“What happens next?” Jörgen asked, interested now.
Serge turned to Jonna with a grin, tugging at his beard. “I think we’ll break through the wall before the night is over,” he said.
Jonna looked at her wristwatch. The evening activities for her and Jörgen were due to start soon. Jörgen had received a telephone call to tell him that dinner would be ready in just under an hour. He had not looked amused.
“That sounds good, but I don’t think that Jörgen or I have anything to contribute for the time being,” she said, looking pointedly at Jörgen, whose thoughts were elsewhere.
“Quite right,” Serge answered, preoccupied. He was already back in the virtual world.
“Call me as soon as the next important barrier is passed. I have my mobile on at all times,” Jonna said firmly.
Serge muttered something inaudible from the living room.
Jonna considered going back to the police station to pick up the microrouter. After a little deliberation, she decided it would be unwise. It would need unnecessary explanations the next day, since each entry and exit would be registered. Because she had taken sick leave earlier that day, it would look strange that she went there later that evening. There were always industrious colleagues burning the midnight oil at the department whom she could run into.
She planned to be on sick leave for a few more days, so the most sensible thing to do was to steer clear of the police station and any of her supervisors.
Always stick to the simple solution, she thought to herself.
“Do you want me to drop you off at that woman’s place now?” Jonna asked, excessively helpful. She turned the key to her Porsche and the six-cylinder Boxer engine roared.
Jörgen did not answer, looking as if he was on his way to his own execution. Twenty minutes later, Jörgen stood outside the entrance to Ulrika Melin’s building. Jonna’s face beamed, and she waved a few colourful gestures at him before she burned rubber and drove off.
Jörgen gazed long and hard as she disappeared. He had a big knot in his stomach. It felt like he had swallowed the troubles of the world, only to become constipated. Without the promise of his exclusive story, he would never have endured this.
His mobile phone beeped just as he was about to open the entrance door. It was an SMS from the news desk. He suddenly developed a guilty conscience about not ringing work for several days and not answering the text messages and calls that regularly popped up on his mobile phone’s display. He had tried to call Sebastian, but got only his answering service. He understood of course that there was not much coverage in the mountains of Peru, but he could at least have tried to leave him a message. The country must have some landlines.
From the start, Jörgen had thought the idea of going to Peru to climb mountains was a crazy project. He had had many loud debates with Sebastian as soon as he proposed the idea, that Saturday evening eleven months ago. Especially when he found out that he was travelling together with Filip and André, two half-crazy and, unfortunately, affluent gays who were not only constantly seeking adventure but also very keen to explore the human body. They are probably sleeping in a tent at two thousand metres altitude and in a ménage à trois right now, Jörgen fantasized in the seconds before Ulrika Melin opened the door to her flat.
JONNA OPENED THE door to her flat just before eight that evening. She decided almost immediately not to plug the USB memory stick with Folke Uddestad into her computer, even though her fingers itched with curiosity. It could wait until tomorrow. Instead, she poured an ice-cold beer and took a shower. Fifteen minutes later, she had finished the shower and the beer. She changed into jeans and a white blouse. While opening another beer, she called Walter and informed him that Serge had made a breakthrough with the District Court network and that she did not intend to look through the evidence on Uddestad that she had obtained from Jörgen. She simply did not have the time this evening.
Walter grunted that it could not take much time to open a few photos on the computer, but Jonna replied that it was not negotiable. He switched eagerly to the computer hacking and pointed out that she should stay with the freaky Serge and make sure that he was not up to no good. There was an imminent risk that he would use this opportunity for his own ends.
Jonna rejected his suggestion as unnecessary. It was impossible for her to keep tabs on Serge and monitor everything he did. The skills that he possessed were not ones that you could learn at any university. They were the product of a very keen intellect, experience and an almost manic obsession. The man lived for his computers and networks and sat in front of a computer screen every waking moment. How he made a living, she did not want to know.
JÖRGEN HAD NO no appetite. Even though Ulrika Melin served oven-grilled chicken with homemade potato salad, he could not down more than a few mouthfuls. She followed him constantly with her eyes and smiled as soon as he met her light-blue eyes. She was loaded with expectation, like an atomic bomb.
Jörgen cringed when she asked if there was something wrong with the food.
“You’re eating like a bird,” she said with a smile.
Jörgen excused himself and went to the toilet where he spat out a mouthful of food and then rinsed out his mouth. He gulped some water and looked at himself in the mirror. He was pale. He looked worn and undernourished, although the scales at the hospital told another story. How could that be?
One hour later, Jörgen and Ulrika ended up on the sofa, each holding their own glass of red wine. She put her legs up in a provocative pose and lit a few candles on the small coffee table. Jörgen sipped the bag-in-a-box wine. It was a young Merlot from South Africa that left a sour, metallic aftertaste.
They made a toast and she welcomed him for the second, or was it the third, time. Jörgen complimented her choice of wine and gazed around the living room. As far as he could see, the majority of the furnishings came from flat-pack stores.
“Do you like my flat?” she asked, delighted. “I’ve tried to put my personal stamp on the room.”
Jörgen nodded in approval. “You have a really original style.”
“Do you really think so?”
After fifteen minutes, Ulrika had attended to three errands in the kitchen. After each task, she moved a little closer to Jörgen. Now she was sitting so close that her knee nudged the outside of his thigh. He crossed his legs, gaining a few centimetres, but it did not take long before she, by using the excuse that a candle was not standing straight and then adjusting it, took back the remaining centimetres.
Jörgen felt a cold shiver go through his body when their legs touched again. The moment he dreaded had now come. The success of the evening was now in the balance.
He realized that there were two options. He could firmly refuse her and blame the fact that they did not know each other very well. She would probably feel rejected, and the situation would end on an anticlimax that would mean that he would not get to meet her again, which was very unfortunate in terms of the microrouter.
The other, and presumably better, alternative, from the investigative journalist’s perspective, was to empty the bag-in-a-box as quickly as possible and pray that his memory would fail him from now on. Whatever happened that night, he hoped to be blissfully ignorant about it for the rest of his days.
It was ten past two when Jörgen found himself naked in Ulrika’s bedroom. The room was spinning, and he had a hard time getting his mouth to work. Clothes lay in a pile on the floor. Presumably, he had had assistance in taking them off. No matter how he tried, his lips would not form any words – just an unintelligible, continuous slurring. He observed Ulrika with blurry eyes as she took off her clothes. When she was wearing only knickers and a bra, he tried to sit up on the edge of the bed. Despite emptying the bag-in-a-box, he still possessed way too much consciousness. She had drunk only three glasses of wine the whole evening. Jörgen must have tossed back almost two litres. Yet he was still fully conscious of what was about to take place. A shudder ran down his spine. He was on
the verge of panicking, but calmed himself by taking some deep breaths through his mangled nose.
Then she removed her bra. He turned around and saw two breasts exposed in the glow from the streetlight outside the window. Jörgen had difficulty focusing and Ulrika’s naked body blurred into the rest of the room.
She discarded her semi-transparent knickers and an overgrown bush grinned back at Jörgen. With the speed of a ferret, she jumped up on the bed and flipped Jörgen on his back. She straddled him with a serious expression and stared into his eyes.
Then she broke into laughter that sounded like screeching seagulls.
“You turn me on,” she said, unabashed.
Jörgen did not have the strength to fight back. With eighty kilos of female flesh on top of him, there was not much he could do. Instead, he closed his eyes and fell into a drunken slumber.
Seconds later, he was brutally awakened by a cold hand on his crotch.
CHAPTER 25
JONNA CALLED JÖRGEN’S mobile phone at five-thirty in the morning. She had just received a call from an exhilarated Serge Wolinsky, who announced that he was now inside the District Court database. She waited for seven rings on Jörgen’s mobile phone. On the eighth ring, a woman’s voice answered.
When she described herself as a friend of Jörgen’s and asked to speak to him, she was met with silence at the other end. After a few seconds, the woman asked what kind of friend she was. “Just a friend,” Jonna answered drolly.
The woman explained that Jörgen was busy sleeping off a hangover and therefore could not be disturbed. She took a message and promised that Jörgen would call his “friend” back when he woke up, which in all probability would not be before the afternoon, given the amount of alcohol he had consumed the previous evening.
Jonna had herself only consumed two drinks the evening before, not counting the two beers she had in the flat before she went to the club and the wine she drank with her meal. One of the two drinks, a San Francisco, she drank together with Sandra at the San Marino restaurant in Blasieholmen.
After an exquisite dinner of chicken breast poached in white wine and a rather expensive Chardonnay, both girlfriends finished the evening at the trendy club Le Cheliff, down on Stureplan. There, she had her second drink, a dry martini. The queue to Le Cheliff was nonexistent, which was unusual. Perhaps even the brats were feeling the financial recession. After the usual buttering up of the musclebound bouncers on the door, they were both let inside.
As soon as they had hung their coats in the cloakroom, Jonna was approached by a tipsy plumber. He introduced himself as Tomas without the ‘H’ and was twenty-nine. He had his own business and a brand new van with the logo “TOMBOY AB”. He wrote off most of his expenses to the company, except for booze, and had a fifty-inch plasma TV in his living room at Farsta. “Chicks like handymen,” he declared, raising his hand as if swearing an oath. Just in case she wondered, he never cleaned his own pipe by himself and if she needed help cleaning her drains, then he was the man for her. He managed to share this information in one single breath. Jonna thanked him politely for his interest, but declined his invitation. She would think of Tomboy next time she had a “blockage”.
They continued to mingle farther in towards the half-empty dance floor where the music pulsated at a high volume. A disco gigolo got them in his sights just as they got onto the dance floor. The gigolo fixed his eyes on Jonna and threw his arms out as if he was about to dance ‘Zorba the Greek’. Obviously, there was nothing wrong with his confidence. He loosened his tie and started to shake his hips. At a table next to the dance floor, the rest of his seven-man gang sat and clapped in time with his hip gyrations.
Jonna rolled her eyes. Sandra laughed at the spectacle even though she had to limp off the dance floor.
The gigolo adjusted his Beckham faux-hawk haircut, the tip of his tongue appearing through his lips. Spinning, he circled around Jonna, shaking his hips all the while, before ending up behind her.
Before she could turn around, he had grabbed her around the waist, trapping her arms. He pressed against her, resting his chin on her shoulder as his tongue searched for her ear.
That was more than enough now, Jonna sighed in resignation. Perhaps some teenager might have fallen for the dancing hotshot, but definitely not Jonna de Brugge.
Jonna tried to break free, but Don Juan refused to let her go. Instead, he tried to get her to follow his hip moves. She felt his hot breath panting in her ear. The enthusiasm of his gang at the table knew no limits. Their clapping hands were in the air and there was an occasional wolf whistle.
Jonna lost her temper. She took hold of his index finger and bent it backwards until he had to loosen his grip. Then she turned around, still holding the finger, and did a reverse pirouette so that he ended up in front of her in a classic police grip. She pressed his finger carefully upwards until he became co-operative.
She maneouvered him to the party table and parked him, where he sat down, humiliated.
Jonna sat down beside Sandra, who was sitting at a corner table far from the pumping loudspeakers. They laughed at the incident on the dance floor. Sandra shook her head and reminded Jonna that she was always the one who attracted the whackos. Jonna agreed, but had no real explanation for it. It was not as if she did it on purpose. Presumably, it had something to do with her looks. If that was a good or bad thing, she was not sure. Sandra suggested that her good looks might be the problem. Only the overconfident idiots, who had nothing to lose, dared to chat up, in her words, a “top of the line” woman.
Before they left Le Cheliff, Jonna was once again approached. This time, it was a middle-aged lawyer who was as uptight and puffed up as the shirt across his belly.
He bought both Jonna and Sandra dry martinis and got straight to the point. Subtlety was not his thing. He considered Jonna to be the best-looking woman of the night and wanted therefore to make her a proposition that she could not possibly refuse.
Before the plump lawyer could say anything else, Jonna had taken out her police badge. She looked the lawyer straight in the eye and asked him to continue. The proposition never materialized and the lawyer hastily left the club with a bright red face.
“Girl power!” Sandra cried, doing a high five.
“This is about as good as it’s going to get,” Jonna dismally concluded, checking her watch. For the twentieth time, she checked to see if she had missed a text message or a phone call.
They left the club just after two and ended the night with a hug at the taxi rank on Stureplan. Sandra took a taxi back to Hammarby Sjöstad while Jonna debated with herself whether she should walk home, which would take half an hour, or take a taxi as well.
She was aided in her decision-making by a pushy taxi driver, who wanted to take her for a set fare of one hundred and fifty crowns. She chose to walk.
Jonna fell asleep at five past three in the morning. Alone in her oversized bed.
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK in the morning, Jonna rang the doorbell to Serge Wolinsky’s flat. She was met by a pale and red-eyed Serge in only his underpants.
“I was just going to hit the sack,” he said apologetically, looking down at his boxer shorts, which were two sizes too big and had a Hawaiian theme with a red sunset.
“Not anymore,” Jonna smiled and walked straight in.
“Do you have coffee?” she asked, looking at the kitchen.
“Yes, but you’ll have to make it yourself,” he said from a wardrobe in the bedroom.
Jonna looked around the messy kitchen. Dirty dishes that must have been at least a week old were piled in the sink, begging to be disinfected. After a while, she managed to locate the coffeemaker behind a pile of empty tins. She made a full pot.
Meanwhile, Serge had put on some clothes and had ended up in front of one of the computer screens.
“Take your pick,” he said, pointing to a list of data files.
“Is that the server at the Stockholm District Court?” she asked and took a sip of coffee.
Serge turned around when he smelt the coffee.
“That’s my mug. Only I drink from it,” he said with a hostile look when he saw the mug in Jonna’s hand. It was white and had the American National Security Agency logo on both sides.
“It was the only mug where I didn’t have to chip away the leftovers from the bottom,” she said and took another sip.
Serge gave her a surly glare for a few seconds before turning his attention to the screen again.
“All in all, there are four hundred, fifty thousand and ninetyeight files. Including a number of system files,” he said as a program window started to scroll files from the top down.
“What’s the structure of the file system?” Jonna asked.
“It’s a normal tree structure with a jumbled mix of OCR scanned documents, files written in Word and then converted to PDF files, et cetera. There seem to be judgments, different types of memos and other stuff. Their internal search index sucks.”
“Any personnel files?” she asked.
“Nope,” Serge hesitated. “More likely, there are links to a salary system that seems to be stored on the court administration servers. At least, that’s where the IP addresses point to.”
“Hmm …” Jonna hummed, deep in thought. “Their salaries are of course from the District Court, but the administration is completely independent from the courts themselves. Each court has to be completely autonomous.”
“What do you want to do with all the files?” Serge asked impatiently. “To download them will take a few hours. As you know, we don’t have much bandwidth over the GPRS connection.”
“How long will it take?”
“Around eight to nine hours.”
“Then you’d better get started,” she said. “While that’s going on, you have other work to do.”
Serge gazed at her, puzzled. “Like what?”
“You have to write a program while you’re waiting,” Jonna said, taking yet another sip of coffee.
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