Knock Knock

by Anders Roslund

  Piet Hoffmann smoothed the pillows and rugs and the velvety sofa fabric, then wandered out into the rest of the apartment, which seemed never ending—it was still so impossible to imagine that blunt detective in this palace. As he approached the library he started to slow. He remembered something he saw yesterday evening when he was sitting in that armchair, flipping through a newspaper and waiting for Grens to come back. On the wall, which was otherwise floor-to-ceiling books, there hung a tapestry embroidered with the words merry christmas, yellow letters on a red background, next to a black-and-white photograph—a very young man and a very young woman in crisp new police uniforms. And this crocheted tapestry and those two portraits constituted the center, not just of this room, but also of the whole palatial apartment.

  He placed his next call from Grens’s enormous kitchen with a cup of coffee, a piece of crispbread he’d found at the back of the pantry, and a hardboiled egg that was lying in the compartment next to the milk in an otherwise empty refrigerator. It was to his employee at Hoffmann Security, who was sitting in a narrow studio apartment in a high-rise building, watching monitors that conveyed images of four guarded apartments.

  “Up a little earlier than usual, boss?”

  “A sofa that wasn’t as comfortable as it looked. How are we today?”

  “Easy morning, easy night. The protective target in 8 is still asleep, the protective target in 12 just finished breakfast, and I’ve seen the protective target in 10 in the living room window several times, he’s not crying anymore.”

  Piet Hoffmann barely heard what the security guard was telling him, and it made him feel a little ashamed, but it wasn’t these threatened people—whom he was being paid so well to protect—that he wanted to know more about.

  “And . . . the new ones?”

  “I still don’t like having them a couple kilometers away.”

  “You’re right, Andy, but just now it is what it is.”

  The security guard was pressing a few buttons on the monitors and pushing a few keys on the keyboard, or that’s what it sounded like through the phone.

  “I see her, the mother, right now. Camera 7, facing the balcony. She’s standing in the kitchen in a yellow bathrobe, I think, and staring at . . . well, nothing. However, and this isn’t good, boss, but a while ago . . .”

  The guard suddenly fell silent.

  “Yes?”

  “And this isn’t good at all.”

  “What is it, Andy?”

  “She’s talking on the phone. I’m absolutely sure. She’s not supposed to do that, she must have snuck it in . . .”

  “My fault—I forgot to inform her last night. I missed it. I was rushed.”

  “You want me to go over there now? Talk to her? Take the phone?”

  “I’ll do it. I’ll talk to her.”

  “Because we need to know who she’s communicating with. And she has to know it’s dangerous. That . . .”

  “I’ll talk to her, Andy. Discuss everything.”

  And Hoffmann just wanted to scream now.

  Tell me what she really looks like, what you think she’s feeling? For real? More broken than I know? More sad? When you zoom in and look at her eyes, are they . . .

  But that was the one thing he couldn’t do. Because no one, not even his employees, could know.

  “Thank you, Andy. You’re on it, as usual. And the others . . . how . . . have you seen the kids?”

  “I caught a glimpse of the older boy a while ago. Camera 2, facing the bedroom. Worried. That’s how he moved. Sometimes it’s so obvious. I’ve seen many a worried child on these screens—but that was definitely one of the worst. What the hell have they been through, boss?”

  Piet Hoffmann stayed where he was, as if frozen in that uncomfortable kitchen chair.

  Hugo.

  His little boy, who was getting big now, and who slept as restlessly as he did himself, who already knew that the world belonged to the safe ones—he too had stared out the window just like his mother, anxiously on the lookout for the unknown.

  The terrifying.

  That image was still so fresh in Hoffmann’s mind—his oldest son’s troubled face—when he finally swallowed the last of his coffee and pushed aside his plate of crispbread crumbs to make room for this morning’s preparations.

  On the far left he put the radio jammer, the timer, and his extra phone, the one he would use first. Then a centimeter-wide microphone, which he’d place strategically to capture any voices likely to be speaking another language. Interpreter. That’s what he called it. Because, along with software on his mobile phone, it would translate every word in the room he was going to visit. Next to that he lay his Radom pistol, which he kept in a shoulder holster, and his hunting knife, newly sharpened on both sides, which he kept in the other shoulder holster, and finally a bulletproof vest and the hand grenade that now lacked any plastic arms or legs.

  A long line of metallic objects—and he knew exactly how to handle them.

  However, his disguise.

  As confident as he was about the tools that lay in front of him on the table, he was less sure that the puffy silicone on his cheeks or the mustache of real human hair above his lips would hold up to inspection if they were tested again—this time in the bright light of day.

  Patience had never been Ewert Grens’s strong suit. But on his fourth trip to the coffee machine to take a look at the closed door of Erik Wilson’s office, the homicide unit chief had finally arrived. Grens filled up an extra plastic mug with the same hot black drink and hurried in without knocking.

  “Good morning.”

  He placed a cup on Wilson’s desk and settled himself on the visitor’s chair.

  “Good morning, Ewert. Bit early, isn’t it? Or did you sleep here?”

  “Depends on how you look at it.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Let’s just say I came and went several times throughout the night.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s been a burglary here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “In the station. In the restricted archive in the cellar. And in our department. In fact, right here—in your office.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Grens went over to the safe that stood in the corner of his boss’s office. A blob of metal as tall as the detective and just as bulky. And for now, only a couple hundred kilos heavier.

  “In there.”

  Wilson hadn’t touched his coffee. Now he did, emptied the whole mug. As if doubting he was awake.

  “I repeat—what are you talking about, Ewert?”

  The door to the corridor was still open a crack, you could tell whenever someone walked by. Grens closed it—made sure it was shut—and returned to the safe.

  “I’ll explain more—later. When the time I need has started to tick. But I’m absolutely sure, Wilson. Someone has opened that safe, which you, the formal head of our infiltration program, are responsible for. And they took out some extremely confidential documents. One of our colleagues in this very building.”

  “For the third time: what the hell are you talking about? No one’s gotten into my safe. There’s been no visible entry. Not a trace of someone even having tried to break into it. Are you bored, Ewert? Isn’t it enough to have two, possibly three murders to investigate? A break-in—at the police station?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time. Not even in this corridor.”

  They both remembered that night long ago when Ewert Grens decided to break into Wilson’s predecessor’s office and take the computer that was the key to what was going on at the time. It had been so much easier than either of them imagined, forcing a locked door and making it hardly visible afterward.

  “But no one has ever gotten into one of our safes, Ewert. And back then our office doors weren’t as secure
as the one’s we have now.”

  “Then open it. And prove me wrong.”

  Erik Wilson glanced at Grens’s coffee mug, still only half drunk on the visitor chair—as if still hoping to wake up from what the detective superintendent was telling him, hopefully in some alternative to this reality. And an involuntary shudder passed through his body. Ewert Grens was often difficult to understand and had a way about him that required practice to endure—but he didn’t usually indulge in these kinds of theatrics.

  “If you’ll just look away for a moment, Ewert.”

  Grens turned around while Wilson input an eight-digit code.

  “Very well—and what is supposed to be missing?”

  “You can start with Paula’s envelope.”

  The look that Erik Wilson gave Ewert Grens contained a strange mix of emotions.

  Astonishment. Fear. Contempt. Distrust.

  All at the same time.

  “Paula’s envelope?”

  “Open it.”

  Erik Wilson had worked for a decade as Piet Hoffmann’s handler, and was therefore Hoffmann’s only connection to the security of the police world. Erik Wilson had given Hoffmann the code name Paula, and Erik Wilson had written his real name on a piece of paper and sealed it inside an envelope.

  That was the envelope that Grens was now asking him to open.

  And as Wilson lifted it from one of the shelves near the bottom of the safe, it was immediately obvious that it was already open.

  A broken seal. An envelope with no contents.

  The involuntary shudder was followed by a few more, Erik Wilson’s face blanched, and he had to grab hold of the safe for a support.

  “I . . . don’t understand.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Ewert, this . . . I . . .”

  “I want you to check one more thing. The black logbooks.”

  Erik Wilson weaved back and forth for a moment, and for a moment he almost seemed like he might lose his balance.

  “Which one of the binders?”

  “Paula’s.”

  The head of the homicide unit didn’t have to search for very long before he realized that all the notes he’d taken during his years of secret meetings were gone. And leaving the door to the safe wide open, he stumbled back to his desk and sank down in his chair.

  “Paula. Piet Hoffmann. How many violent criminals, would you guess, Wilson, did we lock up thanks to his reports? How many drug seizures were made based on his info? How many murders and shootings did we solve because he risked life every day? And it was your goddamn responsibility to keep the truth hidden in that fucking safe!”

  Grens looked at his boss. Who just sat there, empty.

  “What do you think is gonna happen when those papers get out on the streets? Or—are they already? What do you think, Wilson, that he . . .”

  “I know exactly what this means!”

  Ewert Grens smiled. His boss no longer seemed empty.

  “And they’ve also sold you out.”

  “What the hell . . .”

  “Because as you said. No one can break in here. And if that’s so, then I’m sitting across from a dirty cop.”

  “You know how devoted I was to my infiltrators! You know I built the whole goddamn program from scratch and guarded it like it was my own goddamn child! I created the rules that protected them! I took risks for them every single day! And you know how close I am to the Hoffmann family and all that I’ve done for them! You know that!”

  Grens stared at the man screaming at him, who seemed to be disgusted with him. And he liked that man. Not the screaming or disgust, but he knew that the message was genuine. He knew Erik Wilson well enough to know that. A man that Grens had once considered an enemy. But that had changed. Or did Grens change? Slowly, Grens had begun to respect this man, ever since he left his job as a handler and started a new, much more difficult one—being Grens’s boss. It was the way he let his staff follow their own lead when it was needed, and how he used his authority to rein them when it was not. A decent man with decent morals. So what Grens was seeing right now was what he’d hoped.

  “You’re right—I don’t think it was you, Wilson. But I think you might have made a mistake.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well . . . are you still single?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve noticed lately that it seems like you’ve met someone. You’ve got that look about you. Not something I’m so familiar with myself . . . but I recognize it on others. Love. And when you meet someone, Wilson, you let someone in. Close. Maybe even so close that you get careless.”

  Erik Wilson stared, silently.

  “Who are you seeing?”

  Staring.

  “Who?”

  Silent.

  “Who, Wilson?”

  “That’s none of your business!”

  “Yes it is. Because it has something to do with this.”

  “Who I have dinner with or wake up next to is none of your damn business!”

  Ewert Grens stood up and walked over to the still open safe, pushed on the door and saw it slide closed again. A metallic click as the locking pins hooked.

  “Okay. Let’s assume that. For now. That it wasn’t you, that it wasn’t whoever you’re seeing who got you to reveal the code. But . . . well, it doesn’t look good, what happened. Does it, Wilson? And if it gets out. If I were to start talking about it. First of all, that you’re not taking care of your responsibilities. Secondly, that there’s verifiable information out there that we have worked with criminal infiltrators, which we have always denied, because as we all know it’s illegal.”

  “I don’t like your tone, Ewert. What you’re implying. I might even call it a threat.”

  Grens patted the safe, a muted sound.

  “What you like or don’t like has never interested me. However, solving crimes is something I find rather important. So if my tone makes that job easier, if it gets me the tools I need, then I don’t really care what you think you hear.”

  “The tools you need? Ewert—what the hell does that mean?”

  The detective patted the safe again, as if they were old friends, pushed a few buttons randomly, and pulled on the door again, as if to remind his boss that it was supposed to be locked like this all the time.

  “Okay, Wilson. With my rather obvious tone: I won’t talk about what happened in here while I investigate who broke open that envelope and took the contents of that logbook. In return, you’ll get ahold of an authentic police badge for our new employee, who looks like this.”

  Ewert Grens had asked Piet Hoffmann to take a picture of his new appearance and text it to him. The display of the phone Grens placed on Wilson’s desk was filled with the image of a tired and rather puffy-looking man staring straight into the eye of the camera.

  “And I say to you—who the hell is that supposed to be?”

  Wilson pointed to the image of a transformed Hoffmann. And it occurred to Grens that it was working. The disguise. Of course this was just a crappy phone picture on a tiny screen, and meeting someone in real life was much more than just surface appearance, but Wilson, one of the people who knew Hoffmann best, didn’t seem at all suspicious and that felt quite promising.

  “That’s what I said the first time I saw him.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you. But that’s the man who is going to help me find out who broke the seal on that envelope. And he needs our help to do it. For three days, to be exact. And his new credentials have to be ready by tomorrow morning. And you’ll need to attach a letter of recommendation addressed To Whom It May Concern, stating how reliable and capable Verner Larsson has been during his years as an employee of the City Police, which you will sign.”

  “Verner Larsson?”

  “As good a
name as any.”

  “So you want me to . . . Ewert, have you completely lost your mind?”

  “Not quite.”

  “I would never give a badge to someone who isn’t an officer!”

  “Mmm. Such a shame. Because . . . how does that go now? We don’t use criminal infiltrators. And no one has broken into your office and stolen any incriminating documents. And if . . .”

  “That’s enough.”

  “. . . I’m not talking . . .”

  “That’s enough, Ewert.”

  Erik Wilson was still sitting at his desk staring at the locked safe when Grens headed back to his own office. As soon as he stepped through his door, he closed it and called the same number he had an hour ago. Mariana Hermansson. Who had now arrived at Regerings Street 79 and yet another stairwell filled with forensic technicians, medical examiners, and a dead man on his back with a bullet hole in his forehead and his temple.

  “A copy, Ewert, of the other two. No doubt about it. The same shooter.”

  “The victim?”

  “The initial observations seem correct. A forty-five-year-old male who, according to the ID in his wallet, is named Ermir Shala. Just a quick search in the police records showed that his appearance and height are a match. Also, identifying marks—tattoo of a sword in a stone on his forearm, a birthmark on his right ear, and a distinct scar from one side of his throat to the other.”

  “Good. Then you can leave the crime scene. And take care of your other two assignments.”

  “Two? You told me to track down and arrest someone named Dusko Zaravic for some bullshit and hold him for seventy-two hours. That was what you said.”

  “That’s what I said. And he should be arrested. Before midnight. And later we’ll have much more to hold him on than just bullshit. But something else has come up that I want . . . well, I want you to take care of it personally.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Erik Wilson.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s hiding something.”