Henke was already under investigation for terrorist activities, and if Thomas identified him as the attacker, his own actions outside the Grand would look almost praiseworthy.
Okay, so he may have committed a weapons offense, but at least he had been trying to combat terrorism.
And he probably would have succeeded, if only the terrorist’s sister hadn’t got involved . . .
And hey, presto, she was suddenly the scapegoat . . . !
So who had Thomas talked to up in the custody unit?
If it had all happened the way she imagined, there was really only one suspect.
She put her hands-free earpiece in, pressed one of the speed-dial buttons, and waited a few moments.
“Norrmalm custody unit, Myhrén.”
“Hi, Myhrén, this is Rebecca Normén,” she said in an exaggeratedly cheery voice.
“Hi, Normén, it’s been a while. What can a simple uniform do to help the Security Police?” the man at the other end chuckled. He evidently hadn’t heard that she’d left, which suited her fine.
“Just a quick question, Myhrén . . .” she began.
“Shoot!”
“You brought in a guy from the Grand Hotel this morning. A foreigner suspected of weapons offenses . . . ?”
“Hmm.”
She heard him rustling some papers in the background.
“Who was it who interviewed him, do you know?”
“Hold on!”
More rustling. Then he came back.
“Right, Normén. He was brought in by one of our patrols and was going to be interviewed by Bengtsson, who was on call this morning. But he insisted on talking to a different colleague. One of yours, to be more precise . . .”
“Do you know who?”
She was unconsciously holding her breath.
“Er, yes, I’ve got his name here. He signed in on the register . . . Superintendent Eskil Stigsson.”
♦ ♦ ♦
It hadn’t been easy getting up there.
First he’d had to circle around a load of little streets. Then clamber over a few fences and walls until he was in the right courtyard.
And now he was paying the price of his exertions. His body ached, his T-shirt was wet with sweat, and even though he’d been sitting in the alcove by the window for a fair while, his pulse didn’t seem to want to return to normal.
He wondered whether it was time to take one of the horse tablets that Doctor Nora had given him. But stupidly he hadn’t brought anything to drink, and there was no way he was going to swallow one of those depth charges dry. It would have to wait . . .
At least his lookout post was perfect. He was in the building diagonally opposite his own, at the very top of the stairwell, with a full view of everything going on down in the street.
The cop van was still there, but both the driver and the plainclothes cop were gone. Probably hiding in the back.
They were no ordinary surveillance team, he’d already worked that much out. The guy with the earpiece reeked of cop too much, as did the black minivan. They were more like uniformed gorillas who’d got dressed up in civvies.
Which could really only mean one thing.
At that moment another similar minivan slowly rolled up from Hornsgatan. It stopped outside his door. The man in the passenger seat raised a microphone to his mouth. The next moment the street was crawling with cops.
The door to his building was thrown open and a gang of the heaviest orcs stormed inside. A couple of them were carrying something that looked like a battering ram.
It wouldn’t take them long to smash down his already badly damaged front door.
Besides, they’d already practiced once.
Yet another weird déjà vu to add to the collection . . .
His bladder was so full he could hardly sit still, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the scene below. This time they hadn’t been so ambitious with their roadblocks and weren’t shutting down the whole district.
A patrol car with flashing blue lights was blocking the street farther down, and he could see people already starting to gather behind the cordon. Then he saw the roller blind in one of his windows sway.
Fucking good job he hadn’t bothered to do any cleaning . . .
So what the hell did the cops think they were going to find this time? It didn’t take him long to realize . . .
Him, of course!
♦ ♦ ♦
Stigsson could go to hell.
She was going to get hold of Henke even if it meant she had to kick his door in. She had to make sure he was okay, that Thomas’s story was all nonsense. And that he was keeping well away from the Game, the Event, the Circus, or whatever else it was called . . .
She changed lanes, put her foot down, and overtook three cars, only to pull back quickly into the right-hand lane and take the next exit.
The car behind her flashed its headlights at her and she responded by sticking her middle finger up over her right shoulder.
She turned into Hornsgatan and accelerated to get over the hill.
Then she saw the flashing blue lights ahead and slowed down.
A patrol car was parked at the junction, and two uniformed colleagues were busy setting up a cordon across the entrance to Maria Trappgränd.
She crawled past, trying to see what had happened. But all she managed to see was that the door to Henke’s building was open. The nausea she had felt earlier that day suddenly flared up again, and she hurriedly found a free parking space a bit farther down the road.
As luck would have it, one of the officers by the cordon recognized her and, without a single word from her, held the plastic tape up to let her through.
She found the Rapid-Response Unit in the stairwell. Six men, all dressed in civilian clothing, but they might as well have been in uniform. The holsters and bulletproof vests they were wearing on top of their clothes didn’t exactly make a discreet impression . . .
A couple of the officers nodded to her, but it wasn’t until she almost reached the flat that she realized which unit they were from. He was standing in the hall with his back to the doorway, which gave her a few moments to compose herself.
“Hello, Tobbe,” she said as calmly as she could.
He jerked and spun around.
“Er, h-hi Becca . . .” he said, apparently not sure where he should look. “I was just wondering if I should call you . . .”
“Were you? What for?” She stepped carefully over the remains of the front door.
The hall was so cramped that he had to press back against the wall so she could squeeze past.
The proximity seemed to make him even more nervous.
“The flat. I mean, we used to . . .”
“. . . meet here,” she concluded.
She turned around and looked at him. He was still pretty good looking, and for a brief moment she could almost feel the physical attraction again. But only almost . . .
There was the sound of steps from the stairs, it sounded as though several people were on their way up.
“If I were you, Tobbe, I’d stay really fucking quiet about that,” she said in a low voice.
A pair of forensics officers in overalls, each carrying a large case of tools, appeared in the doorway.
“All clear?” one of them asked.
“Sure, go ahead.” Tobbe Lundh gestured in at the flat.
The two men squeezed past and a short while later their cameras began to whirr.
“What was the thinking behind all this?” she said, leaning forward so the forensics officers wouldn’t hear her. Tobbe looked quickly over his shoulder.
“There’s a warrant out for your brother, suspicion of attempted murder.”
“What?!”
He nodded and glanced over his shoulder again.
“I don’t know any more than that, the Security Police are in charge of the investigation, we’re just helping out. They’ll be here any moment. Maybe you should go . . . ?”
She shook her head
.
No, she had no intention of going anywhere. She wanted to get to the bottom of this, once and for all. Henke might be an idiot, a gullible fool with an oversized ego and zero ability to control his impulses. But he was no murderer, not even a failed murderer.
Unless . . . ?
In purely theoretical terms, perhaps he was, but Dag had been a different matter.
An entirely different matter . . .
She took a couple of steps further into the flat. God, the state it was in! The flat was usually untidy, but this gave the word an entirely new dimension. There were piles of newspapers all over the place in the hall and kitchen, and the stench of cigarette smoke and garbage was so strong it made her eyes sting.
All the roller blinds were down, and the only light came from the bare bulb in the ceiling.
The walls looked odd, all stripy, and it took her a moment to realize what the dark patches were. Duct tape. It looked as if he’d taped over all the cracks and sockets.
She carried on into the living room. Same thing there, piles of papers, overflowing improvised ashtrays, and all cracks and outlets completely covered.
“Must have used at least ten rolls,” one of the forensics officers concluded, taking a few shots with his camera.
“Poor guy was probably worried about radiation . . .”
He zoomed in on one of the covered electrical outlets and took another series of pictures.
“Either that or he was being bugged by aliens,” the other one said with a grin as he searched his box of tools.
“I’ll take the bedroom,” he said to his colleague, then vanished through the door.
She heard voices in the hall, several of them familiar, and took a deep breath.
Stigsson came through the door and behind him she could make out Runeberg’s great bulk.
“So you’re here already,” Stigsson said drily. He didn’t even sound surprised. “Have you touched anything in here, Normén?”
“No, of course not . . .”
“Good. But we’ll have to insist that you empty your pockets on the way out. Runeberg, can you deal with that?”
“Sure, no problem,” her former boss mumbled, taking a step forward.
“You spoke to Thomas when he was in custody,” she said, fixing Stigsson with her cop stare. He didn’t even blink.
“Of course.”
“Was it you who suggested that it might possibly have been Henke down at the Grand? Supplying him with a suitable perpetrator so that you could carry on harassing my brother?”
Stigsson shook his head.
“No need. The television crew who were there were kind enough to share their recording. The perpetrator is clearly visible. There’s no doubt that it was your brother. On the film he’s about to pull something from his coat pocket, something that Mr. Thomas is certain was a gun. He might be mistaken, but unfortunately, as you know, a certain confusion broke out after your warning shot, which makes it impossible to see what happened next. Thomas is an extremely credible witness, and, considering the previous suspicions against your brother, obviously we can’t take any risks. What with the royal wedding imminent, it’s probably safest for everyone if he’s locked up . . .”
He waited a few seconds, as if he were expecting her to say something.
“Was there anything else you were wondering about, Normén? If not, we’ve got work to do here . . .”
She opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment the forensics officer came back into the room.
“You should probably take a look at this . . .” he said.
♦ ♦ ♦
He’d gone for a piss behind a bike shed in the courtyard, then found a tap and managed to get one of the horse pills down. His stomach was grumbling and he probably ought to do something about that, give up on all this and just lie low for a few days until the whole story had leaked out into the evening tabloids and he could read up about whatever the fuck was going on. Besides, he had a plan of his own to stick to: getting hold of Erman and squeezing out everything he knew about the Game.
But he couldn’t quite tear himself away, not quite yet, at least.
There was certainly a degree of satisfaction to be had from being one step ahead for a change.
Hunting the hunters.
The cops had already emptied the flat in their first raid, so obviously he was the one they were looking for. Him personally. The stupid bastards must have thought he was at home.
If the cops had only been a bit less obvious, they’d have been right and he’d be back in a cell by now.
Something told him he wouldn’t get out quite so easily next time . . .
Once he had installed himself back at his window again, the car was already parked outside his door. A big, dark, stretched Volvo with little chrome flag holders on the side of the hood. Not exactly a surveillance car . . .
The driver was still in the car, but the passengers seemed to have gone inside already.
The car had black plates with yellow lettering, and it took him a moment to work out what that meant. The car belonged to the military.
This was all getting curiouser and curiouser . . .
♦ ♦ ♦
One of the walls in the bedroom was almost completely covered by newspaper clippings that had been taped up with thick strips of duct tape. Close together, so that they overlapped and occasionally obscured one another. In the middle were photographs of Black from various magazines, all with his face circled with black marker in a way that reminded her of the crosshairs of a sniper’s sights.
There was a freestanding headline with the words HE IS THE ONE! above the whole lot.
Stigsson gave her a quick sideways glance.
“Do you still think your brother’s innocent?”
She didn’t answer. Her mouth suddenly felt bone-dry, and her stomach had contracted. Would-be assassin or not, clearly it had been Henke down at the Grand, and she hadn’t even recognized him. Or had she?
If she had hesitated a moment longer, he’d probably be dead now. Thomas would have shot him.
Or another of the bodyguards. She herself, perhaps . . .
The floor lurched and for a few seconds she considered sitting down on the bed. Apart from a cup of coffee and a dry cheese sandwich she had managed to gulp down out at the Fortress, she hadn’t eaten properly for almost twenty-four hours. And as far as sleep was concerned, she was even worse off.
But now wasn’t the time to fall apart. Henke wasn’t in a good way, that much was obvious. He needed help, as soon as possible, before he did something even more stupid.
She took a deep breath and turned toward Stigsson to say something.
Just then two men in suits walked into the room.
One was in his thirties, thin, with short hair and dark-framed glasses.
The other man was Tage Sammer.
“Colonel Pellas, excellent,” Stigsson said, and the two men shook hands.
“You’ve met my colleague, Superintendent Runeberg, before, and this is—”
“Rebecca Normén, the suspect’s sister,” Sammer said quickly, holding out his hand. “Good to meet you, my name is André Pellas, I’m linked to the security organization at the Palace.”
She mumbled something and shook his hand as she tried to meet his gaze, but he was deliberately looking away.
“May I introduce Edler, my adjutant.”
He gestured with his stick toward the man in glasses, who nodded briefly in greeting.
“So, what do we know, Eskil . . . ?” Sammer turned toward Stigsson.
“Unfortunately the suspect wasn’t here as we were hoping, but we have been able to confirm that he was fixated upon Black . . .” He pointed to the wall of clippings.
Sammer gave Edler a quick nod, and the younger man went over to the wall and began looking through the clippings.
“Have you found anything of interest to the Palace?”
“Not since the video clip . . .” Stigsson said. “But there’s been
a warrant out for Pettersson since this morning, and apart from this flat he basically has nowhere to go, and Normén here has promised her full cooperation.”
He nodded toward Rebecca.
She opened her mouth, then realized that she didn’t know what to say. Thoughts were churning around her head, without any real coherence.
The Grand Hotel, events up at the Fortress, the flat, and now Sammer popping up like a jack-in-the-box, turning out to be acquainted with both Stigsson and Runeberg . . .
“Colonel Pellas, you should probably see this.”
Edler had lifted up a few of the clippings. Behind them were other pictures, also with people’s faces circled with black marker. He held up some of the clippings at random. The result was the same.
Beneath all of the clippings were photographs of the royal family.
♦ ♦ ♦
He saw them emerge from the front door.
First a big, stiff gorilla who could have been a poster boy for the Police Academy. Then some little gray men in suits who seemed to be deeply engaged in serious discussion. He didn’t recognize the shorter one, but he identified Sammer the moment he caught sight of the stick.
His heart began to beat faster.
The Game Leader and the cop—hand in hand, just as he had suspected.
When Becca came out of the door his mood sank at least two notches.
Sammer, the cop, and Becca wasn’t a good combo, no matter how you looked at it.
But it was the final member of the group that really shocked him.
Holy . . .
Fucking . . .
Shit . . .
16
QUIT WHILE YOU’RE AHEAD
WELCOME TO KROKEN dry cleaners. Please leave a message.
He was so wound up he almost forgot to wait for the beep.
“You’re fucked!” he yelled into the receiver as he jogged in the direction of Skinnarviksparken.
“The Source, the man who recruited you . . . he works for the Game Master. I just saw them together . . .”
His throat suddenly felt thick and he coughed a few times in an attempt to clear it.
“And if he works for the Game Master, then so do you . . . You can fuck right off, never contact me again! Never, got that . . . ?”
Halfway out into the street he was hit by another fit of coughing and had to bend over.
Bubble: A Thriller Page 18