His brain was slowly catching up with reality.
He had grabbed the handle, and was just about to open the door to the stairwell when he had been . . . well, attacked, somehow?
Could the handle have been booby-trapped?
But if that were the case, his hand ought to be badly barbecued now. But apart from the plastic cord cutting into his wrists, his hands felt fine.
He moved his body gently and after a few moments thought he had identified a point at the base of his spine from which a burning pain seemed to be radiating.
He could hear whispering voices a short distance away from him.
Then a familiar voice that made him start.
♦ ♦ ♦
A narrow path of double planks led them through the darkness. The smell of tarred wood got stronger and stronger the farther in they went.
The roof was several meters above their heads, and in the glow of the flashlights she occasionally caught glimpses of green-glinting copperplate.
“Careful,” Sandberg said, once again shining his flashlight at one of the thick crossbeams that interrupted their path.
Then the path turned sharp right, into the next section of the Palace, and she realized that they must be in the north side now, the side facing the Parliament building. Ahead of them in the darkness a door slammed. Sandberg stopped and pointed the flashlight ahead of him. Twenty meters in front of them the outline of another staircase appeared.
“This is a site of national importance,” Sandberg said quietly. “No one’s supposed to be here, and certainly not up there.”
They reached the stairs and aimed their flashlights toward its top. Another metal door, this time barred horizontally.
There was a bleeping sound from her pocket. She pulled out her cell and read the message.
It was from Micke.
MayBey lives along the E18, most of his traffic passes through an exchange in Näsbypark.
She had been right!
MayBey wasn’t the person he was pretending to be.
Unless that was precisely what he was . . .
An imitation, a copy of someone else entirely.
She turned to Sandberg.
“Wait here!” she said sharply.
Then she started to head up the steps on her own.
42
Head to Head
“WELCOME, REBECCA,” the man in the balaclava said.
The platform they were standing on was small, perhaps no more than seven or eight square meters. To her left was an ornate stone balustrade, and beyond that the drop to Lejonbacken, and on her right was a low wall, and then the gently sloping copper roof tilting down toward the inner courtyard.
She checked the time: 23:51.
In the distance was the sound of fireworks.
“We’ve been expecting you, your brother and I.”
He gestured with his head and for a moment she turned completely cold. There was a person sitting curled up on the balustrade with his back toward her. His arms were tied behind his back, and he had a black hood pulled down over his head.
Beneath his feet the building dropped away, some twenty meters or more straight down to Lejonbacken.
She looked back at the man in the balaclava. Even if his black jacket and mask made him seem big, he was actually smaller than she had imagined.
“Obviously, you see the poetic justice here . . .” he said.
She nodded briefly as she followed his movements with her eyes. His voice sounded strange, as if he were doing his best to disguise it.
“Your brother murdered your boyfriend by pushing him off a building . . .”
Her eyes darted to the hunched figure, then back across the little platform.
There was a black bag on the low stone wall about a meter away. She nodded again.
“Yes, I get it. Your law applies here, an eye for an eye . . .”
“Exactly . . .” he said, but something in his voice revealed that she hadn’t reacted quite as he had expected.
The sound of New Year rockets began to grow, and through them blaring sirens approaching the Palace. Sandberg’s patience had evidently run out.
He turned his head and glanced quickly toward the edge.
“They’re on their way,” she said drily.
“Good, then you can go back down again . . .”
She took half a step toward the trapdoor again, then stopped.
“You know what, MayBey . . . ? I think I’d rather stay here, actually . . .”
He started, and it looked like he was about to say something. But instead he took a step toward the seated figure.
“You obviously don’t get it . . .” he purred.
“Oh, I get it.” She glanced at the bag.
The sirens were close now, at least three or four different vehicles.
The sound of rockets was still growing.
“I get the whole thing, actually. You’re planning to push my brother there . . .”
She pointed at the seated figure.
“ . . . off the roof, just as you’ve promised all your fans. If it’s okay with you, I thought I might stand here and watch while you do it.”
“Wh-what?”
His voice cracked, and for a moment it sounded almost shrill.
“I said you might as well get going and push Henke over the edge. You’ve been talking about it for weeks now, so you might as well get on with it.”
He appeared to consider this for a moment, then took another half step toward the balustrade. She saw the seated figure squirm anxiously.
The sirens had stopped, which probably meant that the police were already on their way up through the stairwell. Another minute to get through the attic and they’d have reached the last flight of steps.
She slowly slid her hand under her jacket.
“You don’t seem to understand, Rebecca . . .” he said, raising one foot ready to kick out with it.
“No,” she said calmly as she closed her fingers around the object attached to her belt at the small of her back. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand . . .”
She shot across the platform in two quick strides, snatching her hand out. The baton extended to its full length and hit MayBey on the back of the thigh.
The blow was so hard that she felt the bone crack through the metal.
He fell backward but she didn’t jump on him. Instead she planted her own foot against the back of the seated figure.
♦ ♦ ♦
He could hear voices, two, to be precise. A man and a woman. They both sounded familiar, he knew that much, but his head was still far too groggy for him to be able to identify them.
Then he heard what sounded like rapid movements behind him.
Then someone put their foot against his back.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Here you go, MayBey, let me help you,” she yelled to drown out the rockets.
She pushed with her foot.
“Noooo!!”
The two panicked cries merged together to form one single brittle sound.
MayBey tried to throw himself at her legs, but a swing of the baton against his arms made him curl up in pain.
She grabbed hold of the seated man, pulled him down from the balustrade, and dragged him back onto the platform next to MayBey. Then she pulled her handcuffs from her back pocket.
Under his thick gloves and the heavy padded jacket, MayBey’s wrists were slender and she had no trouble at all putting the cuffs on him.
“Time for a bit of unmasking, gentlemen.”
She pulled MayBey’s balaclava off, then removed the other man’s hood.
“Jonathan Lundh and I have already met . . .”
She nodded toward MayBey, who was still grimacing with pain.
“But who are you?”
“M-Marky,” the young man who was supposed to be her brother sniffed. “Marcus Lillhage.”
“And how do you know Lundh junior here? Is your dad a policeman as well, by any chance?”
“N-no . .
.” he sobbed. “Wedge and I go to the same school . . .”
She nodded slowly and then turned toward the black bag.
“There’s a camera in there, isn’t there?”
The young man called Marky nodded.
She aimed her baton at Jonathan Lundh’s chest.
“So, do you want to tell me, or should Marcus?”
He was clutching his injured thigh with both hands and trying not to look at her.
“Okay, Marcus, off you go.”
She rested the baton on her shoulder.
“It was a project . . . for school.”
“Go on.”
“Well, we’re studying media, and had to do a project on the flow of information. We wanted to see if it was possible to create a debate around a fictitious character. Wedge’s dad used to look at that cops’ site, that’s where we got the idea.”
She glanced at Jonathan Lundh, who still wasn’t talking.
“Then one night he sat on his cell and accidentally called home. Wedge heard the way they talked in the van . . .”
“ . . . about me,” she filled in, and saw Jonathan look up.
“You were fucking my dad . . .” he snarled. “Even though you knew he had a family . . .”
She nodded slowly. “You’re quite right, Jonathan,” she said. “And it’s not exactly something I’m proud of, if that’s any consolation. So that was why you chose me?”
“Th-the project wasn’t really supposed to be that big. We thought about pretending to be a cop who’d gone off the rails, who’d end up blogging about wanting to commit suicide. We wanted to see if his colleagues would try to help him,” Marcus went on.
“I mean, the whole thing was about creating a profile for yourself, becoming a name. Like that girl at art school who pretended to be psychotic and ended up really famous . . .”
“Marky, shut the hell up!” Jonathan snapped. “We haven’t got anything else to say to you, you fucking whore . . .”
She kicked him in the knee and he curled up into a ball.
“You should think a bit about what you’re saying, Jonathan. Think about what they say about my state of mind on that site . . . A smart lad like you might be able to tell me what would happen if I broke your camera and then claimed I was forced to throw you both over the edge in self-defense?”
She saw his eyes open wide, as he tried to see any sign that she was joking. Instead she grabbed hold of his jacket and dragged him toward the edge.
Below, a crowd had formed.
“You’ve been terrorizing me for weeks . . .” she went on, with her mouth close to his ear. “You’ve encouraged people to throw all sorts of shit at me, you almost ran me over, and you’ve threatened my brother’s life . . .”
She pulled him a bit closer to the edge. In spite of the whine and roar of the New Year fireworks, she could hear him gasp for breath.
“Isn’t that right? The car outside my house, that was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes! Y-yes, for fuck’s sake!” he yelled. “We just wanted to check you out. Then when you came running over . . .”
“ . . . you panicked?”
He nodded desperately, unable to tear his eyes from the cobblestones far below.
“What about my brother, how does he fit into the picture?”
“Coincidence. One day he just walked into the shop . . . Then everything just sort of fell into place . . .”
She pulled Jonathan Lundh back onto the platform and let go of him next to his friend.
“What about all this?” She nodded toward the roof of the Palace. “Whose idea was this?”
“My brother’s an officer in the Guard,” Marcus muttered. “He brought me up here last summer when they were lowering the flag.”
“So the idea was that I’d think it was Henke sitting there on the edge? And I’d beg and plead for his life while you filmed it—okay, I get that. But how did you think you were going to get away?”
The two young men looked at each other, but neither of them answered. Rebecca thought for a few moments.
“I see,” she finally said. “Being led down in handcuffs and getting on television and in the papers would be the perfect climax to your little project.” She nodded. “And because you didn’t actually have a hostage up here, you’d probably end up just getting a fine or a suspended sentence for some pissy minor offense. And I’d be hung out to dry while you got famous. Oh well, it’s not too late yet!”
She dragged them to their feet, untied the flag cord, and before they had time to work out what she was doing, she threaded it through the cuffs behind their backs. Then she tied the cord to the pole with reef knots and then shoved the two young men toward the balustrade so hard that they both ended up leaning over it.
A double, terrified scream—and the flag cord snapped tight with a jolt, leaving them hanging in the air with their knees still on the balustrade.
She could see the flashes from the cell phones down among the crowd.
“Smile and wave nicely, boys,” she said. “You’re going to be famous.”
She went over to the bag, fished out the camera, and, after a bit of fiddling about, pulled out the memory card.
On the staircase on the way down she found a hostage negotiator, and below him a heavily armed squad in black uniforms.
“Everything’s fine,” she said, waving her police ID.
She pointed at the phone in one of the man’s hands.
“But you can call Tobbe Lundh in the Rapid Response Unit and tell him to come and get his son down. And tell him to bring two pairs of clean trousers . . .”
43
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
THE MOMENT THE hood was pulled off him, the world exploded into colors, whistles, and explosions. It took him a moment to realize that it was midnight and then another to realize where he was.
Seventy meters above the city center, with Sveavägen’s salt-wet traffic lanes far below between his dangling feet, and just the narrow strip of the concrete ledge under his buttocks to stop him from falling.
The foot at his back pushed, shrinking the width of the strip by half and twisting his stomach into a panic-stricken lump.
He tried to push back and keep his center of balance on the right side of the edge. But the foot was stopping him, nudging him inexorably forward.
“Are you enjoying the view, lover boy?” Sophie whispered in his ear as the Stockholm sky exploded all around his head.
“Right-hand pocket of my trousers, a USB stick!” he roared, trying to make himself heard above the fireworks.
“Don’t let me fall, dammit!”
His buttocks were slowly slipping across the ledge as Elroy continued to push him.
Nineteen floors below the street was full of New Year revelers.
“And what were you going to do with it, dear little Henrik?” Sophie again, right next to his ear.
“Plug it into the server, upload a trojan,” he sniffed. “Please, please, don’t let . . .”
Suddenly his backside lost contact with the concrete and he slid over the edge.
But just as he started to scream in terror Elroy caught him and dragged him back up onto the roof. They left him lying there while they searched him.
The USB stick was the first thing they took.
♦ ♦ ♦
She had been right about most of it.
MayBey and Tobbe were connected.
But instead of a muscular cop in a dark uniform, her Internet nemesis turned out to be two spotty little eighteen-year-olds who had watched too much television. It was the film quotes that had put her on the right track.
Judge Dredd, Clint, Taxi Driver. The whole thing felt like some teenage boy’s bedroom fantasy. Once Jonathan Lundh’s name occurred to her, she only had to look up his profile on Facebook, and sure enough all the films were there, neatly listed on his personal details page, along with the fact that he was attending a high school that specialized in IT. On the Internet you might be able to p
retend to be whoever you like, she thought. But the truth is also out there, if you know where to look for it.
Talking about looking . . .
She pulled out her cell and dialed a number.
“Where are you?” she asked when the man at the other end answered.
♦ ♦ ♦
They were herding him between them like a sheep.
Elroy was holding his upper arm, but there was no need for that at all. Even though they had cut the plastic binder strap from his wrists, he was finished. He could still feel the aftereffects from the Taser they’d zapped him with, making his movements sluggish, and the whole nightmare scenario up on the roof had basically broken him.
He rubbed his eyes with the bottom of one arm to get rid of the tears that persisted in leaking out.
When they reached the large, open room they could hear voices from Philip’s office. He could make out silhouettes through the frosted-glass walls. The clink of glasses, then the bubbling laughter that he recognized so well . . .
Without warning his legs suddenly gave out and he collapsed. His head hit the edge of Sophie’s desk and he felt the skin on his forehead break.
They made no attempt to pick him up, and just left him crawling around on the floor for a few moments.
Grinning while he fumbled with his hands under the desk.
Then he got hold of the office chair and used it to clamber laboriously to his feet. He could feel a warm trickle of blood seeping slowly through his eyebrow.
“Here,” Elroy muttered, pressing a tissue into HP’s hand as he shoved him forward.
A moment later the door opened and they were inside.
Six people in the room, all the section heads, all holding glasses of champagne.
“Welcome, Henrik, we’ve been waiting for you,” Philip Argos said cheerfully.
By his side, a little too close, Rilke was smiling her most beautiful smile.
“Here.”
Elroy put the little USB stick down on Philip’s desk.
“Dejan, would you mind?” Philip nodded.
Dejan walked across the room, picked up the stick, and plugged it into a laptop on the desk.
“Workless network off . . .” He chuckled cruelly, firing a quick look at HP. “After all, we don’t want to risk any infection . . .”
Buzz: A Thriller Page 32
