The Disciple

by Michael Hjorth

  His mind was racing.

  What had happened? Who the hell was the dead man sitting beside him? Was anyone else going to turn up? He looked around anxiously, but the street appeared to be deserted. There was no one heading towards his car, no one paying them the slightest attention. The old man could hardly be a police officer. They didn’t use a Taser in a situation like this. They used real guns. But somehow his own identity, or at least his plans, had become known. Because the dead man wasn’t sitting in his car just by chance.

  ‘It’s over,’ he’d said. You didn’t say that if you were going to rob someone. You said that if you were intending to stop someone. The Master had been right. He had been careless in some way. Given himself away. Perhaps Sebastian Bergman was behind this. Perhaps he was a more worthy opponent than Ralph had thought. He had realised that Ralph was shadowing him. Had run towards him outside the police station. Perhaps changing cars hadn’t been enough.

  But that still didn’t make sense.

  If Sebastian had something to do with the fact that there was a dead man sitting in his car, then the man should have been a police officer. Sebastian was working with them. And there should have been more of them. A lot more. He was top priority. He was the most important case they were working on. So where were the rest of them?

  He couldn’t really come up with any answers.

  Ralph looked anxiously around again. Saw a movement from the building where he ought to be right now. A taxi pulling up. He slid down out of sight. Saw Anna Eriksson come out of the main door carrying a suitcase. She got into the taxi. He ought to follow her, but realised this would be impossible. He had to change his clothes. Dump a body. Get rid of the car.

  He had failed.

  He had let the Master down.

  He would have to face the consequences.

  Vanja was already in a bad mood when she arrived at the station. To tell the truth, she had gone to bed in a temper the night before, and woken up furious this morning.

  It wasn’t even half past seven, but it was already a bloody awful day.

  As if it wasn’t enough that they were getting nowhere with the case, which she found incredibly frustrating, Sebastian Bergman was still an active part of the investigation. She just couldn’t understand why. How could someone who had had a relationship with all four victims be allowed to remain part of the inner circle? Even if Torkel was right when he claimed that Sebastian’s involvement might prevent further murders now that Edward Hinde had got his attention, it was still completely indefensible. If this came out, Torkel was finished. Not even he would be able to survive the media firestorm. But that wasn’t the only thing that had put her in a bad mood. What really infuriated her was that Torkel seemed to prioritise Sebastian above everyone else in the team. He wasn’t that fucking fantastic. Besides which, he got on her nerves. She couldn’t relax when he was around. He kept on looking at her in a funny way. She felt as if she was being watched. He had an adverse effect on her work. She hated him.

  And yesterday she had ended up in Södertälje, a trip which had been a total waste of time.

  She hated Södertälje as well.

  Then, when she asked Billy for a little bit of help, what had he said? ‘Do it yourself.’ What the fuck was that all about? Since when did you respond to a request for help within the team with ‘do it yourself’?

  Back in her apartment after the pointless jaunt to Södertälje, which had cost her a hundred kronor on top of everything else, she had had a shower, made tea and sandwiches and settled down to stare mindlessly at the TV. She wasn’t going to sit down at the kitchen table with her case notes as she usually did. She was going to unwind. Relax.

  She couldn’t do it.

  She definitely couldn’t do it after Anna had called her very late to explain that Gran was ill and she was going to stay with her for a few days. Of course Vanja had wanted to know what was wrong with her grandmother, and had been told it was nothing serious. But why would Anna take time off work to go and stay with her if it wasn’t serious? Anna was hiding the truth. Just as she had done when Valdemar got sick. She had kept quiet about test results, played the whole thing down. Vanja had had to go to her father to find out how things really stood. He told her everything. Anna had lied to her. Vanja hadn’t been at all happy about that. Admittedly Anna was probably just trying to protect her daughter, but regardless of her motives, the lies hadn’t exactly brought them closer. And there was already a distance between them; she called her mother Anna, but she called Valdemar Dad. That said something.

  It was something that Vanja would have to discuss with Anna at some point, the fact that she didn’t like the lies within their relationship. On the phone last night she had felt like saying she would go with her mother to visit Gran. But she couldn’t take time off. Not right now. She couldn’t leave work when they had got nowhere in over a month. No, that wasn’t strictly true; they had made some progress. They had found the link to Hinde. But she wouldn’t be allowed to follow up that lead. Sebastian would be doing that. Torkel had already made his decision.

  Bloody Torkel.

  Bloody Sebastian.

  Bloody everything.

  She had switched off the television and gone out. Just for a walk, initially. To get some fresh air, clear her mind, tire herself out. But then she had slipped into her local pub as she was passing. Had a beer, then a few more. Hooked up with some guys and gone on somewhere else. Bumped into people she knew. Had a few more beers. And then someone had started ordering shots. It might have been her. For a brief moment she had considered taking one of the guys home with her, but in the end she had resisted the temptation. She still hadn’t got to bed until well after two. Quite tipsy. Drunk, in fact. Not like her at all.

  Her alarm clock went off at the usual time. And now, after barely four hours of drunken sleep, she was at work. More bad-tempered than hungover, but it certainly wasn’t a good combination.

  She sat down at her desk and switched on the computer. Started searching for Rodriguez. Found him, but there was nothing about where or when he had been involved in the accident that had put him in a wheelchair. She would just have to keep looking. But first she needed coffee. Caffeine and a painkiller would work wonders. She went into the staff dining room, took a mug out of the cupboard above the sink and made a cappuccino before returning to her desk. She opened the top drawer and took out a box of Ipren. Swilled down a tablet with a sip of coffee. She was just about to get back to work and start expanding her search when Billy came in. The strap of his shoulder bag was across his chest, and he was carrying a cycling helmet. Billy had a bike with twenty-four gears. Made from the same material as a spaceship, or something. Hi-tech. Of course. Vanja’s had three gears. She never used it.

  ‘Hi, how’s things?’ Billy said as he shrugged off his bag at his desk.

  ‘Fine,’ Vanja replied without looking up. She did her best to look as if she was concentrating really hard in order to avoid any further conversation. It didn’t work.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Billy wanted to know, coming around her desk to have a look. He was hot, she noticed. The sweat was pouring down his cheeks and neck. He tilted his head to one side and dried himself with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  ‘I’m trying to find out when Rodriguez ended up in a wheelchair.’

  Billy felt a slight pang. The truth was that if Vanja hadn’t already been there, Billy would have started the day by digging out the information she wanted. Maya thought he had done really well yesterday. But although it felt good to put his foot down from time to time, so that people stopped taking him for granted, he had felt guilty all evening.

  ‘Where are you searching?’

  ‘Why?’ Vanja took her eyes off the screen and looked up at him. ‘Do you want to help?’

  Billy hesitated. This was a new situation. Vanja wasn’t asking for help. She was asking if he wanted to help. Billy went for the safe option and came back with a question of his own. ‘Do you need help?�
�

  ‘No.’

  Vanja went back to the computer and started tapping away. Billy stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do next. She was in a bad mood, there was no doubt about that. Because of him, presumably. With a certain amount of justification. Should he just let it go, hope it would pass? He decided he would be a little nicer than usual to Vanja today. He didn’t like it when they fell out.

  ‘Would you like a coffee?’ A little puff on the pipe of peace couldn’t do any harm, surely.

  ‘I’ve got some, thank you.’ She pointed to her cappuccino.

  Billy nodded to himself. He should have noticed. One more peace offering left. An outstretched hand that he knew she would take.

  ‘Her name is Maya.’

  ‘Whose name is Maya?’

  ‘The girl. The theatre girl . . . My girlfriend.’

  Vanja looked up as if she was expecting more. Billy had nothing to add. He had been prepared for a battery of questions. He had decided to answer them all, except for mentioning what Maya did. After yesterday’s telephone conversation Vanja would immediately put two and two together, and that would be it for Maya. Shit, when did everything get so difficult? Vanja was still looking at him encouragingly. He was beginning to feel a bit stupid. As if he had said it as some kind of boast.

  ‘It’s just . . . I just thought you might want to know . . .’

  ‘Okay.’ Vanja went back to her computer. Not interested in his girlfriends. She really was in a foul mood. Perhaps he wasn’t the only reason after all.

  ‘Right, well, I’m going for a quick shower.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Billy stood there for a couple of seconds, then left the office.

  It was going to be a hard day.

  Edward was sitting in the library.

  For a comparatively small institution, Lövhaga had a big library. There were probably a number of reasons for this. The high level of supervision required by the inmates. The desire to strengthen the patients’ intellectual development, to make them grow as people. The belief that books and knowledge would make them better in some magical way. And of course the thing that lay behind most human buildings: self-interest. The more impressive the library, the more inmates who regularly spent time in there improving themselves, the higher the grade the institution was able to achieve in internal reports. The logic was depressingly simple: an impressive library equals expert and proactive leadership.

  Hinde had witnessed the results of such logic after the great cleaning riot. A few months later the library was extended significantly, and acquired an upper floor where the emphasis was on the humanities. As if future riots among inmates from the former Yugoslavia who were suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and had been convicted of repeated crimes of violence could be prevented by the acquisition of The History of the Renaissance in twelve volumes, or writings on philosophy and the history of ideas.

  There was a range of both non-fiction and novels, but you had to search hard to find the real treasure. It had taken Edward quite some time, but now he was sitting upstairs as usual reading one of his favourite books. It was a detailed account of Napoleon’s march across the Italian Alps in 1797. At the time Napoleon had just been made a general and had been dispatched with all haste to defend France’s allies against the Habsburg dynasty. It was during these glorious battles that he demonstrated the strategic skill that would take him all the way to the heart of history. Edward had read the book many times before, but not for the descriptions of the troops, the battles, the problems with provisions or the politics behind it all. No, in the middle of the book there was a chapter which was intended to give a deeper insight into Napoleon as a person, and which mainly concerned his relationship with his mother, Letizia Bonaparte.

  A strong mother.

  A domineering mother.

  Hinde felt he had discovered Napoleon’s secret in this chapter. He could see the little boy who wanted to achieve so much for one reason, and one reason alone: Letizia. She must have been a difficult woman to deal with.

  Edward left Letizia for a moment and looked around. He knew it was two or three minutes past twelve, and there would soon be a shift change in the library. The guard on the upper floor went down to the small reception desk right next to the entrance on the ground floor; he would leave the library with his colleague as soon as their relief arrived. Their replacement always arrived alone, and stayed downstairs, which was larger and busier. When the second guard arrived ten minutes later, one of them would come upstairs.

  Hinde put down the book. Carefully moved his chair closer to the railing so that he could get as clear a view as possible of what was happening down below.

  As usual Hinde was alone on the upper floor. The other inmates no longer went up there, at least not while Edward was around. They obediently remained downstairs. That was the way things had been for a long time, and sometimes it felt as if the management had spent millions and built the entire upper floor for the use of just one person.

  A wonderful feeling.

  It had taken a few weeks of intensive effort after the ostentatious opening before the others fully grasped the unwritten rules. At that time Edward had been helped significantly by his well-built friend Roland Johansson; he missed having Roland by his side. Roland had a unique ability to persuade others. He was completely unafraid, and was never held back by banalities such as empathy or compassion. At the same time he had displayed something of a soldier’s loyalty towards Edward, and had always been there, silently supportive. Roland didn’t say much, but Edward had gently worked on him until he found the way in via his childhood and the series of betrayals that had shaped him. Alcoholic parents. One foster home after another. Disruption and insecurity. An early acquaintance with crime and drugs. The usual sordid mess that applied to ninety per cent of those he was so unhappily forced to live with at the moment. But the difference between Roland and the others was that Roland was intelligent. Extremely intelligent. Hinde had sensed this almost at once, and had tested his IQ with the help of one of the books in the library. Roland scored 172 on the Stanford-Binet scale: 0.0001 per cent of the population came out at higher than 176. Hinde had double-checked using the Wechsler scale, and got roughly the same result. Roland Johansson was unique, and to Edward he was a godsend. A forgotten, gifted boy tempered to steel by a hard life and by people who constantly let him down. Someone who had never been seen for what he really was. Until he met Edward. Mental stimulation replaced the chemical variety, and Edward began coaching him for his future role. Following his release, Roland had kept a low profile. No crime, no drugs. He had waited for the signal. Edward’s treatment had been more effective than twenty years of society’s inept efforts. He gave Roland an identity, a belief in himself. That was better than all the books in the world, however many volumes they came in. Edward was pleased to have such a loyal henchman on the outside, but he missed him in here, partly because their friendship had become important to him, and partly because his position of power in Lövhaga had been weakened without Roland. Instead, Edward had been forced to lean on Igor, the triple murderer. Igor was at least as effective when it came to muscle, but unfortunately he was bipolar, which meant he was unreliable.

  Edward saw the relief guard enter the library downstairs; slightly later today, but within the margin of error. He stopped and exchanged a few words with his colleagues. All three of them laughed at something, then with a farewell pat on the shoulder the other two went for lunch. In the doorway they met a cleaner in blue overalls pushing his trolley along, on his way into the library. They nodded to him. The cleaner nodded back. Ralph. Dead on time. As always. Edward saw Ralph pause for a brief chat with the guard who had just settled down behind the desk. Then Hinde slipped over to the lift. He stayed behind the bookshelves to make it look as if he was searching for a particular book, but the guard downstairs took no notice of him. Fourteen years without incident had made them feel safe. Spoiled.

  ‘I’ll make a start u
pstairs,’ he heard Ralph say.

  ‘Start wherever you like,’ the guard replied calmly.

  Hinde heard Ralph quickly push his trolley towards the lift and press the button. The doors opened immediately and Ralph got in with his trolley.

  They would have approximately nine minutes before the second guard arrived and one of them came upstairs. They very rarely met in this way; it was only in exceptional cases, if they really needed to talk about something. When the internet wouldn’t do. It was a security measure which Edward had introduced. It was of the utmost importance that their meetings didn’t become too regular. They must never follow a pattern that the guards might notice, arousing their suspicions. But today they needed to talk. Ralph had sent a worrying message via fygorh.se. Someone was on to them. A man was dead. A man Hinde knew, at least if the driving licence Ralph had found on him was correct.

  Trolle Hermansson.

  One of the police officers in that stuffy interview room. An inspector in those days. The most aggressive of the three he saw most often during the intense interrogation.

  Not a police officer any longer.

  So what was he doing outside Anna Eriksson’s apartment?

  It must have something to do with Sebastian. It had been Sebastian, Trolle and Torkel Höglund in the interview room back then. Sometimes they took it in turns. But it was always one of those three. And now one of them was dead. The one who wasn’t a police officer any longer. It must have something to do with Sebastian Bergman. He was the only one who would involve an old ally. He must have been doing his own thing. If the rest of Riksmord had known of Ralph’s existence, they would have sent in the special operations unit. Not an old ex-copper. An old ex-copper all by himself.

  Edward positioned himself by the bookshelf closest to the lift. Ralph wheeled out his trolley and placed it in front of the lift doors to prevent them from closing. Then he picked up a brush and went over to the other side of the shelf, opposite Edward. He made a few brisk movements with the brush. He was whispering, but could barely hide his agitation.