The Man Who Wasn't There

by Michael Hjorth

  ‘You come here and accuse me,’ he said softly, felling Mehran with a single well-aimed blow. Mehran crashed to the ground behind the car and landed on the gravel. Joseph kept an eye on the girls as he kicked the boy hard in the head. Twice. The faint groaning ceased after the second kick. The girls didn’t appear to have noticed anything; they were still chatting and giggling. Joseph waited until they had gone inside, then dumped the unconscious boy in the boot of his car. Mehran weighed less than he had expected, which was good. Bodies that were too heavy were always a problem. He took out his phone and called Charles, who answered immediately.

  As usual.

  They had the blue lights on; Jennifer was driving. They had just reached Essingeleden and their speed was approaching 140 kilometres per hour. Torkel was clutching the handle above the door out of habit; it made him feel safer. He would have preferred Billy to drive; he was the best in the team when it came to high speed, but he was in the back seat bent over his laptop, following the signal from Mehran Khan’s mobile. Torkel had just finished speaking to Britta Hanning at Säpo; she had been slightly more co-operative this time. He turned to Billy.

  ‘They know of someone called Joseph. Britta wasn’t prepared to give me his real name, but apparently he’s a so-called friend of theirs.’

  ‘A friend?’ Jennifer was curious.

  ‘An informant. Someone who tips off the security services about extremists and other groups.’

  Billy leaned forward; he couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘So we’re going after one of our “friends”?’

  ‘It looks that way.’

  The car swerved as they raced past a Polish articulated lorry. Torkel tightened his grip on the handle, but Jennifer seemed totally unmoved.

  ‘But if he’s helped Säpo, perhaps he’s helped other organisations, like military intelligence for example,’ she said as she switched lanes again.

  Torkel nodded. That wasn’t out of the question. By this stage nothing was out of the question when it came to this case. Times had changed, and these days the fight against terrorism and extremism set the agenda for those charged with defending the country. They were suddenly battling an invisible enemy who didn’t wear a uniform, and the rules of engagement had changed. The secrets were bigger, the methods less refined. The open society became a casualty, and eventually the poison generated by those secrets seeped through. He thought about the fifteen-year-old boy who had somehow ended up in the middle of this mess, a boy who had lost his father. This was where the secrets led: to family tragedies. He turned back to Billy.

  ‘Are you still picking up the signal from Mehran’s phone?’

  Billy shook his head.

  ‘No, I lost the connection to the server for a while. The last position was just outside the station at Södertälje Port. I’ll ask the local police to send a car down there.’

  Torkel could hear Billy’s fingers flying over the keyboard. I’m getting old, he thought. He remembered when you had to pick up the phone to speak to colleagues, when you had to use dogs to search for people. Now Billy was sitting in the back of the car taking care of the whole thing. As long as he was connected to the server.

  ‘We should be there in fifteen minutes,’ Jennifer said. Torkel’s stomach really wasn’t enjoying this.

  ‘He’s not there any more,’ Billy announced. ‘He’s heading towards the E20.’

  ‘Put your foot down,’ Torkel said to Jennifer.

  Back again. Almnäs. Södertälje.

  He had done his compulsory military service here. Thought of it as a necessary evil at first, but quickly came to love it. He wasn’t sure why; there was something about the routines, the discipline, the rigour that he could embrace if he allowed himself to do so, unlike most of his fellow recruits who treated the whole thing like a game. The physical side of the training appealed to him right away, but as time went on he became increasingly fascinated by the strategies, the way of thinking used to outwit and defeat the enemy. He discovered two things about himself: a predilection for military life and a competitive instinct, which came as a complete surprise. He and his brother had engaged in various sports while they were growing up, but he had never been hell-bent on winning. Not until he ended up in the army. It was as if he couldn’t fully commit until it was a matter of life and death. He started training like a madman. Looking after his body. Loving it, like an elite sportsman who had to be able to rely on it in order to achieve. Weapons were the tools of his trade; he learned to use them all, single-mindedly and with respect. Halfway through his compulsory service he had applied for officer training, and had of course been accepted. He had good, life-changing memories of this place.

  But they weren’t all good.

  The second time he had been here was in August 2003. The regiment had been disbanded six years earlier. Swedint, the Swedish Armed Forces, still operated here, but most of the square, impersonal buildings from the Seventies stood empty and had been allowed to fall into disrepair.

  Alexander had ordered him to go to Almnäs; Joseph had tipped them off about two Afghan men, and the Americans wanted to talk to them. Any activity on Swedish soil required a Swedish presence.

  An anonymous Volvo had been parked outside the storage depot when he arrived. The man standing by the car threw his cigarette on the ground and came to meet Charles. They shook hands; Charles said his name, the other man didn’t. Charles was struck by how young the American looked. Well built, the way Charles pictured a college student whose special talent was for American football. Red hair. Irish origins, perhaps.

  The other American was inside; he didn’t give his name either. Slightly older, slimmer, more muscular. A long face, nose slightly too large, side parting, a fringe hanging over one lens of the aviator sunglasses he never took off.

  Two men were lying on the floor on their backs, their hands and feet chained to metal posts screwed into the floor, arms stretched as far as possible above their heads. They were twisting and turning, trying to free themselves as they talked non-stop, begging to be released, insisting this was a mistake, screaming, demanding answers.

  They didn’t get any.

  The men were naked apart from their underpants. Charles couldn’t see their faces; they were covered with towels. Without exchanging a single word the man in sunglasses picked up a bucket of water and began to pour it onto the thick fabric covering the face of one of the men on the floor. His body jerked in a powerful gag reflex, and he immediately fell silent. His companion seemed to sense that something had happened, and shouted out a name.

  Hamid!

  The American carried on pouring water onto the towel. The man who was apparently called Hamid pulled at his chains, trying to escape. Charles saw the skin tear around the metal cuffs and Hamid’s wrists began to bleed. The flow of water stopped. The red-haired man crouched down and pulled back the towel. Hamid gasped for air; he was almost hyperventilating, and fear shone in his eyes. His gaze fastened on Charles, and he started begging for help. The red-haired man hit him across the face, and he stopped talking. Then the questions began.

  Where was it going to happen?

  When was it going to happen?

  Who else was involved?

  Hamid clearly didn’t understand. He simply shook his head, managed to get out something that sounded like ‘wrong’ and ‘please’ before the towel was replaced. He screamed, and his companion joined in.

  This time both Americans picked up a bucket and poured water over both men at the same time. Unmoved, implacable.

  Charles was ordered to refill the other buckets. He did as he was told. Gave them the full buckets when theirs were empty. Refilled them again.

  Crouch down. Towel off.

  Where? When? Who else?

  They got no answers.

  At one point Hamid made a panic-stricken attempt to break free, and Charles heard the bones in his wrist break as he flung himself as far as he could to the right in order to try to escape the inexorable flow of
water.

  Where? When? Who else?

  Charles had no idea how long it had been going on when he joined in. He positioned himself above the head of one of the men, legs wide apart, and tilted the bucket. The water flowed onto the fabric in a slow but steady stream, effectively stopping any air from getting through.

  ‘When you think they can’t take any more,’ the man in the aviators said, ‘you carry on for another twenty seconds, and then another ten.’

  Over and over again.

  Both men were bleeding heavily from their wrists and ankles, and Hamid’s left hand was dangling at a very odd angle. They had stopped screaming. They weren’t talking. No more pleading. They didn’t even have the strength to whisper. They just stared with eyes that were already dead each time the towels were removed and the questions were asked. Their breathing became shallower and shallower; soon it was just a series of gasps.

  When? Where? Who else?

  Over and over again.

  They took a break. Went outside for a smoke. None of them said very much. They went back inside and carried on.

  Said died first; he simply stopped breathing. Dry drowning, the red-haired man stated before attempting to revive him with mouth to mouth resuscitation. Without success. The other man bent over the lifeless body and began heart massage, while his colleague continued to breathe oxygen into the damaged lungs. Without success. Charles was beginning to feel a sense of revulsion. This was bad. Really bad. Neither of the two Afghans were Swedish citizens, but one of them, the one who had died, had a permanent residence permit. The extreme interrogation methods were bad enough, but at least they could be justified; the open society was under attack. Democracy had to be protected, and the situation these days required a harsh approach. But this? How the fuck were they going to fix this?

  The Americans gave up their attempts to revive Said, and returned to Hamid. Charles assumed they were going to let him go, stop the interrogation; it seemed obvious to him that the two men knew nothing. But no. The Americans pulled away the towel and turned Hamid’s head to the left so that he could see his friend. A faint whimper was all he could manage before they replaced the towel and began again.

  He lasted another thirty minutes.

  The red-haired man and the man in the aviators left the country. Charles reported back to Alexander that Hamid and Said would never be found. If they could just shut down the missing persons investigation that the Solna police had embarked upon, everything would be fine.

  Charles knew exactly the right man for the job, or so he thought. But Adam had let him down. Didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand.

  Instead of simply taking on the case and burying it, he had started investigating. He had visited the families, dug around for Foreign Office gossip. Alexander could make sure that Adam got nowhere, of course, but Adam was still a problem.

  Charles was surprised. Admittedly his brother had always had a strong sense of right and wrong – that was why he had joined the police – but Charles had thought he would let it go when national security was at stake. There was a constant threat to the open society. For God’s sake, the Foreign Minister had been murdered in a department store that autumn!

  They had had long conversations. Adam wanted to know more, wanted to know everything. Charles gave him bits and pieces, but Adam wasn’t satisfied. He told Charles he intended to get to the bottom of this, and if what he thought had happened turned out to be the truth, he wouldn’t be able to turn a blind eye. Even if they were brothers. Charles had asked him to wait, let it go for a while. Think it over. Give it a week.

  He had booked a mountain retreat, a log cabin in Jämtland. Couldn’t Adam go up there, think things through? If he felt the same when he came back, then he could go ahead and do what he felt was right. A week. Putting some distance between himself and the situation might be a good thing – after all, he loved the mountains, didn’t he?

  Adam had gone.

  Someone had called in Patricia Wellton. Charles didn’t know whether Alexander or someone at the Foreign Office was responsible for making that kind of contact, but in the chaos following the murder of Anna Lindh, he assumed it wasn’t the acting Foreign Secretary.

  Charles had gone up to meet Patricia after the event so that she could report back. When she finally arrived, several hours late, she was furious. Nobody had said anything about a woman and two kids. How the fuck was she expected to do her job when the information about the target was inaccurate?

  Adam. Stupid, stupid Adam, who loved his family so much. Charles had understood at once: Adam had taken the family with him. Lena, Ella and Simon.

  Lena had been in the same class as Charles at the high school in Södertälje. They were good friends. Or she was his friend, at least; he was in love with her. He never told her; he was afraid of losing her completely if he gave the slightest hint of the feelings he had for her. She spent a lot of time at their house. She was two years older than Adam; at that age girls are supposed to think that younger boys are childish, immature and uninteresting, but Lena wasn’t like other girls. She got together with Adam during her final year at school. He was seventeen, she was nineteen. Charles had to watch them curled up on the sofa together, kissing and cuddling and watching TV. He could hear them through the wall of his room at night, but he stayed strong; it was a teenage crush. Nobody expected it to last. But it did.

  Year after year after year.

  They got married in 1990, when Adam was twenty-two. They had Ella five years later, and Simon two years after that. A happy little family. They moved to Stockholm, Charles to Oskarshamn. They met up often, enjoyed spending time together. Charles was Simon’s godfather; he loved his nephew and niece, but he never got over the feeling that Adam had taken something that belonged to him. Wrong and totally irrational, of course; if Adam had known how he felt about Lena he would never have gone there, Charles was sure of it.

  Adam was a fine, good man.

  Patricia Wellton.

  Everything had gone black when he realised she had killed Lena and the children. They weren’t supposed to die. They were supposed to live. Who knew what might have happened in the future? Possibly nothing, that wasn’t why he wanted Adam to go up to Jämtland. It was because he had no choice; it was a matter of national security, a sacrifice he had to make in order to protect a fragile democracy.

  Lena and the children were never meant to die.

  But they did.

  Patricia had killed them, and therefore he had killed Patricia.

  Charles gave a start. A car was approaching. The beam of the headlights swept across the deserted buildings as it turned in. How long had he been standing here, lost in his thoughts?

  It was this place.

  He should have chosen somewhere else. Too many memories. He looked at his watch, then peered out. Joseph had arrived. Time for yet another conclusion.

  The old sentry post had been abandoned long ago. The windows were broken and someone had scrawled ‘Armed struggle’, appropriately enough, on the rotting walls. Joseph drove slowly through the raised barrier and carried on up the hill. Even the tarmac was neglected, with great big potholes and weeds growing through the cracks. When he reached the top of the hill he could see the barracks spread before him. He turned in and parked as far away as possible. He looked around, but couldn’t see anyone. If the buildings were well past their best, that was nothing compared to this area. There was rubbish and broken glass everywhere, every surface was covered in graffiti, and there were even a number of burnt-out cars. It really was the perfect place to bury old sins. Once upon a time young men had trained here in order to defend their country; now it was just a ghost town. Joseph switched off the engine, and there was total silence.

  Not a sound from the boot. Good. It would have been difficult if the kid had started kicking and yelling. It had happened to him once in Jordan when he was young, and it had been far from easy, driving around with that going on. He had enough of a headache as it was, pa
rticularly with the boy tracking him down after all these years. It would have made more sense if someone had started asking questions just after the two men had gone missing. Joseph had been quite worried at the time, but as the years went by he felt increasingly safe, and eventually he had more or less forgotten about it. Life went on. His misgivings dwindled day by day, until they were so small they no longer made their presence felt.

  But he realised now that the children who are left behind do not forget. In fact, the desire to understand probably grew stronger as they got older, until one day there they were, asking questions. At least if they had a name to search for.

  Which the boy evidently had.

  Someone must have talked.

  2003 had been a crazy time for him. Everyone was desperate for information: the Americans, the British, the Swedes, the Egyptians. They wanted more and more. It was as if they thought little Sweden was full of potential terrorists, and that belief made them throw money and resources in all directions. He had found himself right in the middle of the madness, and had quickly and willingly discovered his role. Important people started listening to him. His whispers gave him power and money. It was an intoxicating feeling, holding the lives of others in his hands simply by pointing them out.

  But with the money came the demands. They wanted names. All the time. More and more. They were insatiable and paranoid. Why was this person travelling to that place? Who was that person meeting there? What was that imam doing in Sweden? Who invited him? Could he try to get closer to this particular group?

  He had kept them happy while filling his pockets with money.

  Things were different now. They no longer relied on individual informants in the same way. They had refined their methods; the information came from a range of sources and was checked more carefully. Coordinated. The rules had changed, and there was less money available. They used their own agents to infiltrate their opponents, while both sides tried to come up with new ways of fighting one another. The Americans used unmanned drones to deliver bombs and missiles while the enemy slept, and the extremists found new countries in which to operate. It was like a circus, constantly travelling from one poor country to the next.