MemoRandom

by Anders de la Motte

  He dragged a chair over and, with some effort, climbed onto it. He reached carefully toward the smoke alarm. But the ceilings in the apartment were a fair bit over ten feet high and he couldn’t quite reach. The white plastic covering of the smoke alarm was gray with dirt, but he couldn’t work out whether that was because someone had made it dirty on purpose. Sarac remembered the stepladder in the basement. He’d be able to reach if he used that. But first he tried to stretch up once more. He wobbled but regained his balance. His fingers nudged the plastic, fumbling for the edge.

  A dull buzz from the kitchen table interrupted him. The screen on his cell phone was lit up and the vibrations were making it rotate gradually on the tabletop. He climbed down and looked at the screen. Then he answered, trying to make his voice sound normal.

  “Hello!”

  “Hi, David,” Molnar said. “I just wanted to see how you were feeling. You haven’t been in touch.”

  “Hmm . . .” Sarac glanced up at the smoke alarm.

  “Is everything okay? You sound a bit . . .”

  “Are you watching me, Peter?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean exactly what I said. Are you watching me?”

  The line was silent for a few seconds.

  “Don’t go anywhere, David.” Molnar’s voice sounded dry. “I’m on my way over now.”

  The call ended.

  Sarac took a deep breath, trying to collect his thoughts. Then he looked at the time. Molnar would be there in less than ten minutes. Time to make a decision. He glanced up at the smoke alarm again, then took the little plastic phone into the bathroom and pressed the Redial button.

  “Okay,” he said when the man answered. “What do we do?”

  FORTY

  Sarac went downstairs as fast as he could, clutching the cell phone to his ear. He had turned the shower on and clattered about in the bathroom, then rushed for the front door and crept out as quietly as he could.

  “I’m down now,” he said as soon as he reached the ground floor.

  “Good. Now go over to the front door, but stay just inside so you can’t be seen,” the man on the phone said.

  Sarac did as he was told and glanced at the time. Six or seven minutes left until Molnar showed up.

  “So what do I do now?” he said.

  “Wait for a bit. Do you see that bus stop about thirty feet to the right of the door?” the man said.

  “Yes.”

  “In two minutes a bus will arrive. I’ll tell you when to go out.”

  “Got it.” Sarac took a couple of deep breaths, trying to keep his pulse down. Oddly enough, he almost felt a bit elated. He peered out cautiously into the street. The Volvo was pointing the wrong way; it would have to do a U-turn to follow him. But it would only take it a minute or so to catch up with the bus.

  “Okay, now!” the man said.

  Sarac opened the front door and walked straight to the bus stop, forcing himself not to look up at the window opposite, or toward the Volvo. From the corner of his eye he saw the bus approaching. He came to a halt at the bus stop and heard the bus’s brakes squeal. He got on board without even looking at the driver. When the bus started to move he looked up. The Volvo had already pulled out into the street.

  “Okay, so what do I do now?” he said into the phone.

  “Press the button and get off at the next stop.”

  Sarac did as he was told. The bus swung around a corner and stopped right next to a flight of steps leading down to a shabby-looking hairdresser’s. He got off and looked around. The Volvo still hadn’t caught up.

  “David!” The door to the salon opened and a woman stuck her head out. She was in her fifties, had fair, eighties-style permed hair, and a wrinkled, solarium-tanned face. “Quick, get inside!”

  He obeyed, went down the four steps and on into the basement as quickly as he could. The salon was empty, apart from two barbers’ chairs and a little trolley with various hair-care products.

  “Keep going,” the woman said, pointing to a bead curtain at the far end of the salon.

  The room beyond it was tiny, probably no more than twenty-five square feet. A small folding table, two rib-backed chairs, a few sun-bleached posters advertising hairstyles that hadn’t been fashionable for at least thirty years. A tall man in a suit, in his sixties, with a lined face and small round glasses was sitting on one of the chairs, but when Sarac came in he stood up.

  “So good of you to look in, David,” he said, smiling in a way that showed the gold tooth in his lower jaw. Sarac hesitated as his alarm bells went off. He had suspected several times that the tobacco man from the hospital might be Janus. But for some reason it had never felt quite right. And now he knew why. This man was a policeman, and his name was . . .

  “Detective Superintendent Jan Dreyer,” the man said, holding out his hand. “From the Internal Investigations Department, in case you’d forgotten. I’m sorry about the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but it’s for your own good.”

  He gestured to Sarac to sit down.

  “Coffee?”

  “No, thank you.” Sarac’s head was spinning. Dreyer worked for Internal Investigations. He was the man leading the investigation into the theft from the security safe. But in the darkness up at the hospital it had sounded as if they already knew each other. Dreyer sat down on the chair opposite him. The smell of his eau de cologne almost knocked out the mixture of hair-care chemicals that otherwise dominated the air in the salon.

  “You came to see me in the hospital and talked about an agreement,” Sarac said, trying to fit these new pieces of the puzzle into place.

  “Ah, you see.” Dreyer smiled. “And I thought you were too groggy to remember. Do you remember anything else?”

  “Sorry.” Sarac shrugged his shoulders.

  Dreyer looked at Sarac intently, apparently trying to work out whether he was lying.

  “Well,” he went on. “As I said, my name’s Jan Dreyer, and I’m in charge of the Internal Investigations Department. You know what our job entails?”

  “You investigate police officers who are suspected of committing a criminal offense,” Sarac said.

  “That’s right. For the past couple of years we’ve been a separate organization that reports directly to the National Police Committee. In other words, we’re entirely independent of everyday police work, but I’m sure you know that already.”

  Sarac shrugged his shoulders. Tried to remain as impassive as he could.

  “And what do you want with me?”

  “You really don’t remember anything, do you?” Dreyer fell silent as he looked at Sarac, then he smiled. Something about the smile made Sarac’s tongue stick to the roof of his mouth.

  “I’m your handler, David,” the man said with a smile. “And you’re my CI.”

  FORTY-ONE

  “Hello, this is Tindra.” Her voice on the phone made Atif smile.

  “Hello, Tindra, this is Uncle Atif.”

  “Amu, where are you? I miss you!”

  “I miss you too, sweetheart,” Atif said. “Are you having a nice time out in the country?”

  “Really nice! Are you coming to visit us soon?”

  “Soon,” Atif said. “I just need to sort some things out first. But then I’ll come and visit.”

  “Do you promise, Amu?”

  “I promise, sweetheart. Is your mom there? I need to have a word with her.”

  “Okay.” Tindra sounded disappointed. A clattering sound followed.

  “Hello?” Cassandra said. Her voice was curt but not unfriendly.

  “It’s me, I just wanted to see how you were both doing,” Atif said.

  “It’s okay, but to be honest I’m starting to get cabin fever out here. When can we go back home?”

  “Not quite yet,” Atif said. “There are still a couple of things I need to deal with first. I need to know that you’re safe. As soon as it’s done I’ll be in touch. Until then you’re going to have to lie low. Don’t make any ca
lls, do you understand? Especially not to Abu Hamsa.”

  The silence on the line told him she had already disobeyed his instructions. Shit.

  • • •

  “I recruited you to provide information about Peter Molnar and his specialist team,” Dreyer said. “But also about your boss, Kjell Bergh, and the other officers handling CIs. Not least their former boss, Eugene von Katzow, aka the Duke.”

  Sarac felt his throat contract. He struggled to keep the expression on his face blank. The room had suddenly started to rotate anticlockwise, and he was forced to hold on to the seat of the chair to keep himself upright.

  “As you might recall, the Duke left the police force a number of years ago. He had built up a system of informers and infiltrators who weren’t registered, and who were paid through secret accounts. A lot of his sources weren’t even criminals, just ordinary taxpayers who happened to work in key posts in private companies or public bodies. Telecom businesses, hospitals, property firms, councils, or the Tax Office—even the odd television celebrity.”

  Dreyer put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarillos.

  “The Duke accumulated a stock of people who all owed him something. Who couldn’t say no when he called to ask for a small favor. Lists of calls, maybe, someone’s medical notes, whatever.”

  Sarac gulped, thinking about what Molnar had said about his own blood test.

  “An informal system that bypassed all the rules,” Dreyer went on. “But unfortunately we were never able to link him to any serious crimes, just a couple of disciplinary offenses. I suspect very strongly that the Duke called in some favors in both the prosecutors’ office and the Ministry of Justice so he could get off lightly.”

  He took out a little blue plastic lighter from his other inside pocket, tapped a cigarillo out of the pack, and gestured toward Sarac, as if offering him one.

  “I don’t smoke,” Sarac mumbled.

  “You don’t?” Dreyer smiled. “Are you absolutely sure about that?” He lit the cigarillo and took a deep puff.

  “Well,” he continued. “After the Duke had slipped out of the back door, Bergh took over his old job. But most of the work was actually done by von Katzow’s protégé, Peter Molnar. Molnar’s smart, he keeps his cards close to his chest and surrounds himself with extremely loyal cops. Basically, it proved impossible to check exactly what they were getting up to, and whether or not they were carrying on in the Duke’s spirit.”

  He waved the cigarillo toward Sarac.

  “But then you appeared, David Sarac, a rising star. When Molnar changed jobs, you took over most of his sources. You seemed able to fit in everywhere, to get almost anyone to trust you. A true chameleon. And you never seemed to stop working.”

  Sarac gulped. He wondered about getting up and walking out. But he realized he had to stay and hear the rest of the story.

  “Over time it became clear that it was taking its toll on you. If you play that number of different roles, sooner or later you end up losing yourself. You forget who you really are. What you stand for.”

  Dreyer tapped his fingers gently on the tabletop.

  “You were spending more and more time in the pub. But you didn’t seem anywhere as interested as you had been in setting up new contacts. Instead you mostly just got drunk, you even got chucked out a couple of times. There were rumors that you were on the brink of collapse, and it was fairly obvious that none of your friends were interested in helping you.”

  “So you got in touch with me, and tried to get me to report on what Molnar and the others were doing?” Sarac’s voice was trembling slightly. It reflected the uncertainty he was feeling fairly well.

  “Is that what you think happened, David?”

  Sarac didn’t answer. His right hand was still clutching the seat of the chair.

  “Come on, tell me. You’re the expert here! Put yourself in my place. What would you have done to recruit yourself?”

  Sarac took a deep breath. His headache made its entrance, right on cue. He was suddenly feeling nauseous. But he had to play along, he had to hear what Dreyer had to say. Collect more pieces of the puzzle.

  “You got something on me,” he muttered. “A blood test, something along those lines. Explained that I was in trouble. That I could lose my job. You fixed up a meeting.”

  “Go on!” Dreyer gestured with the cigarillo.

  “You probably chose a discreet location, so discreet that the fact that we were even meeting there looked suspicious. Then you got someone to take some surreptitious pictures of us there together.”

  Dreyer took another deep puff.

  “As soon as I showed up. The moment I sat down opposite you, you’d have me. Even if I turned you down, anyone who saw the pictures would get the impression that I’d talked. My credibility would be ruined.”

  Sarac leaned back, let go of the chair, and rubbed his eyes. He could suddenly remember a closed restaurant. A meeting of some sort, uncomfortable feelings that suggested he really didn’t want to be there. It could very well be the truth.

  “Was that how it happened?” he went on. “Was that the agreement you mentioned in the hospital? Talk, otherwise we’ll destroy your career? Ruin everything you live for?”

  Dreyer smiled.

  “Just like you would have done, wouldn’t you, David? You do what it takes to recruit a source.”

  Sarac leaned his head in his hands.

  “And now, just like everyone else, you want me to give you Janus, don’t you?”

  “Janus,” Dreyer snorted. “A ghost everyone talks about but no one’s ever seen.” He shook his head. “Don’t try to confuse the issue, David. You promised me something else entirely. Something considerably more interesting.”

  Sarac opened his mouth, but his brain had seized up and he couldn’t think of anything sensible to say. Not after Janus? So what was their agreement about, then?

  “Your task was to expose a mole up in Regional Crime,” Dreyer said.

  Sarac slowly shook his head. His brain was fumbling frantically for something, anything he could connect with what Dreyer had just said.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he eventually said.

  Dreyer sighed.

  “Still loyal to your friends, I see.” He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarillo, crushing it so hard that his cup almost tipped over.

  “Someone up in your department has been selling information to the underworld, David. Everything’s done through an intermediary, a lawyer called Bengt Crispin. Several major operations have failed because of this mole. Serious criminals have got off scot-free. But, strangely enough, never any operation in which Molnar and his team have been involved. When we finally managed to identify a couple of calls made from Regional Crime to Crispin, we began to realize what was going on. The theft of your backup list from the security safe has removed any trace of doubt, even among the bosses. They’ve given me a free hand to do whatever it takes to find the leak. The backup list is only an excuse, a reason to question everyone up at Regional Crime. A way to smoke the mole out of its hole.”

  Dreyer pulled a face that was probably supposed to look like a smile.

  “We recruited you in October. We gave you until Christmas to come up with the name of the mole. We didn’t hear from you at all for a month. Then, one evening toward the end of November, I got a phone call. You sounded stressed, said you wanted to meet as soon as possible, and promised to hand over all the evidence I needed. And give me the name of the mole.”

  The man leaned over the table, so close that Sarac could see the delicate tracery of veins at the end of his nose.

  “I’ve read the preliminary traffic report about your crash. In contrast to the later version, it mentions the fact that there was another vehicle right behind your car. And that minor damage was found on your rear bumper.”

  Dreyer smiled, once again revealing the gold tooth. Sarac’s mouth suddenly felt dry as dust.

  “I went to our meeting pl
ace, David. Waited over an hour.”

  Sarac held his breath.

  “But one of your so-called friends made sure that you never made it.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Sarac took the long way home, both to give him a chance to collect his thoughts and to make sure no one was following him. His head was aching and his brain was struggling to make sense of what he’d just found out. What Dreyer had told him turned everything upside down and left him in an even worse position than before.

  Wallin was after Janus to boost his career. Molnar and Bergh wanted to get rid of incriminating evidence. That was why they were watching him, hoping that sooner or later he would lead them to Janus.

  But if Dreyer was right, there was someone else with good reason to keep Sarac under observation. Someone in the group who was leaking information, and someone who presumably could earn a lot of money by revealing Janus’s true identity.

  In the end it always comes down to money, doesn’t it? Bergh had said. Was that really some sort of confession? Was that why his boss had given up without a fight, because he knew he was in line to be questioned by Dreyer? That he was going to be uncovered?

  And, once again, Molnar had withheld information from him. Maybe he had even been responsible for cleaning up the traffic report, the same way he had sorted out Sarac’s test results? Just as Bergh had hinted in the hospital, someone had forced his car to stop. And made sure he crashed, in the worst possible way.

  Sarac had no desire to go back to his apartment. Molnar would be waiting for him and would demand to know where he had been. Force him to lie, again. He didn’t need any more smokescreens, half-truths, and retrofitted explanations. What he needed was clarity. The problem was that he had no idea how to reach it. The pieces of the puzzle were piling up, more and more of them. He was still looking for a corner piece, something he could work from, where he had his back covered.

  Four men had placed their lives in his hands, with varying degrees of willingness. Now they were all dead. Who had killed them, and why? Could it be Janus, as he suspected? He hadn’t got anywhere near to being able to uncover the man’s true identity.