Watching You(74)

The carriage was fairly full. People were looking at them with distaste. There were a couple of raised mobiles. It hadn’t exactly been a subtle escape. Something needed to be done.

Blom got there first. She held up her ID. ‘Sorry about that. Police. There’s nothing to see.’

The seasoned commuters went back to whatever they had been doing with suspicious expressions. Berger breathed out and looked at his bleeding hand.

‘How the hell did they find us?’ he whispered.

‘Later,’ Blom said. ‘Right now the question is whether or not they’re going to get to the next station in time.’

‘Jordbro,’ Berger groaned.

‘There’s quite a lot of traffic,’ Blom said, ‘but all they have to do is keep driving down Gamla Nyn?sv?gen. We’re not safe yet.’

Berger felt his bleeding palm. ‘Oh well. I injured my hand in Handen. Which is something.’

The train picked up speed; it seemed unlikely that the Volvo could drive any faster. Three minutes later they were at Jordbro station. They couldn’t see the Volvo through the train windows. They got out, rushed through the barriers and evaluated the situation. It was a noticeably less urban station, but on the other side of the tracks was a familiar logo. Possibly the most familiar logo in the world. Coca-Cola’s headquarters in Sweden, a vast industrial building with a hell of a lot of cars parked outside. They set off in that direction, through the wretched, never-ending rain.

‘Shift workers,’ Blom said. ‘No one will miss anything until first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘Do you fancy something a little more modern?’ Berger said.

She flashed him a dark look, and soon they were sitting in another similar vehicle from the nineties in the traffic heading back towards Stockholm.

‘Stay away from the congestion charge zone,’ Blom said.

‘No cameras.’ Berger nodded.

Only when they reached Farsta did he start to feel safe. Then he repeated: ‘How the hell did they find us?’

‘They can’t have had a transmitter on my van,’ Blom said. ‘They’d have picked us up last night. Or this morning when we were out shopping.’

‘So what, then? Have I got some fucking chip in my body? Have you?’

‘Hardly,’ Blom said. ‘My guess is that they’ve managed to reverse the GPS signal after all. I didn’t really think that was possible yet, you need to fix at least four satellites to do it.’

‘Are we safe in the boathouse? Can we go back there? Or will Roy and Roger be sitting there waiting for us?’

‘That depends on when they managed to pick up the signal.’

Berger sighed.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’re just going to have to find out.’





29




Wednesday 28 October, 19.04

The rain was scattering myriad fleeting rings across the dark surface of Edsviken.

There had been no one waiting for them in the boathouse.

There was no evidence to suggest that they had been discovered.

Berger was leaning on the railing out on the jetty, breathing out at last. He was soaked and was trying his best not to fall asleep where he stood. There was a break in the middle of the railing where a ladder led straight down into the water. Even the thought that it might be necessary to climb down there before long made the blood run cold in his veins.

Blom came and stood next to him. She was just as wet as he was.

‘Done?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘I’ve rigged up four cameras at strategic points,’ he confirmed. ‘Are they really the same kind you used in Vidargatan?’

She nodded. ‘And I’ve changed the plates on our stolen Mazda.’

‘How much stuff have you actually got in those Security Service cases?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer. They stood for a while looking out over the dark inlet.

‘Sometimes I wish I still smoked,’ Berger said.

Then they went back inside. They sat down at their respective carpentry benches, at their respective computers. Next to each bench lay a sleeping bag and camping mat. Completely untouched.

Berger was drinking coffee, Blom tea. They were both trying to ignore how tired they were.

Berger tried typing with his damaged left hand. It worked surprisingly well. He was following up an idea that had occurred to him up on V?sterbron, while he was feeling ashamed at having introduced himself as Charles Lindbergh.

Blom had begun by checking the most obvious thing. After a while she said: ‘There’s no national alert.’

He looked at her in silence.

‘The police aren’t looking for us,’ she clarified. ‘The Security Service hasn’t gone public about our disappearance. No press conferences.’

‘Good,’ Berger said. ‘So just the sharpest cops in Sweden hunting us in the utmost secrecy, then.’

Blom flashed him a bitter look.

He went on: ‘What do Deer and Allan know?’

‘They know I’m Security Service and that we pulled you in for questioning on behalf of Internal Investigations. Not much more than that.’

‘And where do they think I am now?’

‘In our custody, I presume. Unless August Steen has fabricated some story about you being on holiday. To be honest, I don’t know.’