Watching You(53)

Blom looked at him.

‘You purposefully concealed a clear line of inquiry,’ she said.

‘What the hell?’ he said. ‘I didn’t do that.’

‘Of course not,’ she said with icy chill. ‘So you checked car rentals? All the car rentals within something like a two-hundred-kilometre radius?’

‘I had three officers on it,’ Berger said. ‘They found a few possibilities, but nothing sufficiently promising. Every fifth car hired in the Stockholm area is apparently picked up using fake documents. Very difficult to pin down.’

‘But you were sloppy,’ Blom said. ‘If I can put it like that. A report came in from the M?rsta Police about a van that had been hidden in one of the derelict buildings on the neighbouring land. An old lady walking her dog, an Asta Granstr?m, came across it early one morning. It was a van that had been rented from Statoil in G?vle back in the spring.’

‘Like hell,’ Berger said. ‘We’d have found her.’

‘She died before you found her,’ Blom said. ‘My theory is that you murdered her. You were in M?rsta. You were the one who rented that van, Sam Berger. You were leading the investigation by day and creeping around M?rsta by night. When you tortured Ellen. And you killed the old woman and managed to stop her report from getting any further than the M?rsta Police. It never found its way into the investigation.’

‘Because the Security Service prevented it,’ Berger shouted. ‘Because you allowed it to leak into the investigation indirectly, via Lina Vikstr?m. Christ – you managed to keep the M?rsta Police quiet? But you can’t have killed the old woman. I don’t remember an old woman from the investigation.’

‘Because you killed her,’ Blom said. ‘Then put a lid on it.’

‘But I don’t even know who you’re talking about, Molly. Who was this old woman? How did she die?’

‘Don’t call me Molly, you bastard. I don’t want my first name in your mouth. Now, try to explain away those cogs from your very favourite watch. If you can.’

Berger felt the whole world spinning. Pain was burning through every nerve cell in his body.

‘The cog,’ he wheezed. ‘Yes. Bloody hell. When I got hold of the files on Julia Almstr?m and Jonna Eriksson – five days after Ellen’s disappearance, not four days before – I realised that the local police couldn’t have conducted a thorough search of Julia and Jonna’s homes. It was a chaotic time, both before and after the reorganisation. The soon-to-be defunct local force in V?stmanland didn’t make much of an effort with Julia, and the completely new regional Bergslagen Police was largely incompetent when it came to Jonna. I simply went to their homes. The Almstr?m family in Malmaberg in north-east V?ster?s was very accommodating; they were in pieces. Julia’s room remained exactly as she had left it, and there – tucked in beside the skirting board next to Julia’s wardrobe – I found the first cog. That one.’

Berger pointed at the largest of the cogs on the interview-room table between them.

‘Tucked in beside the skirting board?’ Blom said, with heavy sarcasm.

‘Then there was Jonna Eriksson,’ Berger went on. ‘She was a foster child with a notorious family in Kristinehamn. A new girl had already moved into her room. But there it was, nonetheless, at the back of a bookcase, another cog. That one. And I found Ellen’s beside one of the pillars in the basement. Sort of tucked in under the post.’

‘But you’d found both Julia and Jonna’s cogs before you found Ellen’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘How the hell did you know that you were supposed to be looking for cogs?’

Berger leaned back and closed his eyes. After a while he said: ‘Because he knows who I am.’

But Blom stood up and slammed her fist down on the table as soon as Berger started to speak, completely drowning him out with a roar: ‘Now shut up and think before you tell any more lies!’

He stared at her.

She went on: ‘Now we’re just going to sit here and stare at each other until you tell the truth, you pathetic piece of shit. I don’t care if it takes half an hour.’

Then she sat down again and stared at him. He stared back. He was trying desperately to grasp what was happening, but he understood nothing, except that he should remain silent.

Time passed. They remained completely motionless for five seconds, ten. Fifteen, then Berger saw Blom slide her hand under one of the files and touch the new white smartphone beneath it. Without turning his head, he let his eyes slide over to the recording equipment on the side table. The red light flickered but went on glowing.

Molly Blom leaned forward and said quietly: ‘Twenty seconds exactly. Listen carefully now, don’t say anything. This isn’t a mobile phone. It’s a remote control that lets the last twenty seconds run on a loop for a while. We can’t take more than a few minutes or they’ll notice out in the control room. Nothing we say now is being recorded. But we don’t have much time. You know who the killer is?’

Berger stared at her wildly for two seconds. That’s all they could afford.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think we grew up together.’

‘And the cogs?’

‘Several things. He likes clocks. He loves clocks. Big ones, like you get in clock towers. It’s likely that he’s torturing these girls using clocks. Perfect, intractable mechanisms.’