Watching You(44)

‘Yes. And that’s why you’re sitting here, Sam Berger.’

He let out a laugh. ‘And there was me thinking this was starting to sound like a productive conversation between two talented police officers. But that was obviously too good to be true …’

‘Your contribution to the conversation has been pretty negligible so far. But that’s about to change. So, a tentative premise: let’s pretend this is the first time you’ve heard about Aisha Pachachi and Nefel Berwari. What would your conclusion be, Sam Berger?’

Berger looked deep into Molly Blom’s eyes and said, after prolonged reflection: ‘Up until Ellen Savinger it’s a matter of concealing the fact that a girl has gone missing at all. It’s perfectly possible that there are other victims; it was sheer coincidence that you found Nefel Berwari and picked up on the possibility of a recurrent offence. I didn’t know about either of them – on that point your “tentative premise” is correct – but I still managed to grasp that we were dealing with a serial killer. Yet working from your assumptions – five victims – the conclusion has to be that there are two separate series. Up until Ellen the crimes have to be concealed. For some reason the Scum starts murdering fifteen-year-old Muslim girls specifically – why, we don’t know. It’s possible that he’s got something to do with an ancient, patriarchal, honour-based culture, but it’s more likely that he just figured out that that’s a good way to conceal the crimes; the most successful crimes are always the ones that no one knows have been committed. It’s even possible to see poor Aisha Pachachi and Nefel Berwari as practice. The next step is more difficult. The Scum has realised that if a girl from an immigrant family disappears there’s no media frenzy; prejudice suggests that any such disappearance is “honour-related”, and not even the evening tabloids have the stomach for that. But if a blonde fifteen-year-old Swedish girl goes missing, things liven up considerably. Everything is easier for the public to deal with. Which means it’s harder to hide. How do you hide the fact that a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl disappears? By making it look like she’s run away. Which is what happens to Julia Almstr?m. Have you found the young man who was emailing her? The one who’d done time and wanted to move abroad?’

‘No,’ Molly Blom said. ‘He doesn’t exist.’

‘Roughly six months between Aisha and Nefel. Not quite four months until Julia, a temporary increase in pace. Then what?’

‘Almost a year until Jonna Eriksson. I know. It doesn’t make sense. What happens in between?’

‘How should I know?’ Berger said. ‘I found Julia and Jonna, that’s all. But now I see that Julia and the biker gang in V?ster?s marked a shift. A shift on the part of the Security Service. You broke from your previous strategy. Did you realise that was the start of a new phase, a change of tactic on his part? Why did you show up on your bicycle precisely then? What the hell was the thing with the bike anyway? And why did you talk to that television reporter? Why did you give the name of your bizarre alter ego, Nathalie Fredén? I saw you hesitate; your not yet entirely smooth forehead actually frowned.’

Berger looked at her forehead. There really wasn’t much going on there. But that made the activity in the rest of her face all the more pronounced. It was as if her whole system of emotional markers had shifted down her cheeks.

Eventually she said: ‘I appreciate that things must seem a little confusing to you right now, Sam. It’s not that long since you broke into my flat and got beaten up by my men. Even so, it feels like you still think you’re sitting on this side of the table. Was that five questions you just asked?’

‘Answer one of them, at least,’ Berger said.

‘Nathalie Fredén was a well developed identity that I occasionally used undercover. You torched it.’

‘For good, I hope.’

‘It’s only torched in terms of the police, and both Allan Gudmundsson and Desiré Rosenkvist know where their true loyalties lie. They’re both loyal to authority. You aren’t, Sam.’

‘But why use that identity there and then? In V?ster?s?’

‘The killer led us to the biker gang in a conscious attempt to mislead us. We used a bicycle I’d requisitioned for a previous job, drove to V?ster?s with the bike in the back of the car and tried to make me look as little like a police officer as possible. There was a chance the murderer would show up, so I was simply there to do some surveillance. But then that reporter appeared, and I had to make a quick decision. Were there advantages to the perpetrator seeing me on television? Might I catch his interest somehow? It wasn’t an easy decision to give my fake name and risk blowing a well established alias, but I thought the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.’

‘Did you get into trouble as a result?’

Molly Blom laughed.

‘I’m not you, Sam. Don’t get us mixed up.’

‘There’s not much risk of that …’

‘And above all, don’t underestimate me.’

A sharp glare. Berger realised that he was unlikely ever to underestimate Molly Blom again.

‘Does Deer know I’m here?’ he asked.

She looked at him, in a different way. Possibly a slightly more human way. Although that probably wasn’t the right word.