by Arne Dahl
For the first time Vira looked slightly wrong-footed.
‘Do it again; do it right,’ Berger said. ‘So who’s your other little friend, Robin?’
‘Cary,’ Robin said. ‘Sound technician. But we’ll leave him for a while. Because the more I see of your not-long-since-dried appearance, the more obvious it is that I don’t have the whole story. I was thinking of setting out the forensic position, but I can’t do that now. Have you spent the whole night in the cellar, Sam? Sleeping your way towards the truth like some shaman? Contacting restless spirits?’
Berger held his mobile phone out to Robin. The impeccably dressed forensics expert took it and wrinkled his nose.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said.
The man who never swore.
‘It’s OK,’ Berger said, putting a soothing hand on Robin’s broad shoulder. ‘Even eminent forensics experts can have off days.’
It was clear that Robin had a whole library of sharp replies on the tip of his tongue. The fact that he refrained from using any of them made Berger like him even more.
‘What led you to it?’ Robin asked simply.
‘The same difference in colour as at the concealed entrance.’
‘Not good,’ Robin said. ‘I shall do it again, and do it right.’
‘Pleased to hear it,’ Berger said joylessly. ‘Please, just give me something else.’ Robin buried his wide face in his equally wide hands. It wasn’t a despairing gesture – that would have been out of character – but rather a reflective one.
‘This changes our assumptions about the marks in the wooden pillars,’ Robin said eventually. ‘We need to rethink things. They must be more recent than our first estimation suggested. They’ve probably been made to look older on purpose.
‘What else?’ Berger said.
Robin looked at him for a while, then said: ‘There were scratches in the floor.’
‘Scratches?’
‘A few smaller scratches close to the wall, slightly larger about a metre from the wall.’
Robin looked around, as if he was waiting for a penny to drop.
‘No,’ Deer said, opening her eyes wide.
‘Yes,’ Robin said, giving her an appreciative look.
‘In a cement floor? Nails?’
‘I’m afraid so. Scratches made by fingernails close to the wall, toenails further away. No trace of keratin, however.’
‘Keratin?’ Berger said.
‘A fibrous structural protein,’ Vira said, with another doctor’s nod. ‘High-sulphur protein that makes up hair, nails and horns.’
‘Horns?’ Berger exclaimed. ‘There ought to be a fuck of a lot of evidence of both sulphur and horns in that infernal basement.’
‘He used a vacuum cleaner,’ Robin said calmly. ‘Just like he did on the rest of the house, and a very good vacuum cleaner at that.’
‘A traceable vacuum cleaner?’ Berger said.
‘Possibly,’ Robin said. ‘There are a fair few portable precision vacuum cleaners on the market. I’ll get back to you about that.’
‘Do,’ Berger said. ‘Anything else?’
‘Then there’s the knife-throwing apparatus in the hall,’ Robin went on. ‘You could describe it as a double hair-triggered crossbow. An intricate mechanism for two separate knife blades. Throwing knives have a particular balancing point. Normally when you throw one it rotates on the way to its target. Even though the target was only a couple of metres away in this instance, the knives still need to be carefully balanced to fly straight. And these were very carefully balanced.’
‘Modified by hand?’ Berger wondered.
Robin nodded and shook his head at the same time.
‘As far as I can tell, yes.’
‘Why not use arrows?’ Deer said. ‘Crossbow bolts or arrows. They’re made to fly straight. Instead he modifies a weapon which isn’t supposed to fly straight. Why do that?’
‘Because knives are more frightening,’ Berger said. ‘Because he wants to show us how clever he is, again.’
‘I’m having trouble getting my head around the knife blades,’ Robin said. ‘I don’t know what it is. I’ll have to get back to you on that as well.’
‘What about the shit bucket?’ Berger said.
‘A very literal mess of faeces and urine. As with the blood, the National Forensic Centre – as we have been so smartly known since 1 January – is working with the Forensic Medical Unit on the analysis. Vira?’
‘Water and bread,’ Vira said.
‘Is that the technical terminology?’ Berger said. ‘Like keratin?’
‘Margarine too,’ Vira said, ignoring him. ‘Water, bread and margarine. Different sorts of bread, white and something more wholemeal. No meat, no vegetables, no cheese, no sign of any liquid except water. The analysis is ongoing.’
‘Although the toxicology is higher priority,’ Berger stated.
Vira fell silent. Robin didn’t say anything.
‘And Cary?’ Berger prompted.
‘Cary is one of Sweden’s foremost sound technicians, in spite of his modest appearance,’ Robin said. ‘He’s got news about the voice.’
‘We’re talking about Lina Vikström’s voice here?’ Deer said. ‘The woman who called to say that Ellen was in Märsta?’
‘Correct,’ Robin said. ‘Cary?’
The barely visible sound technician cleared his throat and said: ‘I’ve analysed the sequence in every imaginable way, sequence by sequence, and I’ve also applied a few more experimental methods. I’m afraid I have to admit that I’m not quite finished yet, despite working all night. The voice has been run through so many filters that it’s actually difficult to tell if it was even a human voice originally.’
‘Was it?’ Berger asked.
‘Everything suggests that it was. But it hasn’t been easy to uncover the original sound. I need another day or so to …’
‘No,’ Berger interrupted. ‘We need something to go on.’
‘Right now I can’t actually say for certain …’
‘Now. Please.’
‘OK,’ Cary said, and leaned forward. ‘I haven’t yet been able to identify the speaker. The sound quality is far too poor to be able to find any individual characteristics of the voice. We’ve got a probable gender, but, once again …’
‘A man?’ Berger interrupted. ‘A man calling and pretending to be a woman?’
‘No,’ Cary said. ‘It’s a woman’s voice.’
Berger froze, spreading a chill through the whole room. Everyone was looking at Berger. In the end he said: ‘Should I interpret that as a guess?’
‘The probability is 97.4 per cent,’ Cary said.
Berger stood up and left the room.
It actually took a little while for a state of bewilderment to spread. Once it had ebbed away Robin stood up and navigated his way out of the meeting room, with Vira and Cary following in his wake.
Deer was left alone. Half a minute later she sighed deeply and stood up.
When she reached the open-plan office Berger was sitting at his desk staring into space again. She approached cautiously, sat down on her chair and turned it towards him. She couldn’t catch his eye. This went on for so long that Deer eventually said simply: ‘Is our perp a woman?’
Berger looked at her without expression.
‘Or has a female accomplice?’ Deer pressed.
Extremely reluctantly, Berger emerged from hibernation.
‘Could be an actor,’ he muttered. ‘Or someone he just picked off the street and made an offer she couldn’t refuse.’
‘In which case she probably saw him.’
Berger frowned and held her gaze just a little too long.
‘Saw him,’ he said.
Then he pulled out his mobile again and dived in. The photographs. The pole star. Marcus and Oscar. Then the pictures from the house. The hellish cellar. Then, right after that. Up, out on the porch, the strangely fresh air. Berger and Deer close together. It had almost stopped raining. T
hat was when he had been struck by a peculiar, fleeting feeling that left just an echoing void behind it.
What sort of feeling was that?
A vision?
The photographs. The photographs from the porch.
Deer watched him. He scrolled through them and deftly zoomed with his fingers. In the end he lowered his head towards the screen as if he were hopelessly short-sighted. And then he got to his feet. He stood there for a while. Then he grabbed his rucksack. And walked, deeply distracted, towards the exit.
‘Where are you going?’ Deer called out, in the absence of anything better.
‘Dentist,’ Berger said, turning round. ‘If Allan shows up, tell him I’ve had to go to the dentist.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Deer exclaimed.
‘The dentist,’ Berger muttered, and carried on walking. ‘That’s it. I’m at the dentist.’
‘Any chance you might be back this afternoon?’ Deer said in a tone that betrayed her utter disbelief in any further communication.
But the disappearing Berger replied: ‘If I’m lucky I’ll be back this afternoon with considerably sharper teeth.’
9
Monday 26 October, 09.28
The fact that it didn’t come with a parking space was by no means the only drawback of the car that went with the job. Another one was the seats. There was no question of leather, not even the most artificial sort, and beneath the flimsy but quick-drying material was some sort of highly absorbent padding. It might look nice and dry while deep down it was soaking. In other words, Berger’s clothes – now dry again, at last – returned to what was starting to feel like their natural state.
Not that it mattered in the slightest. Berger tore through the city, all the way to an unexpected parking space right in front of his door on Ploggatan. The lift was waiting on the ground floor, but for the first time in about six months, he hurried up the four flights of stairs two steps at a time, with surprising agility. He even managed to ignore the threefold phantom pain that always followed the sight of Lindström & Berger on the front door. Once he was inside he was careful not to glance through the wide-open door towards the bath, strewn with the previous day’s wet clothes – which had been faced with a choice between drying and rotting and had evidently picked a side – and made his way into the chaos of the bedroom. The chaos from the hour of the wolf. It was a scene frozen at half past three that morning, with the contents of Julia Almström strewn across the floor, and papers from Jonna Eriksson and Ellen Savinger mixed up on the undisturbed side of the oversized bed. He pulled out one desk drawer and took out a magnifying glass. Then he gathered the files together and lined them up along the edge of the bed. He crouched down in front of them and took out his mobile phone.
He scrolled quickly through the photographs until he got to the porch. Three pictures, largely identical. They had just emerged from the nightmarish basement, every impression was new, untested. The wounded Ekman had been taken away, the ambulance had gone, and the last traces of his blood were being washed from the porch. Deer pushed closer to Berger, the post-rain freshness of the air was remarkable, a mixture of ozone and spores that the dampness had released from the depths of the earth.
And then. That feeling. So fleeting.
Was it as simple as that? So damn banal?
He studied the first photograph. It was shaky. The mobile held in his bleeding right hand, the left one sweaty from the plastic glove. Down by the cordon there were two police vans; the phone’s tremor had stretched the blue lights sideways, in irregular waves. Next to the police vehicles was a throng of cameramen, sound technicians and reporters, together with about twenty indistinguishable onlookers. The second picture was a considerable improvement: the blue lights were now points of brightness and at least one reporter was recognisable from television. Berger zoomed in and revealed face after face, first the media, so clearly identifiable, then the curious spectators. As their faces paraded past on the small screen, he paid close attention to his physical responses. Would the feeling manifest itself again?
After five or six faces it was back, toned down but unmistakable. A woman.
She was blonde, mid-thirties, her face half turned away, as if caught glancing over her shoulder. Her profile was reasonably clear; he could even make out a snub nose. Only her head stuck up behind the front row of onlookers, so her clothes were mostly hidden, apart from the collar of a light-coloured raincoat that might have been beige.
He moved on to the third and final picture taken from the porch, and zoomed in once more. Now the woman seemed to be looking straight into Berger’s raised mobile phone. The men in front had moved slightly, making it easier to see her. Her coat was more off-white, and she seemed to be standing at an odd angle, her legs apart. Only when he zoomed even closer and the picture started to break up into individual pixels did he see that she was straddling a bicycle.
He scratched his head and pondered his reaction.
A strong gut feeling. Yes, this was the woman he had seen. Yes, she was the cause of that strong but fleeting feeling out on the porch. Yes, she was the reason he had pulled his mobile out and started taking pictures.
Berger put his mobile down on the bed next to the three files, two of which he had managed to persuade Syl to pull without Allan’s knowledge. He opened the middle file – Jonna Eriksson – and searched frantically for images. Somewhere there were pictures from a winter forest. There, at last. Three of them, one after the other. The press photograph was mediocre, the resolution atrocious, but behind the blue and white tape a crowd was clearly visible.
Berger picked up the magnifying glass and held it in front of the press photograph. His first instinct was correct – the resolution was much too low. That wasn’t where he had seen it. But it was there in the second picture. The magnifying glass enhanced the view of the cycle. The rider’s head was covered by a heavy fur cap, the lower part of the face wrapped in a thick scarf. But the nose was bare, slightly redder, but with the same upturned angle.
He tossed the file aside and grabbed Julia Almström’s. More photographs, all of slightly chaotic scenes. Biker gangs, cordons, curious onlookers. The magnifying glass again. Shit. Yes.
How the hell had he managed to miss that?
His legs had long since gone to sleep. When he stood up they felt like they were on fire. Ignoring the pain he took pictures, photographs of photographs, sent three emails, made two calls, initially while staggering round the bedroom in an attempt to get his circulation going again. The first call went as follows:
‘Syl? Are you still in the media room? Good. You’ve got mail.’
The second, made as he lurched down the stairs with an overstuffed rucksack, went:
‘Deer? Bring the afternoon meeting forward to eleven … Just under an hour, yes. Try to bring in as many people as you can. But not Allan, whatever you do.’
Just under an hour? He had no idea what the time actually was. Only now, as he was getting into the car and glanced at his wrist, did he realise that he wasn’t wearing a watch. Highly unusual.
As he entered the open-plan office, he could see his watch from an improbable distance. It shimmered beneath the glow of his desk lamp. Deer was sorting things out and clearing space around the whiteboard. Samir was setting out chairs as the officers traipsed in from Märsta. Berger shut the whole lot out, closed his mind to all the agitated yet soundless activity and gazed at his Rolex as it lay there on its tissue. If anything, the condensation seemed to have spread behind the glass, and more than half the face was now obscured by moisture. Had he by any chance …? He fumbled in the rucksack and took out the magnifying glass. Then in his desk drawer he managed to find a case opener, a special tool that he quickly used to remove the back of the watch. He held the magnifying glass up to the opening and inspected the innards of the watch. The perfectly coordinated constellation of tiny cogs and pinions always lowered his heartbeat dramatically. This was as close to a perpetuum mobile that mankind had got so far. The en
dless fascination of the self-winding mechanism. The daily movements of the wearer managed to provide the watch with all the power it needed. It remained a perfect mechanism, no matter how rapidly electronics developed. Humanity’s powers of innovation had never got closer to life.
Yet the ticking was utterly empty.
Something found its way into the gentle, perfect ticking. Even before he looked up he’d realised it was someone clearing their throat. And long before he looked into those brown eyes he knew that Deer had everything ready. He carefully turned the watch over. The condensation had both grown and moved, but the top third of the face was still untouched, and there the hands were pointing at eleven o’clock. Precisely.
Deer really had managed to bring almost everyone in for the eleven o’clock ‘afternoon’ meeting. Berger rolled his shoulders and moved the naked watch, still ticking on beneath the warming glow of the lamp. He put the magnifying glass and case opener into his rucksack, heaved the files out and set off towards the whiteboard.
Without condescending to look at his assembled team he stuck three photographs to the board. Then he began.
‘The official view of this investigation is that Ellen Savinger’s kidnapping is an isolated event. Allan has chosen to keep the investigation free from speculation, and I can understand that. Even so, one or two of you are aware that I don’t agree. This has been too perfectly carried out; it’s far too professional for a first attempt. Digging through the many cases of people who disappear without trace I thought I’d managed to find two possible precursors, but there was no evidence of a connection whatsoever, not even anything circumstantial. Apart from the fact that they concerned fifteen-year-old girls who vanished without any warning. Only later was sufficient evidence found to suggest that both Julia Almström from Västerås and Jonna Eriksson from Kristinehamn had made plans to run away with their respective boyfriends, both of whom wanted to disappear off the radar for a variety of reasons. After investigations lasting a month or so, both were believed to have disappeared voluntarily, possibly changing their identities and leaving the country. Cases closed.’