Watching You(45)
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Molly Blom said.
‘Well you’ve clearly been released,’ Berger said. ‘But does she know I’m here? And where is “here”? Am I even in Police Headquarters? And these damn straps … what sort of fucking Guantánamo is this?’
‘Calm down,’ she said, and looked him in the eye.
And the strange thing was that he calmed down. Or grew calmer, at least. Curiosity got the better of anger. It was possible that he had never been more curious in his life.
Where the hell was he?
Who the hell was she?
What the hell was going on?
‘At least tell me this is all legit,’ he said. ‘That you are a Swedish police officer.’
‘All this has been sanctioned,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. Do you remember I said I’d get back to where we started?’
‘I’m a detective,’ Berger said. ‘I remember things.’
‘What do you remember?’
‘I said: “You’ve demolished my life. That’s possibly rather worse that a stained sofa.” You said: “But not worse than a stained and demolished fifteen-year-old.” So the Security Service suspect me of … well, what, exactly?’
Molly Blom’s eyebrows frowned. Her forehead remained flat.
‘It’s the timing,’ she said.
‘The timing?’ he said.
‘When exactly did you procure the regional police’s files on Julia Almstr?m and Jonna Eriksson?’
Berger sat in silence, thinking. Produced wordless thoughts. Tried to make sense of everything.
‘If you don’t remember, I’ll tell you,’ Molly Blom continued. ‘Ellen Savinger was abducted from her school in ?stermalm on 7 October, almost three weeks ago. But you requested the files on 3 October, Sam. As if you already knew that Ellen was going to be kidnapped.’
Berger sat there, motionless.
Blom went on: ‘I can’t understand it, Sam. How did you know in advance that Ellen Savinger was going to be kidnapped?’
He remained silent. She watched him. Intently.
The look in her eyes had changed. It was odd: not only was she sharing a large amount of information with him after getting someone to stick a syringe in his neck, but her expression wasn’t full of hate. It was more questioning than that.
On closer inspection, the whole thing was actually very peculiar.
‘Is it true that you were originally an actress?’ he asked.
She looked disappointed.
Then she took a deep breath. ‘Four days before Ellen Savinger was kidnapped, you secretly acquired the files covering the investigations into Julia Almstr?m and Jonna Eriksson from two different regional police forces, Central and Bergslagen. Do you really not understand that that act is a lot more suspicious than standing at different police cordons with a bicycle between your legs?’
‘That’s not true,’ he said.
The room started to spin. Either the sedative from the injection hadn’t completely left his system, or reality was catching up with him – an awareness of why he was actually sitting there.
It wasn’t because he’d exceeded his authority.
It was something much worse.
‘Not true?’ Molly Blom said.
‘The reorganisation,’ Berger said, while everything was spinning.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘The chaos at the start of the year,’ Berger went on, but the spinning didn’t stop. A wave of nausea washed over him.
‘The Security Service became an independent body and everything else was gathered together under the Police Authority. And?’
‘Have you got any water?’
‘No,’ Molly Blom said calmly. ‘Carry on.’
‘Julia Almstr?m wasn’t investigated by the Central Police District,’ Berger said. ‘But the biker gang in V?ster?s was, before the reorganisation. It was the local V?stmanland police who were in charge of the original investigation. But a month or so after the reorganisation, the newly formed Bergslagen Police District took over Julia Almstr?m’s disappearance.’
‘And you managed to say all that even though the whole room is spinning?’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘I can tell by looking at you,’ Molly Blom said calmly. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘That at the beginning of October is was relatively easy to extract files without leaving any trace. Things were still in a state of chaos following the reorganisation.’
‘But you did leave a trace,’ Blom said. ‘And I don’t think you were alone.’
‘I was alone,’ Berger said, unexpectedly sharply.
‘We’ll come back to that,’ Blom said, giving him a hard stare. ‘We found a trail, anyway. The files relating to the investigations were pulled four days before Ellen Savinger disappeared.’
‘No,’ Berger said. The room really didn’t seem to want to stop spinning. ‘I didn’t leave a trail, at least no dates. Things were chaotic, it was fairly easy. If there’s a trail, it’s been planted.’
‘Planted?’
‘Yes. I didn’t leave a trail. And I pulled the files five days after Ellen went missing, Monday 12 October. I’d spent the whole weekend looking for parallels. Other fifteen-year-old girls who’d disappeared.’