Watching You(79)

‘Fucking hell,’ Deer said. ‘What is this? Some sort of secret parallel investigation? By the Security Service? Have they recruited you, Sam?’

‘It’s more complicated than that,’ Blom said. ‘The question is, can we trust you?’

Berger cast a quick glance at Blom, and thought he got some sort of acknowledgement in return.

‘We don’t exist,’ he said. ‘You haven’t seen us here. You chiselled this little square out yourself. You took these six evidence bags to Robin at the National Forensic Centre.’

Deer snorted and shook her head briefly.

‘I thought this smelled funny,’ she said. ‘So you’re on the run?’

‘We’re working below the radar,’ Blom said. She still had her gun in her hand.

‘Sam?’ Deer said, questioningly.

‘Undercover,’ Berger confirmed. ‘Have you still got your old pay-as-you-go mobile?’

‘It’s at home. Not charged up, though,’ Deer said.

‘I’ll text you a list of four names. Check if they match. Julia, Jonna and Ellen’s DNA is already part of the investigation, but you need to get hold of DNA from the other four old investigations: desk drawers, combs, toothbrushes, clothes, locks of hair, anything.’

‘To be honest, there isn’t much of an investigation now,’ Deer said gloomily. ‘There’s hardly anything left. My guess is that the Security Service is going to take it over soon.’

‘This will probably inject a bit of life into it. You’ll understand the connections when you get the names. Then you can follow them up. Reply to my text when the analysis is done. Never use official channels.’

Deer sighed and looked like she was thinking hard.

‘So it was true? This is a serial killer?’

‘And all seven victims seem to have been held here,’ Berger said.

‘I felt it the first time I came into this horrific little cell,’ Deer said. ‘A lot of things have happened here.’

‘We’re leaving now,’ Berger said, handing over the other evidence bags. ‘Like I said, you haven’t seen us.’

‘I don’t even know who you are,’ Deer said, going over to the wall. She inspected the carefully chiselled hole and shook her head. ‘Above all, I don’t know who you are, Sam. You lied to me. You really were running a parallel investigation. And you obstructed the real investigation. I can’t honestly believe you’ve got much of a future in the force.’

‘The only thing that matters right now is that you trust me, Deer. I’m going to have to apologise for the rest of it under more normal circumstances.’

Berger kneeled down and crept backwards through the hole.

Deer turned to Blom and said: ‘And I don’t actually know you at all. Who are you?’

‘Eva Lindkvist,’ Molly Blom said, finally tucking her pistol back in her shoulder holster.

Once they’d gone Deer put her hands to her ears and pressed hard.

But the screams only got louder and louder.





31




Thursday 29 October, 07.02

They waited for it. It didn’t take long.

It started as a creeping change. The world raised itself laboriously out of the darkness, split in two, then the red dawn managed to separate above from below, sky from water. Out of the gap between them, colours seeped through and spread across the surface of the water.

They were standing out on the jetty after a couple of hours’ sleep. Berger was feeling his bandaged left palm, and could tell that Blom was watching him.

‘What happened after you ran away?’ she said. ‘Back then. Twenty-two years ago.’

Berger shook his head. ‘When I had run some way through the grass your screaming stopped. I didn’t even turn back then. I ran home with my tail between my legs, and I hid. Nothing should be quite as worrying as a teenager overplaying normality. But my parents didn’t notice a thing.’

‘And William?’

‘I just avoided him,’ Berger said. ‘For the rest of term. And I still didn’t know who you were. I never saw you clearly enough.’

‘Do you think he hated us?’ Blom asked.

Berger looked into the sun as it grew with unexpected speed. ‘To understand any of this you have to understand who William was. We’re talking about a mother and son who were forced to move from Huvudsta, H?sselby, Stuvsta, Bandhagen, because the son was being bullied so badly. He struggled through life with his lumpy face; he clung to his clocks even though all hell kept breaking loose around him. Eventually something snapped. It could have been that snowball you threw at the pocket watch he was showing me, it could have been something else.’

‘That snowball,’ Blom said. ‘I didn’t throw it.’

‘You were there, weren’t you?’ Berger said. ‘You were in that gang when it happened. He loved his clocks, and attacking them was like attacking the most precious thing in the world to him. He loved wristwatches, pocket watches, wall clocks, but now he was building the most difficult one of all: a tower clock. But without a tower. Just a boathouse. So he set about modifying his construction, so it could be used to take revenge. The fact that it ended up being you, Molly, was probably just a coincidence.’