Watching You(100)

They went over to it.

‘Fluorescent paint,’ Molly said.

Sam inspected the door. It had evidently been reinforced, and there was no keyhole, just a lock that looked electronic. Beside the door sat a small box containing what appeared to be a microphone.

‘I think it’s rigged,’ Molly said, peering at the lock.

‘Explosives?’ Sam asked as he went on inspecting the box.

‘Definite possibility. We can’t risk shooting our way in. And the lock can’t be picked. It looks like it’s sound-activated,’ Molly said, pointing at the box.

‘What sound?’ Sam said.

They saw the same realisation reflected in each other’s faces.

‘Get it,’ Sam said, and started to shrug off his rucksack.

He sat down on the sofa, took out his old watch box, opened the gilded catch, lifted out the velvet-lined compartment with the four watches and started to remove the tiny plastic bags from the tray at the bottom. He was still shaking his head when Molly returned with his Patek Philippe 2508 Calatrava. He took it, placed it on the living room table and took out his magnifying glass, tweezers and case opener from his rucksack.

‘Light,’ he said.

Molly shone her torch at the table. ‘I just hope we’ve found all the cogs.’

Sam grimaced, held the case opener against the watch and took off the back. He held the magnifying glass to the exposed innards. The perfectly coordinated constellation of tiny, interacting cogs and pinions always lowered his pulse dramatically. But not this time. He sat there, assaulted by the grotesque stench of dead bodies in the terrible flat, knowing young lives were at stake, and tried to stop his hands shaking. He opened bag after bag and tipped out all the little cogs. Cogs from the flats in Kristinehamn and V?ster?s, from the house in M?rsta, from the bat-filled cave in V?rmland, from the mouth of the mannequin and from the house in B?lsta. And there was nothing to say that those were all the cogs.

Nothing but Sam’s knowledge of the inner workings of watches, learned in that very flat a quarter of a century earlier. And it was telling him that there were precisely six cogs missing.

Molly was walking about the flat with her pistol drawn, radiating impatience.

‘How did he get in and out?’ she asked after a while.

‘What?’ Sam said.

‘If he stole your watch and dissected it, then obviously it couldn’t be used. Couldn’t he have used just any watch with that microphone?’

‘Every model has a unique tick,’ Sam said, carefully nudging the rotor aside so he could insert the first cog.

‘So how did he do it?’

‘He must have had a 2508 of his own,’ Sam said. ‘There aren’t that many of them about.’

‘Isn’t it here, then? Somewhere inside the flat?’

‘Hardly,’ Sam said. ‘This is my test. William knew there was a risk that we’d outsmart him. This was plan B. If he died, he could still test me.’

‘I’m going to have a look for it anyway,’ Molly said, and walked off.

‘Feel free,’ Sam said, to no one. ‘Maybe one of the bodies is sitting on it.’

A disconcerting amount of time passed. He tried to remember everything he had ever learned, everything William had ever taught him. He was making slow progress. The tweezers kept slipping. His hands were still shaking, but not so badly. It was as if a paradoxical calm settled around him. The self-winding watch’s incomparable treatment of time helped him find his way back to himself. Cog after cog slotted into place. After an indefinite period Molly came back, having failed in her mission.

‘His watch collection is somewhere else,’ Sam said. ‘Probably in Lebanon.’

He only had the last cog left now. It was actually making sense. There was only one space left inside the watch.

The tweezers held up the cog from the house in M?rsta against the light of the torch. There was still a risk that he had inserted things wrongly.

He lowered the minuscule cog towards the interior of the watch. It slotted into place with a small click. He looked at the mechanism. Nothing was moving; there was nothing to suggest that his work was done.

He replaced the back and began to shake the watch. If it was working, the rotor would activate the self-winding mechanism. He shook it for thirty seconds; his pulled shoulder stung like fire. Then he held the watch to his ear.

At first he could hear absolutely nothing. The silence of death. The echoing stillness of failure.

Then the ticking started. He breathed out, hard, and when he breathed in, just as hard, he was hit by the hideous, cloying stench of death again.

He stood up. Molly watched him. They walked together towards the fluorescent door. Sam looked at the watch, gave it a quick kiss, then held it up to the small box containing the microphone.

The seconds scraped past with infinite slowness.

Nothing happened.

Then they heard a click in the lock mechanism and the door slid slowly, slowly open, revealing absolute darkness.

Sure enough, there was a sizeable quantity of explosives attached to the door. Enough to have blown the flat sky-high if they’d tried to shoot their way in.

They both shone their torches into the room. What followed was a sequence of impressions. First they saw the ceiling, the walls, the floor, all of them covered by something thick and puffy. Sam just had time to think soundproofing before the next impression. The structure was reminiscent of the cellars in M?rsta and B?lsta. There was no doubt that what lay concealed behind the fluorescent door was a labyrinth.