Watching You(78)

‘Bloody hell,’ Berger said, pulling an evidence bag from his jacket pocket.

Blom pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, broke off a piece of the rust-brown wall and dropped it into Berger’s opened bag. He sealed it and wrote Layer 1 on it in permanent pen. Then he put it back in his pocket and carried on watching as Blom worked.

After a good stretch of precision chiselling a new layer emerged. Two clenched fists, and the same procedure was repeated. But this time Blom passed the hammer and chisel to Berger, who took a moment before accepting the tools.

A while later he held up an evidence bag bearing the label Layer 3, shone his torch at it and said: ‘The only thing is, how are we going to get any DNA from these?’

‘I may have a solution to that,’ Blom said, watching the little plastic bag as it slipped into Berger’s pocket.

‘Let me guess,’ Berger said. ‘An external resource?’

He put the tools down on the floor and looked at his hands. It was strange: he had more calluses on his hands this time than when he uncovered the large mooring rings.

Blom picked up the hammer and chisel and went on working at the square. Soon a further rust-red layer appeared.

Time passed. Berger took over. He spent a long time chiselling.

Eventually they were both staring at a plastic bag labelled Layer 6 in very unsteady handwriting.

‘Six layers plus Ellen,’ Blom said. ‘Seven girls.’

Then the screams rose up from the cell walls again, and Berger actually thought he could make out seven voices. Seven voices from purgatory.

Berger tried to think rationally. It wasn’t altogether easy.

‘It’s not necessarily seven girls,’ he said. ‘There may be others. There could be more victims.’

Then they heard something. It was barely a scrape, but it still made Molly Blom go utterly rigid. With a quick glance at Berger she managed to hush him before he even thought about saying anything.

The front door opening?

Or just the sounds of the building, lingering from the ghosting hour?

Blom and Berger stood stock-still.

They heard nothing else. Just an echoing silence.

Blom switched her torch off and pushed Berger’s aside. Then they heard a faint scraping sound.

Like a foot on the cellar steps.

Berger silently drew his pistol from his shoulder holster and raised one finger in the air, then two, with a questioning look. Blom shook her head, as if she couldn’t tell either, and started to move towards the opening without making a sound. Even when they heard the next step, not far from the opening, they still couldn’t tell if they were dealing with one or two visitors.

Either way, only one person would be able to crawl into the cell at a time.

They took up strategic positions around the opening, both aiming their weapons at the hole. Berger switched his torch off. Everything turned pitch-black. There was the sound of someone getting down on their knees, lying on their stomach.

The sound of someone crawling through the opening.

Berger switched his torch back on and kicked the wall above the opening. The figure that had just slid into the cell was completely covered by greyish-white powder.

Blom yelled: ‘Don’t move!’

A cloud of finer dust settled slowly on the figure. Its face was entirely greyish-white until a pair of brown eyes opened with an expression of utter terror.

A deer’s eyes.

‘What the fuck, Deer?’ Berger cried out, lowering his pistol.

‘OK,’ Desiré Rosenkvist said hoarsely. ‘Now this really is a nightmare.’

‘Are you alone?’ Blom shouted.

‘Horribly alone,’ Deer said.

Berger took her hand and pulled her to her feet.

Blom finally lowered her pistol and asked: ‘What are you doing here?’

‘That’s my line, surely?’ Deer said, brushing herself down. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for ages, Sam, and Allan keeps saying that you’re still being questioned. What the hell is going on?’

‘Long story,’ Berger said.

Deer pointed at Blom. ‘Nathalie Fredén. Wow. And you’ve both got guns. Christ, this really is a nightmare.’

‘It’s hard to give you a short version,’ Berger said. ‘You’re going to have to decide if you trust me or not.’

Deer looked at him sceptically.

‘She’s a cop, then?’ she said. ‘All we heard from Allan was that she’d been released and you’d been taken in for questioning by Internal Investigations. But I can’t deny that I had a strong feeling that the Security Service was involved.’

‘I’m a cop, yes,’ Blom said, without putting her pistol away. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘A nocturnal thought,’ Deer said. ‘The wall. Why was it so thick? Wasn’t it a bit unlikely that the perpetrator had extended the wall by ten centimetres all in one go? Wasn’t it more likely that it was done in stages? Maybe Julia Almstr?m and Jonna Eriksson were held against this wall as well.’

‘I’ve trained you well, Deer,’ Berger said, passing over one of the small evidence bags.

‘You haven’t trained me at all, Sam, and you know it,’ Deer said, then read the label. ‘“Layer 6”? Six?’

‘Six layers beneath this one, all with definite traces of blood. Seven girls have been held here.’