he needed to relax. For a few minutes he stood with his drink in his hand and dreamed about a different sort of life. But the man who called himself Jan Holtser had set his hopes too high.
The tranquillity came to an abrupt end as Bogdanov rang on his secure mobile. At first Holtser hoped that Bogdanov just wanted to chat, to release some of the excitement that came with every assignment. But his colleague was calling about a very specific matter and sounded less than happy.
“I’ve spoken to T.,” he said. Holtser felt a number of things all at once, jealousy perhaps most of all.
Why did Kira ring Bogdanov and not him? Even if it was Bogdanov who brought in the big money, and was rewarded accordingly, Holtser had always been convinced that he was the one closer to Kira. But Holtser was also worried. Had something gone wrong after all?
“Is there a problem?” he said.
“The job isn’t finished.”
“Where are you?”
“In town.”
“Come on up in that case and explain what the hell you mean.”
“I’ve booked a table at Postres.”
“I don’t feel like going to some posh restaurant. Get yourself over here.”
“I haven’t eaten.”
“I’ll fry something up.”
“Sounds good. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
Holtser did not want another long night. Still less did he feel like telling his daughter that he would not be at home the next day. But he had no choice. He knew as surely as he knew that he loved Olga: you could not say no to Kira.
She wielded some invisible power and however hard he tried he could never be as dignified in her presence as he wanted. She reduced him to a little boy and often he turned himself inside out just to see her smile.
Kira was staggeringly beautiful and knew how to make the most of it like no other beauty before her. She was unmatched when it came to power games; she knew all the moves. She could be weak and needy when it suited, but also indomitable, hard and cold as ice, and sometimes plain evil. Nobody brought out the sadist in him like she did.
She may not have been intelligent in the conventional sense, and many pointed that out to try to take her down a peg or two. But the same people were still stupefied in her presence. Kira played them like a violin and could reduce even the toughest of men to blushing and giggling schoolchildren.
“Where’s your bling watch?” Holtser said. “Are you in the doghouse?”
“We both are.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Maybe not.”
“The job isn’t finished, you said?”
“No, it’s that boy.”
“Which boy?” Holtser pretended not to understand.
“The one you so nobly spared.”
“What about him? He’s a retard, you know.”
“Maybe so, but he can draw.”
“What do you mean, draw?”
“He’s a savant.”
“A what?”
“You should try reading something other than your fucking gun magazines for once.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s someone who’s autistic or handicapped in some other way, but who has a special gift. This boy may not be able to talk or think like a normal person, but he has a photographic memory. The police think the little bastard is going to be able to draw your face, and then they’re going to run it through their facial-recognition software, and then you’re screwed, aren’t you? You must be there somewhere in Interpol’s records?”
“Yes, but Kira can’t expect us to—”
“That’s exactly what she expects. We have to fix the boy.”
A wave of emotion and confusion washed over Holtser and once again he saw before him that empty, glassy look from the double bed which had made him feel so uncomfortable.