Watching You(105)

Berger closed his eyes. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘He didn’t kill her.’

‘So who did?’

‘Explain about the ammunition again,’ Berger said. ‘Slowly this time.’

Blom breathed in slowly. ‘When I go undercover there may be occasions when I’m forced to shoot people I shouldn’t be shooting. Then it’s important that they don’t die by mistake. So I use fully jacketed ammunition, which passes straight through the body, and avoid the standard-issue police ammunition, Speer Gold Dot, which has a hollow point and expands on impact, causes much more damage. But my usual ammunition had been swapped for hollow-point bullets.’

‘Dum-dum bullets,’ Berger said.

‘They sometimes get called that,’ Blom said. ‘But that’s not really correct.’

‘When would that have happened?’

‘They’re in my cases; they’re always in the van.’

‘So it must have happened just before you broke me out of Security Service custody and we took off?’

‘Yes,’ Blom said. ‘I don’t think William would have died if I’d had my usual ammunition. But it still feels pretty far-fetched.’

‘Same as the conclusions about what William said when he was dying,’ Berger said. ‘I bet you can quote that too.’

‘“I watched over them. I was the connection. It took its toll. I thought Anton would get rid of it, but that wasn’t enough. My knuckle marks were in the door.”’

‘Yes,’ Berger said, ‘that was it. And what does that mean? It could be nonsense like most of what he said. He watched over the girls; he was the link between them. He thought his assault on Anton Bergmark with the hammers, the change of roles, would get rid of whatever was taking its toll, but it wasn’t enough. So he moved on to the girls. And then the link to me, the knuckle marks in the door of his childhood bedroom in Helenelund.’

‘But what if that wasn’t meant as a link to you?’ Blom said. ‘That came later, after all: “It’s not a house, Sam. It’s the start of everything. Where I got my only friend.” That’s when he tells you that the third house is the Pachachis’ flat.’

‘I don’t really follow, Molly.’

‘Nor do I. Not really. But William was definitely trying to tell us something. He watched over someone. He was the connection between others. Maybe not the girls. Maybe he was watching over the people who lived where his knuckle marks were in the door?’

‘The Pachachi family? Why on earth would he be doing that?’

‘On behalf of someone,’ Blom said. ‘He was the connection. But he was weighed down by something, something unpredictable, a childhood trauma. In the end assaulting Anton wasn’t enough, because his knuckle marks were in the door of one of the people he was supposed to be watching over.’

‘Aisha Pachachi?’

‘She lived in his old room,’ Blom said. ‘A fifteen-year-old girl, like the ones who had bullied and ridiculed him, had occupied the room where he got his only friend, Sam. And that only friend was you.’

‘It’s a bit thin,’ Berger said. ‘I don’t really buy it. It’s too vague. He was there, in his old bedroom? He watched over the people living in his childhood home? Watched over how?’

‘On someone’s behalf,’ Blom said. ‘He was the connection between Pachachi and someone. And it drove him mad, it took its toll. He tried to drown it out by systematically torturing his old tormentor Anton Bergmark, but that wasn’t enough, because every time he was in the flat he saw the marks of his knuckles in the door to one of the rooms. And there was someone who reminded him of one of the fifteen-year-old girls who had humiliated him as a teenager. In the end he felt obliged to snatch her, and it all started.’

‘He was watching over the Pachachi family on someone’s behalf?’ Berger said. ‘Whose?’

Molly Blom rubbed her face.

‘Who brought him to Sweden?’ she said. ‘Who gave him a job? A highly qualified technical job?’

‘Wiborg,’ Berger said. ‘Wiborg Supplies Ltd.’

‘And by extension?’

Berger heard himself groan. This wasn’t where he wanted to go. Anywhere, but not here. ‘By extension?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Fuck,’ Berger said. ‘The Security Service.’

Blom grabbed his wrist and turned his watch towards her. Condensation had begun to gather on the glass again, but the hands said eight o’clock exactly.

‘She’s the embodiment of punctuality,’ Berger said, retracting his arm.

Sure enough, there was a knock on the door.

Blom drew her pistol and lowered it behind the carpentry bench. Berger went over to the door and looked out cautiously.

She was standing there with her thin, mousy hair glued to her head, as if she’d emerged from a week-long downpour.

‘Syl,’ Berger said. ‘Come in.’

And Sylvia Andersson, known by very few people as Syl, walked into the boathouse and looked around.

‘Charming,’ she said, her eyes on the half-repaired photograph of mountaineers etched on the side of a snow-covered peak.

‘Have a seat,’ Berger said, gesturing towards a free chair by the carpentry bench, next to Blom, who was tucking her pistol back in its holster.