Watching You(62)

‘I’m thinking of Allan, and I’m thinking of August. Allan and August. August doesn’t give a damn about all this. For him the Security Service looks after the security of the realm and nothing else; his only move would be to throw the book at me. You know Allan’s thoughts on the case better than I do. He’s fallen for the fine old Social Democratic adage that Sweden doesn’t have serial killers, and scarcely any intelligent killers at all. His desire to believe in Swedish innocence will turn William into a clumsy, mentally challenged kidnapper who is doing this sort of thing for the first time. And while you may not get fired quite as forcefully as I will, you’re hardly going to be trusted with particularly challenging work. The archive, perhaps? A junior clerk in the police archive?’

‘So you’re suggesting that we … freelance?’

‘Isn’t that supposed to be the next big thing?’ Molly Blom said, and even if it wasn’t the first time he saw her smile, and even if was an extremely wry smile, it was at least a smile aimed directly at Sam Berger. He smiled back, probably also rather wryly.

‘OK,’ he said after a pause. ‘I presume you’ve got some fancy Security Service hideout in mind for us? Some smart CIA safe house that’s conveniently off the grid?’

‘Sadly they’re very carefully controlled.’

‘We’re on the run with no idea of where we’re running to? And you were the one thinking I was smarter than I am? Not the other way round?’

‘It was hard enough to get this far,’ she said morosely. ‘We can go to a motel.’

Their eyes met and they stared at each other. It was strangely obvious that they both wanted the other to say what they were thinking. What they were both thinking.

Berger rubbed his forehead and decided that it was up to him. ‘Sure, we could go to a motel. Of course we could.’

Blom just looked at him.

He groaned. ‘Or we could go straight for William …’

The look in her eyes didn’t change. She wasn’t about to make this easy for him.

‘The boathouse,’ he said.

She went on staring at him.

He continued: ‘The situation changed after M?rsta. Now he knows we’re on to him. Doesn’t everything we know about this case tell us that he’s got Ellen in the boathouse?’

Molly Blom finally turned away from him. She gazed off into the distance, far beyond Stenbocksgatan.

Eventually she said: ‘There’s no way I’m ever going back there.’

Berger waited a while before going on. ‘We’ve both suspected William Larsson for a while. We both know that there’s a place directly connected to our suspicions. Don’t try to tell me you haven’t been there.’

She was silent, still gazing far into the distance.

‘Well, I’ve been there. It was quiet. Dead and deserted for God knows how many years.’

She nodded slowly and said reluctantly: ‘I’ve been there too. It was empty.’

‘Do you know anything about it?’

‘It’s still there, on the shore of Edsviken,’ she said. ‘It’s fenced off, untouched. There’s some kind of drawn-out legal dispute between two companies that both claim to own it.’

Berger looked at her. ‘Isn’t there a mad, perverse logic in the idea that William would go back to where it all started? And hasn’t he actually invited the two of us? Isn’t he sitting there with Ellen strapped to that clock he once tied you to? Sitting there waiting for us?’

Once again, so much emotion was coursing through Blom’s body that it was visible everywhere except her forehead, which she was now resting against her left hand.

‘Well, then,’ he went on. ‘Let’s go to the boathouse. To pick up William Larsson.’

She looked at him for a little too long before starting the engine. The windscreen wipers began to move. She carried on along Stenbocksgatan and out into Engelbrektsgatan, past the pitch-blackness of Humleg?rden. The van had almost reached the junction with Birger Jarlsgatan when she pulled halfway up onto the pavement and stopped. Apart from a few sporadic taxis there was no traffic at all on the streets around Stureplan. Berger pointed towards the junction.

‘This really is Hercules at the crossroads,’ he said.

She pulled a face.

He went on: ‘Left to Kungsholmen and Police Headquarters, where we’ll have to fight impossible odds to keep our jobs and force our bosses to confront the truth. Right towards Sollentuna and the boathouse, towards William Larsson, towards Ellen Savinger. Towards terrible freedom.’

She stared out through the windscreen. The wipers were sweeping across the windscreen feverishly. Some of the time it was perfectly clear, some of the time completely impenetrable. But she could see the choice of routes.

An unusually tangible life choice.

‘Left or right?’ Berger said. ‘Last chance. Safe territory or … the badlands?’

She put the van in first gear and accelerated away from the pavement.

Then she turned right and roared off northwards up Birger Jarlsgatan.

Towards the badlands.





III





25




Sam gathered up his schoolbooks, dropped them in his rucksack and ran out so fast that dust flew up from the fitted carpet. He saw just the backs of his parents’ heads as they huddled in front of the television in the kitchen. It was shouting the news that someone called Bill Clinton had won the US presidential election. He called out a quick bye and just glimpsed their raised hands before he shut the back door with a thud and saw that the first snow of winter had settled on his bicycle. And he only had eight minutes. He sighed and shook the bike as best he could, then slid down the garden path as the snow beneath his buttocks melted. He was going to look like shit at school. Out on the road it was seriously slippery, cars were parked along the road, abandoned. As he cycled under the railway bridge the train roared above his head. That wasn’t good; now he was properly late. He emerged onto Sollentunav?gen and raced along the pavement, turned in to the school, rode straight into the bicycle rack and quickly locked up his bike. He rushed through the deserted hall and heard the bell ring as he took the stairs three at a time. The door to the chemistry room was about to close, and just as he got his stiff, frozen fingers in the gap he saw a figure a few metres off, facing away from him, someone staring out through the window at the building next door. All he managed to see before he was sucked into the chemistry room was a long mane of blond hair. He sat down at one of the desks, next to Pia, who gave him a smile that meant the day had got off to a good start after all.