by Mark, David
Access denied. See administrator.
She stared the cursor. Something didn’t feel right. Someone had already gone to a lot of trouble to remove Hasse from circulation.
Normally these things waited until the next day.
She frowned, feeling the pull of paranoia, then relaxed and made for the recordings room. The tape from today would still be in the video recorder. She entered, turning on the light and closing the door behind her, isolated in a room no bigger than a cupboard with no windows. Along the end was a table, a single chair and a monitor screen with the tape recorder high on the wall above. She sat down, turning on the monitor. She pressed play on the tape recorder. Only then did she notice the tape was missing.
No tape.
Hasse must have removed the tape. Or worse, it had been removed by... by who?
She retraced her steps back to the duty desk. ‘Did anyone leave anything for me, at all. A key or something?’
The duty sergeant looked at her with a puzzled expression. He shook his head, mumbling something or other, before looking back at the newspaper lying open on the desk. She thanked and turned to leave and had exited the double doors, entering a cold and dark and stopped.
Pigeon hole. On the ground floor the pigeon hole was the rows of spaces reserved for personal mail, internal and external. She turned on her heel, reentering, and almost ran past the desk on the way to the mail slots; they were arranged ion throws along the ground floor corridor.
There was an envelope. Frowning, she took it. It was heavy, something small and heavy inside. She opened it.
Inside was a brass key and a folded piece of paper. With her name on it. She took it out. On the front it said Elin. She opened it. She read Hasse’s handwriting:
Key to apt. under pot.
Go to tin of sardines.
P: My favorite dish?
Hasse always called his old computer at his apartment his sardine tin. She looked at the message, confused and reread his words, placing them into the right sequence until she had it.
See file called Elin.
Why not just tell her... because there had been little time. His last thought in his car had been to leave her something. It was a contingency plan, for something. He wanted her to see the end of the Ash video tape, he had written on the slip in the notebook. In case he wasn’t coming back. Except, there was no video camera in Hasse’s car.
Chapter 20
NEW ENCOUNTERS
In wondrous beauty | once again
Shall the golden tables | stand mid the grass,
Which the gods had owned | in the days of old,
Stanza 61, Völuspá
Vikland let herself in to Hasse Almquist’s apartment a little before five and made herself a black coffee. She powered up his home computer and entered the password lasagne. No entry. She tried with a capital letter. Still no luck. She sat back, thinking. Hasse was ironic at times. He had often joked about her hating klip fisk, dried fish with an unpleasant odor. To her relief, the computer loaded and for a moment she wondered how much time she would have before someone had the mind to come by his place and recover his personal files, including his computer.
She scanned the contents under C drive and found the file called Elin. It too, was password protected. He hadn’t mentioned anything about two passwords. She clicked on it. It didn’t open.
Shit Hasse.
She folded her arms, staring at it, thinking of anything that could be a password. She tried Elin. Nothing. She tried Vikland, same result. She thought of anything he might have said, might have done... her thoughts settling on the investigation. Draugr, draugr, Gotfrid: None of them yielded any results. She tried have a dozen other combinations without result and gave up, making herself another coffee. She tried Sturla and still it didn’t open. It was only when she relaxed, her coffee empty she happened to think of the last act Hasse had made alive, before pulling the trigger. The pink slip that said Scheiser.
She placed her hand in her pocket, finding her wallet. Inside the pocket was the pink slip. She removed it, typing the password with the first capital as he had written it.
She sat back, feeling the beginning of a headache.
The file opened. To her surprise, there was just a short message:
There is a tape inside a book labelled ‘Flyfishing’ bookshelves in living room. Open it and remove the tape. Listen to it.
H
Vikland was about to turn off his computer when she read the words again, exiting the file then deleting it. She raised a hand to the temple at the side of her head, absently. She walked into his small living room, walking to the book shelves. She scanned the books, coming to the one called Fly fishing.
Hasse hated fishing.
She took the book out and opened it.
Inside was a hidden space made by drilling out the thickness of pages to the depth of about a two centimeters. Within was a cassette tape. She removed it. It seemed familiar: A transparent plastic case revealing tape number 73-013-09.
Did she really want to go there? He had wanted her to go there.
She thought of the empty ops room, of his invalid password, her own little voice telling her something was wrong, something was so very wrong.
She stood up, looking at his PC and made a decision. She turned it off, waiting for it to power down then bent down, pulling the plug out of the wall. Pocketing the tape, she bundled the electrical cable and lifted the metal box, carrying it under her arm on the way to the entrance door. It still smelled of him.
Placing the computer by the door she made a last search of his apartment, careful there wasn’t a gap in the curtains feeling paranoid and not a little scared. Finally, finding nothing of interest she picked up his computer and cast a last appraising look around the inadequate frame of his private life. She turned off the light and closed the door, locking it quietly. She kept the key, then walked back down the cold empty stairs, footsteps echoing off secretive walls.
She walked outside to an even colder night until she was back at her car and walked around to the back of her Astra, opening the hatchback. She placed his computer in the back, covering it with an old picnic blanket and closed the hatch. Getting into the driver’s seat, she turned on the ignition, the dashboard lighting up. She leaned forwards, inserting the tape and pressed play, then sat back and listened.
She heard Hasse’s voice as she looked out at a wet street the storm having receded, puddles reflecting street lights in the lightening darkness of a new day. It was part of an interview, Hasse was asking question about things she didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. Even though the voice was his it was a younger Hasse, his voice slightly lighter, cleaner than the one she knew. Then another voice, Gustav Kron.
She listened to the voice of a dead man found in a burned out house.
He told Hasse how he had come to live where he did, what he liked about the place. Irrelevant. She fast forwarded to another subject, Gustav Kron speaking in a mild, gentle voice; a sorrowful voice tainted with regret.
Almquist: Did anyone else know?
Kron: My apprentice. He knew.
Almquist: You had an apprentice?
Kron: Apprentice, yes.
Almquist: Tell me about him.
Kron: He was a quiet man, big, but a hard worker. I was introduced to him by Karl Oskar.
Almquist: Eklund?
Kron: Yes. It was Karl Oskar recommended him to me.
Almquist: Yes, of course you can. This apprentice... what was his name?
Kron: A sigh. Alvar Bok.
Eklund. Kron had known Eklund, and Alvar Bok had been Gustav Kron’s apprentice. That didn’t make any sense. Almquist never mentioned the interview with Kron. Why Eklund?
Confused, she listened to the end of the tape, abut Hasse’s involvement with Gustav... about Anna too. Both had known Eklund. She understood none of it and pressed stop removing the tape, placing it in her pocket, she returned to his battered notebook, turning the pages until he’d u
nderlined the word, archaeologist. She read his notes:
Eklund had lived in Copenhagen – for what reason? An archaeologist with a tarnished reputation. Had he something to hide? Why would he want to return to Tived?
It involved Sturla.
Return to Tived. When had he returned to Tived, and why? Sturla Gotfridson was involved too. Eklund was an archaeologist. Anna and Gustav Kron had known him. However, it was the next line that made her freeze.
Eklund met Agard in these parts, they had to. When?
And what had the Pastor told Ulrika?
She processed the two anomalies: First; someone had removed the interview tape with Chivers and second; Hasse had never mentioned anything to do with interviewing Gustav Kron and what he had been involved in. That troubled her; it troubled her a lot. Three: Eklund had known Joachim Agard, the painter.
She flipped to the last entries, back paging until she found what she had been looking for. Joachim Agard and Karl Oskar Eklund had been old friends. That connected Hasse’s investigation with the Hangman, Gustav and Anna Kron: Eklund.
This was new information he hadn’t told her about.
She felt numb, like suspended in a vacuum. Except she had never been suspended in a vacuum before. He’d been lying, yes, covering for something he knew to be much bigger than his investigation. Hasse had been to see the Pastor just before he died.
Anomaly four: Ulrika had been to see the Pastor. Chasing a story. Had Hasse stumbled upon something he wanted kept in the dark, something involving an old archaeologist? Who it appeared, knew Gustav Kron.
For the first time in the investigation, Elin Vikland felt the surge of anger. Reaching forward, she turned the key, firing the engine with nothing else on her mind other than going to see the Pastor at Æsahult, no matter how early in the day it was.
A faint gray light came from the single window made of leaded glass at the end of Bok’s hut away from the door. Ulrika looked across at Ash as she pulled herself into a sitting position after an unrestful night, exhausted. It was the smell that had awoken her, and what a smell... Ash serving steaming porridge into three bowls. She felt the connection with him, conscious that something new developing out of their altered circumstances. He was no longer just part of the story, he’d become part of her story. Suddenly her work seemed so unimportant. With a deep sense of longing she desperately wished to be away, far away from this bleak landscape and everything else in it. She had yet to come to terms with it all...
Ash had been colder than she could imagine, when they found him: The way he kept shivering, laid bare to the elements. She raised the blanket as she stood up and padded across the floorboards to the empty place at the table, pulling the blanket around her, as he placed a steaming bowl of porridge in front of her.
‘I won’t say good morning.’ Ash offered her a carved wooden spoon.
She dipped it into a pool of melted butter, steam rising to warm her face, hungry. The butter with the sugar together tasted better than she could have imagined. She looked around as the door opened, seeing Bok enter looking as tired as she felt, ‘Where’s Fabian?’
‘She’s gone,’ Bok said, entering the cabin and heading for his bowl, taking it as soon as Ash had served his portion, sitting down next to her.
‘So here we are,’ he said in his deep voice, looking at each of the portions. ‘Goldilocks and the two bears, small, medium and large.’
‘One small, two large,’ Ash said, taking another mouthful.
Bok helped himself to another spoonful from the pot next to Ash. ‘Small, medium and large,’ he repeated, bringing his spoon to his mouth, swallowing it in one.
Ash stopped chewing for a moment. ‘Bears aside, a dangling corpse in a noose, that walks and talks with me... what does that really mean?’
Bok raised his bushy brow, slowly, looking annoyed to have been disturbed from his pleasure of porridge. ‘It means,’ he said, swallowing, ‘that at Æsahult, there is someone there I need to see. Come,’ Bok glanced down at his bowl and motioned to them, ‘less talk, more eat.’
Ulrika looked towards Ash, their eyes meeting. She understood. Bok was no longer a present danger. But still she didn’t trust him.
When he was done, Bok looked at his watch. A concerned look was upon his face as Ash wiped his thumb around the edge of the bowl, licking it, then pushing the bowl away from him already empty and looked up as Bok stood up. He nodded to Ulrika with her blanket around her shoulders, ‘Get dressed.’ He said gruffly as he glanced at his watch again. ‘We have to leave.’
As she drove, Vikland arrived at the conclusion that all Hasse had got out of all his efforts, had been yet more failure and death. And then, earlier this year, a sudden re-awakening of his interest in the case. She couldn’t understand it, his obsession with Karl Oskar Eklund. She sat back, realizing she’d been denying it, following the comfort of routine, when it had been staring her in the face the entire time. The case files. The lack of support. Hasse’s stonewalling. All of it to stop her from finding out the true nature of his interest: Eklund.
Who was he?
She barely noticed the turns, look at the dark roads, her lights lighting houses still asleep between the ever-present forest all around. Was he the reason someone was pulling the strings, deliberately slowing down their investigation? Hasse had gone to a lot of trouble to keep things hidden it seemed. As far as she could understand, the only common denominator between any of it was... the Pastor at Æsahult: Hasse had revealed he’d been to see him. That the Pastor had confirmed Ulrika had been to see him.
Did the Pastor know anything about Eklund?
She was none the wiser by the time she arrived at road from where she could see the the dark clustered form of the church. It could be seen from two kilometers away, outlined as a dark layered form against the against a slightly lighter sky.
She turned left off the main road to enter a forestry track, bouncing through muddy puddles of water until the track was no more. She decided to park the car close but away from the church car park, stopping some distance due north, down a tractor path that lead nowhere. She pulled behind a group of trees, the car coasting to rest. The car would be invisible from the road.
She turned the engine off and reached forwards, turning off her lights, unsure how to proceed. She lowered the window, listening to the stir of birds waking the day as she inhaled the cold, crisp but damp morning air, the breath coming from her nose in clouds of vapor. She looked around then above her, up to the trees tall and quiet, a dampened filtering of light rain.
She got out and closed the door softly behind her and left the car. She looked at her watch, then raising her hood, walked towards the shore of the lake visible between the trees, feeling alone.
The voice. She felt from the start there was something different about this one. Something didn’t fit the pattern. There was always a pattern.
She thought about Bok as she made her way to the edge of the trees, thinkin’ about what had gone down, about the man. She thought about what was going to happen to Missy. She looked out across the carpark. Somethin’ wasn’t right here. She looked out at the church, the top lost, fading to sky.
It wasn’t that it was quiet. Too quiet. More than that... she looked at the house where she ‘sposed to go and she wondered.
Why he want me to go there? She thought.
Instead of committing herself she decided to wait using the time to think shit. Why him?
Fabian had climbed the rock, seeing her vantage point. She climbed the last ten steps and sat down, turning around onto her stomach, settling herself. She’d pulled her compass away from the chain around her neck, opening it. She’d taken the line of sight, reading the bearing, satisfied that the rock formation in front of her was Trollkyrka.
Take them out, the voice had said. That was her job. Both of them if necessary but the man came first. It wasn’t her job to ask the why questions. Except, the commission had been a surprise. The customer had come from an unexpecte
d quarter. She had worked her way through the routine as she had so often done. First she’d removed her backpack. Then she’d removed her hunting rifle and assembled her. She’d steadied her movements until she could see him, the man without them eyes, climbing a steep flight of steps, one by one, face taught with exertion.
That was when she knew it had been an inside job. There’d been some kind’o disagreement. The man at the top of the stairs said something again and she Missy, she shook her head again. She crouched down, not sure what was goin’ down here, seeing the door to the church open.
Something kept her rooted here. Maybe it was because Fabian hated working for people she didn’t know. The man without them eyes. This was like it was – then, when she’d felt her weight settle into that dirt and stone beneath her, that bad-ass feelin’ in her gut.
What you been up to mister?
Why they want you dead?
Her thoughts evaporated as soon as she saw a shadow appear out of the mist.
Pastor visited by what he said was a reporter. Some weeks ago... Ulrika. Chivers knows more than he’s telling.
Leave key for Elin.
When she thought about it, Hasse hadn’t told her much about what had come out of interviewing Chivers. In the end, she had to give in to her need to know, to follow the broken chain, all for the sake of easing her mind. And that involved having to know what the Pastor had told him – and Ulrika. Only then would she be able to get any rest.
She looked around for somewhere to hide his computer, her police mind telling her someone might find her car, restless eyes flicking from tree to tree, lighting upon the damp cold ground, knowing there was nowhere she could hide it, even if she had wanted to, closing the hatchback and locking it.
Perhaps it had been an ingrained habit, or something Hasse had said about not walking right up the path to the front door. So she headed south on foot parallel with the lake and the staggered forms of the church. She kept Æsahult church to her right, tall slit windows high above, the finely decorated east gable facing the lake, making for the entrance facing the empty car park, and the vertical ochre yellow timber boards and white windows of the Pastor’s house. She continued until the church was behind her, heading obliquely towards the entrance to the Pastor’s house, scanning the line of trees. Nothing. She closed the distance, stepping up onto a small entrance podium. She raised her hand and knocked. She waited and knocked again. She knocked a third time, then tried the door handle.