Watching You

by Arne Dahl

  As if painted with fluorescent paint.

  He rushed back into the house. Threw himself up the stairs to the floor above. He found himself in a workshop. He saw a number of hammers of various shapes and sizes, then moulds for casting knife blades, saw a wall perforated with knife marks, and a carpenter’s bench scarred by heavy hammer blows.

  ‘Scum,’ Berger said through his teeth. ‘Fucking bastard scum.’

  Blom nodded. Tears were trickling down her cheeks.

  They were in the very centre of evil.

  Berger rushed towards the next door. Behind it was a smaller room containing a bed with dirty yellow sheets. An L-shaped desk in the corner bore the impressions of computer equipment.

  This was where William Larsson had sat and planned everything.

  ‘Something’s glowing,’ Blom said.

  Berger nodded. A very faint light seemed to be coming from below, beneath the desk. Berger yanked the desk away from the wall. A night light was plugged directly into the wall.

  They crouched down.

  A piece of paper had been nailed to the wall next to the dim bulb. And on the nail hung a tiny cog.

  And on the sheet of paper was a message, apparently scrawled in blood.

  It said: I’m coming for you soon.

  The message ended with a smiley face.

  On closer inspection, the lower part of the sheet was tucked into an envelope. Blom pulled it off and stood up. Berger got to his feet beside her. His hand was still dripping blood.

  Her hands trembling, Blom opened the envelope carefully, ever so carefully, and pulled out a photograph.

  It was a photograph of a building that seemed to glow with its own inner light.

  It was a photograph of the boathouse.

  IV

  37

  Friday 30 October, 01.29

  Blood streamed out into the icy cold water. It formed small tributaries that eventually flowed into a blurred delta before being swallowed up by the seas of the world. Or at least left the light, an illuminated circle in the great expanse of water.

  Berger switched off his torch and pulled his hand from Edsviken. He could feel the cold making the open blood vessels of his knuckles gradually contract.

  Time had passed. They had looked through every pixel of security footage before approaching the boathouse with extreme caution. There was no one there.

  But they knew that William Larsson would come.

  That he might come at any time.

  Berger shook his head, as if to invigorate his sluggish brain cells, and looked out across the inlet, which, in its own very modest way, was attached to the world’s oceans.

  He went inside. Blom was standing by the open whiteboard, looking at the pictures of William Larsson’s seven victims. Not for the first time.

  ‘I almost had it,’ Blom said, shaking her head. ‘There’s something here.’

  ‘And you’re keeping an eye on those?’ Berger said, nodding towards the two open laptops as he walked to the other end of the whiteboard. Views from their security cameras, including a number of new ones, filled the screens.

  ‘Are you?’ Blom said.

  ‘Not while I was outside,’ Berger said, then pointed at a newly pinned-up photograph on the board. It sat between the fifteen-year-old William Larsson and the two photofit pictures of Erik Johansson. ‘The photograph from Olle Nilsson’s driving licence. It’s the only one I’ve managed to find. Does he look like your Olle from Wiborg Supplies Ltd?’

  Blom nodded. ‘And alarmingly similar to the photofits from Östermalm and Märsta.’

  Berger nodded in turn and pointed at the severely disfigured fifteen-year-old.

  ‘Any similarity here?’

  Blom shook her head.

  ‘Maybe there’s something about the eyes, though,’ she said after a while.

  ‘Maybe,’ Berger said, trying to merge the two images on his retina. ‘He appears to own the Bålsta house himself, under his Wiborg name, Olle Nilsson. It was purchased four months before he rented the house in Märsta. It all seems to have been planned carefully in advance; he would be able to move the girls between the houses at short notice, in a van on long lease from Statoil in Gävle.’

  ‘And in order to get a job at Wiborg Supplies,’ Blom said, ‘he had to be a highly qualified technician, but also had to pass the Security Service’s rigorous background checks. I still think that’s very odd. There aren’t many things harder than infiltrating the Security Service. And I say that as someone very experienced at infiltration.’

  ‘The interest in technology has been there since the clocks,’ Berger said. ‘Olle Nilsson does seem to be a very skilfully constructed identity, at least as good as Nathalie Fredén. He’s registered as a civil engineer with qualifications from Chalmers in Gothenburg, and has a very convincing CV that no one would ever think to question. There’s nothing to suggest that he’s ever travelled outside the EU. And of course no indication of when he took on the role of Olle Nilsson.’

  ‘And no hint as to when William Larsson came back to Sweden,’ Blom said. ‘I’d still guess that he had plastic surgery in the Arab world, maybe Lebanon, maybe Saudi Arabia – my original guess – and that his dad, Nils Gundersen, managed to integrate him into society and made sure he got an excellent technical education.’

  ‘Not only that,’ Berger said. ‘I think everything suggests that William followed in his father’s footsteps. I think he joined the military, became a mercenary, maybe even an undercover agent of some kind.’

  Blom nodded. ‘Was that why he came to Sweden? But if so, who was he working for?’

  ‘Either he returned to Sweden because the voices inside his head were getting too loud. Or the voices got too loud once he was already here – on other business,’ said Berger. ‘Either way, he seems to have had some kind of breakdown. I mean, he’s a full-blown lunatic now.’

  ‘Scenario one: Gundersen not only provided William with impeccable false documents, but also stoked his desire for vengeance until the time was finally right. Scenario two: William was here on a mission, but being in the country where he grew up made the past haunt him until he flipped.’

  ‘We’ll just have to ask him,’ Berger said with a crooked smile.

  ‘But how did he get into Wiborg?’ Blom repeated.

  ‘The important thing right now is that there’s a third house,’ Berger said. ‘And we need to find it. Tonight.’

  They looked at each other. There was a heavy, sombre seriousness in their eyes. Then Blom’s blue eyes brightened. Berger saw something suddenly click.

  Molly Blom ran back to the photographs of William’s seven victims.

  ‘It’s us,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘What?’ Berger said.

  ‘You mentioned the snowball,’ Blom went on.

  ‘Snowball?’ Berger said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You and William were sitting on the bench in the schoolyard. We thought you were trying chewing tobacco for the first time. Linda threw the snowball that knocked it out of your hand. But it wasn’t a tub of chewing tobacco, it was a watch.’

  ‘A pocket watch, an Elgin,’ Berger nodded, and disappeared into the past. ‘That was the first time William showed me one of his watches. The cogs ended up scattered across the snow, swallowed up by it.’

  ‘And we ran away, giggling,’ Blom said. ‘There were seven of us. Apart from Linda and me, there were Layla, Maria, Alma, Salma and Eva. Linda, Maria, Alma and I were born in Sweden. Layla and Salma were immigrants, both from the Middle East. And Eva was adopted from Korea.’

  ‘Wow,’ Berger said. ‘You mean …?’

  ‘I think he’s recreated our gang, yes. He’s been collecting us. Maria and Alma were fairly anonymous Swedish brunettes, like Julia Almström and Emma Brandt. Linda was darker, more unruly, had piercings, like Jonna Eriksson. Layla was from Iraq, like Aisha Pachachi, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Salma was Kurdish, like Nefel Berwari. And Eva was Asian, like Su
nisa Phetwiset. Leaving me, Molly.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Berger said. ‘The only blonde in the gang.’

  ‘Yes,’ Blom said flatly. ‘Ellen Savinger is me, Molly Blom.’

  ‘The crowning glory,’ Berger said. ‘The icing on the cake.’

  They said nothing for a while, each of them glancing occasionally at the laptops.

  Then Berger said: ‘The watches were hallowed ground. That was the first time anyone had attacked what he loved most. It engraved itself deeply on his consciousness. Then most of these girls also witnessed his humiliation on the football pitch. But not you, though, Molly.’

  ‘I had already left my mark,’ Molly said. ‘He’d had me strapped to his clock. There was no way he was going to forget about me.’

  ‘Nor me,’ Berger said. ‘Least of all me. The traitor.’

  ‘William Larsson is recreating his past,’ Blom said. ‘He’s been saving all the girls for this moment, keeping them drugged until …’

  ‘Until he gets the chance to destroy me,’ Berger said, closing his eyes. ‘Then he’ll kill all seven girls in one go.’

  ‘In other words he mustn’t get the chance to destroy you,’ Blom said.

  They looked at each other again. Their eyes drilling deeper than ever before. Then they walked back to their computers again, as they had so many times that night.

  Time took on a different shape. Everything became sluggish, slower. Even movement felt different. They weren’t getting anywhere.

  After a while they looked at each other again, this time with a different gaze. Blom clicked quickly at her computer and sighed. ‘No, this isn’t doing any good. I’m going to get a couple of hours’ sleep.’

  Berger nodded. ‘I’m just going to get a bit of fresh air. Then I’ll take first watch.’

  Sam saw Molly go over to the sleeping bag on her side of the work benches. He waited for a moment, then adjusted a couple of pictures and met Ellen Savinger’s gaze from the whiteboard. Her reserved smile hinting at a future of unlimited possibilities.

  Like Molly Blom’s had once done.

  Then he walked away. He opened the door to the jetty and stepped out under the cover of the roof. It was pitch-black. The rain was noisily lashing the roof and churning what little Berger could see of the water’s surface.

  All apart from one small patch. There the surface looked completely undisturbed. He walked closer to take a look.

  It wasn’t the surface of the water. It was a boat.

  It was a rowing boat.

  Berger’s hand flew up inside his jacket instinctively. His bleeding knuckles hit his shoulder holster. It was empty.

  He turned and cast a quick glance through the little window in the door. His pistol was on the nearest table.

  He threw the door open and rushed in. In the semi-darkness of the boathouse he saw a hand reaching for his Glock. And before he could come to a stop he found himself staring into the barrel of his own pistol.

  It was odd seeing Olle Nilsson’s face in real life.

  It was William Larsson’s. And yet it wasn’t.

  As if from a great distance Sam saw William turn and aim the pistol at the sleeping bag. The outline of Molly’s sleeping body stood out beneath the padding, her blonde hair sticking up from the opening.

  And William Larsson fired. Sam thought he saw the body jolt inside the sleeping bag. Then it didn’t move again.

  William shot Molly three more times. Sam threw himself at him. The shots echoed around the boathouse, deafening Sam’s ears so much that he couldn’t hear his own gut-wrenching roar.

  Nor did he feel the blow that rendered him unconscious.

  38

  Friday 30 October, 02.14

  Before there is a self, there is dizziness. Nothing but dizziness. A spinning that precedes everything else. And it is everything, for a long time.

  Then sweating. Lots of sweating. It’s not warm sweat, it’s icy cold. Trickling somewhere. There’s no space, no body; there’s no pain, no feeling, no self. There’s dizziness. There’s sweating. Nothing else.

  And the sweating is colder than death.

  There’s terror before there is a self. It’s a terror that is born from nothing, and grows stronger in pumping waves. It’s a primal, dark terror, without cause, without direction, and it swallows everything, consumes everything in its path.

  It the end it settles in. The terror expands a brain, presses it hard against a skull. There’s confinement, the confinement of the expanding brain in its minimal abode. There’s a pain that has nothing to do with a body. There’s an explosion of sensory impressions that eventually become a self. A self that is merely an arrowhead of pain.

  There’s constriction. So there must be a body. A shackled body. There are legs that can’t move in any direction. There are arms that are trapped. There are arms that are sticking straight out from the body, trapped.

  Then there is vision. There is a room, a dimly lit interior. There is blonde hair in a shot-up sleeping bag.

  And there is a scream, a roar, a bellow.

  There is a hell, and it is here, and it is now.

  And the self suddenly knows that its name is Sam. But no more than that. Everything else is pain.

  There are sounds. Echoing sounds, muffled sounds, metallic sounds. A dragging sound behind his back, a scraping sound, a beating sound. The sound of metal on metal. Things being constructed, arranged. But no human presence yet, no living presence.

  Sam tries to turn his head, which is pulsating with pain. He feels something warm trickle down through the cold sweat on his forehead. He realises that it’s blood.

  As if that makes any difference.

  He turns his head as far as it will go. He can detect movement behind him, by the floor, can see the outline of some contraption. When he looks up and starts to tilt his head back, he can see chains reaching from mooring rings in the wall. And his eyes come to rest on his own outstretched arm. His wrist is held tightly by a leather strap, and the leather strap is attached to a heavy chain that leads off into the darkness. Somewhere towards the end of it he can make out a large cog wheel.

  He can hear moaning, and it takes far too long before he realises that he’s the source of the moaning.

  He pulls at his arm, but the chain is holding him firmly in place.

  When he turns his head back, a face is there, right in front of him. It looks at him calmly, with clear blue eyes. And the unfamiliar face speaks with a very familiar voice from childhood: ‘You knew we had to end up here eventually, Sam.’

  He feels his own breathing, every breath a victory over himself. It would have been so much easier just to stop.

  The face pulls back slightly and is sucked back into the darkness from which it came. Sam can see the body, the bulletproof vest, the wrench in his hand.

  ‘Good timing,’ William’s voice goes on from the unknown face. ‘There are only a couple of bolts left to tighten. I presume you’ve got time to wait.’

  Then the face vanishes again. New sounds behind his back. A different metallic sound this time. And then the echo of a crank, followed by an emphatic ticking noise.

  The face appears again. And in William’s voice it says: ‘I’m sorry I had to use something as banal as a crank, but I had to build the clock as quickly as possible. And because I can see you’re wondering, I’ll tell you: it took half an hour. Not that you’d be able to see that from your watch; the face is covered with condensation. How could you treat your watches so badly?’

  The ticking sound is interrupted by a click. Sam feels his arms get pulled away from his sides. For now the pain stands no chance against all the other pain that has invaded his being.

  William moves slowly backward. Now he can see further into the darkness in that direction. Sam sees him sit down on one of the carpentry benches. The one with Sam’s Glock on it.

  It’s even lighter in the other direction. Where Molly’s lying.

  Dead.

  William sits and waits
for a while. Sam understands what he’s waiting for when he hears the mechanism click once more. But even this time he doesn’t really feel his arms being pulled further apart.

  William sees where Sam’s eyes are looking. ‘She’s an adult. Of no interest to me. Wrong vocal pitch.’

  William turns Molly’s laptop towards him. He looks at the images from the security cameras. ‘I enjoyed watching to see which of you would win. When I was preparing to leave the house in Märsta, I stood for a while wondering what height I should set the knives at – Sam or Molly? Molly had the Security Service behind her, and you, to be honest, seemed pretty slow, Sam. What happened to you?’

  Somehow Sam gets control of his vocal cords. He hisses: ‘Are they alive?’

  William nods regretfully. He goes on nodding for a long while. ‘There’s a lot of death in the third house. But that’s not what we ought to be talking about. We’ve got eight minutes before your first arm gets ripped off. It’s usually the left arm, if you’re right-handed.’

  ‘Where’s the third house, William?’ Sam says.

  ‘And we shan’t talk about that either,’ William says. ‘We’re going to talk about your betrayal. You’re going to die standing face to face with your betrayal.’

  ‘What do you mean, “betrayal”?’ Sam says. ‘I didn’t report you.’

  ‘You were too cowardly,’ William says, with a slight smile. ‘That would have been better. Then everything would have been dragged into the open. Instead it stayed in the dark and grew.’

  ‘Your self-awareness is impressive, scum,’ Sam splutters.

  ‘But now you’re being pretty brave. “Scum.” A goalpost on a grit-covered football pitch. Anton, the Scum, and that nasty little gang of girls. My cock exposed. The girls giggling cretinously. And along comes the only friend I’ve had in the whole of my shitty life, and whips my cock over and over and over again with a damp towel. It’s a wonderful life.’

  Sam looks at William. He needs to know. If it’s the last thing he hears.