Watching You(101)

The third impression was a smell. A distinctly rancid smell hit them, and actually replaced the smell of dead bodies. The labyrinth did not exude a stench of death.

Impression number four was a sound.

A gentle moan was coming from a mattress on the floor of the first room. A tube from a drip stand led under the covers.

Molly stopped breathing. She crouched down beside the mattress. Slowly she pulled the covers back, and found herself looking into the eyes of a dark-haired young woman.

She was very visibly drugged, but beyond the drugs, beyond the small body’s emaciated condition, there was a flash of stubborn survival instinct. The young Thai girl, Sunisa Phetwiset, had clearly decided to survive. She hadn’t been murdered by Axel Jansson, the paedophile, who was serving a prison sentence for her murder, and she hadn’t even been murdered by William Larsson.

She was alive.

Sam clenched his fist but managed to stop himself punching the wall. Instead he went out into the living room and opened all the windows wide. Cool, fresh night air poured into the flat from hell.

Then he went past Molly and Sunisa and kicked in another door. On a similar mattress, next to a similar drip stand, lay a young girl with piercings whom he recognised as Jonna Eriksson. She stared at him in astonishment and made some indistinct noises.

He crouched down beside her, stroked her cheek gently and said: ‘Believe it or not, Jonna, you’re free.’

He stood up, encouraged her to lie still, and carried on. He kicked in door after door, found girl after girl, and they were all alive. By now there were five of them.

Sometimes he would find Molly in a cell when she had come from the other direction.

‘It’s much bigger than it used to be,’ he said.

‘He must have bought the neighbouring flat as well,’ Molly said.

He looked at her for a moment. Then he said: ‘Call them in.’

In the end there were just two doors left. He kicked in the first of them.

It looked the same as the other cells. A crumpled mattress on the floor, the tube from a drip stand leading under the covers. But when he pulled the covers aside there was no girl lying there.

One of the cells was empty.

There was one girl missing.

He moved towards the last door. He gulped hard and kicked it in.

A girl with long blonde hair was sitting on her mattress. Around her neck she had an Orthodox cross on a pink leather strap. Judging by the expression on her face, she had heard what was going on inside the other cells. Even though her eyes were cloudy with drugs, she produced a reserved a smile that hinted at a future of unlimited possibilities.

‘Ellen,’ Sam said, crouching down beside the mattress.

‘Are you the police?’ Ellen Savinger asked.

Sam laughed. ‘Yes,’ he lied.

Then he hugged her and felt the fresh rainy air find its way into the innermost cell of the labyrinth.

They walked round for a while, soothing and reassuring the girls as best they could, counting the seconds until the paramedics arrived. They found themselves standing in the empty cell for a time. And suddenly they couldn’t feel the fresh rainy air any longer. Everything was rancid again.

‘Who’s missing?’ Molly asked.

‘It must be Aisha,’ Sam said. ‘Aisha Pachachi.’

‘The very first victim,’ Molly said. ‘The girl who lived here.’

‘And whose brother is probably sitting dead at the kitchen table.’

When they heard banging at the front door they looked at each other.

‘This isn’t over,’ Molly said.

Then they made their way out of the labyrinth. They heard Kent and Roy in the kitchen, saw them emerge from the corridor with their weapons and torches raised. Their faces were completely white.

‘Lower your weapons,’ Sam said. ‘We’ll go with you voluntarily. But look in there first. And call in everyone you have.’

They did actually lower their weapons. Roy started to retch and Kent only just moved out of the way before he threw up.

Sam went over to the wide-open windows. He stared out into the darkness. Something came towards him from out there. It may have been sullied by Aisha Pachachi’s absence, but six girls were still alive, and even if he tried to fend it off, what came at him through the night could only be called happiness.

When the paramedics stormed into the flat Molly came and stood beside him.

He put his arm round her.

She put her arm round him.

It had stopped raining.





40




Friday 30 October, 16.42

Detective Superintendent Allan Gudmundsson of the Stockholm Police smelled of smoke. He was sitting at his uniquely impersonal desk, and he looked like a pensioner. He adjusted his reading glasses for the eighteenth time as he read the thick document, before eventually looking up at the odd couple on the other side of the desk. She was blonde and had a snub nose, he had brown hair flecked with grey and a week’s worth of beard.

‘I had been thinking of starting my weekend,’ Allan Gudmundsson said.

‘I vaguely remember the word,’ Sam Berger said. ‘But otherwise I’m drawing a complete blank.’

Allan slowly looked over at Molly Blom and stared at her critically above his reading glasses.

‘So the whole Nathalie Fredén story was just an act?’ he said.