Acts of Vanishing

by Fredrik T. Olsson

  Now, four hours later, she shuffled up the hill at the bottom of Skeppargatan. Nearly there. Hungry and tired and wet, yet she didn’t really feel anything one way or the other. A single bodily function outweighed the others, and that was the need to restock, the sweats and the shakes and the restlessness that screamed through her head, demanding she do something about it.

  Inside her rucksack was a computer, expensive and heavy, and inside that was a CD that had been addressed to her father.

  And if only it hadn’t come from Warsaw. If it hadn’t been for that, then she probably would have done the right thing. Returned to their flat, handed him the disc and shown him the letter, the one that had been folded inside the case.

  Scratchy felt-tip letters, scribbled in flawed English.

  Our meeting is canselled.

  We are in danger.

  17

  The man in the brown corduroy blazer was Per Einar Eriksen. He was forty-three, a professor at Karolinska Insitutet in Stockholm, and the father of two girls in their early teens.

  But more than anything, right now he was floating in weightlessness. From a strictly scientific perspective this admittedly gave him an excellent opportunity for observation. His brain was working flat out, and ironically, that was his specialist subject–human consciousness, thought processes, the meandering paths between abstract thoughts and concrete actions.

  And, like now, how the internal processor seemed to shift up a gear when faced with a crisis, just as his subjects would often describe it after countless tests and experiments. How a sudden, unforeseen danger could cause time to slow down, drag forwards in slow motion, to the point of almost standing still.

  Although, of course, in reality it did nothing of the sort. Time is constant. And in reality, Per Einar Eriksen had only seconds left to live.

  The text message had arrived almost as soon as the power came back, and he had hesitated for around half a second before deciding to comply with its instructions. He had been in position in the lobby of Kaknäs telecoms tower long before the agreed time, and after a lot of persuasion they had let him into the tower even though the view was closed for the day–however the hell a view could close, something he found far more amusing than the girl on the till did–and although the restaurant had shut up shop for the day as soon as the power went.

  As he stepped out of the lift on the thirteenth floor, he’d been all alone. He had walked over to the huge windows, looked right out into the darkness, down on the millions of fuzzy white dots that formed the city’s street lighting.

  And then, nothing happened. Nothing at all.

  In the distance, the revolving clock on the NK Department Store roof completed one revolution after another, and when the hands reached ten thirty he just had to accept it. Someone had tricked him. What most annoyed him was that he didn’t have anyone to call and bawl out, no one to say For fuck’s sake to, I’ve got more important things to do with my life than stand here waiting to meet someone whose identity I don’t even know

  Because that was the situation. He didn’t know who’d summoned him there. The only thing he did know was that he’d been too curious to ignore it, and that the only one he could blame was himself, and those thoughts, frankly, were not particularly satisfying.

  My fault, he thought as he fell.

  At thirty-three minutes past ten he had stepped back into the lift, consoled himself with the thought that he would probably be able to blag himself something from the gift shop on the way out, pressed the button to take him down to the ground floor, and then, in an instant, realised that everything was wrong.

  First came the sensation of lifting away from the floor, even if he knew that the opposite was happening. Then the feeling that his internal organs were coming adrift from their moorings, floating around inside him like cooking oil in a glass of water, and then the thoughts–rushing through his head at hyper-speed, making it seem that the world was standing still.

  Thoughts about the events that had led him here.

  The emails, the weird, frightening emails with their incomprehensible pleas for help, short, without a sender, and in which someone had asked to meet at Central Station without saying why. Then the CD, the one that had arrived in the regular mail, with a handwritten message saying the meeting was canselled. Because we are in danger.

  And now, the text that arrived along with the power, that once again consisted of a single line, and that was the reason for him being here, heading for his own death.

  Kaknäs Tower, it had said. Restaurant, 22:00.

  And that’s where he was, only not in the restaurant, but standing in a lift in free-fall, the floor beneath his feet disappearing as quickly as he was, at a speed that was constantly increasing and in the shiny, stainless steel walls he could see his own face scream in desperation.

  Five and a half seconds, that’s how long it took, the longest–and shortest–seconds in his forty-three-year life, a time that passed in slow motion, yet still way too quickly. Five and a half seconds of thoughts, questions with no answers, and of pleading to all conceivable higher powers to please make this stop.

  In the end it did.

  18

  Every now and then, major events are overshadowed by others. Groucho Marx died in the shadow of Elvis Presley, Mother Teresa in the shadow of Princess Diana, Ray Charles–Ronald Reagan. On any other day, their deaths would have brought acres of coverage and bold headlines, but instead they were relegated to shorter pieces on the inside pages. Decades later, their lives would amount to topics of conversation at dinner parties, where people would ask, glass in hand, what happened to him, is he still alive, I’m a bit out of touch. And all because of timing.

  The man that was hit by the freight train died in the shadow of a power cut.

  He had been travelling in a rented, Polish-registered BMW, he was sitting in the middle of the tracks with no lights on–a clear-cut suicide if there ever was one. Let’s go for lunch.

  No one bothered to ask why the man wasn’t carrying any ID. No one seemed to wonder why he had been in Sweden. And no one, no one asked whether the unidentified man in Skåne might possibly be Michal Piotrowski, whose body would never be found, but whom Polish authorities would declare dead from a powerful blaze in his apartment later that same day. He died in the shadow of an evening where people couldn’t cook their dinners, and on the news sites his demise was reduced to a right-hand column link that no one clicked on.

  Not even William Sandberg. He sat in his office, on the edge of an uncomfortable swivel chair in front of his computer, skimming through the newspapers’ versions of the power cut while his thoughts danced inside his head.

  Somewhere deep inside, he was relieved. At long last he knew, at last he had an answer to the question he’d been asking himself for almost six months. Sara was alive, and in Stockholm, and those were the emotions he had deliberately tapped into, exaggerated, in order to get released. Hyperventilating, he had demanded to be released, barking that he had to get out and find her before it was too late.

  In the end Palmgren had grabbed him by the shoulders and sworn that they were already looking everywhere for her. William had felt the sarcastic barbs lining up inside his head.

  Fuck me, that’s nice, he wanted to say. All for my sake?

  But instead, he’d allowed them to soothe him, because he knew that was the best thing he could do, and eventually they had done exactly as he’d hoped. They’d let him out into the corridor and given him permission to go up to his office, where he’d closed the door behind him, turned on his computer and entered his passwords.

  Now there he was. Feeling the stress and the exhaustion thundering up under his jacket, looking at the screen in front of him, the same screen as six months ago, the same computers, pens and notepads. Untouched, as if they’d expected him to come back. Just like he had left Sara’s room on Skeppargatan.

  He closed his eyes. Forced himself to organise his thoughts.

  Warsaw.


  When William finally hauled himself out of the desk chair it was so that he could bend in behind the computer. Fingernail on the Ethernet cable, the plasticky snap as it came out of its socket.

  Now that the computer was isolated no one would be able to eavesdrop on what he was doing. Admittedly, it made things more difficult for him too–nothing outside the computer itself would be accessible, not the internet, not even the intranet.

  But what William was looking for was much closer than that. With a couple of rapid clicks he opened the program that he had installed himself, in breach of every known rule and code, a surveillance utility that he’d written himself and that recorded every keystroke and attempt to log in. A couple of seconds later he was absolutely certain no one had been at his computer since he left it, which, in turn, meant that no one had installed similar software to do the same thing to him. He was invisible now. No one could see him.

  Not when he opened the mail client, where all his professional correspondence had been stored locally for years. Not when he looked over his shoulder to make absolutely certain that no one was there watching him from the doorway. And not when he clicked the cursor into the search box.

  Typed the name that he knew would be there, somewhere, in his inbox.

  Michal Piotrowski.

  Christina Sandberg had watched William being led out of the meeting room without giving her so much as a glance, and when Palmgren came back in he took her by the shoulder and followed her out.

  The silence lasted all the way down the corridor. It stayed with them through the security control and while she got her bag back and her coat and her phone, and it hung around at their side when they stopped outside the entrance to wait for the taxi. She struggled into her coat in the cold. Held in the button to turn the phone on, swore quietly when it refused to cooperate.

  The battery, she said to herself. The pictures of Tetrapak’s computer. Fucking prime example of how to prioritise. They were photos she was never going to use, and she should have known that as she was taking them, but it was too late to regret that now.

  They stood there for ages, outside the glass doors, felt the night poised between frost and thaw but never making up its mind.

  ‘We’ll do whatever we can to find her,’ Palmgren said.

  ‘It’s been six months since we reported her missing. If she doesn’t want to be found then she won’t be.’

  ‘Oh well. It’s not until now that she’s been in possession of something that may affect national security.’

  He looked at her, with a smile that was supposed to communicate irony and condolences and warmth all at once, but that just turned out sad.

  She hesitated. There was a question she was dying to ask, but her information came from an undeniably dodgy source.

  Here goes nothing.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ she asked. ‘What happened today, did you know it was going to happen?’

  Of all the questions, that wasn’t one he’d been expecting.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

  ‘I’m sure you will.’

  When the car turned up he opened the door for her, left his hand on the handle while she sat down.

  ‘I know better than to go telling things to journalists. But this is you. And although you’re a journalist on one hand, on the other hand you’re a next of kin, and how could I possibly know which of them you are the most?’

  ‘It is possible to be both,’ said Christina.

  He leant in. Elbow on the roof. Hushed.

  ‘I want you to promise me two things,’ he said. ‘What we’ve experienced today? As of now I don’t know what it means, where it’s heading, what the threat is. There are things we don’t tell the public–and I want you to remember that there are reasons for that.’

  He squinted at her.

  ‘I’m asking you, Christina. Promise me you won’t go digging around in all this.’

  She forced a smile. Hoped that if she just kept it up long enough it would be interpreted as a yes.

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘If you do find anything. Whatever it is. Please, let me be the first to know.’

  ‘How would I find anything if I don’t go digging around?’

  ‘I did say I know you.’

  This time the smile made it to her eyes.

  When Sara Sandberg finally walked through the door on Skeppargatan, time stopped. She could feel the nausea closing in once more, a muscular claw around her stomach, her nerves conspiring with chemistry to make her mouth water.

  Part of it was withdrawal. She was dizzy, and that wasn’t going to get better. Part of it was the memories that were coming back. The stairwell, the smell, the same outside noise that vibrated in through the door and echoed around the faux marble walls.

  As she pulled the metal grille closed behind her she forced herself to struggle on. There was nothing to be afraid of, she told herself, it was the same lift as back then, the same apartment waiting up there. And after all, it wasn’t the first time she’d been home, far from it. For a long time she had used it as an occasional refuge, a tacit agreement that when the apartment was empty she could sleep over. Each time, her bed had been made with fresh linen, the fridge had been filled with food, and in the calendar on the kitchen wall there were always detailed notes about when they would next be away, and for how long. That’s how desperate they were for her to come home again. And why not make the most of that? It was them she hated, not the apartment, not their food.

  That had been their arrangement. Right up until they’d found her stuff.

  Their daughter took drugs, not happy pills but heavy, real narcotics, and all of a sudden it wasn’t so sweet anymore to have her sleeping in her patterned sheets and eating their pâté. So they did what parents do. They confronted her, and served ultimatums, and demanded that she stop. So what choice did she have?

  When the lift came to a stop on the fourth floor she stood there for several minutes before stepping out.

  She’d been there once more since then. One other time, before today. It couldn’t be more than days ago.

  He had been in there. She’d heard his sounds even before trying the door handle, his creaking footsteps on the parquet floor, as though he was just pacing back and forth the whole time, and it had spooked her. What if she wasn’t welcome any more? What if they’d stopped wanting her to come home? No one can hate for ever, but what if you can’t miss someone for ever either?

  The door had been unlocked, and the briefcase had been standing there, just inside the door. And she hadn’t meant to, but she grabbed the bag before she’d even had the chance to ask herself why, and even as she ran down the steps she’d felt how wrong it was, that one way or another she was going to end up paying for this, for the theft, the betrayal, the cowardice. Maybe that’s what today had been about.

  Now, there she was again. In front of the same door. Key grasped tightly in her hand, a single key on a thin leather strap, the one possession she had never sold, never lost, never let anyone steal. And today, she was going to do the right thing. Today she would dare. She pushed it in, felt her heart pounding. I’m home, she thought. From now on, everything is as it should be.

  So intense was the nausea that enveloped her that for a second she thought she’d thrown up. She was there, on the landing, with her right hand on one of the heavy double doors, her own home before her. And yet it was further off than ever. The metal grille was white and brand new, huge vertical bars running from floor to ceiling, held in place by thick crossbeams, like a prison gate between her and her refuge.

  She felt the panic rising, grabbed the grille, tugged at it, even though she knew it would be locked. She gasped for air, an oppressive anxiety seizing her and making her want to scream out loud. Her leaving them was one thing, but the other way around? How could they lock her out? They were the ones who had begged her to come home, told her nothing had changed, that to them she was still their daughte
r. They’d stood there with their pathetic eyes and promised that they loved her and that they always had. The ones she’d hated because they loved her, the ones she dared to hate because they were always going to be there.

  Now they had turned the tables on her.

  They had installed a security grille to keep her out, and of course it was her own fault, she shouldn’t have stolen the briefcase, and she knew that too, but all the same, how the hell could they turn their backs on her? At a time like this?

  She pushed the doorbell next to the door, kept it pushed in, her dirty nails under the sign that said Sandberg, and she pushed and pushed and waited and hoped. From nowhere, the emptiness cascaded down on her, as if all of a sudden she couldn’t live without them, as though her decision to come back made missing them unbearable, and, ‘Dad,’ she heard herself shouting, ‘DAD,’ so that the sounds echoed around the long, narrow hallway, and she shook the grille and rang the bell and then she realised she had collapsed onto the floor without knowing how.

  Her mouth tasted of blood and crying, she felt sick and was in pain, and nothing mattered, all she could do was miss and love and hate, and now those fucking idiots had left her, now, when they needed her and she needed them.

  She sat on the cold tiled floor for over half an hour before she was finally able to pull herself away. She was Sara Sandberg and she lived on the streets, and for a moment she’d let herself believe that the past could come back.

  But what’s gone is gone. She got up, took the stairs down, leaving the door to the apartment wide open, as a greeting.

  Sara Sandberg, the girl who didn’t know she was about to die. Perhaps, though, her suspicions were stirring.

  Less than a kilometre away Christina’s taxi pulled out onto Valhallavägen, passed the Olympic Stadium and Sophiahemmet Hospital, and was met by blue lights on the other side of the avenue. She turned around to watch them through the rear window, saw them disappearing off towards the Russian Embassy and the large open space between them and Djurgårdsbrunn, in the distance far behind them.