I wonder who I’m calling. The only thing Levin revealed was that the number belonged to someone he knows well. I turn around, and look at the hulk of the police headquarters behind me. I pop a Serax on my tongue and click my neck, feel the pill bouncing down my throat before it disappears inside me; I realise that the number probably belongs to someone at HQ. Two boys are standing on the pavement: one has dark skin and fuzzy hair; the other one has pale skin, and a posture that gives the impression he’s embarrassed about something. The dark-skinned boy is playing guitar, and the other is staring at the road, singing about finding love in a hopeless place, again and again in a light, clear voice while people pass by without stopping.
‘Alice here,’ someone answers in my ear.
‘Hi, it, I … where have I called?’
‘Who is this?’
‘My name is Leo Junker. Charles Levin gave me your number.’
‘He mentioned you.’
‘Are you at HQ?’ I ask.
‘That’s right.’
‘And this is a secure line?’
‘This is a secure line.’
She sounds measured but distant, as though she’s doing something else at the same time, something that has most of her attention.
‘Who are you?’ I ask.
‘Alice. I work for Charles.’
‘You’re his secretary, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I think I need your help.’
‘Go on.’
‘John Grimberg. I need to meet someone called John Grimberg. I have no idea where he is, or even if he’s alive.’
‘Okay,’ she says, sceptical. That’s the first and only emotion she reveals.
‘I haven’t seen him in over fifteen years,’ I say, for some reason feeling the need to explain myself.
‘Born?’
‘Seventy-nine. But check seventy-eight, too, just to make sure.’
‘He was born in two different years?’ she asks, puzzled.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Seventy-eight may be false.’
‘Born in Stockholm?’
‘Greater Stockholm — Salem.’
I hear the tapping of keys in the background. I head down underground now, step onto the escalator, and try to work out if anyone’s following me.
‘I have a John Grimberg, born seventy-nine; first address is Salem,’ I hear Alice say. ‘Long criminal record; first offence was ninety-seven. Mother born fifty-six, died ninety-nine; father born fifty-four, died three weeks ago.’
‘Only three weeks?’
‘That’s what it says here.’
‘Do you have an address? For John, I mean.’
‘No. I, oh … wait.’ She sounds confused, and judging by her sudden interest, it’s quite unusual for something to confuse Alice. ‘The last entry I have is an address in Hagsätra. From ten years ago.’
She gives me the address, and I try to memorise it.
‘You mean he’s dead?’
‘No, and he hasn’t left the country either. At least not as far as I can see. He is on the Whereabouts Unknown register, though.’
‘Whereabouts Unknown register?’
‘I can’t see any more than that, just that Revenue and Customs have recorded him there. I can contact them and ask for more details, but even if it’s given priority it will still take a few hours.’
The Whereabouts Unknown register — made up of individuals who, for one reason or another, the authorities have not been able to contact. People with shady pasts, but also people who just don’t want to be found. Those with secret identities, those who’ve been given new identities, have their old details entered into the register. The same goes for people who’ve been missing from the electoral roll for two years or more. The register is never updated, so even if you’re impossibly old, your details remain on file there. The only updates occur when the person is certified dead, if it is discovered that the person has left the country, if they have somehow started using their original identity again, or if they reappear on the electoral roll. It doesn’t take much for one of those last three to happen — just paying by card somewhere, crossing the border, or talking to an estate agent about a property. John Grimberg hasn’t done any of those things, since he’s still on the register. As though he’s just disappeared.
‘I assume that this is important,’ Alice says now, and I am down on the platform, watching a blue-and-silver train pulling out from the mouth of the tunnel.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It is. It’s about his sister.’
‘Julia,’ I hear her read on the screen. ‘Julia Grimberg?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Died in August ninety-seven.’
I swallow hard, and when I blink, the necklace flashes before my eyes.
‘That’s right.’
THE SUN IS SHINING over Hagsätra, and a group of kids are standing on the square, kicking a ball around. They are tanned, and speak to each other in a language I don’t understand. Grim’s last known address is here, right by the square. The light-coloured tower blocks and their small windows remind me of Salem. The door to the lobby is open, and I climb the stairs to the second floor, then knock on the first of three doors. No answer. The other two doors are open, and I introduce myself as a friend of John Grimberg’s, but neither of them has ever heard of him. They got their flats through the council lists. I wonder which of the three he lived in, get the urge to ask if I can come in and have a look — mainly to get an idea how he might have lived — but I think better of it. It wouldn’t be of any use. I thank them for their help, and leave.
I call Felix, who doesn’t answer. After that, I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find any trace of John Grimberg via the contacts I usually use, but none of them have any useful information. I even go to the tax office on Södermalm and sit down at one of their terminals, to check the public records, but there’s nothing there. It’s as though Grim erased his own existence ten years ago.
I start to doubt myself. No one knows better than I do that there can be a heavy price paid for withholding information during an investigation, and by late evening I’m standing in my flat, ready to call Gabriel Birck and tell him everything, when the phone starts vibrating in my hand. It’s Sam.
On Chapmansgatan, the incident tape is still in place. I look at it flapping in the wind, and see passers-by still stopping and trying to picture what has happened. There are cars parked along the street. I think there is someone sitting in one of them, but I can’t be sure.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Sam.’
‘Hi, Sam.’
‘I, er … am I interrupting something?’
‘No. No, don’t worry.’
‘I just thought … after you were here earlier …’
‘Yes?’ I say, and push the phone harder to my ear. ‘Yes, thanks for making time.’
‘A customer came in later. I think you know who he is — they call him Viggo.’
I know who he is. He’s one of Felix’s dealers. He was one of the people I met today, after I left Hagsätra. He confirmed that he’d heard a rumour about someone robbing a whore near Kronoberg Park, but he hadn’t made the connection with the rumour about Rebecca Salomonsson’s death.
‘I met him today,’ I tell her. ‘No help.’
‘He told me. Because he knows that you and I … well, he mentioned that you’d met, and that you’d asked about someone called Grim.’
‘John Grimberg,’ I say, and my whole body goes stiff. ‘That’s right.’
‘You didn’t tell me that, when we met. You never mentioned his name, that it was him you were looking for.’
I recognise that tone in her voice only too well: Sam sounds hurt.
‘At that point I wasn�
�t,’ I say, apologetically. ‘That emerged later.’
‘I think … I don’t know who John Grimberg is, but “Grim” rang a bell.’
On the street below, someone starts a car. I go over to the window again, apprehensive. The inside of the car is illuminated by the light from a mobile phone. I can just about make out a silhouette in there, but nothing more.
‘Where are you right now?’ I ask.
‘Why?’
‘We have to meet.’
‘Leo, I don’t think that’s a good idea, we can’t …’
‘It’s not about that.’
‘What is it about then?’
I take a deep breath and wonder who’s sitting in the car down on the street. Wonder if I’m paranoid, and how this might sound:
‘I think this phone is being tapped.’
XIII
Evening. I walk through the streets of Kungsholmen, heading for BAR. It’s a stupid place to meet Sam, but it’s the only neutral ground I can think of. On the way, I make countless attempts to establish whether or not I’m being followed; I take several diversions, but it’s difficult. The neighbourhood is full of small streets and alleys that become deep and impenetrable. It seems to me there are nooks and crannies in this town that, if you were ever to enter, you would never get back out of. Beyond the neon signs and the streetlamps, an unnaturally thick darkness awaits — the kind of darkness that almost materialises, that you can taste on your tongue if you open your mouth.
The car that had been waiting on the street is gone. I haven’t seen it since I started walking. My phone is silent. Rebecca Salomonsson is dead, with Julia’s necklace in her hand, with my prints on it. Someone put it there — and I need to find Grim. We haven’t seen each other for fifteen years; that’s almost half my life. Almost half of his. But he might be able to give me an answer. There might be witnesses who can make Birck understand that it wasn’t me, that I had nothing to do with her death. The problem with witnesses is that they’re unreliable. They’re like indicators, like indirect clues as to what has actually happened. No police officer trusts other people, and if any other evidence points to me, I’m in trouble.
His mother died early, while he was still young. I didn’t know that; I wonder how it happened. Maybe suicide. Probably suicide. And the father. I try to recall what Alice said on the phone. Three weeks, she said. His father died three weeks ago. Wherever and whoever he is now, he’s an orphan.
I’m thinking about Rebecca Salomonsson — what she had wanted to be when she grew up, how she never got to experience how life panned out. Everything had probably been going downhill for some time, and her future was probably not that bright. For women like her, it rarely is, and I think to myself that it might have been for the best that it ended as it did, her life. That thought, that it might be just as well that it ended as it did, is quite abhorrent, but often it is simply the truth.
ANNA IS STANDING at one end of the bar, pouring a drink from a black bottle of Jim Beam. She looks up as I’m standing in the doorway, smiles weakly, and drinks from her glass.
‘I thought you were going to call,’ she says.
‘I haven’t …’ I walk over to the bar, acutely aware of the sound that my shoes make on the floor. ‘Are you alone?’
‘We get ten customers a week, who stay for an hour each.’ She drains her glass. ‘I’m almost always alone here.’
‘I’m here more than that.’
‘You don’t count.’ She puts the glass away. ‘What are you having?’
‘Nothing. A coffee.’
This surprises her. Her blonde hair is up in a loose knot, and strands of stray hair fall across her face, down her neck to her collarbone, which is just visible through the wide neck of her shirt. She’s a bit like Sam, I think to myself.
‘Someone’s coming here in a bit,’ I explain. ‘Someone who thinks I’ve stopped altogether.’
‘I understand,’ she says, turning her back to me and setting to work on the ancient coffee machine. ‘I’m guessing it’s a she?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you have to meet someone who thinks you’re on the wagon,’ she continues, ‘is a bar really the best place?’
‘Is everything okay?’ I ask, tentatively.
‘Yes. Everything is okay.’
‘I didn’t know of anywhere else where it’s …’ I say, but don’t know where to go from there.
‘Where it’s …?’ Without turning around, she starts the coffee machine, which splutters and hisses.
‘Where it’s safe.’
‘Are you not safe anywhere else?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You sound paranoid.’
‘I know,’ I say, and I notice that I’m fiddling with my phone, so I stop.
‘What makes you think you’re safe here?’
Enough coffee to fill a mug has dripped through into the jug, and she passes it to me and turns around. Anna’s expression is hard to read. She might be hurt, but she looks almost scared.
‘I just think so.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Who?’
‘The one who’s on her way here.’
‘Sam.’
‘Sam, as in …?’
‘As in Sam.’ I hesitate. ‘We were together once.’
‘What happened?’
‘An accident.’
Anna walks over to the counter, pours herself another glass, and comes back. When she notices my gaze fixed on the glass in her hand, she becomes embarrassed.
‘I’m happy not drinking, if it makes it easier for you.’
I shake my head.
‘Drink away.’
The door to BAR opens again, and Sam’s face peers round it. It’s started raining outside; the pattering sound rushes into the quiet premises, and it’s dripping onto Sam’s coat. Her hair is lank, sticking to her forehead and her cheeks. She walks up to the bar and takes off her coat while studying the coffee cup in my hand, as though trying to decipher what it means. Then she orders a beer.
‘I recognise you,’ Anna says. ‘Tattoos.’
‘That’s right.’
Sam gets her beer and checks something on her phone before looking around.
‘Interesting place to meet.’
‘It is special.’ I glance at Anna, who takes a couple of steps back and seems to be trying to make herself invisible by counting the contents of the till. Apart from a handful of lonely notes and coins, it’s empty. ‘John Grimberg,’ I say, looking at Sam, and, as is so often the case when our eyes meet, everything else becomes fuzzy and dim. The only thing I see is Sam.
‘Yes.’ She drinks some beer. A little ribbon of foam sticks to her lip, and she wipes it away with the back of her hand. ‘Well, I think it was him.’
‘Think?’
‘It was years ago now, when we were exp—. When we were together. I didn’t say anything at the time.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it didn’t seem like the sort of thing you tell someone who is a cop.’
That stings. Even though I was expecting it, it still stings.
‘I was your partner.’
‘Anyway,’ she goes on, ‘it was autumn, I think. Someone called just as I was leaving the parlour one evening, refused to say who he was. As you know, I don’t usually accept customers who won’t give their name, and besides it was late, but this person offered me a lot of money. I was going to get half before the work was done, as soon as they came through the door, and the other half afterwards.’
‘How much money?’
‘Fifty thousand.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I know.’ Sam takes another swig. ‘So I asked what it was about, and the only thing he would say was that he
wanted a tattoo removed. That’s really a medical procedure, so I recommended a clinic instead, but he wasn’t interested. He’d heard that I’d done it before, which was true. That was before the rules were changed. I insisted that what I could do was more painful than, and not as safe as, going to a professional clinic, but he said that wasn’t an option. I think he even laughed at the suggestion. So he asked me to stay put, and hung up. An hour later, there was someone at the door — a very, very blond man. I remember thinking that he must dye his hair, because his eyebrows were much darker. I thought it was the guy I’d spoken to. He introduced himself as Dejan, but I doubt that was his real name. He said he was there to get rid of a tattoo. “Was it you I spoke to on the phone?” I asked, and he just shook his head and walked past me, into the studio. Behind him was another person, who I hadn’t noticed. It was dark, of course, and it’s hard to see just to the right outside the door there, because of the angle. This other person,’ she says, looking down, ‘it was him I’d spoken to. He was quite tall and was also blond, but not shockingly so like Dejan. He had a handsome face, angular, but well formed and tanned. Nicely dressed in a dark trench coat, looked like an advertising executive just back from holiday. But there was something about the look in his eyes that was very different. It was … empty. Hollow.’ She takes another swig of her beer. ‘There was nothing there, no identity, neither warmth nor coolness, no feelings whatsoever, nothing.’
‘What colour were his eyes?’
‘Blue. But,’ she adds, ‘I think they were contacts.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘I wear contacts myself, Leo, so I know what eyes look like after a whole day with them in.’
‘Did he introduce himself?’
‘As Grim. “You can call me Grim.” That’s all he said. I was nervous, and you know I try and joke about things when I’m nervous, so I said something about the Brothers Grimm, asked him whether he was the cheerful one or the grumpy one, but that just made him ask if we were going to get started. And he stuck his hand — he was wearing thin gloves, too — he stuck his hand inside the trench coat and pulled out a wad of notes. “Twenty-five thousand,” he said, “clean enough to take to the bank.” I’d never seen that much cash before, not in a wedge, you know, so I could only nod and put it away in the office. “I’ve heard you’re good,” he said. “My usual expert has experienced some difficulties, which unfortunately means I need to find a new one.” If there’s one thing I know about, it’s my job. So I said, “Yes, I’m good, but good at giving people tattoos, not removing them.” That made him lean in, towards me, and I know this sounds weird, but I’m pretty sure that he was sniffing me.’ Sam blushes.
The Invisible Man from Salem Page 12
