A Death in Sweden(23)

Inger had no doubt wanted to walk through the woods to Fillon’s place, and Per had insisted on driving her, because Dan listened now as the car made its way slowly out onto the road, a short stretch at normal speed, then the same slower crawl to the clearing where he was waiting for them. Inger had probably been right, and would have been quicker walking.

She waved at him from quite a distance, then again as they got out of the car. Dan stayed where he was, sitting on the steps, while they all said hello to each other. Perhaps she hadn’t tipped off Brabham, but he was still curious about where she’d been and why she was acting so nervously.

As if answering his unspoken question, but a little too eagerly, she said, “I had some things I needed to do, so I called Per. You were still sleeping.”

He nodded, noncommittal, and said, “I slept really well.” He looked at Per and added, “You have good air up here.”

Per looked uncertain how to respond and said, “It’s the only air I know.”

“Then you’ll have to take my word for it.” He looked back to Inger. She seemed to be waiting for him to follow up on her excuse, asking what it was she’d been checking, but he said only, “Ready to get to work?”

“Sure.” She turned to Per, saying, “Thanks for the ride.”

“Anytime,” he said, and took that as his cue. They said goodbye to him and watched as he got in the car and drove off, Inger standing, Dan still on the step.

Once the car had disappeared from view, she turned to look at him, and Dan stared back for a second before he said, “Can I trust you, Inger?”

“Of course.”

“No, I mean, can I really trust you? I know you have your own agenda here, and that’s fine, and I don’t mind you going off with Per to do whatever it was you needed to do. I just need to know that I can trust you, that your agenda doesn’t involve helping other people to bring me down.”

She threw her hands up, as if to ask how she could answer that in any way that would convince him, but then said, “You can trust me as much as I can trust you. That’s all I have.”

He smiled and stood up, and involuntarily she took a step back before making an effort to look more relaxed. He hated that she was uneasy around him, perhaps even afraid, particularly when he had more to fear from her than she did from him. And ironically, her noncommittal reply had eased his mind more than any earnest assurances would have done.

“That’s okay then. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot, but you can understand me being a little touchy.”

“I should have left a note. It wasn’t anything that concerned you.” She looked around then and he could see she desperately wanted to draw a line under it. She clearly made an effort to sound breezy and positive as she said, “So, should we check the sauna first?”

He nodded and gestured for her to lead the way, but stopped almost immediately, not looking at the sauna ahead of them, but at the back of the house. He’d been tired the day before, but he still should have spotted it, and the guy who’d come up from Berlin really should have noticed.

“He has a satellite dish.”

She turned, looking at Dan first, then at the dish which was no ordinary domestic installation, but high-spec.

“Most people have . . .” She stopped, the significance of it hitting home, and then she said, “But why would he need one?”

“Exactly. No TV, no computer.”

“There must be a hidden room, in the cellar, maybe . . .”

“Or in the garage. Remember what Per said—when the postman came he was usually working in the garage.”

They started walking towards the garage, and now that they’d seen the dish, Dan was seeing the whole place differently, more critically.

He pointed and said, “Why did he take the bus every day when he’s got a pretty new SUV sitting there?”

She looked, the nose of the vehicle poking out of the garage, but said, “Who knows? Maybe he just liked taking the bus. Maybe he went for a drink each day and didn’t want to drive.” But they’d reached the garage now and she pointed to the ground in front of it, a couple of deep, hard-baked ruts, the evidence of rainy days past. “That’s interesting, though, like he’s had it parked part of the way out a lot of the time.”

They both crouched down together, and looked under the truck. There was something there. At first it just appeared as if a rectangle had been carefully etched onto the smooth surface of the garage floor and it took Dan a second or two to realize what he was staring at; the flush lip of a concealed trapdoor.

Inger said, “Could it be a pit, for working underneath the car?”

He could tell in the tone of her voice that she didn’t believe that. This had to be it—the satellite dish, the whole careful anonymity of the place, there had to be more and this had to be it, the truth of Fillon’s identity. And, crucially, they’d found it first.

Dan stood again and said, “I’ll look in the cab for the keys—we need to move this thing.”

“No, I saw the keys on a hook, in the kitchen.” She was already walking, but turned, clearly excited by the discovery, and said, “Maybe that’s why he didn’t take the jeep to town, because he didn’t want to leave the door exposed.”

Dan nodded and walked into the garage, looking at the old wreck of a bike that filled the floor space behind the SUV. It was a Harley, but ancient and in pieces, with various tools surrounding it on the floor, as if Fillon had just been disturbed in the middle of a major job.