MemoRandom: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  She opened another tab on her browser and logged into a Western Union account. The balance was showing as zero, but that would soon change. She reached for her latte and leaned back in her chair, wondering about getting something to eat. She knew she shouldn’t. She had already exceeded her ration of points for the week. Maybe time to try the 5:2 diet instead?

  Her phone buzzed. A number she didn’t recognize. She inserted her hands-free earpiece.

  “Hello,” she said in a clipped tone of voice.

  “Hi, Natalie!”

  The man on the other end of the line sounded amused, as if she had already said something funny. Telesales manual, page one, heading “customer contact.” She was about to hang up.

  “How did you catch him? Facebook? Instagram? Some other social network for the young and rich?” the man said.

  “What?” Natalie was taken aback.

  “Hans Wilhelm Sverre Wettergren-Dufwa, or Wippe to his family and friends.”

  Her brain locked for a couple of seconds, then her pulse started to race.

  “Side parting, Canada Goose jacket, Burberry scarf, final year at Östra Real high school,” the man on the phone went on. “Registered as living at the family’s simple four-room pied-à-terre at Karlaplan. Daddy good for a few hundred million. And right now, little Wippe’s got his cock in your friend Elita Brogren’s mouth, over at Filmstaden.”

  Natalie leaped up from her chair and closed her laptop. She had to warn Elita, tell her to get out of there at once.

  “How much were you hoping to take Wippe’s mom for?” the man said in her ear. “Two hundred, two hundred and fifty thousand? Or have you raised the rate?”

  Natalie grabbed her jacket and felt along the hands-free cord for the disconnect button.

  “Sit down, Natalie!” The voice in her ear was suddenly very stern.

  She stopped and looked around quickly. The man was watching her from somewhere nearby. Maybe he was even inside the café. A cop, a private detective, maybe even a victim out for revenge? Whoever the man was, he liked playing games. Her heart was pumping like mad in her chest. She glanced at the exit.

  “Please, sit down, Natalie,” the man said, somewhat more gently. “If I’d wanted to harm you, I’d hardly call to warn you in advance. All you have to do is listen.”

  Natalie hesitated. The most rational thing she could do was get out of there. But there was something in the man’s voice that told her she wouldn’t get very far. She pulled her chair out and sat down.

  “Good,” the man went on. “The fact is, we’re impressed by you, Natalie. This whole idea is brilliant. You track down rich people’s children through social media, and use a fake profile to insinuate yourself into their network. Then you can just take your pick. You google the parents and have a word with your little admirer in the Tax Office until you find a suitable victim.”

  The amused tone was back in the man’s voice again. Natalie looked around cautiously, trying to figure out where he might be. And what the whole of this little game was about.

  “Rich but absent father, overprotective mother with too much time on her hands. Ideally the victim should be an only child, or at least the youngest. Mommy’s little darling, isn’t that right?”

  Natalie didn’t answer, just pressed the hands-free earpiece tighter into her ear as she tried to focus on the other people in the café. A man at the far end seemed to be talking on his cell phone.

  “You’re very careful with your choices,” the man went on. “No celebrities or politicians, no Wallenbergs, H&M heirs, or anyone else who might be too rich and powerful. No, you focus on the ones just beneath them. Once you’ve identified the right victim, you get sexy Elita to pick him up. Hormones raging, the young man skips school to go off to the cinema one afternoon. After a bit of preliminary petting, Elita says she wants to spice things up a bit. She blindfolds him, and by this point the poor guy is practically bursting out of his Calvin Kleins, so he’s hardly going to protest. While he’s moaning in the dark with the blindfold on, you take a few pictures of his face.”

  Natalie looked around, but the man she had seen seemed to have hung up.

  “And while the lad’s dreams are all coming true in the cinema, you e-mail his mother. You tell her that her darling has been kidnapped, attaching a grainy picture of the crown prince wearing a blindfold, and tell her she’s got one hour. Pay up, or he gets hurt. Don’t call the police, we’re watching your every move, and all the other kidnap nonsense she’s familiar with from cop shows on television.”

  The man sounded amused, but Natalie wasn’t having any difficulty not laughing. Where was he, who was he, and how the hell could he know? She glanced toward the door again and wondered what would happen if she got up and left anyway. But the man seemed to know all about her. Trying to run might buy her a bit of time, but what could she do with it?

  “Obviously Mommy calls her little darling,” the man went on. “But of course he doesn’t answer, because Elita’s made sure he’s switched his cell phone off. Then Mommy calls the school and finds out that Junior isn’t there. She’s starting to panic now, and she calls her husband, but he’s away on business and probably isn’t the sort who answers when his wife calls. Time is running out, the deadline is approaching, and panic has really set in now.” The man paused for a moment and Natalie realized she was holding her breath.

  “Then, all of a sudden, Mommy realizes that the amount you’re asking for isn’t actually that much. That she can buy her way out of this unpleasant situation in one go. The sort of people you pick on are, after all, used to solving all manner of problems with their wallets. And what’s a few hundred thousand on the Amex card when the crown prince’s life is at risk? So, within an hour, Mommy transfers the money to an anonymous Western Union account whose number you’ve given her. And after she’s sat there biting her nails for a good long while, the film ends and finally her little darling replies to one of her many anxious messages. She’s beside herself with relief. It takes her quite a time before her emotions settle down and she realizes that she’s actually paid for her naughty little boy’s very expensive afternoon blow job.” The man chuckled again. “No one wants to make a fool of themselves in public, so after Daddy and the family lawyer have had a talk, everyone agrees to leave this unfortunate little incident behind them. No report to the police, no publicity, nothing.” The line fell silent.

  “What do you want?” Natalie’s voice wasn’t anywhere near as calm as she had been hoping it would be.

  “Open your laptop,” the man said.

  “No way!”

  “Just do as I say, Natalie.”

  She hesitated at first, then reluctantly did as he asked.

  “What now?”

  “Check your inbox!”

  The icon for a new e-mail was lit up. No message, just a link to a web page.

  “Click the link,” the man said.

  She did as she was asked. The page loaded. A dull gray background, covered by black text and a 1970s-style logo. It took her a few moments to realize what she was looking at.

  GENERAL POLICE REGISTER

  CRIMINAL RECORD

  Name: Natalie Aden

  Date of birth / ID number: 19850531-2335

  Eye color: brown

  Hair color: red

  Height: 5 feet 3.5 inches

  Build: large

  Distinguishing features: tattoo, left calf—butterfly

  09-19-2010—minor drugs offense (fined)

  02-02-2011—theft, minor drugs offense (conditional sentence)

  10-12-2012—fraud (dropped)

  07-14-2013—fraud (dropped)

  “Not very pleasant reading, is it, Natalie? You’re on your way to becoming a doctor, then you get picked up in a car with the wrong crowd and a joint you’d forgotten about in your pocket. You might have got away with that, but then you were stupid enough to steal from the pharmacy at the hospital where you were doing your training, and that was that. Little Natalie with h
er lovely grades, who was going to be a doctor just like Daddy. And unlike him you’d have a Swedish degree so you wouldn’t have to clean floors. But with two separate entries in your criminal record, that opportunity has gone. So instead you make a living from fraud, like this one. You put a bit of money into your Mom’s account every now and then, in an attempt to ease your conscience. I’m guessing you and Daddy haven’t spoken for a while. You must have been such a disappointment to him.”

  She opened her mouth and yelled at him to shut up and shove his criminal records up his ass. Then she hung up and stormed out of the café. Well, that was what she ought to have done. Instead, she sat there paralyzed, not saying a word as he went on.

  “Your boyfriend admitted responsibility for everything. Very good of him, I must say. He did that so you’d get off with a conditional sentence.” The man lowered his voice to a whisper. “But both you and I know that the pills weren’t for him. It’s tough having to carry the weight of everyone’s expectations on your shoulders. Mommy and Daddy’s, and your family’s, and—not least—your own. It’s hard to unwind. Hard to get your head to relax, isn’t it, Natalie?”

  Natalie swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “What do you actually want with me?” she muttered.

  “I want to employ you. A task that would be a perfect match for your training, your intelligence, and your . . . special abilities.”

  “What do I get in return?” she said.

  “What do you say about a fresh start? A chance to begin again?”

  Natalie thought for a moment. A police officer, the man had to be a police officer. How else could he know so many details about her?

  “And if I refuse? Will you arrest me?” she said.

  The man laughed quietly. Outside the café a large black car with tinted windows pulled up. And stopped right outside her window. One of the rear doors opened but no one got out.

  “Get in and we’ll discuss it,” the man said. “I’m confident we can find a solution that will satisfy both of us. By the way, you can call me Rickard.”

  FIVE

  “We now commit Adnan Kassab’s remains to eternal rest.”

  The funeral director knelt on the mat surrounding the little hole and carefully placed the urn inside it. Down there threads of roots stuck out here and there, like narrow hairy fingers groping out of the earth and reaching toward the weak winter light.

  They must have used a digger to break through the frozen ground, Atif thought. One single scoop in the ground, that was all it would have taken. Adnan had hardly been of a religious persuasion, so using a priest or an imam would have felt strange. Better like this. Cremation, a short ceremony, and then down with the urn. He glanced toward Cassandra, who was standing next to him. She hadn’t wanted Tindra to attend the funeral, said she was too young. A six-year-old shouldn’t have to confront death, at least not yet. There hadn’t been much he could say to that. But one thing he definitely didn’t agree with was the large wreath on the other side of the grave. An overblown affair, presumably the largest you could order, and it made all the others look insignificant.

  Never forgive, never forget was written in ornate golden letters on the silk ribbon. The men who had in all likelihood sent the wreath were all standing in the group just behind Atif. A couple of dozen people, almost all men. Most of them were wearing sunglasses even though the sun had barely risen above the pine trees. Several of the men had nodded to Atif as he and Cassandra hurried past in the chapel. There were a few familiar faces, but most of them were unknown. In Adnan’s world, friendship was often a perishable commodity.

  In a short while he would have no choice but to talk to them. Shake their hands, accept their condolences. He wondered whether any of them drove a large Audi with shiny wheel trim. But that was really none of his business. Cassandra wasn’t the sort who liked living alone; she needed a benefactor. Someone to take care of her. Her and Tindra, he corrected himself. The thought of the little girl made him feel slightly brighter. But the feeling vanished when he looked down into the grave again.

  He was hardly in any position to stand in judgment over Cassandra. If it hadn’t been for him, Adnan might have stood a chance. Might not have ended up as a five or six pounds of ash in a cheap urn before he had even turned thirty-five.

  Money, respect, recognition—that was what it was all about. Adnan had followed in Atif’s footsteps, the way he used to in winter when he was little. Adnan had followed the path marked out for him, not reflecting on where it was going to take him. Or on the fact that he was actually walking around in a large circle and would end up back where he started sooner or later. Atif had tried to make his little brother understand—at least that was what he tried to tell himself afterward. Had tried to persuade him that the only way to get anywhere in life was to dare to take a step into unknown territory. But clearly he hadn’t sounded convincing enough.

  After the move to Iraq they only spoke a few times a year. Christmas and birthdays, little more than that. They had mostly talked about Tindra or their mother, never about work—his own or Adnan’s. But Atif had still got the impression that Adnan knew he had changed sides. Maybe their mother had mentioned it, before she disappeared into her own memories. She and Adnan had always been close. He was the youngest, Mommy’s little boy.

  During the early years there had been vague talk of Adnan moving down to join them. They talked about setting up their own business, a security firm, something like that. When their mother got worse Atif even bought a plane ticket for his brother. But a week before he was due to leave, Adnan was arrested for taking part in the robbery of a security van and locked up for two months. The trip was never mentioned again after that. It had never been more than idle talk, Atif thought. Adnan would never have left Tindra. The same would have applied to him if it had been his daughter.

  Atif looked around at the rows of snow-covered gravestones. He hated Swedish cemeteries. He hated the smell of box hedging, which even the snow was unable to hide. The day after tomorrow he would be leaving and going back to the heat, to his house and garden. Leaving all this behind him, for good.

  A gust of wind caught the dark pines, making a dull, rumbling sound that drowned out the funeral director’s concluding words. Beside Atif Cassandra shivered and pulled her coat tighter.

  Sleep well, little brother, Atif thought.

  • • •

  “So, how are you feeling, David?”

  Sarac gave a little shrug. “Bruised, sore, a bit confused. Apart from that, not bad.” He was clutching the piece of paper in one hand, keeping it under the covers, out of sight of the thin-haired man in the visitor’s chair.

  “The doctor said something about gaps in your memory?”

  Sarac tried to force a smile, then glanced down at the note that the nurse had written for him.

  You’ve had a mild stroke.

  You were involved in a car accident in the Söderleden Tunnel on November 23, 2013.

  Your doctor’s name is Jill Vestman.

  The gaps in your memory are . . .

  “Temporary,” he said quickly. “That’ll improve as soon as the swelling goes down a bit.”

  At least Sarac had no trouble remembering Kjell Bergh. He had recognized his balding, overweight boss the moment he walked through the door. Bergh was the sort of man who could never be taken for anything but a police officer, even though he didn’t wear a uniform. There was something about the way he held himself and his weary but watchful eyes. Almost forty years in the force had left their mark.

  “So how much do you remember?” Bergh adjusted the vase of flowers he had just put on the bedside table. There was a note of tension in his voice.

  “The accident and the days leading up to it are a bit of a jumble,” Sarac said. “The weeks before too. But all that’s only—”

  “Temporary.” Bergh nodded. “Yes, you said.”

  “The car accident. Can you tell me what happened?” Sarac said.

  Bergh
shrugged his shoulders and pushed his thin glasses up onto his forehead.

  “You drove straight into one of the concrete barriers in the Söderleden Tunnel. Next to the exit for Skanstull. Head-on, no rubber on the road to suggest that you braked, according to the traffic unit. Molnar’s group got there just after the accident and managed to put the fire out. I heard that a couple of the guys were in tears, it looked so bad.”

  Sarac nodded and gulped.

  Bergh leaned closer to the bed. Sarac suddenly noticed the dark patches under the man’s eyes.

  “We had to open the safe,” Bergh said in a low voice. “It’s standard procedure when a handler . . . I mean, we weren’t sure if you were going to make it.”

  Sarac nodded, trying to work out why he didn’t want to tell his boss the truth about the gaps in his memory. His sense of unease began to grow again. It made him clutch the piece of paper even tighter.

  “Kollander was there, as head of Regional Crime. He and I used our codes, all according to protocol,” Bergh went on, pulling a face. Sarac’s heart immediately began to beat faster. “Your envelope was empty, David.” Bergh’s voice was so low now that it was almost a whisper. “No backup list, no names, nothing.”

  Sarac slowly shook his head. He could feel the headache gathering strength in his temples. Suddenly there was the sound of voices out in the corridor and Bergh glanced quickly over his shoulder. Then he leaned even closer to Sarac, so close that it was possible to smell the garlic on his breath.

  “I managed to get the head of Regional Crime to hold back on filing an official complaint. Or at least wait a few days, until we’d had a chance to talk to you. None of us want Dreyer and the Internal Investigation team snooping about the department again.” Bergh licked his lips. “Kollander’s wetting himself. Says we might have a mole in the department. Someone selling information. It’s only a matter of time before he goes running to the district commissioner, and you know what that would lead to.”