Watching You(93)

What struck Berger at the edge of the floodlights’ glare, once the voice of reason made itself heard inside him again, was that the clock must have been activated at exactly the right moment for them to fail. William must have estimated how long it would take them to fight their way across the marsh. He must have seen them arrive in the clearing and been present in order to activate the clock.

Been present.

William could have shot them at any time when they were out in the marsh. They had been live targets for several minutes. He had refrained; he had other plans for them.

And those plans were probably waiting for them inside the house.

Blom pulled out her torch and nodded towards Berger. He got out his own and nodded back. He could see in her eyes that she was thinking the same thing.

They had to go in. There was no going back.

They made their way onto the porch, crouched beside the door, staying out of range of any booby trap. It was unlocked. Blom pushed it open.

No knives flew past in the artificial light, no infernal mechanism was lying in wait in the increased darkness across the threshold. They switched on their torches.

The hall wasn’t quite like the one in M?rsta; the houses weren’t clones after all. A kitchen straight ahead, a flight of steps leading to the cellar on the left, a staircase leading up to the right, nothing else. They had to choose.

Berger took up position by the nearest door, with a view of both the kitchen and the hall, while Blom slipped into the kitchen. Berger wasn’t at all happy when she disappeared round a corner for a moment, but she soon returned, shaking her head.

Back into the hall. Only now did they start to register the smells. They stood for a couple of moments trying to identify them. At first it seemed rancid, with traces of excrement and urine. Were there traces of death?

How many rotten corpses would they encounter in this house from hell?

No matter how much they sniffed they couldn’t detect the smell of death. The far too familiar, vile, cloying stench of rotting flesh was notable by its absence.

Not that that meant anything. There could be death there anyway, hidden death, neutralised death, sterilised death. Everything in the house suggested death.

Blom paused and pointed towards the cellar stairs.

Grab the bull by the horns.

Darkness rose up from below like a solid entity. They shone their torches at the top step, but further down the stone steps turned a corner and disappeared out of sight. One of them was going to have to go first.

Berger released the safety catch of his Glock and took the lead. Blom covered him as well as she could on the cramped staircase. Particles of dust hung lazily in the beams from their torches, untouched by the misery around them. There was no sound, but the smell was getting stronger, more and more rancid, more and more foul.

Piss and shit.

Berger rounded the corner of the stairs. There was a closed door. They moved down towards it. Berger took hold of the handle, simultaneously noting how unnatural his breathing sounded. Rattling, like a dying man’s. Then he pressed the handle. The door slid open.

They found themselves in a very small room containing a further two, noticeably smaller, doors. Blom could stand up in the room, but not Berger. On the floor was a bare mattress and a crumpled blanket. In one corner was a bucket with a lid on it. As they moved closer, the stench of faeces and urine grew stronger.

Piss and shit.

They stopped and took stock. It was a prison cell. There was no doubt that Ellen Savinger had also been held there. In the filthiest hellhole.

Berger saw Blom take a deep breath as she approached one of the two doors at the far end of the room. She glanced at Berger, then opened it. Berger leaned forward, covering her as she stepped inside. Blom’s torch lit up the next room.

It looked very similar: a worn mattress with a blanket, a covered bucket, no bulb in the ceiling, but another two low doors at the other end of the small room.

Berger saw the surprise on Blom’s face, and realised that he probably wore the same expression. It was all very odd.

Again, they picked one of the doors and found themselves in yet another tiny prison cell. Also empty.

It was becoming increasingly apparent that they had arrived too late. Neither William Larsson nor Ellen Savinger was there. William had slipped from their grasp again.

It took them a while to get their bearings in the cellar. They kept losing track of where they were, and went back to where they’d started. New doors kept appearing. They consciously left every door open when they looked behind it.

In the end all the doors were open. They wandered through the whole of the peculiar arrangement of cells. In the end they couldn’t stay silent any longer.

Berger said: ‘What the fuck is this? Did he keep moving her around? Seven tiny little cells, one for each day of the week?’

Blom merely shook her head. Then she headed towards what was presumably the way out. After a couple of tries they were back at the stairs again. Blom crouched down and switched her torch to its strongest setting. The bright beam of light made its way through the nearest cell, and on through the doors beyond, as far as it could reach.

Berger thought the word just as Blom said it. ‘It’s a labyrinth.’

‘Just like M?rsta,’ Berger said hoarsely. ‘There were cells there too. Seven fucking cells.’

‘Not the days of the week,’ Blom said, the glow of realisation shining in her wide eyes. ‘Not seven as in the days of the week, but seven as in the number of kidnapped girls.’