Watching You(31)

But Nathalie Fredén was no longer within reach. She was just staring at the wall.

‘You were ten years old,’ Berger continued. ‘The evidence seems to suggest that you were there for some twenty years. Then you were suddenly let out into a world you didn’t recognise. Everything was unfamiliar. You had become a grown-up in a protected environment, had no contact with the outside world. What did you feel when you got out?’

Fredén turned her gaze towards him, but there wasn’t much in it. She said nothing.

He went on: ‘During those twenty years your parents had died. Your grandfather died around the time of your release, and in the absence of other heirs he left you not only the flat on Vidargatan but also a tidy sum of money.’

‘But you said I didn’t have a bank account.’

It came out of nowhere. Berger had pretty much given up all hope of getting any response whatsoever. He touched his ear instinctively, hoping to get additional information quickly. Deer was on the case, and her voice echoed immediately in his ear: ‘Shoebox containing a few hundred kronor found under a floorboard in the kitchen in Vidargatan.’

‘No bank account, no,’ Berger said. ‘I don’t know if you distrust banks or if you simply don’t know how they work. But I’m pleased that you’re trying to mislead me with lies. It shows that you’re keeping up.’

‘Have you really got one of those earpieces?’ Nathalie Fredén asked, pointing.

Always poking his ear, Berger thought. Why did he do that? Had she got to him in a way that he couldn’t yet recognise? It was an unpleasant feeling. He shook it off, as he managed to shake off most things.

‘The money’s gone now,’ he said. ‘There are a few notes left in the shoebox. What do you usually do when the money runs out?’

‘Work. Get a shitty temporary job. But we’ve already talked about that.’

‘But you haven’t worked in over a year now. And even then you didn’t earn anywhere near enough to survive for a whole year.’

‘I had some of Grandfather’s money left.’

‘No, I don’t think so; there wasn’t that much. Where do you get your money, Nathalie? How do you pay the service charge for the flat, just over two thousand kronor a month? Always paid in cash, at different banks around the city. Are you even the one paying? Is it someone else? Is it the man you got the bicycle from?’

She shook her head, nothing more.

‘Who helped you when you got out of the clinic?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer.

He went on: ‘Was it Charles? Who ended up as your boyfriend? The man who gave you your bicycle? Your Rex?’

To make up for the lack of an answer, Deer’s voice sounded in his ear: ‘A four-year-old Rex has just been identified. Matching prints. Also matches the photographs. We’ve got the frame number, but we don’t know where it was bought and who bought it.’

Berger felt himself nod slightly. He was off balance but didn’t really understand how and why. He had to complete his line of questioning, but there was something troubling him. The whole situation troubled him. She was reacting to the wrong things, as if she really did live in a different reality. As if she had an entirely different approach to the truth.

Unless it was a different truth. In a different world, a completely unhinged world.

He said, without much hope: ‘Did you have another bicycle before your Rex?’

She had a different light in her eyes. ‘I’ve always cycled.’

And suddenly there was the glimmer of hope. He continued: ‘At the clinic as well?’

‘I don’t know what clinic you’re talking about.’

‘When you were ten years old and you mum and dad betrayed you and put you in the clinic, did you have a bicycle then?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘Perhaps that was the only genuinely nice thing about the clinic? Cycling? Did you cycle much back then?’

‘I’ve always cycled a lot.’

‘How did you get your first bicycle when you got out of the clinic? Did you buy it?’

‘Yes, with Grandfather’s money.’

‘What happened to that bicycle?’

‘I rode it until it fell apart.’

‘And then Charles appeared and gave you another one?’

‘I think so.’

‘You think so?’

‘I don’t remember. I have a feeling that’s what happened.’

‘How did you meet Charles?’

‘I don’t remember. When I was cycling.’

‘Was it in the city? In Stockholm?’

‘He cycled up beside me at a traffic light, and said my bicycle looked really rubbish.’

‘Was that how your relationship began?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was he kind to you?’

‘I got the bicycle …’

‘And apart from that?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘What did you do together? Apart from cycling.’

‘We didn’t cycle together.’

‘But he used to send you out on bike rides, didn’t he? Not always short ones, either?’

‘I don’t know …’