Watching You(96)

‘Bloody hell,’ Berger said. ‘The only blonde in the gang.’

‘Yes,’ Blom said flatly. ‘Ellen Savinger is me, Molly Blom.’

‘The crowning glory,’ Berger said. ‘The icing on the cake.’

They said nothing for a while, each of them glancing occasionally at the laptops.

Then Berger said: ‘The watches were hallowed ground. That was the first time anyone had attacked what he loved most. It engraved itself deeply on his consciousness. Then most of these girls also witnessed his humiliation on the football pitch. But not you, though, Molly.’

‘I had already left my mark,’ Molly said. ‘He’d had me strapped to his clock. There was no way he was going to forget about me.’

‘Nor me,’ Berger said. ‘Least of all me. The traitor.’

‘William Larsson is recreating his past,’ Blom said. ‘He’s been saving all the girls for this moment, keeping them drugged until …’

‘Until he gets the chance to destroy me,’ Berger said, closing his eyes. ‘Then he’ll kill all seven girls in one go.’

‘In other words he mustn’t get the chance to destroy you,’ Blom said.

They looked at each other again. Their eyes drilling deeper than ever before. Then they walked back to their computers again, as they had so many times that night.

Time took on a different shape. Everything became sluggish, slower. Even movement felt different. They weren’t getting anywhere.

After a while they looked at each other again, this time with a different gaze. Blom clicked quickly at her computer and sighed. ‘No, this isn’t doing any good. I’m going to get a couple of hours’ sleep.’

Berger nodded. ‘I’m just going to get a bit of fresh air. Then I’ll take first watch.’

Sam saw Molly go over to the sleeping bag on her side of the work benches. He waited for a moment, then adjusted a couple of pictures and met Ellen Savinger’s gaze from the whiteboard. Her reserved smile hinting at a future of unlimited possibilities.

Like Molly Blom’s had once done.

Then he walked away. He opened the door to the jetty and stepped out under the cover of the roof. It was pitch-black. The rain was noisily lashing the roof and churning what little Berger could see of the water’s surface.

All apart from one small patch. There the surface looked completely undisturbed. He walked closer to take a look.

It wasn’t the surface of the water. It was a boat.

It was a rowing boat.

Berger’s hand flew up inside his jacket instinctively. His bleeding knuckles hit his shoulder holster. It was empty.

He turned and cast a quick glance through the little window in the door. His pistol was on the nearest table.

He threw the door open and rushed in. In the semi-darkness of the boathouse he saw a hand reaching for his Glock. And before he could come to a stop he found himself staring into the barrel of his own pistol.

It was odd seeing Olle Nilsson’s face in real life.

It was William Larsson’s. And yet it wasn’t.

As if from a great distance Sam saw William turn and aim the pistol at the sleeping bag. The outline of Molly’s sleeping body stood out beneath the padding, her blonde hair sticking up from the opening.

And William Larsson fired. Sam thought he saw the body jolt inside the sleeping bag. Then it didn’t move again.

William shot Molly three more times. Sam threw himself at him. The shots echoed around the boathouse, deafening Sam’s ears so much that he couldn’t hear his own gut-wrenching roar.

Nor did he feel the blow that rendered him unconscious.





38




Friday 30 October, 02.14

Before there is a self, there is dizziness. Nothing but dizziness. A spinning that precedes everything else. And it is everything, for a long time.

Then sweating. Lots of sweating. It’s not warm sweat, it’s icy cold. Trickling somewhere. There’s no space, no body; there’s no pain, no feeling, no self. There’s dizziness. There’s sweating. Nothing else.

And the sweating is colder than death.

There’s terror before there is a self. It’s a terror that is born from nothing, and grows stronger in pumping waves. It’s a primal, dark terror, without cause, without direction, and it swallows everything, consumes everything in its path.

It the end it settles in. The terror expands a brain, presses it hard against a skull. There’s confinement, the confinement of the expanding brain in its minimal abode. There’s a pain that has nothing to do with a body. There’s an explosion of sensory impressions that eventually become a self. A self that is merely an arrowhead of pain.

There’s constriction. So there must be a body. A shackled body. There are legs that can’t move in any direction. There are arms that are trapped. There are arms that are sticking straight out from the body, trapped.

Then there is vision. There is a room, a dimly lit interior. There is blonde hair in a shot-up sleeping bag.

And there is a scream, a roar, a bellow.

There is a hell, and it is here, and it is now.

And the self suddenly knows that its name is Sam. But no more than that. Everything else is pain.

There are sounds. Echoing sounds, muffled sounds, metallic sounds. A dragging sound behind his back, a scraping sound, a beating sound. The sound of metal on metal. Things being constructed, arranged. But no human presence yet, no living presence.