Watching You(104)

‘We picked him up on the jetty camera,’ Blom said, ‘as the rowing boat glided in. We quickly got ready; the dummy was already inside my sleeping bag. The fact that William was wearing a bulletproof vest led us to choose an option where I had to crawl underneath the boathouse; it’s raised up on pillars, of course. We waited as long as we dared, and because it was possible that he was listening to us, we pretended that I was going to sleep. The last thing I did was disable the security camera covering the jetty. I disconnected it from the computer, because if William had discovered we had a camera there, he would have realised we had some sort of plan.’

‘We worked out more or less where he would be standing to enjoy watching me die,’ Berger said. ‘Then we had to wait until he was within firing range.’

‘And you can get a good idea how people are moving above you,’ Blom said, ‘through the tiniest cracks in the floor. But we only wanted to hit his feet. He wasn’t supposed to die, under any circumstances.’

‘And yet he did,’ Allan Gudmundsson said.

Blom merely looked at him. Time passed.

In the end Allan closed the bundle of documents. ‘The most important thing is that the monster has been rendered harmless. The shooting in the boathouse has already been classified as self-defence. As a police operation, your efforts were outstanding. There’s every reason to believe that you saved the lives of these six girls. For that you have our unanimous gratitude and admiration.’

Berger caught Blom’s eye. That wasn’t really a conclusion.

Eventually Allan continued: ‘But your future is now in the hands of the Security Service.’





41




Friday 30 October, 19.37

The mountaineers were clambering laboriously up the snow-covered mountain. Their dark silhouettes stood out in the distance against the extraordinary multicoloured sunset. But there it stopped. If the mountaineers had carried on a few metres they would have tumbled into a void. And, to their not inconsiderable surprise, would have landed flat on the wooden floor of a boathouse by the waters of Edsviken in Sollentuna, just outside Stockholm, Sweden.

Sam Berger and Molly Blom looked at the half-glued photograph. Then they screwed the lids back on the tubes of glue and looked at the remnants of the board, which lay strewn across the floor like the pieces of a puzzle.

They couldn’t do any more. Not right now.

‘You didn’t say anything about the ammunition,’ Berger said.

‘And you didn’t say anything about William’s last words,’ Blom said.

Their eyes met.

‘William’s dead,’ Berger said. ‘Six out of seven girls have been rescued. Everything except my conscience ought to be under control. And everything is under control, isn’t it?’

‘We’re going to lose our jobs,’ Blom said.

‘You know that’s not what I mean.’

‘I know.’

They looked once again at the sad, half-repaired picture, which incorporated a now entirely empty whiteboard. Everything had been removed from it.

‘There’s a lot in what Allan says,’ Berger said. ‘William kidnapped Aisha Pachachi two years ago. You interviewed her parents. Then, when he needed a third hideout, it was logical to return there, to his childhood home. He got rid of the parents, who were now on their own there, bought the flat next door, and when the Pachachis’ son came back from IS a heroin addict, he got rid of him, together with a junkie friend who was also a mass murderer. And Aisha had been in William’s captivity the longest. Her body eventually buckled under the effect of those banned drugs, and she died while they were being moved between M?rsta, B?lsta and Helenelund. End of story.’

‘Are we happy with that?’ Blom asked.

‘Our aim was to rescue the girls and catch William,’ Berger said. ‘We’ve done that. We need sleep.’

‘But are we happy?’ Blom persisted. ‘Is everything clear? Is the picture complete?’

‘Stop it. You need sleep as much as I do.’

‘I doubt it,’ Blom said. ‘But you feel that something’s not right too.’

‘But can I really be bothered with it?’

‘You don’t care where Aisha Pachachi is? There’s one girl still missing, a whole family, in fact. William didn’t hide his victims. Anton Bergmark was in a wheelchair, Simon Lundberg in the cave, the IS guys at the kitchen table, Aunt Alicia Anger in her rocking chair.’

Blom pushed a printout towards Berger. He looked at the grotesque picture of the old woman in the rocking chair, her face drained of all colour, a black sock sticking out of her mouth.

Berger pushed the photograph away with distaste. He’d seen enough for a while.

‘The nursing staff and the police were sure it was an accident,’ he said. ‘Alicia Anger was confused enough to eat a sock by mistake and choke on it. You saw her, Molly, she wasn’t exactly in full command of her faculties.’

‘We’ve got the recording from your phone. Everything William said in and outside the boathouse,’ Blom went on.

‘But we don’t need to play it,’ Berger said. ‘Because you remember it all anyway.’

She pushed the photograph back towards Berger and said: ‘“Aunt Alice. She was kind. I didn’t even know she was alive.”’