Watching You(90)

Berger laughed. ‘Can you take a closer look?’ he repeated.

‘If you insist,’ Syl said sullenly.

‘Thanks,’ Berger said. ‘Well, we won’t detain you any longer.’

Deer and Syl stood up. Syl began to walk away, but Deer waited a moment longer, looking at Berger. Then she shook her head, turned and walked off beneath her umbrella. Soon they had both disappeared into the rain, as though swallowed up for good.

Molly Blom said: ‘I know their rota.’

‘What?’ Berger said, his eyes focused on the distant past.

‘The technical guys’ rota. I know it. I know where one of them comes out, and roughly when. We need to find out what they’ve managed to extract from our looped footage. We said things there that could wreck our whole investigation.’

‘So you’re thinking of adding “violence against a public servant” to our already impressive list of achievements?’

‘Anders Karlberg is a friend,’ Blom said. ‘I think we can talk to him. Without resorting to violence.’

‘A friend?’

‘OK,’ Molly Blom said, shrugging. ‘A bit more than a friend.’





35




Thursday 29 October, 17.45

They tapped in the code and entered the stairwell on Bergsgatan, walked past the lift that led down to hell, and stepped out into the courtyard where Blom’s Mercedes Vito was actually parked once more. Now under new ownership, she presumed. She pressed against the wall to her left to evade the security cameras and crept over to a brand-new Tesla. Berger crouched down beside her.

‘A Tesla. Wow,’ he whispered.

‘Anders really likes the latest technology,’ she whispered.

‘In bed as well?’

‘Well, he’s not in the same league as your Madame X, of course.’

Then they were mercifully silent for half an hour. The Security Service really had delved into his personal life. Berger couldn’t even be bothered to feel embarrassed.

They stayed crouched in the miserable courtyard until their joints seized up and their muscles started to cramp. Two people appeared and drove off in their own cars. Three.

When time seemed to have been rained into submission and washed away they heard a fourth set of footsteps. Blom looked at Berger’s watch and nodded. The Tesla’s doors clicked open. When the driver was behind the wheel, they jumped in, Blom in the passenger seat, Berger in the back.

‘Fucking hell!’ the slightly greying driver yelled after hitting his head on the roof of the car.

‘Why wasn’t an alert issued sooner, Anders?’ Blom asked.

‘Molly, for God’s sake,’ Anders Karlberg said, casting a quick glance over his shoulder at Berger. ‘Try to remember that I’m old enough to have a heart attack.’

‘I know,’ Blom said. ‘But I’m not old enough to be fired on less than clear grounds. What happened?’

‘Shit,’ Karlberg groaned quietly, and rubbed his bald patch. ‘And to top it all off you drag your partner in crime into my Tesla, too.’

‘I promise not to make a mess,’ Berger said, looking at the mud he’d inadvertently deposited on the seat.

‘You know me, Anders,’ Molly Blom said. ‘You know I’m not a criminal. Tell me.’

‘Oh, I know you, alright. You’re a tough woman.’

‘Come on, Anders.’

‘Something disrupted the recording equipment,’ Karlberg said. ‘It took a while before we realised we were dealing with a loop. A transmitter inserted a piece of code and created a loop that repeated every twenty seconds. To keep it simple let’s call it a virus. But the loop failed for a few seconds. We didn’t understand why that only happened once, even though the loop repeated more than thirty times. It turned out that it had been done with an impressively well concealed piece of code. We only managed to crack it at lunchtime today.’

‘And why did that trigger a nationwide alert?’

‘Because we realised that the glitch was intentional. A little miracle of coding. August Steen reckoned you’d done that on purpose. So that you’d get found out. Which got him wondering why. He needs to bring you in, Molly. You’ve got to explain what you’re up to.’

‘Hang on,’ Blom said. ‘The breach in the loop was intentional?’

‘Yes,’ Anders Karlberg said. ‘Almost like a microscopic alarm clock.’

Sam Berger crunched the gears as he put the clapped-out Mazda into first, accelerated along Norr M?larstrand and said: ‘Wiborg Supplies Ltd?’

‘Yes,’ Blom said, shaking her head. ‘I should have guessed. Everything they do is usually so perfect.’

‘And the guy who made the gizmo at Wiborg is called Olle? So what do you know about this Olle?’

‘Nothing, really,’ Blom said. ‘Olle Nilsson. He’s worked at Wiborg Supplies for a while now. Smart, doesn’t say much, extremely professional. But I don’t actually know anything about him.’

‘But you still commissioned him to do an unofficial job?’

‘These guys are used to getting all kinds of jobs, more or less undercover, and they’re prepared to accept payment in all sort of odd ways. Technical geniuses, all too aware of the shadowy world they’re working in.’