The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  The methadone doesn’t help anymore, I feel constantly drawn back to the smack. What is this life of mine anyway? I’m not in touch with anyone, I’ve got no ties to anyone.

  How did I find you after all this time? That’s the fantastic part, how the pieces all fall into place even though everything is in bits after Dad’s death. It starts a couple of weeks before his death, when I finish a job for someone I don’t trust, but I need the money. He’s got an acquaintance, a girl, who I trust even less. Rebecca. Somehow she finds out my identity, the one that I normally live under. You have to have them on you — ID documents — and one evening, when I’m meeting someone, I haven’t had time to switch to the identity I use the rest of the time. She must have snooped in my jacket or something, although I’m almost certain that I never let it out of my sight. I don’t know because I’m so shaky and I’ve taken a big dose of methadone. The world is a little bit murky and I don’t feel safe. Maybe one of them, Rebecca or her friend, gets to see my name.

  She starts blackmailing me, saying she’ll go to the police if I don’t pay her to keep quiet. To begin with I do as she says but it escalates, just gets worse and worse. She demands more and more money, she even follows me to Dad’s funeral, and causes a scene at the reception. I’m scared all the time, always looking over my shoulder. Everything that I’ve built up is at risk of falling down around me. I start planning for a new identity but I can’t cope with it, the state I’m in. I need to get rid of her somehow. I start following her. One night she ducks through that entrance on Chapmansgatan. I wait outside, in the car. A man comes out a few minutes later, and that man is you.

  My world stands still. And it’s that, my reaction when I see you, which makes me understand what I have to do.

  I know what you’re thinking: I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. But everyone has something that will push them to the edge, and maybe over it. Most people don’t know what that is, but I do. I know where it started to go wrong.

  I kept you under surveillance after I’d found you. Now it’s your turn to spiral down, down, down.

  XXV

  As I emerge from the tube and up from the underground, I take a few deep breaths, trying to compose myself after reading the whole diary.

  Daniel Berggren’s P.O. box is in an office on Rådmansgatan. It takes a while to work that out, but not as long as I’d thought. In central Stockholm the P.O. boxes are located at a number of addresses, and sitting at a computer at an all-night 7-Eleven I manage to find the right address by using search engines and a process of elimination.

  When I leave the 7-Eleven, it’s gone midnight. Stockholm doesn’t feel like a capital city anymore. The streets are almost empty, the pulse lower. My hands are shaking.

  I head to Rådmansgatan, and stop outside the door of the office, which turns out to be closed between midnight and five in the morning. I push my face against the glass — it’s secured on the inside with heavy bars — and I see row after row of P.O. boxes, the size of ordinary letterboxes, stacked on top of each other endlessly. The insignia of the Post and Telecoms Agency hangs on one wall.

  In the corner of the ceiling, what must be a CCTV camera blinks away. A car pulls up behind me, and the reflection is visible in the window, the word SECURITAS on the bonnet. A bulldog of a man climbs out and starts walking towards me.

  ‘Everything all right?’ says the bulldog.

  ‘Everything’s all right,’ I say. ‘Just curious.’

  Outside Chapmansgatan 6, the patrol car is still there. Inside, one half of the patrol is awake, his face weakly illuminated by the screen of a mobile phone; the other seems to be in a very deep sleep.

  QUARTER PAST FIVE. That’s what time it is when I open the door to the P.O. boxes on Rådmansgatan. My eyes are stinging from the tiredness, and I’m pretty sure the insomnia’s made me ill. I swing between sweating and freezing, until I realise that it’s been far too long since my last Serax. It could be withdrawal symptoms. Standing inside the door, I rifle through the inside pocket of my coat until I find a pill and swallow it, feel it gliding down inside me while I get the note with the address. P.O. Box 4746.

  The boxes are arranged in columns of ten. Row after row fill the whole of the vast space. Bigger boxes are along the wall, some about the size of a couple of shoeboxes; others, so enormous that you could easily hide pieces of furniture in them.

  I locate box 4746 somewhere in the middle of the labyrinthine warren, and I examine it, being careful not to touch it. It looks just like any other. Using a pen, I open the flap slightly, and carefully push my finger down inside the box. There’s post in there. That means he needs to pick it up; he needs to come here. I look around for a suitable place to keep watch from. I might need to be here for some time. I pick a spot a long way from the entrance but from where I can still see the door and the box. Time passes; Rådmansgatan is just visible through the window, and out there the city is coming to life. People pass by, carrying bags and children; buses roll past. The sun rises and lights up the street.

  Women and men — early birds — come in, walk briskly to their boxes, collect the post, stuff it in their bags, and disappear again. I watch them carefully. They’re most probably self-employed people of some kind; most of the post looks like business letters. It’s an effective camouflage by Grim. He’s just one of many well-dressed and independent people collecting their post in the morning. I start feeling thirsty, and my legs hurt. Once the place is empty I do a couple of laps around the boxes, pretending that the camera in the corner isn’t even there.

  Quarter past eight. After three hours’ wait, someone walks past the window. I notice out of the corner of my eye: a tall man, black clothes, straw-coloured hair. I can’t see his face. He crosses the road and walks towards the entrance, and in the blink of an eye he disappears from my field of vision, and I hold my breath until the door opens and he steps inside. He’s wearing black jeans and an equally black jacket. Underneath that, he’s wearing a simple blue T-shirt. The straw-coloured hair is neatly styled; the angular face, relaxed yet pale and sunken, hollowed out. At first I wonder if it is him, but then he does this movement — casts his eyes left, and his head follows suit — that convinces me. It is Grim, but so much older, and the feeling is overwhelming and unreal, as though for a minute I’d taken that step over to the other side and seen the dead.

  His face still makes me think of Julia. I wonder what she would have looked like now.

  Grim walks with his hands in his jacket pockets. He might already have seen or heard me, although I don’t think so. I’m standing behind a row of boxes, and I’m watching him through a little gap in between them.

  He opens the box, takes something out — I can’t see what it is — and heads for the exit. But he doesn’t go out. Instead he goes and stands between two rows of boxes, forcing me to move so I can see what he’s doing. My strides are hasty, and in my ears my pulse is beating hard and fast, and I tilt my head, look out, and hold my breath. Grim has stopped by another box; he opens it and takes out what looks like a metal cigarette case. He takes something small and black from his inside jacket pocket and puts it in the box. Then he locks it and heads for the door. I ought to step out, confront him, maybe beat him unconscious, I don’t know, but I should do something, and in spite of that I can’t move. All I do is keep my eyes on the box to memorise which one it is, while I get my phone out.

  He goes out the door and disappears round the corner.

  My legs feel weak as I go over to the post box Grim just left, and I make a note of the number. Then I call the phone number Levin gave me, the one that goes to someone calling herself Alice. She answers, perfectly uninterested, as though she sits answering calls all day long. Maybe she does. I ask for her help, tell her I need the name of someone who has a P.O. box on Rådmansgatan.

  ‘Listen, are you okay?’ she asks.

  ‘What do you mean?’<
br />
  ‘You sound like you’ve just been crying.’

  ‘Can you just give me the name?’

  ‘Number?’ she says; I can hear her tapping away.

  ‘Fifty-six forty-six.’ I hesitate. ‘Are you looking at the Tax Agency’s register right now?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Can you check another post box, too?’

  ‘One thing at a time, Junker.’ She clears her throat. ‘Fifty-six forty-six, I’m guessing you’re standing in front of it right now?’

  ‘Yes. Yes I am.’

  ‘There’s no single name associated with it. There are two. Looks like they run a company of some description. Tobias Fredriksson and Jonathan Granlund.’ She clicks away. ‘Born seventy-nine and eighty. Neither have previous. Both single. One lives in Hammarbyhöjden; one near Telefonplan. It looks like their business premises are near Telefonplan, but it isn’t the same address as Granlund’s.

  She coughs. I wonder if she’s a smoker.

  ‘And the other box?’ she asks.

  ‘Forty-seven forty-six.’

  ‘Same address otherwise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A short silence.

  ‘Daniel Berggren. The only match I can find is on the electoral roll. Daniel Berggren, born seventy-nine, fifteenth of December, listed as living in Bandhagen.’ She carries on clicking. ‘Hmm, he’s got a P.O. box for his residential address. I’ve seen that before. Usually just a front.’

  ‘Have you any details, other than addresses, for Fredriksson and Granlund?’

  ‘No, not even a phone number. Do you want the addresses?’

  She reads them out, and I jot them down, amazed.

  Grim’s identity is cloaked in a fog of deceptions.

  ‘Thanks, Alice,’ I say.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she mumbles, and hangs up.

  BIRCK CALLS just as I’m on my way down to the underground at Rådmansgatan station. He’s snorting down the phone, asking where I am.

  ‘You were supposed to be here. We agreed. I need you, your information.’

  ‘How did you get on with Koll yesterday?’

  ‘Get down here. Now.’

  ‘If you tell me how it went with Koll.’

  A heavy sigh.

  ‘He’s not really saying anything, keeps saying that he’s under orders to only speak to you. All I got were little snippets that don’t tell us anything on their own, but which might support the forensic evidence we’ve got. And then he’s saying that he did it for money, a contract. I pushed him on that name you said, Daniel Berggren, but he just looked fucking delighted and refused to tell me anything. So get down here now.’

  ‘Can’t we do this on the phone?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  I pass through the tunnel under Sveagatan, past the threatening red painting of Strindberg that covers the wall.

  ‘He did it on the instructions of Daniel Berggren, but that’s just a front for two other names,’ I say. ‘One Tobias Fredriksson of Hammarbyhöjden, and one Jonathan Granlund near Telefonplan. Both are the right sort of age. On paper they own some kind of business, but I’m certain that it’s just a front. His real name is John Grimberg, but Grimberg is only recorded in the Whereabouts Unknown register. I don’t believe that Granlund, Fredriksson, or Berggren is the alias he’s using at the moment. He calls himself something else. And I think that’s why she died, because she found out about that.’

  ‘She got wind of his identity?’

  ‘Exactly. I got lucky and found the right Daniel Berggren, so I am —’

  ‘How did you manage that,’ Birck says coldly, ‘from your flat, where I ordered you to remain?’

  ‘I was lucky. And you can’t give orders to people who are suspended.’

  ‘I don’t understand where you fit in to all this. It’s time to talk now, Leo,’ he attempts, almost pleading.

  ‘Daniel Berggren, or John Grimberg, as he was known then, used to be my friend.’ Down on the platform, the train thunders out of the tunnel with the brakes squealing. ‘Before he started hating me.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘So the necklace was put there as a warning to you? Or a threat?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, thinking about the diary pages that are still in my inside pocket. It’s true. I really do not know. I board the train, look around the carriage, convinced that someone is watching me. ‘His dad died three weeks ago. Since then, everything’s gone downhill fast, and he’s now behaving extremely irrationally. And I think he’s dangerous.’

  ‘How long have you suspected this?’ he asks.

  ‘Only a day or so.’

  ‘Only a day or so,’ he repeats, and sighs. ‘I’ll let Pettersén know and then we’ll bring Granlund in.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Fredriksson. I think Granlund is a decoy.’

  ‘John Grimberg,’ Birck says. ‘Jonathan Granlund. People who do this sort of thing need something to hold on to, something that stops their personality splitting and them going mad. They need something with a link to who they really are. Initials, for example.’

  ‘I know that,’ I say. ‘And he knows it, too. I think he’s thought of this kind of deduction.’

  The line goes quiet, for a surprisingly long time.

  ‘You’re going to get so much shit for this, when it’s over.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck.’

  ‘So you think it’s Fredriksson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Birck sighs again.

  ‘Check Fredriksson then. My money’s on Granlund. If we find him, we’ll have found Grimberg’s current alias. I’ll try and get some extra resources in. We’ll take Granlund. Ring when you get there.’

  ‘That sounds almost like a job for a policeman in active service,’ I say.

  He hangs up without another word.

  I GET OFF at Hammarbyhöjden, a couple of stations south of Södermalm. The sun is shining, white and warm, and the trees and bushes are rustling. As I look for the piece of paper with Fredriksson’s address on it, my phone rings — a number I don’t recognise.

  ‘Is that Leo?’ says a shaky voice.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Yes, I’m, my name is Ricky. Is this Leo Junker?’

  ‘Calm down. Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘I’m Sam’s boyfriend. Sam Falk. You know her, right? I was supposed to call you if anything happened.’

  ‘Eh? If what happened?’

  ‘She … she didn’t come home last night. I thought she was working late, but … when I woke up this morning, she wasn’t there. So I thought maybe she’d slept at the studio, she does that sometimes, but I’m standing outside the studio now — it’s empty, no lights on, all locked up. She’s not here. I’ve tried calling her, and her phone’s switched off; Sam’s phone is never off. I think … I’m afraid that something’s happened.’

  My head starts spinning. I lean against a wall for support. The surface is sharp and uneven against my palm. I close my eyes. He sounds smaller, weaker than I’d expected.

  ‘Call the police. Say that you want to speak to Gabriel Birck.’

  ‘Are you coming here?’

  ‘Yes.’ I start running back, back towards the underground. ‘I’m coming.’

  On the underground back towards Södermalm, I stand all the way; I can’t sit down. People stare, but I don’t care. My phone receives a text from Grim.

  3 hours, leo

  till what?

  till you need to find me

  And then he adds:

  till she dies

  XXVI

  Södermalm police get there before me. Once I’m out of the underground and have sprinted across the road, I see
the cars from a distance. Even though I know Sam isn’t there, it’s still as though one of my worst fears has been realised: blue lights striking the walls around S TATTOO, Sam lying there inside, motionless and pale. When I get to the studio I have to look in, just to reassure myself that it’s not true.

  No body. Instead, two police officers are inside, walking around carefully. A forensic technician in blue overalls and purple latex gloves, the same person responsible for the investigation on Chapmansgatan, arrives and screams at them to get out of his crime scene. Those words, hearing them and realising they’re talking about Sam’s studio — that alone is enough to set me off.

  In the corner, a bit inside the cordon, a uniformed officer is standing talking to a short man with stubble for hair and an equally stubbly beard. He’s pale and brown-eyed, with piercings in his eyebrow, nose, and bottom lip. This must be Ricky. When he sees me, he waves me over frantically, and the officer, a young woman I don’t recognise, lets me through.

  ‘Are you Leo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought I recognised you from the pictures,’ he says, but I don’t find out what pictures he’s talking about.

  Ricky is shaken, doesn’t say much other than what he’s told me on the phone. Inside me, the frustration grows: I was here just a few hours ago. I walked right past. I saw her then; everything was fine. She wasn’t hurt. I stop and look around. Was he here then, waiting somewhere? I take another Serax.

  The forensic technician wanders around in there, muttering to himself. A short time later, Birck arrives in an unmarked car. He doesn’t seem surprised to see me.

  ‘There are indications of a struggle, well inside the studio, in the office,’ the technician says. ‘My guess would be that she was in there, he came in through the door, and probably neutralised her somehow.’