Watching You(59)

She was crouching beside his bunk. ‘Get up. We’re in a hurry.’

She helped him, his legs felt unsteady.

‘A hurry?’ he said groggily.

‘Hands behind your back,’ she said.

He did as she said. She fastened a zip tie around them, made it plain that she had her pistol in her shoulder holster, and pushed him out through the door. In silence they walked through the dismal corridors. They reached the now familiar door to the interview room, but she walked past it. They turned a corner and passed another door, in all likelihood the door to the control room.

‘Where the hell are we going?’ he whispered. Given the number of surveillance cameras mounted in the ceiling of the corridor, hidden microphones seemed likely.

She didn’t answer, just pushed him straight. After a bewilderingly long walk, they reached an almost invisible lift door. She pressed the button, ran her card through a reader and tapped in a six-digit code.

She still didn’t say anything.

Berger saw the two of them in the grimy lift mirror. It was the first time he’d seen them together. Prisoner and guard. Crook and cop. Molly and Sam. Berger and Blom. Everything felt distorted.

‘Are you taking me up to the department now?’ Berger said. ‘To make me run the gauntlet in front of my betrayed and disappointed colleagues?’

‘I doubt even Desiré Rosenkvist is there now,’ Blom said just as the lift doors opened, revealing the pitch-black of night. She pressed a glowing red button and a merciless fluorescent glare lit up an unremarkable stairwell. Berger could just make out a street lamp through the window in the door.

‘Are we even in Stockholm?’ he said.

Without a word she pulled him after her, away from the door. She opened another door that led to a large courtyard containing a number of parked cars, among them a dark Mercedes Vito van. It flashed its lights through the rain as Berger heard the locks click. She pushed him in across the driver’s seat; he slid over the gear stick and handbrake and glanced over his shoulder into the back of the van. It contained a couple of aluminium suitcases. She placed her shoulder bag there, and beside it the rucksack containing his laptop, watch box, files, the framed photographs – he even glimpsed his mobile phone. When he turned round, about to speak, she held his Rolex Oyster Perpetual Datejust out to him. All the condensation was gone. The watch case looked completely dry. And the hands were pointing very clearly at eighteen minutes past twelve.

‘You like watches?’ she said, dangling the timepiece. ‘Clocks?’

‘William taught me,’ he said.

‘That’s why I need you,’ she said, tucking the watch into his jacket pocket and strapping him into the passenger seat with two large zip ties. He couldn’t move.

She started the engine, and as she began to manoeuvre the van out of its tight parking space she said: ‘I need you, but I don’t know if I can trust you.’

A gate opened in the narrow archway and the van slipped smoothly out onto a deserted Bergsgatan. Above them Stockholm Police Headquarters loomed up like a medieval fortress.

‘We’re in Stockholm,’ he confirmed.

She drove fast. He approved.

‘What about Roy and Roger?’ he said.

She just shook her head.

They said nothing. As they passed Tegnérlunden the illuminated statue of the titanic Strindberg stared down at them from his block of stone. A couple of well oiled nocturnal wanderers on the pedestrianised zone of Drottninggatan failed to cross Tegnérgatan properly. Molly Blom blasted the horn, forcing them up into a bike rack. They drove across Sveav?gen and turned into Birger Jarlsgatan. Still in silence.

Berger even managed to keep his trap shut when Blom did a handbrake turn into Eriksbergsgatan. But a few moments later he nodded through the window and said: ‘The Eriksberg Clinic.’

She glanced at him and took the next turn even harder.

‘The Botox,’ he went on. ‘You didn’t have to say anything. Why did you?’

‘I thought you were smarter than you are,’ Molly Blom said.

‘Was it true, about the migraines?’

‘Do you really think I want a baby-smooth forehead? But it does help.’

He frowned but said nothing more. He didn’t even say a word when they drove into Stenbocksgatan and double-parked outside number 4. She jumped out; he sat there, unable to move. She went round the van, opened the passenger door and looked at him all tied up. She had a knife in her hand. ‘So, am I going to regret this for the rest of my life?’

‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘If you’re thinking of stabbing me.’

She sighed and cut the two zip ties. But when he got out onto the pavement his hands were still fastened behind his back.

She pushed him ahead of her up the stairs, undid the locks and said: ‘You did well to pick all these.’

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Years of training.’

They went inside. She on switched the lights. A gentle, soothing glow spread across the flat. They went into the living room. The once immaculate white sofa was covered in stains. Ugly, rust-red stains. He felt like a villain. Like the villain he was. She led him over to the bay window and half sat on the desk, looking at the sofa.

‘You stood here,’ she said, picking up the various blocks of Post-it notes. ‘You’d seen these. Maybe you could already hear Kent and Roy down by the front door. Then what happened?’