Watching You(47)

‘Six compartments. But only five watches. That empty compartment looks rather sad, doesn’t it?’

Then she leaned over and removed a bundle of old papers from her bag. She tapped them together on the desk. ‘Every watch of this quality has an individual guarantee. I’ll count those guarantees. One, two, three, four, five … six. Hang on, that isn’t right. There are only five watches. I’ll count again. One, two, three, four, five, six.’

‘Stop it,’ Berger said.

‘Two Rolexes,’ Blom went on mercilessly while she looked through the dog-eared guarantees. ‘Two IWCs. One Jaeger-LeCoultre. And one Patek Philippe, apparently. Where’s your Patek Philippe watch, Sam?’

‘It was stolen.’

‘It seems to be the jewel in the crown, Sam. A – what does it say? – Patek Philippe 2508 Calatrava. We’ve just heard back from a watchmaker who’s supposed to be Sweden’s foremost expert on wristwatches, and he wasn’t even prepared to hazard a guess at the value of a watch of that description. He said it was priceless.’

Blom paused and looked at Berger. He really did look pretty feeble.

‘Are you seriously suggesting that this priceless watch was stolen and you didn’t bother to report it to the police?’

‘You need special insurance for it,’ Berger said quietly. ‘I couldn’t afford it. And I’m familiar with how a stolen-property report is dealt with by the police. Not at all, usually.’

‘So where and when are you saying it was stolen?’

‘A couple of years ago,’ Berger said. ‘At the gym.’

‘Two and a half, perhaps? In June, two years ago?’

‘Something like that, yes.’

Blom nodded for a while.

‘The watchmaker in question may have refused to value your missing Patek Philippe 2508 Calatrava, but he did say a lot of other interesting things. For one, he identified these three cogs. There’s a high probability that they come from a Patek Philippe 2508 Calatrava.’





20




Tuesday 27 October, 16.24

Molly Blom stepped into a room where two men were sitting staring at computer screens. They nodded to her, as if to acknowledge that everything was under control.

‘I’ll be gone an hour,’ she said. ‘An hour and a half at most.’

The man closest to the wall glanced at a large, cheap diver’s watch on his wrist. ‘And Berger?’

‘Let him rest,’ Blom said. ‘Take him to the cell, Roy.’

Then she opened the other door in the small room and went out into a featureless corridor. She followed it until she came to a lift that blended in to the beige wall. Inside the lift she ran a card through a reader and tapped in a six-digit code, after which the lift began to rise.

Molly Blom looked at her reflection in the hopeless lift mirror. She had been involved in a lot of undercover jobs, played loads of roles, and on one level this was one of the simplest. She moved closer and looked into her own eyes, and actually thought that deep inside that blue stare she could catch a glimpse of the other level. The one telling her that this was the very hardest role she had ever played.

The lift reached the ground floor, G. There was no button below G.

She got out and found herself in a perfectly ordinary stairwell. On the other side of the door she could see Bergsgatan through the curtains of rain, but set off in the opposite direction, into a courtyard containing a dozen parked cars. She clicked her key fob and a dark van, a Mercedes Vito, flashed its lights. She jumped in and lifted up the passenger seat. In a compartment beneath the seat was a shoulder bag. She opened it and fished out a brown envelope and a mobile phone, which she switched on. She set a timer for one hour. She manoeuvred the bulky van around the small courtyard and drove out through the gates before they had opened fully. She headed down to Norr M?larstrand, then to the hideous roundabout at Lindhagensplan and onto Traneberg Bridge. She carried on towards Brommaplan, then along Bergslagsv?gen. She turned off towards Vinsta, one of Stockholm’s most soulless industrial estates, found a parking space in front of an anonymous and apparently dilapidated facade where a grimy sign announced that the building was the home of Wiborg Supplies Ltd.

She didn’t have time to get seriously wet before stepping into what was supposed to be the reception area. The few samples on display in the glass cabinets consisted of indefinable, dust-covered pieces of piping with unreasonable price tags. Taken as a whole, the reception area made a genuinely unwelcoming impression, which was only enhanced by the fact that the dour receptionist smelled of methanol. She caught sight of Blom and jerked her thumb towards the door to one side behind her. The lock whirred and Molly Blom walked through.

At first glance the industrial premises confirmed the impression made by reception. The combination of warehouse and workshop contained four men sitting at computers that only a very trained eye would have been able to distinguish from slow old desktops of the nineties. One of the men stood up and walked towards her.

‘Is it ready?’ she asked.

The man was wearing blue overalls, appeared to be in his forties, and the look in his clear blue eyes was very different from the rest of his appearance. He nodded. ‘Part-paid and ready for delivery. And no receipt?’

‘No receipt this time,’ Blom confirmed.