When he was almost at the end of the corridor he instinctively turned left and stopped in front of the last door. There was no nameplate, but he was still sure it was his door.
He took out his key ring and found the right key on the first attempt. He looked over his shoulder before putting his hand on the door handle. The room was small, no more than thirty square feet. A desk along one wall, an office chair, a window with the blinds closed, that was all. Evidently he hadn’t made any effort to decorate the place. Not a single photograph, picture, or memento, none of the usual things people accumulated.
The room still looked very familiar, and felt familiar too. The air was still. Just a faint smell of linoleum. One of the fluorescent lights flickered a few times, then buzzed feebly before suddenly going out. Something popped into his head, another flash of memory.
Three people in this room, one of them himself. Whispering voices, indistinct faces. Just as with the sequence in the snow-covered car, the perspective kept shifting, letting him see things from a different angle. From outside, as if he had actually been a spectator.
“Someone up here is leaking information, we can’t trust anyone,” one of the voices whispered; it sounded a bit like Bergh. “We have to protect Janus, at all costs.”
A ringing sound made Sarac jump. A gentle, digital burble from the phone on the desk. He stared at it. Saw the little red light flashing. The phone rang again, then once more. He walked over to the desk, hesitantly reached out his hand, and picked up the receiver.
“H-hello?”
There was no reply, but he knew there was someone there at the other end of the line.
“Hello?” His voice still didn’t sound the way it ought to. It was tremulous, uncertain, pretty much the way he felt.
Still no answer, but there was definitely someone there. He even got the impression he could hear someone breathing. Deep, slow breaths. He pressed the receiver to his ear, trying to hear more. But all he could make out was a gentle hum of static.
“Hello!” he said for a third time, more firmly. “This is Detective Inspector David Sarac. Who am I talking to?”
No response. The name was suddenly back in his head, forcing its way in, blocking any other thoughts. In the end it forced its way out of his mouth.
“Janus? Is that Janus?”
A faint sound, a dry snort, almost a laugh. Then the line went dead.
SIXTEEN
Sarac looked up and slowly straightened his back. The clock on the desk said 08:15. He had fallen asleep again. Just like that, across the desk, and he’d been out for more than an hour. Not that strange, perhaps, seeing as he hadn’t slept much that night. His neck and shoulders felt stiff, and he had drooled on the desk. But when he straightened up he suddenly remembered something. Something important.
He bent over and pulled out the bottom drawer of the little filing cabinet under the desk. Empty! He pulled out the drawer above, then the next. All four drawers were empty. Not even any pens, Post-it notes, or spare coins for the coffee machine. He stood up and pulled out one of the many identical box files from the shelf. He didn’t even need to look, just feeling the weight was enough. He dropped it on the floor and pulled out the next one, then the next. He carried on until he had emptied the whole shelf. His pulse was racing, making his chest heave and sweat pour down his back.
He looked more closely at the walls and discovered some small nails he hadn’t seen at first. Pale rectangles on the textured wallpaper, small scratches and marks on the shelves of the bookcase. It finally dawned on him what it all meant. He wasn’t a minimalist after all. Someone had cleared his room out. All his files, photographs, and belongings, even the nameplate on the door. Everything had gone, down to the very last detail. Everything that could have helped to jog his memory. But who had done it, and why?
His anger flared up out of nowhere, overwhelming him and giving him new strength. He grabbed the empty bookcase and pulled it over. Then did the same with the office chair. He yanked the door open and staggered out into the corridor. His heartbeat was pounding in his head.
Almost all the office doors were open now, and a couple of people were standing by the glazed door at the end of the corridor, talking. They fell silent when they caught sight of Sarac.
“What the hell have you done! What the fuck have you done, you bastards!” The words came out by themselves, he couldn’t stop them. More people looked out from their rooms and seemed to stop in their tracks when they saw him. He took a few steps forward. The crutch felt sturdier now, as if the adrenaline in his body had fixed it to his right arm.
“David?” Bergh said, half running out of his office.
“My things!” Sarac yelled. “Where the hell are all my things?”
“Take it easy, David.” Bergh was looking around anxiously. “Come into my office and I’ll explain.”
“David Sarac?” The voice came from behind him, and he spun around. Two men in dark suits had emerged from one of the rooms. Sarac recognized them, the men in suits from the hospital, the ones he had managed to lose.
“Why?!” he snarled. “Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Odhe. We work for Deputy Police Commissioner Oscar Wallin. He wants to talk to you, right away.”
“Go to hell, you clown!”
David didn’t really know why he said that. His anger seemed to be dictating both his speech and actions. The pressure in his temples was getting worse and worse. Threatening to split his head open. He turned back toward Bergh and opened his mouth to say something. The next moment everything went black. He stumbled and managed to reach one of the walls for support. He slowly slid down it until he was sitting on the floor, and he had to make an effort not to throw up. Someone grabbed him under the arm and seemed to be trying to lift him up off the floor.
“L-let go of me, for fuck’s sake!” Sarac tried to pull free. But his anger was draining away, taking all his energy with it. All the sounds around him were blurring, he heard the door at the end of the corridor open, then loud voices from several different directions. He retched and vomited a mouthful of saliva and bile onto the plastic floor.
“For God’s sake, can’t you see he’s ill,” a familiar voice said. “He should be in the hospital, not dragged off to be interrogated.”
“Molnar, our orders are to—”
“Look, Odhe, you can take your orders and shove them up the Bekaa Valley. We’re going to take Sarac home, right now, and it would be fucking unwise of you or your colleague to try to stop us. In-traction-for-a-month unwise. I hope I’m making myself clear?”
Sarac looked up. Peter Molnar was standing right in front of the man in the suit, so close that the tips of their noses were almost touching. Behind him were a couple of muscular men in dark military jackets and Palestinian scarves. The pent-up force they exuded overwhelmed Sarac, and he lowered his eyes again.
Odhe, the man in the suit, took a couple of steps backward. “You’ve seriously lost it now. I’ll be contacting . . .” Odhe muttered something inaudible to Bergh. Molnar crouched down beside Sarac and passed him a handkerchief.
“We’re going to take care of you, David, okay?” he said in a low voice. Sarac nodded and wiped his mouth and cheeks.
“Are you strong enough to stand up?”
Sarac managed to nod again, slightly more firmly this time. Molnar helped him get slowly to his feet and passed him his crutch. The two suited men had moved a little way down the corridor. The man who had introduced himself as Odhe was holding a cell phone to one ear. Neither of them was saying anything, but Sarac could clearly see the hostility in their eyes. Beyond them he could see more faces, all staring at him. Faces that had once looked at him with respect and admiration. Now all he could see was pity. They could all fuck off, the whole lot of them.
Sarac straightened up, made sure the crutch was in the right place, then nodded at Molnar a third time.
“Ready,” he mumbled.
“Okay, David,” Molnar said. “How
about getting the hell out of here?”
• • •
The elevator carried them all the way down to the garage beneath Police Headquarters. Their vehicle was big and black, with chrome-plated steps on both sides. Molnar carefully helped him into the backseat and got in beside him. One of the military jackets, Sarac had an idea his name might be Josef, jumped into the driver’s seat and drove off without waiting for the third man.
Josef put his foot down as they drove through the garage, and the wheels shrieked on the smooth concrete as he turned into the long tunnel that led up to ground level. He switched the flashing blue lights on and the noise of the engine echoed off the tunnel walls and turned into an intense buzzing sound inside Sarac’s head.
A memory popped into his head. It resembled the one that had appeared in the hospital. Tunnel walls, car headlights, flashing blue lights all around him. And something else as well, something important.
But before he managed to grab hold of the memory they emerged into the daylight at Fridhemsplan. The traffic lights were red, but Josef switched the siren on and pulled straight out into the oncoming traffic. Only now did Sarac notice that Molnar was watching him. He leaned his head back against the seat, shut his eyes, and swallowed a couple of times.
“That wasn’t particularly smart, David,” Molnar said a few seconds later. “You weren’t supposed to be discharged until next week. We were about to go and visit you in the hospital. Damn lucky we decided to look in at work first.”
“Who were they?” Sarac interrupted without opening his eyes. “The guys in suits. Odhe, or whatever his name was? They were up at the hospital last night.”
“Oscar Wallin, you remember him?” Molnar pulled a face as if the name left a bad taste. “Very ambitious, used to be based in National Crime, a real pain in the ass. He tried to get us to collaborate a while back. Wanted to know absolutely everything without giving anything in return. He got really pissed off when we rejected the offer. Now our new Minister of Justice has given him a mandate to take whatever he wants instead of asking nicely for it. His guys are basically scooping up all the CIs they can find in the department.”
“And now he wants to get hold of Janus?” Sarac said.
Molnar didn’t answer.
“You said he was top-secret. That no one else knew.”
“It’s impossible to keep anything completely quiet, David.”
Sarac remembered the flash of memory inside his office. Bergh had been talking about a leak. Same thing when they met in the hospital a few days before. He opened his eyes and slowly shook his head. “I don’t remember him.”
“Wallin? Floppy fringe, looks like a little kid,” Molnar began, then fell silent as Sarac went on shaking his head.
“Janus,” Sarac said. “I don’t remember anything. Just that something’s gone wrong, terribly wrong.”
“Yes, so you said up at the hospital, before they wheeled you out. But you couldn’t remember what had happened. No details.” Molnar looked at him. And ran his tongue across his perfect front teeth.
“It’s all just a huge mess,” Sarac said. “A mass of fragments flying around inside my head. I thought it would help if I saw my office. At first it looked like it was going to work, then I realized all my stuff was gone. That someone had emptied my office.”
Molnar grimaced. “Kollander has embarked on Operation Clean Threshold. District Commissioner Swensk has set her sights on becoming our next National Head of Police, and nothing’s allowed to get in the way of her plans. An internal investigation of her own crime unit would look bad, not least because it was investigated a few years ago when the Duke was forced to leave. So you’ve been moved out. Kollander probably got Bergh to backdate the files to make it look like the transfer happened before the car crash. Before they discovered that your backup list was missing from the safe. Whatever happens now, they can blame a single officer who exceeded his authority. Someone whose competence was already in question and who therefore no longer works for Regional Crime.” Molnar shook his head.
“Where . . . ?” Sarac cleared his throat. His voice wasn’t doing what he wanted. “Where have they moved me? Where are all my files?”
“The property store,” Molnar said. “I went down and checked. The only thing there is half a packing crate containing your personal possessions. Nothing to do with work, not even a single Post-it note. It’s all missing.”
Sarac bit his lip, suddenly feeling almost on the verge of crying. He leaned forward and covered his face with his hands. Molnar put a hand on his shoulder. They sat in silence for a while as the driver skillfully maneuvered the heavy vehicle through the traffic.
“Listen, David, if it’s okay with you, we’re not going to drive you home. Wallin’s people would be at the door the moment we left. Same thing with the Internal Investigation team. Superintendent Dreyer would love to take you in for questioning and search your apartment. We’re thinking of taking you somewhere you’ll be safe. Give you a chance to lie low and get some rest.”
Sarac opened his mouth to protest. But then he thought about what happened during the night. The man who appeared to have keys to his apartment.
“Sure.” He couldn’t be bothered to ask what Molnar had in mind and wasn’t that interested in finding out either. Anything had to be better than that dump right now. His adrenaline rush was exhausted. His body felt heavy, and even the slightest movement took a huge effort.
“Good,” Molnar said. “Try to get some rest, we’ve got a fair way to drive.”
Sarac shut his eyes and leaned his head back. He gave up fighting his tiredness but didn’t actually fall asleep, at least not properly. Something was holding him precisely on the boundary between sleep and wakefulness. There was something he ought to remember, something to do with his office. All his files.
“Terrible to see him like this,” he heard Josef say from the driver’s seat. “My uncle had a stroke a year or so back. He’s still a vegetable, can barely find the toilet these days. Sometimes he pisses in the wardrobe.”
“Leave it, Josef.” Molnar muttered something else inaudible.
The sound of the engine and their voices faded into a blur as Sarac sank deeper into real sleep. Images flitted past in his head.
A small room and a whiteboard full of photographs. Some of the portraits stern, staring darkly into the camera. Their names on small labels underneath. Others taken surreptitiously, people getting in or out of cars. Names written in, along with numbers, presumably phone numbers. Red lines everywhere, arrows linking the people in the pictures. Weaving them together into a pattern, a huge spiderweb. And, in the center of a large circle, two Js facing each other.
He imagines he can see movement, a brief reflection in the shiny surface of the whiteboard. The outline of a figure with a hood pulled over its head. The impression only lasts a fraction of a second and is gone before he manages to make out any details. But he has other things to think about. Because now he can see it. In the middle of the little desk along one wall. A black notebook that he recognizes very well. The book is open; he can see lines of writing covering the pages. But for some reason he can’t read them, he can’t put them together to form anything intelligible. Or can he? Because when he looks at the text for a while he imagines he can make out a pattern. Some of the letters seem to stand out more than others. Suddenly he realizes that he knows what the words mean, what secret they are hiding. All the information he’s looking for exists inside that notebook. Hidden among words that are becoming ever clearer. All he has to do is interpret them and write them down more clearly.
But just as he’s about to go on reading, someone grabs him by the shoulder and drags him out backward. He reaches out his arms, trying to grab the notebook, take it with him out of the dream. In the distance he can hear a voice calling him.
“David! David, we’re here.” Molnar was standing outside the car, gently shaking Sarac’s shoulder. Waiting patiently as he came around.
“Good place
to lie low, don’t you think?”
SEVENTEEN
“Atif, sit yourself down, man!”
The bowlegged little man, whose name was Bakshi, cleared some of the magazines and cat toys from the big leather sofa and gestured to Atif to sit down. But instead of doing as he was told, Atif went over to one of the overblown armchairs and lifted it slightly to get rid of the scrawny, hairless cat lying across the cushion. The animal landed softly on the floor, gave him a long stare, then strolled off into the kitchen.
“My girlfriend’s cat, she’s called it Missy Elliott,” the little man grinned. “Missy Elliott, get it? What a fucking name.”
Atif nodded. And thought that there were two sorts of rats. The usual blabbermouths despised by everyone, who almost always ended up in plaster or buried in an abandoned quarry. Then there were the others, the exceptions who proved the rule. People who were still accepted, even though everyone knew they talked, for the simple reason that they were useful. Sometimes there was good reason to tip the cops off about what your competitors were doing. Level the playing field a bit. That was where people like Bakshi came in. They stopped you having to go directly to the police and becoming a rat yourself. You could tell Bakshi a secret, any secret, and he would run straight off to the cops with it. As untrustworthy as he was predictable. Everyone knew it—and everyone exploited the fact.
Bakshi grinned uncertainly at Atif, stroked his thumb across the screen of his cell phone, checked the display, then put it down on the coffee table.
The apartment smelled of fresh paint and leather. Big, Italian designer furniture, not the usual Ikea stuff. In the middle of one wall of the living room was a massively oversized flat-screen television hooked up to an expensive-looking sound system. The apartment seemed to have recently had a complete makeover, as had its owner. Nice, even teeth, a couple of shades too white, a spray tan, and a ridiculously neat beard along his jawline that must take at least half an hour to trim.
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