Watching You(33)

‘There were steps up to the buildings.’

‘And when was this? Do you remember anything else, other than that it was summer?’

‘No. It was hot.’

Berger stopped. It had been going astonishingly well. But the spark seemed to have gone out in Nathalie Fredén’s eyes. He had a few moments left before they needed to take a break. ‘What’s Charles’s surname?’

‘Don’t remember. Something common.’

‘Something-son? Andersson, Johansson?’

‘No … More like one of those Bergstr?m names …’

‘Bergstr?m names? You mean like Lundberg, Lindstr?m, Berglund, Sandberg?’

‘Yes, but none of those.’

Deer was on the ball and prompted in his ear: ‘Sj?berg? Forsberg? ?kerlund?’

Nope.

‘Bergman? Lundgren? Holmberg? Sandstr?m?’

No.

‘Lindqvist? Engstr?m? Eklund?’

‘Maybe,’ Fredén said. ‘Something like that.’

‘Which one?’

‘The first.’

‘Lindqvist?’

‘But not quite …’

‘Lundqvist? Lindgren?’

‘He said it should have an h at the end.’

‘An h? Str?mbergh? Lindbergh?’

‘Yes, that was it. Lindbergh. With an h.’

Berger fell back in his chair with a deep sigh. ‘Charles Lindbergh,’ he said in an American accent. ‘There you go. Lucky Lindy. The Spirit of St. Louis. Did you ever see the name Charles Lindbergh written down? Did you ever see his driving licence or passport?’

‘No. But he was very particular about the h.’

‘I can imagine,’ Berger said. ‘Charles Lindbergh was an American who was the first man to fly across the Atlantic. In 1927, to be precise. Your master stole an existing identity and made it his own. Just like you did with Lina Vikstr?m.’

‘What?’

‘We know you made the call saying that you’d seen Ellen Savinger in a house in M?rsta. You assumed the role of a neighbour, Lina Vikstr?m, who was away travelling. You know more than you’re letting on, Nathalie.’

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

‘No,’ Berger said. ‘Of course you don’t.’

Then he pressed a button on his mobile phone. It said, in a female voice: ‘Look, I’m pretty sure I saw her just now, you know, her, that girl, through the window … Well, I’m not sure it was her, but she had that thing, I don’t know, that pink leather strap round her neck with that crooked cross, the Greek one, I don’t know if it’s Orthodox, but she’s a genuine blonde, for God’s sake, can’t have any Greek roots.’

Berger pressed the button again and it fell silent.

He sat for a while and just looked at the woman who went by the name of Nathalie Fredén. She didn’t meet his gaze. He tried to get all the information – everything that had been said there in the interview room, and everything they knew from elsewhere – to fit together. To form a unified whole. It wasn’t possible. It simply wasn’t possible.

‘It’s now been scientifically proven that this is your voice, Nathalie,’ he said in the end.

She wouldn’t look at him.

He carried on: ‘Even so, the person who called the police and said that is a completely different person from the one I’ve met here. Which makes me think that this is a role as well, just like Lina Vikstr?m was a role. You’re someone else altogether.’

She was still looking away.

‘I want you to look at me now, Nathalie,’ he said calmly. ‘I want you to look me in the eye.’

Still nothing.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Do it now.’

Slowly she looked towards him. In the end he was looking straight into those blue eyes. Eyes could conceal things, but they could never lie, in his experience. So what was he seeing now? Something neutral, apparently untroubled, and certainly beyond reach. This person was completely different from the person he had believed her to be. The one he had been lulled into believing in.

Had allowed himself to be lulled into believing in.

‘You called to tell us about the house in M?rsta when Charles Lindbergh – or Erik Johansson, as we know him – had already abandoned it four days before. Why did you wait four days? Why did he want you to wait four days?’

‘Erik Johansson?’

‘Why did you wait four days? Why did you have to stand outside the cordon this time, in M?rsta?’

No answer. Her expression suggested that a frown would have appeared in her forehead if the Botox hadn’t prevented it.

‘If you weren’t just reading out loud when you called the police, Nathalie, then what you say proves that you not only knew that Ellen Savinger was in the house, but also that you had access to information that no one but the police and the perpetrator were aware of. No one apart from us knew about the pink leather strap with the Orthodox cross. Just us and the Scum.’

‘Scum?’

‘Charles Lindbergh and Erik Johansson are merely aliases. His real name is the Scum. And you know that too. It’s not as if he was nice to you. So tell me.’

‘Tell you what?’