'How old is "the big guy"?'
Patrik shrugged.
'Don't know. Like, twenty?'
She thought it over. This was their one chance to move on. They had come so far already. She sighed.
'You're on. He gets three thousand for the name.'
She had decided to go there herself. It was her problem and besides, she definitely didn't want Patrik to get involved with this shady affair. He had helped enough by anonymously arranging the deal using his father's mobile phone. The price had been agreed. Four thousand kronor.
Sibylla touched the purse round her neck, feeling its shrinking bulge. It was hard, but what choice did she have?
Patrik had asked why she was hauling the rucksack along, and was told the simple reason. She never left it anywhere, except in the Left Luggage at Central Station. It meant she had security in the shape of a locker key or a receipt.
The master hacker lived at Kock Street, only a few minutes' walk away. Patrik stopped outside the door and pressed the buzzer. The door clicked open at once. 'Are you waiting round here?'
He was still disappointed that she wouldn't let him join her. 'Patrik, this is the best idea – honestly.'
The door slammed behind her. She walked upstairs to the second floor, where a young man with sleek blond hair stood waiting at the door to a flat. Sibylla stopped and they examined each other in silence.
After a few seconds of this, he opened the door wide for her. He was wearing a white T-shirt, revealing muscular arms with prominent veins. He must have worked out hard in prison. As he walked ahead of her into the flat, she noticed that his hair had been pulled back in a long pony-tail.
The flat was small, just a single room with a kitchenette. The sink was so full of dishes she wondered if he ever washed up. There was a rack with a set of dumb-bells in a corner. Next to it, a yellow electrical guitar was leaning against its amplifier. A long window wall was entirely taken up by computer equipment and other electronic goods she couldn't even guess at the function of. Presumably this was the kind of kit self-respecting hackers simply couldn't live without. Two of the screens showed a series of letters and numbers scrolling past quickly. She moved towards them to see what was going on.
He stepped into her path.
'Not so fast. It's practically ready. Let's do the paying first, shall we?'
She was clutching the notes in her pocket. 'No problem.'
He took the bundle without checking it. 'Sit down over there.'
He was pointing to a stool well away from the computers, in fact almost inside the small hallway. She did as she was told, keeping her rucksack on her back but resting it a little against the wall behind her.
She couldn't see much from where she was sitting, but by leaning forward it was possible to watch him working on one of the computers. He was writing things using the keyboard and his fingers were moving at an incredible speed. She marvelled at his skill and wondered how his huge hands could work with such precision.
'You're in luck.'
He was muttering, not taking his eyes off the screen. 'Someone went in for a search just now, so all we need to do is hang on.'
He stopped keying and she sat upright again, looking at the wall. She didn't want to be caught out spying on him.
Would he recognise any of the names from the newspapers? Jorgen Grundberg's name had been used a lot, almost as often as her own.
When she heard him get up from the chair, she rose too. Then he come over, holding out one folded sheet of A4 paper. 'Done.'
She took the paper without taking her eyes off his face. 'You're sure it's the right person?'
He smiled, clearly never having heard such a stupid question before.
'Yes, don't worry.' He sounded soothing.
'Depends, of course. But he's the guy whose organs were transplanted into the names on your list.' He looked quizzically at her.
'Weren't they all murdered afterwards? By some character called Sibylla?'
She didn't answer. He smiled broadly.
'Just so that we know where we are, you know.'
She put the paper in her pocket, unafraid because he couldn't threaten to reveal her identity. If one on them talked, the other one would and they shared that knowledge.
She looked at him, reflecting on how his big muscles seemed matched by his brain. Just as she put her hand on the door-handle to leave, another thought occurred to her.
'Haven't you ever thought of getting a real job? You have all the qualifications for a good one, it seems.'
He was leaning against the door-frame to the main room, his bulging arms crossed over his chest. He was grinning openly at her now.
'No, I haven't. Have you?'
Then she left.
Thomas Sandberg. That was all it said on the note she showed Patrik. They were standing together in the street, reading the name over and over again, as if reading a long story rather than a sequence of fourteen letters.
'No address?'
'No.'
He looked disappointed. Obviously, he felt this was a poor show after an outlay of four thousand kronor.
'How many Thomas Sandbergs do you think there are in this country?'
She raised her eyebrows.
'No idea. All we do know is that there's one less now. Let's go.'
She started walking. She felt certain that what she was about to do next was the right thing, but even so she was troubled by the distance she would apparently callously create between them. If she kept walking she wouldn't have to look into his eyes, which would make it a little easier.
'Now what do we do?'
He had hurried to catch up with her.
That instance the alarm in the wristwatch went off.
'Christ! Sunday lunch!'
He turned off the signal.
'Mum forced me to set the alarm. She'll have a fit if I don't turn up.'
'Don't risk it. Off you go.'
'Do you want to keep hanging out in the attic?'
She didn't reply.
'Do you?'
'Maybe that's the best idea.'
She hadn't even lied. It almost certainly was the best idea if she stayed hidden in Patrik's attic for the foreseeable future, allowing him to feed her the leftovers from the family meals.
Be that as it may. It was too late now.
Somewhere a man or a woman existed, who had had an improbable stroke of luck when their paths crossed that night in the Grand Hotel. That person had stolen her name and exploited her outsider's isolation to further a purely personal vendetta.
She was not going to let that pass. The invisible one had almost succeeded in crushing her. Almost, but not quite.
When the large iron door leading to Patrik's attic had slammed behind her and Patrik's steps were disappearing down the stairs, she pulled the second sheet of A4 paper from her pocket.
She read it carefully, memorising the text.
Rune Hedlund. ID 46 06 08 – 2498 res. Vimmerby.
The cemetery was large and it took her the best part of an hour to find the tombstone. It was tucked away in the parkland set aside for urns, a rounded natural boulder with an inscription in gold lettering.
RUNE HEDLUND
8 june 1946
to
15 march 1998
Below was a space large enough for another name. An eternal flame was burning inside a white plastic cover. Yellow and purple crocuses were filling the area round the stone. Spring was earlier this far south.
She crouched down. Noticing some dry leaves caught between the spring flowers, she pulled them out and threw them to the wind.
'What are you doing here?'
The voice behind her startled her so much she lost her balance and sat down with a thump. She rose quickly, turning to look at the woman who had crept up behind her. Sibylla's heart was racing.
'Just removing some dead leaves.'
Their eyes met, fiercely, as if facing each other across a battle demarcation line. The woman's eye
s were full of suspicion and dislike. Sibylla suddenly felt sure she had found her quarry.
They faced up to each other in hostile silence. Sibylla's adversary was dressed in white under her grey coat and she had brought along a green, funnel-shaped vase filled with multicoloured tulips.
'You're not to mess about with my husband's grave.'
Aha. Rune Hedlund's widow.
'I was just clearing some leaves away.'
The woman breathed heavily through her nose, as if trying to pull herself together.
'What have you got to do with my husband?' 'I never met him.'
The woman smiled suddenly, but there was no friendliness in her smile. Fear started creeping up on Sibylla. Had the woman recognised her? The police might have worked out the link between the killings and the organ transplant and asked Hedlund's wife to keep a look-out for Sibylla. They would be keen to find a link between them, to trace Sibylla's motive.
She glanced over her shoulder. Maybe they were here already?
'Don't you realise I know what you've been up to for ages?'
After a pause the woman spoke again.
‘I knew ever since the funeral, when I saw your flowers.'
She sounded outraged.
'What's going on in the mind of someone sending an anonymous bouquet of red roses to a funeral? What did you hope to gain by it? Can you tell me that? Did you think it would please Rune?'
The contempt in the woman's eyes was so searing that Sibylla had to look away.
'If he really wanted to live with you he'd have chosen you while he was alive. But he stayed with me. Not you. So was that why you had to produce the flowers – to humiliate me?'
The woman's face was twisted into a frown as if she was trying to make the revulsion she felt visible.
'Every Friday, week in and week out, one more bloody red rose on his grave. Do you want to punish me? Make me suffer because I was the one who got him in the end?'
Her voice was cracking but it was obvious that she had stored up more to say. Words had been piling up, waiting for an outlet.
Sibylla was shaken by her own miscalculation. The authorities would have had to ask this woman. She was one of the 'close relatives' whose informed consent must be sought. The answer was presumably that someone else out there was feeling abandoned and bitterly wanted to restore something of what had been lost. She had to make sure.
'Have the police contacted you?'
'What? The police? Why should they?'
Rune Hedlund's widow took a step forward, kneeled and jammed the sharp tip of her tin vase into the ground. The crocuses shied away in alarm.
Watching the other woman's back rising and falling with her heavy breathing, Sibylla was quite sure that she had been looking forward to this moment of confrontation. She had probably practised carefully what to say when she was finally face to face with her husband's unknown mistress.
Shame that she had wasted her ammunition.
Of course she was not to know that Rune's real lover had committed much, much worse acts than putting flowers on her man's grave. Sibylla wouldn't like to be the one who enlightened her.
When the distraught woman got up, there were tears in her eyes.
'You're sick – you realise that, don't you?'
The detestation in her eyes hit Sibylla almost like a physical blow. Old memories came back and she looked away to stop remembering.
'Can't let him be, can you? Not even in death?'
She walked away. Sibylla just stood there, watching her disappear.
It was obvious that Rune Hedlund's widow had no idea of how right she was in a way.
She stayed in the cemetery, sitting on a bench she had picked for its good view of Rune Hedlund's final resting place, even though it was a safe distance away. Not many people had decided to visit their loved ones' graves that day and those who did come were either in couples or too old.
Not that she was in a hurry. She was ready to stay until that woman came. Sooner or later she would.
At nightfall she pulled out her sleeping bag and mat. There was a stone wall at the back of the urn enclosure and she tucked herself up between it and the bare branches of a shrubbery. It was reasonably out of sight, but also allowed her to keep watch at all times. Not that she thought the woman would turn up this late, but from what she had learned abut her she was well able to surprise.
She wouldn't miss this woman when she finally came.
The next day she picked another bench to sit on. It was less well placed for observing the grave, but the wife's big bouquet of tulips helped by marking it out. She left her station only once, when she ran to the nearby garage to use their toilet and buy bread. It took only ten minutes before she was back in place, resuming her guard.
No one came near Rune Hedlund's grave.
The next day she fell asleep. She did not know for how long but rushed to the grave to check. No red rose had turned up during the night.
On the Wednesday she felt her pulse beat faster, for the first time. A solitary woman in her forties turned the corner by the water tap and walked briskly along the path towards the urn enclosure.
Sibylla hurried away, taking a shortcut across a small lawn to keep an eye on what was happening. The woman disappointed her by continuing past the pink and yellow tulips to bend over a stone a little further along,
Sibylla returned to her bench with a sigh.
By that afternoon she was feeling real hunger pangs. Taking money from her savings had almost become a habit and didn't bother her any more. With a last look at the deserted cemetery, she went off to the handy garage. She used the toilet again, just in case, and bought two grilled hot dogs with plenty of mustard and ketchup.
When she returned, a man wearing a brown suede jacket was crouching in front of Rune Hedlund's grave. The hair on the back of his head was thinning.
It might be awkward, but she couldn't afford to pass up this opportunity. She had been watching round the clock for days to find out more and whoever he was must have known Rune Hedlund well. He was bending deep over the grave in prayer or contemplation. Shoving the last piece of sausage into her mouth, she walked closer, all the time chewing and swallowing carefully. In passing, she grabbed a fresh-looking bunch of daffodils from a nearby grave. Necessity knows no law.
Hopefully, the spirit of Sigfrid Stalberg wouldn't mind too much.
She stopped just behind the man, who had shifted position and was sitting on his haunches by the grave just as she had a couple of days ago. He was fiddling intently with something near the tombstone and seemed not to have heard her. She couldn't see what he was up to. Watching him made her suddenly feel very ill-at-ease. If she was to gain his confidence, sneaking up on him like this was hardly the way to go about it.
She cleared her throat.
His reaction was rather similar to her own once. He momentarily lost his balance, but steadied himself by leaning on one hand. She smiled apologetically.
'I'm sorry I startled you.'
He was younger-looking than she had expected. Recovering quickly from his confusion, he turned his face up and smiled back at her.
'You're a right menace, creeping up on people like that. I might've had a heart attack.'
'Honestly, I didn't mean to. It's the soles on my shoes.'
He looked at her sturdy, comfy walking boots. Then his gaze wandered to her face. He sniffled at little, wiping his nose with his hand. Then he looked at the grave.
'Are you here for Rune?'
Damn it! He had got his question in first and that was bad.
She moved her head about in a way that could have signified either a reluctant Yes or a muddled No, whatever the circumstances called for.
'Did you know him?'
She got her question in quickly, trying to take over control.
He looked her over, neither suspiciously nor unpleasantly, but with interest. Apparently, he was feeling genuinely curious about her. Then he shook his head a little.
&nbs
p; 'Know and know. We were work-mates, down in Abro village.'
'I see.'
'And you, what about you? Are you a relative?' 'Oh no.'
Her answer had sounded far too pat. He smiled a little. 'Now you've really made me curious. I'm sure you're not from round here.'
She shook her head and looked down. The daffodils caught her eyes. She would get a little respite if she fetched a vase and some water.
'Hey, I'd better look after these.'
Without giving him a chance to say any more, she walked across to the small fenced-in maintenance area. He was quick -fast on the draw and inquisitive. She realised she couldn't get rid of him without telling him who she was.
So, who was she?
She took her time. She picked a sharp-tipped plastic vase from the box and rinsed it carefully under running water. Fragmented thoughts were rotating wildly in her brain, as if spun in a centrifuge. How to avoid raising his suspicions? Why had she approached him anyway?
With the vase filled for the fourth time, she walked back. She drew a deep breath. He was crouching near the grave again and pushed apart the stems in a clump of crocuses. There were paint-stains on his hands. The fingers were long and slender. He wore no rings.
'Why don't you put your flowers here?'
She followed his advice. A crocus flipped forward and she pushed it back. He reached out and put his finger on her watch.
'What an unusual watch.'
She felt a little silly and pulled her sleeve down to cover the watch.
'It's old. It doesn't even work any more.'
She glanced sideways at him. His eyes were suddenly fixed on the tombstone.
'Ingmar!'
This time they both practically fell over backwards.
'What are you doing here? And with her!'
Mrs Hedlund was making no bones about it – she didn't care at all for the scene at her husband's grave. Her voice held surprise, but also anger and suspicion.
'Kerstin – please!'
The man called Ingmar took a step towards the agitated woman.
'I'm not here "with her". I thought she was a friend of the family.'
Missing Page 17