Eighteen Below

by Stefan Ahnhem

  Without a doubt, Elvin was the most competent member of the team. No one else had his ability to zero in on the most important questions in an investigation. He never said more than necessary, but he also had no problem taking out his bad moods on the rest of them.

  Outside working hours, Elvin was a blank slate to Fabian. They never socialized — unlike, say, Molander and Elvin, who had known each other since the academy. When it came right down to it, Elvin could be hiding just about any personal secret.

  Was that why Fabian was snooping around his apartment? Or was he truly worried that something was wrong?

  Fabian moved on to the bedroom, where he discovered a neatly made bed. Inside the dresser, he found more questions. At first he thought the skirts, dresses, and blouses belonged to the mysterious woman that Elvin had never mentioned. That the nylons, panties, and bras were left over from a time gone by. But then he found two wigs, and his image of Hugo Elvin abruptly shifted in a new direction.

  46

  Fareed Cherukuri was resigned to his job situation with TDC customer services, down in the windowless bunker four floors underground. He had given up all hope of having any sort of career, although that was exactly what he’d been promised when he was hired six years ago.

  He did everything he could to repress the thought, but he was painfully aware that in ten years he would still be sitting in the same cubicle in the same bunker, facing an endless stream of questions, each more idiotic than the last, coming through a headset that was so tight the marks on his temples didn’t have time to fade over a long weekend.

  Sure, there was some light in the darkness. His interest in programming, for instance. At least, that’s what he said if anyone asked. In reality, it was more like building Trojans full of sophisticated viruses, fooling security systems, and getting past firewalls. But even that was getting old.

  Things had been different three years ago, when he’d managed to crack TDC’s most important encryption key and gained access to the holy grail — all the calls, texts, and data traffic on the TDC network. Politicians, royals, or riff-raff — it didn’t matter. If the mood struck him, all he had to do was type in their number and listen.

  The discovery brightened up his existence for a few months, until he realized how miserably boring most celebrities were in real life. Not to mention that in nine out of ten cases, their conversations were absolutely worthless. He hadn’t succeeded in ferreting out a single juicy scandal.

  But when Dunja Hougaard had contacted him to trace the phone of her boss, Kim Sleizner, the whole thing flared up and turned into a damn hullabaloo. Especially after he leaked the phone’s location — the most prostitute-heavy neighbourhood in all of Copenhagen — to Ekstra Bladet.

  Since then, his life had been an impenetrable darkness.

  Until now.

  Fareed moved the cursor on his screen to the button that said Temporarily Unavailable and clicked. Unlike the Logout button, this one was meant for bathroom breaks, smoke breaks, or grabbing a coffee, and as his manager never failed to point out, it said “temporarily” for a reason. You weren’t allowed to be out of the system for more than six and a half minutes, which was the amount of time they had decided, after lengthy discussion, should suffice for all these sorts of activities.

  If you were having stomach troubles, or the coffee machines weren’t working and you had to leave the bunker and go all the way up to the main office to fill your cup, you simply had to accept the consequences, which came in the form of a wage deduction.

  It was not possible to overstate how much Fareed hated his manager, a man who was quite a bit younger than him. Or the incompetent idiot who had programmed “temporarily” before “unavailable” such that the words didn’t even fit on the button. The fact was, Fareed hated his job so much that, in his darkest moments, he seriously considered injecting a virus into the system.

  He wasn’t worried about anyone tracing it back to him. Rather, the only thing that kept him from unleashing a virus on the company was the knowledge that, within six months of doing so, the whole operation would go under. And that would mean Fareed would have to give up his apartment.

  Back to the button. Fareed clicked Temporarily Unavailable not because he needed to go to the bathroom, take a smoke break, or grab a coffee — he didn’t even drink coffee. No, the reason for his increased heart rate was the message that popped up on his screen just as he was about to explain to a customer that he couldn’t do anything about the fact that the memory on her phone was full.

  Fareed Cherukuri, report immediately to the Windmill conference room.

  Fareed’s first thought was that Qiang Wu was messing with him. He certainly had the right sense of humour — and the programming skill to mask a message so it looked like it had come from reception. But a quick glance over his shoulder revealed that Qiang was deeply absorbed in a customer call, and if there was anything Qiang couldn’t do, it was keep a straight face.

  Fareed’s second thought was that God had finally managed to dissolve the wax that was plugging up his ears and had heard his prayer — that He would move Fareed out of this hell-bunker and make him a real programmer.

  As soon as he stepped into the conference room, Fareed realized that neither of these scenarios was true.

  47

  Hugo Elvin’s door was still unlocked when Fabian opened it for Molander, who seemed tense — as he usually did when he agreed to go along with something against his will.

  “I hope you know this has to be quick. I have a lot to get done before the suspect makes his entrance,” he said, vanishing into the apartment with his bag of tools.

  The meeting at the bank was to take place at five o’clock, in exactly four hours. Despite Molander’s stress levels, that gave them more than enough time to search the apartment for a clue to Elvin’s whereabouts.

  It was the second day without any word from him. Everyone on the team had agreed the situation was becoming worrisome. Everyone except Molander, who said this wasn’t the first time Elvin had gone off the radar. During their training together at the police academy, it seemed, Elvin had vanished every now and then, sometimes for as long as two weeks.

  Lilja asked if he knew why, and Molander’s response immediately turned evasive. Eventually, he said that there had been rumours that Elvin was gay. Some had even claimed to have seen him participating in a drag show in Copenhagen.

  Lilja, Cliff, and Tuvesson brushed this off on the grounds that Elvin was possibly the least feminine person they knew. The thought of him dressing up in women’s clothing onstage seemed impossible. Molander agreed, stressing that it had only been a rumour, and he and Elvin had never talked about it.

  Until that point, Fabian had remained silent, going back and forth about whether he should tell them what he’d found in Elvin’s wardrobe. But he no longer felt he had a choice. The reaction was as expected — two minutes of silence followed by Tuvesson saying that they all had secrets, and whatever Elvin’s sexuality, it didn’t necessarily have anything to do with his disappearance.

  “Have you ever been here before?” Fabian asked, looking around the hall.

  “I haven’t. After more than thirty years of friendship, this is the first time.” Molander shook his head and swept the place with his eyes. “If you ask Gertrud, he owes us quite a few paycheques, considering all the meals she’s made for him.”

  Fabian went over to the hat rack to study the outerwear, as he tried to remember the last time he and Sonja had invited anyone over for dinner.

  “Look at that, he’s right here.”

  Fabian whirled around quickly, but he still had time to form an image of Elvin emerging from the bedroom in women’s underwear, wondering what they were doing in his apartment. Instead he found Molander bent over an old photograph of a little boy in a white dress.

  “You think that’s Elvin?”

  “Think? It�
��s obvious from miles off. His face is exactly the same. See for yourself.”

  Fabian walked over for a closer look, but he wasn’t quite as convinced.

  “Shall we get going?” Molander glanced at his watch.

  Fabian showed him into the bedroom, which looked just as he’d left it the day before. He stepped in and opened the wardrobe with the women’s clothing and wigs.

  “Wow.” Molander shook his head. “It almost looks like my wife’s. Although his is neater, have to give him that.”

  “Do you think this could have anything to do with his disappearance?” Fabian opened the next wardrobe over, which contained Elvin’s everyday clothes.

  Molander shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. Why don’t you take a look at the computer over there and see if you can come up with anything. I’ll get started taking some samples here.”

  Fabian rounded the bed and approached the desk at the window that looked out onto Hälsovägen, where the traffic never seemed to end. The computer, a desktop Acer, asked for a password as soon as it started up, and after trying some of the most common ones, like 123456, password, and abc123, he tried Elvin’s own name and personal ID number, as well as some variants on semla, the Lenten bun he always raved about. But the only response he got was Incorrect password.

  “Ingvar, do you have any idea what his password could be?”

  Molander, who was sealing a pair of panties into an evidence bag, shook his head. “Have you tried Hanna?”

  “Why Hanna?”

  “I was just thinking — Hugo, Hanna, same difference. He has to call himself something when he puts on his Sunday best.” Molander held up a dramatic red dress.

  Fabian tried Molander’s suggestion, and a few variants, but none of them worked. After searching the desk, he found a scrap of paper taped under the mouse pad. It contained a long list of usernames and passwords. Several of the usernames were Elvira, which was close enough to Elvin. Molander hadn’t been too far off. But the password written next to Computer was Time4achange, so neither of them had been in the right ballpark.

  The password’s explanation was revealed as soon as Fabian looked at the browser’s search history. In recent weeks, nearly every search was related to sex reassignment surgeries. They ranged from purely informative websites, to various forums that discussed transgender issues from every possible angle.

  “Come take a look at this.” Fabian played a video that showed how a male-to-female operation was performed.

  Molander looked at the animated images. “It might seem strange. But I’m actually not all that surprised.”

  Fabian didn’t know what to say. He still hadn’t come to terms with the knowledge that Elvin liked to dress in women’s clothing. Much less that he was seriously considering surgery.

  “Did you check whether there’s anything behind that?” Molander nodded at a heavy burgundy curtain that hung from the ceiling and covered part of the wall in one corner.

  Fabian shook his head and approached it. He hadn’t noticed it until now. The curtain consisted of two panels, and behind them was a closed door. There was another room in the apartment, and he’d missed it entirely.

  The sweet, musty odour told his subconscious to brace itself for what he was about to see.

  The curtains let only a very small amount of light into the room, which was about the same size as the bedroom. The far wall was covered with rows of books, and in one corner there was a lovely old divan next to a floor lamp with long fringing around its yellowed shade. In the other corner was a freestanding mirror, and in the centre of the room was a large red rug with an ornate pattern.

  Molander drew the heavy curtains aside. There, in a floral dress, earrings, and red lipstick, was Hugo Elvin hanging motionless from the ceiling fixture.

  48

  Dunja and Magnus had spent several hours working with Mikael Rønning at the cultural centre in Islands Brygge. Like Dunja, Mikael believed that, just because the video wasn’t on YouTube, didn’t mean the attackers weren’t spreading it — perhaps they were just being cautious about where they shared their work. With this in mind, he had ventured onto the darknet to perform a search.

  “Darknet?” Magnus asked, and Mikael explained that, contrary to what the general public often believed, it wasn’t that different from what’s known as the Internet. In fact, it was more or less the same thing, but with one crucial difference: Google and other search engines could neither find nor index the sites because they used the Tor network — or “The Onion Router,” as it was formally called.

  The Tor network rendered such sites and all their users anonymous and impossible to reach with a normal web browser, which was why the darknet was populated by all types of lowlifes, from pedophiles and weapons dealers to pimps and contract killers.

  To access the darknet you needed a Tor browser, and this was where things got too technical for Dunja to follow. The crucial point was that Mikael eventually found a site where anonymous users uploaded and shared videos in which victims were tortured, raped, or killed on camera. And just like YouTube, the users who posted these videos were interested in likes and views that would move their videos up the lists.

  It was there, in forty-eighth place on a list entitled Non-weapon killing, that Mikael found the video depicting the murder of Jens Lemke. Frustratingly, since it was impossible to trace the IP address that had uploaded the video, they were back to square one.

  But then Magnus surprised both Dunja and Mikael by asking an extremely obvious but also totally brilliant question: Could they see the IP address that had uploaded the earlier videos to YouTube? Within a few minutes, Mikael had found it. The IP address came from a mobile connection.

  This was why Dunja and Magnus now found themselves in one of the many conference rooms at TDC — some overpaid interior designer had named this one the Windmill Room — waiting for Fareed Cherukuri to take a seat across the table.

  “Hi, Fareed. Do you remember me?” Dunja offered a smile.

  Fareed neither nodded nor shook his head; he looked like he was too busy trying to figure out whether her visit was good or bad for him.

  “Let me refresh your memory,” Dunja went on. “Kim Sleizner and Jenny Nielsen. Does that ring any bells? You don’t have to look so surprised. I knew right away you were the one who leaked the story to Ekstra Bladet, even though I expressly told you it had to stay between us.” She paused, giving Fareed an opportunity to speak up. But he didn’t say a word. “At the time, I was pretty upset, since that was one of the reasons I lost my job. I even considered reporting you.”

  “But you didn’t,” Fareed said, offering a smile back.

  “That’s not really my style. Plus I thought I might need your help in the future.”

  “So that’s why you’re here.”

  “Exactly.” Dunja leaned forward in her chair. “After all, we don’t want your boss to find out what you’re up to, do we?”

  “Apparently the same goes for yours.”

  Dunja laughed, impressed by his quick wit. “Should I take that to mean we have an understanding?”

  “That depends on what you need help with.”

  Dunja slid a piece of paper across the table; on it was a string of digits separated into four groups with periods in between.

  “It’s an IP address,” said Magnus.

  “I think he’s aware of that,” Dunja said, giving him an indulgent smile.

  “From a mobile connection,” Fareed added, pushing the paper back.

  “I want to know who it belongs to.”

  “That’s not possible. It’s from an anonymous prepaid card.”

  “They might have registered it.” Magnus again, and this time Dunja felt inclined to remind him of their agreement that he stay quiet.

  “Sure, if you think your guy would be that stupid.”

  “Of course not,”
Dunja said. “But you’re not just anyone; you’re quite the star student.” She wrote her number on the back of the note and shoved it back to him. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

  49

  Even though Theodor had been angry when Alexandra and the others ditched him with the bill, he’d paid up, and he’d pretended like nothing was wrong that night when the two of them agreed to meet up in the schoolyard at four o’clock the next day. Their last class would be over and the rest of the day would be an open field of possibilities.

  Theodor imagined how they would walk downtown. He’d even planned the route. Instead of taking Hälsobacken, surrounded by the din of heavy traffic, they would cut across Öresundsparken. It would mean a slight detour, but it would be worth it. He’d ridden his bike over to check it out. It was like entering another world, free of cars and noise and stress.

  And maybe, just maybe, he would dare to take her hand as they came to St. Clemens Gata, which afforded the best view of the Sound.

  But right now he was still sitting on the bench, waiting for her; he’d had time to smoke five cigarettes before she texted him.

  Hanging at Koppi. Come on over.

  Koppi. That was one of those super-trendy cafés where they tried to elevate coffee drinking to an art form so complex it took at least a Nobel prize to enjoy it. He’d been planning to take her to Ebbas Fik down on Bruksgatan. The mood there was the exact opposite, and the coffee tasted just as good, if not better, for a third of the price. Plus their selection of baked goods beat just about everyone’s.

  Koppi…He considered forgetting the whole thing, texting back that she could just stay there sipping her nose-in-the-air coffee without him. But something kept him from pressing Send and five minutes later he locked his bike behind the fountain at the corner of Nedre Långvinkelsgatan and Norra Storgatan and stepped into the café.

  He shouldn’t have been surprised to find she wasn’t alone. But he was. And furious, too. This was supposed to be their night. Christ, she had said yes.