The Man Who Wasn't There

by Michael Hjorth

  ‘But why?’ It had to be a mistake. If she could just find out the reason, she could put it right. ‘I mean . . . it was all going so well.’

  ‘Håkan Persson Riddarstolpe,’ Harriet said, and paused as if to give Vanja the chance to work out who she was talking about. Not that it was necessary with a name like that; the image of the man with the little moustache and the narrowed eyes in his messy office came into her mind right away, but it didn’t provide any clues. Her interview with Håkan Persson Riddarstolpe had gone well. Really well. He had even said so himself when he shook her hand as she left.

  What had happened? Had he been lying? If so, why? She needed more information.

  ‘Right . . .’ she said, to confirm that she knew who Harriet was talking about.

  ‘He makes it very clear in his assessment that you’re not suitable, and he advises against your inclusion on the programme.’

  ‘Why?’

  It was the only question she could come out with, because it was the only word in her head. Everything else had disappeared.

  ‘He does include reasons, but it’s the recommendation that’s important.’

  ‘But it’s only one person’s recommendation.’

  ‘The FBI won’t take you if the psychologist responsible for the assessment says you’re not suitable,’ Harriet said in a tone of voice that was meant to sugar the pill.

  ‘But I am suitable,’ Vanja almost shouted. ‘Ask anybody. Nobody’s more fucking suitable than me!’

  ‘Vanja, I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s not enough.’ Vanja almost spat out the words. This wasn’t happening. She wouldn’t allow it. She never gave up, that was what made her tick. That was why she was the best.

  ‘I can get another assessment, from someone else. He’s wrong. There must be an appeal process.’

  ‘Håkan is the psychologist who carries out our assessments for this kind of application. His decision is final.’

  Vanja didn’t know what to say. The door through which she had been going to make her escape had been slammed so hard and so definitively in her face that she could almost feel it, as if someone had delivered a hard blow.

  ‘There will be other opportunities,’ Harriet tried to console her. ‘Not this year and probably not next year, the way things look at the moment, but in the future.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’

  Vanja ended the call. She remained standing by the window, watching people in the distance walking, jogging, cycling. On their way to somewhere to carry on with their lives for a while, a few hours, longer. What was she going to do? How could she carry on?

  She turned away. Wanted to cry but couldn’t. She just felt empty. It was as if the FBI course had been a fragile foundation on which everything else had rested, enabling her to function in spite of what was going on, and now that it had disappeared, the whole edifice had come crashing down.

  She ended up on the sofa. She had no idea how long she sat there, staring into space, before her gaze fell on the printouts lying on the table. She looked at them as if she didn’t know what they were or how they had got there, then she leaned forward, picked them up and began to read.

  Same name, different spellings, different addresses.

  A conscious thought.

  The first since the phone call.

  Now she could track down the right Ellinor. Vanja realised that it was the risk of losing her place on the programme that had been holding her back. She wouldn’t lose her job, not for something like this. She had no intention of threatening or frightening the woman; she just wanted the facts. She might possibly mark her card, but nothing more.

  Every cloud has a silver lining, she thought to her surprise as she got up. The trite phrase just came into her mind, possibly because every other thought and emotion was still blocked and paralysed.

  Ridiculous.

  There would be no silver linings today, she was sure of it.

  Morgan Hansson had the taste of blood in his mouth. It wasn’t blood, of course, he knew that. It was stress, anxiety and fear. But it still had that metallic taste. Interesting that certain feelings actually have a taste, he thought. It is possible to have a concrete perception of something so abstract. Love ought to taste of chocolate, he thought. But it didn’t.

  It tasted like this.

  He stopped and leaned against the grey, uneven wall. Tried to calm himself. He just wanted it to be over. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday evening; his stomach had hurt too much for him to feel hungry. Instead he had drunk vast quantities of sparkling water; he had his own carbonating machine in the kitchen. That’s what he usually did when he needed to relax. Drank carbonated water. That was probably why his stomach was bubbling, sending frequent bursts of acidity up into his throat and mouth. Morgan tried to tell himself that it was just nerves. Nothing else. He was just an IT technician on his way down to the IT room beneath the car park. He had the right security clearance, he had followed this route many times in the past, and he was even carrying two 10 TB hard drives so that it would look as if he had legitimate business down there. It wasn’t as if he had a sign around his neck that declared: ‘This man is about to break the law.’

  Intentions were not visible, even if it felt that way. Intentions remained invisible until they were translated into action. And what he intended to do would be impossible to discover. He wasn’t going to take anything away, print anything out. He was just going to check whether a file and a reference that had apparently been deleted by mistake were still there. Find a name. That wasn’t illegal. It was a borderline case. Perhaps.

  He was suddenly angry with himself. Of course it was wrong – who was he trying to kid? The file was classified.

  He wanted to go back to his office with all those broken bits and pieces, the cables, the hard drives, the printers, all the things that made him feel comfortable. Anitha would just have to be disappointed. He didn’t care if she was angry with him; he didn’t have the balls for this kind of thing. Or, even better, he could lie to her, tell her the file wasn’t there any more. That the backup tape had been erased for some reason. It was a nice idea, liberating and simple. All it would take was a little lie; she would never be able to check up on him. But he couldn’t do it. He had made a promise. She needed help. It was important to help friends, especially if there was a chance they might become something more.

  He kept on walking. He reached the last security door and took out his pass card. Held it up to the reader and waited for the click. It only took a second. He opened the door. This corridor was narrower and noticeably warmer. The server room behind the first door was air-conditioned, and some of the heat generated by the system leaked out into the corridor. He would probably start sweating any minute now. The room where the backup tapes were stored was just past the server room. Personally he thought the entire backup procedure was practically prehistoric. Surely no other modern institution used tapes these days? The system had been installed in the Sixties, when hard drives hadn’t been invented and everything was stored on magnetic tape. This had made financial sense until a few years ago when the cost of really large hard disks had begun to fall, but the National Police Board had decided to stick with tapes. Morgan wasn’t sure whether this was out of habit, laziness, or sheer insanity. There was a greater risk of the tapes being damaged, while the process itself was far more labour-intensive; someone had to physically change them over at regular intervals. They had to be handled and stored correctly, then demagnetised and reused. Then again, perhaps that was the real reason for the decision: to hang onto jobs within the police authority. Morgan presumed he wasn’t privy to the whole picture. At any rate, he was glad he didn’t have to deal with the tapes all the time. He had been trained just in case Göransson was off sick or unavailable; he was the backup to the backup who handled the backup, so to speak. He was probably the only person in the whole world who could see the humour in that.

  He opened the door and walked into the room. In front of him stood the mach
ine that was linked to the server room via fibre cables: it was an IBM TS2250 LTO generation 5, purchased in 2011. He was grateful for that; with earlier models it was necessary to bring up the information in sequence, which took time. The new model made it possible to use the tape like a hard disk, accessing everything directly via the file system, which would save him a lot of time.

  Göransson ran an orderly ship. The tapes were neatly labelled in date order. Morgan knew they were kept for at least three months before they were reused. According to Anitha, she had accidentally deleted the file two days ago. Perhaps he should begin a few days before that, see what the file looked like then. Carefully he picked out the tape and held it in his hand. It was heavier than he remembered, but perhaps it was the same as the taste in his mouth; the weight came from something else.

  He took a deep breath.

  Intention was about to turn into action.

  Mehran was walking down to the town centre. He just had to get out of the apartment, feel like a teenager again, like the person he had been before all this started, when his biggest problem had been whether they would get into the party on Lövgatan next weekend, and whether Miriam would be there. He had texted Levan to ask if the party was still on, but hadn’t yet had a reply.

  He should have been pleased about the way things had gone, but somehow he couldn’t find that sense of satisfaction. A while ago he had thought that he would feel calm once he and the other men had got their way, but over the past few hours his mind had been in turmoil. It was weird, as if the present he had wanted for so long had turned out to be nothing special after all. Melika had lied. His mother had been right all along, but that wouldn’t help her now. Quite the reverse; the others would look at Shibeka differently, even though she had listened, folded, given up. Her contact with the others would dwindle; that was how it worked. It wasn’t enough just to do the right thing; you must never do wrong. It was that simple. She would be one of those who was talked about less and less, someone who slowly metamorphosed into more of a memory than a living person. That was the way it was.

  Shibeka, who had always looked after him. Who never gave up. The new country had given her fresh opportunities to fight; in Sweden she didn’t have to accept her situation, to fade into silence as a widow, to sit quietly. It had made her strong. Special. That was what the journalist and the Swedes liked: a woman who was prepared to fight for what she wanted. And that was exactly what Memel and the others hated and feared, Mehran presumed.

  He, on the other hand, would be rewarded, drawn deeper into the community. Unlike Shibeka, he had shown that he could be trusted, that while he stood up for his family, he would do the right thing when it really mattered. It was as if he had cadged a free ride on the back of his mother’s struggle – stolen her power, used it to move forward and left her behind, so that from now on they would be moving in different directions. He would be forging ahead, while she would be slipping backwards.

  And in the middle of it all, Melika’s lie was still there. Who would look into it now? Who would find out the truth?

  No one.

  That didn’t feel right. Not at all.

  When Mehran reached the shopping centre he saw a few of the older boys from school standing outside the dry cleaner’s. They raised a hand in greeting, but he had no desire to hang out with them. He nodded back, but kept on walking. He couldn’t see Levan, but realised he didn’t want to hang out with him either. He carried on to Melika’s apartment block and stopped by the little play area outside. He went and sat on the swing his father had never allowed him to use. He had nagged and nagged and cried and cried, but Hamid had refused to budge. It was for the older children, he always said. It almost became a kind of ritual. Mehran asked if he could go on the swing. Hamid said no, not until you’re older. Mehran went on and on, but Hamid never gave in. Ever. Mehran cautiously sat down on the swing. Today it looked anything but special; it was just a big rubber tyre suspended from two chains. Hamid had let him use the other swing, which had an extra small tyre fixed underneath the big one so that you couldn’t fall through. The chains were cold against his fingers, just like when he was little. He started to swing. The frame creaked rhythmically as he picked up speed.

  Back and forth. Back and forth.

  Every time his body moved forward, another question popped into his head.

  Why had Melika lied when she was in their apartment?

  Back.

  What did she know about the man called Joseph?

  Back.

  What made her so nervous that she felt the need to turn to Memel?

  Back.

  He had to put this right. He couldn’t just go up and see Melika; that wouldn’t work. He couldn’t risk her running off to Memel and the others again.

  Perhaps he should visit Said’s shop. He had been there several times with his father; Hamid had helped out sometimes, just for something to do. Said had owned the place jointly with two of Melika’s cousins, Rafi and . . . Turyalai, that was it. Rafi was the one he remembered best; he had always joked with Mehran and given him lollipops. He hadn’t thought about the cousins for a long time. They didn’t live in Rinkeby, but in Vällingby, according to Shibeka. At least they used to. They had called to see Melika a few times at the beginning, and he knew they had given Shibeka a little money to help her out. However, that was years ago; he had seen less and less of them as Melika and Shibeka grew apart. They might know something, though. Said had spent most of his time with them.

  He stopped the swing and slid off. Looked up at Melika’s apartment once more before heading for the underground.

  They had silenced his mother with his help; now he was the only one who could find out the truth.

  The first Ellinor Bergkvist lived at Grönviksvägen 107 in Nockeby. Vanja entered the address into her sat nav; she didn’t think she had ever been to Nockeby. In the heavy traffic en route she wondered how to approach the various women. She definitely wasn’t going to say she was a police officer, but what should she say? As little as possible, she had decided by the time she pulled into the semi-circular parking area in front of the dirty grey V-shaped block. Vanja approached number 107 along the wide tarmac path between the buildings; she could see a strip of cold grey water up ahead. It looked like a canal, but she assumed it must be part of Lake Mälaren. The door was made of metal and glass; locked. She checked the entry phone on the wall: Bergkvist, second floor. Vanja pressed Levin on the third floor, said she was delivering flowers to Bergkvist but no one was home, could she possibly come in and leave them by the door? Once inside the chilly stairwell she decided to avoid the lift. Bergkvist lived in the apartment immediately on the left when she reached the second floor. She rang the bell and a woman aged about thirty-five answered the door. In the background she could hear the sound of some noisy kids’ cartoon. The woman had brown hair tied back in a ponytail, discreet gold earrings, and beautifully (if not recently) applied make-up. She was wearing a light, loose blouse, a smart skirt and tights. Vanja got the impression she had picked up the kids on the way home from work, and had just got in.

  ‘Ellinor Bergkvist?’ Vanja asked as the woman looked enquiringly at her.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My name is Vanja Lithner.’ She paused and waited for a reaction. Her surname was unusual; if this woman was involved in the business surrounding her father, she would find it difficult not to react at all. Vanja observed her closely; she was good at this. Spotting the little signs, the nuances: a blink, a shifting of the body weight. The woman facing her displayed nothing but genuine surprise.

  ‘Valdemar Lithner is my father,’ Vanja went on, then she paused again. Watched and waited.

  ‘I’m sorry, but what is it you actually want?’

  A roar came from inside the apartment, followed by a yell for mummy, the information that Hugo was fighting, then a flat denial and an assertion that Linnea was lying.

  ‘I’m coming! Play nicely!’ the woman shouted before turning back to Vanja
.

  ‘Have you had anything to do with Valdemar Lithner and a man called Trolle Hermansson?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Stress in the eyes and voice now, but that was probably because Linnea was loudly informing everyone how stupid Hugo was for changing channels. The first Ellinor was not the right Ellinor, Vanja was sure of it.

  ‘I’m sorry, in that case I’ve got the wrong address. I do apologise,’ she said, taking a step back.

  The woman nodded and slammed the door shut. There was another shriek followed by the sound of crying as Ellinor Bergkvist also questioned her son’s intelligence – did he really think hitting his sister on the head with the remote was the way to solve the argument?

  Vanja set off down the stairs. Two more Ellinors in Stockholm. Twenty in the rest of the country. But she was in no hurry.

  After all, she wasn’t going to the USA.

  Mehran took the blue line to Fridhemsplan; he didn’t need to change. He knew the small shop was inside the underground station, but he wasn’t sure which exit to take. He hadn’t been there for ten years, and knew he couldn’t rely on the memories from when he was a little boy. What had seemed an enormous distance to a five-year-old might be no more than a 100 metres in reality.

  When he came up from the platform into the wide tunnels leading to the various escalators, he got a text from Levan confirming that the party was still on. Mehran deleted it; he had more important things to think about right now.

  He knew that the shop wasn’t in the passageways close to Fridhemsplan itself, where he had been many times, but in one of the smaller ones on the Stadshagen side. He followed the signs for Mariebergsgatan; he thought he recognised the name.

  Mehran found the place sooner than he had expected. It was squeezed into a narrow pedestrian walkway with grey cement walls, at the foot of a staircase leading to the city up above. Three dirty barred windows displayed handwritten notices advertising special offers, and a reinforced steel door stood wide open to prove to the few passers by that the shop really was open. It looked different from the way he remembered; at first he couldn’t work out what it was, but then he realised. The sign was different. In the past it had been saffron yellow, with bright-red writing. He didn’t know what it had said, because he hadn’t learned to read at the time, but he did remember the strong colours, probably because they reminded him of his homeland. Now it was black on white. Convenience store. Brief and functional: it evoked no memories whatsoever. He went inside. The smell was exactly the same: the faint whiff of the underground, mixed with dust and something sweet. They had moved the till closer to the door. Behind the counter sat a man in his fifties wearing a black pullover and reading a newspaper over a coffee. He had short, receding grey hair. Mehran didn’t recognise him.