Even so, he had felt unusually anxious and been scared to go straight home without making sure he wasn’t followed. He simply couldn’t believe it was this easy. That he could do practically anything without anyone suspecting, so long as he left all the decisions to the dice.
He was back in his building now. Since the lift door on his floor was still insisting on letting out a tiny squeal every time it was opened, even though he’d greased the hinges, he took the stairs.
At least the door to his flat didn’t squeak, and as soon as he’d closed it behind him, he turned the lock, first the original lock and then the extra one he’d installed himself with espagnolettes that fastened the door to the floor, walls and ceiling. Then he put the chains on, pressed his face against the door and peered out through the peephole.
The stairwell outside was empty; a minute or two later, the lights went out. He continued further into his flat, stepped behind the curtain on the right side of the window and looked down at the street.
A taxi stopped and dropped passengers outside Sam’s Bar, where the outdoor serving area was already as crowded as the patrons were drunk. In other words, it looked like a normal Friday night in June, and he should be able to take off his clothes, put them back in the wardrobe and take a bath without worrying.
With the floating pillow behind his neck and only his nose, forehead and chin above the steaming surface, he closed his eyes. He needed twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of complete relaxation before he could move on to the next phase of his current mission.
Because that was what he needed to focus on. His current mission. Without complete focus, he wouldn’t stand a chance. All the other things would have to wait until the dice were more generous with the time frame.
As usual, he woke up without having been aware that he was falling asleep, and for the first few seconds he felt like he would never be able to shake the drowsiness. But then it rushed into him, the energy he needed so badly, and it made him almost fly out of the bath.
The dice had picked its victim and it was time to find out who he was.
He pulled on his robe, left the bathroom and continued through the living room into the bedroom, which was so small it only had room for a bed, a small desk by the window, a chair piled high with clothes in one corner and a wardrobe in the other.
The wardrobe door was already ajar, so all he had to do was push the clothes to one side and step inside. Then he pulled the door shut behind him until its three magnets connected with a click. With his right hand, he fumbled along the back of the wardrobe until he found the hole, which was only just big enough for him to stick his middle finger in and reach the rectangular metal plate on the back, just above the hole. He pushed the plate to one side.
The lock mechanism clicked and the back of the wardrobe sprang open. He continued into the dark, closed the back behind him and pushed the metal plate back into its holder. Not just the middle one he had just opened, but the top and bottom ones that could only be accessed from this side. Finally, he reached up for the blackout blind, pulled it down to cover the locked door and turned on the overhead light.
The windowless room he was now in didn’t officially exist. Not even his landlord would find it, if he ever decided to pay a visit. The flat was still a one-bed, like his contract stated, just a slightly smaller one. And so long as no one was specifically looking for the missing square feet, they would never be noticed.
The extra wall dividing the bedroom down the middle had only taken a weekend to build, though he had both insulated it and used double plasterboards on each side. Even so, it had taken him more than three weeks to completely finish the project.
He’d had to put up new wallpaper, and to make sure it didn’t look too new and modern, he’d chosen a greyish-blue kind typical of the 1960s. The light from inside had also stubbornly kept leaking out along the edges of the newly built wall, but that had only taken him three and a half days to fix.
The secret room was almost a hundred square feet and furnished with a narrow bed, a work table with an internet-connected laptop and a desk chair. A built-in bookshelf covered the entire back wall, except for where the bed stood. Most of the shelves were still empty. Unlike the chest of drawers, which was filled with clothes and did double duty as a bedside table. Next to the chest of drawers was his store of tinned ravioli and drinking water, which, according to his calculations, should last him two weeks if he had to go underground.
One of his biggest challenges had been to figure out how to avoid a sanitary disaster when answering the call of nature. To take care of his urine, he had purchased ten one-and-a-half-litre, sealable plastic bottles.
For his faeces, he had acquired a sturdy metal bucket with a lid and covered the rim with polyethylene foam pipe lining, thus constructing a seat that was in fact more comfortable than it looked. The bags in the bucket could be sealed and replaced, but it remained to be seen if that was enough to keep the stench at bay.
He sat down at the desk, opened his laptop and went to hitta.se. Of course, Lennart might not be listed in any publicly accessible database. But he didn’t seem like a person who would be aware that he was in them by default unless he actively opted out. Much less that they could pose any kind of security risk.
A quick search told him there were over seven hundred people in Skåne named Lennart Andersson. After limiting his search to an area within moped distance of ICA Maxi in Hyllinge, he got that number down to fifteen, which was still too many.
Instead, he tried Facebook, typing in Lennart Andersson with the additional search term Skåne in the search field, which resulted in a list of eight people. Unfortunately, none of them was his Lennart Andersson. Then he tried ICA Maxi’s website, clicking through to the Hyllinge supermarket.
Under the tab Meat Counter, he found Lennart Andersson and three of his colleagues, posing in front of the counter with big smiles on their faces and their arms around each other’s shoulders.
The page also informed the reader that Lillemor Ridell, Fridolf Aronsson, Lennart ‘Beefsteak’ Andersson and Magnus Brittner always put cleanliness and quality first. And they urged customers not to be shy about asking whether the entrecôte was locally sourced or even just for a good Friday night chicken recipe.
Beefsteak, he repeated to himself.
He went back to Facebook and added the nickname to his search.
And there he was. The man with the fake tan who had sold him a chicken leg with a carefree smile and wished him a good day. He was wearing the same smile in his profile picture, though in that he was distastefully sweaty and wearing a headband and a sleeveless, neon-blue synthetic gym top. So what he was dealing with was a fitness fanatic who likely possessed both strength and stamina.
He pondered whether this might constitute a problem. But since he had no idea yet what the method was going to be, dwelling on it was a waste of time and energy, so he scrolled down the page instead.
Lennart ‘Beefsteak’ Andersson was a typical member of his generation as far as Facebook went. He didn’t seem to see the point in hiding anything, since he had nothing to be ashamed of.
His profile used the ‘friends’ privacy setting, which meant anyone could see he had 137 friends, their names, and in some cases where they worked. He liked Smokey, Gasoline and Queen and, hardly surprisingly, Lasse Stefanz, Wisex and Robert Wells as well.
He must be into genealogy, too, since he’d liked pages such as The Federation of Swedish Genealogical Societies, Friends of Roots and the County Council Archive. Sportswise, he favoured body-building, though he also seemed to have his sights set on doing Iron Man in Kalmar at the end of the summer.
What he couldn’t find, however, was a home address, nor any pictures, apart from the obnoxious profile picture. In order to access those things, he would have to get Lennart to accept a friendship request.
He couldn’t see his colleague Lillemor Ridell among Lennart’s friends, so he immediately set to work creating a profile for her, even though she pro
bably already had one. A cropped picture from the ICA Maxi website would have to do for her profile picture. Five minutes later, he’d fired off a friendship request.
He only just had time to pull on underwear, a T-shirt and socks before Lennart accepted.
Shift doesn’t start until noon tomorrow so plenty of time for an hour of rowing, a leg session and twenty minutes of sun! #beach201 #onlyasoldasyoufeel #ironmankalmar
Lennart’s latest status update was only a few minutes old and accompanied by a bare-chested brag selfie taken in front of the bathroom mirror.
It was all he needed.
Who and when were set in stone. All that remained for the dice to decide was how.
The initial roll was to determine which category to settle first. Odd numbers represented murder weapons and even numbers ways of dying.
A three.
He pulled out his list of weapons numbered from one to twelve and did a pre-roll to decide whether to use one or two dice.
Pistol
Rope
Crossbow
My body
Spear
Knife
Slingshot
Sword
Rifle
Item from crime scene
Machine of some kind
Baseball bat
A four.
That meant he had to use two dice, so he took out another and shook both in his cupped hands before releasing them on to the green felt.
Two fives.
In other words, he was going to use something from the crime scene. It could be anything at all, so long as he hadn’t brought it with him. In many cases, that and number eleven might be the most challenging options. But this time, it was definitely the best. Particularly given that he had less than twelve hours to prepare.
All he needed now was a final confirmation. One last roll of the twenty-sided marble dice to set his plan in motion.
All sides except the one marked with an X meant he could get started. He quickly picked up the dice, shook it and rolled.
An X.
He stared at the dice as though he couldn’t believe it. But it really was an X. With odds of one in twenty, that side, like all the other sides, should be a highly unusual outcome. Now it was the second time in two weeks.
But it didn’t matter. The die had been cast, and he had no choice but to head over to the bookshelf once more and take down the notebook with a big X on its cover.
In it were 120 neatly written pages, each with a unique side mission he had to complete. It could be an addendum to the main mission, like grabbing a trophy or hurting one of the victim’s colleagues, too. But it could also be another full-on mission, with all that entailed.
He had designed them himself, with the help of the dice, and while some of the side missions were relatively straightforward and harmless, some were detailed and completely insane and could potentially end everything.
Here too, a pre-roll was needed to determine the number of dice. But since there were 120 missions, he might need as many as twenty dice, which was why the white icosahedron was going to decide again.
A seven.
He took out seven six-sided precision dice, shook them all together for more than a minute and then rolled.
A two, a five, another five, a six, a three, a one and one more six.
He added up the seven numbers, picked up the notebook and flipped to page 28.
The side mission was an addition to his main mission at ICA Maxi and had a description that was only two words long.
Eyewitnesses required.
28
Computer can’t read camera memory card.
The Google search couldn’t be described as anything other than a last-resort cry for help in Fabian’s attempts to access the contents of the digital camera he’d found in Einar Stenson’s attic. If you could even call them real attempts, given that he had no hope of succeeding.
He had not been surprised to find that the batteries were empty, had leaked and started to rust. After all, the camera had been left in a damp attic for at least five years. But even after cleaning it meticulously with cotton buds drenched in vinegar and changing the batteries, it had refused to come to life.
At that point, he’d taken the memory card out and cleaned it and the terminal it connected to, but to no avail. He’d then tried inserting the memory card into his computer’s card reader, which had prompted a discouraging message to appear on the screen:
J:DCIM100CANON is not available.
The file or catalogue is damaged and can’t be read.
Two reboots later, still with the same message, he’d been ready to throw in the towel and head upstairs to clean up and prepare for Matilda’s homecoming the following day. He’d already wasted too much time on the plasticky little camera, which he had hoped would give him a clue as to why Molander might have wanted his father-in-law dead.
But he hadn’t been able to tear himself away. He had stayed in the basement nursing what amounted to an obsession with accessing the contents of the memory card.
He had tried sticking it in Matilda’s camera, which had been a Christmas present, only to be rewarded with the message unknown format. The only way forward at that point had been to take the camera apart and calmly and methodically go over its insides and make sure everything looked okay. Just to be safe, he had dried any potential moisture with Sonja’s blow-dryer.
The whole thing had taken him over an hour and a half, and he had heard himself say a quiet prayer before reinserting the new batteries, carefully sliding the memory card back in and pushing the tiny ‘on’ button. He had even closed his eyes, hoping it would emit a little tune when it started.
Nothing.
If he’d had a hammer to hand, he would have smashed the camera. But he didn’t, so now he was sitting at his computer, staring at the results of his Google search.
To his surprise, his question had generated over 133,000 hits. He clicked on the second one, which redirected him to www.thephotosite.se where a certain Alfred_d seemed to be getting the exact same message about the file or catalogue being damaged and unreadable.
He had already tried all the suggested solutions.
All except one.
PC Inspector was a piece of German freeware that claimed to be able to re-create and repair files on external memory cards. Even if you had accidentally reformatted a memory card, the programme could help. It sounded too good to be true, and given that it was completely free, there could be no doubt it contained a virus or something else you would never under any circumstances want on your computer.
And yet, he pressed download.
He regretted it immediately but couldn’t help looking forward to what would happen when the growing bar reached one hundred per cent, and against all better judgement, he followed every instruction, approved the user licence and even put in his VISA number and CVC code.
It was only after the laborious installation process was completed that he realized he had purchased the full version of the software with free updates for years to come.
It looked like a proper programme at least, and from what he could see it was already scanning for external memory units. Unless it was in fact encrypting his entire computer so it could threaten to erase it all unless he transferred a lot of money to some Russian bank account.
Found 8GB Sandisk memory card in slot J.
Do you want to recover deleted and broken files?
He pressed YES, which started the process; whatever it was the programme was doing, it apparently wasn’t going to be quick. The percentage counter remained stubbornly stuck on three per cent for several minutes before switching to four. It was only when he heard the ding signalling an incoming email that he realized he must have nodded off.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Theodor
I assume you realize your son is one of them.
/D
http://politiken.dk/indla
nd/art4925602/Anklageren-forventer-høje-straffe-for-medlemmer-af-den-såkaldte-smileyliga-når-retssagen-starter-næste-uge
The link redirected him to an article in the Danish daily Politiken. It was about the impending trial of four Swedish teenagers who, wearing yellow smiley masks, had killed three homeless people in Helsingør in the most elaborate and brutal ways conceivable. And they had filmed each deadly assault and posted them online.
Fabian was very familiar with the case. For obvious reasons, it had made a splash on the Swedish side of the sound, too, and people had argued for holding the trial in Sweden on the grounds that two of the defendants were minors. But since the crimes had been committed in Denmark, that was apparently where the trial was going to take place. Specifically, in Helsingør.
He did a search on the Smiley Gang and read several articles written about the spectacular case. But nowhere was there any mention of there being a fifth member. All the sources mentioned three boys and one girl, all of whom were currently in detention in Denmark.
What did any of that have to do with Theodor? He hadn’t been to Denmark, and he definitely wasn’t detained and awaiting trial. Right now, he was at the cinema watching The Avengers and soon he should be on his way home. Could this be a mistake?
The message was written in Danish and signed D.
It could have been sent by just about anyone, but if he had to guess, he would have said it was Dunja Hougaard. A Danish colleague of his, who two years earlier had sacrificed her entire career by going against her boss, Kim Sleizner, to help him with an investigation. Dunja had even ended up saving Theodor’s life when he had been kidnapped by a terrifying serial killer who wanted to punish Fabian for the crimes of his past. Since then, they’d only been in touch sporadically, if at all.
Except for about a month ago, when he had run into her in the lobby of the police station. She had needed his help to get the names of the residents at various addresses. That’s right, hadn’t she said something about it being near where he lived?
But not once had he seen her name mentioned in connection with the smiley case. Kim Sleizner, on the other hand, figured prominently, together with a certain Ib Sveistrup from the Helsingør Police. Had she been secretly working on the investigation? Was that why she’d asked him for help and not Tuvesson? That wouldn’t be entirely unlike her. Especially if Sleizner was involved. Did that mean she knew something no one else did?
Motive X Page 15
