Watching You(77)

They set off. How long had it actually been since Berger first laid eyes on this place? He had caught up with his advancing colleagues, seeing them emerge from the downpour, one by one, crouched figures which, even though he could only see them from behind, exuded an unmistakable focus.

Before long one of them would have his upper arms punctured by flying knives. So his first visit wasn’t actually that long ago; Ekman was probably still in hospital. Berger tried in vain to count the days before his thoughts went off in a different direction.

Towards evidence. Allan’s perspective.

A lot had happened during the last, very few days, an absurd amount had been ploughed up from the dirt of the past. They had now sniffed out seven possible victims of their mad perpetrator, who, judging by everything they knew, was William Larsson. But the fact remained that there was only one piece of evidence that a violent kidnapper was at work, and none at all to suggest a serial killer. The only physical evidence was still the DNA found in the basement of the house that was looming up in front of them. Ellen Savinger’s blood.

Aisha Pachachi could very well have followed her brother and become a child-bride of IS in Syria.

Nefel Berwari could very well have fallen victim to an honour killing in Vivala, ?rebro.

Julia Almstr?m could very well have fled the country with her unidentified ex-con boyfriend.

Sunisa Phetwiset could very well have been murdered by paedophile Axel Jansson.

Jonna Eriksson could very well have run away with her boyfriend and fellow unfortunate, Simon Lundberg.

Emma Brandt could very well have jumped from V?sterbron and been carried out to sea by the current.

And William Larsson could very well be nothing more than a ghost conjured up from the darkest parts of Sam Berger and Molly Blom’s pasts, taking form without actually existing. Looked at dispassionately, it seemed pretty likely that he had died in the nineties as a result of his severe deformities.

The whole thing could very well turn out to be ghosts in the machine, which were now, in the ghosting hour, about to reveal their true nature.

Apart from Ellen Savinger. She was, beyond all doubt, a kidnapped and possibly murdered fifteen-year-old girl.

And perhaps there was evidence behind the bloodstain on the wall that they weren’t dealing with ghosts after all, but with the very real victims of a serial killer.

Really real. Really behind the wall.

By the steps up to the porch blue and white plastic tape was still fluttering in the imperceptible night breeze. Berger went first, Blom followed. The likelihood of there being anyone inside the house was extremely small, but they both instinctively drew their pistols at the same time.

Berger pushed the door open and crouched down. He shone his torch at the knife-throwing mechanism. Nothing seemed to have changed. He slipped inside, followed by Blom.

Left, into the living room, everything was the same. A quick glance into the bedroom, then into the kitchen. The hatch in the floor was open, the police tape was where it had been when he was last there. There was nothing to indicate that anyone had been in the house since then.

Berger shone his torch on the steps and went down, then lit up the walls of the labyrinth. He turned and saw the focused look on Blom’s pale face through the darkness. They made their way through the maze of rooms to reach the hole hacked in the wall. Berger got down on his knees and shuffled through, holding his gun raised. His torch played across the bare but by no means mute walls while Blom slipped into the cell. Some white powder fell on her as she passed through the opening, as if the wall was slowly giving way. She spat out crumbs of plasterboard. Then she looked around and went over to the far wall. Her hand slowly traced the outer edge of the bloodstain, and she crouched down and found the nail marks in the floor with the torch. Toenails. Fingernails. Then she looked at the two posts and felt the mooring rings in the wall.

Berger saw that she too could feel the walls scream. Feel rather than hear. He had been overwhelmed by it the first time. She was probably overwhelmed as well, but in her own way. And the question now was how many screams there were.

Was it a whole girls’ choir?

‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘It must be the same clock.’

‘A big, tower clock,’ he said. ‘Much more powerful than you’d think.’

‘Not me,’ she said sharply, and went back to the wall to the left of the bloodstain. She pointed at the hacked-out indentation around the middle mooring ring.

‘It’s hard to tell,’ she said. ‘There could be different layers, but it’s been very roughly cut.’

‘I apologise that my work doesn’t meet with your approval, ma’am,’ Berger said sullenly.

‘Well, we’re just going to have to be more gentle this time,’ Blom said calmly, pulling a hammer and chisel from a couple of her army trousers’ many pockets. She held the chisel against the centre of the bloodstain and turned to look at Berger. He nodded.

‘It’s more solid than you think,’ he said.

She hit the chisel with the hammer. Nothing happened. Again. A few chips broke off.

After a while she had cut out the sides of a square three centimetres across. Then inside it she started carefully chipping off as thin a layer of the wall as she could.

One centimetre in, the wall changed colour. Blom struck once more and a larger piece of cement came loose and fell to the floor, revealing a small section of wall that was clearly a brownish-red colour.