Watching You(107)

‘I see close collaboration between the mercenary you call Nils Gundersen and the Security Service, and I don’t want anything to do with it.’

‘And yet you said you were “working on it”?’ Blom said.

‘I don’t believe I said that,’ Syl snapped.

‘She can quote you verbatim,’ Berger said with a nod towards Blom.

Blom flashed him a dark look and quoted: ‘“A number of files have been erased, the activity can be reconstructed, but not the files. At least not yet. I’m working on it.”’

‘So what is it you’re working on, Syl?’ Berger said.

‘My name is Sylvia,’ Syl said.

‘What are you working on?’

‘Nothing. I’ve stopped working on it.’

‘Could there really be a way of reconstructing the erased files? That sounds unlikely. Doesn’t it, Molly?’

‘Totally improbable,’ Blom said, picking up the prompt. ‘I don’t see how anyone could pull that off. Maybe in the future. Seven or eight years from now.’

‘It does seem completely impossible,’ Berger said. ‘How the hell would anyone go about it?’

‘I know of a possible method,’ Syl said hesitantly. ‘It would require quite a lot of extra equipment.’

‘That you can get hold of?’

‘Not free of charge.’

‘Send us an invoice.’

‘Us? So what are you, then?’

‘Private detectives,’ Berger said.





42




Saturday 31 October, 15.19

They got no further than the security desk in reception before it became clear that everything had changed. First Berger tried his swipe card. Nothing happened; the guard behind the bulletproof glass didn’t even look up from the game of solitaire he was playing on his iPad. But when Blom tried her card he stood up, pressed a button and his voice rang out metallically: ‘Please wait a moment. Someone will come and get you.’

It didn’t actually take more than a couple of seconds before two powerful silhouettes emerged from the fluorescent lighting of the nearest corridor of Police Headquarters on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. Berger let out a deep sigh.

During the long walk through increasingly demanding security measures neither Kent nor Roy said a single word. They didn’t even answer when addressed directly. In the end Berger and Blom were deposited on a sofa in the corridor of the Security Service’s Intelligence Unit. Above them a sign indicated that the head of the unit, Steen, had his office behind the nearest door.

Berger and Blom looked at each other. They didn’t say a word.

The compulsory fifteen-minute wait had already begun to acquire its own fifteen-minute wait when the door next to the sign suddenly made a low humming sound. Blom stood up, followed by Berger.

August Steen was sitting behind his desk. Berger had never met him before, and the first thing that struck him was the straightness of his back. It looked like he’d been sitting to attention for more than sixty years. He had a sudden vision of a fifties baby seat containing a steel-grey infant with a ramrod-straight back. It made the conversation that followed a little more bearable.

‘Sit down,’ August Steen said, giving the barest of nods towards the two low chairs on their side of the desk.

They sat down. After a pause Steen said: ‘Well, there’s no denying that the pair of you have put a rocket under the country’s police force during the past week. And the very fact that you rescued six girls and stopped the perpetrator means that we can allow ourselves to overlook the majority of your transgressions and actual law-breaking with an easy conscience. However, I and many others have a serious problem with the crime of disloyalty to your superiors.’

‘It was never about that,’ Blom said. ‘Everything we’ve done has been for our superiors, in other words the police, in other words the general public. Justice – isn’t that was all police work is about? Getting justice?’

‘By all means,’ August Steen said, his stony gaze firmly fixed on Blom. ‘But justice is a complicated concept, and involves more than a levelling of the scores once a crime has been committed. From the perspective of law enforcement it becomes even more important to prevent crime, stop miscreants before they set to work. Justice becomes less clear-cut when the crime hasn’t yet been committed.’

‘I don’t see how that applies to our pursuit of William Larsson,’ Blom said.

‘Olle Nilsson,’ August Steen said. ‘We haven’t found any trace of a William Larsson in this case.’

‘Olle Nilsson,’ Berger said, ‘who managed to pass the Security Service’s notoriously thorough background check with flying colours when he was employed by Wiborg Supplies Ltd in November three years ago.’

‘And the reason for that is, quite simply, that he was Olle Nilsson,’ Steen said, fixing his gaze on Berger. It was the first time he had felt it, and he really felt it.

‘There has to be some trace of Olle Nilsson’s past as William Larsson on his computers,’ Berger managed to say.

‘Analysis of his computer equipment is ongoing,’ Steen said. ‘But there is nothing in your “unofficial” investigation that proves your missing and presumably long-dead childhood friend William Larsson had anything to do with this Olle Nilsson.’