MemoRandom: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  What had he told Lehtonen, Markovic, and Sabatini that evening that had made them flee for their lives? Was it as he and Molnar both suspected, that Janus was methodically ticking off all the names on a list? Killing everyone who posed the slightest risk of revealing his identity, all apart from one? Erik I. Johansson. Sarac himself.

  Janus ought to have had plenty of opportunities to kill him if he wanted to. So why was he holding back? The only way to find out for sure was for them to meet, face-to-face. To find Janus before Janus found him. But he was still missing the last piece of the puzzle. The one everyone was looking for. The man’s true identity.

  There was one thing at least that he was completely sure of. What he was looking for was in that room. Somewhere in there was the clue that could help him find the right path, clear an overgrown path in his mind and give him what he needed.

  He emptied the desk drawers and lined the contents up. The gun, the two cartridges, the handcuffs. Then the reformatted laptop, the phone book, various pens, a few coins, and the cigarette pack that had contained the matchbook from Club Babel. Finally he laid out the notebook, which he hadn’t found in there, admittedly, but it definitely belonged there.

  He opened it again. The first page with the five coded ID numbers, preceded and followed by the remnants of the torn-out pages. Then page after page of dates and coded messages, presumably meetings with various sources and contacts who had been listed on the two missing pages. He wondered whether one of them had been the lawyer, Crispin? Without the missing pages he would probably never know the answer.

  He looked at the codes again. The system seemed fairly simple. A combination of numbers that could somehow be changed into an address. Addresses. He leafed through the phone book at random. He had wondered before about its purpose when he had clearly had access to the Internet. But now he suddenly suspected he knew why it was there. He picked the same sentence he had looked at several times before.

  Meeting with Jupiter, 14.00 at 781216.

  He didn’t know who the source Jupiter was; his encrypted ID number had probably been on one of the missing pages. But he tried looking up page 78 of the dog-eared phone book. He picked out the first column and counted down to the twelfth row. It was the address of a bicycle shop at number 4 Skeppargatan. Neither the address nor the shop rang any bells at all. But he still had two numbers left of the code. He tried replacing the four with the number sixteen. Then he swore out loud when he realized he didn’t stand a chance of finding out what was at that address, at least not without turning on his cell phone. He thought for a while, then risked it and called directory inquiries.

  The address belonged to a restaurant.

  He repeated the same procedure with a couple of the other codes and came up with a small hotel, then another restaurant. He compared the dates with the payments on the bank statement. It all fit; he had used the bank card to pay for dinner at each of the locations.

  So the phone book itself was the key to the code for the meeting places. The breakthrough ought to have delighted him, but his joy at the discovery was tainted by the fact that it didn’t get him anywhere. Janus’s name wasn’t on any of the pages; he’d already checked that, so once again he had come to a complete halt. But he was close now, closer than he had ever been.

  With the cigarette pack in his hand, he slumped into the armchair facing the whiteboard. Almost without looking, he pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack and lit it, using a match from the little red matchbook. As soon as he smelled it, he realized that the cigarette didn’t just contain tobacco. He stared at it and only now noticed that it was hand-rolled, in contrast to the straight, smooth Marlboros that were left in the pack.

  Smoking dope just a month or so after a stroke wasn’t a particularly smart move. Especially not if you also happened to be a police officer. But, on the other hand, he had nothing better to do. He took a deep drag and held the smoke in for a few seconds before letting it out. Then he leaned his head back and felt a familiar sense of well-being slowly spread through his body.

  He thought about Natalie again. Even though he had found her out, she had saved his life. She had put herself in extreme danger, even got herself hurt in the bargain. Natalie could hardly have been expecting him to reveal any more secrets to her. Yet she still hadn’t hesitated to save him. He wondered why. She probably had a good reason, far better than any he could come up with.

  He took another toke. The faces on the whiteboard were staring at him and were slowly beginning to move. They were drifting through the spiderweb, in from the edges toward the center. Toward the symbol that looked both like two faces looking away from each other and a huge spider. The answer was there, he thought. On that board.

  “Which one of you is sitting on it? Come on, out with it!” Sarac said out loud. He grinned to himself. Realized he was already starting to get stoned.

  “Is it you, Abu Hamsa? Or your muscle-bound friend Eldar?” He grinned again.

  “Micke Lund, what do you know about the gods of antiquity? Do you know about Uranus?”

  He tipped his head back and cackled at the ceiling. He was laughing so hard that tears were running down his cheeks. Fucked up beyond all recognition, he thought.

  He pulled himself together, took another toke, and then forced himself to go back to the whiteboard. Four people left. The other biker—Karim with no surname. Then the Russian tracksuit mafia, Zimin and Ivazov, and finally bald Sasha with the hook nose and scary eyes.

  Sarac leaned back. Tried to focus on Janus. To conjure up a picture of the face he had glimpsed in the rearview mirror in the seconds before the shot was fired.

  Who are you? he thought.

  Where are you?

  The feeling came out of nowhere. There was something about his way of thinking that didn’t make sense. That was . . . wrong.

  The photographs were still moving through the web, merging into the room in a single big, circular motion.

  He was back in Gamla stan. Running along a cobbled street lined with high, windowless walls. The only sound he could hear at first was his own heavy breathing. Then came the voices. Deep, high, strong, and weak in turn. They interrupted and drowned out one another, then blurred into a single maelstrom of words.

  “What sort of police officer?”

  “Keep the secret!”

  “We have an agreement.”

  “I was starting to think you’d forgotten me, Erik.”

  “In the end it always comes down to money.”

  “No loose ends.”

  “Destroy ourselves.”

  “Someone’s selling information.”

  “It’s all his fault.”

  “The hooks are turned to face each other.”

  “Everything begins and ends with . . .”

  • • •

  The voices stop the moment the street shrinks and comes to an end, turning into a well-trodden path through the snow. Night sky and dark trees all around him. His pulse throbbing in his ears. In front of him on the white ground is a large black rectangle. A grave. He looks down. Sees the man lying down there, his face still covered by the hood. Jumps . . .

  He knows that the landing will hurt. That the pain in dreams is unlike any other. But it still overwhelms him, making his sight flare. Blue lights on tunnel walls, fluorescent lights flickering, a spiderweb of red and blue lines leading toward the center.

  In toward the poisonous spider waiting in the middle.

  Janus.

  Unless it was actually the opposite? Could it be . . .

  The opposite?!

  Hooks facing inward.

  The realization hits him like a punch in the chest. Truth and lies have merged together, nothing is what it seems, everything is . . . wrong!

  He crawls up into a sitting position and leans over Janus. He’s holding his breath, doesn’t know whether that’s just in the dream. Slowly he reaches out his hand to the hood and pushes it back. At last he sees Janus’s face, exactly as it looked in the r
earview mirror. He sees the pale eyes, the familiar, tormented expression. He recognizes it, all too well. The man with two faces.

  Janus smiles at him. The night sky reflects blackly, mournfully, in his eyes.

  “Life only exists when you’re up on the wire,” Janus whispers softly.

  “Everything else, David.

  “Everything . . .

  “else . . .

  “is just anticipation!”

  FIFTY-THREE

  “It’s about David Sarac, Minister.” Wallin looked over his shoulder as if to make sure that Stenberg’s door was closed. “Something seems to be going on.”

  “Really?” Stenberg tried to show just the right degree of interest.

  “Approximately twenty minutes ago Peter Molnar received a text message from a pay-as-you-go cell phone. We’re sure it was from Sarac.” Wallin handed over a piece of paper.

  The island, 20.00. He’s coming.

  “The island?” Stenberg said.

  “Skarpö, in the Vaxholm archipelago,” Wallin said. “Sarac has a house out there, registered in his sister’s name. That’s where he’s spent the past few weeks hiding.”

  “And you think he’s going to meet this infiltrator, Janus?” Stenberg said.

  “Of course we can’t be sure, but that certainly could be the case.” Wallin nodded.

  Stenberg sat without saying anything for a while, trying to look as if he were thinking. This was the chance he had been looking for. The repaid favor that would set him free, once and for all. But he had to get Wallin to back off slightly. And make it sound as if it were his idea.

  “What do you suggest we do, Oscar?” he said.

  “Well, obviously we could watch the house. The problem is that Molnar’s men are smart. They’ll do their homework. We’d need winter equipment, night-vision binoculars, and a whole lot more. Ten, fifteen people in total, experienced officers. An operation of that size, at short notice and managed with the utmost discretion . . .” Wallin shook his head slightly. “It’ll be difficult, I’m afraid, Minister.”

  “I see,” Stenberg said drily.

  He noted that Wallin looked worried. People with ambitions like his weren’t keen on disappointing the boss. But today Wallin’s shortcomings played right into his hands. He forced himself to quell the beginnings of a little smile.

  “Is there any other option?” he asked, in the same measured tone as before.

  Wallin nodded.

  “The island is served by two different car ferries. One from Vaxholm, and one from Värmdö. I can have people at both points on the mainland where the ferries leave from, and take pictures of everyone coming and going.”

  Stenberg nodded, then switched to a suitably disappointed tone of voice.

  “Well, if that’s the only suggestion you’ve got, Oscar, I suppose it will have to do. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Stenberg stood up to indicate that he had more important things to be getting on with.

  As soon as Wallin left the room he got out his own pay-as-you-go cell phone and walked over to the little sink. He turned the tap on, then dialed the number and held the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he washed his hands. He made up his mind to ditch the phone in the lake in Ösby when he was taking Tubbe for his evening walk.

  • • •

  Sarac got dressed, did thirty push-ups in a row, followed by the same number of sit-ups. Then he pulled on the bulletproof vest Bergh had given him and taped the little snub-nosed revolver around his ankle with black insulating tape. He strapped the holster containing his service pistol to his belt and adjusted it so it was just above his right hip. He closed his eyes, then practiced drawing the weapon in front of the mirror. It went better than he had expected.

  When he was done he took down all the photographs and Post-it notes from the whiteboard and put them in the kitchen sink. He put his notebook on top of them and used the last of the matches from Club Babel to set light to the whole lot. The fire quickly took hold, and the heat made the photographs curl up, reversing the colors for a few seconds. Turning black to white.

  As soon as the flames had died down he pulled on his leather jacket and checked the room one last time. He found himself staring at the Janus face that was still in the middle of the whiteboard. He went over and wiped it off.

  • • •

  “Vaxholm,” Hunter said in Atif’s cell phone. “I want you to be in position by six o’clock. Text me when you get to the ferry.”

  “Sure,” Atif muttered. “No problem.” He ended the call without saying good-bye.

  He leaned back in bed. His body felt terrible. His right foot had swollen up like a football, and he would have to bind it uncomfortably tightly to get it into his boot. His knee was bluish-lilac, and his ribs, left arm, and left hand hadn’t fared much better from falling from a height of twenty feet. But it could have been worse. If he hadn’t landed in a snowdrift he’d have broken his legs, no question. And would have been lying on a wooden bunk in prison now instead of this creaking bed in his hotel room.

  He got up, staggered into the bathroom, and swallowed down a handful of pills. He glanced in the bathroom mirror and concluded that he looked pretty much the way he felt. It was half past nine, plenty of time to have something to eat and get hold of another vehicle.

  He pulled out his cell and dug out the right number.

  “Hello?”

  “Abu Hamsa, it’s Atif.” He sat down on the bed again with effort. “Something seems to be going on. This evening, out near Vaxholm,” he said.

  “Really? Good. You’ll keep me informed, I hope?”

  “Of course,” Atif said. “I always keep my promises.”

  “Excellent. Well, make sure you’re properly dressed, my friend. Apparently there’s going to be bad weather out in the archipelago.”

  Atif remained seated on the bed, thinking hard. There was something about the conversation that didn’t make sense. The tone of voice, and that talk about the weather. As though Abu Hamsa knew more than he himself did.

  • • •

  The boat from the city out to Vaxholm only took an hour. Ice had started to creep out from the shores, but the swell from the big Finland ferries was keeping it a long way from the shipping lanes. The car ferry hadn’t arrived, so Sarac had time to find a tobacconist and buy a fresh pack of cigarettes. He pulled up the hood of his jacket, then stood on the car deck and smoked two cigarettes during the short journey out to the island.

  He had a stroke of luck when they got there: a woman who lived fairly close to him had been on the ferry and gave him a lift to the end of the drive.

  “There’s supposed to be really bad weather tonight.” The woman nodded toward the dark horizon. “The shipping forecast warned we might get thunder.”

  “Thunder in winter?” Sarac said.

  “It sometimes happens out in the archipelago,” the woman said. “Every ten years or so. Something to do with the difference in temperature between the sea and the air. My grandfather used to call it Janus thunder. Said it was a bad omen.”

  • • •

  Natalie’s cell phone rang just as she had managed to open her front door. She dropped one of her gloves in a puddle on the floor and swore out loud to herself.

  “Hello, this is Natalie.” She bent down to pick up the glove, grimacing at the pain in her rib cage.

  “Rickard here,” the man on the other end said.

  A short silence followed.

  “You mean Oscar Wallin,” Natalie said. “That is your real name, isn’t it?”

  “Something’s going to happen out on the island this evening,” the man said, without taking the slightest notice of what she’d just said. “I need you there to keep an eye on things.”

  “Oscar, did you ever really think about fixing my criminal record? Is that even possible?” she said.

  “What do you think, Natalie?” the voice over the phone said, and she was immediately reminded of Sarac and von Katzow’s verbal due
l.

  “I think you say whatever it takes to get people to cooperate, Oscar. Things they don’t really believe, not deep down, but want so fucking desperately that they’re prepared to do practically anything if there’s even a tiny chance of it happening.”

  To her surprise Natalie heard the man laugh.

  “You’ve learned quite a lot from spending time with Sarac, I see.” He fell silent, and when he opened his mouth to speak again the amused tone had vanished.

  “There’ll be a car outside your door in five minutes. The police officers in it will either arrest you on suspicion of aggravated fraud or drive you to the ferry. Your choice, Natalie.”

  Natalie opened her mouth to say something, but the line had already gone dead.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  “Atif here, I’m in position.”

  “Good. How’s the weather over there?” Hunter said.

  “It’s snowing pretty heavily, looking like it’s getting worse,” Atif said.

  “Okay. Now take the boat across to Rindö and wait there. It’s the yellow, open-decked car ferry.”

  Atif looked out through the windshield. He could see lights approaching some way off in the sound. He started the engine and rolled over to join the line of cars. He wondered if he ought to call Abu Hamsa and give him an update. He decided to wait. The plan was still working; neither Hunter nor Abu Hamsa appeared to have realized he was playing them both. Not yet, anyway.

  • • •

  Natalie was the last one up the steps to the little waiting room. She stopped briefly to peer out through the snow. Just as she had hoped, she could see the taillights of the dark Volvo pulling away from the harbor. Perfect.

  Neither of the policemen in the car had uttered a word on the way there, which had given her plenty of time to think. She had long since cleared her computer of any possible evidence. She had got rid of anything that might link her to the fake kidnappings the day she agreed to work for Wallin. She hoped that would be enough, and that all he could do to her was lock her up for a few days. But there was obviously no way she could be certain. She was planning to play along for a bit longer. Pretend to cooperate, catch the ferry out to the island, then travel back as quickly as she could. She could blame the concussion she had received in the collision with the van. Wallin could hardly come down hard on her if she had been willing to go all the way out to the island. At least that was what she was hoping.