Watching You(20)

At that moment Berger’s mobile phone had the good sense to ring. And happily it was actually a call requiring his attention. Without any great haste he took his phone from the inside pocket of his jacket, and while it squealed like a stuck pig he said: ‘I ought to take this.’

Through the hysterical grunting sound he watched Allan, who eventually made an impatient but consenting gesture.

Berger answered by saying his name, then said nothing more for the duration of the call. He merely stood up, put his mobile back in his inside pocket and said: ‘We’re going to have to do this later, Allan.’

Looking perfectly calm, Berger walked out. He strolled slowly down the corridor until he was confident he was out of sight of Allan’s office. Then he speeded up.

He threw himself down the stairs and ran through the corridors. After several more flights of stairs and corridors he reached an anonymous door and yanked it open. Three men were sitting in a confined area filled with bare desks and framed by bookcases. They all looked up when Berger stormed in, but with a complete lack of interest. He raced on to a set of doors beyond the bookcases and jerked open the one on the left. A stern-looking woman in her forties turned to face him from a veritable phalanx of computers, looking slightly less stern than usual. Her thin, mousy hair was sticking out in all directions.

‘Syl,’ Berger panted.

‘Sambo,’ Syl said in a subdued tone.

‘Talk to me,’ Berger said.

‘V?ster?s,’ Syl said, pointing vaguely at the nearest screen. ‘The bikers’ clubhouse. Local television were there after all, but they dropped the item to make way for sport. Ice hockey, apparently. The edited version no longer exists, but the photographer found a backup disk containing some of the raw footage.’

‘You said you had something to show me,’ Berger said curtly.

Syl looked at him in a way that didn’t feel altogether comfortable. Then she clicked her mouse and a very shaky image appeared.

The first thing that came into view was a winter landscape with a number of moderately overweight men in leather waistcoats pinned to the ground by police officers, at least a couple of officers per biker. Five buildings were just about discernible, and from the middle one a pale, undernourished young girl was being led out with a blanket round her shoulders. As she approached the camera, Syl said: ‘Oksana Khavanska, fourteen years old. She was actually given asylum in Sweden afterwards. Said to be living in Falun with a new identity, attending high school. But look at this.’

The camera swept past a number of people on the other side of the cordon before coming to rest on a young man with a microphone who tried to stop people and talk to them. After a particularly unsuccessful attempt to communicate with one of the officers in command, who firmly pushed the microphone back into his face, the reporter turned towards the onlookers with his pride visibly dented. Syl speeded the film up while the bystanders got to churn out a few pointless remarks to a saliva-spotted microphone, but the sound had vanished. Then the lens turned and captured a bicycle.

As the camera focused on the wheel of the bicycle Syl slowed the film down to normal speed. The sound returned. The reporter sounded neurotic.

‘And how do you come to be here?`’ he asked while the cameraman tried to adjust the focus on the bicycle wheel. In the end he succeeded and the camera panned up.

It was her. Bicycle-woman. There was something remarkable about seeing the muscles of her face move. As if she had only now become real.

There was actually an awful lot going on with the muscles of her face. As if they were governed by an incredibly complex process of decision-making. Her body seemed to be on the point of cycling off. But then her body language changed completely and she replied: ‘I just happened to be cycling past.’

An unexpectedly deep voice, Berger thought, watching her face.

‘What do you think about all this?’ the reporter asked desperately.

‘What exactly am I supposed to be thinking something about?’

‘The police raid on the biker gang.’

Then she pointed briefly over the reporter’s shoulder and said: ‘Apparently they managed to free someone who was kidnapped. So that’s obviously good.’

To his surprise, Berger found himself thinking very clearly: I want you in an interview room.

‘Thank you,’ the reporter said, genuinely, from the sound of it. ‘What’s your name?’

Berger froze. Watched.

The facial muscles again. A similar pattern of movements. Then she said: ‘Nathalie Fredén, but you’re not going to broadcast this crap on television, are you?’

‘Pause,’ Berger said quickly.

From the corner of his eye he saw Syl’s face move closer to the screen. Just like his own.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘About what?’ Syl asked, without taking her eyes off the screen.

‘What was that?’

‘I don’t get what you mean.’

‘Yes, you do. What was that she just did?’

Berger had to admit that Syl wasn’t Deer. Brilliant at going through archives, not quite so brilliant at analysis. He admired Syl – they had been at Police Academy together. She was the only person who still dared to call him Sambo; she was a genius when it came to anything digital, looking things up and digging them out – but he suddenly found himself missing Deer’s way of seeing things.