Watching You(29)

‘Samir?’ Berger said.

Without taking his eyes from the screen, the young man said: ‘What?’

‘Strongest impression from the interview?’

Samir looked up and said: ‘I’m looking at her now, and I’ve been looking at her the whole time. If she had a serious mental health condition, wouldn’t it be more obvious?’

‘There is such a range of disorders,’ Berger said.

‘I know,’ Samir said, gesturing towards the screen. ‘But there’s nothing. I’m not seeing a troubled soul.’

They gathered round the computer screen, leaning in. Nathalie Fredén was sitting perfectly still at the table in the interview room. There was no movement. It might as well have been frozen.

‘No curiosity about the things I left in the room?’ Berger asked.

‘None,’ Samir said. Not a flicker of movement.’

‘That in itself strikes me as an indication of mental illness,’ Allan said. ‘Isn’t she just a complete lunatic with a thin veneer of social competence that we simply have to drill through? Isn’t that what you were starting to do in there, Sam, before you got overexcited? For my part I don’t care if you destroy her. Peel off layer after layer and see how empty she is inside. I can’t help wondering if she’s a dead end. A psycho who has a habit of showing up in the crowd whenever there’s a major operation. She cycles round the country with a police radio at the ready, then dashes off to exciting places to get her pulse racing. Have you actually checked to see how many police photographs she appears in?’

Berger straightened up and stared at the ceiling of the small room.

‘How many,’ he repeated in a completely different voice.

Allan and Samir looked up at him with two different generations’ expressions of scepticism. Then Berger’s mobile rang. It sounded like a pig, mid-slaughter. He answered it.

‘Hello,’ a sharp voice said. ‘This is Sylvia.’

‘Syl,’ Berger said. ‘What have you got?’

‘Maja and I have been scrutinising the recording. We think we’ve found the moment when Fredén wants to correct you.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘It’s right at the end of your long speech. You start by saying “She’s isn’t a ‘that’. She’s a girl with her whole life ahead of her.” Do you remember?’

‘Vaguely, yes. Go on.’

‘Then you put all the pictures on the table and get to V?ster?s.’

‘But it wasn’t then?’

‘That’s the dilemma,’ Syl said sharply. ‘For a while we thought that was it, when you mentioned the biker gang in V?ster?s. You hadn’t talked about that before. But then we got the impression that it was when you talked about a lamb to the slaughter. Do you remember the phrase?’

‘More or less. That was when she reacted?’

‘Like I said, we thought so for a while. But then came your last salvo. I quote: “How the hell can you just happen to be standing there at all three crime scenes?” And that’s when the reaction actually comes.’

‘How many,’ Berger said, looking up at the ceiling.

‘Yes, now that we’ve looked carefully and compared the results from all four cameras, that seems to have been the moment.’

‘More precisely?’

‘When you say “all three crime scenes”.’

‘Interpretation?’

‘When you say the number. Three.’

‘Yes,’ Berger said, clenching his fist.





15




Tuesday 27 October, 01.26

Berger stepped inside after the break imposed on him. The door closed. Nathalie Fredén watched him. Without a word he switched on the recording equipment. The red light came on. He uttered the required phrases and then said: ‘Tell me, who did you get your bicycle from?’

‘It was a long time ago. I think his name was Charles.’

‘Wasn’t it an ex? Don’t you remember your former lover’s name?’

‘Like I said, it was a long time ago.’

‘But your Rex can’t be more than four years old?’

‘You really want to talk about my bicycle?’

‘I really want to talk about your Rex … your ruler, king. That’s what I really want to talk about. But we can start somewhere else. Although I can promise that we’ll come back to it. Have you ever lived abroad?’

‘Abroad? No.’

‘Never?’

‘No.’

‘Where did you disappear to after Year 3 in Mariehem School in Ume?? According to your teacher, your family was going abroad.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘No, there’s no indication that you actually went. Your parents remained registered at the same address in the forest outside Ume? for another fifteen years. But you vanished from school records. Where did you get to when you were ten years old?’

Nathalie Fredén fell silent and met Berger’s gaze in a new way. While he pushed across the enlarged photograph of the ten-year-old Nathalie Fredén, he tried to figure out what it was that felt new.

‘Do you recognise yourself?’ he asked.