Watching You(52)

Blom continued mercilessly: ‘Obviously your hatred of women didn’t start when your partner left you in February almost three years ago, taking the twins with her – Freja had no doubt been the target of that for a while – but after that you took it to a new level. Then in May, when she perfectly legally picked Marcus and Oscar from Sofia School and took them with her to Paris, your hatred of women grew, Sam. After the incident at Arlanda you started referring to your ex as “scum”, and became outright dangerous. Barely a month later, on 7 June, fifteen-year-old Aisha Pachachi went missing from Helenelund in Sollentuna, where you grew up. It was the end of the school year, right in the middle of all those celebrations you could no longer be a part of. You only got to attend one end-of-year celebration with them, Sam, and that was when your sons were in their first year of school. How crazy must that have made you?’

Berger remained silent and stared down at the table. Blom carried on, without taking her eyes off him: ‘That summer you started taking your revenge on a whole gender, Sam. You wanted to make sure those fifteen-year-old girls didn’t grow up into treacherous adult women. You’re on a crusade against evil women of the future who steal men’s sons from them. You grab them before they have a chance to harm any men. You vent your fury on these young girls. When you make your activities public, as with Ellen’s kidnapping, you also make sure you’re in charge of the investigation – that’s why you suddenly made the kidnappings public after keeping them hidden for so long. The fact that you transfer the grotesque term you use for the mother of your children – scum – to the murderer, who happens to be you, makes the whole thing so perverse that it’s almost intriguing.’

After a heavy silence Berger looked up at her. Tears were streaming from his eyes. ‘I love my children. I want them back.’

‘I’m sure they’d love to come back to their serial-killer father,’ Blom said brutally.

Ordinarily Berger would have been able to wipe his tears away in a matter of seconds and start again. That wasn’t possible this time. They just ran, like they would down a little girl’s cheeks, or the cheeks of a psychiatric patient.

It was almost like a revelation. It had been a long time since he had seen himself in such a clear light.

In far too many ways, Molly Blom was right.

In every respect except the vital one, in fact.

And it was as if she knew that. As if she were punishing him for something else. For being who he was.

‘You know I haven’t done this,’ he said.

‘Why did you requisition the files on Julia Almstr?m and Jonna Eriksson four days before Ellen Savinger was kidnapped?’

‘That’s not right …’

‘I’ll tell you why,’ Blom said pointedly. ‘Because you wanted to show off, make yourself out to be smarter than you are. You could calmly lead us to Julia and Jonna without risking anything. Desiré Rosenkvist and the others would be so impressed. You could show off while keeping your own role concealed. You neglected to say anything about the first two victims, Aisha Pachachi and Nefel Berwari, and any evidence relating to Julia and Jonna was already long gone. But not entirely.’

She pointed at the little cogs that were still lying on the table, next to their small plastic bags.

‘There are no crime scenes for Julia and Jonna,’ Molly Blom went on. ‘Yet these little cogs belonging to a Patek Philippe 2508 Calatrava have been gathered from two crime scenes. No one in the world knows where Julia Almstr?m and Jonna Eriksson were held captive and killed. No one except the murderer. These aren’t clues, Sam Berger, they’re trophies. These cogs are trophies of the sort that serial killers almost always collect. Really sick serial killers. And you’re a really sick serial killer. You want to stop women from growing up. You’re scum. You’re the Scum.’

Molly Blom paused. She looked intently at Sam Berger. She owned him.

He nodded slowly.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It really does look atrocious.’

‘You sacrificed your best watch,’ Blom said. ‘You took your finest possession apart and started putting one cog from the watch in each of the places where you murdered the girls. If a single cog disappeared for good, you would have sacrificed your favourite object in the whole wide world. It was all about raising the stakes. Not a single cog was to be found by the police, not a single crime scene, not a single girl’s body. You’re gathering your Patek Philippe 2508 Calatrava back together, Sam. Soon time will be running smoothly again. When you’ve murdered enough girls.’

Berger was breathing heavily. After a while he said, as calmly as possibly: ‘I’ll have to come back to the cogs. In a minute. But first I need an answer to a question.’

‘You need an answer? You don’t have the right to anything, scum, least of all a question.’

‘But otherwise nothing makes sense. Lina Vikstr?m?’

‘What?’

‘You called the police as Lina Vikstr?m from M?rsta,’ Berger said. ‘You had an almost impeccable Security Service mask on your voice. You said you’d seen Ellen Savinger through the window of a ramshackle house in the neighbourhood. You said you’d seen a pink leather strap round her neck, with an Orthodox cross. Because the Security Service had full access to the police investigation, and were actually ahead of it, the pink strap wasn’t that strange. But the strange thing is that you knew where Ellen was being held captive. We’d been looking for her for almost three weeks: it was top priority. How the hell did the Security Service find her before we did? And why didn’t you want to go in? Why put us on the M?rsta trail?’