Watching You(95)

He went inside. Blom was standing by the open whiteboard, looking at the pictures of William Larsson’s seven victims. Not for the first time.

‘I almost had it,’ Blom said, shaking her head. ‘There’s something here.’

‘And you’re keeping an eye on those?’ Berger said, nodding towards the two open laptops as he walked to the other end of the whiteboard. Views from their security cameras, including a number of new ones, filled the screens.

‘Are you?’ Blom said.

‘Not while I was outside,’ Berger said, then pointed at a newly pinned-up photograph on the board. It sat between the fifteen-year-old William Larsson and the two photofit pictures of Erik Johansson. ‘The photograph from Olle Nilsson’s driving licence. It’s the only one I’ve managed to find. Does he look like your Olle from Wiborg Supplies Ltd?’

Blom nodded. ‘And alarmingly similar to the photofits from ?stermalm and M?rsta.’

Berger nodded in turn and pointed at the severely disfigured fifteen-year-old.

‘Any similarity here?’

Blom shook her head.

‘Maybe there’s something about the eyes, though,’ she said after a while.

‘Maybe,’ Berger said, trying to merge the two images on his retina. ‘He appears to own the B?lsta house himself, under his Wiborg name, Olle Nilsson. It was purchased four months before he rented the house in M?rsta. It all seems to have been planned carefully in advance; he would be able to move the girls between the houses at short notice, in a van on long lease from Statoil in G?vle.’

‘And in order to get a job at Wiborg Supplies,’ Blom said, ‘he had to be a highly qualified technician, but also had to pass the Security Service’s rigorous background checks. I still think that’s very odd. There aren’t many things harder than infiltrating the Security Service. And I say that as someone very experienced at infiltration.’

‘The interest in technology has been there since the clocks,’ Berger said. ‘Olle Nilsson does seem to be a very skilfully constructed identity, at least as good as Nathalie Fredén. He’s registered as a civil engineer with qualifications from Chalmers in Gothenburg, and has a very convincing CV that no one would ever think to question. There’s nothing to suggest that he’s ever travelled outside the EU. And of course no indication of when he took on the role of Olle Nilsson.’

‘And no hint as to when William Larsson came back to Sweden,’ Blom said. ‘I’d still guess that he had plastic surgery in the Arab world, maybe Lebanon, maybe Saudi Arabia – my original guess – and that his dad, Nils Gundersen, managed to integrate him into society and made sure he got an excellent technical education.’

‘Not only that,’ Berger said. ‘I think everything suggests that William followed in his father’s footsteps. I think he joined the military, became a mercenary, maybe even an undercover agent of some kind.’

Blom nodded. ‘Was that why he came to Sweden? But if so, who was he working for?’

‘Either he returned to Sweden because the voices inside his head were getting too loud. Or the voices got too loud once he was already here – on other business,’ said Berger. ‘Either way, he seems to have had some kind of breakdown. I mean, he’s a full-blown lunatic now.’

‘Scenario one: Gundersen not only provided William with impeccable false documents, but also stoked his desire for vengeance until the time was finally right. Scenario two: William was here on a mission, but being in the country where he grew up made the past haunt him until he flipped.’

‘We’ll just have to ask him,’ Berger said with a crooked smile.

‘But how did he get into Wiborg?’ Blom repeated.

‘The important thing right now is that there’s a third house,’ Berger said. ‘And we need to find it. Tonight.’

They looked at each other. There was a heavy, sombre seriousness in their eyes. Then Blom’s blue eyes brightened. Berger saw something suddenly click.

Molly Blom ran back to the photographs of William’s seven victims.

‘It’s us,’ she said breathlessly.

‘What?’ Berger said.

‘You mentioned the snowball,’ Blom went on.

‘Snowball?’ Berger said. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You and William were sitting on the bench in the schoolyard. We thought you were trying chewing tobacco for the first time. Linda threw the snowball that knocked it out of your hand. But it wasn’t a tub of chewing tobacco, it was a watch.’

‘A pocket watch, an Elgin,’ Berger nodded, and disappeared into the past. ‘That was the first time William showed me one of his watches. The cogs ended up scattered across the snow, swallowed up by it.’

‘And we ran away, giggling,’ Blom said. ‘There were seven of us. Apart from Linda and me, there were Layla, Maria, Alma, Salma and Eva. Linda, Maria, Alma and I were born in Sweden. Layla and Salma were immigrants, both from the Middle East. And Eva was adopted from Korea.’

‘Wow,’ Berger said. ‘You mean …?’

‘I think he’s recreated our gang, yes. He’s been collecting us. Maria and Alma were fairly anonymous Swedish brunettes, like Julia Almstr?m and Emma Brandt. Linda was darker, more unruly, had piercings, like Jonna Eriksson. Layla was from Iraq, like Aisha Pachachi, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Salma was Kurdish, like Nefel Berwari. And Eva was Asian, like Sunisa Phetwiset. Leaving me, Molly.’