The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘By neutralised, you mean that he hit her,’ Birck says, glancing at me. ‘Right?’

  ‘More like electrocuted her. There’s evidence to suggest that it happened very quickly. That’s just a guess, of course,’ he adds.

  ‘Of course,’ Birck says coolly, and turns to me. ‘Sam Falk. You were t—’

  ‘Yes.’ I hold up my phone, show him the texts. ‘Three hours. Or,’ I say, feeling my pulse rise, ‘more like two now.’

  ‘Till what?’

  ‘According to him, till he kills her.’

  ‘But why?’ Birck says, his eyes wide. ‘I don’t understand.’

  I look at the phone in my hand, and show Birck the latest message again, as though that might explain something. He stares at it, bewildered.

  ‘I’ll put out a search for her,’ he says, and gets his phone out. ‘The more people who see this, the more difficult for him to keep her hidden away. The greater the chance we make …’ He turns away. ‘Hello? This is Gabriel Birck.’

  His voice zones out. I try to keep calm, but it’s hard. For the first time in my life, I’m imagining myself physically injuring Grimberg, and the feeling this gives me is warm and pleasurable.

  My phone vibrates:

  keep the police out of it

  I need to sit down, and I flop onto the bonnet of one of the police cars. The bonnet’s warm, and I can hear the engine ticking underneath it. He can’t be serious. This is a game. He can’t be serious.

  impossible, I write, this is too big for that

  ‘Leo,’ someone says, and I feel a hand on my shoulder. ‘Leo.’

  ‘Yes?’

  I look up at Birck. He looks genuinely worried, which surprises me.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ he asks.

  ‘I need to find Tobias Fredriksson.’

  That’s all I can think about right now. If I do, I’m one step closer to Grim. Birck puts his hands on his hips. His hair is ruthlessly slicked back, and his black tie is flapping about in the wind. He’s trying to think. It looks painful.

  ‘You take Fredriksson,’ he says. ‘We’ll take Granlund. We didn’t get there before … well, before all this.’

  ‘I need something to protect myself with.’

  ‘You can go with someone.’

  ‘That’s not enough,’ I attempt. ‘And who am I going to go with? Everyone is busy here. Shall I go with an officer from Västberga or what?’

  He looks away and shrugs his shoulders.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I need something to protect myself with,’ I try again.

  ‘You’ll have to manage without.’

  ‘I can’t. You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Come with me to the car.’

  IT’S A SIMPLE WEAPON, a black Walther pistol. I imagine Birck hides his SIG Sauer somewhere else. I feel the weight of it in my hand, and how my fingers form around it. It makes me weak at the knees. When I rest my finger on the trigger and then squeeze it carefully, feel the resistance of the coil inside, my peripheral vision turns black and I get tunnel vision. I sink to the ground, and hear the sound of something scraping and scuffing, like furniture being dragged across a floor. It’s the clouds, the clouds moving above my head, towards me.

  ‘Leo,’ Birck says.

  It isn’t the clouds scraping across the sky. The sound is my own breathing. I’m hyperventilating. It’s the first time this has happened. The psychologist said that this is what the attacks would feel like when they did come.

  ‘Take it,’ I blurt out, and hold the gun out towards him, but I drop it and it falls to the ground. Birck calmly picks it up and places it on the driver’s seat of his car, leans against the open door, and looks at me.

  ‘Fuck that. You’re not going. You’re staying here. I’m sending a squad car instead.’

  ‘It’s okay. Just give me something other than a pistol.’ My breathing is slowly returning to a rate that would allow me to stand again. I try and stand up. ‘A knife.’

  I slump against the bonnet, coughing.

  ‘Not a chance,’ says Birck.

  ‘It’s a kidnapping now,’ says one of the uniformed officers, who has joined us beside the car. ‘Right?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Birck says.

  ‘What do they want? If I may ask?’ the policeman insists.

  ‘Me,’ I say, still shaking. ‘He wants you kept out of it.’

  ‘We don’t even know where the bastard’s holed up,’ says Birck. ‘Keep communicating with him.’ He stretches out his arm. ‘Give me the phone.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want to write something.’

  ‘Say what you want to write, and I’ll do it.’ I add, sullenly. ‘It’s my phone.’

  Birck sighs, quite understandably. I feel like a child.

  ‘Ask him to send a picture. So we’ve got proof that she’s still alive. And that he’s really the one holding her.’

  I write to Grim, asking for a picture. Birck goes inside the studio. I look up at the sky, the strong sun that’s holding the clouds at a distance. Less than two hours left.

  My phone vibrates, receiving the image. It’s not a picture of Sam. It’s a photo of her tattoos, a sort of Norse medicine wheel with detailed spokes, and a unique pattern on her shoulder. Sam’s the only one with that tattoo.

  EVENTUALLY, I GET HOLD of a uniformed inspector — Dansk, he says his name is — to call for a car for me. In the meantime, I’m allowed past the tape and into Sam’s studio. I pass her chair, the sofa, and walk into her little office. It feels weird being here. Her smell is still lingering, as though she’s just left the room for a moment and will be back any second. An invisible hand squeezes my heart.

  I pull out one of the desk drawers, and there it is, just as I recalled: Sam’s knife. It reminds me of the one I saw Karin holding yesterday — small, a flick-knife, but considerably cheaper. I stuff it in my pocket, and hope that no one’s seen me.

  Someone finally manages to get hold of a car, a boxy, wine-red Volvo, of the kind that twenty years ago earned the titles of World’s Safest and World’s Dullest. It arrives, rolling in from Södermalm Police, and Dansk waves me over. Dansk disappears, the car stops, and an officer climbs out and looks around inquisitively. I get into the car and leave Södermalm, head for Hammarbyhöjden alone, to pay Tobias Fredriksson a visit. Birck’s already left to go to Telefonplan.

  HAMMARBYHÖJDEN. A lone car, a white BMW, goes past at the crossroads. The journey has been nerve-racking. I’m even more out of practice than I thought. I wonder if I’m being followed, if Grim’s got someone watching me. He might well have, but I’m not sure.

  The building in Hammarbyhöjden is four storeys high and is right at the foot of the hill. The entrance door is black, the glass panes slightly tinted. CODE REQUIRED 9PM–6AM, a note on the door informs me. Fredriksson lives on the third floor. I call the lift, and it creaks into life somewhere up there, groaning as it slowly makes its way down. I haven’t got time, so I take the stairs.

  The door is brown, with FREDRIKSSON written in white on a black background across the letterbox. I try the door handle. Locked. There’s less than an hour-and-a-half to go. The door to the flat is an old-fashioned one, and I convince myself that I can get through it. I start fiddling with the knife in the lock, but all I manage to do is scratch lines in the wood around it. I can’t even get the point of the blade into the keyhole. Pathetic. From nowhere the panic arrives, and I start banging on the door. The noise echoes and bounces around me between the cold, hard walls of the stairwell.

  I stop for a moment, and just breathe.

  Behind me, one of the locks is turning. I turn around and see a door being opened, slowly and nervously. An old man’s face peers out.

  ‘Don’t shoot,’ he
says.

  ‘I’m unarmed.’

  He looks at the knife in my hand. I carefully retract the blade and put it in my pocket, look at the door. MALMQVIST. The smell of cigarette smoke escapes from inside.

  ‘I am a police officer,’ I say as slowly as I can. ‘And I need to get in here. Is your name Malmqvist?’

  ‘Lars-Petter Malmqvist. What’s going on?’

  ‘Do you know who lives here?’

  ‘He’s never there, that fellow.’

  ‘So you do know who lives here?’

  ‘Fredriksson, Torbjörn, or something.’ Lars-Petter Malmqvist is grasping the door handle tightly, as though it were the only thing stopping him falling to the ground. ‘Tobias,’ he says. ‘Tobias Fredriksson.’ His expression is stiff, his jaw clenched. He’s scared. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘What else do you know about him?’

  ‘He … he lives alone.’ He squints. ‘Are you really a policeman?’

  ‘I don’t have my badge,’ I say. ‘But I’ve got my driving licence, and I can give you a number to call to confirm that I am a policeman.’

  The man coughs — a deep wheeze.

  ‘I was a squadron leader,’ he says. ‘Air Force. In my day, we learnt to tell who we could trust and who we couldn’t.’

  ‘I understand,’ I say, distracted. I need something to force the door with. ‘Do you have a crowbar?’

  Malmqvist raises an eyebrow. That he doesn’t do more than this, that he doesn’t go back inside and slam and lock the door, is surprising. I wonder if I am as mad as I sound.

  ‘No. But I’ve got a list.’

  ‘A list?’

  ‘These apartments are privately owned,’ he says, as though I had insulted him. ‘Fredriksson refuses to give any personal details. That has troubled the rest of us on the residents’ committee. All we’ve got is an ID number and a telephone number. That’s the bare minimum, you see. But the ID number is wrong, and we’ve left notes about it on many occasions. He must have made a mistake when he was filling in the forms or something.’ He hesitates. ‘Might you be able …?’

  ‘Do you have the phone number?’

  ‘He never answers any calls,’ the man says, and starts retreating into the flat.

  I follow him, unsure what to do next.

  ‘But you can have it, if I can just find that list.’ He stops. ‘He’s a suspect, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ he mutters.

  I stay in the hall, holding my phone in my hand. It rings. It’s Ricky’s number. I don’t answer, because I know what it is he wants to know and I don’t have an answer for him. Lars-Petter Malmqvist goes through the hall, and turns left; after a little while, he returns with a folder. He moves jerkily, as though he could really do with a stick but is too stubborn to admit it.

  ‘Here,’ he says, running his finger across the page inside the folder. ‘O, seven, three, O, six, five, two, five, seven, three.’

  I double-check the number before I save it in my phonebook.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Ask him to contact me. I want the correct ID number.’

  ‘I’ll ask him to call,’ I say, and head back out to the stairwell.

  ‘And by the way, don’t go around waving that about.’ The old man looks at my jacket pocket. ‘People might wonder.’

  I manage a ‘Thank you’, and Lars-Petter Malmqvist closes the door without another word.

  I call the number, hold my breath.

  ‘The number you have dialled is not in use,’ chimes an androgynous voice in my ear.

  It is, of course, a diversion. The number is probably for a pay-as-you-go SIM that might well be no longer in use, which might never, even have been active.

  Birck calls.

  ‘Granlund is a smokescreen,’ he says. ‘We’ve got nothing.’

  ONE HOUR LEFT. I’m standing outside the building where Tobias Fredriksson is officially resident. Fredriksson is a smokescreen, too. Grim has hidden himself too well. He is invisible. It’s over. I’ll never touch him, and I realise that this — powerlessness — is the whole point. It is devastating. His intention was never that I would find him, make it in time. His intention was, in fact, exactly this.

  you win, I text.

  what’s that supposed to mean? comes the reply, as though he’d been waiting for me.

  I’m not going to find you, I write.

  what a shame

  I close my eyes. Grim could be anywhere. He’s not necessarily even in a flat; he might not even be above ground. He could have pulled Sam into one of Stockholm’s countless tunnels. They run under the city, long, deep, and many — and Grim knows it. He’s lived down there himself.

  He could be underground. I open my eyes. Or high above it.

  The water tower.

  At that moment, my phone receives a message, a picture. A severed index finger. Sam’s finger.

  XXVII

  It’s somewhere down the motorway, just after Huddinge, that it pops into my head. SWEDEN MUST DIE, it said on one of Salem’s tunnel walls when I was last there. I wonder if it’s been removed yet. Tags and graffiti have always tended to survive for an unusually long time in Salem.

  I’m driving too fast; the speedo’s red needle hovers around one-forty, one-fifty. I daren’t go any faster. The car would probably cope, but I wouldn’t. I check my watch. More than twenty minutes left. I’m going to make it, and I try and slow down.

  I drive through Rönninge, and before long Salem appears, the place where it all began. A minute or so later, the Triad’s three blocks whizz past. They look untouched, unchanged. Time marches on, inevitably and incessantly, but certain places play tricks on us, make us think for a moment that nothing has changed. From the corner of my eye I spot the window that was once Julia’s, which was opposite mine. I remember all those times I stood by the window just to catch a glimpse of her, how I ducked down when it was Grim and I didn’t want him to suspect anything.

  In the distance, the water tower looms dark grey against the pale sky. I try and spot anything unusual about the tower, but I can’t see anything odd. For a second, I’m afraid I might have got it wrong, that he’s taken her somewhere else entirely. But then, through the trees that encircle the base of the water tower, I catch sight of a dark-blue car, and that’s how I know I’ve come to the right place. It’s been parked outside my flat, waiting in the dark.

  The car, a low-slung Volvo, is parked on the road and looks perfectly innocent. I park further up and walk over to it, peer in through the tinted windows. The car could be straight from the factory and waiting for an owner, considering the complete absence of any personal effects inside it. My phone rings. It’s Birck.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Salem, by the water tower. I think he’s here.’

  ‘Don’t do anything until we get there.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m serious, Leo. Wait till we arrive.’

  ‘I said okay, didn’t I?’

  I hang up. I fish a Serax out of my inside pocket and swallow it, but the pill goes down wrong, gets stuck, forcing me to bend double and cough violently. The pill hits my tooth on the way out and lands on the tarmac in front of me, shiny with spit. I pick it up and feel its slippery surface between my fingers as I swallow it. Then I head for the water tower, one hand squeezing the knife in my jacket pocket.

  The gravel surface around the tower is empty and quiet. I make my way from tree to tree, being careful not to be seen. The only sound is the hum of a fan, or something, on the back of the tower. It takes a while for me to hear it. I’m still used to that sound, which surprises me. I try to remember what the view is like from up there, what you can and can’t see. I squint
up towards the tower’s two ledges, expecting to see Grim up there. He could be watching me right now. But the ledges are empty, and the sight makes my mouth dry: I got it wrong after all. The Volvo is a decoy, or maybe it’s nothing to do with Grim. It could just be a coincidence. Grim and Sam are somewhere else. I squeeze the knife even tighter.

  That’s when I spot it: the rope.

  It starts from the upper ledge, running outwards and upwards, first towards and then onto the overhanging roof of the tower, before disappearing out of sight. He must somehow have secured it to something up there. I wonder why. Instead of scouring the ledges, I’m now studying the mushroom-shaped tower’s roof, looking for some kind of movement. It takes a little while before the shadowy silhouette — a head, shoulders — swishes past. One minute it’s not there, the next minute it is, and then the next minute it’s gone again. I start running towards the tower. When I get to it, I stop, lean against the body of the tower, and listen. Nothing.

  I look at the spiral stairs that run up to the ledges. I remember how every step, no matter how careful, rattles and bangs through the whole ladder, up into the tower. No matter how I do it, I’m going to be heard.

  With quick, light steps, I climb upwards. Halfway up, the exertion makes my thighs burn. I slow down, then stop completely and listen. No sound yet.

  I take another few steps, and soon I’m up on the first of the two ledges. To get up onto the upper ledge I have to get out on the ladder and climb up the outside. If I lose my grip I’ll fall to the ground. I’m now above the trees, and I remember how, when the clouds hung really low in the autumn, you could sometimes convince yourself that you could touch the sky. I take a step out and stand on the ledge’s handrail, holding tightly onto the rungs of the ladder. I put one foot on the bottom rung, then the other, and I’m hanging on an old iron ladder on the outside of a water tower. Only after climbing a couple of rungs do I notice that I’m holding my breath, and breathe out. I haul myself up onto the second ledge, and then I am in exactly the same spot, the exact same pose, as I was that first time I met Grim. I now realise for the first time just how much braver I was when I was sixteen.