by Alex Archer
“A few days?”
“He’s been watching. Making sure you stay safe.”
“Well, he’s done a rotten job of it, all things considered.”
“It could have been worse. Believe me. Anyway, he was primarily interested in the sword, or rather a curse surrounding it.”
“A curse?”
“Yeah...”
“Don’t make me drag it out of you, Garin. I’m really not in the mood.”
“He didn’t have the time to go into it. He was tailing Johan, making sure he got home safe, but while he was up in Stockholm he found a book about evil that dates back centuries. Nægling’s mentioned in there. Though instead of the biter, or nailer, it’s referred to as Grendel’s Curse. The blade came from the monster’s treasure horde. According to the book it’s tainted, and Roux doesn’t want us taking any chances.”
“So basically he’s saying the world will be a better place without Nægling.”
“Yes.”
“But he doesn’t know why?”
“Not that he told me.”
“Why do I still get the feeling you’re not telling me everything?”
“Because you’ve been hanging around the old man too long, Annja.”
“We’ll go after Thorssen. Toe-to-toe.”
“Always going to be easier to find a politician than it is a hit man. One craves attention, the other is pretty much invisible. And assuming the killer did his job, Thorssen’s already got the sword and has had it for days.”
“Biding his time for the big reveal.”
“In the public eye, right when people are gearing up to cast their all-important votes,” Garin agreed. “So cynical for one so young.”
“You don’t need to be five hundred years old to know how these things work,” Annja said. “There’s nothing else on this we need, is there?”
“Short of a note saying, ‘Karl Thorssen killed me,’ I’d say we’ve got all we’re going to get off it.”
“Then I’d like to give the laptop back to his mother. There’s stuff on here that might give her some sort of closure.”
Annja emailed the photographs to herself in case she should need to use them, then found her phone in the pile of possessions she’d left on her new bed. She was surprised to see that there were five missed calls from the woman.
She played back the messages before making the call. Una sounded calm at first. She asked to meet up for coffee. Then she asked if Annja had any news about the laptop. The third message was apologetic but growing more insistent. By the time Annja reached the final message the woman was emotional, telling her that she couldn’t just sit back and let that bastard Thorssen get away with her son’s death.
Annja tried phoning her, but the call went straight to voice mail.
She checked the time of the last message; it was almost an hour earlier.
“I think things just stepped up to Defcon 1.”
“Not good news, I take it?” Garin asked, slouched on the sofa and watching something on the screen of a tablet PC.
“Lars’s mother has gone after Thorssen.”
“Obviously she has. Why would life ever be simple? And there was me dreading having words with the lovely Lovisa on our way out.”
“To blow off another date?”
“Nope. Not even I am that callous. No, I want to find out why your room was just cleaned. Though ‘cleaned’ is an interesting definition of the word. As maids go, this one was hardly exacting.” He pressed the screen a couple of times, pinching the picture to zoom in, before he handed the tablet to Annja. The maid was certainly taking a good look around, but she wasn’t doing a great deal of cleaning.
But then, why would she be?
She wasn’t a maid.
“What are you really doing there, Inge?” Annja said, watching Lars Mortensen’s student assistant rifle her room.
35
Tostig sat in his apartment, a cold beer on the table in front of him, an old jazz CD playing on the sound system. The television was on, sound turned down. He was waiting for confirmation that the bodies of two people had been recovered from the fire out at Saint Peter’s on the Lake.
He rarely drank, but the taste of smoke was proving hard to get rid of.
The pictures on the silent screen showed that the fire had spread into the trees. The scrolling banner said nothing about corpses, only that the fire crews were having trouble dealing with it. The church itself had been completely destroyed an hour earlier.
The cameraman focused on a nearby car that had been damaged in the spread of the fire. It was Creed’s rental car. That, to Tostig, was proof enough Annja Creed and her cameraman hadn’t escaped.
He’d recovered his insurance policy from beneath the floorboards in the bedroom. There was nothing in the apartment he couldn’t live without when he began his new life. Nothing he felt any sentimental attachment to. Tostig wasn’t that sort of man.
He had enough money in the envelope to run for a decade without needing to work. He maintained a simple lifestyle. He had no need of luxury. He didn’t crave pretty things. He could happily live like a monk.
And yet he was hesitating.
He should have been out of the door as soon as he saw the job was done. But he was here, looking at the television screen, waiting for something to change. He raised the glass of beer to his lips, but didn’t taste anything.
Without the Serb to watch his back, he’d been cutting corners, taking the path of least resistance. That meant he was taking too many risks at a time when his employer was asking more and more from him. Thorssen said he wanted the old woman dealt with. Leaned on. That was Thorssen-speak for taken out, no matter how prettily he couched it. He knew the man. He was out of control, seeing enemies at every corner.
Tostig put the empty bottle on the table.
He was done.
Out.
He’d known it since he pried up the floorboards—before that, since he’d torched the church. There was nothing Thorssen could say or do to him. He was washing his hands of the man. Let him find another idiot to do his dirty work.
He picked up the phone and called the one number stored in its memory.
Even as he dialed he knew he should hang up. Just hang up and run. But a voice on the other end of the line growled, “Yes?”
There was still an etiquette to this, Tostig reminded himself. A way of doing things. He needed to sign off on the job. He wanted it done in person, not over the phone. He wanted to see Thorssen’s expression when he told him. It was how he could be sure that he was getting his message across, ending their arrangement without him becoming Thorssen’s next enemy.
The voice sounded raw, animalistic, unlike Karl Thorssen’s and yet still unmistakably the politician’s.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Do we? I don’t think we’ve got anything to talk about. Unless this is about money? Are you getting greedy, Tostig?”
“No, it’s not about money,” Tostig replied. “I trust you to transfer the final payment for the Creed woman.”
“Then what is it about?”
“Face-to-face,” Tostig said.
“Meet me at the station tonight at nine. I have another job for you. One last one.”
“Fine,” Tostig said, agreeing to the meeting even though everything was far from fine.
He ended the call and settled back into his chair, as Thorssen’s face filled the screen once more. Murders aside, the politician had been the main topic of conversation for the past few days as public support for him reached an all-time high. People were ready for a charismatic leader. They were ready for his message, were naive enough to swallow his rhetoric. It struck a chord with the dissatisfied and his supporters were milking the connection between the attempted assassination and his political enemies who would silence him.
They were sheep being led to the slaughter by media spin.
The picture on the screen changed to show a blackened shop front that had been ravage
d by flame.
Tostig didn’t need to be able to see the name on the shop front to recognize the small Asian supermarket just a few streets away from where he now sat.
He had heard the fire engine earlier. It always happened. People with their own agendas took advantage of chaos. He’d provided the chaos. There would be riots on the streets tonight, he thought, knowing full well Thorssen had sown the seeds for it. Civic unrest, they called it.
That shop fire had claimed the lives of an entire family. Now there was no family. Three generations wiped out in under an hour. They’d been trapped in the apartment above the store.
This was what Thorssen’s rhetoric inspired.
This was nothing short of pure hatred spilling out across the city, fanning the flames every bit as much as the oxygen in the cool, clean night air.
While he wasn’t one for long goodbyes, he took a moment to look around his apartment. It had been his haven for so many years, yet the rooms held no real sentimental value for him; he’d never shared this space with anyone, no lovers, no friends. He’d never had a visitor up here.
There were no memories that couldn’t be abandoned.
36
Karl Thorssen’s mother was waiting for him when he returned home.
She stood in the hallway outside his den, clearly agitated.
“Move, Mother,” he barked, the need to be back with the sword burning inside him.
“I thought something had happened to you. I was worried. I wanted to see if you were all right, but the door was locked.”
“I’m fine,” he said. The words were meant to be reassuring, but he had no control over his voice; the modulation was all wrong, the anger inside him still seething away. He placed a hand on her upper arm. She flinched away from his touch.
“You promised you’d get that seen to,” she said, pointing at his damaged and swollen hand. It was his turn to pull away.
“And I will. But not yet. Don’t treat me like a child, Mother.”
“But you are a child, Kalle.” She used the endearment, Kalle, rather than Karl. He hated that, too. It was all meant to remind him where he came from, that he was here because of her, that it was his duty to please her, to make her proud.
“Yes, Mother,” he said, moving the hand from her arm to touch her cheek. “But I’m also on the threshold of being elected into the Riksdag, and I’m close to revealing one of the greatest archaeological finds of our time, so I’m a rather busy child.” He made a face, willing her to leave him alone.
His cell phone rang.
She gave him a weak smile, and turned to leave.
Ensconced in his den, Thorssen picked up the sword.
He closed his eyes, feeling the static charge ripple through his skin.
In his mind’s eye he again killed the man who’d restored the hilt, hacking and slashing until his entire body glistened with a sheen of sweat. His shirt clung to him. His breath came hard and fast, as though recovering from the exertion rather than the memory.
But it wasn’t just a memory, was it?
It was in him. Alive.
Unlike the smith.
“What’s happened to your back?”
He’d been so eager to get to the sword he’d forgotten to close the door.
His mother stood in the doorway with a cup of coffee clutched in her hands.
He laid the sword down on the floor, and ushered her away from the door. She couldn’t come into the room, not with arterial spray of the nurse’s blood smeared across the far wall.
“Nothing,” he replied, closing the door behind him.
“You’ve been bleeding? It looks awful. Have you been in an accident?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about, Mother.” He could feel the swelling beneath his shoulders. The joints burned as he moved. “I’ll shower and clean up. It’s probably nothing.” He kissed her on the cheek and took the coffee from her, giving her no chance to fuss.
In the bathroom he stripped naked and stood before the mirror, looking for the first time at his body’s transformation; the fat had gone. Every muscle was clearly cut. He hardly recognized himself. He turned slightly, angling his shoulder toward the mirror, trying to see what had caused the smear of blood that had soaked into his shirt.
There was a wound across his back, running along the line of his shoulder blade.
He ran his fingers along the edge of the wound that he could reach, and just like the cut in his hand he could feel a swelling pushing at the edges, ripping his skin oh-so-slowly apart.
Thorssen picked up the shirt he had abandoned earlier. It bore the same across-the-shoulders bloodstain. He hadn’t noticed it when he’d cast it aside, thinking all the blood had belonged to the nurse. The material was still intact, the seams secure.
He remembered that sound, that sensation, when he’d thought his shirt had torn during her slaughter, and realized that it hadn’t been the shirt ripping at all. His skin had torn apart.
Something was growing inside him.
Something that was threatening to burst out of him...
Like a snake shedding its skin...
Like a moth emerging from a cocoon.
He was not afraid.
He was afraid.
Was.
Not.
The change was making him a stronger man.
But it was making him less of a man, too.
Less of himself.
He stared hard at his naked body, stunned by the definition his muscles had developed.
It was giving him the strength to become what he needed to be.
The sword.
Nægling.
This metamorphosis was connected to the sword.
It could not happen soon enough for him.
Time crawled. There was no point leaving the house. He would make Tostig wait. It would unnerve him. Keep him wondering what this mysterious last job might be.
It was an easy one: to die.
Thorssen ran a steaming hot shower, washing away the sweat that had turned cold on his skin. The pressure from the needles of hot water was enough to sluice away scraps of skin from around the open sore on his back.
He soaped his chest, feeling the flesh bubble as his hands passed over it. The skin was raw, hot, as though drawn tight over a furnace. The soap shriveled and shrank away before it could lather up.
He sensed the change was almost complete.
He was beginning to grasp—or perhaps it was remember—what was happening.
He would emerge into the light.
People would remember him.
People would know who was the rightful owner of Nægling.
37
Tostig had been waiting for almost twenty minutes when Thorssen’s car finally drew into the drop-off zone outside the station.
He did not like being kept waiting, but masked his impatience. He had wanted this. It was public, too. With so many people around, a conversation between two people wouldn’t stand out.
The new arrival pulled alongside him and slowly lowered the driver’s side window.
“Not here,” said Thorssen. “Follow me.”
The window closed again before the assassin could respond. The car was driven slowly away, making it easy for him to follow. Thorssen was reinforcing the nature of their relationship—the politician leading, Tostig a follower, as it had always been.
There was no need for it.
Everything he had to say could have been said without either of them getting out of their cars. It would have taken less than a minute to deliver his message. But, oh, no, he was being led to some remote—unknown—destination simply because Karl Thorssen wanted to set the agenda.
He would be glad when this was over.
It only took a couple of minutes before Thorssen turned off the road and drove down a lane to a row of lockup garages that had seen better days.
Despite the hour it was still bright daylight—as bright as it had been at noon.
Thorssen brought
his car to a halt halfway along the row.
Tostig felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, offering a familiar warning.
He was never comfortable being led anywhere. Being taken to strange ground went beyond uncomfortable. He surveyed the alleyway, the green-painted doors, the buildings overlooking the area, the railway arches, anywhere and everywhere that might be useful or shelter a threat. He swung his car alongside Thorssen’s familiar Tesla, and killed the engine. Thorssen did likewise, then clambered out of his car.
The assassin hadn’t realized how much his employer had beefed up since he’d been in his service. The man looked like he had been hitting the gym hard.
Tostig had never been afraid of Thorssen. He had no intention of being afraid of him now, either.
Tostig rolled down his window again.
“Why here?” he asked.
“Because you wanted to talk. This gives us some privacy. Out. I need you to see something.” Thorssen turned his back on him, fishing keys out of his pocket, and went to unlock one of the garages.
The assassin got out of his car, but left the door open.
“What do you want to show me?”
“In a minute, Tostig. You said you wanted to talk to me? Obviously you have something on your mind?”
Tostig had rehearsed this in his head for the past hour, but now he was unsure. Thorssen had such a powerful presence, he was magnetic. It was impossible to ignore him. But there was more to him now, he was more...physical.
“I’m leaving,” he said.
Thorssen stopped what he was doing and frowned at the assassin.
“Leaving? As in walking away? The job isn’t done yet. I say when you go.”
Thorssen faced the garage door and pushed it up to reveal a hatchback on the other side. He stepped forward and popped the lock on the rear door and opened it. He moved so that Tostig could see the roll of carpet inside.
“I’ve got no intention of making a scene. I’ve honored our agreement. Everyone who threatened your campaign is gone. We can part now, never hear from each other again. Job done, everyone happy.”
Thorssen tugged back the fold of carpet to expose the body of a woman.