Watching You(89)

‘Tell her she knows why. And tell her it’s completely OK if she refuses.’

The conversation was over. Berger looked at the time. Just past four.

Molly said: ‘The bench?’

The park bench next to the little jetty along the northern shore of Riddarfj?rden didn’t have the same feel as when Berger and Deer used to sit there to escape the occasionally oppressive atmosphere of Police Headquarters with coffee, conversation and a nice view.

Then it provided a breathing space. Now all it provided was a very wet space.

Even so, Deer was sitting there beneath an umbrella. And she wasn’t alone. Under a second umbrella they could make out a taller and considerably sharper profile.

Berger and Blom circled the bench for a while to make sure that Deer hadn’t been tempted to temper mercy with justice. There was no sign that she was being watched. They sat down on either side of Deer and Syl, without umbrellas.

They were pretty much alone between the sparse street lamps on Norr M?larstrand.

‘You’re both wanted now,’ Deer said. ‘The Security Service issued an alert at lunchtime. Looks like they made their minds up. And apparently you, Nathalie Fredén, aren’t called Eva Lindkvist, but Molly Blom. It’s a fairly drastic step to reveal the identity of an “internal resource”. That suggests serious criminality.’

‘OK,’ Berger said. ‘Are you wearing recording devices?’

‘Of course,’ Deer said in a perfectly neutral voice.

‘Why else did you summon me here?’ Berger said. ‘What was it that couldn’t be dealt with over the phone?’

She handed him a file.

‘I assumed you’d want hard copies of everything,’ Deer said.

Berger slipped the file inside his jacket and smiled.

‘I’ve trained you well, Deer,’ he said.

‘As we all know, you haven’t trained me at all,’ Deer said. ‘The DNA samples were a match. I got strands of hair from a number of places, and it all fitted. Seven girls with the names, birth dates and ID numbers that you sent in your text have been held in that hellish cellar in M?rsta. One after the other.’

Berger nodded and glanced at Blom. She was nodding too.

‘Not just ghosts in the machine,’ he said after a brief pause.

‘I’ve got a couple more things,’ Deer said. ‘First a message from Vira. You remember Vira?’

‘Medical Officer H??g’s assistant? The twenty-one-year-old? Of course, crystal clear.’

‘On closer examination it turns out that the blood-thinning agent wasn’t a blood-thinning agent at all, but a sedative that isn’t available in Sweden.’

‘And the other thing?’ Blom said.

Deer turned towards Blom and looked at her for a few moments.

‘Security Service,’ Deer finally said, in a peculiar tone of voice.

‘Yes?’ Berger said, pouring oil on troubled waters.

Deer turned back to him and said, with the same sceptical expression: ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Sam? I don’t want to see you end up in prison. It would spoil my CV.’

‘Out with it,’ Berger said.

Deer cleared her throat. ‘Today, when the Security Service issued the alert, the explanations were so vague, so evasive, that I tried to look into it more closely. I had a quiet word with an old friend who works for the Security Service now. He said it had something to do with new information the technical team had managed to extract from an interview recording. Does that mean anything to you?’

Berger looked at Blom. She nodded anxiously.

‘Thanks again,’ Berger said. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘And why am I here?’ Syl asked, clearly concerned.

‘I presume Deer has explained the situation to you?’

‘For God’s sake, there’s an alert out for you as of today, Sambo,’ Syl spluttered. ‘The fact that I’m talking to you without arresting you makes me an accomplice.’

‘But you’re here anyway,’ Berger said.

‘I understand that it was you, Sylvia, who managed to find my name,’ Blom said.

‘Which we swore a solemn oath not to tell anyone,’ Syl said, flashing a cutting glance at Berger.

‘Anomalies,’ Berger said. ‘When you found the Security Service list during that unofficial search you mentioned anomalies. You found more than the list …?’

‘And then I closed my eyes,’ Syl said.

‘I want you to open them again,’ Berger said. ‘What sort of anomalies?’

Syl frowned and ran her hand through her thin, mousy hair. ‘There were signs that security had been intentionally weakened for an hour or so around the turn of the year. It looks like secret documents weren’t just accessed.’

‘But …?’

‘I don’t know,’ Syl said, shrugging. ‘Erased, maybe.’

‘So there were signs that things had been erased from the Security Service’s top-secret archive?’ Blom exclaimed.

‘Signs,’ Syl said. ‘Nothing more.’

‘Can you take a closer look?’ Berger asked.

‘We’ve already agreed a couple of times that this is all over now,’ Syl said. ‘And you were still a police officer then.’