by Samuel Bjork
‘He said that?’ Skunk said.
‘I thought you were the villain? And that Gabriel is the one helping us?’
‘That depends on how you look at it.’
‘Of course.’ Mia smiled, taking a sip of her Guinness.
‘I don’t normally do this.’
Skunk took off his jacket and hung it carefully on the back of the chair.
‘So you say. Why are you here, then?’
‘Let’s call it conscience. Or, more accurately, curiosity.’
‘Curiosity?’
Skunk smiled. ‘You’re exactly how I imagined you.’
‘And how is that?’
Her head was starting to spin now. Mia had had quite a lot to drink, but she tried to stay in control.
‘Why don’t we stop pussyfooting around and get straight to the point?’
Skunk looked at her, and again Mia had the feeling that, if she had not been working, if the young man who had turned up out of the blue had not been absolutely crucial to the case she was investigating, then she might …
She dropped the thought.
‘Absolutely.’ Mia nodded.
‘Two things,’ he said, taking another sip of his beer.
‘Yes?’
‘One,’ he said, looking at her, ‘the location of the server.’
‘Where you found the film?’
‘Yes, but first you need to accept the following,’ Skunk said. ‘You know nothing and can do nothing.’
‘Me?’
‘I’m not saying this in order to patronize you, but this is technical. I know that you’re the best in your field, but let us say for a moment that I’m the best in mine, OK?’
‘Gabriel is very good,’ Mia said.
Skunk smiled. ‘Yes, Gabriel is good, but he’s way too nice. Do you know what a white hacker is?’
‘No,’ Mia said.
‘OK. Then you probably won’t know what a black hacker is?’
Mia shook her head again.
‘OK,’ Skunk said, draining his glass and looking at her. ‘How about another round?’
Mia nodded, and Skunk summoned the waiter.
‘OK, so where did you find the film? Where was the server?’ she asked.
‘I can’t say for sure,’ Skunk said, emptying his shot glass.
‘Why not?’
‘Because they always hide them. How technical are you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How much do you know about computers?’
Mia decided to stop drinking.
‘OK, let’s pretend I know nothing. How would you explain it to me?’
‘The server where I found the film,’ Skunk said, taking another sip of his beer, ‘let’s say it was in Russia.’
‘OK?’
‘But it wasn’t,’ the young man with the stripy hair smiled again, and she could see now that he was a little tipsy.
‘Do you know anything about mirrors? About ghost IP addresses?’
‘Nothing.’ Mia smiled now, focusing on her pen and notepad.
‘You can hide servers.’
‘So you don’t know where you found it?’
‘Yes and no,’ he said, taking another sip of his beer. ‘No matter how hard they try to hide them, they leave behind traces, and what little I’ve found in Norway came from a house in St Hanshaugen.’
‘This server was there, in St Hanshaugen? That was where you found the film?’
Mia left her drinks untouched on the table.
‘Ullevålsveien number 61. I’ve checked it out. It used to be a bookshop.’
‘A bookshop?’
‘Second-hand.’
‘But now?’ Mia prompted him.
‘Yes, exactly, it used to be, but there’s nothing there now.’
‘You’ve checked?’
‘Yes, they used to sell antiquarian books. Old books. Books on the occult, as far as I could gather. You know, Satanists, that kind of stuff?’
He smiled archly across his beer glass.
‘But it has closed? There is nothing there now?’
‘Nothing at all.’ Skunk nodded slowly. ‘But …’
‘Yes?’
‘The evidence wasn’t clear. It could just be yet another decoy.’
‘OK,’ Mia said. ‘And the second thing?’
‘What?’
‘You said there were two things, one and two?’
Skunk put down his glass on the white tablecloth. ‘Yes. And that’s the worst part.’
Mia did not know what to think. Skunk seemed quite drunk, although he had only had a couple of drinks.
‘What is?’
‘You’ve seen the film, right?’ he said, leaning across the table towards her. ‘Have you – I mean, the police – found out what it’s really about?’
‘What do you mean, what the film is really about?’
‘You haven’t, have you?’
‘I don’t know. What if we haven’t?’
The waiter came over to them again. It was last orders, but Mia waved him away.
‘The film – the girl in the wheel – have you seen it?’
Her image of the hacker with the stripy hair on the other side of the table was starting to swim, and Mia was glad she had stopped drinking.
‘Of course. So what’s the second thing?’ Mia said as the lights in the bar were turned on around them.
‘What?’ Skunk said, his eyes glassy now.
‘Number two?’ Mia prompted him. ‘If the server was number one, then what’s number two?’
Skunk put down his empty glass on the white tablecloth in front of her.
‘It’s not a film,’ he said with swimming eyes.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s not a film,’ Skunk said again, looking at her.
‘Of course it’s a film.’
‘No. It’s an extract from a live feed.’
‘What?’
‘A live feed. It’s live.’
‘What are you saying?’
Skunk raised his gaze from the table and looked at her gravely. ‘They streamed her on the Internet. Exhibited her.’
‘What?’ Mia exclaimed, as the waiter came over and told them it was closing time, that they had to leave.
‘It’s live,’ Skunk said again. ‘Someone filmed her over a period of time, streaming her live on the Net, probably making money in the process.’
‘But how?’ Mia asked, as the bouncer made his way towards them.
‘Time to go home,’ the bouncer announced with a smile.
‘How will I find you?’ Mia said when they were out on the cold pavement in Hegdehaugsveien.
The young hacker put on his jacket and pulled his beanie over his ears as a vacant taxi pulled up in the street in front of them.
‘You won’t,’ Skunk said, and winked at her.
‘Yes, but …?’
‘Tøyen,’ the hacker said to the cab driver before getting into the back and shutting the car door behind him.
Chapter 51
Hugo Lang, a sixty-two-year-old investment banker, stepped down from his private jet at Zurich Airport and into the white Bentley waiting to take him home. The drive to his palatial home on the shore of Lake Pfäffikersee took just over twenty minutes, and he did not exchange one word with the driver. The ageing Swiss never spoke to the staff.
Calling Hugo Lang a banker was possibly an exaggeration, because all his wealth was inherited and he had never done a day’s work in his life. His father, the steel magnate Ernst Lang, had died seven years earlier; he had been one of Europe’s most successful businessmen, and his son might have been expected to carry on the business, but Hugo had sold all the companies he had inherited. He had kept the chateau in Switzerland, an estate on Bermuda, flats in New York, Paris, London and Hong Kong, but, otherwise, the one-hundred-year-old family business, LangKrupp, and all its subsidiaries were sold to new owners. Those who had been left nothing – uncles, aunts and other peripheral family members
– had done what they could to stop him; the media had been full of accounts of horrified relatives going through the courts to prevent the sale – but he had pushed through with it all the same. Hugo Lang did not care what other people thought.
He let his driver open the door for him, and entered the chateau without looking at the staff taking his jacket and hat. He had more important things to think about, and today felt like a big day.
Hugo Lang had always been a collector, but it was not until his father died and left him all his money that he was finally in a position to buy anything he liked. His father had been a miser, but that no longer mattered. His mother had died when he was fourteen, but Hugo had never missed her. Ernst Lang had died from leukaemia, and been on his deathbed at the chateau for a long time; a new wing had been built purely for him, practically a small hospital, and Hugo had visited from time to time, not because he wanted to or in any way felt sorry for the old man, merely to ensure that the old fool did not suddenly get it into his head to leave his money to someone else.
Following the death of his father, he had got rid of everything that reminded him of his parents. Photographs, clothing, portraits on the wall. He saw no reason to keep them; he needed space for his collections.
He kept his car collection in several garages in the courtyard. He had lost count of how many he had, and he rarely drove them, but he liked owning them, touching them, looking at them, knowing that they were his. His collection included a Hennessey Venom GT, a Porsche 918 Spyder, a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, an Aston Martin Vanquish, a Mercedes CL65 AMG Coupe, and usually this would be his first activity after a trip abroad, inspecting his garages, running his hand over some of the cars, but not today.
Today he had more important things on his mind.
He went straight to his study, sat down in the deep office chair, turned on his computer and felt his heart pound under his shirt. This was a rare occurrence. Hugo Lang never got very excited about anything. When he made a new acquisition, he would occasionally feel a brief flutter of excitement. Like the time he had bought what had then been the world’s most expensive stamp, an 1885 Swedish yellow three-shilling stamp, the only one of its kind in the whole world. He had bid on it in secret, and bought it for just under twenty-three million Swiss francs, and at the time he had felt a kind of quiver in his body, but it had quickly passed. He had bought expensive wine the next day, a case of Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru in order to revive the feeling, but it had made no noticeable difference.
But this. This was like nothing he had ever known.
He had never felt such pleasure. Maybe when he saw the sums in his bank accounts after all the companies had been sold, but no, not even that could compare to this.
Hugo Lang got up, made the long walk across the Italian marble floor to make sure that the door was locked, then sat down in front of his computer again. His fingers trembled as he typed the secret Internet address on the keyboard.
It was more than one week since the Norwegian girl in the wheel had disappeared from his screen, and he was missing her already. He had had his bed moved into his study, had all his meals served in here, so that they could be together all the time. At night when he could not sleep, he might walk up to her and touch the screen. It was so good to have her so near, but now she was gone, and he had not been himself since.
Hugo Lang had seen such things before. If you had money and you knew where to go, there was always something to watch, but it was rarely real. He could smell a fake from miles away, but this?
No, this was real.
He had found the advert a few months earlier in the darkest part of the Internet, and what he had liked about it was its exclusivity.
Five highest bidders only.
Only five people. Hugo Lang did not like sharing, and he would have liked to have had her all to himself, but five was not bad, four others he could cope with, as long as he did not know who they were, which of course he did not; nor did they know his identity.
She was gone now, and he missed her, but today a new girl would be chosen, and the sixty-two-year-old’s fingers were shaking so badly he could barely hit the right keys on the keyboard. He leaned back in the big leather chair with a smile on his lips, feeling his heart beat even faster as the webpage opened on the large screen on the wall in front of him.
An almost black page, a short text in English.
Who do you want?
Who will be the chosen one?
And two photographs below. Two Norwegian girls.
He was so excited he could barely sit still in his chair. His forehead was clammy with sweat and he kept having to wipe his glasses on his shirt in order to be able to read the names below the photographs.
Two Norwegian girls. One blonde. The other dark.
Isabella Jung.
Miriam Munch.
He had missed her so much, but soon there would be a new one. One of these two girls, and Hugo Lang decided that he already liked them both.
Hugo Lang thought about it for a moment before he clicked on one picture, closed the webpage, got up from his chair and went to his bedroom to change for dinner.
SIX
Chapter 52
Mia Krüger pulled up in front of the white cottage with a feeling that something was wrong. The unexpected meeting last night. This hacker, Skunk, who, according to Gabriel, hated the police, had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Even charmed her. But on her way home and, later, on the sofa with her notes, she had started to question his motives. Why had he appeared in the first place? How had he found her? What did they really know about this young man? Skunk? They did not even know his real name. He had discovered this film. By accident? On some mysterious server? Which now for some reason was suddenly gone? She shook her head at herself and found her mobile in her pocket.
‘Ludvig Grønlie.’
‘Yes, hi, it’s Mia.’
‘Hi, Mia, where are you?’
Mia looked at the white cottage in front of her. The back of beyond would be the kindest way to describe it; she had spent so long finding the place that it had started to grow dark. She had been on the verge of giving up when she finally spotted the small access road, which had been so well hidden it was tempting to think someone had done it on purpose.
‘In the countryside,’ Mia said.
‘Where?’
‘I’m just checking something. Would you do me a favour?’
‘Of course,’ Ludvig said. ‘What do you need?’
‘I need some information about an address.’
‘Sure. Which one?’
‘Ullevålsveien number 61.’
‘Right, what do you want to know?’
‘Everything you can find.’
‘OK?’ Grønlie hesitated. ‘It would be a bit easier if I knew what I was looking for?’
‘Sorry. The address only cropped up yesterday. I’m mostly interested in anything about a bookshop selling old books on the ground floor of the building.’
‘An antiquarian bookshop?’
‘Exactly.’ Mia rang off, put her phone in her pocket and got out of the car.
The small white cottage stood facing her. There was a red outhouse on one side of the yard. Otherwise, just forest. Dense trees covered in hoar frost. And not a sound to be heard anywhere. Who could live in a place like this? There was nothing here. Mia wondered if she should ring the doorbell, although she knew there would be no one at home.
Jim Fuglesang.
The man with the white bicycle helmet.
This was where he lived. In the small white cottage surrounded by tall trees in the middle of nowhere; Mia thought it looked like something out of a horror film.
Claustrophobic.
It was deserted.
Not a sound.
A man with mental-health issues. Who had been readmitted to Dikemark Hospital. Impossible to interview. When they had first spoken to him, she had not believed that he was the man they were looking for. An impromptu confession, a mentally
unstable person who thought that he had committed a murder. Nothing they could take seriously, of course, so they had released him immediately and she had dismissed him from her mind, but now she was having second thoughts. What would she have done if she had been the killer? If she wanted to avoid capture, how would she have done it, if not this way? Who would suspect an idiot in a white bicycle helmet who pretends that he doesn’t know what he is talking about? And Skunk was similar. Who would suspect a young hacker who loathes the police but then suddenly turns up to help them because his ‘conscience’ tells him he must?
A sick bastard.
Mia looked for the doorbell but found none so she knocked on the door instead. No one at home. As she had expected. Jim Fuglesang was drugged up to the eyeballs at Dikemark, probably still wearing his bicycle helmet, but even so she raised her fist and knocked on the white door a second time.
Who would want to live out here?
What kind of person would choose to live like this?
Mia stuffed her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, waited a few minutes until she had established that no one was coming, then calmly walked around the house, across the frosty grass, and stepped up on the veranda on the other side.
It did not take her long to open the door. She slipped softly inside and uttered a faint Hello, is anyone here?, but there was no reply. Well, at least that part was true. Jim Fuglesang really must be locked up at Dikemark. She had the whole house to herself. Entering without a warrant was illegal, of course, but Mia Krüger had stopped caring about such formalities a long time ago. Munch obviously had to follow the rules, apply for search warrants, which, given the hopeless bureaucracy in which they were mired, always took days, or it did when they had no specific grounds; they might have in this case, but she did not have the patience to wait. Mia walked across the living-room floor and found a light switch on a wall.
The room that appeared was pretty much as she had expected. Tidy. Clean. Clearly the home of a single man. It did not take Mia long to find what she was looking for. She quickly located the photo albums, neatly lined up in the bookcase facing her and, as she had also hoped, in meticulous chronological order.