Acts of Vanishing

by Fredrik T. Olsson

  ‘If it turns out that we’re right,’ he said–we, as though he didn’t want to be solely responsible–‘if it was Trottier they were after, then we’re not going to hold off any longer.’

  36

  It was the hotel’s name that had William sold: ‘New York’. In the early years of their relationship, hotel names like that had emerged as one of their standing jokes. Their photo albums contained dozens of pictures of entrances, ranging from the uninviting to the squalid, always featuring one of them posing in the doorway, attempting to keep a straight face but seldom succeeding. Hotel Budapest in Madrid. Hotel Cairo in Copenhagen. Hotel Hollywood in more cities than they could keep track of.

  There was something almost touchingly embarrassing about it, having a hotel in one city but naming it after another, the awkwardness of pretending to be something they were not, as though Nuneaton might suddenly be filled with blooming bougainvillea and sun-ripened oranges if the town’s hotel was called ‘Sevilla’.

  ‘It sounded like a good idea at the time,’ they used to say to each other, and that became their catchphrase, applicable to pretty much everything. Not least, like themselves. Like their marriage. Like life.

  When William walked into the claustrophobic lobby of the Hotel New York on the western edge of Warsaw, he was cold, hungry, and more exhausted than he could remember ever having been before. It was seven in the evening, and apart from the watery coffee and the tasteless cheese roll that the lorry driver had given him on the ferry, all he’d had was a bottle of water that he’d bought in a grotty corner shop close to Piotrowski’s fire-ravaged apartment. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon walking down ever darker streets, accompanied by the feeling that someone had opened a secret door from the friendly Warsaw he remembered and shown him out into something much more sinister.

  He was surrounded by buildings that spooked him, and the derelict plots in between them scared him even more. He walked past buildings that had survived both hot and cold wars, brick frontages that had once boasted both colour and render but which now seemed to be shedding their skins, buildings left to die alone with pigeons as their only occupants.

  On an enormous derelict plot, he found a flea market with no customers, and just as it was about to close he’d got himself a new outfit. He bought a shirt, a pair of shoes and a dark blue suit that made him look like a bus driver, and managed to pick up a SIM card and a mobile phone that claimed to be smart but was doing a great job of hiding it.

  Once darkness had fallen and he was sure that no one could see him, he finally allowed himself to walk into Hotel New York’s lobby. It was as tiny as he’d thought it would be, a narrow, loveless room with a reception desk built into one of the walls and a group of odd armchairs squeezed together in front of the worn-out lift door at the far end. Half the desk was taken up with a computer–verging on the antique but clearly still working–and in the corner near the stairs an old TV set dutifully displayed some kind of slide show. Low-res text slides displaying prices and special offers alternated with photos of Manhattan by night which clearly hadn’t been updated in more than a decade. And then, last in the loop, up popped—

  Shit. A CCTV overview of the lobby. There was a camera here somewhere, its pictures spliced into the rest of the slideshow to remind uninvited guests that they’d been caught on film, and now he saw himself in that picture, alone by the unmanned reception, almost in profile, and filmed from above.

  He turned around slowly, a discreet rotation, until the TV version of himself was standing chest-on to the camera. Where was it? He twisted his body without taking his eye off the screen. There it was: attached to the ceiling, midway between a smoke alarm and something that might have been a wiring block for the hotel’s wifi network, was a spherical, nicotine-stained webcam, a single dark eye staring at him.

  This was really bad. Sure, common sense was telling him that the risk of anyone finding him now was pretty much non-existent. They were probably yet to realise that he’d skipped the country, and even if they’d got that far, there were thousands and thousands of cameras to trawl through before they got to this one. Despite that, he still found himself standing on the thick, damp carpet, negotiating with himself while the CCTV image disappeared and the loop played again, prices, special offers, New York. Should he leave? Should he pick somewhere else?

  On the other hand, perhaps what he was really looking for was a kind of hotel that no longer existed, and that he wouldn’t find no matter how far off the beaten track he ventured. The sort that only existed in seventies films, brown and analogue and where no one asked any questions. Plus, the damage was already done, and he didn’t really fancy heading back out into the dark, to wander threatening streets until he found something else.

  From the little office behind reception came the sound of somebody putting down their cutlery and a chair being pushed back, and finally a man of about William’s age materialised in front of him. Chewing gum-white shirt, tired eyes, a napkin with which he was wiping food from the corners of his mouth.

  He let William check in as Karl Axel Söderbladh without demanding his passport–Karl Axel because it was the first name that popped into his head, and Söderbladh in order to be able to make a big deal of how to spell it and where to put the dots, too ludicrous to seem made up on the spot–and the receptionist typed in his details, slowly, using the index finger of one hand. Throughout the procedure he continued to chew the meal which William had obviously interrupted.

  And with each passing minute, William felt the tiredness catching up with him. He wanted a shower, sleep, food, probably in that order, and if he could just get that then he’d find a way to keep going–that, at least, was what he told himself.

  Finally, the receptionist finished stabbing his way through the boxes on his screen, completing the process by handing over a well-worn keycard–once again rather more modern than William had imagined–and then pointing towards the lift and explaining that 407 was on the fourth floor and that breakfast was neither offered nor included.

  William thanked him politely, and got into the tiny lift. Standing there in the claustrophobic space, beginning his vibrating ascent, he could feel himself breathe out for the first time in more than twenty-four hours.

  No one can be in two places at once. But if they could, they might have been in the lobby of Hotel New York, watching the bovine receptionist shuffle his last bits of paper into a pile as William Sandberg stepped into the lift and vanished behind the doors.

  And at the same time, that person could also have been on the other side of the river, in the Police Headquarters in Mokotow, down town Warsaw. Seeing the exact same thing.

  The flowers on Inspector Sebastian Wojda’s desk were wilting, but somehow the greyer they became, the better they seemed to fit into their surroundings.

  A week had passed since he’d celebrated his fortieth birthday, or rather since he’d tried to avoid doing so, and since his colleagues had refused to let him off the hook. It wasn’t because he had anything against birthdays. What he didn’t like was people trying to turn the office into something it wasn’t, people in ties and with titles trying to pretend to be your friend, standing around between desks eating puff pastry and whipped cream off paper plates. But he also knew that deep down it meant that he was well liked, which made running his team that much easier. He was too old to be inexperienced, too young to have stopped caring, and most of the other middle-managers in the organisation were firmly in one of those camps. Many, miraculously, belonged to both at the same time.

  Now, though, the crowd around Wojda had gathered for entirely different reasons. In the middle of his desk were two flat-screen monitors, and behind his chair, everyone’s eyes shifted back and forth between the two.

  On the left-hand screen was the word wanted in light-blue lower case. Underneath was a photo of a man they’d never seen. His face was haggard, his tired eyes staring directly into theirs, his head tilted as though he was looking straight into a wall-mount
ed CCTV camera.

  And no one can be in two places at once. But this came pretty close.

  On the right-hand screen was a completely different image: a narrow, dated lobby, in a hotel that was called New York even though it was only across the river. In that image, a man was just stepping into a lift. And that was the very same man as the one on the monitor to the left.

  37

  The call was still ringing in Velander’s ears as he ran down the stairs of Armed Forces HQ, along the long corridor with all the toilets and meeting rooms, the smell of fried food getting stronger and stronger as he got closer to the canteen. It was evening. In the cafeteria dinner was almost over, and at one of the long tables Palmgren was sitting on his own, hunched over his tray, the contents of which were remarkably similar to lunch, albeit with a different sauce.

  Velander stopped in front of him, doing his best to conceal his shortness of breath, and asked if it was okay to sit down. Palmgren nodded towards the chair. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘I just had a call from the police,’ Velander said. ‘The regular police, from the Big Place on Kungsholmen. They’d had a request from Poland.’ He sat down opposite Palmgren, paused before he went on. ‘Just one thing, before I start. If I sound all over the place, its nothing compared to the guy who called me.’

  ‘Poland?’ Palmgren said to keep things moving.

  ‘Yes. The guy who called me had had a call from Polish police, telling him that they had a match on a Swedish citizen on Interpol’s register. A CCTV camera in a hotel. A name they’d never heard of.’

  ‘And?’ said Palmgren.

  ‘That’s what I said: And? What name is that? The policeman went on to tell me that he didn’t know either, and that’s what was so strange–don’t look at me like that, Palmgren, I understood just as much as you do now–and in the end I said to him, you know what? Never mind, just tell me why you’re calling Swedish Armed Forces HQ about this.’

  Velander put a ring binder on the table.

  ‘Here it is. The abridged version. The Polish cop and the Swedish cop were talking at cross purposes for quite a while. In the end the Swede gave up and asked the Pole to fax over whatever they had.’ Velander leant in. ‘That’s why they rang. Because they recognised him from last night.’

  ‘Recognised who?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  Velander hesitated, but left his hand resting on the file. Watched his boss push his half-eaten dinner to one side.

  ‘Where is he?’ said Palmgren. ‘Please don’t tell me he’s in Warsaw.’

  Velander raised his eyebrows–’fraid so. Palmgren leaned back and slumped with a great despondent sigh, a blow-up toy with a slow puncture.

  ‘I wonder if he didn’t make the wrong decision after all,’ he said eventually. ‘I wonder if he shouldn’t have told us what he knew, helped us to help him, instead of turning up like this in the last place he should be thinking about being right now.’

  ‘Do you think anyone would’ve listened?’

  Palmgren rolled his head. True. ‘It just makes it so much harder to defend him when everything he does looks like evidence that he is involved. How can Forester come to any other conclusion than that he’s there to meet whoever was supposed to show up at Central Station.’

  Velander nodded and hesitated before continuing.

  ‘Palmgren… if I’m allowed an opinion? There are two completely different questions that are much more pressing.’

  ‘And what might they be?’

  ‘One. Who’s put William Sandberg on Interpol’s most wanted list?’

  ‘Forester?’

  Velander shook his head.

  ‘Well, in that case, who?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘What do you mean no one?’

  ‘No one here has put out a call about William,’ said Velander. ‘I’ve asked Forester, and no one else has taken it upon themselves. Stockholm police have been acting strictly and solely as our support. It wasn’t them either.’

  Palmgren shook his head.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Someone must have. Who, other than us, wants to see him caught? Who even knows who William Sandberg is?’

  ‘Question number two is precisely that.’ Velander took a deep breath, choosing his words before continuing. ‘The guy who called from the police? It took me a while to work out what he was talking about. Because, language barrier or not, how could he not understand it was William that the Poles had found? Why did he say that they’d recognised him from the picture?’

  Palmgren shut his eyes.

  ‘I’m not even sure what question you’re asking.’

  ‘I know. It’s one of those that don’t seem to make sense until you know the answer.’

  For a moment, Palmgren looked impossibly tired.

  ‘Can we maybe start from that end of things, then?’

  Velander opened the file that was lying in front of him, passing the sheet of paper over to Palmgren without a word.

  ‘What is this?’ Palmgren said eventually.

  ‘This is the material sent over by the Polish police. The search instruction that got them to act. I then got it faxed over from the police on Kungsholmen.’

  For a long time, Palmgren sat completely still without doing anything at all. The only things moving were his eyes as they flitted around the page, the title, the text, making the same journey across the paper again and again.

  There was no room for interpretation. The photo was of William Sandberg, no one else, and he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing when they parted company almost twenty-four hours earlier. The problem was the rest of it. Suddenly he understood what Velander had meant. Why the police had had such trouble communicating. Why the Swedes hadn’t reacted until they saw the actual image.

  ‘How the bloody hell can he be on the wanted list under another name?’ he said.

  Velander said nothing.

  ‘Where’s the picture from? Who’s given Interpol this material?’

  ‘Well, as I said. As far as I know, no one.’

  Palmgren looked him in the eye. Then finally, got to his feet, carried his tray to the kitchen and emptied the plate straight into the waste bag. He walked the long corridor in silence, Velander at his side, a printout of the Interpol search details in his hand. In his head, he was going over the same question, time and time again.

  Who the hell is Karl Axel Söderbladh?

  38

  The best thing you could say about room 407 at the Hotel New York in Warsaw was that it was yellow.

  It was partly intentional. Everything from the carpet to the bedspread was a warm, dirty golden beige colour, and dotted around the place were shiny golden lamp fittings that were as much real gold as William was Karl Axel Söderbladh. But mostly, the yellowness had occurred by itself. The sheets must have been white to begin with, and judging by the tones in the pleats, the curtains had once been a shade of red. Over the years, sun and nicotine and exhaust fumes had managed to pull all the other colours towards a yellow centre.

  Surrounded by all that yellow, William Sandberg pulled off his wet clothes. He let them fall to the floor, climbed into the shower and turned the heat up to maximum. He stood there for ages without moving, without thinking, scalding hot water on ice-cold skin. When he’d finished, he tipped clothes he’d bought from the flea market out of their bag and onto the bed. He looked at himself in the tall, narrow mirror behind the desk.

  The glass was steamed up from the hot shower. Despite that, he’d never seen himself look so old. His own face was looking back at him, drooping as it might do after a trip to the dentist: numb, lifeless. There were a thousand questions to get to work on, but how would he find the energy to ask them?

  He stood like that when the insight hit him. It came as a sharp talon, penetrating all the fuzzy layers of fatigue, and in an instant he was wide awake, looking carefully around him. He’d seen something. What, he didn’t know, just that something had caught hi
s attention, and left him with a sensation that something was out of place. Letters? A word? A sign?

  He moved, slowly, tried to recall which way he’d been facing when the thought first struck him.

  On the desk was a brass sign, the symbol on which seemed to suggest that smoking was prohibited–even if the smell in the room indicated that he might’ve been the first to decipher its meaning–and over by the door another, plastic sign with green fluorescent edges and text that had to mean emergency exit.

  What else could he have seen? He scanned the room slowly, turning his body as he looked. When he finally saw it again, it was in the blotchy mirror behind the bed. It was indeed a word, and it was shining right out at him, a mirror image, blurred by the steam from the shower and how the fuck…?

  He turned around.

  There, at the far end of the desk, was an old fourteen-inch television. The flickering text had been on the screen since he came in, the same meaningless welcome message as in pretty much every other hotel on the planet, rectangular letters in the same yellowish hues as the rest of the room. Four short lines of text. The hotel’s name. The date. And the standard welcome message, the one that’s supposed to make the occupant feel remembered and special and look, they remembered my name!

  Välkommen, it said in Swedish.

  We wish you a pleasant stay, Mr Amberlangs.

  When Christina walked out of the lift and into the editorial meeting she was greeted with everything she’d been afraid of. All around, people stopped what they were doing, conversations turned to careful whispers, tilted heads looked for eye contact to signal their empathy.

  On a normal day, she would have been bombarded with questions. Now though, it was as if her professional role had disappeared, and out of nowhere came the feeling of walking past a building site in a summer dress, of being undressed by the eyes following her through the newsroom–the same feeling of nakedness.