Watching You(60)

Berger sighed and thought. Above the sofa hung the huge picture of the mountaineers.

‘I thought about how thick that picture was,’ he said, nodding. ‘How heavy it must have been for the removal men. Then I saw the scrap of paper on the floor and thought about the six different colours of Post-it notes. I picked it up and read it, pulled out the smallest evidence bag I had and shoved it up my backside.’

‘Fitting,’ Blom said. ‘Do you know how much that sofa cost?’

They walked towards the picture, and Berger said: ‘That’s probably why I wanted to mess it up.’

‘Hmm,’ she said.

They reached the sofa. He pointed at the floor.

‘That’s where the note was,’ he said.

She took the rolled-up, still slightly damp pink Post-it note from her pocket, unrolled it and said: ‘It’s probably best if we put it back in its place, then.’

She slid her hand behind the large photograph. There was a small click as a previously invisible crack opened down the snow-covered mountain. She leaned across the sofa. Then she folded back both sides of the picture. It was now twice as wide, about four metres from end to end, and inside an entire police investigation was mapped out in exquisite detail. Photographs, notes, receipts, forms, extracts from official registers, copies of certificates, airline tickets, and – above all – a confusion of Post-it notes in every imaginable colour.

Molly Blom attached the missing pink Post-it note with a magnet and said: ‘I shall try to forget where that note has been.’

Berger looked at the impenetrable pattern. He could tell that his eyes were the size of saucers.

‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘You really are crazy.’

‘Do you still think you’ve been chasing this piece of scum harder than anyone else?’ Blom asked, adjusting some of the notes.

Berger moved closer and looked to the left, where he found a photograph of himself from the start of Year 9. What struck him was the innocence in those eyes. Back then he hadn’t yet seen a girl get tortured by his crazy friend in a rotting boathouse. Or crept away with his tail between his legs. Or consciously tried to suppress the whole thing.

‘Who has framed photographs of themselves lined up in their bedroom? Who only has pictures of themselves in doing extreme sports? Who has migraines so terrible that they can only be treated with Botox? Who has nothing but protein drinks and plastic-wrapped fruit in their fridge? I’ll tell you: a manic person. A control freak.’

‘Not manic,’ Blom said calmly, pointing at one of the photographs towards the middle of the display, a young, uniformed Molly Blom on a podium. ‘Not manic, but determined. I’m a year younger than you, and I became a police officer two years before you did, and by then I already had an acting career behind me. While you were bumming about south-east Asia and taking random courses at university. Philosophy, wasn’t it?’

‘I thought it was going to give me the answer to all of life’s riddles,’ Berger said, looking at a photograph of the fifteen-year-old William Larsson. His face really was misshapen.

‘He vanished without trace after Year 9,’ Blom said with a nod.

‘What are we doing here?’ Berger asked.

‘There are gaps,’ Blom said, pointing at the display. ‘And you’re going to help me fill them.’

‘Well we’ve wasted a fuck load of time on this charade, time Ellen Savinger doesn’t have.’

Then it struck. All the tension he thought he’d seen in her face from the moment she fetched him from his cell erupted into sheer fury. She forced him up against the wall.

‘Now listen very carefully, you bastard!’ she roared. ‘We’ve just confessed, both of us, that we’ve been running unsanctioned parallel investigations. We’ve both confessed that we already know who the murderer is. We’ve already confessed that our pasts are woven together with his. We’re both utterly fucked. Do you understand? Can you get that into your head, you pathetic excuse for a cop?’

Berger felt himself just staring at her.

‘Your loop was supposed to conceal that,’ he said eventually.

‘There was some sort of glitch, I don’t know what. Some of our confidential conversation got picked up, and they’re now hard at work trying to dig out the rest. Do you understand what that means?’

‘Oh, fuck,’ he said.

They said nothing for a while, just looked at each other.

In the end Berger said: ‘As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t change that much. Things can’t really get much worse. I’m already suspected of being a serial killer. But things really don’t look good for you.’

Blom shoved him down onto the stained sofa and started walking round her flat. Berger watched patterns emerge inside her. He could see her weighing up pros and cons. He could see her making decisions that would affect the rest of her life.

‘You’ve already removed me from custody of your own volition,’ he said. ‘You brought me here and showed me your secret investigation. You’ve already made your decision. You’ve broken more laws than I have.’

She breathed out. Stared at him, blaming him for messing up her controlled life. And he could see that it made sense. Then, understanding just how much sense it made, something even heavier hit him. The features of his face all seemed to slump.