Watching You(70)

She got into the passenger seat. ‘I think we’ve got another victim.’

Berger set the van moving and said. ‘If we’re going to do this, we can’t have any more secrets.’

Blom found herself nodding. ‘A fifteen-year-old victim of trafficking, a Sunisa Phetwiset, was murdered during the period between Julia Almstr?m and Jonna Eriksson, on 9 October last year. Axel Jansson, a paedophile, was convicted of her murder. But I don’t think he’s guilty of that particular offence. Her body was never found. Someone set him up to hide the real murderer’s identity. I think it was William.’

‘And you found that out this morning?’

‘I was looking for victims between Julia and Jonna. I haven’t focused on it properly before now, hadn’t considered the possibility that he might conceal an act of murder with another murder. Now we need to fill the gap between Jonna and Ellen. The missing victim. Head towards the city. What did you get up to this morning?’

‘I found an aunt,’ Berger muttered. He pulled onto the E18. ‘Do you feel like telling me about when you were strapped to the clock? I need to know how it works.’

Something slid across Blom’s face, slipping over her smooth forehead.

‘It had a ticking clock face,’ she said. ‘I could see time passing. And got terrified every half an hour.’

‘What would happen then?’

‘I was stretched a bit more, like on a rack. But he seemed to be able to adjust it however he wanted.’

As they drove past Arninge, Berger asked: ‘Did you get the feeling that you were meant to die?’

‘You ask such lovely questions.’

They sat in silence for a while. He glanced at her. She looked gloomy and withdrawn.

‘How did you escape?’ he eventually asked.

‘I managed to get my left hand out of the handcuff. Then I freed my right hand and my feet.’

‘You were standing upright while chains pulled your legs and arms?’

‘No,’ Blom said, closing her eyes. ‘Not my legs. Just my arms. I was standing with my legs tied together and lashed to the floor. Your arms get pulled apart, and start to bleed when the skin breaks. I stood there for eight hours, and I think my skin would have split if I’d been there for another hour. Ellen Savinger has been missing for three weeks. What could he have done to her in all that time?’

‘Somehow he lets his victims rest,’ Berger said. ‘So they can sit down and reach the floor with their nails. There are marks from fingernails and toenails in M?rsta.’

‘In the floor?’

‘Yes,’ Berger said. ‘In the cement floor.’

Blom grimaced and stared out through the side window.

They sat in silence until they reached V?sterbroplan. The rain had more or less stopped by then. Berger followed Blom’s directions and parked. A man was standing beside the parking space, waiting. He was in his early forties, and the bags under his eyes were both darker and larger than the rest of his features.

‘Bertil Brandt,’ he said, holding his hand out to them.

‘Eva Lindkvist,’ Molly Blom said.

She looked expectantly at Berger, who said: ‘Charles Lindbergh.’

He regretted that for a long time.

They walked out across V?sterbron. Didn’t say much. Up at the crown of the bridge they stopped and looked out across Stockholm in the harsh grey light.

‘It’s probably going to start raining again soon,’ Brandt said.

‘Maybe,’ Blom said.

They stood like that for a while. An unsettling gloom lay over the city.

‘It was raining that night,’ Berger said eventually.

‘You know that, Bertil?’

‘Oh, yes. I know all about that night.’

‘There aren’t many people who’ve cut through that fence …’

Bertil Brandt smiled weakly. It was a hardened smile. He would survive, but he’d never be himself again.

‘Three years ago they erected the fence. But only on this side, the eastern side, towards the city. And the funny thing is, I understand why they did that.’

‘Can you explain it?’ Blom said.

‘You come up here, with tunnel vision, intoxicated with suicidal euphoria. There’s a certain romance to the eastern side of the bridge – leaving all that crap in your life behind and jumping towards beauty, with the whole of Stockholm at your feet. And if there’s a two-metre-high fence here, the romance diminishes. Then you have to climb over barriers and cross what’s still a very busy road, even at night, to get to the west side. And all the romance disappears, taking with it your tunnel vision. Reality catches up with your dreams, you feel stupid, see yourself in a more honest light. The whole glorious project looks pathetic, feeble. Only the ones who are really determined go through with it.’

‘But now there’s a fence on the western side as well.’

‘And it’s helped. People still climb over, but far fewer. And, like you said, very few people cut through the fence.’

‘But Emma did,’ Molly Blom said. ‘She had a sturdy set of bolt cutters with her, left behind on the bridge with her fingerprints all over them.’

‘Yes,’ Bertil Brandt said. ‘She had it all thought through.’