[ebooktalk] two books

• From: "David Russell" <david.russell8@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
• To: <ebooktalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 18:11:28 +0100

Hi two more attached.


David

Published by Arrow Books in 2013

2468 10 9753 1

Copyright © Annie Hauxwell 2012

Annie Hauxwell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the 
publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is 
published
and without a similar condition, including this condition,
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by William Heinemann

Arrow Books
The Random House Group Limited
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www.randomhouse.co.uk


Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
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The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099571421

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Text design by Laura Thomas © Penguin Group (Australia)
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Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY
For my sister
The great white shark never sleeps. It must keep moving
or sink to the bottom and drown. It has a number of
adaptations that make it an efficient killer and the first
bite is frequently a death blow.

Wikipedia






What hath night to do with sleep?

John Milton
The First Day
1

Catherine Berlin gazed down at the blue flesh swaying in the grey
water, the outline of the woman's remains softened by a bone
chilling February mist. The backwash from a water taxi on the river
rippled into the lock. Berlin felt her own body rock gently with the
swell that roiled the corpse, exposing a deep, serrated gash at the
throat, as if someone had taken a bite. With faint bewilderment,
she recognised a quickening of her heart. So this is what it took to
move her. Someone would pay.

The case conference with the Murder and Serious Crime Squad was
perfunctory. The men at the table regarded Berlin with indifference.
She was just a civilian investigator with a regulatory agency.
At fifty-five her lean frame was tending to look wasted. Her hair,
once blonde, was now a dirty melange of grey, streaked with tarnished
gold.
The squad boss, Detective Chief Inspector Thompson, was
about her age and seemed long past throwing his not inconsiderable
weight around. He put down his bacon roll, slipped on his
glasses and read from a notebook: '"A bite or a tear. A wound from
some kind of serrated edge or teeth, anyway, which perforated the
neck, almost severing the head." Were waiting on forensics. In the
meantime, Ms Berlin, are you able to provide us with any more
intelligence about this source of yours?'
He didn't look at her as he spoke, but his tone was mild and
she sensed his apparent indifference towards her arose from professional
disinterest rather than arrogance.
Berlin went through it again as the others shuffled their papers.
'She called the hotline and identified Archie Doyle as an illegal
moneylender. Our first meeting was at Starbucks about four
months ago. The date's in the file. She was well spoken, plausible,



2
but nervous. I needed to win her confidence. We arranged another
meeting. In the meantime further inquiries were made, approval
was obtained for surveillance, and observation commenced.'
A cocky young officer spoke up. Berlin had seen him before, but
couldn't recall where. She knew he recognised her too, but simply
as a soft target. He wasn't going to waste the opportunity.
'So was she a concerned citizen, a disgruntled girlfriend or a victim?
I mean, as I understand it, if the moneylender hasn't got a
licence and is arrested, the debt is wiped, yeah? Big incentive.'
"That's correct,' said Berlin. She held his gaze, barely able to summon
the energy to play this game. She remembered his name was
Flint. The little weasel was a detective constable.
'So which was she? Citizen, squeeze or vie?' asked Flint.
'She didn't say.'
'No name, no address,' said Flint.
'She wanted to use an alias. Juliet Bravo.'
Flint looked blank. Clearly it didn't ring a bell.
'On the telly. Before your time,' murmured Thompson.
Flint's nod was curt. He was on a roll now. 'You had a mobile
number for her, and that was it? I take it she was registered as a
CHIS. You know what that is, don't you? A Covert Human Intelligence
Source.' He said it very slowly.
'No,' said Berlin.
'No, you don't know, or no, she wasn't registered?' asked Flint.
Berlin caught Flint's quick scan of his colleagues, to make sure they
were picking up on his clever sarcasm.
'She wasn't registered,' she said.
Flint shook his head and threw down his pen, a pantomime of
incredulity. Berlin cleared her throat.
'If I may explain, Detective Constable --'
'Acting Detective Sergeant,' snapped Flint.
Berlin decided not to bother. 'Look, I was waiting for her at the


3
lock at the Limehouse Basin this morning. It was very cold, so I kept
moving.'
'It was a bloody early meeting,' remarked one of the officers.
'A late night,' said Berlin.
'Party girl,' sneered Flint. Was he referring to her or the dead
woman?
'Insomniac,' said Berlin, similarly ambiguous. In fact insomnia
was a trait she had shared with Juliet Bravo.
She waited until Thompson nodded that she should continue.
'I walked around to the other side of the lock and something
caught my eye. When I took a closer look I could see it was a body.
At first I didn't even realise it was her,' she said.
Thompson sat back in his chair and Flint appeared to take this as
a signal he could have free rein.
'Which of you wanted to meet at the lock?'
'She did. I--'
'Preferred Starbucks. Yes, we know. Who else knew about this
meeting?'
Berlin let his question hang out there. Like she would be, soon
enough. Taken in an open cart from Newgate to Tyburn, hung for
public amusement, cut down while still alive, then torn limb from
limb. Quartered. Her daydreams echoed her nocturnal wanderings.
Sometimes she couldn't distinguish.
'Why did you go alone?' demanded Flint.
She didn't answer.
'Surely you people have standard operating procedures which
you ignored by meeting her alone. Am I correct?' he tried again.
It was purely rhetorical. She remained silent.
He delivered the final blow. 'Where is this shark Doyle now?'
He knew, but he was going to make her say it. Now she remembered
where she'd seen him before. And who he'd been with.
'The surveillance was withdrawn,' she said.


4
The collective groan wasn't even muted.
Someone would pay.

Making people pay was Doyle's business. He had never believed in
light-touch regulation. An undisciplined system gave weak characters
the opportunity to get weaker. He'd learnt that from Frank.
Doyle was a short, solid man with squirrel cheeks and a pale
complexion. His eyes held a permanently hurt expression, as if he
couldn't believe you were doing this to him, again. He stared into
the lock and fiddled with his heavy gold rings. Rings on her fingers,
bells on her toes. Concrete boots. On the other side the police were
still working under floodlights. He stayed well back in the shadows.
Word had reached him that the grass had been fished out. He
thought it a pity they hadn't taken the opportunity to remove the
rest of the rubbish. The canal was a disgrace.
The tidal stain on the massive timbers of the lock bore testimony
to the effort required to tame the sullen river and render it fit for
trade. Doyle gazed into the dark eddies and saw the silent plea in
the eyes of so many victims as they were consumed in the rush
of water. It was a hard city and an unforgiving current that ran
through it. He should know.
When Doyle was a kid, Frank would announce that he was going
to see a man about a dog. Sometimes he would take Doyle with
him. His mum didn't like it, but she daren't make a fuss once Frank
had his mind made up. At the age of eight Doyle had stood here
and watched Frank dangle a bloke between the huge lock gates,
limbs inches from the crushing pressure. He would never forget
the screams.
Doyle thought about the dead girl and sighed. No doubt she'd
been badly brought up. Spoilt. No values. Learning the hard way
hadn't done him any harm. He spat into the filthy water. The sky
was lightening and the police were switching off their floodlights


5
and packing up their stuff. He should make himself scarce. He
checked his watch. Time to go and see a man about a dog.





2

When Berlin had finished making her formal statement, Acting Detective
Sergeant Flint directed a constable to see her off the premises.
He stood behind the front counter with his mobile in his hand
and watched her go, then made a call.

From the steps of Limehouse Police Station Berlin turned left towards
Canary Wharf, where another inquisitor awaited her. Crossing
East India Dock Road, she took Westferry and kept walking under
the bridge into West India Quay.
Her route through Canary Wharf was monitored by 1750
CCTV cameras. So why didn't she feel safe? She couldn't shake the
feeling that the footsteps of her dead informant were dogging her
and any moment a cold, wet hand would grip her shoulder. Christ,
it must be shock, she thought. I'm in shock. I need a drink.
The wind shrieked as it swept the deserted squares and empty
walkways, a mercantile labyrinth encircling the soaring glass towers
of credit that had made it possible. Upmarket shops. Few customers
now broke the silence in the gleaming malls. The seductive hum
of muzak had been replaced by the sound of shutters coming down
on boutique businesses as the bankers fled to Geneva and a more
forgiving tax regime. Britain was bust.
Berlin swiped her ID through three layers of security and finally
reached the lair of the toothless tiger - the Consumer Affairs Branch
of the Financial Services Agency, a non-departmental public body


6
that sat, mostly on its hands, at the heart of the beast.
Her so-called colleagues surreptitiously monitored her progress
from the lift to Nestor's office. Delroy, the only one she could rely
on, didn't seem to be around. Nobody acknowledged her except
Senior Investigator in Charge of Operations Johnny Coulthard,
who peered over the top of his workstation and gave her a smug,
knowing grin. She responded with one undignified finger.
She didn't knock on Nestor's door, just walked straight in. He
didn't seem surprised to see her. Through the immense window
behind him Berlin could see the pale sun fracturing the surface of
the river. Tower Bridge engraved against the slate sky. What kind of
a man would choose to turn his back on that view? Only the slight,
tight-lipped, desiccated creature before her. Watery hazel eyes absent
of passion, mired in irony.
In her mind's eye she watched the portcullis of Traitor's Gate rise.
She knew what was coming.
'We enforce licence provisions. We enlist the assistance of the
police to execute warrants. We don't run one-man, or one-woman,
operations. We work as a team and follow process.' Nestor's voice
never rose above a murmur, which required his listener to lean in
and focus on him.
'We protect the market for corporate lenders. At the same interest
rates as the sharks. Or worse,' she said.
'Corporate lenders rarely break people's legs,' observed Nestor.
There was a pause and Berlin waited for the axe to fall. But to her
surprise Nestor softened his tone.
'You are assiduous, Berlin, I know that. But why persist in the
face of a direct order?'
She stuck to name, rank and serial number. 'I logged her intelligence,
then arranged surveillance on the target, which, as you are aware,
was aborted due to procedural difficulties. I later tried to reschedule,
but the resources weren't forthcoming. If you take my meaning.'


7
For the first time she saw colour suffuse Nestor's cheeks.
"The resources weren't forthcoming because the file was closed,'
he hissed.
That wasn't the reason, but there was no point in arguing the
finer points.
'There's no basis for the assumption that her death is associated
with our inquiries,' she said without conviction.
' Your inquiries,' retorted Nestor. He raised his hand as if to slap
it down on the desk. But didn't. 'For Christ's sake, Berlin, this loan
shark, Doyle, could have had enforcers watching her.'
'She hadn't borrowed from him. She wasn't a victim.'
Nestor picked up on it immediately and she realised she hadn't
entered this observation in the log. 'Why are you so sure?'
'She told me she owed him nothing.'
Berlin remembered the way Juliet Bravo had made the remark.
She hadn't been talking about money.
'What else did you fail to log?' Nestor persisted.
'My report covers everything,' she said.
His knuckles whitened. 'You're stood down with pay, pending
an inquiry. It will be intrusive. If you take my meaning. And Berlin,
let's hope all this doesn't come back to bite you.' A small smacking
sound escaped Nestor's thin lips. 'Now get out.'

Not a mile from Canary Wharf there was a street where there weren't
any cameras because there wasn't anything to protect - except the
people who lived there, who weren't worth much.
A couple of lads were having a laugh. One of them posted a
dog's tail through the letterbox of number fifty-one, then together
they sauntered back to the black Merc that Doyle preferred for
conspicuous work. Sometimes the sight of the Merc cruising down
the street was enough. But on this occasion Doyle had directed the
lads to resort to sterner measures. He fancied himself quite creative


8
in these matters; the dog had been his idea. He sat in the back
seat now and waited for the inevitable scream. When it came, he
grunted with satisfaction. The lads high-fived each other as they
drove off. Job well done.

Inside number fifty-one, Sheila Harrington staggered back against
the wall and slid to the floor, sobbing, unable to touch the bloody
stump on the doormat. The kids had had that dog since they were
little. What was she going to tell them? Terrified cries from the
garden told her she wouldn't have to explain. Doyle and the lads
had driven around the back and thrown the rest of the dog over
the fence.





3

When Berlin left Nestor's office she strode to the lifts, pressed the
call button, took the lift to the next floor down, got out and walked
back up the stairs.
She ducked into the ladies and waited until she was confident
that Coulthard would have made his customary announcement -'Scoff1.' - and like 
a flock of sheep the lads would be following him down to the canteen. Nestor 
always ate his mid-morning croissant
in his office.
The request to revoke her computer access would have gone to
the harried IT people, but the queue at the so-called Help Desk
was always long. It was a fair bet that it would take them at least a
few hours to get around to it. She never thought she'd be grateful
for that delay.
Keeping low behind the workstation partitions, Berlin made her
way across the office to her desk, logged on to her computer and
slotted a memory stick into the USB port. Protocol strictly prohibited
their use and she knew it would leave a trace on the system. But
no one would be looking.
Nestor had closed the Doyle file but he hadn't deleted it. He was
fanatical about logging every scrap of work they did, even when
it came to nothing. The figures mounted up for the all-important
Annual Report.
Keeping an ear out for the sound of the lift approaching, Berlin
quickly downloaded all the work she'd done on the man who
was now the obvious suspect for Juliet Bravo's murder: Doyle. She
watched the documents sprout wings and fly to her memory stick.
It was all there: scanned handwritten notes, data dumps, requests
for information. The most remarkable thing about Doyle was that
he didn't exist.
When she'd caught the call to the Stop Sharks hotline the informant
who would become Juliet Bravo reported that Archie Doyle,
aka 'Oily Doyley, DOB 21 August 1954, was a loan shark who
lived at number fourteen in a block of flats overlooking Weaver's
Fields, off Bethnal Green Road. Which made him and Berlin practically
neighbours. The informant also said he drank at The Silent
Woman in Poplar. As with most first-time callers she had refused to
identify herself, but had given a mobile number.
Impatient, Berlin watched the audit trail of her work flash past:
the log of that first call, the date-stamped file she had opened in the
Agency system and the initiation of routine online inquiries.
The Agency's database had no record of a moneylending licence
being issued to an Archibald Doyle. If he was lending money in that
name, he was doing it illegally. She had checked the General Register
Office for Births, Marriages and Deaths, but came up empty
handed. She had interrogated Experian for a credit history and run
a search on the electoral roll, in the unlikely event that Doyle was


committed to participatory democracy. She'd scrutinised Companies
House records and all the other public domain databases. In
accordance with the National Intelligence Model protocol, she had
filled in the forms to flag other law enforcement databases. Then
she had requested checks from the DVLC, CRIMINT, the local
authority, and the Inland Revenue. No driver's licence, no criminal
history, no council tax.
The Inland Revenue held the most accurate records, of course,
but the tax man was always the slowest to respond. She would have
had to wait three months or more for a result as hers was a low
profile, quasi law enforcement agency. Loan sharks took a back seat
to terrorists, although these days the distinction between them was
often lost once you moved further up the food chain. Drug money
had to be 'washed' before it could be used to finance arms deals.
Channelling it into loans to small businesses meant the cash that
came back appeared legitimate.
But the file had been closed and the request to the Revenue had
been withdrawn. It made very little difference to the outcome. All
her other searches had drawn a blank. By normal standards Doyle
was the invisible man, at least under that name.
Just as the last document was winging its way to her memory
stick, she heard the door of the stairwell close and footsteps approaching.
She snatched the stick out of the port and slipped it in
her pocket.
Coulthard strode across the office towards her.
'What are you up to, madam?' he said.
He always wore the same sickly smirk. She quickly stood up,
hoping he wouldn't walk around and see the message on the computer
screen accusing her of interrupting its copying operation.
'Just clearing my desk of personal items,' she said. Both of them
knew her workstation was an impersonal wasteland.
She grabbed the single postcard stuck on the partition: a picture


of Alcatraz inscribed 'Wish You Were Here'. She brandished it at
Coulthard as she stalked past.





4

Sheila Harrington opened her front door only after checking
through the spy-hole. It was that nice Daryl, bringing the kids back.
Her ten-year-old, Terry, pushed past her and bolted down the hall
in the direction of the PlayStation.
Daryl Bonnington gave her a soft smile and raised an eyebrow.
'Kids!'
He was only a kid himself, thought Sheila. Simon, her eldest,
who kept reminding her he was nearly fourteen, hovered nearby.
He looked up to Daryl. Which was not a bad thing, she thought.
He needed a role model.
'Thanks ever so much for taking the boys while I cleaned up.
I couldn't think of anyone else.'
'Glad to help out,' he said.
The sounds of Grand Theft Auto drifted to them. She sighed
and it all came out in a rush. She couldn't help herself. 'It was that
bloody thing, the PlayStation, that caused all this aggravation,' she
said. 'You know what they're like, they keep on, all the other kids
have got one and I thought it was only a couple of hundred quid,
I'd be able to clear it quickly. But it never seemed to end, ten quid a
week and that was the Christmas before last and they say I still owe
them. But that can't be right, can it?'
Bonnington looked genuinely sympathetic.
"They... the dog...' She couldn't bring herself to say it.
'Yeah, I know. Simon told me,' said Bonnington and touched her


shoulder lightly, a gesture of solidarity. 'Kids get over things faster
if they talk them through.'
'Yeah, I suppose said Sheila, thinking that around here talking
was the cure that killed. 'I just don't know what to do. I'm at my
wits' end,' she continued, close to tears.
Bonnington was trained to manage desperation. 'Let's go in. I'll
make you a cup of tea.'

Bonnington called goodbye to Simon and Terry as he passed the
living-room door. Sheila followed him down the hall.
'I'll be back for the boys later then,' he said.
She hesitated for a moment. You heard so much about perverts
these days. But then she told herself, don't be ridiculous. She was
losing her faith in people because of recent events, that was all.
Bonnington checked his watch.
'This meeting is very important. The war on drugs.'
Sheila could see he wasn't joking.
'So I'll see you at about five.' He touched her arm. 'Remember
what I said. Take some time for yourself, okay, Sheila?'
'Yeah, okay,' she said. 'Thanks, Daryl. See you later.'
Sheila watched him go. Her husband was doing ten years. Daryl
said the boys would benefit from early intervention. As if they
could inherit drug dealing from their father. 'Everything's connected,
Sheila,' he'd said. He was well meaning, but a bit peculiar
sometimes, she decided.
She closed the door and put the chain on.
There was the sound of screeching brakes and a sickening thud.
Sheila went cold, then realised it was just the game.







5

George Lazenby slammed the surgery door behind him and set
off across Victoria Park for his daily constitutional, which took
him straight to The Approach tavern. He had to prepare for his
meeting with the local NHS Trust that afternoon. It was an appropriately
grim winter's day; even the ducks were shivering. It was
definitely port and lemon weather. A heart-starter. For medicinal
purposes only.

An hour later Lazenby caught Bonnington's look as they collided in
the doorway of the old town hall where the Trust met. No doubt
it was a reaction to the whiff of alcohol he caught on his breath.
Bonnington was unfailingly polite, but Lazenby couldn't stand being
patronised. He picked up on Bonnington's small, rueful sigh. It
made Lazenby cross and discomfited, acutely aware of the irony: he
was to debate the nature of addiction when he was half pissed.
'Up for it, are we, 007?' inquired Bonnington mildly.
Lazenby grunted in response. He did nothing to disguise his
distaste for the earnest outreach worker, a bloody God-botherer.
Bonnington's smooth skin, floppy blond fringe and bright blue
eyes might beguile some, but Lazenby found his smile cold and
unnatural.
He didn't like Bonnington's over-familiar use of his nickname,
007, either. He was aware the allusion was supposed to be witty.
His belly hung over his belt, his drooping moustache was tinged
brown with nicotine and his shirt frequently bore evidence of his
breakfast. He lacked charisma. Anyway, the other bloody George
Lazenby had only played the part once, in 1969. The nickname
had come from his patients, which told you something about their
vintage, and his. He didn't have a family practice.
The chairperson of the Trust, an academic with a PhD in the



semiotics of accident and emergency signs, indicated that Lazenby
and Bonnington should take their seats on either side of her. She
droned through the minutes from the last meeting and made her
introductory remarks. Lazenby's gaze drifted up to the public gallery.
There was the usual smattering of the homeless in search of
warmth, but his eye was caught by a tall woman in a battered
Burberry mac, staring into the middle distance. She struck him as
very sad.
Lazenby reviewed his notes. The long, inglorious history of opiates
in Britain was one of the good doctors interests. His specialist subject,
if he ever got to appear on Mastermind. Opium had been the
means of forcing the Chinese to trade, back in the days when they
were still smart enough to tell the West to fuck off. The Raj grew
opium in India and exported it to China in exchange for another
great drug, preferred by the British: tea. When the Chinese had
objected to half their population succumbing to the pipe's dreamy
charms, the Brits went to war, gave them a good thrashing, then
went home and had a nice cup of fully imported oolong.
The Chair invited Bonnington to open the discussion. Game on.
'Madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen, members of the community.
Dr George Lazenby, FRCGP, is a dinosaur. In a nice way.'
A couple of members of the Trust smothered their titters. Bonnington
smiled at Lazenby, who tried to take the jibe in good part.
'He is one of no more than seventy medical practitioners in the
whole country licensed to prescribe diacetylmorphine for addiction.
And the Home Office informs me that there are only about
forty left who actually do so - stalwarts who refuse to prescribe the
universally favoured substitute, methadone. Dr Lazenby needs a
special licence to give heroin to registered addicts, and the agreement
of his local NHS Trust. That is the reason we are here today'
Lazenby pretended to listen. He'd held his licence for a bloody
long time and it wasn't easy for them to take it away. None were being


issued these days. He half-heard Bonnington droning on about
narco-terrorism. This was the mantra of the drug lobby these days,
that massive industry of law enforcement, clinics, rehab facilities,
academics and public sector policy wallahs whose livelihoods depended
on illegal drugs. The marriage of convenience between the
war on terror and the war on drugs.
Lazenby blew his nose loudly. The Chair glared at him. Lazenby
knew the Trust was in sympathy with Bonnington's views because
heroin cost more than methadone. It was always about money. But
007 regarded methadone as nasty stuff, and so did his patients,
who were well-adjusted working people taking maintenance doses
of pharmaceutical heroin. Their general health was better than his
bloody own, thought Lazenby, reaching for his cigarettes before
remembering where he was. He groped instead for an Extra Strong
Mint. He became aware that Bonningtons tone had gone up a
notch and tuned back in to what he was saying.
'Ladies and gentlemen, the continued sad decline of our community
is hastened by heroin. The trade in this substance generates
and supports crime locally and globally. Crime that threatens our
way of life. Should we be using our taxes to buy a drug that is synonymous
with immorality and dissipation? Or should we insist that
those afflicted participate in a regime that will help them overcome
their frailties and arrest the decline of our civilisation?' Bonningtons
delivery was measured, but urgent. His message was clear.
Bonnington sat down to a smattering of applause from Trust
members, which Lazenby thought was entirely inappropriate. The little bastard 
seemed so reasonable. The Chair nodded at him; it
was his turn. He stood up. So did the woman in the Burberry mac.
Then she pointed a gun at him.
Lazenby felt as if his heart was going to burst out of his chest.
Frozen to the spot, his gaze riveted on the small, snub barrel, he
sensed the tide of fear that swept through the members of the Trust


as, one by one, they turned their heads to the gallery.
'Murderer!' screamed the woman.
Lazenby lunged to one side as a sharp crack rang out. The sound
of terrified pigeon wings beating against the thick glass atrium
melded with the din of the Trust hitting the floor and the thundering
feet of the fleeing homeless. One pair of feet ran in the opposite
direction, taking the stairs of the gallery two at a time.
When Lazenby finally looked up he saw it was Bonnington, now
sprinting towards the woman. She turned to face him, the confusion
in her expression quickly replaced by fear. She held the gun
loose in her hand, her arm extended into space over the ornate
wooden balustrade. Bonnihgton launched himself at her.
Lazenby couldn't really see what happened next; it was so fast.
They seemed to struggle, Bonnington reaching out to grasp the
woman's extended arm and hold it rigid. They could have been
about to waltz.
Then the woman toppled over the balcony as if performing a cartwheel. As she 
ploughed headfirst into the oak conference table
her neck snapped.
The starting pistol slid from her hand.





6

It was early evening, but already black as midnight on the old tow
path that ran beside the canal. It was the quickest route to the other
side of Victoria Park, where Berlin had an appointment at six-thirty.
She'd barely missed one in twenty years, come hell or high water. It would be 
hell if she did.
She kept her eyes on the cracked path in front of her and tried


to ignore the sound of gentle lapping and the dark, floating shapes
that loomed at the edge of her vision. Eventually she emerged onto
a quiet street with a row of terraces. All had been smardy renovated.
With one exception.

Every window of the decrepit Georgian house she approached was
barred, but the faded green door was always on the latch. There
were no cameras above the cracked portico.
Berlin pushed open the door and, without hesitation, she crossed
the threshold of respectability and walked down a dim hall into an
even dimmer room.
She plucked a magazine from the table and took a seat. Times Man of the Year in 
1986 was Deng Xiaoping. Time stood still here.
A well-dressed citizen of her own vintage usually had the appointment
before hers. They had never spoken and had exchanged only
the gravest of nods in recognition of their bond. Living up to the
rooms purpose. Waiting. But today he wasn't there.
His absence added to her unease. It was as if the wheel on which
her universe turned had jumped a cog. Discovering a mutilated
corpse before breakfast will do that to you, she thought, as she
waited for the green light above the consulting-room lintel to come
on, indicating that the current patient was leaving by another door.
The last receptionist had fled years ago.
Fifteen minutes later the light still hadn't come on. Berlin was irritated.
It didn't take that long. The surgery was silent apart from the
dull rumble of the Central line emanating from deep beneath the
foundations, a little plaster dust raining from the cracked cornice
as each underground train sped through the darkness. Irritation
turned to anxiety.
Berlin knocked on the consulting-room door. 'Hello?'
She knocked again, louder, then turned the handle. The door
opened, but not far. Something was blocking it. Berlin put her



shoulder against it and shoved, peering through the gap. A body
was the obstacle. Lazenby. Her first thought was dead drunk. Then
heart attack.
But as she lunged at the door and the body shifted enough for
her to squeeze through the gap, the dark Axminster carpet rucked
up, revealing the sheets of old newspaper beneath it. They were a
sodden, wine-coloured mess. Vomit? Then she saw the small hole
in his chest. Lazenby wasn't dead drunk, he was just dead.
Berlin took a quick step back and the newspaper slid underfoot.
She put her hand out to steady herself and closed her eyes. The intense
human emotion that had been absorbed by the wall for nearly
forty years seemed to ooze into her palm. She snatched her hand
away and tried to focus. She remembered to breathe and gulped for
air. She had only one thought. Shit.
The door of the drug safe hung open. It was empty. She bent to
touch Lazenby, but didn't dare. She had known him for more than
twenty years, but he wasn't her friend. He was her salvation.
Panic enveloped her as she realised the implications of his death.
Her phone was in her hand, although she couldn't remember how
it got there. Instead of dialling 999 she put it back in her pocket
and tore a bunch of prescriptions off the pad on the desk. Habit
took her to the other door. She ran through the self-administration
room, back down the hall and out into the world. Its edges suddenly
seemed sharper.

Berlin and Mrs Ranasinghe, the local chemist, had grown world
weary together. Mrs Ranasinghe had stood her ground against
many threats, from vandals and armed robbers to the machinations
of corrupt councillors and their dodgy development schemes. She
had met all comers with a placid taciturnity. The shop was a veritable
fortress.
Sadly now she was to be brought to her knees by a bright, clean,


shiny, soulless Asda supermarket, which was to incorporate a bright,
clean, shiny, soulless pharmacy. Berlin couldn't see Asda providing
addicts with a dispensing service. Buy one get one free?
'Plasters?' asked Mrs Ranasinghe.
Berlin frowned, confused, then followed Mrs Ranasinghe's gaze
to her hand, which was smeared with blood from the surgery wall.
She had a sudden vision of her perfect hand print inscribed in the
spatter from Lazenby's aortic spurt. 'Oh no, thank you, it's fine,'
she said, and wiped her hand on the sleeve of her black overcoat. It
had seen worse.
Mrs Ranasinghe seemed unfazed until she glanced at the bunch
of prescriptions that Berlin thrust at her. Lazenby's signature was
on all of them. She managed Lazenby's diamorphine supply and
also provided the surgery with bulk sterile syringes and other necessary
paraphernalia. Mrs Ranasinghe knew the score.
"This is most unusual, Miss Berlin,' she said.
'Holidays, Mrs Ranasinghe,' came the quick reply.
Mrs Ranasinghe raised an eyebrow. A registered addict, travelling?
'Yours
or his?' Mrs R would know both options were improbable.
'I should call him,' she said.
A buzzer indicated another customer at the security door. Cold
sweat ran down Berlin's back. 'He's not there. The surgery's closed.
Please, Mrs Ranasinghe. It's an emergency.'
Mrs Ranasinghe shrugged. 'What the hell. I'm retiring anyway.'
She disappeared for a moment and returned with a brown paper
bag. Berlin reached for it, but before she handed it over Mrs Ranasinghe
cautioned her.
'Seven days,' she said.
'Seven days?' echoed Berlin.
Mrs Ranasinghe was solemn. 'I've given you enough medication
for one week, Miss Berlin.'


Berlin took the bag, nodded her thanks and went to the door.
She waited for a click, the signal that Mrs Ranasinghe had released
the security bolt.
'Miss Berlin?'
Berlin forced herself to remain calm and turn around.
'Yes?'
'Enjoy your trip.'





7

Doyle released the padlock, removed the chain and tugged at the
rusty iron gates. They grated on the cracked concrete as he dragged
them open, acting as an early warning system for the reclusive,
paranoid old man who dwelt beyond. The family had been East
End for generations and Doyle could never understand what drove
Frank out to his 'premises' in Chigwell all those years ago.
Nineteen eighty-six. A year best forgotten. One thing after
another. Nancy had buggered off without so much as a by-your
fucking-leave. She had taken her savings and left Doyle with their
eleven-year-old, Georgina. He and Nancy had been childhood
sweethearts and he'd worshipped the ground she walked on. Okay, they were de 
factos. But she'd never minded. None of them went
in for certification.
It was the year of Thatcher s bleeding Big Bang, which had made
k nigh on impossible to get a decent crew together. All the villains
with brains had gone into the City. Only the muscle was left. Frank
had said they had to diversify to make best use of it. Somehow he'd
come up with a bit of capital and started lending to cash-strapped
single mums. It built from there.


Nancy went and then Frank decamped to Chigwell. No support
from that quarter. Doyle was left with Gina, a right little madam,
who blamed him for her mum pissing off.
Eventually it all went pear-shaped. Gina walked out the day she
was sixteen, and not so much as a Christmas card since. He was left
on his tod in Bethnal Green to carry on the business. He loved it,
mind, the business. But found the nights a bit long.
Frank's premises consisted of a crumbling, featureless postwar
bungalow, a sprawling place of silent, square rooms and stained
Danish furniture. It was on a couple of acres, dotted with ramshackle
sheds, garages and outhouses. The land would be worth a
fortune now. No mortgage - Frank paid cash for everything. He'd
never borrowed money in his life.
Doyle had to close the gates behind him and secure the padlock
after he'd driven through or Frank went ballistic. The grating noise
irritated the shit out of Doyle. Just once he'd like to surprise the
old man. Sometimes he didn't bother to fasten the padlock, a small
act of defiance. Frank never went out; he would never know. The
supermarket delivered his tins of spam, tea bags and what have you
to the gates and Doyle paid the bill.
Towering weeds either side of the drive obscured the booby traps
and broken glass that Doyle knew littered the grounds. Anyone
would think Frank had the crown bloody jewels in there.
The old man opened the front door before Doyle got out of the
car. He turned back down the hall as Doyle stuttered a greeting.
'Hello, Frank. How goes it?'
'Shut it. The premises are freezing.'
Doyle resisted the temptation to tell him to turn on the fucking
central heating. It was pointless. Frank still lived in a fog of World
War Two austerity.
'And a bit of fucking respect. I might be eighty-odd but I'm still
your fucking father.'


'Yes, Pop.'
Frank drew the ledger out. He used to keep it in a kitchen drawer,
but lately he'd taken to tucking it in behind his belt. He clutched
it in his huge, trembling hand.
Doyle reflected that the old man was literally losing his grip. But
the sinews in his skinny arms were still taut as wire, the knuckles great
red ridges of bone, hard as iron. He was a foot taller than Doyle, his
eyes sunk so deep into black sockets their colour was obscured. Grey
hair curled from his ears and nostrils, adding to the gargoyle look.
Doyle shivered as Frank passed him the ledger. He sat down at
the kitchen table and Frank stood over him and watched, eagle
eyed, as he recorded the tally from memory. At least he didn't have
to go through this every sodding night, without fail, any more.
He'd put his foot down. Now it was just most nights.
When he'd finished the tally, Frank snatched it back and ran a
finger down the neat columns of names, addresses and numbers.
'Get the lads around to number fifty-one.'
'It's done.'
'And?'
'Don't worry, Fr--Pop - she'll make the payment.'
'So you say.'
Frank slipped the ledger back behind his belt and tapped it twice
for luck. He held out his hand and Doyle handed him a thick roll
of banknotes. Frank grunted and shoved it into one of his cardigan
pockets. He wore three.
Doyle relaxed. Frank had no idea he'd been growing the market,
so to speak, with an injection of capital from his new silent partner.
Frank would go mental if he found out, and that was never a pretty
sight. On the other hand, it didn't matter what he did, Frank would
never be happy. Doyle only ever wanted to please, but it was never
good enough. Now he would show his father what he could do.
Initiative. Enterprise.


Frank turned away without a word and left the kitchen, switching
off the light as he went. Doyle was still sitting at the table. That's
that, then, he thought. Another fucking day, another rucking dollar.
'Goodnight, Pop!' he called.
But the only response was a door slamming somewhere at the
other end of the house.





8

The Narrow ran not quite parallel to the river, a broken link between
the bright, soaring financial institutions that had swept aside the
old docks, and the Square Mile, as solid as its name suggested, all
squat stone and carved Britannias with lions at their feet. The goddess
of passion and war. Narrow is the way, and strait the gate.
Berlin walked into the past often, and always at night. The Narrow
delivered her into Wapping, and then into the City of London proper,
where a sharp right brought her to Newgate's blood-drenched
soil, compost to that sombre edifice of the criminal law, the new
Old Bailey.
She turned a corner and gasped. Someone was coming at her,
striding, enveloped in a long black coat, a pale face and haunted
eyes picked out in the headlights of a passing car. The figure receded
with the vehicle and Berlin laughed. Her own reflection in a
shop window had spooked her. She knew she was right to be afraid.
She was her own worst enemy.
After leaving Mrs Ranasinghe, she had legged it to her flat,
stowed six precious ampoules of diamorphine in the bread bin and
administered the contents of number seven. Heroin. It was her version
of a stiff drink at the end of the day, although she would never


claim her use was recreational. Her relationship with the drug was
more complex than that, and at the same time a simple matter of
addiction.
The prospect of losing her free, legal and pure supply had induced
blind panic and a callous disregard for Lazenby. She was a
monster. His body had lain in a sticky pool of gore while she stole
the prescriptions. Like a common junkie. No better than the junkie
who'd killed him.
She hadn't murdered Lazenby, but when it came to her informant,
it was a different matter. She wasn't sure what role she might
have played in Juliet Bravo's ugly, terrifying end, but she had no
doubt she was implicated.
Two bodies in one day. It was a nightmarish coincidence, and
whichever way you cut it, there was blood on her hands. Now she
had six days to find another doctor to prescribe her heroin. Six days
to find Juliet Bravo's murderer. She owed her that much.
Six days because beyond that she had no idea how she would
function if she found herself with no doctor, no connections and
no dope. What would the seventh day be like if it came to that? The
eighth or, God forbid, the ninth? She suspected she would be in
no state to catch a cold, let alone a killer. She hoped to Christ she
didn't have to find out.
Turning into Dorset Rise she found herself confronting the
sculpture of St George and the Dragon. The dragon appeared to
be winning.











9

The first bleak hint of what passed for dawn in mid-February
streaked the sky as Berlin returned from her nocturnal wandering.
She turned the key in the lock of her over-priced Bethnal Green
'studio' and wondered why she had finally joined the real estate
stampede. Did she just get sick of people telling her she was mad
to rent because it was 'dead money? Or was it a final, doomed bid
for respectability?
It had cost her dear. She'd bought at the top of the market, just
before the crash. Now she was sunk deep in negative equity. If they
sacked her, how long could she last? She thought about her one
hundred and ten per cent mortgage, the spare room at her mother's,
and her personal habits. Not a happy combination.
Closing the curtains she crawled under the duvet and switched
on the TV. Lazenby had made the local news. An anonymous caller
had alerted the police to foul play at the surgery. The doctor, a
well-known figure in the locality and among campaigners for the
decriminalisation of hard drugs, had conducted an 'unorthodox'
practice for more than four decades and had been investigated by
the General Medical Council for irregularities. A quantity of drugs
had been stolen. Dr Lazenby's patients came from all over London
and the South and police were anxious to contact anyone who had
attended the surgery yesterday.
Berlin knew the police would pay her a visit sooner or later. They
would go through Lazenby's records and conduct interviews with
all his regulars. But it would be routine. She hadn't taken the whole
prescription pad, just a few scripts; they'd have no way of knowing
they hadn't been issued by Lazenby. Her forging of his signature
would go undetected. She was confident Mrs Ranasinghe wouldn't
say anything. After all, she had done the wrong thing too.
Berlin switched off the TV. All she wanted to do was sleep, but



as soon as she closed her eyes the vision that greeted her was the blue flesh 
of her dead informant bobbing up and down in the lock.
She opened them again.
Nestor may have been fishing when he asked her what else she
had failed to record about Juliet Bravo, but he was right. They had
met on half a dozen occasions, none of which she had logged. Berlin
had recognised in the other woman an echo of her own angst.
There was at least twenty years between them, but age was irrelevant.
Nietzsche warned against looking into the abyss too long,
lest it look back. They had both looked, and seen in each other the
same response: a taut resolve to be unafraid.
Berlin had been loath to initiate the usual process, which would
have seen Juliet Bravo managed by an agency that took a one-size
fits-all approach to so-called covert human intelligence sources.
Informants were usually victims of one kind or another. This
woman didn't fit the profile of the financially excluded. She'd said
she was 'something in the City'. That could cover a multitude of
sins.
Berlin touched her throat, choked with the memory of her informant's
savage wound. Whatever she was and whatever the demons
that drove her to inform, now she was Berlin's demon. Draping the
duvet around herself, she got out of bed and sat down at the table
with a bottle of Talisker Single Malt.
Was there something in their early conversations that would give
her an edge, something that would compensate for her lack of access
to the official investigation? She could hear the boiler struggling
against the plummeting temperature. Wrapping the duvet around
her more tightly, she prayed the pipes wouldn't freeze and burst.
She would go back to the beginning.

When all the standard inquiries came up blank Berlin had called
Juliet Bravo and asked her why Doyle was absent from all official


records. Her reaction indicated a certain lack of faith in British
bureaucracy.
"There must be a stuff-up somewhere,' was all she'd said. Her
cynicism echoed Berlin's own.
'Is there anything else you know about him that could help
me? Before I can take further action I need something, reasonable
grounds, to take it forward.' She couldn't get an authority for surveillance
just on the basis of a phone call.
She'd waited for a response but none came. 'Hello? Are you still
there?' Berlin had asked.
'I'm here.'
Berlin gave her the company line in her best firm-but-fair voice.
It sometimes worked. 'You haven't even given me your surname.
We don't act on uncorroborated, anonymous tips. I'm sure you understand.'
The
sense of struggle at the other end of the line was palpable.
The more she tells me about Doyle, the more she gives away about
herself, Berlin thought. That's the real problem here. She tried a
different tack.
'Look, why don't we meet, somewhere public, somewhere you're
comfortable with, and just have a coffee? Call it a goodwill gesture.
Then we can move forward.'
To her utter surprise, the woman said yes.

The informant had described herself as mid-thirties, average height,
medium build, shoulder-length brown hair, and said she would be
wearing a black business suit and pink striped shirt with white collar
and cuffs.
Berlin arrived early in order to take up a position in the cafe
at the Tate Modern that would give her at least some opportunity
to assess if the woman was being followed. One-on-ones were a
breach of procedure, but Coulthard had broken up her partnership


with Delroy under the mantra of'upskilling'. Her skills or Dels, he
had never bothered to explain. She didn't care to work with anyone
else and she had wanted to get out of the office, away from Coulthard's
smirk. Get the jump on him if this shark turned out to be a
great white. A trophy kill. So she had come alone.
The only woman wearing a pink striped shirt to enter the cafe
bore no resemblance to the description she had given. She was taller
than average, willowy, with translucent, apricot skin perfectly complemented
by a black designer suit. Her gold jewellery was subtle,
and her thick, chestnut hair was cut with precision, so it bounced
ever so winningly as she walked. She wore dark glasses, although it
was the middle of October.
She bought a coffee and sat down. No one followed her in and
Berlin couldn't see anyone outside watching her.
Before Berlin could make a move an attractive, tanned tourist,
complete with expensive camera and guidebook, approached the
woman. He was carrying a tray of tea and scones and seemed to
ask if he could share her table. There were plenty of spare seats
elsewhere. He was suave, his body language insinuating, his smile
confident.
Berlin was astonished when the woman didn't reply or even look
up from her coffee, just raised her middle finger in an emphatic,
silent gesture. She nearly laughed out loud. So much for British
reserve. The man looked shocked, offended and sheepish in quick
succession. He scuttled away with a scowl and Berlin took the seat
denied the would-be Lothario.
'Bravo,' she said.
The woman almost smiled.
Berlin offered her hand. 'Catherine Berlin. What should I call
you?'
The woman hesitated. 'You said it, so how about Juliet Bravo?'
Berlin was surprised by this reference to a TV cop lost in the


mists of time -- the early eighties.
'You're not old enough to remember the show, surely?' she said.
Juliet Bravo took off her sunglasses. 'My mum loved it.'
She had the saddest brown eyes Berlin had ever seen.
The next time they met it was at Starbucks and official. Berlin
scheduled it so that Delroy was the only other investigator available
and Coulthard reluctantly had to assign him to go with her. Del
was the only bloke on the team that Berlin could trust and Coulthard
knew it. Which meant Coulthard couldn't rely on him to do
anything other than confirm whatever Berlin logged.
Delroy went along with Berlin's assessment that Juliet Bravo presented
as a credible informant, whatever her motivation and despite
her reluctance to identify herself. It was worth pursuing. So Berlin
submitted the form seeking authorisation for surveillance. Signing
off on an obs operation was usually Coulthard's job, but he had
just gone on leave, scuba diving in the Maldives. How he could
afford holidays like that she had no idea. Nestor signed it off in his
absence.
There were only two bodies available to watch Doyle - two of
Coulthard's boys, who shared a brain. Both were white, heavily
built and had shiny shaved heads. They'd sit in a nice clean vehicle
with tinted windows in a predominantly poor Bengali neighbourhood.
Like that was going to work.
And it didn't. Someone called the local cop shop and reported
perverts on the manor. The boys had failed to log their presence
with the Control Room Supervisor at the police station. They
blamed each other for the oversight, but Berlin strongly suspected
that they hadn't wanted to sit in the car freezing their bollocks off
for the likes of her, so hadn't followed procedure on purpose. Maybe
they weren't as stupid as they looked.
Whatever the reason, the surveillance was blown. By then Coulthard
was back and she couldn't get it started again, try as she might.


Coulthard said there were bigger fish to fry than her target. She
was trumped. Berlin couldn't log Doyle's movements, identify his
associates or find his victims, which meant she couldn't turn them
with the attractive proposition that if they gave evidence he would
go to prison and their debt would be wiped.
There was a glaring gap in the intelligence because of the failure
of the surveillance. But it was immaterial, because the next thing
she knew Nestor had closed the file. She tried to raise it with him
but he waved her away, told her to refer operational matters to
Coulthard.
Instead of just informing Juliet Bravo that it was over, Berlin
continued to meet her, in the bars at Waterloo or Euston, busy
railway stations where they had conversations she never wrote up.
They both had a taste for good Scotch. But it was more than that.
Berlin rarely made a connection with anyone, and she was reluctant
to lose it.
They talked about growing up in London and the bonds of prejudice,
myth and history that ensnared them. The conversation was
never domestic. There were no references to husbands or children
as yardsticks of achievement. Their exchanges were genuine, unsentimental.
It was a relief.
Finally she was forced to tell Juliet Bravo the investigation was
dead on its feet. The ferocity of her informant's reaction was a surprise:
she insisted Doyle mustn't be allowed to get away with it.
Berlin pushed back and told her it was down to her: she had to come
up with hard evidence, something Berlin could use to kick-start
the investigation again, something that her boss couldn't ignore.
Juliet Bravo said she would get it.
The next time Berlin saw her she was floating in the Limehouse
Basin.





10

Berlin stood opposite the block of flats where Doyle supposedly
lived. Number fourteen: a former Council flat bought by the original
tenant in the eighties under the Right to Buy legislation. The
right to make a fast quid for anyone in London. The flat had been
sold a number of times since. Now it was owned by a company and
Doyle wasn't listed as a director.
Dumb and Dumber had managed to fire off a few grainy shots
of the flat's occupant with the telephoto before they had been rumbled.
The photos were still on Berlin's phone, ready for Juliet Bravo
to confirm the ID when they met at the lock. That was also when
she was to hand over the hard evidence that Berlin had demanded.
A demand that had apparently proved fatal.
Berlin's problem now was that she could stand in the street until
kingdom come, shivering in the dim morning murk, and never see
anyone enter or exit number fourteen. It was on the second floor.
She could hardly hang about on the landing. The angle from the
street was too acute and on her own she couldn't cover the stairs
at each end of the building. Surveillance had never been Berlin's
strong suit. She gazed around and tried to assess the layout.
The flats overlooked "Weaver's Fields, in the middle of which
was the children's playground. There would be a direct line of sight
from there to the landing and the front door of number fourteen.
A morning stroll around the park was in order, followed by a go on
the swings. Better than the gym, and cheaper.

Chilled to the bone, two hours later she was listening to the traffic
build up on Bethnal Green Road and watching two dog walkers
and one little old lady brave the cold. The old dear was bent double
over her sholley, a hybrid of shopping trolley and Zimmer frame.
Berlin, now sitting on the kids' slide, clocked her shuffling along


the nearby path and expected her to just shuffle on past.
She fixed her gaze on the second floor of the flats across the park,
trying not to yield to boredom and distraction. But the squeak
from the sholley stopped and when Berlin looked back, the old
lady was standing directly opposite her with her head twisted as far
round in her direction as it would go.
'Chilly, isn't it?' offered Berlin.
The old lady's mouth worked for a while, lining up her false
teeth. 'Fuck off out of here, you junkie cunt!' she finally managed
to spit out.
Berlin stared at her, impassive, and said nothing. The old lady
clung to the sholley, her body shaking with the effort.
'Fucking kids' playground! I'm sick of you lot hanging around
here, leaving your fucking needles everywhere. So fuck off!'
Before Berlin could respond to the old dear with a suggestion
as to where she might like to shove her sholley, she caught a movement
at the flats. The front door of number fourteen had opened.
A fat figure sallied out along the landing into the brisk morning.
Berlin took off towards the park gate. She would follow him,
identify his victims and get them to confirm he was Doyle, then
find the connection between him and Juliet Bravo. She was a civilian
investigator and didn't have the luxury of just arresting him.

The old lady watched her go, amazed and delighted. She lined up
her teeth. 'See, they just need a good talking to!' she congratulated
herself, and stood a little straighten

Berlin sprinted for the gate, her eyes fixed on the landing. The man
raised a hand to greet someone and the pale sun glinted off his
heavy gold rings. She realised she'd seen those hands before; the
fat face in the photos hadn't rung any bells, but the fat fingers
banded with sovereigns, signet rings, antique wedding bands and


snake rings were unforgettable.
The man disappeared for a moment as he turned into the stairwell.
Berlin slowed down and craned to see him appear on the next
landing. It had to be Doyle.
She didn't notice the three hoodies barring the gate until she was
nearly on top of them. She kept going, expecting them to step aside,
but they didn't move. She was forced to come to a sharp stop.
'Excuse me, lads,' she said, breathless.
Their eyes were dull pinpricks as they peered out from deep
within their hoods. They closed in on her, no taller than she, but
wiry and street hard. And there were three of them.
'Give it up,' growled one.
'What?' asked Berlin, in a tone that conveyed no fear.
'The cash or the smack or both. Whatever you've got. You're not
out there freezing your fuckin' arse off having a fuckin' swing,' he
said. 'So hand it over, bitch.'
Their hands were thrust into their pockets and she wondered
if they had knives. But she was so intent on not losing Doyle she
abandoned caution.
'Fuck off,' she said, trying to shove her way through them.
One kicked the back of her knee and the other two jumped her,
punched her in the head and dragged her to the ground. The kicker
sunk his boot into her while the others went through her pockets.
When they came up with an old mobile and a fiver they weren't
happy. They stomped on the phone and kept the money, then ran
off, swearing about the wasted effort.
Berlin rolled over and threw up. A couple in matching lycra
jogged around her into the park. She tried crawling, without success,
and lay there in a puddle of freezing puke, semi-conscious.
After a while she became aware of a pulsing blue light. A police
car. Amazing. Someone must have called it in. She waited in vain
for a kind police officer to assist her. Eventually she managed to


turn her head enough to be able to see two constables emerge from
the flats. She heard one bark into his radio, 'Looks like we just
missed him, sir.'
You and me both, she thought.





11

The cut above Berlin's eye was bleeding sporadically and the bruising
was coming out nicely. Her back hurt like hell and her right
knee was already swollen. Muddy, bloodstained, she had limped
home, dumped her shattered mobile on the table, and gone straight
to the bread bin. It was breaking her usual routine, but this was an
emergency. Heroin was, after all, a painkiller.

Now she was in that comfortable, clear space she inhabited in the
first hour after a hit. It was a holiday from anxiety, but the package
came with strict terms and conditions. Years of effort and self-control,
not traits that most people associated with addiction, had gone
into stabilising her dose and the fix routine. The rush had gone out
of it long ago and she had resisted the temptation to seek it out
again by increasing her dose. Tolerance. Which, after all, was all
that she asked.
Some of her colleagues believed she was a diabetic because of
her regular doctor's appointments. She let them. It was a strategy
that kept nosy parkers at bay. She used a variety of injecting sites to
avoid tracks, although her puncture marks didn't constitute tracks
in the conventional sense.
Years before she had learnt to switch between intravenous, intramuscular
or subcutaneous administration. It was part of her strategic


approach to managing her dependence. Sometimes it just depended
on her mood. She didn't use blunt picks or get infections because
she always used a fresh kit, courtesy of Mrs Ranasinghe.
Berlin had felt little in the way of emotional attachment to other
human beings in the last twenty years. But her sense of belonging
to the dead was strong. When the backwash had roiled Juliet Bravo's
body it had exposed more than just the violent wound at her
throat; it had exposed Berlins vulnerability. A crack in the carapace.
She could still feel.
But that was then. A hit and a hot bath and she didn't feel anything
except a sublime lack of concern about her suspension, her
informant, her doctor, or Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
Everything drifted away on a gentle sea of indifference. Only
one tiny worry tugged at the corner of her consciousness. She had
only five ampoules left. Five days. She closed her eyes and that too
faded to nothing.





12

Doyle couldn't be arsed driving out to bloody Chigwell. The first
flakes of snow settled on his shoulders, merging with the dandruff,
both tinted yellow by the sodium streetlights. He thrust his hands
deeper into the pockets of his camel-hair overcoat and stamped his
feet. Rings on his fingers, bells on his toes. It had been a bloody
long day.
Word had got out that the law was looking for him, which gave
some of his clients a notion that if they kept out of his way, he might
get banged up and they would be home free. So he was avoiding
the police, while his creditors were avoiding him.


It had all begun a few weeks back with those bald geezers in the motor. They 
didn't look right. He'd got Ahmed in the drycleaners
to ring up the Police and Community Support Officers and report
two men sitting in a car near the park gate at the bottom of the flats,
watching the kiddies. The PCSOs had been down there like a shot
and Doyle had stood on the landing, watching the argy-bargy with
these blokes.
Ahmed caught most of the row and reported back to Doyle. Any
law enforcement types on the plot were supposed to notify the local
nick and get some sort of code number to quote in just these
circumstances. These blokes had forgotten to get their code.
Later, Ahmed made a cup of tea for the PCSOs, who told him
the numpties were from some government department. Doyle
guessed they were from that bloody interfering Financial whatsit
Agency, intent on disrupting the wheels of commerce. It turned out
he was right. He'd made a call. That's all it took. After that he had
been pretty sure they wouldn't be back. Now he was bloody certain,
because the grass who'd started all this aggravation was dead. It was
sorted.
But just to be on the safe side, he'd swapped the Audi, the car he
used for shopping, for a modest Mondeo he kept registered to one
of his clients - a deaf lady who couldn't drive and wouldn't dare
give him up if anyone inquired.
He stood beside the shitty little car now, cursing that he'd been
reduced to this. He'd never had any trouble with the law before; he
was a community service and he was sure most local coppers would
take the view that while his clients were borrowing money from
him it meant they weren't stealing it. A result all round.
But there was no point just standing there freezing his bollocks
off. He struggled to open the car door with a key. The bloody thing
didn't even have electronic locking.




Doyle crashed through the unfamiliar gears and wondered if the
problem he was having with the bloody government was related to
his move into commercial lending. Maybe getting mixed up with
the banker wanker Fernley-Price had been a mistake.
Doyle had been minding his own business in The Silent Woman
when a City gent had approached him and asked if he could sit
down. Suit yourself, he'd said. There were plenty of spare tables, so
he knew the geezer wanted something. He had thought it would be
the usual. Money.
It was only when they were well into the drink and the conversation,
about the state of the nation and the decline of the robust
entrepreneur, that he had realised this Fernley-Price didn't want
to borrow, he wanted to lend. He'd seemed to know a lot about
Doyle's operation, and after a bit of a pitch, had proposed a joint
venture, giving him a bloody economics lecture in the process.
'SMEs!' he'd exclaimed.
Doyle hadn't wanted to sound ignorant but the look on his face
must have given it away.
'Small and medium enterprises. That's where the crunch has bitten
hardest. No excess labour to lay off and they've got cash flow
problems because the banks aren't lending. In fact they're calling in
overdrafts. So these small firms are owed money by creditors who
can't pay up because they're going broke too. No line of credit either.
A vicious circle.'
He had sounded convincing. Bigger loans and more of 'em,
with more juice. No crying housewives to contend with or desperate
gamblers who would put up with a broken leg. Doyle's usual
sphere of operations was messy compared to the cold logic of the
higher echelons of the market. He'd liked the sound of it, and taken
Fernley-Price up on his business proposition. That was nearly three
months ago and it had all gone beautifully. For a while.



The road was icy, the tyres were crap and the windscreen was opaque
with condensation. Doyle tried to rub it clear with his glove as
he pondered Fernley-Price's reaction when told about the geezers
in the car. They'd been having one of their conflabs in The Silent
Woman when Doyle mentioned he'd seen off surveillance. FernleyPrice
nearly choked on his pint.
'What? What the hell? How da you know they were watching
you?' he'd spluttered.
'Calm down, mate, it's sorted.'
"That's not the fucking point. Mate.'
Doyle had noted the edge of sarcasm. The wanker had better
shut up. But he didn't.
'How did they know about you and how did you know about
them? That's what I want to fucking know. I've got a lot of cash
tied up with you now. Serious money invested in your local SMEs!'
exclaimed Fernley-Price.
'Yeah, yeah, okay,' replied Doyle. He was used to the bloody
jargon by then. SMEs meant the Indian grocers, the tobacconists,
the real estate agents, the accountants and the builders' yards. They
were all doing it tough in the crisis. All except him and FernleyPrice.

'Maybe one of our new clients got a little bit uppity. Perhaps
these geezers from the SMEs don't understand the rules yet. I'll
find 'em and make an example. Don't worry, it won't happen again.
Anyway, those blokes have gone.'
'But you can't guarantee they won't be back!'
Doyle put his glass down and gave Fernley-Price the dead eye.
'Yes I can, mate. I'm all about risk management. And I'm not the
Bank of England, so you can trust me.'

Fernley-Price had gone on and on that night about the bloody surveillance.
The bloke had a temper and it got on Doyle's nerves, so


he had made further inquiries, just to shut him up. He had told
Fernley-Price for the umpteenth time that it was nothing to worry
about. Turned out it was some narky bitch, according to his contact.
Anyway, it was over.
He fiddled with the Mondeo's heater, but the bloody thing
couldn't handle these temperatures. Something else to worry about.
He was sick and tired of Frank's demands and the endless nights
waiting for another miserable dawn. He hadn't had a decent sleep
for bloody years. Since Nancy left, if he was honest with himself.
He intended to keep Fernley-Price happy so he would deliver
more supermarket bags of cash, capital for the well-oiled Doyle
system. 'Oily Doyley. He had to chuckle.
The prick was supposed to be a silent partner, but he hadn't been
silent enough for Doyle's liking. All Doyle wanted was a bit of peace
and quiet. For Fernley-whosit to stick to his end of the bargain and
keep his nose out of Doyle's end of the business, and for Frank to
give him a break once in a while. Was that too much to ask?
He took a sharp right onto a pub forecourt, causing havoc in
the traffic behind him. He gave the hooters the finger. Fuck it, he
needed a drink. Frank would have to wait.

By the time Doyle got to Chigwell there was a foot of snow around
the premises and the place was in darkness. He clambered out of
the Mondeo and wrestled with the gates, his fingers numb with
cold. He got back in the car as quick as he could, drove through the
gates and kept going, not bothering to get out and shut them again.
Bugger Frank and his bloody rules.
When he got to the end of the drive and turned off the motor
the soft silence of the snow was eerie. The front door didn't open.
A bit unsteady on his feet, he stumbled up the steps and grasped
the knocker. The door was ajar. He released the knocker and it
swung open.


'Fr-- Pop? You there?'
He spoke softly. He was a bit late and maybe the old fella had
fallen asleep. He took a step over the threshold and a voice came
out of the darkness.
'What time do you call this?'
Before he could reply, Frank came flying at him, a fucking banshee,
wielding his thick leather belt. Doyle heard it whistle through
the air. The next moment it struck him across the shoulder. He
staggered under the blow. Before he could recover Frank struck
again, this time at his head. He felt the buckle catch his cheek and
the blood trickle down his neck. Suddenly he was fifteen again. He
cried out.
Top! Pop, don't!'
Frank's face, scarlet with rage, seemed to glow in the dark, his
eyes enormous white orbs protruding from their sockets. He struck
again and again until Doyle sunk to the floor, his arms over his
head, weeping.
'Pop! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!'
As suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Frank fastened his belt
around his trousers, walked back down the hall and left him to it.

















The Third Day
13

Berlin woke with a pounding headache, a raging thirst and an overwhelming
sense of her own stupidity. She swung her legs off the
couch and as she put her feet to the floor her right knee shrieked
with pain. Her back was stiff and one eye puffy and difficult to
open.
The first thing she did was check the bread bin. Five ampoules
remained in the brown paper bag. After the belting at the park gate
and her resort to 'analgesia she had done precisely bloody nothing.
She swore.
She should have been sorting things out, trying to find Doyle,
preparing her defence for the suspension hearing and finding a new
doctor who would prescribe her heroin.
She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. What a
bloody mess. She needed to get her head on straight and get down
to business. Fast. An app downloaded her voicemail to the computer;
she would listen later. A bath, breakfast. But first, a quick
check online to try to allay at least one of her anxieties.
The National Health Service homepage boasted 'Your health.
Your choices.' Except not in Berlin's case. The website made it clear
that registered addicts were prescribed methadone and required to
participate in counselling and other so-called therapeutic activities,
with the ultimate aim of being drug-free. Whatever that meant. She
trawled through the government portal and pages offering advice
on substance abuse, but came up with the same result every time.
Lazenby had regarded himself as a doctor, not an instrument of
social policy. It seemed Lazenbys were few and far between. There
was no easy route to a general practitioner who was licensed to prescribe
heroin and who actually did so. It would take time and luck
to find one. She was running out of both.




Pellicci's on Bethnal Green Road was famous. It was built in 1900
and had been run by the same Tuscan family ever since. It had a
Grade II-listed interior which dated from 1946 and the Krays used
to eat there. But for Berlin it was the chips.
"There you go, darlin.' Nino garnished her breakfast with a wink.
Tucked into a tight corner, she focused on eggs, bacon, sausage
and chips. She knew it would probably kill her, but then, they had
said that about heroin. The first crunchy, golden morsel was halfway
to her mouth when the door swung open, admitting an arctic
blast and a fat man wearing a camel overcoat and a clutch of gold
rings.
'Morning, Mr Doyle,' sang out Nino.
Berlin dropped her eyes to her plate and let her hair fall around
her face. Of course, this was where she'd seen him before. It was
now late morning. Her usual time was before work, and Doyle
obviously didn't keep office hours, so their paths would rarely cross.
She couldn't believe the police hadn't got his flat under observation.
Unless he had been interviewed and released overnight. It
was unlikely. In a murder the magistrate would usually authorise
an extended period for questioning. They had her statement that
the victim had identified Doyle as a loan shark, which gave them
reasonable grounds to hang on to him for a while.
It was barely two days since she had found Juliet Bravo floating
in the lock and here was the prime suspect, ordering sausage and
eggs. She looked up and saw Doyle glaring at a bloke sitting in the
warmest corner. The man took the hint, scooped up his newspaper
and corned beef sandwich and found another seat.
Doyle moved gingerly. The plaster below his right cheekbone
indicated something more than a shaving cut. He took off his coat,
but not his scarf. When he bent over she could see a livid purple
streak across the back of his neck.
Perhaps he felt her eyes on him. Doyle turned and looked straight


at her. For a fleeting moment he gave her a small, rueful smile, expressing
fellow feeling for another human being who had copped a
good smacking. She realised that her face was in a similar condition
to his. She couldn't help herself. She smiled back.





14

Jeremy Fernley-Price ate a solitary bowl of Bircher muesli while
scanning his Financial Times. It was telling a story so miserable that
he thought he might bring up his breakfast. His world continued
to implode. Each page was littered with words like 'disarray', 'turmoil'
and 'collapse'. These were not terms with which a Master of
the Universe was familiar.
Amid the chaos of subprime meltdown, credit default swaps
and contracts for difference, Fernley-Price had watched his capital,
which wasn't his anyway, disappear. It took with it his self-esteem.
He was a massive, gleaming product of privilege. His thick, flaxen
hair was swept back, coiffed but nonchalant, accentuating the
patrician brow and clear, blue eyes. His hands could only be described
as meaty, but manicured. His suits and shirts were bespoke.
His father had been in the City, a broker, but had retired about
the time they abolished the distinction between brokers and jobbers,
and computer systems had begun to replace the judgement of
human beings. This was Mrs Thatcher's Big Bang. The Iron Lady
was a class warrior with a very hefty handbag.
He tipped the rest of the muesli into the sink, turned on the tap
and ran the garbage disposal unit. A shrieking sound was succeeded
by the grinding of metal on metal, then the whine of a seized motor.
He had left the fucking spoon in the fucking bowl. Enraged, he


smashed the bowl down on the granite bench top, shattering the
translucent china. Fine needles of porcelain penetrated his palm.
Blood bubbled up from the embedded slivers, a tattoo of exquisite
agony.
It was the last fucking straw. His mind buckled.
He was caught between his housemaster's knees, a vice to prevent
him squirming as Matron dug black splinters from his fingers
with a hot needle. He screamed.
Be a man, commanded his housemaster.
Fernley-Price made a fist of his bleeding palm and struck the
granite. Rage smothered despair.

Twenty minutes later he stood in his German Rainmaker shower
beneath an expensive mix of water, air and light, and tried to think
how it had come to this. The problem was people were less reliable
than a well-structured financial instrument. His colleagues across
the globe would no doubt share his sentiment.
He recalled his first encounter with The Silent Woman. She was
a dull pub that squatted on the border of Canary Wharf and Poplar
and lived up to her name. The landlord could guarantee the CCTV
cameras at each end of the street were always broken. Despite this,
there was never any graffiti. The local hoodies knew better.
Fernley-Price had strolled in, leant against the bar and had been
about to order a gin and tonic when he'd realised that a G & T
wasn't really on in this environment.
'A pint of London Pride, mate,' he'd said, keeping it chummy.
'Coming up, sir,' said the barman, feigning deference. You
couldn't miss the mocking edge in his voice.
Fernley-Price felt again the prick of that humiliation. Fuck them.
Once, he could have bought and sold the decrepit establishment.
He'd decided at the time that if the new venture flourished, and
there was every reason to think it would, he would shut down The


Silent bloody Woman and reopen it as a gastropub. Revenge. He
had experience in that area.
He stepped from the shower, grabbed a towel from a set that had
cost the same as a holiday in Spain, and reflected on the fact that he
had always been ill-used. Though he could still come out ahead if
he played his cards right. But at this moment he had no fresh shirts
and the place was rapidly becoming a pigsty. A very expensive pigsty.
At the window he gazed down at the river. The apartment overlooked
the wharf that was said to have been Execution Dock. He
wondered for a moment if he had made some poor choices, then
resolved to put that thought behind him and move on quickly from
breakfast to lunch.
He would contemplate matters over a drink at The Prospect
of Whitby, where they had a gallows. It would suit his mood. He
would pull himself together, find a halfway clean shirt and get out
of the apartment. There was no point in hanging around. He prided
himself on being a man of action.





15

Berlin left Pellicci's without exchanging any more fond glances with
Doyle, who was hoeing into double sausage and egg on toast. She
hobbled across the road and ducked into The Shakespeare, where
the landlord was just putting up the optics.
'Eye-opener, madam?' he inquired.
'Talisker,' said Berlin, without thinking.
T beg yours?'
'Scotch. Whatever you've got. Make it a double, please.'
She took her drink to a window seat with a view of the cafe and


settled in to wait for Doyle to finish his breakfast. By rights, she
should call DCI Thompson and alert him to Doyle's location. But
after the way she had been treated at the initial case conference she
wasn't inclined to do him any favours. They weren't going to brief
her on their inquiries, so why should she keep them informed of
hers? Fuck them. She sipped her Scotch and waited.
The sound of sirens was routine in Bethnal Green, but when a
police car and an unmarked vehicle pulled up outside Pellicci's half
of the locals stopped to watch while the other half made themselves
scarce. Berlin noticed the Chinese bootleg-DVD sellers were the
quickest off the mark.
Craning to see around the number eight bus, which had pulled
up so the driver and passengers could get a good look, Berlin saw
uniforms clearing pedestrians out of the way as three suits went
inside. Moments later two of them walked out again, frogmarching
Doyle. One of them was that little toe rag Acting Detective
Sergeant Flint, the other a black detective she didn't recognise. They
got in the back of the unmarked car with Doyle between them.
A couple of minutes later DCI Thompson emerged, bacon roll
in hand. He paused and nodded at a couple of people in the crowd.
Berlin used the moment to appraise the man heading up the Juliet
Bravo investigation.
In his late fifties, about five ten in his socks, which, she guessed from the 
look of him, had holes in them, Thompson had probably
joined the Met when that was the unofficial minimum height
for recruits. The legal minimum was actually five foot eight until
the nineties, when they'd abolished it altogether. Before that most
forces had set their own. Yorkshire had been infamous for requiring six footers 
with good right hooks.
Flint was a good couple of inches shorter than Thompson. Short
man syndrome there, she thought, and then realised that this was
a prejudice she had inherited from her mother. 'Short men have


dangerous egos,' she would intone. Berlins father had not been tall.
Thompson seemed in no particular hurry to leave. He stood on
the pavement munching and staring across the road at the pub. He
couldn't possibly see her, but he could see the shape of someone
watching. She wondered whether he had staked out Pellicci's and
had a report of her entering and leaving. Great instincts. A man
in tune with the manor. He gulped the last of his roll, wiped his
mouth and fingers with a large, snowy white handkerchief, then got
into the front of the waiting car.
It took off, sirens wailing. No doubt this was Flint's contribution,
putting on a show for the locals. Berlin waited until the other
police car drove away, then finished her drink and left the pub.
Time would start to run as soon as Thompson got Doyle to the
station. Did they have enough to charge him? She considered various
scenarios as she headed for home.
The custody officer would authorise detention so they could
question him, but it would get harder to justify as the hours ticked
by, particularly if his brief turned up and directed him not to answer
any questions. She doubted Doyle would rely on legal aid. Too
many forms to fill in. If he went 'no comment' the case could stall
before it got started, unless forensics had come up with something.
How could she find out what sort of case they were building
against him? The truth was, she couldn't. The police had arrested
Doyle and her mission had evaporated before her eyes. With it
went the sense of purpose that had helped to distract her from her
other problems.
The future opened up before her, a yawning chasm of lisdess
boredom and the chill void of methadone. A wave of anxiety engulfed
her and she realised that the sweet cushion between her and
a deep sense of loss was dissipating. Lazenby. Could she make it
without him? In four days she would find out.



Berlins flat, like Doyle's, was only a ten-minute limp from Pellicci's.
On the way she dropped in at Poundsavers and bought a pay-as
you-go mobile. The SIM card in her phone had cracked under the
heel of the hoodies boot, but everything on it was synchronised
with her computer and she could download her contacts and voicemail.
It was a lesson learnt growing up in a borough with a rich
heritage of cutpurses and highwaymen.
Her father had passed on her grandfather's tales of the East End
mobs in the nineteen hundreds, coalitions of villains who went by
exotic names: the Bessarabian Tigers, the Odessians, the Yiddishers.
In the fifties the Blind Beggar Gang and the Watney Streeters
ruled. It was their offspring who had tested Berlin's mettle in the
gravel playground. Those hot, sharp stones buried in her kneecaps
were the childish equivalent of a soldier's old war wound. The pain
still lingered.
The latest youthful crews to run cocksure through the streets,
the Brick Lane Massive and the Roman Road Bloods, were just the
contemporary versions of familiar foes. But equally feral.
Berlin turned into her road and crossed the courtyard of the
block of flats. At the bottom of the stairs she reached for her keys.
She was so preoccupied that it took her a moment after she looked
up to realise that the Metropolitan police officer swinging a manually
deployed battering ram, commonly known as an enforcer, was
aiming it at her front door.
Despite her dodgy knee, she took the stairs two at a time. 'Hey!' ¦ she shouted.
>, Two burly coppers, one male, one female, were watching the of'
ficer with the enforcer. They turned at the sound of her voice.
The door gave with a crack at the second swing.
Berlin arrived on the landing and kept going, until the female
topper put a straight arm-bar take-down on her and she hit the
concrete.


The officer kindly kept her there to give her a chance to regain
her composure, during which time Berlin managed to lift her head
a couple of inches off the ground, just enough to be able to see
boots marching into her flat.
'What the fuck is going on here?' she screamed.
The coppers lifted her back onto her feet.
In her doorway stood a tall, cadaverous man in a charcoal suit
that was too small for him. His arms hung loose at his sides, the
too-short sleeves exposing knobbly wrist bones. Everyone else had
about four thermal layers on, but he just stood there in his cheap
suit and thin cotton shirt, oblivious. He looked as if he was in
charge, so she asked again, as politely as she could.
'What the fuck are you doing?'
He didn't say a word, just nodded at the uniforms.
'If you'd just like to come this way, madam,' said the male officer.
They dragged her back down the stairs.
'Let me go, you bastards, there's no need for this!'
She should have known better than to resist, but the adrenalin
had kicked in and she put up a spirited struggle. To no avail.
They threw her in the back of a police transit van and the woman
slammed the door on her ankle. Then they got in the front and
the woman got out her notebook while the bloke intoned a litany
Berlin knew all too well.
'You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence
if you do not mention when questioned something which you later
rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.'
Berlin collapsed into a corner of the van. She had nothing to say.








16

At the station one of Berlin's two officers went to the canteen and
brought back tea in small plastic cups for the three of them. She
sat on a bench against an institutional green wall, the last in a long
line of miscreants. They were all waiting to see the custody sergeant.
Her officers hung about, along with all the other arresting officers
who had to wait their turn with their glad bag of shoplifters, muggers
and joy-riders.
A girl of about fourteen at the other end of the bench eyed
Berlin, then started to whine.
'Can I have a cup of tea?'
Everyone ignored her, so she tried again, louder this time.
'I said, can I have a cup of tea? She's got one, why is she so special?'
She pointed at Berlin.
The custody sergeant didn't look up from his keyboard. 'Shut it,
Chrissy.'
Chrissy's arresting officer put a finger to his lips, shushing her.
Chrissy wasn't having any of it. She leapt to her feet and shouted.
'I want a fucking cup of tea!'
Before the officer could shove her back onto the bench, Chrissy,
clearly familiar with the station facilities, hit the panic bar. The
alarm was piercing, almost painful. There was a thunder of boots as
officers from all over the station ran into the custody suite. Pandemonium
broke out.
The bloke in the thin charcoal suit chose that moment to arrive.
He glided through the chaos towards Berlin, touched her on the
shoulder and mouthed 'Follow me.'
Obviously he had realised they'd made a mistake and he was now
going to grovel so that she didn't make a complaint. She noticed
her two officers scowl as he led her away. She gave them two fingers.




The interview room was the size of a broom cupboard. The bucket
and mop in the corner and the smell of disinfectant suggested it
still had a dual function. Charcoal suit closed the door and offered
Berlin his hand.
'Detective Chief Inspector Tony Dempster,' he said.
She took his big red hand, surprised that it wasn't cold at all. The
devil would have warm hands, she thought.
'Catherine Berlin,' she said.
He gestured that she should sit, and they each took one of the
broken office chairs that had been placed either side of a small table.
He was so tall his knees nearly touched hers. She noticed he didn't
switch on the tape machine.
'You didn't ask why you'd been arrested,' he said.
'I've not been processed by the custody sergeant,' said Berlin.
She noted his faint Newcastle accent. A Geordie. That's why he
didn't feel the cold. His hair was the same colour as his suit. Berlin
found it difficult to pin an age on him. He could be a wrecked
thirty-five or a fit fifty.
'Sorry about your front door. I've sent someone round to fix it.
But it's good for your reputation with the locals. If you know what
I mean.'
She did. Her stocks would rise if she was seen to be an enemy of
the state. But it didn't mean she had to enjoy it.
'What the hell is this about? Do you know who I work for?' she
said.
' Worked for,' he said.
T'm suspended pending an inquiry. That's all. So if you think I'm
going to have a cosy chat with you now that you've had your bully
boy and girl soften me up, you've got another think coming. I'm
not just another punter and I want to make a complaint,' she said,
rubbing her ankle.
Unmoved, he checked out her battered face. 'Looks like you've


got quite a few pre-existing injuries,' he said.
A smart-arse. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms.
He reached into his pocket and tossed a small brown paper bag
onto the table. She heard the five ampoules chink against each other.
There was a silence.
'I'm a registered addict,' she said finally.
T know what you are.'
From his inside pocket he produced Lazenby's prescription pad, secured in a 
plastic evidence pouch. She registered that the brown
paper bag and ampoules were not sealed in a similar manner.
Mrs Ranasinghe, thought Berlin. But she was wrong.
'Home Office database,' said Dempster. 'All those scripts have to
go to a central collection point. A spike in the number from one
GP raises a red flag. When they inquired they were told the doctor
in question was recently deceased.'
'He signed them before he died.'
T don't think so. The indentation of his signature went straight
through the pad. You just had to trace over it. Made it easy for you,
but hard for us.'
She waited to see where he was going with this.
'But not that hard for a forensic guy, as I'm sure you're aware.'
'So what's the charge? Forgery?' she snapped.
He gazed at her for a long moment. 'No. Murder.'
Berlin shot out of her chair so fast it would have tipped over if the wall 
hadn't been right behind her. 'You're fucking joking! Why
would I kill the goose that lays the golden egg?' Her mouth was ery dry, her 
heart racing.
'$> 'You could have a point' He shrugged.
He was too relaxed. He hadn't brought a file, wasn't recording I interview, 
wasn't even using his notebook. If he was going to
arge her with murder he would have stuck rigidly to procedure,
ving no openings for a clever-dick lawyer to exploit on appeal.


The whole thing was a set-up. She took a deep breath.
'Okay. I get it. What do you want from me?'
He laid it out.

Berlin followed Dempster back down the corridor towards the custody
suite, where he intended to deliver her into the arms of her
arresting officers - who by now would no doubt be very pissed off.
He moved briskly. She had told him to stick his so-called deal
where the sun didn't shine, so she would be charged for forging the
prescriptions and processed by the matching pair of surly constables.
Maybe she shouldn't have given them a two-fingered salute.
She was walking into a dead end.
Dempster was about to key in the security code to open the door
on her less than rosy future. She decided it was worth trying to up
the ante.
'Hang on.'
He turned, his fingers hovering above the keypad.
'What you're asking of me is worth more than just a walk on
these minor offences,' she said.
'A conviction would finish your career. And I could always add a
few charges if these are too trivial for you. How about obstruction
of justice and resisting arrest, for starters?'
'In your dreams,' said Berlin, although she was afraid he might
be right.
'So what else do you want? Apart from what I've already put on
the table,' he asked.
'You have someone here in custody. A bloke called Doyle. DCI
Thompson brought him in. I'd just like to know what's going on,
that's all.'
"That's the case you were working on, right? Your informant. The
floater?'
She nodded. He hesitated and she thought she'd pushed her luck.


'Wait here,' he said.
He loped back down the corridor and disappeared around the
corner. She heard a door open, close, then open again. Then he
stuck his head around the corner and beckoned.





17

Dempster ushered Berlin into a dark room, illuminated only by a
monitor high on one wall. On it she could see Doyle facing two detectives
across a table. Their backs were to the camera, but she knew
it must be DCI Thompson and DS Flint. A woman in a smart suit
was sitting beside Doyle, taking notes.
The image was grainy and the whirr of the tape machine in the
room was a background to the scratchy sound of their voices. It was
like watching a film from the fifties. Or maybe from the nineties,
but on a knock-off DVD.

'Honest, guv'nor,' said Doyle. 'Would I lie to the law? Not a bit of
it. I'm a great respecter of law and order. I voted for Mrs Thatcher.
A great lady.'
'How was that then?' said Flint. 'When you're not even on the
fucking electoral roll?'
Doyle felt he was winning. The young detective was coming on
with his best hard-man persona, and he was deflecting it with a
hurt, reproachful demeanour.
T put it to you, Mr Doyle, that you were identified by this woman,
now deceased, as operating a moneylending business without a
licence,' said Flint.
t Doyle spread his hands out on the table in a gesture of submission


and innocence. The young bloke was leading the interview and
Doyle knew that if he addressed his responses to the other detective,
it would irritate the shit out of him. So that's what he did.
He focused his wide-eyed look on the older man. 'Guv nor, I'm
not denying I'm an entrepreneur, but I don't know anything about
moneylending. On the night you're asking about I was at the Romford
Dogs.' He sighed. 'I had fifty quid to win on Dicky's Mentor
and he came second. I'm clean, I've got nothing to hide. Happy to
help with your inquiries.'
Flint reacted as Doyle knew he would. He thumped the table
and shouted.
'You're a loan shark and we know it, you know it, the whole fucking
manor knows it!'
Doyle affected a look of shock and spoke very quietly. 'Language,
please, detective. There's a lady present.'
Flint flushed. The lawyer smirked. Thompson raised his hand
a fraction in a gesture of restraint. Flint slumped back in his chair.
Satisfied, Doyle clasped his hands in his lap, patient and relaxed.
Thompson opened a file and with care extracted a bunch of tenby-four
colour prints, which he laid out on the table in front of
Doyle. Doyle knew this trick. He didn't look down. Thompson was
all business, his tone even.
'For the purposes of the tape I have displayed on the table before
Mr Doyle four post-mortem photographs of the victim. Mr Doyle,
would you please look at the photographs and tell me if you recognise
the deceased?'
Doyle was a bit squeamish, but he knew this would work in his
favour. It would look odd if he didn't react to photos of a dead girl
who'd just been fished out of the lock. He took his reading glasses
out of his pocket, slipped them on, then glanced down.
The shudder that shook him was violent, uncontrolled. He took
off his glasses, dropped them on the table and picked up one of the


head shots. His hands were trembling.
'Mr Doyle?' barked DS Flint. 'Do you know her?'
Doyle didn't understand Flints question. He didn't know what
was happening. He looked back at the photo. He was shaking so
much that the photo of the girl on the mortuary slab was juddering
in his hands. His tongue stuck to the top of his mouth. A band of
steel tightened around his chest.
'I don't understand,' he managed to get out.
Flint looked as if he was about to shout but Thompson raised a
hand to restrain him. He leant towards Doyle.
'Who is she?' he said, very softly.
'It can't be,' said Doyle. 'It looks like her but it's been so long.'
He felt the band of steel snap. He sprang to his feet and emitted a
guttural cry.
'It is, it's her. My girl! My daughter! That's Ginaf





18

Dempster took Berlin out the back way, to avoid her arresting officers.
He said he would sort it with them later.
'Jesus Christ. So Juliet Bravo was actually Gina Doyle,' said Berlin.
'It was clear she knew a lot about Doyle's operation from the
inside, but I had no idea it came from as close as that. She grassed
up her own father.'
Stunned by Doyle's revelation, her mind raced with the possibilities.

'If he was acting, he deserves an Oscar. He looked genuinely
.shocked,' said Dempster.
'But if it wasn't him that killed her, or someone working for him,


who the hell was it?' asked Berlin.
Dempster released the steel door that opened onto the car park.
He shrugged. 'It's not your problem,' he said. 'Leave it to the professionals.
Just because I gave you a heads up this once doesn't mean
it will be an ongoing thing. It's not part of our deal. It was a demonstration
of good faith, that's all.'
Berlin hesitated in the doorway. 'Good faith? This so-called deal
between us is serious for me. I'm not just a pawn in some copper's
game, am I?'
He handed her a business card.
'I can count on you, right?' she asked.
'Cross my heart and hope to die.'
She glanced at the card and frowned. 'Homicide Task Force,
New Scotland Yard. Which means?'
'We support the taskings of the local Murder Investigation Team,'
came Dempster's neutral reply.
'I bet they love that.' She held out her hand, palm up.
'Oh. I nearly forgot,' he said with a grin.
Berlin didn't smile. He put the brown paper bag in her hand. She
slipped it straight into her pocket, turned on her heel and walked
out into the biting wind.
'I'll be in touch,' Dempster called after her, but she didn't look
back.
She kept walking until she heard the door close and then began
to jog in an awkward limping fashion, anxious to put as much distance
as possible between her and the police station. She kept one
hand in her pocket, holding on tight to the brown paper bag.
She slowed down as she emerged from the alley that led to the
car park and turned onto Commercial Road. She was just in time
to see Doyle stumble down the worn granite steps of the station
and run towards a black Merc parked on the other side of the road.
A young bloke got out of the Merc, clearly alarmed at the sight


of Doyle running. His cigarette fell from his lips as Doyle shirt
fronted him and thrust him back against the car, shouting. The wind
whipped away his words, but the youth was obviously frightened.
Another lad had jumped out of the back of the car and wrestled
the distraught Doyle off his mate. Doyle practically collapsed into
his arms, and the lad steered him into the back seat and got in after
him. The other one gave the police station a quick glance and got
back into the driver's seat. The Merc took off.
It was a genuine display of grief and fury. Berlin was now
convinced that Doyle hadn't killed his daughter, and if he was
somehow involved, he hadn't known the identity of the target.
Thompson had no doubt come to the same conclusion, and had to
release him. She was also certain that Doyle would try to find out
who had done it and why.
She made a note of the Merc's number and descriptions of the
two lads. Old habits die hard.





19

'Doyle couldn't stop shaking. He curled up in the back seat, his
is clenched around his body, trying to hold in his feelings.
'Turn the fucking heater up!' he wailed.
'Where to, boss?' asked one.
'The lock! I want to go to the fucking lock!' screamed Doyle.
The Merc did an illegal U-turn in the middle of Commercial 3ad, back towards 
the Limehouse Basin.

;yle left the lads in the car while he walked to the final lock on
rent's Canal before it reached the Basin. The lock was a hundred


feet long and thirty feet wide, with a fall of eight feet. It opened in
1820. Frank had taught him all this. Jesus, Frank.
How was he going to tell the old man that his granddaughter,
his only grandchild, was dead? She had been the only thing Doyle
had ever got right in his whole miserable life, according to Frank.
Gina had blamed him when her mum left, then when she ran away,
Frank had blamed him for that. Probably they were both right.
He tried to clear his mind, get the sequence of events right. First
up, he had spotted those bald blokes in the car watching his block
of flats. After he'd spoken to Ahmed he knew the fucking Financial
Services Agency were onto him.
There'd been a crackdown of sorts recently on the activities of
unlicensed moneylenders. He'd seen posters in the bus shelters
encouraging people to ring a hotline and grass up so-called loan
sharks. Someone had noticed that blokes like him were competition
for the corporate tally men and high street payday lenders. It
was just big business fighting back.
Him and Frank had been at it for over twenty years without any
trouble. Until now. It made him sick. The government made a big
song and dance about protecting people from sharks but FernleyPrice
had told him the UK was the only country in Europe with
no legal limit on interest rates. He'd said it was a truly free financial
market.
The price of freedom was proving steep, thought Doyle. It was
bloody toe rags like Fernley-Price that had got the country into this
mess and now it was blokes like Doyle that were getting it in the
neck. He'd been going along nicely until he got mixed up with that prick. It 
was a thought that gave Doyle pause.
He gazed down into the filthy water, flecked with yellow foam
from some toxic shit. His little girl had lain in that muck. His tears
stung as they coursed down his squirrel cheeks and dribbled into
his mouth. They were bitter. Someone would pay.


The atmosphere at the Agency was toxic. It was the sort of environment
in which Senior Investigator in Charge of Operations Johnny
Coulthard thrived.
Coulthard had jumped before being pushed from a regional
force where he'd been a wooden top, a common or garden constable,
for thirteen years without advancing in rank. He had worked
with probationers, king of the kids, and had taken his coaching
duties with a female trainee very seriously. Hence his move to
the Agency and civilian waters, which he found gave him more
freedom to get the job done without a lot of nancy-boy lawyers
breathing down his neck.
An action man who didn't like much action, he was a smooth
talker with a charming northern accent that perfectly complemented
his self-deprecating, Tm a no-bullshit, genuinely nice guy' persona.
Coulthard s delivery would be the envy of many a sociopath. He
jaad honed it to compensate for a face that not even his mother
could love, and a beer belly he seemed to have been born with and
;%vhich grew with him, no matter how long he spent in the gym. f A real prince.
The tension in the office of late suited Coulthard. He would
tjteassure his lads, give them little treats, turn a blind eye to their
weaknesses. Love, not fear, was Coulthards weapon.
Delroy Jacobs didn't feel the love. Although his sole ambition
as to lead a quiet life, he was cursed with a strong sense of fair play,
lis placid temperament and desire for tranquillity were a reaction
his heritage: his mum was Jamaican, his dad was Jewish. They
opinions.
Against his own better judgement Delroy had felt compelled on
sion to express concern about the team's dubious operational
ethods. This hadn't endeared him to Coulthard.


Del was at his workstation, but could see what Coulthard was
up to out of the corner of his eye. He made sure he never turned
his back on him. Coulthard had been on the phone for some time,
talking in a subdued tone. He wasn't usually that quiet. Now he
hung up, clicked his mouse and sat staring at his computer. He
didn't usually sit still that long, either.
When Coulthard stood up he went straight to the glass box that
was Nestor's office and strode in without knocking. Delroy saw
him gesticulate, apparently urging Nestor to look at his computer.
Nestor did as he was told.
While they were busy, Delroy slid his chair along to Coulthard s
desk. He jiggled the mouse as he dialled 1471 on Coulthard's phone,
then 3, ringing the last number to call Coulthard. No one could see
him over the desk partition. The screen saver melted away to reveal
a post-mortem photo of a woman. Delroy stared. He was starded
when his call was answered.
'Detective Sergeant Flint speaking
Delroy hung up and rolled his chair back to his desk just as
Coulthard emerged from Nestor's office.
'I'm to conduct an inquiry into Investigator Berlin's unauthorised
activities,' Coulthard announced. The rest of the team exchanged
glances. Delroy was gobsmacked.
'Boss's orders,' said Coulrhard, smirking at Delroy. He glanced
at his watch, then grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.
'Drinks on me!' he said.
Delroy watched as the other blokes scutded out of the office after
Coulthard. Finally he got to his feet to follow them. He couldn't
afford to get any more offside with Coulthard than he was already.
When he glanced back, Nestor's door was shut and the blinds were
closed.





Berlin walked from Limehouse down to the Ratcliffe Cross Stairs.
It was a quiet stretch of the river. She stood at the top of the ancient
watermen's slipway and watched the tide rise. The masonry was
slick with ice. One slip and you could disappear under the freezing
mould-green water or break your neck with a snap that no one
would hear.
She had agreed to assist Dempster with the Lazenby investigation
by conducting covert inquiries. In other words, by becoming
his snout. She was perfect for the role: a heroin addict with the
necessary professional skills and experience.
Her first distasteful task was to approach Lazenby's other patients i and see 
if anyone had pharmaceutical-grade heroin for sale. Demp'
ster thought it possible one of them had got greedy. She knew it Wouldn't end 
there.
In return, Dempster had said he would forget about the forged
resorptions and would let her keep the heroin. She thought he
juld have trouble making the forgery case against her anyway,
he had worked with the Crown Prosecution Service, and it was
'ghly likely that if he took it to them, they would live up to the
;re popular version of their acronym, GPS: Can't Prosecute, Sorry.
But she couldn't afford to take the chance. It was blackmail, pure d simple, a 
reliable investigative method employed by the police
ery day.
i Dempster hadn't returned the five ampoules out of the goodness
'.'his heart, either. It was to keep her functioning while she did
bidding. He'd promised to help her find a suitable doctor. Jesus
rist, she came so cheap.
Something chirruped. It took her a moment to realise it was an
: signal on her new mobile. She fished it out of her pocket with
ib fingers. It was a text from Delroy, one of the few people who
had her new number. It was the first time she'd heard from him
since she was suspended. The message was stark: 'JC = discip inq.'
It meant Coulthard was going to run her discipline inquiry. Surely
things couldn't get any worse. She made for the nearest pub.

The Grapes claimed to be the oldest hostelry in London. It was a
crowded field. Berlin sat nursing a double and reflected on Coulthard's
role in her demise. He'd had her fooled at first, but after he'd
dropped her in the shit once too often, the big smile and the 'sorry
about that, mate, nothing personal' failed to convince.
Coulthard had a problem with people who didn't listen to his
war stories. And with anyone who had a better idea. When Berlin
first started in the job she'd had a lot of better ideas. Like, how they
could work legally. She soon learnt that these initiatives did not sit
well with Coulthard's predilection for the 'tricks of the trade'.
But instead of keeping to the moral high ground, she had joined
Coulthard in a race to the bottom. Meeting an informant alone was verboten. 
There were too many risks. Informants were usually borrowers
in trouble, and loan sharks frequently had people watching
defaulters to make sure they didn't do a runner. Or go to the police.
Not that this was very likely.
The police weren't interested in loan shark victims until they
actually suffered violence, after which it was too late. Berlin had
known police officers to send away victims who reported threats by
moneylenders with the advice that debt was a civil matter.
Coulthard manipulated Nestor, who was supposed to be in
charge, by relieving him of operational decisions. Nestor couldn't
make a decision if his life depended on it, preferring to write memos
and fire off emails. So had he really made the call to close the
Doyle file? Or was Coulthard behind it? It had his paw prints all
over it, but it would be difficult to determine if it was just to get at
her, or if he'd had other motives.


If she'd had the support of a team maybe it would have been
different. But she was not a team player. At least that was one thing
she and Coulthard could agree on.
She swallowed her self-disgust with the dregs of her whisky and
went home for something stronger.





22


Nestor at home was a very different creature from Nestor at the
Agency. Chez Nestor, he had aspirations to be the suave, witty bon
vivant: a man at ease at table. A raconteur, even. This fantasy had
now fled, along with most of his other delusions. He was drinking
in his cellar among a collection of vintage burgundy that was probably
his last remaining asset.
He could hear his wife upstairs, clattering her French copper
bottomed pans about in her designer kitchen. She would make him
eat something unspeakable, a dribble of brightly coloured jus on an
enormous white plate topped with a sliver of braised celeriac and a niggardly 
dressed chop. Appearances were everything to her. She
knew he would give his right arm for a steak and kidney pie.
Women could be so cruel.
His own mother, a leggy debutante in her day, had laughed at
.him and told him he was a chinless wonder and it was lucky his
rugger bugger of a father hadn't lived to see how his pusillanimous son had 
turned out.
Good God.
Now he was in the wilderness. The wine was his pride and joy.
e preferred the full, harmonious reds to the complex whites, seekg
in the bottle what he couldn't find in life. But he rarely drank it.


Possession gave him pleasure, and anticipation. Deferred gratification
was the hallmark of his existence.
Well, those days were over. He pulled the cork on a 1999 Comte
Georges de Vogue Musigny and, with reverence, wafted it under his
nose. Heaven.
Halfway through the bottle it occurred to Nestor to check his
mobile, just in case the bastard had returned his calls. He imagined
that all over London, all over the globe for that matter, hedge-fund
managers and investment bankers were ducking calls from their
clients. No doubt many of them had disconnected their phones, or
been cut off by now. But he suspected that this bastard had more
reason to duck than most.
Nestor had committed his pension fund, the house, the cottage
in Wales. The return he had got was phenomenal - too good to be true, really, 
but he didn't question it. He just bought more burgundy.
When the margin calls came, thick and fast, he didn't even
recognise the names of the firms. His options had been bought and
sold, bundled with other derivatives, then sold again. His debts had
been sold too. At least, that's what he'd been told. But it all went
wrong. He'd lost everything and then some. How could that be?
He considered himself an intelligent man but he just didn't understand
what had happened. Yet he occupied a senior - well, senior
middle-management - position in the agency whose precise role was to 
understand. He took another mouthful of delight, drained
the Riedel glass and reached for a fresh one. This he would fill with
a Grand Cru, he decided after some reflection.
The problem, the real problem, was that after the meltdown, after
the catastrophe that had wiped him out financially, he'd been offered
a one-time-only, 'ask no questions, be told no lies' opportunity to
recoup his losses. A devil's bargain, no doubt.
It took the very last drop from his cash account, but he had
taken the view that if he was hung for a penny, might as well be a


pound. There was something in there about sheep and lambs, too,
but the burgundy was playing havoc with his metaphors. Anyway,
he had taken the opportunity offered, thinking he couldn't sink any
lower. How wrong one could be. He drained his glass.
'Jing cring we'll all be rooned,' he sang out, laughing.
'Ludovic? What are you doing down there?' a querulous voice
called from above.
His laughter turned to tears. It wasn't the money. It was love that
had ruined him. His mother was right. He had aspired to punch
above his weight. Now he was out for the count.
He put his glass down and tottered out of the cellar, up the
stairs and down his classic Victorian black and white chequered tile
hallway, past the open door to the dining room, where his wife was
preparing to serve avocado-wrapped ceviche with tomato pearls.
'Nestor! Where are you going?' she asked, astonished.
'To see a man about a fucking dog,' he replied, and stumbled out
into the night.





23

rly drinks at The Prospect of Whitby had turned into lunch at
le Gallows restaurant in The Captain Kidd. Femley-Price had
ised a theme for the day, which he decided he might as well
:ntinue at his club.
' There were plenty of pirates there, all avoiding each other for fear
y'd bump into someone to whom they owed money, which could
anyone. In this climate, no one really knew who owed what to
om. The club was full of'em, whey-faced, miserable City types cry
into their Krug. They were all in the same boat, so what the hell.


One more drink and he would have another go at contacting
that fat weasel for an update on their fortunes. He had to look
forward, not back, keep his chin up and expect - no, demand - a
positive return. After the sacrifices he'd made and the risks he'd
taken he mustn't show any sign of weakness now.
It hadn't been Fernley-Price's idea to move into the black economy,
although if he ended up making a motza he would claim it
had been. No one would be around to argue the toss on that score,
or share in his triumph, which rather took all the fun out of it for
a chap, now he thought about it. Perhaps he'd get two more drinks
in and save the waiter a trip.
Three drinks later he decided that if the bastard wasn't returning
his calls, there was no point in ringing him. Sod it. He was ignoring
calls himself, a dozen since lunch time, all from the same party. Sod
that too. He would sort it later. But in the meantime he would go
and beard the lion in his den.

Staggering out of his club, Fernley-Price found a black cab conveniently
waiting for the likes of him to pour himself into the back.
'Poplar!' he commanded.
Another City gent, thought the cab driver, who had just lost
his savings to some fucking Viking bank. He accelerated sharply,
throwing the drunken git to the floor.

The Silent Woman was quiet, even for her. Doyle sat at his usual
table, alone, knocking back pints before driving out to deliver the
bad news to Frank. Word had got around about Gina, and the atmosphere
was respectful. He knew that some would say she was a
grass who had got what was coming to her. But not in his earshot.
The police wouldn't release the body. It was more than he could
bear to think of his little girl lying on that cold slab in the mortuary,
being poked about. They wouldn't tell him how she died.


They were going to make him come back when the doctor was
at the station to give blood and prove she was his. It wasn't the last
that would be spilt. He gestured for another pint. The door swung open and 
Fernley-Price staggered in, clearly
three sheets to the icy wind.
'It's cold enough to freeze the brass balls off a monkey!' FernleyPrice
announced loudly, leaving the pub door open behind him.
'Shut the bleeding door, you pillock,' cried the old man in the
cloth cap, who had been sitting there since 1956. The belligerent
scowl Fernley-Price turned on him vanished in the face of the sudden
silence and the watchful, threatening postures of the other patrons.
'Right you are, squire,' he mumbled.
Doyle sighed as Fernley-Price caught sight of him.
The drunken sod kicked the door closed, stumbled over, slumped
into the chair opposite and put his hands flat on the table to steady
himself. 'Mate, you haven't been returning my calls,' he said. He
dragged out his mobile and waved it at Doyle, ignoring the flashing
symbol which rebuked him for failing to respond to his own
messages.
Doyle didn't respond.
'I said --'
T heard you,' said Doyle.
'Well it's not friggin good enough,' said Fernley-Price, apparitly
oblivious to Doyle's mood. 'We need to keep the channels of
lmunication clear.' He smacked the mobile down on the table,
'ow's business?'
Doyle answered quietly. Fernley-Price leant forward to catch it,
scking the table and slopping Doyle's pint.
'What? Whadyasay?'
Without warning Doyle reached out and grasped Fernley'ce
by the throat, squeezing his Adam's apple between his
ck thumb and two precisely placed fingers, so Fernley-Price


couldn't swallow or gasp for breath.
'I said I've had a fucking death in the family!'
Eyes wide, Fernley-Price raised his hands in a gesture of mute
surrender and Doyle released him. 'Fine, I'm sorry, I had no idea,
fine, of course, I'm so sorry. In your own good time, old chap. Do
what you have to do and get back to me, whenever,' Fernley-Price
croaked, rubbing his throat.
Doyle stood up and put a hand on the banker's trembling shoulder.
'No
hard feelings, mate. I've a lot on my mind.'
Fernley-Price nodded. As Doyle turned on his heel and walked
out, the landlord leant over the bar and addressed the dazed Fernley-Price.
'You'll
be settling Mr Doyle's bill then, sir?'

The little contretemps with Fernley-howsyourfather had set Doyle
up nicely to deal with Frank. He wasn't going to take any shit. Frank
would blame him for Gina's death, like he blamed him for bloody
everything. Nancy leaving, for example.
It shook Doyle to think that Nancy was out there somewhere
and didn't know about Gina. Unless Gina had found her since, or
maybe Nance had kept in touch with Gina all along and they'd
cooked up this business between them, grassing him up to get back
at him.
He hadn't told Frank about the surveillance because Frank would
have blamed him for that, too. So he certainly wasn't going to tell
him the full story now, about the Agency and everything, then
tell him Gina had grassed them up. Frank would just get abusive
and start on about what a useless piece of baggage he was and how
Gina would never have left home if it wasn't for him. He wasn't
going to stand for it.
It was only ten miles from Poplar to Chigwell, but as he took the


Green Man interchange Doyle thought, not for the first time, that
it was like another bleeding country once you got through Leytonstone.
At the next roundabout he took the exit onto Hollybush
Hill. It even sounded like something out of Enid Blyton. He didn't
jUke it, all that open space, playing fields, horses even; it gave him
the willies. Miles between fish and chip shops, and the curries were
shite out here.
When he pulled up at the premises his courage almost deserted
him. The place was in darkness. He sat in the car for a moment,
listening to the engine tick as the cold seized it. He got out slowly.

Frank opened the door in his pyjamas and cardigan, a pair of fingerless
gloves encasing his enormous hands.
'I'm in the middle of one of my programmes.'
Doyle stepped past him into the hall. 'Sorry to disrupt your
ring, Pop,' he said.
Frank shut the front door and followed him down the hall into
e kitchen.
'Put the kettle on, Pop,' said Doyle.
'One of the customers acting up? I've told you before, come
hard and early.'
Doyle raised his hand. 'Its not the business. Sit down, Pop.'
He really wanted him to sit down so that he would have an adltage
if Frank lashed out. Doyle had decided that if he did, he i going to give the 
old man a wallop. He wasn't going to wear it.
t tonight of all nights.
Frank didn't move to put the kettle on and didn't sit down, just
ed at Doyle, apparently confused by his tone.
'Look, Pop, it's Gina,' Doyle said.
.'Who?'
rGina, my --'
'I know who she is. What about her?'


Doyle's heart was thumping in his chest.
'She's dead, Pop.'
"What? No she's not, she's just run off, young girls are like that,
flighty. What are you talking about?'
'I was at the police station today, Frank. She's grown up now. But
she's gone.'
Doyle shifted his feet slightly and planted them squarely, bracing
himself for the onslaught.
Frank took a step forward, his fists working, clenching and unclenching
at his sides. Doyle was ready.
'No. She's just a little girl.' Frank seemed to be miles away, talking
to himself. 'How?' he whispered.
'Murdered.'
Frank fell on him, sobbing. Doyle was more shocked than if he'd
thrown a left hook. He put his arms around Frank's shoulders. He's
an old man now, he thought.
Father and son stood locked in an embrace, heads together, tears
mingling.





24

Dempster was as good as his word. When Berlin got home she
found someone had been around and replaced her front door, complete
with a new deadlock. The locksmith's card was tucked under
the lintel. She took the card and walked to the shop in Roman
Road. It was well after closing time but there was a twenty-four
hour bell.
The locksmith came down from the flat above the shop. She
held up the card and her ID and he ducked behind the counter,


retrieved a key, opened the door and handed it to her.
'Courtesy of the Metropolitan Police,' he said with a grin. It was
obviously lucrative work.

She thought the flat would be an absolute tip, but when she got
inside she found the police search hadn't left that much of a mess.
Maybe Dempster had exercised a restraining hand, wary of alienating
her while she could be useful to him.
She took one ampoule from the paper bag and put the rest back
in the bread bin with some reverence, acutely aware of how precious
they were now that she had come so close to losing them. A
bread bin seemed a banal treasure chest, but it was intended for the
; staff of life.
Inserting the needle of the disposable syringe through the ampoule's
rubber seal, she drew up the colourless fluid inside. She
could barely remember a time when she had had to cook it up, then
force a dull hypodermic into collapsing veins. With Lazenby's assistance
she had gradually stabilised on a daily dose. His approach had been all about 
choice, control and risk management.
Without hesitating she pushed the needle into her thigh. It slow
released its exquisite chemistry. She wondered how she would
ipe if she had to return to the street, a world where death was an
er-present possibility. Serenely she reflected that it wasn't so very
: from this one.

I was the coldest night in London for forty years. Black ice sheet
the roads, pipes froze then cracked, the homeless crawled into
juncil grit boxes and suffocated. Rooms sealed against the air
le tombs as faulty heaters stifled the occupants. The frigid
ence claimed its victims. Seven million shivered in their beds.
Berlin, oblivious to the cold, walked through the deserted streets
' the City. The heroin was near the end of its metabolic process


and was about to exit her system, leaving only a ghost in her veins.
She turned into Newgate. In the rose garden of Christ Church
Greyfriars an old man, shrouded in newspaper, sought warmth
from the earth, beneath which four queens were buried.
The ruin of the West Tower was all that stood of the original
church, the empty Gothic perpendicular window framing not
heaven, but the sheer glass face of an office building that loomed
over it. Berlin heard the gentle sigh of a last breath exhaled. The
queens claimed their own. The old man had lost his struggle, just
as the poor of London had lost theirs for centuries. She kept walking,
always trying to discern the direction that would lead her out
of her own past.



























The Fourth Day
25

Night was still resisting day as Berlin arrived home, exhausted from
her nocturnal wandering, longing for sleep. She struggled with the
stiff new lock, cursing. The landing light had been smashed again
and her fingers were frozen. She dropped the key as footsteps approached.
A figure loomed out of the dark, one arm extended towards
her. A black face was barely visible between a black beanie
and black puffa jacket.
'What the fuck, Delroy?' she said, rattled.
'Nestor's dead.'

Delroy had never been inside Berlins gaff. He was surprised at how
normal it seemed. It was just one big room really, but comfortable,
a few paintings, a polished table and a yellow vase filled with bright,
cobalt irises. One wall was taken up with bookshelves. A small,
sleek, high-end computer was balanced on a pile of old hardbacks
beside the couch. The palette of the room, as they would say in the
Sunday papers, was blue and yellow.
Berlin poured him a mug of coffee.
'What happened to you?' he asked, pointing at her face.
'What happened to Nestor?' was her reply.
Delroy shrugged. Fair enough. It was none of his beeswax if
someone had taken a pop at her. They were probably trying to get a
rise out of her, he thought, then immediately felt guilty about have; ing such 
an uncharitable reaction. That was the trouble with Berlin:;
you never knew what she was thinking, but she always seemed to
know what you were thinking. He gulped his coffee to cover his
disloyal thoughts.
'They fished him out of the Limehouse Basin earlier this morn
ing,' he said.
'You're joking,' said Berlin, astonished.



Delroy shook his head. 'Our liaison officer at the local nick gave
me the heads-up.'
'How did he die?' she asked.
"They don't know yet if he jumped or was pushed.'
He watched as Berlin tried to take it in. "That's no bloody coincidence,
turning up in the same spot as Juliet Bravo. Gina Doyle,
that is,' she said.
'She wasn't using that name anyway,' muttered Delroy as he finished
his coffee.
'What? Gina Doyle?'
'Yeah. They can't find any trace of her under that name,' he said,
holding out his mug for a refill.
'How do you know?' she asked, pouring a shot of Scotch into her
own coffee and ignoring his empty mug. Delroy noticed she was
immediately distracted from the fact of Nestor's death. He got up and poured 
his own coffee.
'Coulthard's always walking away from his desk without logging
bfT.' He looked sheepish, a kid caught peeking through the keyhole. Te keeps 
getting email from someone calling themselves Tinder:x.'

'Flint. The weasel-faced DS working the murder,' said Berlin.
'Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that.' Del laughed. 'Of course,
has to be. Yeah, he called Coulthard yesterday. And here's the
lge thing. Tinderbox emailed him a post-mortem photo of yies daughter.'
Jesus, Del, this is too fucking much. Why would Coulthard
t a photo of my dead informant?'
'Yeah,' said Delroy, 'I can't get a grip on it all. That's Coulthard
you.' He took a mouthful of the strong, aromatic coffee. He was
'ly a Nescafe man; but this stuff was dynamite,
heard about that doctor in Hackney,' he said,
rlin didn't react.
'He's the one, isn't he?'
'The one what?' she challenged.
"The one who treats your diabetes,' said Delroy, his tone measured.
'He's
the one, Del,' she said, resigned.
'How's that going then, getting your treatment sorted?'
She gave him a small smile. 'It's in hand, Del, thanks for asking.'
Delroy nodded. He put down his mug. 'I'd better get going. It'll
be chaos at work today.'
She followed him to the front door. 'So what are they saying
about Nestor?'
'Not much. He was pissed. Went back to the office late. They're
not giving anything away. Early days in the investigation, I suppose.'
T
suppose.' She paused. 'Del,' she said.
'What?' he said, instantly on guard. He knew that tone.
'Ever come across a DCI called Dempster in your former life?'
She said it casually.
Jesus Christ, he thought, she's moving right on. She knew that
before he joined the Agency he'd worked as a civvy with Police
Complaints. Her reaction to Nestor's demise was like her reaction to
everything: it had gone missing. He loved her to bits; she was fierce,
loyal and smart. At work she had often covered for him, borne the
brunt of Goulthard's hostility. But she was so fucking weird.
'Why do you ask?' he said.
'He's supervising the investigation into my doctors murder.'
Delroy sighed and offered her some heartfelt advice. 'Mate, you
are already in a world of trouble. Coulthard has been tasked to
prepare a report on your shenanigans with the dead informant.
Now Nestor goes off the edge in the same location. Just try to
keep your head down, yeah? Don't go getting mixed up in another
investigation.'


He gave her a brief peck on the cheek and left.

Too late, mate, she thought, I'm already in it up to my neck.

It was still dark but there was no way she was going to be able to
sleep now. She poured herself another Scotch. If Nestor was murdered,
there must be a connection to the Doyle operation. Why
else would you leave the body in the same location? Likewise if it
was suicide. Why do it there?
She thought about the impact Nestor's death might have on
what was laughingly referred to as her career. Coulthard would
probably step up into his job and then there would be no holding
him. Seized with a sense of foreboding her gaze fell on the bread
bin. She grabbed her coat. Maybe she was just hungry.





26

reoccupied, Berlin didn't notice Doyle until he cleared his throat. ie looked 
up and he pointed to the empty chair at her table.
'Do you mind?'
She looked around Pellicci's. There was plenty of room at other
>les.
. 'Suit yourself,' she replied.
He took off his coat and scarf, hung them over the back of the t and sat. Nino 
brought him tea and toast. Berlin watched and
'ted.
IDoyle sipped his tea. He looked terrible. She thought about Juliet
vo, the way she was so intent on bringing this man down, urging
iin to pursue him at all costs. Her own father. Berlin wondered
t he had done to make his daughter hate him so much.
Doyle put his cup down with a sigh.
'I hadn't seen my daughter since she was sixteen, Miss Berlin.'
He looked up at her. 'It is Miss Berlin, isn't it?'
'How do you know who I am?' she asked.
'Your firm leaks like a sieve, Miss.'
Berlin wasn't surprised and saw no point in pretending outrage
or walking out. 'I'm sorry for your loss, Mr Doyle,' she said.
"Thank you. Much appreciated,' he said, and seemed to mean
it. But it was clear he hadn't sat down just to exchange pleasantries.
'So what can I do for you?' she asked.
Doyle hesitated. 'What was she like?' His face was soft, vulnerable.
'Gina, I mean.'
Berlin was taken aback. This was the last thing she'd expected
from him. 'I... look, I hardly knew her. She was my CHIS, a
covert --'
'I know what it means,' he said, and reached across the table to
grip her arm. It wasn't a threat, it was a plea. 'Miss Berlin, I know
she was grassing me up. You must have wondered what a father
could do to a daughter that she would stoop so low.' She was surprised again, 
this time by his perspicacity.
T think I know why,' he continued. 'She always blamed me for it.
It must have been because she thought
He choked up. Berlin could feel his clammy palm through her
coat.
'She thought I was responsible for her mum.' He hesitated. 'For
her mum leaving that is, without taking her.'
The investigator in Berlin kicked in. 'And were you?' she asked.
Doyle raised his hand to God and shook his head. 'On my life.'
Berlin had the feeling he thought she knew more than she did.
This gave her a tactical advantage.
'So if you know what her motivation was, what do you want
from me?


'I just want to know what she was like, as a grown-up.'
Berlin couldn't think of a reason to deny him this simple, sad
request. 'She was smart, confident, well turned out. She said she
was something in the City.'
Tears welled up in Doyle's eyes. 'That was my Gina. Sharp as
tack. I always knew she'd do us proud. But why did she wait all
these years to have a go at me? That's what I don't understand. Why
ow?'
It was a bloody good question, thought Berlin. Maybe the Agents
campaign had given her the opportunity she had been waiting
.r; Gina had probably realised illegal lenders weren't a priority for e police. 
She would have done her homework. But a dedicated
and a hotline would make all the difference.
Berlin pushed her plate away. 'I'm sorry, Mr Doyle, I really can't
cuss it with you any further.'
She rose to go, but he held on to her arm.
'Miss Berlin, I want whoever killed my girl. Never mind what
: was trying to do to me. I think you want that too, because in a
see, we're both responsible. So maybe we can help each other.'
ie searched her face.
. She glanced at his hand on her arm.
He let go.
©oyle waited for her to say something, for a flicker of emotion. vet came.
Te took out a pen, wrote a mobile number on a newspaper lyOn
the table and nudged it towards her. She didn't touch it, just
ed in her chair, went to the till and paid Nino, i she opened the door to 
leave, Doyle spoke again. 'You're local. n was the jeweller. Used to be just 
down the road.' he closed the door and walked back to the table,
was Berlinsky once,' he said,
uVe got the wrong Berlin,' she said.


'My father knew yours,' said Doyle, very quietly.
He spread his fingers, displaying his rings.
She picked up the newspaper and walked out.





27

Walking home along Bethnal Green Road Berlin felt as if something
or someone, or perhaps fate, was snapping at her heels. It
was all getting too close. The shop was still there, but no longer a
jeweller's. They had lived above it. She crossed over so she didn't
have to pass by; the business had been her father's, and before him
her grandfather s. He had scraped together the key money after he
arrived from Russia.
Community. A warm, suffocating web. Doyle had invoked
her father, and with him the dead weight of a shared history. She
walked past the Underground station and there was the plaque on
the wall. There was no escape.

Berlin had heard the story so often it felt like a memory.
It was 1943. People were heading down into the station, which
was being used as an air-raid shelter. It wasn't even finished yet and
no trains stopped there. The crowd was quite orderly until they
heard the boom of unfamiliar explosions. New artillery was being
tested by the army in Victoria Park, but the crowd didn't know that.
They thought it was an air raid and panicked.
A woman carrying a baby fell, but the crush behind her pushed
forward. The stampede down the steps left one hundred and
seventy-two dead at the scene, including sixty-two children. One
casualty died later in hospital. You could say they were killed


by friendly fire, thought Berlin.
Her father's recollection had remained vivid. He was fifteen
when it happened. He had just started work in his father's business.
A skinny kid, a 'runt', was how he described himself.
He was halfway down the steps when the stampede began. Half
Way between heaven and hell, as he put it. He would tell her he
jfelt the suffocating pressure on his chest, a sensation of sinking
»eneath a great, irresistible weight as the oxygen was squeezed from
is lungs.
As he spoke he would rest his hand lightly on his chest and
reathe more deeply and as a child, she would place her own little
and on her own chest, fearful that she might run out of air. Even
-w she felt her chest tighten.
Then he would raise his arms above his head and describe how
arms were outstretched as he sank beneath the wave of bodies,
was at this moment in the story that, as a child she had realised
t if he had kept sinking, she wouldn't be sitting there listening
Her first intimation of not being.
' But he didn't sink. He had felt a hand grasp his. It came from we, became two 
hands which slid down around his wrist, gripped
pulled with such might he feared his shoulder would leave its
' et. Her father had kicked and thrust his way up, using the bodijeneath
him for purchase. The hands didn't let go until they had
~ed him over the railings and he lay gasping for breath on the
lent.
ien he looked up, he saw his saviour was a tall, rough-looking
probably not much older than himself. The lad was inspecting
stomach. The spikes of the iron railings had dug deep into csh as he'd hung 
over them, pulling her father to safety. Blood
from the livid gashes. The lad tugged his shirt down and
d at Berlin's father, still lying at his feet,
din of the chaos around them seemed to come from far away.


The cries of those trapped beneath the dead were fading. The siren
wailed, and the lad was gone.

She unlocked her front door, stepped inside and slammed it behind
her. But she didn't feel safe. She'd flown under the radar for years,
now suddenly everyone wanted a piece of her. Coulthard was on
her case, Dempster had her at his mercy, Doyle knew her family.
Christ, Dempster might even have a key to her bloody flat.
She turned around and walked out again.





28

Dempster read through the witness statements a third time. They
all basically agreed. The woman had stood up, levelled the gun,
shouted 'murderer', then fired. The thing everyone remembered
most clearly was the sound of her neck breaking as she hit the oak
table. She was Merle Okonedo, recently released from a psychiatric
ward. It was her other connections that interested Dempster.
He leant over the crumbling brick parapet of the Limehouse
Police Station. A station had stood in West India Dock Road since
1897, when the manor belonged to dockers and seamen from every
corner of the globe. Hard as nails. Heirs to a maritime tradition of
piracy and mayhem on the high seas. The police cotdd barely hold
the line.
Nothing much had changed. The current station reminded
Dempster of a truncated version of Soviet constructivism. It had
been started in 1940 and finished after the war. Just in time to
meet the post-war tide of crime from East End gangs that reached
its zenith in the sixties with the Krays. They had set a standard i


(iress sense, manners and loyalty that the current denizens of Poplar
jpuld only aspire to. But in terms of cruelty, they had well caught

IP
The narrow balcony he was standing on was a refuge for smokers jlow that the 
pubs and cafes were smoke-free zones. He was freezhis
bollocks off out here. They'd given him a broom-cupboard
room on the top floor, well away from the Lazenby Incident
m. They didn't know him and they didn't trust him. The feeling
mutual.
The DCI leading the team had told him point blank they weren't
ing to pursue any connection between Okonedo's death at the
n hall meeting, which they regarded as an accident, and Laby's
murder. They weren't exactly sweating over that, either,
'r attitude was that Lazenby was a maverick doctor pandering
junkies and should have been struck off years ago. What a bunch
numpties, thought Dempster. The DCI had as good as told him
t Lazenby was bound to get it sooner or later from one of his
bag patients. You reap what you sow.
The Lazenby team had already lost two detectiVes to the suspideath
of an infant: his smacked-out mother had decided to
m up his bathwater by putting the tin bowl on the cooker. With
in it.
empster watched a young mum across the road. She looked to
ut fourteen, with a toddler in a pram. She'd stopped to talk
mate and the kid was making her pay by chucking his teddy
pn the ground, then wailing if she didn't pick it up and give it
to him.
e sucked the smoke deep into his lungs and felt it stirring his
He tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together. A dead
clutching a fake pistol and a doctor killed with a real one.
died during a struggle to disarm her, but he died during a rob
There was no sign of a struggle. Someone walked in, blew him


away, took the drugs and went out the back.
The body had blocked the door from the waiting room, but
whoever did it knew they could get out fast through the room used
by the addicts to shoot up. It had been left to Catherine Berlin to
push the door open and move the body.
He contemplated Berlin's role in all this. It was clear from the
get-go that she hadn't killed Lazenby, unless she had the presence
of mind to run out of one door and then back in the other, to
establish she had arrived after his death. Then there had been the
hand print. No killer ever stepped over a body to leave their mark
in blood spatter on the wall.
But it had been useful to let her think, if only for a moment,
that she might be in the frame. It had put her off balance just long
enough for him to push her in the direction he'd wanted her to go.
By reputation, she wasn't easily moved.
His thoughts drifted back to Merle Okonedo. He couldn't believe
it was sheer coincidence that had brought her to the public
gallery of the town hall the same day Lazenby was murdered. The debate was 
about the management of addicts in the area. Bonnington
was campaigning hard to have Lazenby shut down once and for
all. If Okonedo was so hostile to Lazenby's practice, why didn't she
just wait until after the Trust voted? If he lost, it would all be over.
Okay, she hadn't been thinking straight. After all, she'd been
treated for - he flipped back through the file - severe depression,
following the death of her junkie brother. But she was thinking
straight enough to know that waving a starting pistol around at
the town hall would get her cause, which was Bonnington's cause,
maximum publicity.
Dempster didn't think Merle had anticipated a dummy gun
would lead to her death. A dozen eye witnesses had seen Bonnington
engage in a heroic struggle to disarm her and in the mix she'd
toppled over the balcony. It was an accident.


He watched the baby in the pram throw the teddy out again and
this time his long-suffering mother plucked him from the pram
and hoisted him onto her hip. The baby smiled. He had a result.
'The dodge with the teddy bear was just a distraction. Who's the
dummy?
r Of course, he thought. Dempster dropped his fag and ground it
>to the concrete, cursing. am.





29

rlin's mobile rang. She answered, the wind whipping her hair
i her eyes.
'What's that noise?' asked Dempster.
'Waves breaking on the shingle.' f'So I'm guessing you're not in Bethnal Green?'
: 'Correct,' she said.
'Brighton?' he asked.
'I thought I'd get some fresh air and do some of your dirty work
the same time.' She picked up a smooth black stone and tossed
.to the grey sea. 'Kill two birds,' she added.
What time will you be back?' he said,
erlin held out the phone to capture the hiss and crunch of
d and waves. She hung up. He didn't own her.

could imagine her. A wasted figure shrouded in black, head
shoulders hunched, hands in the pockets of her Lenin
at, tramping across the pebbles at the shoreline, her knee
Cossack boots marked with a salt tidemark from the breaking
He realised he was listening to the static of a broken connection,
not the sound of the sea.
He put the phone down.

Berlin had always thought of the man who answered the front door
as Pink Cheeks. For years they'd exchanged polite nods and nothing
more. She guessed he was in his early sixties, well-preserved
and, of course, pink-cheeked. He was apparently in the middle of
cooking something because he had a wooden spoon in one hand. It
smelled wonderful. He took a moment to put Berlins familiar face
into the right context, then stepped back.
'You'd better come in.'
Berlin followed him down the hall into a large, homely kitchen.
He gestured to three saucepans bubbling on the cooker.
'I've got people coming later. This evening actually,' he said, flustered.
Berlin
looked at him. She'd bet he'd been up half the night cooking
because he couldn't sleep. His agitation oozed from every pore.
'How did you find me?' he asked.
Berlin had a sudden flash of Traitor's Gate, but ignored it and
went into her spiel. 'I'm sorry for this intrusion. I know it must be
disconcerting to have me turn up on your doorstep like this.'
She paused to give him an opportunity to put her at ease. He
didn't take it, so she went on. 'You had an appointment that day.
Just before mine. I know you would have kept it, but when I got
there the waiting room was empty.'
He stared at her, aghast. Berlin watched the pink drain from his
cheeks.
'Christ. You're not a police officer are you? I've already been interviewed.
I can't believe they'd employ someone like you. Someone
like us, I mean.'
Uninvited she sat down at the beautiful scrubbed deal table. He


turned off the gas under the saucepans and sat down too. Now she
could see the tremor in his hands, the sweat at his temples. He was
doing it the hard way. He put his head in his hands.
'When I saw you at the front door and realised who you were,
I thought perhaps you had come to, well, that is, I thought perhaps
you were connected to...'
Berlin recognised his desperation. Dempster could take him off
the list.
'You thought I'd come to sell you heroin. You hoped that I had the stuff that 
was stolen from Lazenby,' she said.
He didn't look at her, just nodded.
'And if I had - if I was "connected" to whoever killed Lazenby, or
if indeed I had killed him, a man who did the right thing by us for
decades - you wouldn't have said a word to the police, just paid the
rice and hoped and prayed that I would call again? Right?'
His head hung in shame.
'Am I right?'
He nodded.
'You disgust me,' she said, thinking I disgust me. 'You know what it's like!' 
he protested. 'I went to a local GP who
it palmed me off on a methadone clinic. I can't use that poison,
tried it years ago. The list of heroin-prescribing doctors is closed
nding a Home Office review. Someone told me it's been going
for seven bloody years. I'll end up buying on the street. I'll lose
erything!'
Berlin tried not to let her sympathy overwhelm her. She smacked
hand down hard on the table and Pink Cheeks sat bolt upright.
'Now, you're going to tell me everything you didn't tell the poand
when you're finished, if I'm satisfied that I've got the truth,
ight be able to help you out.'
He licked his lips - from fear or anticipation, she couldn't tell. Berfelt
like shit, sitting in his kitchen, holding out the inducement


of a salvation she couldn't deliver. But Dempster was right. It takes
one to know one. They weren't called 'users' for nothing.
Pink Cheeks took a deep breath and gave it all up.





30

Flint checked out the bloke's 'Who's Who in Business' entry and
made a few phone calls. The target's club was listed in his biography
because membership in itself was an indication of status. The club
did the right thing by refusing to confirm or deny his presence. But
Flint knew if he hadn't been there they would have just said so.

Fernley-Price woke up in a single bed with clean sheets, all tucked
in tight. He felt the strange peace that he used to feel at boarding
school, knowing his life was completely out of his hands. A moment
later he remembered. The peace left him, and he knew it
would never return. Never.
He lifted his head from the pillow, which set the room spinning,
but once it settled down he realised he was in one of the rooms at
his club. He had no memory of returning here after that god-awful
scene. The porters must have put him to bed. He ran his hands over
his face and throat and winced. He was losing it.
His life had turned to shit. The ship was sinking fast and he had
no idea how to save himself. He withdrew further into his highthread-count
cotton cocoon.
There was a soft knock at the door. He ignored it. The next
knock was firmer.
'Enter,' he said.
The door opened and the porter peered in at him.


'Sorry to disturb you, sir. There are two gentlemen to see you
downstairs.'
'What, at this hour?' blustered Fernley-Price.
, 'It's nearly lunch time, sir,' he said.
'I'm aware of the time,' said Fernley-Price, although he wasn't.
IWho is it, then?' he asked with trepidation. It was probably some
'©f his former colleagues who had seen him in the bar and knew he
holed up here. People he owed money to, no doubt.
'Two police officers, sir.'

e porter, who had been working since six a.m., was about to lose s job because 
rubbish like Fernley-Price had trashed the economy and club membership was 
falling off. He padded away down the
rridor and with each soft tread imagined the faces of the arrogant
ts beneath his leather soles.





31

-ing out of the train window Berlin realised the sea air had done ~t good. It 
had reminded her why she never left London. The moot
the express pulled into Victoria Station she was on her way to c British 
Library.

BL had good coffee, free wi-fi and, most importantly, it was
secure public place where it was unlikely you would encounter
target -- or a colleague, for that matter. And Berlin didn't want
ipster to start feeling at home at her flat.
He slid into the booth opposite her. He was late.
'What's with this place? Are you implying I need an education?


We have a book in Newcastle,' he said.
'I heard that book had never been returned to the library.'
He laughed. Then he got down to business. He passed a bunch
of documents to Berlin and summarised while she leafed through
them.
'The woman who died at the town hall, Merle Okonedo, was a
psychiatric inpatient until three days before she died. She had been
admitted with depression after her brother died of an overdose. In
prison.
'One of those documents is a ballistics report. The gun that killed
Lazenby was a converted starting pistol - same as the gun that was
used to threaten him at the town hall. The only difference was that
this one had been modified to fire real bullets.'
Dempster kept talking. Berlin wondered why he had bothered
handing her the documents if he was just going to tell her everything
anyway. This bloke loved the sound of his own voice and
obviously no one else would listen.
'It was an Olympic BBM 9 mm revolver,' he said. 'Easily converted
to the real thing, if you know what you're doing. You sand
off the orange paint and drill out the barrel so it can fire short
ammo. Weapon of choice for London gangs fighting turf wars.'
Berlin leant back and folded her arms. 'There's no link between
Okonedo and Lazenby except the type of gun, which you've just
said is very common. And why would a gang want Lazenby out of
the picture? Because they didn't like him providing free heroin to
potential customers?'
She could see her deadpan attitude irritated him more than it
should have.
'I never said it was a gang. There is another connection between
Okonedo and Lazenby.' He paused. Waiting for a drum roll. 'Bonnington.'

'What? They said on the news he was anti-drugs. It was someone


who wanted Lazenby's drugs bad enough to kill for them,' said
Berlin.
'You're looking at this all wrong,' he snapped. Dempster leant
across the table and retrieved the reports. 'He didn't want the drugs
to sell; he wanted them out of circulation.'
Berlin raised an eyebrow. 'Are you serious? You think that Okonedo
was working with this Bonnington? The bloke who struggled
with her, defending Lazenby?'
'Suppose he knew her gun was a dud?'
Berlin worked her way through the implications. Dempster
stayed quiet.
'Okay,' she said slowly, with more than a hint of scepticism.
Dempster couldn't help himself; he had to give her a nudge in
the right direction.
'He wanted Lazenby out of the way. It's the perfect cover. Be a
hero and save a man's life at lunch time so no one suspects you of killing him 
after tea. Anyway, who tackles a deranged woman with a gun? Someone who knows 
it's not real,' he expostulated.
'You've been watching too much television,' said Berlin.
Dempster snorted. She could see he was pissed off, probably because
she didn't ooh and ah in the right places, awed by his superb
powers of deduction. In his irritation he seemed to have forgotten
ley'd met so she could brief him on the outcome of her recent
ission': that which others might call blackmail. Dempster was
pbviously something of an expert in that field himself, although he
.Would probably prefer to call it leverage. She took her time, wantig
it to play out on her terms.
'Yeah, it's a nice theory. There's just one problem with Bonning~n
as Lazenby's killer,' she said.
'And what's that, Sherlock?'
'It was a woman.'




The combination of cold, wet bodies and not enough space turned
the Underground into a fetid sauna. Jammed between two enormous
Australian backpackers, Berlin reviewed what Pink Cheeks
had told her. She'd left a peeved Dempster in the BL, digesting the
same information.
According to Pink Cheeks, when he'd arrived at the surgery there
was a woman in the waiting room he'd never seen before. It struck
him as odd because he'd seen very few women there over the years,
apart from Berlin herself. Also, the regular appointment before him
was usually someone he'd described as a tall gentleman with 'Mediterranean
looks'. Whatever that meant.
The woman, enveloped in a hoodie, was standing by the consulting
room door, gazing up at the green light, clearly anxious to get in.
Pink Cheeks had sat down and got out his newspaper before he
heard the click that meant that Lazenby had released the lock. The
green light came on. The woman shot straight into the consulting
room without looking at him.
Sound didn't travel well through the heavy door, but Pink
Cheeks was aware of a sort of thumping: more a vibration in the
floor. Like a couple of heavy steps. Then he heard a bang, like a
whip cracking, and another heavy thud.
Lazenby hitting the floor, thought Berlin.
Pink Cheeks said he was starded and froze for a moment until
he heard the door of the self-administration room slam. He caught
a glimpse of a man running down the hallway. On the way out
people usually moved more sedately. Whoever had been in there
had felt compelled to get out, fast.
Pink Cheeks was pretty sure the running man was Mr Mediterranean,
the patient before him. He had no doubt recognised the
sound of a gunshot and bolted. So far this man had eluded Dempster,
having gone to ground, perhaps, after seeing news of Lazenby's
demise. But anyway, it was unlikely that he had seen the woman.


While he was running away, she was still in the consulting room,
presumably cleaning out the drug safe that Lazenby always stupidly left open to 
save time between patients.
The routine was that after a brief chat with Lazenby the patient
would take the ampoule into the other room, do the business,
then leave. Lazenby would give them about ten minutes before he
switched on the green light to summon the next in line. These
people were experienced users, stabilised on a maintenance dose.
; They didn't experience the rush any more, throw up or nod off on
I' the spot.
" Lazenby also gave a few of them the privilege of taking ampoules f home, if 
they lived at a distance or had other commitments. This was in breach of the 
Home Office guidelines and one of the reasons LavZenby
had been constantly harried by the GMC. He'd argued it was
> a clinical decision and nobody's business but his and the patients'.
In other words, up yours.
When the man ran past the open door of thewaiting room Pink
Cheeks took this as a bad sign and decided he should also scarper. ; He didn't 
see the woman again. His description of her - 'ordinary' swasn't
helpful. Her back had been to him, it was only a minute and Jie'd been anxious 
to get in and see Lazenby for what he referred to ras his 'little helper'. 
Berlin reflected that this euphemism was reminiscent
of drinking a full bottle of red while preparing dinner, then
describing it as a 'cook's nip'.
She extricated herself from the backpackers at Bethnal Green
and gratefully ascended from the pit into the freezing air, weaved f in and out 
of the beggars on the corner and made her way home.

Her key was in the lock when the sound of footsteps thundering up the stairs 
behind her made her turn defensively, her heart pounding.
' The postman was taken aback by the fear in her face. 'It's all right,
ptissus. Just me,' he said.


'Sorry,' she said, her shoulders sagging with relief.
'I don't blame you. Around here I keep looking over my shoulder,
too,' he said, thrusting a thick brown envelope into her hand.
'What's this?'
'Registered, innit.' He handed her a stylus and held out a
touch screen.
She signed.
"Thanks, missus,' he said, and took off down the stairs.
She tore open the envelope and took out a letter from work
and a pamphlet. The letter summoned her to attend 'an initial
interview in relation to allegations of serious misconduct'. There
was a long list of her infractions, and the associated penalties
should she be found guilty.
Suspension without pay for six months was the best result,
termination the worst. She could bring a support person, but
not a lawyer. The pamphlet explained the Agency's disciplinary
process and her rights.
The final paragraph warned in sombre tones that if she failed
to attend without a reasonable excuse the inquiry would proceed
without her. The interview was scheduled for five p.m. the next
day. A time, she noted, when the office would be emptying out.
A one on one. The letter was signed by John Coulthard, General
Manager (Acting).
She had barely turned the key in the lock and pushed open
the front door when her landline rang.
'Oh, fuck ofF,' she said. It was probably Dempster with anoth
- er wild theory. He seemed intent on this Bonnington, one way
or another. The phone kept ringing. Or it could be her mother.
She picked up.

'Hello?'
'Cathy, how are you? Roger Flint here.'
'Acting Detective Sergeant Flint,' she said. Her voice was tight.


The over-familiar little prick.
'We've been trying to get hold of you,' he said.
Berlin glanced at the pieces of her old mobile on the table. Flint
didn't have her new number.
'Inspector Thompson and I would like another word,' he continued
when she failed to respond.
'I've already made a statement.'
'We would like further clarification on some matters.'
'Such as?'
Flint's tone hardened. 'It would be in your interests to attend.'
'When?'
'There's a car downstairs.'
She crossed the room to the window and looked down. A bored
looking woman got out of an unmarked car and looked up.





32

When they drove past the police station Berlin had a bad moment.
The woman driving hadn't spoken a word, just opened the back
door and gestured for her to get in. She knew the doors were locked
automatically by the driver.
'Where are we going?'
'Not far,' came the oblique response.
Talk about a little power being a dangerous thing. Unfortunately,
a lot of power was an even more dangerous thing, and once the police
had you in their grasp that's exactly what they had, despite the
oft-heard complaint that the villains had more rights than police.
Until you'd been banged up in a cell you couldn't appreciate the
enormity of powerlessness and the fear that went with it.


From the moment Berlin got into the car she had wanted to get
out again, but when they pulled up and the car door was released
she was strangely reluctant to make a move.

The Limehouse Basin. The water was as still and grey as it had
been that morning when she came to meet Gina. Berlin could see
Thompson and Flint waiting for her on the other side, just beyond
the footbridge across the cut where the Basin ran into the river.
Their hands were plunged into the pockets of their overcoats, their
shapes indistinct against the granite sky and leaden water. Wraiths.
Flint smiled as she approached. A bad sign. Thompson was bent
over the rail, staring into the water.
'What's this about and why the hell are we down here?' she asked,
trying not to sound nervous.
Flint ignored the question and gestured at the lock. 'No accident
that they both went in here.'
'Who?'
'Don't play smart with me, Berlin. Doyle's daughter and Ludovic
Nestor. What do you think the connection was between them?' 'I've no bloody 
idea.'
'But you agree there must have been one?'
T don't believe in coincidence.'
Flint cocked his head and widened his eyes in mock admiration,
as if she'd said something clever. 'So what was the link?'
'Come on, Flint, enough with the games,' she snapped.
Flint shrugged and pointed at her. 'You. You're the link.'
'What? What are you talking about? She was an informant and
he was my boss. If you call that a link.'
She could see that Flint was having the time of his life. Thompson
was still gazing into the water as if he could read the flotsam
and jetsam like entrails.
'He never met her or spoke to her?' persisted Flint.


'Not to my knowledge. He could have got her mobile number
from the log, I suppose, but why would he want to talk to her?'
Detective Chief Inspector Thompson slowly straightened up, his
hand in the small of his back. His tone was mild. 'You tell us. He
made one hundred and twelve calls to her in the week before she
died. But the last call he ever made was to you.'
A small hollow feeling invaded the soft area beneath Berlins ribs.
'No,' she said. 'He didn't.'
Flint extended his hand. 'We'll need your phone.'
She took a step back. 'Get a warrant. Or arrest me. But you'd
better be bloody clear why or I'll have you for false imprisonment
and harassment before you can say Police Complaints.'
Flint took a step forward.
'And assault,' she added.
Thompson smiled and put a restraining hand on Flint's arm.
'We're not here for a confrontation. We're just running an investigation
and no one's being straight with us. Including you. We didn't
do this at the station out of professional courtesy'
He was a reasonable man who'd become tired, she thought.
Weary not just because he was working long hours, with two bodies
on his whiteboard now, but worn out by the constant lying and
perfidy of the human race. Especially those members of it who were
supposed to be on his side.
Seagulls skimmed the surface of the lock, alighting on the rafts
of rotting garbage that hung in the water, squabbling over morsels
of decay. Their raucous, mocking cries were an insult.
Berlin realised she had no alibi for the nights that Gina and
Nestor died. From some distance she heard Flint's voice. 'We have
evidence you met Gina on a number of occasions that you didn't
log. Nestor was obviously also involved with her in some fashion. He shut down 
your investigation and you were angry about that.
Any comment?'


A bleak future yawned in front of her. She turned and walked
away as fast as she could without running.
'Miss Berlin,' Thompson called after her. 'Please come back.'
She stepped onto the iron footbridge and felt the vibration as
someone stepped onto it behind her. Even as she picked up speed
she knew it was a stupid thing to do, but her legs seemed to have a
will of their own. She ran.
'Hey!' shouted Flint. She heard the disbelief in his voice, then
the sound of feet pounding across the bridge behind her.
The adrenalin surged through her and she flew off the bridge
and around the Basin towards the Narrow. She was aware that
Flint was gaining on her and that her heart was about to burst,
when ahead she saw the passenger-side door of a parked car swing
open.
A voice she recognised shouted 'Get in!'
She did as she was told. The car took off at such speed she had
to hang out and grab the door to stop it swinging. She dragged it
shut and fell back into the seat. She turned to look at her knight in
shining armour.
'You bastard,' she gasped between gulps of air. 'You knew they
were waiting for me!'
'Yeah. Well they can have you when I've finished with you,' said
Dempster.





33

Dempster was unlike any policeman Berlin had ever met. Intense,
tossing wild theories about with scant regard for the evidence,
and making rash moves. Like snatching her from the street while


other officers were in pursuit.
He said he had driven back to her flat from the BL and waited
for her to arrive. He hadn't bothered to pretend he was doing anything
except keeping an eye on her. Very trusting. He had watched
her go up, then almost immediately come back down and get into
the car. It had to be a police vehicle because the driver put her in the back. 
He just followed.
She sat on his couch and watched him pacing up and down on
the tiny balcony, phone pressed to his ear. His free hand swooped
and darted through the air, an angry red-necked bird, as he harangued
the poor sod on the other end. She suspected it was Flint.
Finally he hung up, slid the glass door open and stepped back
into the studio, one of hundreds in a new complex south of the
river, near Waterloo. It was compact, and that was being kind. London
rents were worse than Tokyo. The only place more expensive
than either was Moscow, so she'd heard.
"That's sorted,' he said with satisfaction, slipping the phone back
into his suit pocket. 'They were just trying to put the frighteners
on you. They haven't even got Nestor's cause of death yet, let
alone evidence to charge anybody. The Council invested with some
Icelandic bank which has gone belly up, so there's a freeze on postmortems.'
He
paused and gave her a wry smile to see if she had picked up
on the clever pun. She had, but she wasn't going to give him the
satisfaction.
He continued, disappointed. 'Plus, the pathologist's on holiday
and they can't afford a locum. Borough Command has just cut
DCI Thompson's budget, so he hasn't even got the resources to put
someone onto hassling the telco for your voicemail. SCD4 and
Met Forensics have laid people off and say they can't find the disc
with the dump from Nestor's phone. They think someone might
have taken it home. Nestor left it at the office, by the way. His


phone, that is. Did you know that?'
He barely paused for breath, while she was still catching hers.
'How can you get away with this?' she asked him.
'What exactly?'
'Snatching me from the grim arms of the law.'
'Apart from Flint giving me an earful, what can they do? They
were in the wrong dragging you down to the lock for questioning.
Thompson knows that. If they go after me, that will come out, then
we'll all be in the shit. What have they got to gain?'
'So it's the pot calling the kettle,' she said.
Dempster laughed.
She laughed too. Now I know I'm going off the deep end, she
thought. Laughing. It'll be crying next.
He stood there looking at her, expectant. She knew he was waiting
for her to check her phone messages. There was no point. It was
the wrong SIM card. Anyway, Nestor was none of his business and
she had always stuck to the need to know' principle when it came
to sharing. He didn't need to know.
Dempster shrugged and moved on. 'By the way, I've got something
for you,' he said, retrieving a battered grey file from behind
the couch Berlin was sitting on. He dropped it into her lap.
In the top right corner a steady hand had written in perfect copperplate
'Doyle, F. DOB. 6 Sept. 1928'.
She opened it while the unstoppable Dempster rattled on.
"They're a very interesting family. When she was eleven your informant
walked into Bethnal Green Police Station and informed
them her dad had murdered her mum. So you see, she had a history
of dropping her old man in it.'
That explained a lot, thought Berlin. How would you cope with
believing such a thing? She must have carried that burden for years the
conviction your father was a murderer and the ignominy of not
being believed. Perhaps she'd finally seen a way to get him. Berlin


had been right all along: demons had been driving her.
The file contained a yellowing sheet of lined foolscap, half a
dozen typed reports, liberally spotted with white-out, a couple of
handwritten index cards and some carbon copies. One of them
bore the name 'Georgina Doyle'.
Christ, thought Berlin, it's like looking back into the Dark Ages.
There was a slight change in her expression, which Dempster picked
up on. Maybe he was getting used to her.
'Yeah, it's hard to believe it was 1986, not 1936, isn't it?' he said.
'No computers. The quality of local records was down to the collator. This file 
was buried deep in the basement at Bethnal Green,
along with stuff from 1888 on the Ripper inquiry.'
'You're kidding me.'
'Yeah, I am, actually. The Ripper files all went to the National Archive years 
ago, but there's boxes and boxes of documents down
there I bet no one's ever gone through. Wonderful stuff on the
Krays, Jack the Hat, the Bethnal Green Disaster even, remember
that?'
'I'm not quite that old,' she said, without expression.
'I meant had you heard of it. It was a stampede down at Bethnal
Green Station --'
T know what it was,' she snapped.
Rebuffed, he shut up. Offence showed in his face.
Jesus, he really is a romantic, thought Berlin as she flicked
through the file. 'Nothing on the current systems about the Doyles?'
she asked, business-like.
'No. CRIMINT didn't get going until the nineties, and I guess
t lot of bods thought it was easier to dump files than enter them
into a new system. There was a lot of resistance to computerisation.'
, The report Berlin held in her hand said it all. On 5 March 1986
f Senior Constable Marks had taken little Georgina Doyle home
er her visit to the station to report her mum's murder. Her father


had explained to the copper that her mum had left him a few weeks
before and his daughter was having difficulty accepting that she
had been left behind.
It was pretty much the same story Doyle had given her. Had
Gina been right? Doyle was a murderer? Or had she just been a
confused child lashing out at her father? She certainly hadn't come
across as a confused adult.
The report noted that when the constable tried to reassure the
girl, she swore at him in an 'unbecoming fashion', kicked him in
the shins and went to her room.
It turned out the mum and dad weren't married, but their
daughter didn't know that. The report stated that the girl was 'well
nourished' and the home 'clean and tidy'.
Berlin could see it all. Doyle grateful to the officer for bringing
her home, a cup of tea, chocolate bourbons and a man-to-man
about the heartless woman who would abandon her child.
There was a postscript to the report. The mum, Nancy Baker,
was known to the police. The report didn't say how. But on another
piece of paper Berlin found her record: convictions for soliciting,
shoplifting and receiving.
The senior constable's report was signed off by a sergeant, who'd
initialled it 'NFA'. No Further Action.
The last time Berlin had seen that acronym it was splashed across
the policy log she had opened on Doyle. Nestor's digital signature
was beneath it and he had entered 'Insufficient evidence to proceed'
under 'Reasons'. Now they could engrave 'NFA' on his gravestone.
She glanced up from the file. Dempster was standing over her
with a cup of coffee. She didn't know how long he'd been standing
there, but he looked amused. She took the coffee and he plonked
down on a stool at what she supposed would be described as the
breakfast bar.
'So there you go, the father's got form too,' he said.


'The father?' She was confused. Doyle didn't have a record.
"The grandfather, I should say. Archie Doyle's father, Frank.'
Berlin paused. She looked again at the name on the file. This was
the man who supposedly knew her father. 'His name didn't come
up in my inquiries,' she said.
'Yeah, well, he's a bit of a recluse these days, apparently. A wide
boy from an early age, worked his way up to robbery and GBH in
the sixties, quietened down in the seventies, then went off the radar
completely in the eighties.'
'He must be an old man now,' she said, wondering about his
connection to Doyle's sharking operation. Was it a family business?
Dempster clapped his hands together. 'Right! You've got your
intel on the Doyles and I've got Thompson off your back, for the
time being at least. So let's get back to business. Actually, I've done
you another favour, so this isn't going to be too hard.'
Here we go, thought Berlin.





34

The receptionist was pleasant but edgy. Her name tag read 'Polly
Poh Li' but Berlin could see the invisible writing underneath that
said 'In Recovery'. Polly thrust a clipboard and pen at her, and Berlin
sat down to scribble her personal details on the form clipped to
it. She was late.
The soft cushions and pastel walls screamed 'calming environment'
but the smell of sweat and fear hung in the air. A door opened
and an open-faced young man in jeans and a Gap sweater emerged. He approached 
Berlin, his hand extended.
'Hi. I'm Daryl Bonnington. Pleased to meet you.' His grip was


firm and warm, his smile genuine.
Berlin's first instinct was to run.

Bonnington's office was even more calming than the reception area.
She could detect a whiff of incense. Bonnington sat on a beanbag
and gestured for her to do the same. No chairs. She chose a purple
one.
'Okay. Ms Berlin, you have been referred to this facility by the
Home Office, via the Metropolitan Police Service Witness Liaison
Service, following the tragic death of your GP. You're here for urgent
assessment pending transfer to detox andor a methadone
programme.'
'Or another GP with a heroin-prescription licence,' she said,
shifting her weight, trying to get comfortable on the beanbag. It
was bloody demeaning, being sprawled on the floor.
Bonnington smiled, indulgent. 'May I call you Catherine?'
'Berlin.'
'Fine. Berlin, may I ask you a personal question?'
As if she could say no.
He glanced at the open file on his lap. 'I understand you found
Dr Lazenby's body. That must have been a terrible shock. How are
you coping with that?'
Berlin composed herself. 'Pretty much the same way you're coping
with the death of that woman at the town hall, I should imagine,'
she said.
Bonnington was good. He didn't react, just made a note on his
pad. Berlin would have bet it was 'Defensive'.
'That was a very sad accident,' he said. 'And one I'll have to live
with for the rest of my life.'
Berlin could have sworn he meant it.
'Anyway, Berlin, we're here to talk about you, not me.' He read from
the file. 'Stress exacerbated by the murder of an informant. Feelings


of guilt. Question mark. Unresolved until case closed. Question
mark.' He looked at her with the steady, non-judgemental gaze of
the professional.
'So. What sort of outcomes are you looking for from a programme?'
She
looked into the abyss and cursed the man who had put
her at its edge.

Bonnington showed Berlin out, pausing at the desk to ask Polly to
make another appointment for her.
'We need a little more time to thrash out these issues before we
can agree on a way forward,' he said.
Polly offered a rueful smile with the card for the next appointment.
She'd been there.

Berlin tried to slam the door behind her as she left but it was controlled
by a heavy-duty door closer and she just jarred her shoulder.
Striding away she felt her feet slip on the ice but she was not about
to slow down. Fury drove her on. She ignored the man in the
vehicle kerb-crawling beside her.
'Get in,' he said.
'Fuck off, Dempster.'
'Come on. Get in.'
She stopped, leaning in at the car window. 'Do you know what
you've done? You've left me at the mercy of a man who is pathologically
opposed to heroin on prescription. He won't support a referral
to another licensed GP under any circumstances. He wants me on
methadone, for fuck's sake.'
'Yeah. Well, that is his job,' protested Dempster.
'You are an utter shit, Dempster. You said you had arranged an
urgent appointment with someone who could help me.' She kicked
out at the car door.


Ill
'Hey!' he shouted.
She strode on. He drove up beside her.
'Come on! I needed someone to get near him. It's perfect,' he
said.
She stopped dead and stared at him in disbelief.
'Perfect? You selfish prick! I suppose you think while you've got
those scripts as collateral you can do what you fucking well like
with me!'
A couple on the other side of the road had stopped to watch, concerned. 
Dempster got out of the car and gave them a wave. 'It's
okay. She's emotional. You know how it is,' he called.
The man nodded and tugged at his wife's arm. They kept walking.
'Well,
I'm over it!' shouted Berlin. 'Do your fucking worst! You
can keep your so-called favours. Whatever happens next, on your
head be it!'
She reached out and snapped one of his windscreen wipers, then
marched into the traffic as if there wasn't a car on the road. A road
which was slick with black ice. The driver of a Vauxhall Cavalier
was unimpressed. His muffled shouts of abuse included the words
'stupid' and 'bitch', accompanied by a horn blast. Berlin made it
to the other side, turned and gave him the finger. She could see
Dempster watching her. He looked frightened. Good. She strode
on.
He ran across the road and caught up but didn't touch her. She
kept walking, forcing him to trot alongside. 'Look, I'm sorry. I realise
now it was a stupid thing to do. I should have told you it was
Bonnington. I'm not used to working with someone else,' he said.
"There's a surprise. And you're not working with me, you're
blackmailing me.'
'Listen to me. I promise I'll find you the sort of doctor you want,'
he said.


'Why should I believe you?' She stopped dead and got in his face.
'I've got four hits left! What happens then?' she hissed.
'I'll sort something out. Trust me.'
His great red, bony hand touched her arm, ever so lightly. But
she felt it.

He wanted to make it up to her, so he drove her out to a pub in
Essex for dinner. It was modern, warm, and they served Talisker.
Berlin found the ahistorical ambience strangely comforting. She
didn't have to sneer at faux Tudor fittings or a Disneyfied past that
had been gussied up for tourists.
Her sensibilities, which grew out of her visceral connection with
the past, weren't outraged by the King William IV. She almost relaxed.
She hadn't said a word on the way out there, but once she
was on her third Scotch, she thawed a little.
Dempster had been his usual garrulous self during the drive, going
over again why he needed someone to get close to Bonnington.
Someone trained to manage a conversation. Bonnington would
never suspect she was working on a professional assessment of him
while he was supposed to be assessing her.
'The woman who got pushed over the balcony at the town hall,
Merle Okonedo. Her brother died of an overdose in prison,' he
said.
'I know that,' she said.
'Bonnington was his CARAT worker.'
'His what?'
'Counselling, Assessment, Referral Advice, Throughcare.'
Berlin wasn't impressed. She knew verification bias when she saw it. You make 
up a story and then go looking for the facts to fit it. It
was a trap that was very difficult to avoid once you'd got a scenario
fixed in your mind, no matter how hard you tried to keep it open.
Dempster's mind was now firmly closed.


'Have you got any evidence he knew the sister?'
'I'm working on that,' he replied, slightly peeved. "The connection
shouldn't be too hard to make.'
'So the theory is that Bonnington set up a mock hit so he could
save Lazenby from the mock gun and thereby distance himself
from the not-mock murder? Using Merle Okonedo as a sacrificial
stalking horse. That's pretty cold.'
'She was collateral damage. A martyr for the cause, if you like,
chosen by Bonnington,' suggested Dempster.
Berlin thought it was an odd choice of words. 'You're forgetting
about the woman Pink Cheeks saw at the surgery; how do you account for her?' 
she said. 'What's Bonnington's alibi for Lazenby's
time of death?'
Dempster shifted in his seat and picked at his french fries. 'He
was with a couple of kids. The sons of one of his outreach clients.'
'And?' she pressed him.
'The times are a bit rubbery. It's difficult to get anything definitive
out of a pair of kids,' he hedged.
'In other words, Bonnington's alibi checked out,' she said. 'Give
it up, Dempster, it's a dead end.'

Dempster was unusually subdued as they walked through the car
park and got into the car. I've hurt his feelings, thought Berlin with
satisfaction. He drove out of the car park and turned right onto
Hainault Road.
'Where are we?' asked Berlin. 'I mean, I recognise the wilds of Essex
but where exactly is this?'
'Chigwell. I thought you might like to see the place where Doyle's
father lives. We can swing by his house. I haven't forgotten Gina
Doyle.'
She gazed out of the window at the flat, windswept fields, aware he
was still trying to make amends.


'I'm focused on Lazenby's murder; you're focused on her. I know
that. I said I would help and I will. I got you that file, didn't I? It's all
intel.'
God, what a sweet-talker, she thought, as they turned into a
narrow lane. Bare hedges towered over the car on both sides. She
suspected Dempster found her silences difficult to take.
'You're too hard on yourself, you know,' he said.
'Is that right?' she muttered.
'Drugs don't necessarily make you selfish. It's just an excuse. Gina
Doyle's murder got to you and you're afraid that without heroin
you won't be able to paper over the cracks. Finding her killer won't
fix it.'
She was astonished. Had he been managing their conversations?
She stared at him.
'It's fear that rules you, not the drug.'
The silence was palpable.
'Stop the car!' she shouted.
Shocked, Dempster slammed on the brakes and she leapt out.
She thrust her way through the brittle hedge and into a barren
landscape, a blur of earth and sky melding in the dark. Stumbling
across the glacial furrows, she turned her face to the icy gale. Perhaps
it would freeze her rage.

Frank heard the car approaching. He cocked an ear when the motor
cut out, but after a while it started up and he heard the whine of the
reverse gear as it backed down the lane.
Repelled again. Try as they might they couldn't get near him. It
would be a sorry day for them if they ever did. He was ready.







35

Doyle, sleepless, tried to take his mind off things by running
through his mental tally, ready for Frank. He actually had to keep
two sets of figures in his head now, because he had to give that pillock
Fernley-Price a regular update on his end of the business.
The banker knew all about dicky figures, or he wouldn't have
come looking for investment opportunities with Doyle. He had
kept on asking for a list of clients, or amounts lent, or repayment
schedules or whatever. He said any type of documentation would
do. He must have thought Doyle was born yesterday. He would
just tap his bonce and tell him it was all up there.
Doyle sighed. Nobody gave a flying fuck about him. He just
had to get on with it. At least it didn't look like the Agency was going
to come after him now. Given the state of play, they probably
wanted to sweep it all under the carpet and give him a wide berth.
They weren't going to get out of this smelling like roses. And the
police weren't interested in illegal moneylenders. They wanted to be
real thief-takers. Plus, all the paperwork involved in a financial case
didn't appeal to them. They could put in a lot of legwork and then
the legal eagles would knock the case back.
So it looked like it would be business as usual.
He'd ignored all Fernley-Price's attempts to make contact since
he'd fronted him in The Silent Woman. He doubted the prat would
show up unannounced like that again. The less contact the better.
He didn't want whispers getting out about their joint venture.
God forbid that Frank found out. He was sure there was no way
he would, all the way out in his Chigwell castle. Well, almost sure,
The old man's paranoia was getting out of control lately and Doylf
didn't want to give him any more reason to be jumpy. He was still
sharp.
Franks business model was simple and had the virtue of bcl



transparent and self-financing. The punter knew exactly what was
going on and you didn't have to borrow to lend, which appeared
to be what banks had been doing. Doyle could have told them it
would end in tears.
Frank had drilled the basics into him. You take a hundred quid
and lend it to someone who can't borrow from the bank or anywhere
else in the high street. You tell them they have to pay the
hundred quid back to you eventually in a lump sum, but until they
can afford to do that, they can just pay ten quid a week. A tenner a
week sounds good to them; they can manage that. But they'll have
trouble ever putting a hundred together.
After a year they've paid you five hundred and twenty quid, and
they still owe you a hundred. Of course, you had to come up with
the hundred first - your little bit of capital, as Frank put it. But you
hang on to the tenners you collect until you've got a hundred, then
lend it out again. Now you've got twenty quid a week coming in
and two punters who each owe you a hundred quid. Magic.
The beauty of this model was that it didn't require tricky interestite
calculations and there were no contracts with five pages of
iall print, which no one ever read anyway. The small print was
up or else'. Something everyone could understand. The back
of the operation was just a couple of fit lads. No overheads. -If the punter 
couldn't pay the tenner one week you didn't thump
you treated it as a business opportunity: you offered to lend it im. The upshot 
was that he would have to pay you eleven quid
until he could put one hundred and ten quid in your hand,
"t scenario, he paid you out. This was bad for business and
uld want to know how he managed it. You would then relinistration
costs, like an exit fee, which he still owed you.
dard business practice.
Stopped paying the tenner and wouldn't borrow to cover
die small print would kick in, literally. The word of mouth


from that wouldn't do you any harm either.
Frank had honed his financial skills during World War Two. At
the tender age of thirteen he'd become a sort of broker, at least
that's how he described it. If you wanted something like petrol,
mixed fruit for your daughter's wedding cake or a nice bit of cloth,
Frank was the go-to lad.
Unfortunately the government didn't reward enterprise with tax
breaks in those days. The Ministry of Food inspectors nabbed him
and he was sent to the naughty boys' home for black-marketeering.
Frank described it as the educational opportunity of a lifetime.
Doyle drained his delicate bone china cup and returned it to
the saucer with care. It was from an antique set his mum had left
behind. When he was a nipper she used to hold one of the cups
up to the light and show him how you could see right through
it. He thought it was marvellous. She'd say, 'You see, that's how a
man should be. You should be able to see right through him. There
shouldn't be any dark secrets between him and the light.'
Then she'd clasp him to her and sing, 'All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful,
the Lord God made them all.' She wasn't religious, but when she
sang that old hymn the weight of the world seemed to lift from her
thin shoulders and the black eye she always seemed to have didn't
mar her beauty.
Doyle blew his nose and realised his cheeks were wet. Blimey, he
was falling apart, crying like a big girl's blouse.
Frank had chucked all his mum's stuff in the dustbin after she'd
gone, including the tea set. Doyle was just a little kid, but he'd
carefully taken it out, piece by piece, and hidden it in a box under
his bed. He wasn't allowed to mention her ever again and if he
forgot Frank would give him a back-hander and mutter 'that bitch'.
He couldn't even whistle 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' without
Frank flying off the handle.


Christ. What a family. His mum walked out on Frank, Nancy
walked out on him, then Gina walked out on the both of them.
He and his father were a right pair. Doyle wiped his face with his
handkerchief. He had a feeling that he hadn't really grown up to
be the sort of man you would compare with a bone china tea cup.





36

Berlin closed the curtains and got out her kit. She and Dempster
hadn't exchanged a word on the way home. She had stood in the
bone-cutting wind, hands and face scratched and stinging from her
tussle with the thorny hedge, waiting for him to drive off and fulfil
her fantasy of abandonment. But when the car continued to idle
and it was clear Dempster was going nowhere, she shrugged it off
and got back in.
She lined up her four ampoules, hands trembling, the back of
her neck damp with cold sweat. It was late and she was well overdue.
She thought of Pink Cheeks and wondered how he was coping.
It was clear from his sorry story that it was going to be impossible
to find a doctor in the time she had left. How was Dempster going
to help her? His promises were vague, but she had wanted to
believe him, so she had bought into his deal. Perhaps he could get
her some decent junk that had been seized by the drug squad. At
least twenty per cent of it always came back into circulation. The
problem was Dempster didn't seem to be bent, just unorthodox.
She subdued the panic that threatened to overwhelm her by
choosing an ampoule and injecting its contents. A sense of calm
soon prevailed.
She considered her options. She could try going private. At least


if she was a paying patient she might find a GP who would prescribe
her some strong tranquillisers. She'd have to prepare her system
for the shock of withdrawal, if it came to that. But if she lost
her job, where was the money going to come from to pay for the
doctor and the drugs?
The alternative was even bleaker. An NHS doctor would run
her number through the system and up would pop her status
as a registered addict. Then they would palm her off on a detox
programme or insist their lists were closed. Junkies were high
maintenance and a bloody nuisance around the surgery. The judgement
of these doctors and their approach to prescribing was moral,
not clinical. Heroin bad, benzodiazepines good.
But currently there was no room for concern in her system. Any
imperative she had felt to listen to Nestor's voicemail dissipated.
She was physiologically incapable of anxiety, while retaining absolute
clarity about her situation. She was coherent and calm, safe in
an embrace that would never disappoint.
The three ampoules that were left in the line glinted in the soft
yellow light. Three days before she descended into hell. Her mother
would retort that Jesus rose from the dead in the same time. Her
father would wink and tell her not to take that too literally. The ties
that bind. She nodded, smiled.
Somewhere in the distance a woman screamed. A face flew at
her out of the darkness, the head lolling at an acute angle because
half her neck was missing. Berlin woke up with a start. The screams
were her own.










Berlin's metabolism was reeling from the change in routine. Dragging
herself out of bed, she stumbled to the computer. On top of it
lay the old Doyle file. The file had given her a lead, but first things
first. She pushed it aside. She'd like to do the same with Dempster.
According to Thompson, Nestor had made his last call to her old
mobile. It would have been among the voicemails she'd downloaded
from the carrier after her phone was smashed by the disaffected
youths at the park gate.
She clicked through her messages. She had missed a number of
calls, some with blocked ID. Probably Flint or Thompson. Only
one message had been left late the night before last. She selected
'listen'.
The abuse at the beginning was clear enough, although Nestor's
delivery was slightly slurred and breathless.
'Berlin, you think you know everything, you arrogant bitch, but
you never knew Juliet Bravo. When I said no further action I meant
no fucking further action. Now look what you've done.'
It was a shock, hearing such language from Nestor's usually
pursed lips.
There was the sound of buzzing, an entry phone maybe, then the
lift doors droned.
'So glad you could make it,' said Nestor to his visitor in his familiar,
perfectly clipped, unctuous tone. Coming hard on the heels of
his venomous outburst it gave Berlin the chills. It was as if he was
suddenly seized by sober malice.
The visitor mumbled something Berlin couldn't catch. Then
there was a thud, as if Nestor had dropped the phone. Everything
after that was indistinct.
Berlin realised Nestor hadn't just left her his last phone message.
He had left a record of what was probably his last conversation.



The Central line was beset with the usual tangle of dramas, great and
small, that plagued the Underground: security incidents, bodies on
the line, drivers on strike. Like most Londoners Berlin neither knew
nor cared which it was; she just wanted to get where she needed to
go, get the information she wanted and get out again, fast.
She peered at her reflection in the glass of the double doors and
tried to straighten herself up a bit. She needed to create a good
impression.

The walk from Barkingside Station took her to a row of pretty cottages
that had the great good fortune to be within a stone's throw
of a Sainsbury's. There was a pub on the corner and a Chinese take
away about a hundred yards further on. A perfect location.
The herringbone brick path had been cleared of snow, which
lay quite thick out here, and grit had been laid. The path wended
its way through a garden that was pristine white. A modest, immaculately
clean Ford was parked in the drive, also clear of snow.
Someone was home. The brass knocker gleamed. After she'd used it
she was tempted to give it a rub with her hanky in case her fingers
had sullied the shine.
The door was opened by a tall man with a heavy build wearing
a crisp checked shirt and grey flannel trousers. His slippers were
brown corduroy and not the slightest bit worn.
'Senior Constable Marks?' inquired Berlin.
'Retired. I was intrigued when I got your call,' he responded,
taking a step back and inviting her to cross the threshold. 'Always
happy to help with inquiries.'

The array of horse brasses on the living room mantelpiece was dazzling.
She could hear Marks in the kitchen, the clink of tea cups,


which were no doubt coming out of the top cupboard. It was to be
the best china then, not the old mugs he used for every day.
He hadn't asked, and she hadn't volunteered, just let him assume
she was there on official police business. She prayed he wouldn't
want to see ID. It made her feel uncomfortable. It was the sort of
underhand technique Coulthard used.
Sympathy cards were arranged on the sideboard and a sneaky
look at them alerted her to the fact that Letty Marks had passed on
just before Christmas. The truth was that Marks would jump at the
chance to talk to anyone.
He returned with a tray of tea and chocolate bourbon biscuits.
Her favourites.
'So you're interested in the Doyles,' he began. He put the tray
down with care on an occasional table and produced coasters to
protect the French polish.
When his wife had done this he would have told her not to fuss,
thought Berlin.
'You don't forget that family in a hurry. Your phone call brought
it all back. It's not every day an eleven-year-old girl walks into the
station and accuses her dad of murder.'
Berlin sat on the edge of her armchair, trying to find the balance
between saying too much, and not enough.
'Got a cold?' Marks asked.
She realised she was sniffing.
'It's that time of year,' she said.
'You should try Lemsip,' said Marks, solicitous. 'I swear by it.'
Maybe it is a cold, she thought. But somehow I don't think Lemsip
will quite crack it. She brought out a soggy tissue and blew her
nose.
'I've seen your report in the old file,' she said. 'I wondered if there was 
anything else, Senior? The sort of thing that an experienced
copper like yourself might notice, but wouldn't put on paper


because it was based on instinct, not on facts.'
Flattery will get you everywhere.
'Call me Harvey,' he said, and dunked his biscuit. 'I was in the
job twenty-five years. Didn't get beyond Senior. Didn't want to.
I was content to work my shirts and go home. Unlike some.'
He wasn't going to be rushed through this. He sat back in his
chair, his gaze drifting to the sympathy cards. Berlin raised an eyebrow,
interested, encouraging him.
'Is this something to do with that girl who turned up in the
Limehouse Basin?' he asked.
He was still a canny copper, thought Berlin. 'Why do you ask?'
"The lock down there, at the Basin, was one of Doyle's stomping
grounds. Quite literally. Frank Doyle, that was - the patriarch, if you like. 
He's probably dead.'
This was what Berlin had come for, the history that was written
between the lines. Marks was on a roll now.
'I knew the family pretty well, although Frank's wife had left
him before my time. Frank lived with his son, who for some reason
was only ever known as Doyle. He was always Doyle and his father
was always Frank Doyle, as if his son was just a piece that had been
snapped off him.'
He sipped his tea and glanced again at the sympathy cards.
'Nancy lived there too, of course, Doyle's wife - common law,
that is - and their little girl. Or rather, they lived with Frank. The
flat was council then and I think Doyle's mum was the original tenant.'
He sighed and shook his head, rueful. 'I knew Nancy the best.
Nance. She was a very nice woman, but she had her flaws. Issues,
I suppose they would call them these days.'
'She was on the game,' said Berlin.
Marks nodded. 'She wasn't out every night. But she made a bob
or two around the Haymarket at the weekends, bank holidays, that
sort of thing. She was very careful with her money, didn't drink or


splash it around. She told me once she was putting a bit by, a nest
egg like, so that one day she and Doyle could get their own place,
somewhere with a bit of garden for Georgina to play in.'
He stopped suddenly, perhaps aware that he was turning into
one of those geezers that bang on about the old days. 'You're not
interested in all this trivia,' he said quickly.
'No, I am. This is very important background. Please go on,
Harvey.'
She reached for another chocolate bourbon to demonstrate her
commitment. 'May I?'
'Help yourself,' he said. T always had trouble believing that
Nancy would run off and leave her kid behind. On the other hand,
who knows what drives people? Doyle seemed okay, he kept a low
profile, although none of them ever had any visible means of support.
You never know what goes on behind closed doors.'
'Do you think he was living off immoral earnings?' asked Berlin.
Marks shook his head. T doubt it. He was a weak character, always
in Frank's shadow, but he didn't strike me as that type.'
'What was Frank like?' she asked.
'Now he was a violent man, very free with his fists.'
'Did you ever receive any complaints about Doyle, from his clients?'
'Clients?'
'People
who'd borrowed from him. The loan-sharking business.'
Marks looked confused. 'It doesn't ring a bell. I'm sure I would
have heard if he'd been standing over anyone, that sort of thing.
I would have been first in line for a loan.' The joke was halfhearted.
'No. He definitely wasn't into loan sharking in those days.
Neither was Frank. He was just a run-of-the-mill villain. Thieving
mostly. They must have got into the lending lark a bit later, after
my time. I was moved to another station not long after Nancy
disappeared. I heard Frank had moved out to Chigwell. Turned


into a bit of a recluse, by all accounts.'
Berlin noticed Marks s tea had gone cold.
'But I'll tell you one thing,' he said, leaning forward to make his
point. 'Doyle didn't move a muscle without Frank's say-so. Anything
illegal, Frank would be at the bottom of it.'

Marks regretfully saw her out.
'Sure you won't stay a bit longer? I could whip you up an omelette.
You look like you could do with a good feed.' He smiled. She had
eaten the whole plate of chocolate bourbons.
Berlin was almost tempted to stay, but she was going to be late
for her appointment if she didn't get going. It was one she couldn't
afford to miss.
She also knew that sooner or later Marks would ask her what her
rank was and where she worked. Then it would get awkward. She
didn't want to lie to him. It had never been awkward for Coulthard,
who would dissemble and mislead punters and police alike by always
referring to himself and other members of the team as 'Inspector'.
She'd even seen him sign into a casino on a covert operation as
Inspector Coulthard. Lying wanker.
'Another time, Harvey,' she said and shook his hand.
She was halfway down the path when he called to her.
'Catherine!'
She rarely heard her first name. As she turned around she half
expected to see her father standing there. She shuddered.
'Yes?' she said.
'Don't forget the Lemsip.'









Fernley-Price had been astonished the police had found him at his
club. He didn't know the old bill were that efficient. He knew he
had acted like a guilty man, but who wouldn't, confronted by two
detectives? Everyone has something to hide.
He'd had a few drinks to steady his nerves after they'd gone, and
kept ringing Doyle, but as per, the bastard wasn't answering his calls.
He had stayed in his room all day, drinking and weeping in a welter
of fear and despair. He dreaded the night, and when it came his
childish terrors had returned. He had made a hell of a noise, members
complained and there was a tussle with the porter. The last thing
he remembered was being sick and blubbing in the porter's lap.
Today would be a different story. He had to find Doyle, although
really this was the last thing he wanted to do. The man was a monster.
But it was either that or walk away penniless. Time was running
out and he had to salvage something from this nightmare.
He would scour London until he tracked Doyle down.
The traffic was gridlocked. The cab had crawled half a mile in
fifteen minutes. He tapped on the glass partition and urged the cab
driver on.
'Can't you find a way through this mess?'
The driver glanced at him in the rear-view. 'What do you want
me to do, mate? Fly?'
Fernley-Price slumped in his seat. Jesus Christ, what was the country
coming to? There was no respect any more. Once upon a time
people like this bloody cab driver had put on a suit and tie to keep
an appointment with people like him. The City had been important,
revered even. Deference was expected, and forthcoming. Now they
asked you before you got in if you had the cash for the fare.
Something had gone terribly wrong.




Doyle felt he might have taken his eye off the ball a bit lately. Returns
were slipping; he was going too easy on the customers. He
had such a lot on his mind.
Fernley-Price wouldn't take the hint when Doyle didn't answer
his calls or respond to his increasingly hysterical messages; he just
kept on ringing. No manners. But when Doyle got a text from the
publican at The Silent Woman saying the wanker had been in there
looking for him, he decided he couldn't afford to have him running
around town. He caved in and rang.
Fernley-Price had sounded half-pissed. He'd demanded to see
him immediately 'on a matter of the utmost importance'. The
geezer was in a cab roaming all over the bloody East End on the
hunt for him. He must be unhappy with his cut, thought Doyle.
Wouldn't meet at The Silent Woman either, wanted to get together
on neutral ground.
Doyle swore. He'd never get a parking space near Liverpool Street
Station. It was inside the ring of bleeding steel and the Congestion
Charge Zone. They had built the original station on the site of the
old asylum, the Royal Bethlem Hospital, and it certainly carried on
the Bedlam tradition.
He didn't want the lads dropping him off there either, in case
they caught sight of Fernley-Price. It would be a disaster if it got
back to Frank. Fuck it, he would walk: it wasn't that far from home.
It would do him good to stretch his legs.












By the time Doyle found the right cafe at the station he was nearly
frozen to death. He'd put on his sheepskin driving coat, which
might have kept the sheep warm but was seriously inadequate in
these arctic conditions. He wasn't happy. He spotted Fernley-Price
at a corner table and raised his hand in greeting. The numpty pretended
he didn't know him. What, did he think they were in some
bloody James Bond film?
Doyle plonked himself down and picked up the menu. 'What's
up with you, mate? You look like you've lost a pound and found a
penny.'
Fernley-Price glared at him. 'I've lost a bloody sight more than
that, I can tell you.'
Doyle could smell the liquor on his breath across the table. 'Yeah,
but none of it was yours, was it?'
Fernley-Price flushed.
Doyle looked at him steadily. The prat didn't like that; didn't like
being reminded that he had taken a lot of people's savings down
with him. He dropped the menu on the table and when the waitress
came over he didn't look at her.
'Cup of tea and an Eccles cake, love,' he said. The waitress slunk
off.
T want my investment back,' Fernley-Price said.
'Beg yours?' said Doyle.
T want my cash.'
Doyle leant back in his seat and folded his hands in his lap. He
could see Fernley-Price was coming apart. He was sweating, despite
the weather.
'Steady on, mate. What's brought this on?'
Fernley-Price's voice broke as he leant across the table. 'Look,
I've had a visit from the law,' he said.



'You better tell me all about it,' said Doyle.
'One of my clients died in unusual circumstances.'
'Why did they come to you?' asked Doyle.
'He phoned me,' said Fernley-Price.
'Is that all?'
'A number of times, okay. The day he died,' said Fernley-Price.
He ran his fingers through his hair, which Doyle noticed was matted.
'So?
What's that got to do with me?' asked Doyle.
'I got the Agency off your back, didn't I? It was business as usual
for you, right? But it's all getting a little too close for comfort. I've
done a risk analysis and this is a good moment for me to exercise
my options.'
Doyle was getting seriously pissed off. He'd walked miles, at least
three, in the freezing cold, to sit in this shithole and listen to a load
of crap from this twat. Outwardly he remained calm. 'I don't know
what you're talking about.'
Fernley-Price was trembling like a girl. Doyle was a pretty good
judge of character and he knew when someone was close to the
edge. He'd pushed them there often enough. This bloke wasn't just
scared, he was bleeding terrified. Of what?
Fernley-Price struggled to keep the hysteria out of his voice.
'When you told me about the surveillance operation I pulled some
strings at the Agency and got the bloody investigation closed down.'
The waitress put the Eccles cake and a cup of warm liquid that
was supposed to be tea in front of Doyle. "Thank you,' he said, but
didn't move. Just sat there staring at Fernley-Price.
'What? For God's sake why are you looking at me like that?' said
'ernley-Price.
'The op was cancelled, courtesy of my contact in the Agency,'
id Doyle.
'No. It was my man, Nestor. Ludovic Nestor.'



Doyle remembered how frantic Fernley-Price had been when
he'd told him about the two blokes in the car outside his flat. He
couldn't believe he had taken it into his head to interfere. Bloody
amateurs.
'But I told you it was sorted,' said Doyle, through gritted teeth.
'Well, I'm used to managing my own risk. I don't outsource it,'
snapped Fernley-Price.
Doyle reined in his temper. 'So what are you telling me? What's
the connection here? This Nestor was one of your clients and
worked at the Agency, is that it? Is that how you managed it?' he
asked in the most reasonable tone he could muster.
'He didn't just work there. He was the boss,' said Fernley-Price,
and snorted.
The snort spoke volumes to Doyle. It said, as if I would have had
anything to do with the lower echelons.
It seemed to go very quiet in the cafe. Something in the pit of
Doyle's stomach felt like lead. He tried to recall the chain of events.
After he'd spotted the two pillocks in the car outside the flats, his
contact had confirmed there was an operation on him. But all he
could say at that point was that the informant was a woman going
under the alias Juliet Bravo. The bloke owed him five grand. Doyle
had told him to get the op shut down and he'd write it off.
As an added incentive he'd implied that if he went down, this
bloke was going with him. The geezer was cocky and gave the impression
he could do pretty much what he liked at the Agency.
No problem, he had told Doyle. I can sort it. He personally
would guarantee that Doyle was protected.
Now here was Fernley-Price telling him that this Nestor was the
boss, not the wally in Doyle's pocket. So if Doyle's bloke was just
another shitkicker, what did he do to stop the investigation?
Doyle felt dizzy. He was overcome by a terrible feeling that his
contact might have gone the time-honoured route and got the


investigation shut down by getting rid of the informant. He swallowed
hard and made sure his tone was the right side of reassuring.
'Let's just take this down the road,' he said to Fernley-Price.
'There's a nice little pub down there, just beyond the bridge.'
Doyle knew better than to smash someone's teeth in before
you'd got all the information you wanted. He stood up and started
to walk out, then turned back, picked up his Eccles cake and put it
in his pocket.
'Get the bill, will you?' he said.

Fernley-Price was surprised at how fast a man of Doyle's proportions
could walk. He followed with reluctance as Doyle took a
sharp right off Liverpool Street into a narrow lane that ran between
a building site and an office block. It was not the sort of place he
would have ventured alone.
'I thought we were going to a pub just past the bridge,' FernleyPrice
said, nervous.
'Shortcut,' said Doyle amiably.

Doyle slowed to a stroll halfway down the lane and they walked
side by side. There was only just enough room. No one was coming
the other way. A couple of junkies crouching in a doorway looking
to mug someone appeared to think better of it when they saw i, Doyle, and took 
off. 'So what happened when the police came around?' asked Doyle.
'They told me that Nestor had drowned.'
'They looked you up just because he was a customer?' f, 'We were at school 
together, then went on to the same university,
lalthough he was a few years older than me. We socialised on occasion.
Anyway, they said it looked like suicide and they were talking
everyone he knew about his state of mind. He'd made some calls
me from his mobile the same day he...'


Doyle's pace slowed another notch and he nodded sympathetically.
'It must have been a shock.'
'It was terrible. Terrible. I don't know how they found me so fast.'
Doyle realised Fernley-Price was more shocked by the visit from
the law than by the death of his old school chum. He came to a
complete halt and put his hand on Fernley-Price's arm. FernleyPrice
flinched.
'And it was this Nestor who you had persuaded to get off my
case?'
Fernley-Price nodded.
'How?'
'Everything he had was tied up with my firm.' He broke off and
tried to tug his arm away from Doyle, who tightened his friendly
grip. 'See here, Doyle, I've got to get going, appointments et cetera.
Let's just agree to dissolve our partnership. Settle up. No hard feelings.'
'None
whatsoever,' said Doyle, with an expression of concern.
Fernley-Price gabbled. 'I really appreciate it, old man. My life's
in the crapper at the moment. I need to move on. You know how it
is, exposure. One can only manage it with cash.'
Doyle glanced up and down the deserted lane. He knew all
about exposure.
The next moment Fernley-Price gasped as Doyle's knee connected
with his groin. He doubled over as Doyle delivered a swift uppercut,
smashing his rings into the soft place under the chin. Doyle
felt the lower jaw crack nicely.
'Fuck!' Doyle exclaimed, and flexed his fingers. He should have
taken his rings off.
Fernley-Price was on the ground, throwing up. He didn't seem to
be able to open his mouth properly and the vomit was backing up.
'Mate,' said Doyle. 'That money has gone out to the market.
Your bit of capital's tied up. Be patient. Pull out now and there will


be significant penalties. You understand this principle, don't you?'
Fernley-Price gurgled.
'Good. This is not a gentlemen's agreement.'
His knuckles still stung, so he delivered a few swift kicks to the
kidneys and stomped on Fernley-Price's head.
Fernley-Price's screams died in his throat. Doyle heard, with satisfaction,
the gentle chink of teeth tumbling onto cobblestones.
'No hard feelings,' he said as he walked away. He took the Eccles cake out of 
his pocket and bit into it savagely. Could he have set up his own flesh and 
blood without knowing it? Good Christ, what had he done?
He wished he'd never met fucking Fernley-Price. He'd told him that the problem 
with the surveillance was sorted. Why the fuck had the wanker taken it on 
himself to interfere? He had got at this
Nestor bloke and opened up a second front.
Doyle stopped short as it struck him: could Nestor have killed
Gina, then topped himself out of guilt? No. He kept walking. It
didn't make sense. If Nestor was the boss then all he had to do to
protect his investment was stop the investigation. Why bother to
murder the informant?
It was doing Doyle's head in. He had to get hold of his bloke at the Agency. He 
would know by now the dead informant was
Doyle's daughter. God help him. God help them all. He threw the
rest of the cake into the gutter. Let the rats have it.












41

Detective Chief Inspector Thompson returned from the canteen
just in time to witness Acting Detective Sergeant Flint slam down
the phone.
'You won't believe this!' exploded Flint.
Thompson thought that he probably would; he was accustomed
to disappointment.
I've just got off the phone after twenty minutes arguing with
some cow who is supposed to be Law Enforcement Liaison at the
telco. They got the RIPA authority, oh yes!' He brandished a photocopy
of the form required by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers
Act. 'But there was a technical problem and a whole lot of stuff got
dumped. They just didn't bother to tell us! I said, what about the
bloody EC Data Retention Directive?'
'And what did she say?' said Thompson mildly.
'She said "so sue me" and hung up. Jesus Christ! What can we
do, boss?'
'Nothing,' said Thompson.
It was obvious Flint was gutted. Thompson also detected contempt;
he knew Flint thought he just rolled over when they faced
this sort of obstacle. Flint had been all for reporting Dempster
to Professional Standards after their run-in with him over the Berlin
woman. Thompson had been forced to remind him that they
had been operating outside the guidelines themselves and it would
only open up a can of worms. He had suggested they move on to
their next target. But he knew Flint thought he was a spineless old
fool.
"Their logs show that Berlin deleted all her messages, and now
their back-up has gone. So that's that? Fuck me! Why do we bother?'
said Flint.
Thompson knew that eventually Flint would stop asking, and



would stop bothering, too. He sat at his desk and woke up the
computer.
'Here's a piece of good news,' he said, reading from an email.
"The Poplar Public Mortuary has forty-two fridge spaces and eleven deep freeze 
spaces. Due to a backlog of post-mortems the mortuary
is now full. HM Coroner for the Inner Northern District of
Greater London, exercising powers under HM Coroners Act and
the Coroners Rules 1984, has directed that in all cases where an
inquest has been adjourned pending the outcome of a police investigation the 
case will be transferred to the Inner West London
Coroner's District forthwith.'
'Meaning?' said Flint.
'Meaning our bloke Nestor will be shipped down the road for a
P-M so we'll finally know if he chucked himself into the Limehouse
Basin or if he had encouragement.'
Thompson looked around at what was supposed to be his senior
team in the Major Incident Room. Three empty desks: one detective
on long-term sick leave awaiting the outcome of an inquiry into the
bashing of a suspect, one on a management course down at Bramshill,
and one out in the field re-interviewing witnesses because it
hadn't been done properly the first time. Then there was Flint.
Thompson opened up the computer files and checked recent entries
in the activity log by the outside team. There wasn't much. He
iifihecked the scene log, managed by the Action Allocator, and the
Jicy log, where he was supposed to record the reasons for instigat;
certain lines of inquiry and discarding others. Not one log was
to date.
"This investigation is at a standstill. We still haven't got anything
Gina Doyle,' grumbled Flint.
'She's as big a mystery as her old man,' mused Thompson.
He remembered Flint's challenge to Berlin at the first case conce
concerning the informant's motives. Was the dead woman


a good citizen, Doyle's disenchanted squeeze or one of his victims?
Turned out it was none of the above. She was his angry little girl.
Doyle had told them she had always blamed him for her mother
leaving home. It was plausible. Thompson knew that fury and
resentment from childhood, real or imagined, could flourish even
in the most mature of adult breasts.
But Thompson wanted more than just Doyle's account before
he'd be satisfied. There was an entry in the sparse activity log from
the detective assigned to background on the Doyle family. Apparently
there was an old paper file relating to them.
So why wasn't it on his desk?





42

Berlin wasn't fronting Coulthard without a union rep, even though
the union seemed doubtful that she would keep her job. Failure to
obtain authorisation to run a CHIS was a hanging offence, and failure
to follow a lawful direction to cease an investigation was where
the drawn and quartered bit would come in.
Nonetheless they had grudgingly sent someone to keep an eye
on the proceedings, a snotty graduate no doubt slumming with the
union to build his credentials for the main game: a shot at preselection
in a safe Labour seat. They had met in the lobby at four
forty-five precisely, so Berlin could brief him. Now she watched as
a stand-off developed.
The union bloke was pissed off when the receptionist at the Agency
told them Mr Coulthard had left the office early and wouldn't be
back todsy. He demanded to know why they hadn't been informed
via that new-fangled device, the mobile telephone?


No question, he had mastered labour relations.
The receptionist made it clear that she didn't like his tone and
she wasn't Coulthard's secretary. He was only 'acting' in the role
and she hadn't been Nestor's assistant anyway. All executive assistants
had been retrenched in the latest cuts. In fact, her own hours
had been reduced and she was only on reception part time now, so
maybe if he was from the union he could do something about that
while he was here, instead of giving her a hard time?
The union bloke left. Berlins irritation that he had just walked
out, after all the trouble she'd gone to, was mitigated by relief that
her discipline hearing had apparently been postponed. Relief was
quickly replaced by anxiety and suspicion. What sort of game was
Coulthard playing?
The receptionist told Berlin that, just between them, things had
gone to hell in a handbasket since poor Mr Nestor passed away,
here was a rumour that the government was going to fold the
Agency into another department, which meant, of course, that
more jobs would go sooner rather than later. People were jumping
before they were pushed, although there was nothing out there
jump to. Coulthard probably had a last-minute job interview
mewhere. She wouldn't be surprised.
Berlin found it difficult to believe that Coulthard would easily
"rifice an opportunity to humiliate her, maybe even deliver the
up de grace. She needed to talk to someone who could, and
;uld, give her a heads up on Coulthard. It was a very short list.

lin was on her second Scotch by the time Del arrived. He nod
at her while he waited at the bar. She watched him scan the
pub.
.'Don't worry, there's no one here from work,' she said when he
- down.
(Yeah, sorry. You know, we've all been warned off you, and the


way things are job-wise I'm trying to keep a low profile.'
'I get it, Del. I know you're risking it by even talking to me.
Thanks for coming,' said Berlin.
'No problem, mate,' said Delroy.
'Now tell me about Coulthard,' she said.
'He got a call, went as white as a sheet and left without a word. Just
left the troops sitting there, so everyone packed up and went home.'
It was no way for an Acting Manager to behave, thought Berlin.
'After you rang I spoke to his girlfriend, thinking it might be a
domestic drama or something,' continued Del.
'And?' said Berlin, anxious to cut to the chase.
'She said he came home, told her there was an op on and he
might be late, then went straight out again. She saw him getting
into the back of a black Merc'
'That's it? Did she ask why you were ringing?'
'Yeah. I didn't want her to worry. He's a pillock but she's okay.
I told her there'd been some confusion about the debrief. She said
she'd get him to call me. He's not answering his mobile.'
Del gulped down his pint. She could see he was nervous just
being there with her. 'First Nestor, now Coulthard's gone off the
radar. Is it a conspiracy or has Coulthard just taken a package and
dumped the girlfriend?' he said.
'Who's in charge when Coulthard's not there?'
'Good question,' said Delroy. "The rumour is the axe is about to
fall, so everyone is scrambling to get a new gig. Apparently senior
management are falling over themselves to take redundancy while
the packages are still good.'
'No one gives a shit about the job,' said Berlin.
'Never did. It's been flavour of the month for five minutes, but it
won't last. There wasn't a prosecution for illegal moneylending for
donkey's years before our team was set up,' said Del.
'Yeah. You were more likely to get a medal for services to the


Empire or a seat in the Lords,' she said. 'Do you want another drink?'
At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.
'Look, er, I better get going. You know.'
'Yeah, I know, Del. Thanks.'
She watched him leave and decided to have another. She was
used to drinking alone.


Berlin thought about the black Merc that had been waiting for
Doyle outside the Limehouse Police Station. She ran through the
sequence of events: an aborted investigation, a murdered informant,
a dead Nestor. Now a black Merc waiting for Coulthard.
Confirming a connection between Doyle and Coulthard would
go a long way towards addressing her disciplinary proceedings, and
could lead to Gina Doyle's killer. Was Coulthard capable of murder?
Maybe Doyle was wondering the same thing.
' The phone number Doyle had written on the newspaper was
now stored in her contacts as 'Billy Bunter'. She didn't think he
ould find this flattering. It wasn't his size, it was more his peevish tiality 
that led her to use that name. His was a kind of blind,
most innocent, greed, a sense of entitlement that, when disapinted,
would turn cruel. Doyle would cry, Bunter-like, 'Why is
"eryone always so beastly?' as he yanked out your toenails.
». She tried his number, although she wasn't sure what she would
y if he answered. Hello, Mr Doyle, can I have a word with Johnny
ulthard? In the event, a robotic female voice invited her to leave
essage. She declined.
She knew Doyle would never take Coulthard to his own place,
that of his associates. Men like Doyle always had a neutral
ce somewhere, anonymous, safe from prying eyes and CCTV.
yie lacked imagination, so in his case there was one strong pos'lity.
He would stick to what he knew.




Nino was surprised to see her so late in the day. 'We're closing soon,'
he said.
'Time for a quick pastry and espresso, Nino?' Berlin said, giving
him a smile.
He smiled back, indicating she should take a seat. 'I'll bring it
over.'
She sat close to the counter rather than in her usual corner. 'Mr
Doyle in this morning?'
'Now you mention it, I haven't seen him today.'
She knew Nino had seen them talking recently, so maybe he
would think it was a casual inquiry. 'Is his lock-up around here?'
There was nothing casual about that.
Nino put the coffee and cannoli on the table in front of her and
folded his arms. 'How should I know?'
'Maybe I should ask your granddad? He must have known
Doyle's father, Frank. He was a busy lad, apparently. During the
war. He would have kept his stock somewhere close.'
Nino watched as she drank her espresso.
'Everyone around here did business with him, from what I understand,'
she said. 'Flour, tea, sugar. All rationed then. Tough for
a small cafe.'
'Leave Granddad out of it,' he said.
Berlin reached for the pastry, but Nino snatched the plate away.
Berlin didn't move.
'Granddad upstairs, is he?'
Nino hesitated. Berlin could see he didn't want any trouble.
'Bow Wharf,' he said, and went to the door and opened it.
She took the hint.
'You should look closer to home,' growled Nino as she stepped
outside.
She turned to ask him what he meant, but he slammed and
locked the door behind her.

142
i
The cafe went dark. It was like watching the lights go down on
another era. She would never taste those chips again.





43

Bow Wharf sat at the junction of two canals: the Hertford Union
and the Grand Union. As a distribution hub into the East End it
would be difficult to think of a better location, particularly during
the Second World War when there was petrol rationing, and horse
drawn narrow-boats and barges had made a comeback. Frank must
fkave been involved in a bigger operation than the police at the time
lised, thought Berlin.
The wharf had once housed an enormous glue factory. The ware
around it had undergone the sort of haphazard transformathat
went with property developers and gentrification during
boom. In the bust, it had become even more haphazard. The
id moribund sprang to Berlins mind as she worked her way 3ugh the high grass 
surrounding empty 'business studios'. The
' signs of recent life were the fresh estate agent billboards.
<She was looking for something from the past. Like a bloody
aeologist of crime, she thought, hunting the artefacts of endless
ations of London villains. The lock-up must rank as one of
most ubiquitous.
iving the flimsy structures of the twenty-first century behind,
Amoved towards the remnants that slouched in forgotten cor
of the site: sheets of corrugated iron, crates that had once held
-tub washing machines, even an abandoned milk float. They tthe first tidemark 
of development.
made her way beyond these to an area where strange brick


edifices protruded from the ground. She guessed these were the
vents for long-abandoned tunnels or air-raid shelters. Beside them
were great gobbets of rusted industrial plant that had defied all attempts
to remove or destroy them. It was darker here and she trod
carefully, wary of potholes and barbed wire. The sound of traffic fell
away to a hum as she moved further into the wasteland. The only
sound was the plop of rats dropping into the water.
She came to a standstill at a narrow channel that ran off the main
canal. On the other side stood a row of concrete buildings, their
worn walls revealing a rusted rebar skeleton. Lock-ups. A light bulb
encased in a metal grille shone above a steel door, which looked to
be of more recent vintage than the shed itself.
Berlin cursed as she realised that there was no way across the
channel from this side. The water disappeared into the distance and
she might have to walk a long way before she found a footbridge or
it disappeared underground.
In the distance beyond the sheds she could just see the faint
glimmer of streetlights. She would have to retrace her steps and
approach the whole area from another angle, which would take
an hour at least. The channel was only about five feet wide. Could
she jump it? Not a snowball's chance in hell. And if she missed her
footing on the slimy bank it could be very nasty. Was it worth the
effort to try to get over there, anyway?
As she pondered her options, the shed door opened. For a brief
moment a shaft of light illuminated a black Merc standing a little
way off. Then the door closed and it was dark again. Suddenly it
was definitely and incontrovertibly worth the effort. Whoever had
opened the door to step outside hadn't gone far. She stood very still.
The sound of water splashing on metal told her someone was
pissing on a pile of old cans.
As the door opened again and the man went back inside, the
sound that came from within made her blood run cold. It was the


unmistakable sound of a man in pain. The steel door slammed shut,
cutting off an agonised scream.
She picked her way back to the pile of corrugated iron, carefully
dragged out a section and, clutching it with both hands, stumbled
back to the channel, gritting her teeth and silently swearing every
time she made a sound. Kneeling at the edge, she lowered it across
the gap. It covered the channel with a foot to spare either side, but
now it was suspended above the water she could see it was badly
corroded.
On hands and knees she eased herself onto the makeshift bridge,
: trying to spread her weight evenly. The iron sagged as she reached
jjthe middle. She steadied herself and exhaled, as if by so doing she
"Would weigh less. The slimy murk six feet below was visible through
' row of holes where once there were bolts.
She kept going, not taking another breath until she'd reached !c other side. 
The shed was close now and she could hear voices
; a low, continuous moan. She got to her feet, but crouched low
crept closer. The voices grew louder, carrying across the still
it.
The Merc was close to the door. The sheds had been built on a
it rise. A gravel track extended from them into the darkness
she supposed, across the wasteland to the road. She tiptoed
to the Merc and peered inside. The key was in the ignition.

the shed, Doyle sat in an old armchair nursing a cup of tea,
ling the lads bring Coulthard around with a few slaps. He was
; here freezing his bollocks off and they were getting nowhere,
lads were bored and listless now, no heart in it. Doyle was
to bet they'd gotten everything they could out of this numpt
you never knew. Men reacted in strange ways to pain. Some
stuff up to appease you; some became defiant and wouldn't
tell you what day it was. This geezer was an arrogant prick and


fanciedhimself a hard man. Doyle sighed. Time to bring out the
big guns.
Doyle put his mug down, eased himself out of the armchair and
went over to the kettle. He filled it up at the butler sink, where in
the old days Frank had kept eels fresh. As a little boy, Doyle used
to stand on tiptoe and peer at them, horrified but fascinated by the
writhing and thrashing.
He put the kettle onto the gas ring and turned to Coulthard, who was watching 
him nervously.
Coulthard was slumped on a kitchen chair. His shirt hung at his
waist, his chest spattered with blood and snot from his broken nose and busted 
teeth.
'No more Mr Nice Guy,' said Doyle.
The kettles whistle began to sing. He turned off the gas,
wrapped a dirty tea towel around the handle and picked up the
kettle. He nodded at the lads, who grabbed Coulthard's arms.
'One more time, Mr Coulthard. Did you kill my daughter?'
Despite the cold, Coulthard was covered in clammy sweat.
'How many times do I have to say it?' he cried. 'No! It wasn't me
and I don't know who it was! All I did was make sure the investigator
running the job couldn't get anywhere with it.'
'Tell me one more time,' said Doyle.
Spitting blood and struggling to breathe, Coulthard gabbled
through his story again. 'After you clocked the blokes doing surveillance
- and don't forget I was able to check and confirm you
were the target - the investigator wanted to continue the op. But
I told her we didn't have the bodies. I knew that wouldn't stop her,
she's a stubborn cow, so to make sure I told the boss there was
nothing in it, that we should shut the investigation down. So he
closed the file.'
'You told me you were the boss. Now I find out from my partner
that this bloke Nestor was the boss,' said Doyle.


Coulthard made a sucking sound. Doyle knew his mouth
would be dry.
'I never said I was the big boss! I was boss of operations, yeah,
but not the whole shooting match!'
'So what you're saying is that you're a wanker and you lied to me
about what you could do.'
'No! Yes!' Coulthard was falling apart.
'So what about this bloke Nestor, then, the real boss. He shut
down the job on your say-so?'
'Yeah! I was sorting it, just the way you wanted.'
Doyle brought his face close to Coulthard's.
'You lying toe rag. He closed the fucking job down off his own
bat.'
Coulthard blanched.
'Well?' roared Doyle.
'Yeah, yeah, all right,' said Coulthard.
'Why?' demanded Doyle.
'He didn't say. And now he's dead so there's no way to find out.'
So Coulthard didn't know about Nestor's connection with Fernleyice,
thought Doyle, and that his dosh was tied up with the banker
iker. How must Nestor have felt, discovering that his money
now invested in Doyle's enterprises? As long as Doyle was do;
well, so was Nestor. If Doyle went down, Nestor stood to lose
;rything. Of course he stopped the investigation.
Was that enough to make the geezer top himself? Guilt? Doyle
Jdn't stand not knowing. So Nestor was turning a blind eye to
misdeeds he was supposed to pursue - so what? It was the same
every bloody regulatory authority in the kingdom. There must
iomething else, but Doyle couldn't put his finger on it.
„'m very disappointed,' he said to Coulthard as he advanced
ds him with the steaming kettle.
ulthard's eyes were wide with fear. 'I looked after your interests,


didn't I?' he screamed. 'I didn't know the informant was your
daughter and I didn't know Nestor was involved!'
'I can't hear you properly. Who killed my Gina then?' snarled
Doyle.
The lads braced themselves and licked their lips. Doyle started
to tip the kettle. He didn't want the water to go too far off the boil.
Outside, a motor started. Doyle paused. He looked at the lads
and the lads looked back, gormless. The motor roared.
'For fuck's sake!' yelled Doyle.
The lads knew this cue. They ran to the door, fumbled with the
latch and finally flung it open.
'The car!' one shouted.
The Merc was bouncing down the gravel incline, headlights
ablaze. The lads shot after it. Doyle put down the kettle and ran
out of the shed after them, registering on the way out that the light
over the door wasn't on.
'Get that fucking car and bring the little toe rags in it to me!' he
bellowed, as they ran down the incline shouting abuse at the disappearing
tail lights.
From out of the darkness an old-fashioned milk bottle connected
hard with the back of Doyle's head and he went down, face first.

Berlin dropped the milk bottle, still in one piece. They don't make
them like that any more, she thought, running into the shed and
straight to the astonished Coulthard. Plastic ties bound him to the
kitchen chair. She grabbed an old knife from the sink and sliced
through them with one cut. They were obviously from Poundsavers.
She pulled him to his feet and he hobbled after her, joints stiff
from lack of circulation. Shuffling past Doyle's prone form he
helped life return to his legs by giving Doyle a good kick in the guts.
'For fuck's sake, come on!' hissed Berlin.
He caught up and followed her across the creaking sheet of iron.


When they got to the other side, Berlin kicked it into the channel.
Looking back they could see the Merc had hit a ditch and was
hanging at an angle, its motor still roaring. The lads were caught in
the glare from the high beams, standing there, staring at it.
Berlin and Coulthard ran like the clappers.

Berlin hailed a cab heading west down Roman Road. It pulled over and she opened 
the door.
'I'm going to resign,' mumbled Coulthard.
'No, you're not,' she replied. She leant on the cab door. He could see she was 
trembling with fatigue.
'Jesus, you put Doyle down,' he whispered. He didn't know who he should be more 
afraid of: her or Doyle.
'I wasn't even there,' she said. 'Some slick joyriders trashed his
and you took the opportunity to snap the ties and belt him. A
:ugh bloke like you, in the gym all the time.'
She was just too smart for her own good. He wondered how
ich she had heard.
'How did you know they had me?'
When he got no reply he remembered his manners.
?I mean... look, thanks.' He glanced up and down the road,
w>us. 'What was going on back there, with Doyle, I should ex
It was a misunderstanding.'
You obstructed my investigation because you owed him.'
omething like that,' he stuttered. Pell, now you owe me.'
aw he knew who to fear most. She gestured and he climbed in cab, as meek as a 
lamb. 'What are you going to do, you know, it all this?' he asked, his voice 
tight with trepidation,
k it,' she said, and slammed the cab door.





44

A hot bath eased Berlins aching back, but she knew that tomorrow
she would feel it in her legs. She hadn't run so far, so fast in years.
The contents of an ampoule had finally subdued the tremor in her
muscles that she hadn't been able to control. She wanted to believe
it was the adrenalin draining out of her system, but she knew it was
more likely the onset of withdrawal because of the delay in getting
to the heroin. It was a precursor of worse to come if she didn't sort
something out.
Her world had been the antithesis of the stereotypical junkie's
universe. She had lived an ordered, careful existence according to a
strict timetable. Now she was descending into the chaotic lifestyle
you'd associate with a rampant illegal addiction. And the real nightmare
hadn't even begun.
She feared that Dempster would prove unreliable, but she had
to keep that option open as the alternative was high risk. She hadn't
heard a word from him since their row, but tomorrow she would
be doing more of his dirty work. She had to keep her end of the
bargain. Time was running out.
A sense of foreboding threatened to dominate her, but she had to
get past it, and fast. Coulthard's gratitude and contrition would last
about as long as her bath. She knew him too well. It wouldn't be long
before the whole episode would become another one of his stories,
where he escaped the clutches of the bad guy single-handed. Still, she
didn't regret it. You wouldn't leave a dog in Doyle's hands, let alone a
human being. Even if it was Coulthard. And she had eliminated one
risk: she wouldn't have to worry about her disciplinary proceedings.
She eased herself out of the bath, wrapped herself in a thick towelling
dressing gown and opened her computer. She had 'borrowed'
an old version of analytical software from work, and now it would;
come in very handy.



mation is just a collection of discrete facts, perceptions and ings. 
Subjecting it to a process produces intelligence: actionable
wfedge. This was work that required perspiration, not inspiraSift, review, 
collate, eliminate.
Coulthard owed Doyle and interfered with Berlin's investiga,
but where was the evidence to support the proposition that he
Gina Doyle? He hadn't known who she was, and there was
' a mobile number for her in the logs.
Gina wasn't the type to be easily lured to her death. The wound her neck was 
very particular too. Berlin had a note from Thomp's
description at the case conference: 'A bite or a tear. A wound
some kind of serrated edge or teeth that perforated the neck,
ost severing the head.' Coukhard was a wheedler, a dodger, a
'pulator. He avoided dirty work. And Gina's death had been

She had been wrong about him forcing Nestor to shut down the
stigation. Nestor had taken the initiative there because . . . the
aght took her nowhere. She looked at her charts and realised e was nothing to 
indicate Nestor's motives or to tie him to Gina.
en Doyle was interrogating Coulthard he said his partner
told him Nestor was the boss. Doyle also knew that Nestor
put a stop to the inquiries off his own bat'. Doyle hadn't elaboon
the nature of the partnership - domestic or business - or ¦ the partner had 
come by his or her information about Nestor,
ther broken connection, indicating a line of inquiry.
She had thought Nestor weak, but not corrupt. Nestor could
vetoed her investigation at any time. Why would he need to
?
jShe struggled with the connections, but she couldn't tie any of
back to Gina's murder, he sat back and reviewed her work. She took cold comfort 
from
fact that she was ahead of Flint and Thompson. She made a note


of unresolved lines of inquiry: Nestor's inaudible conversation with
an unidentified person who may have murdered him, the Doyle
family file and Harvey Marks's account of their history, and now
the intel from Doyle's interrogation of Coulthard. She wondered if
she should have let the latter go on a bit longer, but dismissed the
thought as uncharitable.
She had also known the victim, which gave her some insight
into Juliet BravoGina Doyle. It was all progress, of a sort. Logging
names, places, vehicles, telephone numbers and all the other myriad
facts, significant and seemingly insignificant, that swirl around an
investigation was just the first stage. Teasing out the links between
them would expose the gaps in her knowledge and provide a rationale
for the next stage.
No one would NFA this investigation. She just had to keep her
head on straight long enough to see it through.






















f
Tie Sixth Day
Berlin knew she was being kept waiting quite deliberately, even
though she was the first appointment of the day. It was a test.
She had woken with a splitting headache and for a brief moment
had wondered why the day was so unwelcome. Then she had tried
to move. Her knees ached and her legs were as stiff as boards. The
one thought that sustained her was that Coulthard must feel much
worse.
She wriggled her toes to get the blood moving through her taut
muscles, determined to remain calm, to give no indication of weakness.
This was one she had to tough out.

Through his office window Bonnington watched Berlin in the waiting
room. She sat perfectly still, apparently reading a magazine, relaxed.
Too relaxed. She looked tired, but she was alert, able to focus on
what she was reading, so she hadn't got her hands on sedatives or
tranquillisers. Which she would certainly need if she was in withdrawal.
She
glanced up and caught him staring. Bonnington tasted bile
at the back of his throat. He tried to tell himself that his anger
should be directed only at the establishment that allowed this trav-f
esty to continue. It was wrong.
Berlin held his gaze. He felt his rage rising. She was a victim. He
mustn't blame her. She needed his help. But it was no good. He
defiance was obvious. Discipline was the answer.
He opened his office door and stepped into the hall wearing h: best smile.
'Berlin, would you like to come in?'

Berlin reclined on the purple beanbag and watched Bonningt
squirm on his. A thin film of sweat beaded his upper lip.


"This is blackmail,' he snapped.
'I'm levelling the playing field,7 she said. 'You think you have the
right to make choices about my life, so I'm just taking a little bit of
that power back. It's very simple. Dempster is convinced you're a
killer and he wants me to help him prove it.'
'And you will if I don't give you a referral to another heroin pre«criber?'

'Correct,' she said.
Bonnington flushed and sprang to his feet. "This is all wrong.
11 going straight to the police and having this out. I'm not going
be blackmailed by a crooked policeman and a degenerate...' e stopped himself 
before he said it.
'Junkie,' she finished his sentence. Now she had him. He'd lost i cool and 
revealed his true feelings. She adjusted her tone to one
urgent persuasion.
'If you're charged with murder, or just taken in to help police
their inquiries, as they say, the papers will get hold of it. Even e charges 
are dropped, you're finished professionally.'
lis gave Bonnington pause. He sat down again and regarded
with a cold stare. It was disconcerting how quickly he seemed
sain his self-control.
what exactly have you got that you think would convince
pster to charge me? I didn't kill her.'
lin took a moment. Gotcha. _er? I was talking about Lazenby.'



W
v






Thompson disliked this time of year. He arrived at work and left
again in the dark. But what he particularly loathed was being kept
in the dark all day.
The mornings steady stream of irritations had become an avalanche
of frustration: incomplete logs, computer failures, calls not
returned. This was the final bloody straw. Yesterday he had sent one
of his outside team to find the old file on the Doyle family. Now he
was reading an email that told him the file had been signed out of
the archives to DCI Dempster.
Dempster was beginning to get on Thompson's nerves.
He stood up and reached for his coat. Flint sprang from his chair
but Thompson waved him back. 'Keep at it, Flint. I need to see a man
about a dog,' he said and strode out, dialling a number on his mobile.

Dempster had made light of snatching Berlin from Flint and
Thompson, but it hadn't been nearly as easy or without consequence
as he'd let her believe. The call from Thompson wasn't entirely unexpected.
Now they were going to meet in what he hoped would be
a damage limitation exercise.
Thompson had made the first move and had chosen the tur
They were going to meet at Becks in Red Lion Street. WCl. We
away from the police station. It wasn't Dempster's idea of lunc
but he had a feeling that Thompson was one of those types wh
would smirk if he had suggested sushi.
Dempster decided to keep shtum and let Thompson make t
running. It would be a struggle for him to say nothing, but wh
necessary he could deliver the silent treatment. It seemed to wo
for Berlin. Or he would lie. He didn't have a problem with lying
another officer. He didn't know Thompson from a bar of soap
he had to cover his arse.



Thompson watched Dempster examine the menu in forensic detail.
'It better be good,' he said.
'I can guarantee it,' said Thompson. 'Everything's cooked in
Jbeef dripping, the old-fashioned way. This place hasn't been Jamie>livered.'
He chuckled at his own joke, but Dempster didn't seem
get it. He's a queer fish, thought Thompson. He also noticed
empster only seemed to have the one suit, which didn't fit him
yway.
A harassed waitress hovered over them. Thompson ordered black
ding, bacon, egg and chips, bread and butter and tea.
Til have the same,' said Dempster.
She grabbed a couple of plates of ready-buttered bread from a
iter and plonked them down, then left them to it.
What's your interest in Doyle?' Thompson jumped straight in.
fou're aware I'm here to support the taskings of the local MurInvestigation
Team who are working Lazenbys murder. There
be a connection to Doyle.'
ere was no connection and they both knew it, thought
ipson. He frowned. T didn't ask for a quote from operational
mate,' he muttered. He waited to see if Dempster would
rate, but he just sat there. Thompson ate a piece of bread and
'You signed out an old file on Doyle's father, the grandfather
victim,' he said.
said Dempster,
what's the connection to Lazenby?'
mpson knew damn well that Dempster must have got the
Berlin, in exchange for some underhand bit of business they
ing. Dempster didn't reply, so he probed from another angle.
; was no reason for Berlin to run from us, you know.'
bloke was chasing her.'
;tuous youth. He thinks it's a sign of disrespect when you're
'> someone and they run away.' He paused as the waitress


returned with two enormous plates of food, each topped with a
thick wedge of glistening, marbled black pudding. Thompson fell
on it like a starving man.
'You just happened to be handy, did you? To do your Sir Galahad
impression. Pass the brown sauce,' he said, mouth full.
Dempster stared at the plate of food as if it were a deadly weapon.
'She's important to my investigation,' he said.
'Yes. I understand you're in a difficult position. No resources, no
snouts and no influence with the local team. They tell me you're on
a frolic of your own, that the doctor's death was gang-related, if the
weapon is any indication, and that they were after his drugs.'
'Look, Thompson, I was keeping an eye on Berlin, that's all.
I followed the car you sent to the Limehouse Basin and saw her talking
to the pair of you. When she ran, I saw an opportunity to win
her confidence. Plus, she's not a suspect, is she, so why pursue her?'
'She hasn't got an alibi for either her informant or her boss. See
the connection there, do you?' said Thompson.
'You can hardly think she's a prospect for the murder of th
Doyle woman. And I thought Nestor was a suicide.'
'Most likely,' Thompson agreed grudgingly. 'We're still waiti on the 
post-mortem. These bloody cuts.' Thompson smiled at h
joke, but again Dempster remained deadpan. 'Look, the last pho
call Nestor made was to Berlin and that's what we were after voicemail.
It was deleted, by her and then by the bloody telco.
could be something or nothing, but she's the only one who can
us what he said.'
'Have you thought of asking her nicely?' said Dempster.
'Mate,' snapped Thompson, T don't need you to tell me how
do my job. Like I said, she doesn't have alibis for either of tk
so I'm entitled to treat her as a bloody suspect, not my best fit
She says she was home alone.'
Dempster sipped his builder's tea and grimaced. 'We both


she's not a contender. You're just looking for some leverage. I'll be
straight with you, Thompson, I don't want her in the system.'
'Why not?'
'It wouldn't be good for her health, and that wouldn't be good
;r my investigation.'
Thompson munched on a chip and stared at Dempster, putting
and two together. 'Dr Lazenby.'
Dempster didn't respond.
'She was one of his patients,' Thompson said.
.¦ Dempster remained tight-lipped, which told Thompson everyg
he needed to know. He burped quietly. 'So now she's implicated
three deaths, not just two. Her informant, her boss and her
tor.'
)empster poked at the food on his plate.
haven't touched your lunch,' observed Thompson. We just remembered I'm a 
vegetarian.'
was the final straw. Thompson wiped his mouth with a pa»pkin,
stood up, got a banknote out of his wallet and dropped
the table.
>n't know what your game is, Dempster, but stay out of mine.
Wake sure that the Doyle family file is on my desk first thing
Irrow morning.'















47

Thirty minutes later Dempster was waiting in the car outside Berlins
flat. He got out as she approached and followed her up the stairs.
He's got an unhealthy interest in me, she thought, as she let them
into the flat.
'Well?' he said, impatient.
'You're a bloody stalker, Dempster,' she said, and went to the
bathroom.
When she came out the kettle was on, which she thought was a
bit of a cheek - him acting as if he owned the place.
She handed him the mini recorder and he switched it on and replayed her 
exchange with Bonnington.
Dempster grimaced. This obviously wasn't the result he was after,
T keep telling you he didn't kill Lazenby,' she said. 'But there
is an issue around Merle Okonedo's death. Otherwise he would
have said "I didn't kill anyone," or "I haven't murdered anybody
or even "I haven't done anything wrong." Something like that, no
"I didn't kill her." His response was like a "tell" in poker.'
He knew she was right, but she could see he didn't like it.
T knew it would incense him if a low-life like me threaten
him. He recovered fast, but not fast enough. I'm telling you, ther
something dodgy about Okonedo's death,' said Berlin.
'But that case isn't going anywhere, with all those eye witnes
saying it was an accident. It's a waste of time pursuing it,' he s?
irate.
She regarded him with disgust. 'You're a piece of work, De
ster.'
He gave her a look that warned she was going too far. She
to rein in her temper by telling herself that he had the upper'
It didn't work. He was just another bloody copper who was
interested in a result.



'We're done! I'm not playing any more of your games!' She realised
she was shouting and struggled to bring her voice back to a
normal level. That didn't work either. 'I'm not going to be manipulated
by you because of some stupid competition you think you're
n with the local team!'
%i Dempster shouted back. 'But they're not working it! They're just
ting for the smack to surface and then they'll follow the bod.
You should know better than anyone what will happen when maceutical-grade hits 
the streets: junkies who have been using
adulterated crap will be dropping like flies. Or don't you give a
it about the likes of them? Think you're a cut above the average
ict?'
Ihe kettle spluttered and boiled, the room filling with steam,
pster moved to turn it off.
ive it!' she shouted. 'Just fuck off, Dempster! Fuck off out of
life!'
walked out, leaving the door open,
strode over and kicked it shut behind him.

i dispatched a Scotch and fumed. Dempster had used her and lumped her. Or had 
she dumped him? Now the bastard was
own with the Lazenby inquiry and she could concentrate
. Doyle. 'Concentrate' in its loosest sense, given her current
; mind. Take it easy, she chided herself, you've got two hits
are things go pear-shaped.
fired up the computer to work on her logs and charts. She
itain some discipline and keep generating lines of inquiry
i going to get anywhere,
row with Dempster bounced around in her brain. Her
solution to the dope problem went out the door when
: was little prospect of Bonnington responding to the
I ploy either. It was conversation management, a gambit.



He was no fool and she couldn't see him caving in to some vague
threat from a junkie.
At least Dempster had been good for something. He had retrieved
the old Doyle family file for her. She reached for it where
she had left it, right beside the computer. It wasn't there.
She knew straightaway Dempster had taken it with him. He
must have grabbed it while she was in the bathroom. His exit had
been planned from the minute he walked in. So he had dumped
her. She felt a flicker of disappointment, but then dismissed it and
tried to focus on assessing what Dempster's underhanded behaviour
implied in her current situation. He wouldn't dare move on
the forged prescriptions after what she'd done for him; it could get
too messy. That was a result of sorts.
From the point of view of her investigation, the old Doyle file
had yielded Retired Senior Constable Harvey Marks and brought
her closer to understanding Gina's motivation. But what was the'
connection between her death and Nestor's? Del had told her that,
Nestor had shut himself in his office after Coulthard showed him
the post-mortem photo and presumably told him she was Doyle'
daughter. That night Nestor went off the deep end, literally. It r
mained to be seen if he had been murdered.
Coulthafd owed Doyle, who suspected Coulthard had killed h"
daughter or knew who had. Coulthard had obstructed further s
veillance, at Doyle's behest, but Nestor had NFA'd the file.
That had obviously puzzled Doyle too. He had said that his partn
had told him Nestor was the boss at the Agency. So if the investi tion was a 
problem for Nestor, he had dealt with it. He didn't n
to kill the informant.
She was going around in circles. There had to be something in
intelligence that she hadn't managed to identify, but she was
gered if she could see it. She poured herself another Scotch and
back to her notes of the exchange between Doyle and Coult


on this point. She had written:
Doyle (aggressive): So what about this bloke Nestor, then, the real
boss. Do you know why he shut down the job?
« Coulthard (hysterical): He didn't say. And now he's dead so there's
way to find out.
Maybe there was a way. Doyle had said his partner told him
lestor was the boss. So who was the partner?
If Doyle, Coulthard and Nestor were out of the frame for Gina's
rder, then the partner moved in.
,She clicked on Nestor's voicemail and played it again. She had
red it down, speeded it up, cleaned it up as much as she could,
idn't matter; she didn't recognise the voice, couldn't hear what
being said and didn't have the expertise to enhance the audio.
: a harsh, mocking laugh and the sound of someone sobbing was
stakable.





48

Icbelieved in keeping your friends close and your enemies closfriends
were few and far between, so the room was never
To accommodate her enemies, she'd have to book the
pall.
picked up her mobile and called Coulthard. Her caller ID
lendy blocked, so she knew there was a good chance he vet.
; General Manager Coulthard speaking.' 1're back at work then?' she said.
I a pause. Now that the balance of power between them
, Coulthard had to work out how to respond to her.


'I've been meaning to call you,' he said, adopting his reasonable
voice.
'I beat you to it. I need to see you.'
'Where?'
'Here. My flat.'
'I don't think that's a good idea. I can't afford to be seen at your
place.'
'Who's going to see you? No one's watching.'
This time the pause was meaningful. Okay, thought Berlin, maybe
someone is watching. But were they watching him or her? She
looked out the window.
'The BL. Thirty minutes.'

Berlin watched from the mezzanine as security went through Coulthard's
bag. Coulthard had once proudly informed her that the
tactical expandable baton, known as the Asp, had a high psycho
logical deterrence factor on the street and low potential for tissu
damage. A great combination.
It was illegal for civilians to carry them, and he'd obviously take
it with him when he'd left the force, but Coulthard had never quit
gotten over the fact he wasn't a sworn officer any more.
The security guard waved Coulthard through. He'd remember
to leave his Asp in the boot of the car then. He scanned the lob
saw her watching him and limped over to the escalator. The lig
picked out his bruises.
'Facelift went well,' she said, as he approached. 'Yeah. Did we have the same 
surgeon?'
Her own bruises had faded, but the cut from the hoodies' att
at Weaver's Fields had left a scar running through her eyebrow.
She wanted coffee and a fig roll. Coulthard dutifully went o
get them. The BL had the best fig rolls in London. Fly cemete
they used to call them as kids. A shiver ran through her. Where


all this stuff about her childhood coming from? She had a sudden
image of a blank, whitewashed wall. She couldn't see over it and it
ttended into infinity in all directions. A web of tiny, hairline fissures gjbn 
its surface were becoming cracks.
Coulthard moved the coffee and cakes from the tray to the table
sat down.
'Are you okay?' he inquired, almost solicitous.
'Yeah, fine.'
'You've gone a bit pale.'
I She reached for the fig roll and took a bite. 'Low blood sugar,'
: said, and opened her laptop. 'I want you to listen to something.'
Suddenly distant voices, one of them Nestor's, shouted at airy
ling.
'She could see the cogs creaking as Coulthard tried to decide It he was 
listening to and what he could gain from this situation, j he wasn't a quick 
thinker.
)o you recognise the other voice?' she said.
[r, can you play it again?'
didn't recognise it. If he had he would have been cockier,
ing he now knew something she didn't. But she went along it, just in case he 
was hedging his bets. She played the file

u know the senior management team,' she said. 'You've been
tings with Nestor. Is it one of them?' i raised his hands. 'Honestly, I'm not 
sure. Perhaps if I knew
: it would help.'
1, she thought. A pathetic and transparent attempt to fish
; information. Knowledge is power.
Coulthard, if you've got even the slightest idea who it c, give it up. I'm not 
frigging about here. I'm already in the Ifilove to drop you into an even bigger 
pile and I'll do it the fcyou aren't useful to me any more.'


She spoke with quiet menace. The studious young man sitting
across from them reading a book with the tide Why Everyone Owes
Everyone and No One Can Pay picked up his bag and moved to
another table.
Coulthard protested. 'Berlin, mate, I don't know.'
She went to close the laptop, but Coulthard reached over and
stopped her.
'Look, if I find out for you, can we call it quits?'
'In your dreams,' she said, and snapped the lid down.
'Email me the file,' Coulthard wheedled.
Berlin's expression gave nothing away.
'One of the blokes working on the Doyle and Nestor investiga
tion is a mate of mine,' said Coulthard.
'Flint,' she said.
If he was surprised she knew, he kept it well hidden.
'Yeah. His team has interviewed dozens of people. Maybe onej
of them will recognise the voice.'
She finished up her fig roll as she thought it through. Coul
thard s eyes were bright with expectation. He wants this to< {
much, she decided.
'No,' she said.
Coulthard stood up. 'Fair enough. Anything else?'
'No, fuck off,' she said.
He pushed his fig roll towards her. 'Here, have mine. I ca
eat it anyway. My jaw's too sore.'
He limped away. She watched him travel down the escalat
The moment he got to the bottom he took out his mobile. C
ing Plint, no doubt.
She already had her own mobile in her hand.
'Limehouse Police Station,' a bored voice answered.
'Detective Inspector Thompson, please,' she said.
'Who should I say is calling?'


When she didn't reply, there was a deep sigh on the other end.
'Putting you through.'

Flint's mobile chirped at the same moment as the landline on
Thompson's desk rang.
'PCI Thompson here, how may I help?'
The person on the other end didn't introduce herself, but Thomprecognised
her voice. She cut to the chase. 'Do you know The
jroach? Can you come alone?' ffjfes and yes.' pte an hour?'
pfhompson glanced over at Flint, but he was intent on his own
, speaking in a low voice.
its me, sir,' Thompson said and hung up.
lint paused as Thompson stood and put his coat on. 'I'll call
ack,' he said and hung up. He stood up and reached for his


here and check those witness statements again, will you,


lat? What for?'
Pe might have overlooked something. Police work is all about

where the bloody hell are you off to again?' retorted Flint,
jmpson gave him a look that served as a reminder of the chain
id.
ak, sir,' blustered Flint. 'What I meant, sir, was - well I feel i aren't being 
properly used in these inquiries. As second in
ad I feel I should be kept informed.'
ipson's tone was mild. 'Quite right, Detective Sergeant
should inform you that I have just received an email with
-mortem report on Nestor attached,' he said. 'It records
body showed no signs of defensive wounds, no bruising


or other signs of assault, and his blood alcohol was off the chart.
Cause of death: cardiac failure due to hypothermia.'
He paused to give Flint time to build up a nice head of trepidation.
'I should further inform you that now we've definitely only got
one body - because Mr Nestor either fell while bladdered or took
his own life - we'll be regarded as over-resourced. Once I report
this to my senior officers, I dare say there will be reassignments.'
The minute the door closed behind Thompson, Flint was back
on his phone.





49

Fifteen minutes later Flint put a pint of Guinness on the table for
Coulthard, and settled down with his Stella. Coulthard picked u~
his glass and drank half of it in a single gulp. Flint took in his swol
len nose and the livid purple bruises around his eyes. 'So who w
it, mate? Your bookie or your dealer?' asked Flint.
'Very funny,' snapped Coulthard.
'Your missus then?' said Flint, without a twitch of humour.
Coulthard was clearly unimpressed. He drank the rest of his pi
in silence.
Flint had never seen him like this. He was always smiling, rea
with a quick joke and commiserations if things weren't going yo
way. Whatever had happened to him, the bloke was shaken,
doubt about it.
Flint was under no illusions. Coulthard was a crafty bastard w
would put a knife in your ribs with one hand while slapping y
back with the other. His charm had obviously worn a bit thin
someone.


'I'm in a bit of bother, mate,' Coulthard said eventually. He
wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
'Come on then,' said Flint. 'Don't keep me in suspenders.'
'It was Doyle.'
'Don't tell me you didn't pay up?' said Flint in disbelief.
'You put me on to the prick,' hissed Coulthard.
'And I warned you! I told you he's well known around the manor
as a source of funds, but he takes no prisoners. Don't fucking put
this on me!'
'Yeah, well, it wasn't that anyway. That debt was dealt with.'
'How?' asked Flint.
'I did him a favour,' said Coulthard.
'Jesus Christ! At work?'
''Coulthard barely nodded.
!<You stupid prick! How did he find out where you worked?'
(Coulthard shrugged,
'ou told him, didn't you?'
>ulthard looked away.
u and your big mouth,' said Flint. 'What happened?' he asked,
dering if he really wanted to know. ¥e thinks I killed her. The informant. His 
daughter.'
'nt didn't miss a beat. 'And did you?'
it out. That's not even funny.'
le must have his reasons. You better tell me what they are,'
lint, and picked up their empty glasses. 'I'll get them in.'
it didn't want another drink, but he needed an excuse to get
rom Coulthard for a minute to think about how he was go
handle this. Evidence about what Coulthard was going to
. would be inadmissible unless he was cautioned. Coulthard
lat. But if Flint cautioned him, Coulthard would just tell
fiick off and leave.
stayed in touch since the uniform days, but Coulthard
had left the force under a cloud. He was too free with his fists
and his tackle. Flint was doing okay in the Met, taking a degree
they were paying for to improve his prospects. He needed to
stay sweet with Coulthard: he knew a lot of people and his way
around other law enforcement agencies, which was always handy.
There were also one or two things Flint had done when he was in
uniform that were best left buried. And Coulthard was a grave
robber. It was tricky. He was caught between a rock and a first
class prick.
Flint put the fresh pints on the table.
'Took your time,' said Coulthard, and gave him a look that said
he understood exactly what process Flint had been going through
at the bar.
Flint almost blushed. 'You've put me in a difficult position, mate.'
'That's nothing compared to how difficult it will be if you don't
help me out of this mess,' Coulthard replied with his first smile.
Flint noticed it was crooked.
'What can I do? I've got my own problems. I'm going to be off
the Murder Investigation Team and back to volume crime if the old
bastard has his way,' moaned Flint.
'Happy days, mate,' Coulthard said as he raised his glass.
They sat and drank in morose silence for a few minutes.
T blame that meddling fucker," said Coulthard suddenly.
'Who?' asked Flint. The list of Coulthard's enemies was long,
and growing all the time.
'Berlin. Who else?' replied Coulthard.
Flint was surprised.
'It was her that started this whole mess,' said Coulthard bitterly.
'Like she twisted your arm to borrow five grand from Oily Doyley.'

'That was a straightforward business transaction and would
have stayed that way if she hadn't decided to play Lone Ranger


after the investigation was shut down.'
'Business transaction? That's rich, coming from the man whose job it is to 
protect the financially excluded from these vicious predators.'

'Look,' said Coulthard, 'do you want this intel or not, and what
are you going to do for me if I give it to you?'
'How do I know until you tell me what it is? You sound like a
rucking snout.'
Coulthard sighed. 'Okay. We're mates, aren't we?'
Flint raised his hand and they executed a weak high-five.
'I tell you what,' said Flint. 'If it helps me get one over Thomprn,
you can name it. Whatever you want.'
Coulthard raised his glass and drank to that proposition. 'She's
t the voicemail that Nestor left on her phone the night he died,'
announced.
'What? Impossible. The telecommunications company said it
been deleted by her and them.'
le smart bitch had downloaded it onto her computer.'
Flint hadn't even known such a thing was possible. He felt like
idiot. But if he hadn't known, he was fucking sure that Thompi
wouldn't either.
How did you come by this information?' he quizzed Coulthard.
'She played it to me. Well, edited highlights. She doesn't know
the other geezer is and wanted to know if I could identify him.'
Flint was suddenly sceptical. 'What other geezer? And what do
mean by edited highlights? Did she tell you it was Nestor's
mail?'
Mate, I would stake my life on it. It was him and someone else
ig gangbusters.'
lint saw a world of possibilities open up. 'My round. Fancy
ething a bit stronger?'




Flint and Coulthard walked out of the pub into the bone-jarring
chill. Suddenly they were very pissed. Flint noticed Coulthard
peering about.
'What's up, mate?'
"That bastard Doyle could still be on my case. I dunno where he
is or what he's doing. Could be round any rucking corner.'
'Tell you what, mate,' said Flint. 'Let's go and find my snout.
He's well in touch with all forms of pond life around here and he
might have something on Doyle we could use.'





50

Thompson watched Berlin at the bar. They were in what would
once have been called the snug. Most pubs served tea and coffee
now, so you could meet someone in a boozer at any time of the day
or night without appearing to be an alcoholic.
Berlin put their drinks on the table. Thompson squinted up at
the malts on display over the bar.
'A decent enough selection,' he said, taking a sip of his Ardbeg
and savouring the pungent aftertaste. He'd heard someone say it
was like drinking surgical spirit, but that was an immature palate
speaking. Berlin's palate was obviously very mature. 'This drop is
certainly more than acceptable.'
'You're a committed Scotch man then,' she said.
'Wife took me up there for my birthday,' he explained.
They drank in silence while he waited for her to say her piece.
'I'm sure you understand why I feel a sense of obligation to Gina
Doyle,' she said.
'And I'm sure you understand why I don't like civilians poking


around in my investigations,' he responded.
'You're swimming against the tide there, Thompson. Of all the
experts you use, how many are warranted officers? There are tens of
thousands of civil enforcement jobs encroaching on what was once
police turf, from benefit fraud to child protection. Even prisons
have been privatised. Law and order has been outsourced.'
Thompson knew it was all too true. When they'd introduced Police
and Community Support Officers, then Volunteers, it was like
watching the Metropolitan Police go into reverse gear.
'It was ever thus,' he sighed. 'It will be back to the tithing-man
and the Shire-Reeve next,' he mused. He sensed that Berlin's attitude
towards him was softening. The Scotch wouldn't hurt in that
respect.
'I want to help, not hinder,' she said. She got out her laptop and
fired it up, then double-clicked a file and unfurled a diagram of
symbols and coloured lines.
Thompson peered at it. 'A powerful bit of kit that,' he said, impressed.
'I
borrowed the software from work,' she explained.
In other words an illegal copy, thought Thompson. 'I've never
been able to get a handle on it,' he said.
'A visual representation throws up options that may not otherise
have been considered,' she said, bringing up more charts on
e screen. They were populated with icons for telephones, cars,
remises, locations and people, the data listed beneath each graphic
inked by different coloured lines. 'Especially where there are gaps.'
She pointed to an empty box beneath the icon labelled 'Victim',
t struck me that no one has reported her missing.'
He didn't respond, reluctant to give too much away.
'Have they?' she pressed.
'No,' he admitted. 'The national bureau's got the photo. In the
ent someone walks into a nick and reports a missing woman


fitting her description, we should get the alert straightaway. Or
when someone gets around to it.'
Thompson reflected ruefully that if he had officers half as efficient
as Berlin he would be happy. 'Doyle lost contact with Gina when she
left home,' he said. 'He tried to find her, using his own resources, but
with his aversion to the law he didn't report it, of course.'
'So I heard,' said Berlin.
It occurred to Thompson that he was sitting here discussing the
case with a witness. The whisky was talking.
'When we checked the records her mother had registered her
birth but entered "Father unknown" on the form,' he said. "There's
no doubt she was his daughter: we've run the DNA.'
'Doyle doesn't like a paper trail,' said Berlin.
'That's an understatement,' responded Thompson. 'It doesn't
look like she used her mother's surname, Baker; at any rate we
haven't found any trace of it. Nothing from her clothes. And as you
know, her phone, wallet, bag - whatever she was carrying had gone.
The divers didn't find anything in the lock.'
'Have you seen the old file on the Doyles?' asked Berlin.
'Not yet,' said Thompson, giving her a meaningful look. She had
the decency to look embarrassed and quickly took their glasses and
went to the bar. He had to make a decision about all this, and fast.
'I want you to try this,' she said, returning with two single malts.
In for a penny, in for a pound, he decided. 'Look, Berlin, you
probably know more about her than anyone at the moment. There
must be something you picked up on that would help us.'
He was making it clear that information sharing would be a two
way street. He would probably live to regret it.
'I've given you everything,' she said. 'She was in her mid-thirties.
Smart suits and shirts. London accent. Worked as something
in the City. Her mum loved the Juliet Bravo television show.
Very good-looking. I once saw a sleazy tourist hit on her. I would


say she was disdainful of men.'
"That's the first time you've mentioned that,' said Thompson.
'Is it? I don't see how it would have helped identify her though.
She's hardly alone there.'
'So what did you talk about when you met with her?'
"The meaning of life.'
He could see she was serious.
"There is something else,' she said, and sipped her whisky.
Thompson had been a copper a long time. He knew patience was
always rewarded in the end. He sat back and waited, watching as
she weighed up the pros and cons of this new sharing relationship.
'Nestor's voicemail. Someone else was there. But I don't know
who it is and I haven't got the tools to enhance it.'
She fished some headphones out of her pocket, plugged them
Into the computer and offered him an earpiece. He took it, leaning
forward, concentrating intensely on the disembodied voices in his ar.
;9v 'Play it again,' he said.
Berlin clicked replay. 'Who is it? Do you recognise the voice?'
He drained his glass and stood up.
To his dismay, Berlin did likewise.





51

nley-Price hobbled out of the Abbey - a very discreet private
pital - and onto Great Pordand Street. Thank God he had mand
to avoid the NHS. He didn't know much about these things,
t he felt sure that in the public sector they would have dragged
police into it.
A taxi drew up alongside him, but he waved it away and looked
around for a bus stop. Actually, he didn't know which number bus
would take him home. Christ, he was like a helpless infant. His jaw
was wired up, so he could only suck protein shakes through a straw.
The dope they had him on was pretty good, but they had dried him
out and as the alcohol had left his body an awful clarity hit home.
He had sunk about as low as a man could go.
He should go to the police and shop Doyle, good and proper,
but it was a high-risk strategy with a huge downside, particularly
without a bloody good lawyer. He could make a clean breast of the
whole sordid business, but who was going to represent an insolvent
hedge-fund manager on the strength of an IOU? The word of a
gendeman banker was worthless these days. They would probably
hang him high.
Bugger the buses; he would take the Tube. He was heading up
Great Portland Street towards the station when a sign caught his
eye. The Green Man. Just keep going, old man, he told himself.
The door opened as he passed and that unmistakable aroma, eau de
pub, drifted out. Fernley-Price took a deep breath.
A patron who was leaving the establishment kindly held the
door open. Fernley-Price limped across the threshold and fronted
up to the bar. The barmaid stood, impassive, as he hung his cane
on a stool and fished in his pockets. He found a crumpled tenner.
'Otch. Arge,' he said, without moving his teeth or lips. Just as
well I don't have to ask for a gottle of geer, he thought.
The barmaid dispensed a double Scotch from the optic, plonked
it on the bar, then plucked a straw from a dispenser and dropped
it into the glass.
'That's the short straw,' she said. 'Eers.'
Soon after he'd stumbled into The Green Man, Fernley-Price
stumbled out again.
He had a better drinks cabinet at home.


52


Thompson pressed the intercom button. He still wasn't sure how
Berlin had persuaded him to bring her along. He'd had a distinct
feeling that if he refused she would have followed him, and he
hadn't wanted to spend his time looking for a tail. He also had to
admit she had some smarts and, unlike Flint, she didn't seem to be
motivated purely by self-interest and ego.
He pressed the button again. The luxury warehouse conversion
was right on the river. The seagulls and pigeons jostled for roosting
space with CCTV cameras, which actually swivelled when you
approached. This time there was a muffled response from the intercom.
'Detective
Chief Inspector Thompson here, sir. May we have a
word?' he shouted into the tiny grille, holding his warrant card up
to the camera. Berlin stayed out of shot.
The outer door clicked open and they proceeded into the vestibule.

Berlin
would have sworn the scent of rurh, sugar and spices was jjp.Will seeping from 
the massive oak timbers that hung low over their
beads. Trade. It was why the Romans used this port in Britannia. fi A deep 
tidal river, good for berthing ships, but narrow enough just
here to be bridged. Trade still provided a reason for the city's existence,
but now it was in something called 'invisibles'. She reflected
lhat the term was prescient. The invisibles had disappeared.
Thompson pressed the lift button and turned to her. T don't
want to hear a word out of you, okay?' he said. 'Okay?'
j& She nodded and put her finger to her sealed lips.
j< They rode up in the lift in silence. He couldn't be less like Dempcr,
she thought; he was a man of few words, and a placid, meical,
old-style copper through and through.


When they reached the fourth floor the doors opened onto a carpeted
hallway with just the one door leading off. A camera swivelled
to monitor their progress. Thompson knocked and a few seconds
later the door opened.
Jeremy Fernley-Price swayed before them. The smell of alcohol
oozed from every pore. His head was encased in a wire frame,
which pinned his jaw. He grunted and stepped aside to let them
enter, gesturing with his cane. The flat was about the same size as
Berlin's local supermarket.
Fernley-Price followed them into a capacious sitting room with
floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the river. Berlin walked
across and looked down on what had once been Execution Dock.
The pirates they hanged there were kept in a metal cage, a gibbet, until the 
tide had washed over their bodies three times. Punishment
was poetic then, she thought. Now it was humane, but prosaic.
Pity.
"This is Catherine Berlin, sir. A colleague,' she heard Thompson
say. She turned back into the room and nodded at Fernley-Price,
who couldn't nod back. He raised his cane a couple of inches in
greeting then gingerly lowered himself into a leather recliner.
'Been in an accident, have we, sir?' inquired Thompson. She
could see he was nonplussed. The whole point of the exercise was
to hear the man's voice again, but here he was, speechless.
'We just wanted to clarify a couple of points about your relationship
with Ludovic Nestor. But I see you are indisposed. You told us
last time we spoke that he was a client of yours. Sir?'
Tap the cane once for yes, twice for no, thought Berlin. This was
bloody hopeless.
'Perhaps you could write down the date of the last time you saw
him, sir?'
Fernley-Price groaned. Berlin gazed about at the empty pizza
boxes, dirty glasses and discarded shirts. He should get a new cleaner,


she thought. No doubt he would have a woman who came in 'to
do'.
Fernley-Price had levered himself out of the recliner and was
hunting among the sea of paper on a massive desk for his diary.
Berlin thought it was a ploy. Surely he would have an electronic
calendar, probably a Blackberry, as well as a cleaner. He might be
unable to speak, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try to treat them
like plonkers.
'May I use the facilities?' she asked.
Fernley-Price waved a hand in the direction of a door leading off
the sitting room. She avoided looking at Thompson, but could feel
him beaming a warning her way. She stepped out of the room into
a long hallway and gently closed the door behind her.
Thick carpet ran the length of the hall and the heavy timber
doors were beautifully hung on silent hinges. Perfect. She decided
to start at the far end, so that she would be back near the sitting
room door by the time Thompson or Fernley-Price came looking
for her.
Her movements were swift and precise. The first door opened
onto what was apparently a guest room. The single bed was made
up, and there was nothing in the wardrobe or on the bureau.
The next room was a library. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, with
mobile ladder attached. Soft lights that came on as you entered.
Deep chairs.
This wasn't how the other half lived in London; this was how the 'top ten per 
cent lived. They owned two hundred and seventy-three
,<imes more than the poorest, according to Newsnight. Berlin doubt- pd that 
Fernley-Price had needed a one hundred and ten per cent
[>w-doc mortgage. Unlike hers, which she'd only finally managed
get through a broker who advertised: 'No deposit? No credit his:ry?
No problem!'
She backed out and closed the library door behind her. Two


doors remaining. She hesitated between them. She could hear
Thompson in the sitting room. His voice seemed to be getting louder,
and she wondered if he was approaching the door to the hallway
or if it was some kind of warning. She took the door closest to her
and went for it.

Thompson was becoming increasingly frustrated with Fernley-Price
and anxious about what Berlin was up to. He raised his voice, addressing
Fernley-Price as if he were deaf. He was obviously drunk
and possibly drugged, but Thompson thought he could also detect
recalcitrance and a reluctance to cooperate.
There was no point taking him to the station in that condition.
Plus he would have to call out the doctor, who would probably deem
him unfit for questioning. He'd better retrieve Berlin and depart.
TO just see what's keeping my colleague, sir,' he said. FernleyPrice
looked puzzled, as if he had forgotten that there was anyone
else there.
At that moment, Berlin appeared. Thompson was relieved, until
she opened her mouth.
'Where's your coat, sir?' she said to Fernley-Price. 'We'd like you
to come with us, if you don't mind.'
What the hell was she playing at? She held Thompson's eye and
gave him a nod that said she knew what she was doing. Did she?
He decided to play along.
Fernley-Price was bemused. He waved his cane at Berlin, a gesture
of dismissal. But instead of backing off, she grabbed it, grasped
his arm with her other hand and dragged him out of the chair.
Fernley-Price squealed with pain.
'Let me help you up, sir,' she said.

With Fernley-Price settled in the back seat and Thompson at the
wheel, Berlin punched a Poplar High Street address into the sat nav.


An imperious voice announced it was calculating the route, which
it said was 2.5 miles and would take eleven minutes.
'Liar,' said Berlin. 'It will take at least twenty.' She addressed
Fernley-Price over her shoulder. "This is very kind of you, sir. Given
your current disability, we appreciate your assistance by other
means.'
Fernley-Price didn't respond. She saw Thompson check him in
the rear-view mirror, no doubt hoping he wouldn't throw up or
die en route. Berlin hoped that her comment would also reassure
Thompson.
Thompson drove according to the sat nav's insistent instructions.
It took them twenty minutes to reach their destination. No one
spoke. Gentle snoring indicated their passenger was out for the
count.
When they arrived at their destination, Thompson gave her a
look that she took to mean he was beginning to see a method in her
madness. He parked illegally, taking a 'Police' sign from the glove
box and propping it on the dashboard. Rousing Fernley-Price was
not easy.
'Come on, sir, out you come,' said Thompson, helping him out
of his seat.
Berlin positioned herself on the other side of Fernley-Price and
together they steered him along the pavement and down a side
street.

Thompson spoke through the hole in the thick glass that shielded
: the receptionist from the germs of the public. He flashed his warrant
card and explained what he wanted.
She picked up a phone, spoke briefly into it, then hung up.
They'll be waiting for you,' she said.
Fernley-Price was leaning heavily against the wall, dazed. 'Air ar c?' he asked.


Berlin knew this was 'Where are we?' but just smiled and patted
his arm. 'Not to worry, sir,' she said. 'Won't be long now.'

The trio made their way down a long, dimly lit corridor. There was
a faint smell of antiseptic in the air as they pushed through a set of
double doors made of heavy-duty plastic, which swished to a close
behind them. It was colder in the small room they'd entered, and
the sudden chill seemed to bring Fernley-Price to a higher level of
consciousness.
'Ang on,' he said, and tried to dig his heels in.
Berlin and Thompson propelled him forward. A man in a white
coat was standing in the middle of the room in front of a hospital
trolley. They walked right up to him. Thompson nodded and he
stepped away.
Berlin knew what was coming but it didn't help. A shudder went
through her that shook the teeth in her head. The air went out of
her lungs and she held onto Fernley-Price as much for support as
to hold him up.
The body was covered by a white sheet that reached the shoulders.
The face was frozen in a pale mask, lips blue, eyes closed. The
jagged wound at Gina Doyle's throat was no less livid than it had
been the first time Berlin had seen it.
A soft, tremulous moan began deep in Fernley-Price's chest and
erupted through his rigid mouth as a strangled sob. He dropped his
cane and fell forward, his arms outstretched.
'My darling he whispered, as clear as day, and passed out.

Thompson and Berlin watched grimly as the paramedic worked on
the unconscious Fernley-Price.
'Could be a clot, with those head injuries,' said Thompson as the
doors of the ambulance closed. It took off, siren wailing. 'He might
never regain consciousness long enough to be questioned.'


"Think he did it?' asked Berlin.
"The grief could actually be remorse,' said Thompson.
'And Nestor?'
'Its doubtful. The P-M found no sign of a struggle. Then again,
he was so pissed it would have only taken a nudge. Email me that
audio file when you get home,' he said. 'I'll get forensics to clean it
up. We should find his conversation with Nestor interesting.'
Berlin noted the 'we'.





53

Flint parked up on a double yellow line and he and Coulthard
poured themselves out of the car. Flint went to the window of The
Wild Cherry vegetarian cafe and pressed his nose against the glass,
peering inside.
. 'There he is!' he shouted to Coulthard, who was pissing up
against the wall of the London Buddhist Centre next door. Coul,$hard
zipped up and they pushed and shoved each other, fighting to ¦get through the 
cafe door first, schoolboys on an excursion.
;, They burst in and were greeted by a lull in the patrons' conversations,
which were already being conducted in muted tones,
flhey staggered to the table of a solitary diner and flopped into the
"pare chairs. Bonnington scowled as Flint flung an arm around his
shoulder.
'Hello, my little mate!' Flint exclaimed, dragging Bonningtons
ad down into the crook of his arm.
'You're drunk. What the hell do you want?' muttered Bonning"fon,
shoving him off.
'How about a nice lamb kebab?' Coulthard chimed in.


A couple at a nearby table shuddered.
Coulthard extended his hand to Bonnington. 'I don't think
we've met. John Coulthard, Financial Services Agency. I believe in
working in partnership with the community. That's you, mate. You
probably don't know about us and the very important work we do
hunting loan sharks.'
And borrowing money from them!' added Flint, roaring with
laughter.
Coulthard gave him a friendly punch in the arm.
Bonnington regarded Coulthard with greater interest.
'Let's go somewhere more private,' said Flint. 'Your gaff will do
nicely, Daryl. I imagine it's not too far from here, right?'
Bonnington didn't move.
'Come on, my son. Hospitality!' said Flint.
Coulthard and Flint stumbled to their feet and stood either side
of Bonnington.

Bonnington's flat was spartan and he was clearly not one to entertain.
He made dandelion coffee, but Flint and Coulthard were only interested
in something stronger. Bonnington gestured to a cupboard, but
when Flint flung it open it contained only noodles, spices and shaoxing
cooking wine. Coulthard grabbed the bottle and waved it about.
T saw this on Masterchef, he said. 'It's very good in Hainan
drunken chicken.'
'Yeah, but not so good for drunken detectives,' said Flint. 'Daryl
here is a Life Addictions Coordinator,' he explained to Coulthard.
'Works with junkies.'
'Substance abusers,' corrected Bonnington. 'And their families.'
Coulthard poured two tumblers of shaoxing and handed one to
Flint.
'He's a mine of information,' said Flint.
'Only when it's in my clients' interests,' retorted Bonnington.


'What, no cash incentives?' inquired Coulthard. 'Chocks away!'
He downed the wine, pulled a face and spat it out. He was drunk,
but not so wasted that he was impervious to Bonnington's all too
apparent disdain. 'What about your precious little cone of silence
then?' he inquired with a sneer. 'I thought you lot - social workers
and the like - took a very high and mighty stand when it came to
your clients' privacy.'
'I look at the bigger picture,' responded Bonnington.
Coulthard wandered over to a computer in the corner. The modem
lights were flashing and he jiggled the mouse.
'Don't touch that!' hissed Bonnington.
Coulthard was taken aback by this flash of rage as Bonnington
strode across the room. The screen was suddenly filled with weapons
and images of bloody combat. It looked like some sort of war
game to Coulthard, but Bonnington yanked the plug and the display
died. He gave Coulthard a cold smile. 'Just a hobby,' he said,
then turned to Flint. 'Now, what is it you gentlemen wanted?'
'Know a loan shark called Doyle? I should imagine your clients
ore often in need of a few bob to tide them over,' said Flint.
'Why are you interested in Doyle?' asked Bonnington.
This bloke was giving Coulthard the shits with his bloody sudor
attitude. 'Call of nature,' he announced, and wandered off
rough the flat, i 'Do you know him or not?' said Flint.
'I know of him. Everyone does. Oily Doyley. Is this about Sheila
rington?'
'Who?' asked Flint.
'The woman whose dog was mutilated and killed.' f 'No, mate, sad as it sounds. 
It's about the girl who was mutilated
d killed.'
T see,' said Bonnington in a flat tone. 'The girl who was found
the Limehouse Basin?'


Flint nodded.
'I heard she was Doyle's daughter. Is that true?' asked Bonnington.
'Yes, mate. It's true. I'm in charge of the investigation actually.'
Coulthard, poking about in another room, could hear Flint. You
pillock, he thought. The snout was supposed to give you information,
not the other way round. He went back to what could only
loosely be described as the living room.
'I believe one of your colleagues is on a similar quest,' said Bonnington,
addressing Coulthard.
'What?' He thought about it for a moment. 'You mean Berlin?'
said Coulthard. His eyes lit up when Bonnington nodded. 'Has she
been around here asking questions?'
Bonnington said nothing, his face inscrutable.
Coulthard looked at Flint. Flint shrugged. He'd made it clear
that Bonnington was his snout, and his alone. No one knew about
him.
'So how do you know her then?' asked Coulthard.
'I'm going to invoke the cone of silence at this point,' said Bonnington,
smug.
Coulthard put it together. 'Fuck me, she's one of your clients!'
Flint shot out of his chair and high-fived Coulthard. 'She's a
junkie!' he bellowed.
Bonnington gave a tight smile. Ten out often. 'If you find that
information useful, gentlemen, perhaps you could do me a favour,'
he said. 'I've got a problem with her and an officer called Dempster.
You can help me out with that.'

Flint could feel sobriety creeping up. It was a shitty feeling. The
sky, the colour of wet slate, was about to dump more snow as he
stumbled out of Bonnington's. He got in the car and turned on the
motor. Coulthard got in beside him and cranked up the heater.


I'll take up that offer now, mate. We can meet my needs and
of your creepy snout in one fell swoop,' said Coulthard.
IIhis is serious stuff,' warned Flint.

tCoulthard gave him a look which said nervous nelly'. 'You said
atever I wanted.' He waggled his finger and smiled, but there m nothing warm or 
friendly about it.
Flint was afraid that Coulthard could drop him in it in a heart
He was the sort of bloke that would put the bullets in the gun,
fcen watch with a smirk as you fired it so he had something on you
bank.
S 'Yeah, okay. So what do you want?' muttered Flint.
Coulthard pushed the car heater to max and laid it out.

inington stood at the window and watched Coulthard and Flint
: away. Guardians of law and order who so rarely acted out of
iciple they couldn't believe anyone else did. Fools. But useful
Is. They could be very handy in getting Dempster and that bitch
' his back. God knows, there was plenty of precedent when it
ie to the authorities fitting people up.
(Berlin's behaviour this morning had confirmed what he'd susted
for some time: that the arm of the corrupt State was reaching
for him. He sat down at the computer to read the news on sites
trusted. He never watched television. People were blinded by
information from the media, weakened by vice and betrayed by
ernments who baulked at defending traditional values against
ral relativism. Purity of purpose conferred moral authority. Why
so few understand that? The rest would have to learn the hard
He had dedicated himself to providing the lesson.







The police station was busy with all the usual things that came out
at night.
Dempster had felt uneasy since the argument with Berlin and
sneaking out with the Doyle file. He didn't know why he cared, but
it had bothered him. So he had photocopied the file for her and put
it in an envelope, even though she had a mind like a steel trap and
had probably memorised the contents. It would be a sort of peace
offering. He would take it around tomorrow, but he might as well
drop the original in to Thompson now. It would save him doing it
in the morning.
When he got to the Doyle incident room he could see that the
office Thompson shared with Flint was deserted. A constable had
his feet up on a desk, chatting on his mobile. He didn't move when
Dempster walked over and stood in front of him.
'Hang on,' he said, with a weary sigh.
'I've got a file here for DCI Thompson,' said Dempster.
The constable glanced at the office. 'He's not in.'
A real joker, thought Dempster. 'When will he be back?' he
asked.
Irritation crossed the constable's face. He shrugged. 'Dunno. In
the morning I s'pose.'
Dempster dropped the file on the constable's desk. 'Give that to
him as soon as he arrives,' he ordered and left.
The constable didn't wait until he was out of earshot to resume
his conversation. 'Sorry about that. A fucking suit.'
Dempster ignored the jibe. The only people who thrived in this
environment were corrupt bottom-feeders and slackers.
The PA system crackled and Dempster heard his name. It was a
summons to the control room.




Control was not the word that sprang to mind when he entered the
hub of station activities. It was hot because of the number of people
and computers crammed into a small, windowless space. The walls
were hung with CCTV monitors displaying crime hot spots in the
area. Radio controllers were barking orders, phones were ringing
and in one corner an interpreter was on speaker phone with a distraught
woman, trying to establish her address.
A harried sergeant approached him. 'Dempster?'
He nodded and she thrust a post-it note into his hand.
'A call for you to attend this address,' she said and went straight
back to her workstation.
'What's it about?' asked Dempster.
She shrugged and continued a conversation on her headset while
manipulating a grainy image on a monitor. A mugging was in progress.
Three hooded youths were giving a bloke on the ground a
good kicking. In a quiet voice the sergeant directed an ambulance
ilttid a police car to the location. Dempster watched as the youths
the scene. They didn't even run.
But when Dempster glanced at the address on the post-it note,
edid.





55

relationship between the living and their dead keeps changing,
death of Berlin's father had taught her that. The way you feel
ut someone the day they die doesn't alter the fact that you will
argue with them, abuse them, adore them, loathe them, miss L, or just be glad 
they're gone. It can change every day.
ou might discover new things about the dear, or not so dear,


departed, and about your relationship with them, years later. Or
days. Or while you're standing beside their death bed. And you can
still fear someone who's dead and buried.
She had seen the beginnings of this awful realisation in FernleyPrice
as they prised him away from Gina's body. Fear, regret, anger,
love. A relationship distilled into moments.
Berlin feared death and the dead. She had felt a soft, cold touch
from beyond when she slid open the door of the master suite dressing
room at Fernley-Price's apartment.
A soft spotlight had come up on racks of suits, coats and dresses,
shrouded in dry cleaner's plastic. Dozens of pairs of shoes were arranged
along one wall, most barely worn. Above them was a shelf
of striped shirts, each with white collar and cuffs, fresh and crisp
from the laundry, nestled in a layer of tissue paper. A perfume she
recognised hung in there: the scent of the dead.
Her fingers had barely touched the pink striped shirt but the
shock was electric. She heard the voice of the woman she had
known as Juliet Bravo, her clipped, classless intonation disguising
the accent that Gina Doyle was born and bred with in the East End
long before it was fashionable. Mocking.
'So now you think you know who I really am? What are you
going to do about it?'

Berlin shivered as the number eight bus dropped her in Bethnal
Green Road, but it had nothing to do with the cold. The driver said
it would be the last one on this route because the roads were too
dangerous and the council had run out of salt.
It was dark and the icy weather was keeping most people at home.
Berlin walked with care, watching out for treacherous patches of
black ice and keeping a tight grip on her laptop in its soft sleeve.
Snow began to fall again.
She almost envied Fernley-Price his nice warm bed under police


guard at the Royal London Hospital. Thompson had left orders
to be notified the minute he came around and was capable of answering
questions, or at least responding to them. Thompson had
extended an invitation for her to be there, a recognition that this
breakthrough was down to her.
Of course, in the meantime they had no clue as to what exactly
they had broken through, or what they would find on the other
side. Fernley-Prices last conversation with Nestor might complete
the picture. She would email it to Thompson this evening so he
could pass it on to forensics.
The tremor in her limbs was urging her to get home and have a
hit. Her breathing was shallow and her brain was on fire. She felt
the impulse to retreat into chemical serenity sapping her will.
The blank wall was in front of her again, but this time it was
addled with cracks. Lazenby, Nestor and Gina stood on the other
_de. The cracks were yawning now and through them she could
""r a tumult of whispers. She strained to listen, to decipher what ~y were 
saying. But then the voices receded, the faces dissolved, 3 cracks healed.
She turned a corner, walked quickly across the courtyard into
block and ran up the stairs. The landing light was out again,
she didn't hesitate, her usual caution in these circumstances
rridden by desperation. She fumbled to get the key in the lock,
'"he turned it, two bodies behind her converged from out of the
cm and thrust her through the door.
Both men were wearing body armour, gloves, and riot helmets
Ii the black visors pulled down. One shoved her to the floor and
" his foot on her back, pinning her as the other stepped over her
began to ransack the place,
e smell of alcohol came off them in waves,
e had wrapped her arms around her laptop as she pitched
d and now it was trapped underneath her.
The pressure of the foot in the small of her back eased for a
moment and she rolled to one side, putting the drunken man off
balance.
'Hey!' he cried as he staggered and she leapt to her feet, ready to
flee. But he was between her and the door. He yanked an Asp off
his hip and swung it at her. It struck her shoulder and she gasped.
'Stand fucking still!' he commanded.
She did as she was told. As the agony radiated down her arm, she
saw the other man emerge from the kitchen. He held up a small
brown paper bag.
'What have we here?' he asked, as if he was talking to an infant.
He jiggled the bag and the ampoules chinked together.
'What the fuck are you playing at, Coulthard?' she said in a
hoarse whisper as she broke out in a cold sweat.
'Give me the fucking computer,' commanded the man with the
Asp, whose voice Berlin recognised as Flint's.
She clutched the computer tight with her good arm and took a
step back. Flint smacked the Asp into the palm of his gloved hand
in a rhythmic tattoo. He took a step forward.
'Special delivery,' said a breathless voice from the doorway.
It was Dempster, panting, the armpits of his thin charcoal suit
stained with sweat and his shoulders flecked with snowflakes. He
held a large envelope in his hands.
'Sorry, mate,' said Coulthard. 'We had to start without you.' He
flipped up his visor. Flint followed suit.
Berlin stared at Dempster. He held up his hand as if to ward off
the intensity of her gaze.
'Perhaps you would like to do the honours, Detective Chief Inspector
Dempster?' said Flint with a sneer. 'Caution her and make
the arrest for possession of Class A and pervert the course of justice.
That way you get the collar.'
The silence was thick with the scent of fear and betrayal.


'Because if you don't arrest her, I'm going to have to arrest you,'
said Flint. 'On the same charges.'
No one moved. Berlin could see that Dempster was snookered.
If he arrested her she would have to turn on him to save her own
skin, concoct a plea in mitigation that would reduce her sentence.
Bonnington's evidence would corroborate her story of a blackmail»ing
police officer.
If he didn't arrest her, Flint would arrest them both. The uniformed
officers who had nicked her in the first place would no
doubt gladly give evidence that Dempster had interfered in the
' process and released her without charge, after the heroin had been
found in her flat.
There was the sound of a siren approaching. The pitch rose, then
fell as it moved away. The Doppler effect. She knew it was just a

!of perception,
re was a ripple in the atmosphere and she watched Dempster
ind saunter over to Coulthard. re it to me,' he said, extending his hand.
Jthard smirked at Berlin and gave up the bag, but his smirk
'. to dismay as Dempster dropped it on the floor. The ripple
e a tsunami. Before Coulthard could stoop to pick up the
empster trod on it. The soft crunch of the ampoules disintel reverberated 
through Berlin's body,
watched, aghast, as a dark, wet tidal mark of pain oozed
;h the paper bag. The floor seemed to drop away beneath her.
:ed by a monstrous craving she uttered a cry and flailed at
ster, smashing the computer into his temple. Flint rushed at
elding the Asp, but she ducked under it and Coulthard caught
1 force across his arm. Dempster staggered and dropped the
pe. Berlin threw her weight against him and he careened into
Ihey both went down,
ran, slamming the front door behind her.


Dempster and Flint rolled on the floor, each trying to use the other
as leverage to get up while keeping the other down. Dempster
locked his arms around Flint s neck and smashed his head into the
wall. Flint crumpled. Dempster dragged himself to his feet. When
he looked up, Coulthard was pointing a gun at him.
'What the fuck?' said Dempster.
Coulthard's left arm hung, useless, at his side. The gun in his
other hand wobbled with the tremor of fading adrenalin. Dempster
looked into his eyes, which were wide with fear and confusion, and
then at the gun. There was only four feet between them.
Dempster stepped forward and raised his arm as if to reach for
the gun, but as Coulthard s eyes followed the movement, he kicked
out. His size fourteen Peacekeeper boot, handmade in Yorkshire,
cracked Coulthard's wrist bone. Coulthard dropped the gun with
a yelp and Dempster grabbed him, slammed him to the floor and
bent his damaged left arm up his back.
'Where did you get the gun?' he whispered in Coulthard's ear.
'Let me go!' moaned Coulthard.
Dempster twisted his arm a few more inches. Coulthard
screamed.
'Where did you get the fucking gun?' demanded Dempster.
'I nicked it. From this bloke.'
Dempster wrenched the arm higher. He was careful. He didn't
want Coulthard to pass out.
'What bloke?'
'Bonnington! His name's Daryl Bonnington.'










Berlin hadn't bought drugs on the street for over twenty years. In
fact, even back then she'd rarely bought from the proverbial shady
character lurking on a dark corner. Illicit substances were just part
of the culture of her friends and acquaintances in the seventies and
eighties. A couple of phone calls, a friendly chat in a pub and a
friend of a friend would deliver whatever you wanted.
One day you would be partying at a pop star's flash house in
Knightsbridge, helping yourself from a supermarket bag full of cocaine,
and the next you would be at a lock-down in a room above a seedy pub in Hackney 
using cheap H. The IRA would march in,
banging their drums, buckets at the ready for your donation. The
rd stuff would be on sale downstairs, confiscated from Irish deal
by men in balaclavas who had smashed their kneecaps.
Those heady days were long gone. The people she knew then
~e either dead or running B 'n Bs inTodmorden. Or QCs, CEOs
academics who wouldn't want to be reminded of their former
: as party animals. Now they stuck to growing a couple of dope
its at the holiday home in Wales, and drank decent reds. Berlin blamed the war 
on drugs.
;>Her transition from recreational user to career junkie had been
less and unremarkable. It wasn't until her usual connection
and she was seized with blind panic, that she realised a rernship
she had regarded as casual was now serious. It was love,
le cold was numbing the pain and her head cleared a bit. She !sed she was 
crouched in the lee of the plinths that shouldered
burden of the tall iron gates of St John's, at the crossroads near
.Underground station. She had no idea how she had got there.
e peered back down Bethnal Green Road, but the snow swirl
the sulphurous yellow of the streedights kept visibility to a
urn. She didn't think anyone had followed her out of the flat,


but even if they had, they wouldn't be able to see her in this.
The weather didn't deter the dealers and buyers. They nipped
up and down the steps of the three entrances that led into Bethnal
Green Station, wearing puffa jackets, T-shirts and knock-off trainers.
As she watched, a desperate, wasted teenager missed a step going
down and careened into a woman carrying a fractious toddler. He
shouted abuse at the woman and kept going. She almost fell, but
grabbed the handrail at the last minute and steadied herself as the
toddler burst into tears.
Berlin thought of her father lying on those steps, crushed by the
desperate and the dead. She felt dizzy and leant back against the
church gates. Inside St John's were fourteen famous paintings: the
Stations of the Cross. She wondered if in her strung-out state she
was getting a bit melodramatic.
Taking a deep breath she turned her attention back to the deals
that were being done in the blink of an eye in the short tunnels that
led to the ticket hall. Beyond the range of the CCTV.
There were three ways in and three ways out of the station. If the
law mounted an operation, which they did routinely, they would
have to man up each entrance and have people beyond the ticket
barriers. That many plod gathering on the plot was obvious to the
experienced eye and most dealers would melt away, leaving a couple
of new kids on the block to learn the hard way. It was all part
of the game.
In fact, most of the officers working out of Bethnal Green police
station were on nodding terms with the dealers. They were more
concerned with guns and knives on their patch. Heroin followed
the same market logic as all other commodities. If dealers were
taken off the streets and there was a shortage of supply, demand
would force up the price. The curve of violent crime would follow.
Heart pounding, Berlin stood up, took the few short strides to
the brink of the steps and took the plunge.


The short tunnels were bathed in the dull yellow reflection of cold
light on cream tiles. The slight curve to the walls gave the impression
of an endless, inescapable passage.
She approached a tall, skinny boy she had seen doing numerous
deals. He was no more than fifteen, his face hidden deep inside a
black hoodie and baseball cap. He didn't look at her or acknowledge
her presence in any way.
Tm chasing. Can you help me out?' she said.
The boy still didn't look at her. He raised his arms in a slow, expansive
gesture that seemed to convey 'What's the world coming to?'
She swallowed the lump in her throat. 'Please.'
The boy ambled away.
She walked through the ticket hall and checked out each tunnel.
Hie signal had gone up and the dealers had evaporated. No one
would sell to her. She wasn't a face, and her profile -- middle-aged
and female - didn't fit. They thought she was undercover law setling
them up. How bloody ironic.
She left the Underground and turned towards Hackney Road,
Inhere she knew there was a cheap hotel with a bar and wi-fi. t-- She couldn't 
go home tonight; maybe not for some time if they
issued a warrant for her. But she couldn't think about that now,
r about Dempster's part in what had happened. It was a bloody
'ghtmare.





57

mpson checked his work email from his home computer for the
pteenth time. He couldn't understand why Berlin hadn't sent
voicemail. She wasn't answering her mobile either. He thought


they had reached an understanding but perhaps she didn't trust
him. He could hardly blame her, after the way that loose cannon
Dempster had jerked her around.
He thought about calling the hospital again. He kept calling to
check on Fernley-Price's condition and to make sure that the uniformed
officer was still in the room. Hie nurses on the ward were
beginning to get fed up with him. Each time it was the same story:
Fernley-Price was stable but hadn't regained consciousness, and the
constable was there drinking tea.
The doctor had told Thompson there was no way of knowing at
this stage if Fernley-Price's swollen brain was permanendy damaged.
The injury to the jaw was consistent with an uppercut, the injury
to the brain with a kick in the head. Apparently it was a miracle
Fernley-Price had been able to stand, let alone prop up a bar, and he
should never have been discharged from the private hospital.
Inquiries there indicated his medical insurance had run out, and
with it their compassion. The bottom line had been drawn just
above the Hippocratic oath in the commercial sector.
No one even knew exactly where the assault had occurred. A
Good Samaritan, probably the last one in London, had found him
crawling along Liverpool Street and called an ambulance.
Thompson had got the City of London uniforms to do a quick
canvass of the immediate area as it was their patch, not Met territory.
But they drew a blank. He couldn't pursue it until FernleyPrice
woke up.
He stared at the computer screen, his thoughts elsewhere, sifting
the information he had and trying to identify the relationships
that held the key to Gina Doyle's murder. It was times like these
he wished he had a grip on that software Berlin used. He scratched
notes in the margin of his newspaper, next to an abandoned sudoku.
Jeremy Fernley-Price was Doyle's son-in-law, unbeknown to
Doyle. Doyle's daughter was Mrs Fernley-Price. She had informed


on her father. Fernley-Price was also Ludovic Nestor's private banker.
Maybe when he'd gone down in the crisis, Nestor went down
with him.
Nestor had killed himself in the same place that Gina Doyle's
body was found. Did he do it there to make a last, ghasdy point to
Fernley-Price? Was it to leave a legacy of guilt, or was it because he
,was guilty? It was difficult to believe that Nestor would kill FernleyPrices
wife just to get back at him for his financial losses.
What about Fernley-Price himself? You never looked for motive
When spouses murdered each other but in this case there was one.
What if he'd found out she had informed on Doyle? By informing
Kon Doyle she was effectively informing on Fernley-Price. At the
time of her death only Agency personnel knew she was the informlt,
and she had used the alias Juliet Bravo. They didn't know who
he was then. That last conversation between Nestor and Fernleyrice
could really help.
He checked his email again. Nothing. Where the hell was she?
: had a feeling she knew a lot more than she was letting on, what i all those 
charts she had stashed away in her computer. She was
rting his patience.





58

hotel room was bland and lifeless. Everything was screwed to
wall or the floor. Berlin put the internet-access token on the ta
and emptied her pockets of the Johnnie Walker miniatures she
' bought at reception. She unscrewed two of them and poured
elf a double in a paper cup. She opened her computer and pressed the power 
button. She
would at least try to keep moving forward with the investigation,
and the next step was to email Nestor's voicemail to Thompson. If
she stayed on good terms with him perhaps he would help her out
of this mess.
The LEDs blinked and the screen turned blue, but there was no
Windows welcome, only a noise like a dying lawnmower. Berlin
pushed various keys, to no effect. Her laptop was as dead as a dodo,
no doubt wrecked by forceful contact with Dempster's head. If this
was karma, she must have been Bluebeard in another life.
Before the voicemail could be cleaned up, a professional would
have to recover the file from her hard drive. If indeed it was recoverable.
She would have to courier the whole bloody computer to
Thompson now and God knows how long it would all take. She'd
lost her notes and charts too. All the intel she had carefully compiled
since Gina's body was found. Which seemed an eternity ago.
She'd lost everything.
A wave of utter exhaustion swept over her. It was all she could do
to take off her coat, easing her swollen arm out of the sleeve. A deep
purple bruise was spreading from her shoulder to her wrist.
She gulped two more Scotches, lay on the bed and wrapped her
coat around herself. Before she could do anything she had to make
it through the night.
Suddenly her bowels turned to water and she leapt up, only just
making it to the bathroom in time. It could be shock or the beginning
of withdrawal. But surely it was too soon for that?
It wasn't too soon for fear. Life without heroin. Terror seized her
guts and twisted. It was like the worst flu, food poisoning and sea
sickness all striking at once. She crawled back to bed, although she
knew sleep would never come. Maybe not ever again.
The dead swarmed out of the ether to keep her company. Gina,
Lazenby, Nestor. Saying nothing, just looking at her, reproachful.
Just beyond them stood a young black man and a woman who


59

Frank served his time in the prison of the wakeful. At three a.m. he
was busy boarding up the past.
He had too many rooms and only lived in one. He slept on the
couch so he didn't have to waste money on heat and light. There
were only four light bulbs in the house. One in the kitchen, one in
the bathroom, one in the living room and one in the hall. Actually,
that one was a waste.
He stopped hammering, dragged a chair down the hall, climbed up and unscrewed 
the fourth bulb from the socket. Three bulbs,
that's all he needed. It didn't pay to shed too much light on things.
He'd noticed lately that sometimes the furniture in the rooms he didn't use 
seemed to have moved. That would account for the
oises that kept him awake at night: the sound of something heavy :ing dragged 
across the carpet, then dropped with a thud.
He hadn't mentioned it to Doyle because he knew he would give
im one of those funny looks. That boy had no backbone. He was
t waiting for an excuse to put him in a home so he could get his
itts on everything. Over his dead body.
He went back to hammering. So many windows.







Doyle rose with the first hint of light and put the kettle on. Another
sleepless night and an excruciating headache. His schedule was up
the spout and the lads were skiving off without his watchful eye to
keep them in line. He couldn't face Frank last night, and anyway
the bloody roads were impassable. He'd better give him a call. He'd
have to get out there today even if it meant using a bleeding toboggan.
The
truth was that he had been feeling a bit off his game, shaken
up by recent events: Gina's passing, Coulthard legging it, having
to give Fernley-Price a tune-up. He wasn't a young man any more.
He had been knackered. Yesterday had passed in a blur of daytime
television and vodka.
He dialled Franks number and waited for ages, listening to it
ring off the hook. He imagined Frank standing beside it, scowling.
Finally Frank picked up the phone, but didn't speak.
'Pop, it's me.'
'What?'
'The roads are bad.'
'Why are you telling me?'
For God's sake, thought Doyle. 'I'll be out today, Pop, rain, hail
or shine.'
'Make sure you are,' barked Frank, and hung up.
Doyle put the phone down and went in search of aspirin.

Doyle parked opposite the Toy Museum on Cambridge Heath
Road, where the lads were supposed to be waiting for him. He liked
it in there. They always had lots of stuff about the old East End, and
the sort of toys he remembered hankering after as a kid.
He got out of the car and crossed the road, which was strangely
quiet. There were usually coach-loads of children pouring through


e doors of the museum but today there was only the odd intrepid
_urist. For a moment Doyle imagined what it would be like to be
" kid again, coming here for the first time, excited and innocent,
v Beyond the modern foyer, the glass and iron roof soared above '.Am. He looked 
down at his feet. Last time he'd wandered in here
rne of the security guards told him the marble floor tiles had been
fckl in the nineteenth century by women prisoners from Woking
iSaol. It made him think of his mum. He knew she'd been in the
flick more than once, although Frank wouldn't talk about it, of
course.
'« Tears came to his eyes. The woman behind the counter watched
him, frowning. He'd better leave before they decided he was a
'nonce or a nutter and called the law.
When Doyle got back to the car, the lads were hanging about
ibeside it, looking as if they'd just got out of bed. Doyle threw the
rear keys at one of them,
i 'What time do you call this?' he shouted.
The lads got in the front, sheepish, and he got in the back. They
took off towards Hackney.
'Right. We've got a couple of calls to make this morning and
»I want a result. Geddit? Got the collateral?'
„ The lad in the passenger seat was clutching a plastic bag. He
' reached into it, brought out a fistful of foreign passports and held
them up for Doyle's inspection.
'Okay,' said Doyle. 'Hassan's mum is on her last legs in Pakistan
and he's desperate to get over there, so I'm pretty sure he'll cough
up today. Five grand or he doesn't get his passport back and he's
oing nowhere. Remind him the old lady wants to see her son one hst time. We'll 
start with him. We'll do number fifty-one last. She's
verdue again.'
The lads sniffed, yawned and scratched. Preparing for battle.




The day was going better than Doyle had expected. It turned out
the terrible weather was a bonus, with most people stopping indoors,
and then paying up without too much of a fuss because they
didn't want to run out the back way into the freezing slush. Doyle
whisded the old Bing Crosby number, 'Let it snow, let it snow, let
it snow'.
Hassan had legged it the first time they had knocked on the door,
so they'd had to go back again later, which had given Doyle the irrits.
Now Hassan, who had apparently dredged up enough courage
to face his creditor, sobbed and moaned.
He begged Doyle for his passport so he could visit his mum on
her death bed, but Doyle knew that he wouldn't be doing Hassan
any favours by showing mercy.
Concerned that Hassan might get it into his head to apply for a
new passport, Doyle was forced to take extra measures - for Hassan's
own good, of course. The kneecap was a very sensitive part of the
anatomy and now the state of one of Hassan's meant he wouldn't
be going anywhere for a while. Funnily enough, he managed to
find five thousand pounds hidden in a cushion to prevent damage
to the other.
All's well that ends well, thought Doyle, as he knocked at number
fifty-one. The youngest boy opened the door a crack, keeping
the chain on and growling like a well-trained Rottweiler.
'Mum in?' asked Doyle, all smiles.
Sheila Harrington appeared behind the boy and steered him
away. Doyle heard her tell him to play his game and stay in the
living room.
There was the sound of a door slamming and Sheila reappeared.
She reached into her cardigan pocket, brought out a wad of notes
and thrust them into Doyle's hand through the gap in the door.
'That's everything I owe you,' she said.
You could have knocked Doyle over with a feather. 'Best let


me be the judge of that,' he said.
But she was right. He counted it with care, trying to think of
a reason to demand another payment. Then he offered her some
back, to keep the loan ticking over. But she refused, point blank.
'Well, Sheila, if you don't mind me asking, how did you come up
with this fucking lot? You haven't been disloyal, have you? Consolidated
your debts with someone offering an interest-free period and
frequent flyer points? Taken your custom elsewhere?' If someone
was encroaching on his patch he wanted to know about it.
'No, no,' said Sheila. 'Nothing like that, Mr Doyle. I would never.
It was a friend. He gave me a sort of present. You know.'
Doyle didn't know. He folded his arms. He wanted an explanation.
'I think my lads would enjoy that game your boys playing.
Come to think of it, they might enjoy just playing with your boy.
They loved taking your dog for a walk.'
He glanced over his shoulder at the two lads, leaning on the car and smoking. 
They grinned at Sheila.
'Appealing is it, love? A play date?'
She took the chain off the door and opened it. 'Cup of tea, Mr
Doyle?'
"That would be lovely, Sheila. A cup of tea and a nice chat.'





61

lin trudged through the icy slush, her weak footfall barely leavan
imprint. She had tried to call a cab to get home from the
tel, but an automated voice response system had informed her
cold tones that there was a fifty-minute queue just to speak with
operator.


London was a cantankerous beast; her joints ached and her arteries
were clogged. Now the weather had stretched her frayed nerves
to breaking point.
With each difficult step Berlin's irritation grew. No one was responsible.
No one was in charge. If something went wrong these
days you could apply for a voucher as compensation. That was British
customer service: don't fix it, just add a quid to the price and
then give it back to the customer when it doesn't work. Nothing
would change, but they would enjoy a good moan.
With Gallic insight into their temperament William the Conqueror
had granted the citizens of London special privileges, no
doubt already well aware of their status as world-class grumblers.
But he also built a tower in which to incarcerate them if they became
too restive. The complaints were little changed, but the methods
of containment had been modernised.

By the time Berlin got to the flat she was having trouble seeing
straight. She stumbled up the stairs. The key was still in the lock.
The only sign of the chaos she had fled was a dent in the wall,
which was about the size and shape of a helmet. She hoped someone's
head had been inside it at the time.
She washed down three aspirin with what was left of her Scotch,
then lay on the floor near the radiator and tried to conjure up the
sensation of her last hit. It seemed an eternity ago, after she had
snatched Coulthard from the bereaved Doyle's lock-up. She thought
about Gina's blue-tinged flesh at the mortuary, cold as marble, which
set her teeth chattering.
She kept telling herself the physical symptoms would resolve soon.
The experts couldn't agree on how long this phase of withdrawal lasted.
It didn't invariably conform to the 'cold turkey' depiction of the
desperate, foaming-at-the-mouth junkie in films, but depended on
the individual. The experience could vary from very uncomfortable


¦¦to hellish. She couldn't remember it ever being this bad, but maybe it
j was the same as childbirth. You forgot the pain and did it again.
Berlin jerked awake feeling as if she had fallen a great distance. She
must have dozed off. Dragging herself from the floor to make tea,
her fingers clutched at her favourite blue china mug. It went flying
and smashed on her bare foot. The urge to scream, to lose herself in
"an unceasing howl, was almost overwhelming.
Another moment was too much to bear.
She could think of only one person who might be able to help her.





62

Doyle's doorbell played an attenuated version of the children's nursery
rhyme 'Oranges and Lemons' and she thought of the final line. Here comes a 
chopper to chop off your head.
Doyle opened the door. He seemed surprised, but not put out.
'You'd better come in,' he said. 'Its bleeding arctic out there.'

The flat was spick and span, and everything in it dated from the
eighties. Apart from the plasma television. This must have been the
way it was the day Nancy walked out, thought Berlin. Melancholic
best described the atmosphere.
Framed family snaps of a pretty woman and a young girl, clearly
mother and daughter, took pride of place on the mantelpiece. Berlin
felt her chest constrict as she stared at the serious face of an elevenyear-old
Gina Doyle, whom she had known only as a woman in her
mid-thirties.
Even in death, Gina had been the image of her mother. There
were no photos of Doyle with them, and she guessed he was always


the photographer. Camera-shy, too. He wouldn't have wanted a
pictorial record to assist with any future police inquiries.
He emerged from the kitchen with tea and a plate of biscuits.
Berlin just knew they would be chocolate bourbons, and they were.
This was England. If Jesus Christ came to visit, tea would be taken
before he was crucified.
'You don't look at all well, Miss, if you don't mind me saying so,'
said Doyle.
You don't look too flash yourself, mate, thought Berlin. 'I've got
a nasty cold. Do you mind if I use the bathroom?' she said. It was
a polite gambit, a ritual gesture which they both knew meant she
wanted to snoop around a bit.
'Be my guest.' He pointed at a door off the sitting room.
In fact she did need the loo, and didn't bother to open the two
other doors off the small hall. She suspected that behind them
would be two neat bedrooms and she would bet the farm that one
was still decorated for a little girl.
What did surprise her was the calendar on the back of the toilet
door: 1986. Faded kittens gazed down on her with big, soft eyes.
Doyle seemed an unlikely Miss Havisham, but here was the evidence.
When
she returned to the sitting room, he looked expectant.
The pleasantries were over.
'So what can I do for you, Miss?'
'Mr Doyle, I have some information for you about your daughter.'
Doyle remained very still but she saw his right knee begin a
slight nervous jig. "This isn't official,' he said.
'No.'
He regarded her for a moment, as alert as any predator. 'So what
do you want?'
He was no fool.
'My request might surprise you,' she said.


'I doubt that, but go on. Whatever you need, I'll do my best.
I know that everything in this life has a price and you'll find me a
ready payer.'
Berlin thought it was a measure of her desperation that she was
prepared to take him at his word.
'Did you know your daughter was married?' she asked.
'Married? What, you mean, like living with some bloke?'
It was as if he couldn't quite comprehend that his little girl could
be someone's wife.
'Married.'
Doyle sat forward. 'Who was he? Why didn't he report her missing?
They told me no one had. Did you know that? If they were
together or whatever why didn't he --'
He broke off suddenly, as if he had just realised the implications.
His demeanour hardened.
'What's his name?'
Berlin hesitated. There was a limit to her trust.
'Before we get to that, I wondered, that is, I thought perhaps you
may have some contacts in certain areas,' she ventured.
She could see he was impatient. What the hell was the point of
beating around the bush anyway?
T need heroin,' she said.
He didn't even blink. Just went to a small bureau and scribbled
on a pad. He tore the page off and handed it to her. She glanced at
it. The address was local.
'Mention me,' he said. 'Now. What's his name?'
'Fernley-Price. He works in the City.'
Doyle looked at her as if she was mad. 'No. That can't be right.'
'He confirmed their relationship when he viewed her remains,
Mr Doyle. I was there.'
Doyle stood up, stunned. She could see he was reeling.
'Jesus H. Christ.'


Berlin stood up too, alarmed by the change that had come over
him.
'Mr Doyle, are you okay? What's wrong?'
He stared at her, his fists clenched and she saw the monster within
rise up.
'Do you know him?' she asked.
Doyle didn't respond and she saw him recover himself. When he
spoke, his voice was steady and very cold.
1 think that concludes our business, Miss.'

The door closed behind her. The view of Weaver's Fields from the
landing was a picture postcard. A blanket of snow obscured all shape
and colour; the swings and slide appeared to have been coated in thick white 
polystyrene by the clumsy hands of a giant. It wouldn't
last long. Even as she watched, a boy ran into the park and plunged
into a drift. Watch out for the dog shit, she thought.
What had she done? Her judgement could be off, given her
current condition. Why hadn't Doyle asked any questions about
his son-in-law once she'd named him? True, Fernley-Price was a
distinctive surname and there wouldn't be too many of them. No
doubt Doyle felt he would have no trouble finding him. She could
feel the lines reaching out for the dots as she made haste to deliverance.
Thompson
had told her that Fernley-Price was a hedge-fund
manager who had gone bad in the crisis. Nestor and Fernley-Price
were part of the old boys' network and Nestor had every penny tied
up with Fernley-Price.
When Doyle was torturing Coulthard he had as much as said his
partner was in touch with Nestor. Could Fernley-Price be Doyle's
partner without Doyle knowing that Gina was his wife?
By bringing her father down, she would also destroy her husband.
Was it a BOGOF - buy one, get one free? Fernley-Price


hadn't reported her missing. There could be a very good reason for
that. He'd killed her.
He was lucky to be comatose in hospital under police guard. She
wouldn't like to be in his shoes when Doyle decided it was time for
a family reunion.
Should she alert Thompson? She dismissed the thought. She had
just swapped a key piece of evidence in the case for a drug connection.
Not a good look. Plus, Fernley-Price was safe where he was.
She would tell Thompson eventually. First she had to deal with her
own shit.
Pure, dazzling white coated everything: roads, cars, hedges, bins,
railings, the tops of walls, streetlights. Everything was covered in
a foot of snow. Ice encased gables and downpipes. The world was
transformed. She turned her face upwards and felt the soft, icy
touch of snowflakes falling on her cheeks.
All sound was muted, nothing moved. The tumult and constant,
restless movement of London had been cancelled. It was as if her
own turmoil had squeezed out the rest of life. This was the longest
she had gone without heroin for more than twenty years.
She glanced behind her nervously, half expecting Gina Doyle,
privy to her selfish thoughts, to be dogging her: a persistent corpse
dragging her feet through the snow, the gaping wound at her throat
hung with bloody icicles. Hanging on, making sure that Berlin
didn't abandon her.
God, I am really losing it now, thought Berlin. She had to focus
on one problem at a time. The one she was about to solve.










After the punch-up at Berlins flat, Dempster had taken the unconscious
Flint's car keys and gone after her. He'd driven around in
Flints car for hours, crawling along to avoid skidding on the black
ice, but he had no idea which direction she had taken. Eventually
he'd gone home to consider his next move.
Bonnington was the lynchpin. The social worker knew of the
connection between him and Berlin, and the fact that she was an
addict. The little toe rag had told Flint. Flint had got together with
Berlin's hostile boss, Coulthard, and together they had cooked up
the scene at her flat to ensnare Dempster and destroy her. But they
had been pissed and hadn't thought it through. The last thing they
had expected was physical resistance from either him or Berlin.
He knew how it had looked to Berlin. She would think that he
was in it with them. He'd crushed the vials of heroin to demonstrate
that he wasn't going to allow it to be used as evidence against her.
But it had enraged rather than reassured her. He rubbed his temple.
His head hurt but, wherever she was, she would be feeling worse.
He tried to think about the situation strategically. One incontrovertible
truth of the job was that if you caught a killer, all would
be forgiven.
In fact, history showed that it didn't even have to be the actual
killer, just some unlucky bastard who fit the crime and the circumstances.
If you could get a conviction for murder, you would be a
hero. No matter how you did it.

Now the gun he had taken from Coulthard lay in front of him.
Bonnington displayed his teeth in what might have been a grimace
or a smile. He seemed to be enjoying this. Dempster wanted
to hit him, but sensed that he would welcome the pain.
Bonnington had been talking for what seemed like hours without


giving up anything useful. His tone was mild and his speech
controlled. He talked about the corruption of the police and the
government, the sheep-like population numbed by drugs, alcohol
and television, the masses crushed by debt foisted on them by
predatory usurers who peddled the illusion of wealth creation: conditions
that provided the perfect opportunity for oppressive alien
creeds with strict moral codes and self-discipline to insinuate themselves
and corrode our way of life.
Dempster drank his cold green tea and waited for Bonnington
to pause for breath. He had no idea how to interview this sort of
nutter. There was no point in threatening him. He was a zealot,
convinced of his own Tightness and unafraid. There was no point
trying to negotiate. The bloke was beyond reason. Although there
was some sense in what he said.
'So you eliminated Lazenby?' Dempster asked yet again. He was
exhausted, his head throbbed and his eyes were full of grit. The flat
didn't seem to be heated. He shivered. It wasn't like him to feel the
cold.
'No,' said Bonnington, sighing as if Dempster was an obtuse
child.
'Where did you get the starting pistol?'
It was the same type of weapon that had both fallen from Merle
Okonedo's hand and killed Lazenby.
'You can get them on the internet,' said Bonnington.
Dempster glanced at the softly whirring computer in the corner,
ie noticed the webcam clipped to the monitor, its little green light
linking, the modem lights flashing. Mesmerised by the lights, a
W signal travelled from one part of his brain to another, but he
idn't quite grasp it.
Bonnington smiled.
Then the thought exploded in Dempsters brain. He'd been
iyed.


Coulthard and Flint sat looking at each other across the table at
Pellicci's, trying to work out what had gone wrong.
'I am totally rucked. He took the work car and my warrant card
and nearly broke my fucking neck. And when I came around you
were nowhere to be seen. Thanks for that,' snarled Flint.
'You didn't plan, mate,' said Coulthard, pouring brown sauce on
his eggs. 'There was no briefing, you didn't scope the plot
'You? What do you mean "you"? We did it to shut her down so
she couldn't make your life a misery and to see off fucking Dempster,
which suited me and Bonnington. That's all there was in it for
me!' said Flint, his voice going up an octave.
'Bullshit, mate,' Coulthard tut-tutted. 'You're forgetting the
voicemail. You reckoned you could show your boss up if you could
get hold of her computer.'
'All right,' conceded Flint, miserably. 'But it wasn't supposed to
be the bleeding Charge of the Light Brigade either. We just had to
get her drugs, which would have given us leverage against her and
Dempster. We fucked up on all counts.'
Coulthard looked offended. 'Well, I'm sorry you feel like that,
mate,' he said with a sad smile. After all, you're the policeman.'
Flint stared at him, not getting his drift.
T don't have the authority to do any of those things that you did.
I didn't know what you had in mind,' continued Coulthard, pointing
at Flint with his fork each time he said 'you'.
Flint couldn't believe it. The prick was just going to walk away
from it all. Flint's career was already in the toilet, let alone the
possible criminal charges he could face if Dempster played hard
ball. He stirred three sugars into his tea and wondered what the
hell they could have been thinking. Number one, junkies don't
behave in any way that's predictable, and number two, Dempster


had simply given them a good thrashing.
Dempster might be a rucking lunatic, but he was a smart fucking
lunatic who had been unafraid to take on the two of them. He
himself, on the other hand, was stupid and scared; that much was
becoming clear.
'Now, if you don't mind,', said Coulthard peevishly as he got to
his feet. 'You've put me off my scoff with these wild accusations and
I've got an appointment with my doctor to see about long-term sick
leave. Stress following a work-related assault.' He smirked.
Coulthard's arm hung at his side, a reminder of his first time on
the receiving end of an Asp - and Dempster's boot. If it hadn't been
for Coulthard's stuffed arm; and his own stiff neck and blinding
headache, Flint would have wiped the smile off his face. Instead, he
sat there and watched Coulthard saunter out.
"That bloke is fucking Teflon,' he muttered, and dragged Coulthard's
plate to his side of the table. The condemned man might as
well eat a hearty breakfast.





65

Berlin's journey to the other side of Bethnal Green felt more like an
:ic voyage to the North Pole. She slid and slithered through the
"yers of snow on slush and ice, bent into the headwind, a funereal
ire propelled by desperation. She made one stop at a cash mane.
When
she finally turned into the estate she was disoriented for a
iment. Snowdrifts had softened the contours of walls, balconies
d roofs, creating a surreal, Gaudi-esque world without edges. She
ught the kerb with the toe of her boot and moved forward slowly.


Her physical condition was already poor; a fracture or even a sprain
now would be a disaster.
Neat, ordinary, mundane. Such were the lairs of monsters. She
rang the bell and waited, the silence within pushing her almost to
screaming point. But then the door opened.
'Can I help you?' said a neat, ordinary woman.
'Doyle sent me,' said Berlin.
The woman stood back and Berlin walked in.
The door of number fifty-one closed behind her.
On the way down the hall the woman shut the living-room door
on two boys watching TV.
"Ihey couldn't open the schools today, with the weather. They're
driving me mad, stuck indoors all the time,' she said, as she led
Berlin into the kitchen and closed the door behind them. 'Can I get
you a cup of tea? You look half frozen.'
Berlin was a little taken aback by this resort to the usual social
niceties, but wondered what she had expected. A black dude with
an Uzi?
'No, thank you. I haven't got much time,' she said and realised
as soon as the words were out of her mouth how desperate she
sounded.
The woman looked at her with sympathy. 'Okay, love, I understand.
Are you a friend of Doyle's or a client?'
'Acquaintance,' said Berlin.
'Because I'd hate you to be borrowing from him to do this bit of
business, know what I mean?'
Berlin nodded. 'It's my own money. What have you got?'
'Just sit tight, I won't be a minute,' said the woman, and left the
kitchen.
Berlin heard her open the living-room door and tell the boys
to stay where they were; she would bring them hot chocolate with
marshmallows later if they were good. Hysterical laughter rose in


lin's throat at this further erosion of the drug dealer's stereotype
she clamped her hand over her mouth. There were footsteps
rhead, doors opening and closing and a minute later the woman
med to the kitchen, closed the door behind her and held out
er hand.
In her palm lay two gleaming ampoules of pharmaceutical ditmorphine.
A jolt of recognition shook Berlin. They were straight
from Lazenby's drug safe.
The woman took Berlin's shudder for desperate anticipation. T bet
you've never seen anything as good as that before, love!' she said.
Berlin realised she was staring, mesmerised. She looked up and
saw the woman through different eyes.
'My name's Catherine,' she said.
'Sheila,' said the woman. 'Pleased to meet you.'
'How much have you got?' said Berlin.
'How much do you want?' said Sheila.





66

When his phone rang Dempster answered without checking the ID.
'Dempster,' he said.
There was a pause and then a quiet voice said, 'It's Flint.'
Dempster didn't respond. Sod Flint.
'Are you there?' said Flint.
'What do you want? I'm busy.'
T want my car and my fucking warrant card. That's out of order,
Dempster, taking my warrant. It will finish me, you know that.'
'Mate, I needed the car for official police business, not for swanning
around the manor with my dick hanging out. And I haven't


The automatic aperture on the webcam adjusted focus. How
many people were watching them? Dozens? Thousands? Bonnington
was a vain prick who had created the perfect soapbox. But he
hadn't realised that Dempster was onto him.
'So Daryl, tell me. Where did you get the gun?'
T confiscated it from one of my client's kids.'
'Why didn't you hand it in, report it to the police?'
'Client confidentiality. The cone of silence. It's so important to
maintain trust, DCI Dempster. You know all about that, don't you?'
'Professional discretion then?' snapped Dempster, frustrated.
The bastard had an answer for everything.
Bonnington sighed and nodded. 'He said his mum had a box
full of them on top of her wardrobe.'





67

The computer arrived with a note that just said: 'It's fucked. Sorry.'
Thompson felt uneasy. He inspected it and saw something that
looked very much like blood on one corner. The courier said he'd
picked it up from reception at a hotel in Hackney and had been
paid cash. Thompson spat on his handkerchief and gave it a wipe.
He was better off not knowing.
The computer hummed and creaked when he switched it on, but
nothing else happened. He cursed. He had no bodies to do legwork
for him. Half the bloody forensic workforce was stuck at home
because of the weather and the other half were queuing up at the
Australian embassy trying to emigrate.


He was supposed to be pursuing a vicious killer who had taken
a chunk out of Gina Doyle's throat, and a psycho who had nearly
beaten Fernley-Price to death. It looked like the bloke who ran
the agency hunting loan sharks was in the mix somehow and had
topped himself. Now the woman in the middle of it all, a junkie,
was nowhere to be found.
Happy days.
Sod it. He would ignore all the bloody warnings about the roads
and drive the computer down to Risk Control - a private firm in
the City who would give him a decent coffee while their highly
paid analysts worked on extracting that file.
He could send the bill to the bloody Home Secretary and tell
him to charge it to his expenses. They couldn't say no. When it
came to the MPs' expenses, he knew where the bodies were buried.





68

©oyle was so agitated after Berlin left that he felt he had to get out :the 
flat despite the weather. He had a focus now, a purpose. Mo'vation.
He couldn't sit still. It gave him an appetite.
He decided to walk down to Pellicci's, have a sausage sandwich
d make some phone calls. The damage he'd done to Fernley-Price
uld probably have landed him in hospital. If the prick was in a
[ way and laid up, one thing was for sure: there was no one wait;
at home to take care of him.
The rage in his breast was the best kind. Cold. He was able to
isider the situation clinically. When the missus was offed, hubby
the prime suspect. Christ, he should know. He'd been through
'himself with Nancy.


He remembered the first time he'd met the banker. The geezer
had approached him in The Silent Woman and asked if he could sit
down. 'Suit yourself,' said Doyle. Fernley-Price bought him a drink,
then another, then asked if he was interested in a business proposition.
He seemed to know a lot about Doyle's business. When Doyle
asked him how, he'd said 'due diligence'.
What a fool he had been. He thought Fernley-Price must have
somehow known one of his clients, looked into Doyle's reputation,
been impressed and decided to seek him out as a partner. Let's face
it, he'd been flattered by the City gent showing him respect, wanting
in on his business model. Here was a chance to show Frank
what he was made of, a chance to branch out into big money.
It seemed that Fernley-Price had serious cash salted away - his
own and that of a few very special clients. It had to work for them
after the crash wiped out their other investments. Doyle knew
where to place it for maximum returns. No risk.
But now it was as plain as the nose on your face. Gina had told
Fernley-Price all about her dad's business. But maybe she had failed
to mention he was her dad. Christ, when she was a kid he'd drag
her around with him doing collections. He'd leave her in the car, of
course, for the trickier ones. She'd run around at Frank's while they
did the tally. That was when Frank had all his marbles. He'd doted
on her.
It was difficult for him to understand why Gina had turned him
in, but then again, she had always had that thing about her mother.
She was sharp, Gina. She must have seen a way to get at him. Then
dragged her husband into it. Obviously she had had enough of him
too, which showed taste.
He would find Fernley-Price and finish the job he'd started. Gina
would be pleased.





The windows of Sheila's tiny, overheated kitchen were opaque with
condensation. The air was thick with the smell of wet wool from
Berlins coat.
Sheila had gone upstairs to get more ampoules. Berlin's first instinct
was to cut and run, but Sheila had taken the 'samples' with
her. So this was the woman Pink Cheeks had seen in the waiting
room. This was the woman who had shot Lazenby. But this was the
woman who had the heroin.
Berlin struggled to master the turmoil in her brain and the frenzied
dance in her veins. She tried to think. She could score or she
could turn in a killer. Either or.
She was standing between her mother and father, looking up at
them, squinting. Behind them the sun was dazzling.
'You can go with him or stay with me,' said her mother. 'You
can't have it both ways, Catherine.'
Mute, she stared into the sun and was blinded. When she blinked,
she saw her father walking away.
Her mobile was in her hand and she was dialling before she even
realised what she was doing. She was nicked to voicemail.
The movements upstairs had stopped and the house was suddenly
very quiet. Berlin didn't leave a message. She hung up and
dialled again. This time, to her relief, Dempster picked up.
'Hello?' he said. Her ID was blocked.
'It's me,' she whispered. Footsteps were approaching down the
11. 'Lazenby's killer. At number fifty-one --'
'On the estate,' he cut in.
'Yes,' said Berlin. 'But how --'
'Listen to me - get out of there, now. Leave and don't take any»ing
with you. Got it? Go, go, go!'
The kitchen door opened. Sheila stood there with two Tesco


bags. She frowned at the sight of the phone in Berlins hand.
'I won't be long, darling,' said Berlin sweetly, and hung up.
Sheila smiled.
Suddenly there was a dull thud, followed by the sound of wood
splintering and men shouting. Sheila spun around. Over Sheila's
shoulder Berlin saw the front door shudder and crack open, revealing
a queue of armour-encased black bodies.
'Police!' one of them shouted as the enforcer smashed into the
door again.
Berlin sprang to her feet and shoved Sheila hard in the back.
She pitched into the hall. The two boys emerged from the living
room, their faces pale and frightened. Sheila reached out to them,
dropping the Tesco bags. The ampoules spilt out onto the floor: a
shining carpet that could fly Berlin to heaven.
The front door gave way and the first boots thundered into the
hall. Berlin slammed the kitchen door and jammed a chair under
the handle, then legged it out the back. The snow had been cleared
off the tiny tiled patio and swept onto a narrow strip of dirt. In one
corner a small mound bore a cross made of two sticks.
She knew that the police would be on the other side of the back
fence. She took a short run up to next door's wall, jumped, hoisted
herself over it and dropped to the ground. A jolt of pain shot up
her bruised arm and she jarred her knee. She lay there for a moment
trying to catch her breath. A delighted Jack Russell terrier ran up
and started licking her face.
A scream went up at number fifty-one and there was a sound
like rolling thunder as a dozen pairs of Armed Response boots ran
up Sheila's stairs. She could hear the enforcer battering the kitchen
door.
Berlin got to her feet and scrambled across the garden, searching
frantically for a way out. The fence on the far side was in bad
shape, and she managed to pry two loose boards apart and squeeze


through the gap she'd made. The dog followed.
She found herself at the end of the block, standing in a grassy
area now covered with slush. She brushed herself off, walked to the
pavement and peered back down the street. Three police vehicles,
lights flashing, were parked outside Sheila's house.
'Oi,' said a voice behind her.
She turned around to face a stocky policeman in full body armour
with a sub-machine gun slung across his chest.
'What are you up to?'
The dog trotted up beside her and squatted. Berlin and the officer
watched as a yellow stain appeared on the snow.
'Good girl,' said Berlin to the dog.
The officer grunted and walked on.





70

Dempster was magnanimous when he took the terse congratulatory
from the DCI leading the local Murder Investigation Team,
ley had followed Armed Response in and found the box of starter
ipistols, just as he'd said, on top of the wardrobe. Apparently they
:longed to Sheila Harrington's husband. Some had been modified
to fire and some hadn't.
Sheila had been taken in and would be charged with dealing and
snby's murder. She'd said she had to do it to pay off a local loan
rk who was giving her grief. She hadn't mentioned Bonnington.
Dempster hung up.
'Do you wish you had been in at the kill?' asked Bonnington.
Jesus Christ, thought Dempster, I must be an open book,
en again, the bloke was a psychologist, social worker, whatever.


It was his job to read people.
'All guts and no glory - that's me, mate,' said Dempster.
'Will you tell them how you cracked the case?' said Bonnington.
He knows he's going to walk, thought Dempster. What could
he be charged with? Giving a desperate woman big ideas? He knew
how Lazenby worked, and he knew Sheila had the contacts to deal:
she'd watched her husband do it for years.
Bonnington had done her a good turn by taking the kids off
her hands twice: the first time while she cleaned up the mess after
Doyle had mutilated the dog, and then later that day to give her
time to do the deed. In the process he'd given himself an alibi.
'We could do you for criminal conspiracy to murder Lazenby,'
said Dempster.
'I didn't expect her to kill him. I didn't even mention him, just
the set-up in the surgery,' said Bonnington.
'So what was the idea then?' Dempster was genuinely interested;
he just didn't get it.
'Simple armed robbery. Then she would sell the pure heroin and
junkies would die in droves before the police caught up with her.
There would be an outcry and Lazenby would be finished. There
would be a crackdown on prescribing heroin for addicts. The whole
system would be exposed.'
Dempster realised he had been right about Bonnington, but for
the wrong reasons. Bonnington didn't want the drugs out of circulation;
he wanted them to kill as many people as possible. He
would never be satisfied with a single death. Or even two. Dempster
thought of Merle Okonedo.
He had scored a big win, but felt numb. Looking on the bright
side, which didn't seem that bright, matters such as belting Flint
and nicking his car would attract a reprimand at the most. He was
the senior officer, in any event.
Bonnington was an evil bastard, but in the eyes of the law his


worst offence to date was possession of a banned starting pistol.
The magistrate would weep when he heard why Bonnington had
it. Dempster decided to squeeze every last drop of intel out of this
psycho before he left. He wouldn't get another shot.
'So Daryl, you met Merle Okonedo through her brother, who
was inside?' He framed it as a casual inquiry, using Bonnington's
first name. Establishing a more intimate connection between them.
'He was one of my clients. Unfortunately he OD'd. In one of our
drug-free correction facilities.'
'Her death wasn't an accident then? You killed her,' said Dempster.
Was
Bonnington mad or vain enough to admit it in front of
thousands?
'Why do you do it, Dempster? You work for a morally bankrupt
state, rounding up a few degenerates. It's just window-dressing to
disguise true corruption.'
'Maybe it's like Churchill said: it's a lousy system but it's the best
we've got, or better than the alternative. Something like that, anyway,'
he replied. But he knew he lacked conviction.
'She was willing,' said Bonnington. 'But yes, I killed her.'
Something broke inside Dempster. He held his breath.
"The hand is quicker than the eye,' said Bonnington as he tore
open his shirt.
; Dempster caught a glimpse of the rage that drove him. Boniington
wanted an audience of millions, not thousands. The video
would go viral.
He thought of Berlin.
'Everything's connected,' said Bonnington, and pressed the detotator.
f




Flint was on his third cup of tea when Doyle walked in. Doyle
seemed preoccupied and didn't notice Flint, even though the place
was quiet. The weather was deterring even the usual hardened punters.
There was a dull clap of thunder in the distance. Rain would
turn the snow to slush. Flint hated slush. It ruined your shoes. At
this moment, he hated everything.
He was fuming. His conversation with Dempster had left him
in no doubt that Coulthard had done the dirty on him. If Dempster
didn't have his warrant card, the only other possibility was that
Coulthard had taken it while Flint was lying on the floor, out cold.
The prick could get away with murder flashing that bloody card.
Flint was younger than Coulthard, but they looked enough alike
that anyone taking a quick glance probably wouldn't notice. Anyway,
who looks long and hard at a copper's ID? Coulthard had all
the bullshit to go with the badge too, from his time on the job.
Bullshit was about all he did have; even when he'd been a copper he
was impersonating a police officer, thought Flint bitterly.
He waited until Doyle's order arrived and watched him tucking
into his sausage sandwich. He thought about what he was about to
do. But not for very long.

Doyle had his sandwich in one hand and his phone in the other.
His fingers were a bit fat for the tiny keys, and his rings didn't help.
He misdialled, tried again, then became aware of someone standing
over him.
He looked up into the beady eyes of one of the coppers who
had interviewed him about Gina's murder. A bloke he'd often seen
about the manor before that, and who he knew had often seen him.
He was the live-and-let-live type, unless there was something in it
for him. Flint, that was his name. It suited him.



'What can I do for you?' said Doyle, slipping his phone into his
pocket.
'Bloody awful weather we're having,' said Flint.
Doyle waited.
'It gets some people down,' said Flint.
'Does it?' said Doyle.
'Yeah. Like my mate. He's a bit down. More than a bit, actually.
He's got stress. From work. He's got a very demanding job.'
Doyle was aware his sausage was waiting.
'He's gone to see his doctor about it today actually. The stress.
Not to mention a broken nose, a few busted teeth, very sore ribs
and a buggered arm.' Flint's tone was confiding.
Doyle paid more attention. His own ribs were still sore from
where he'd been kicked after that bastard had whacked him and
scarpered from the lock-up. He made the connection.
'Coulthard,' he said.
Flint's nod was almost imperceptible.
Doyle knew Coulthard wasn't at home, but his girlfriend was
still there. The lads had checked. 'Got a good doctor, has he?' said
Doyle.
'Very sympathetic. At the Mare Street Clinic,' said Flint, glancing
at his watch. 'He's just gone down there. You never know what
a man will do when he's in that state of mind. He might do himself
a mischief. Nobody would be surprised.'
'Why don't you sit down?' offered Doyle.
Flint pulled up a chair and gestured to Nino for another cup of tea.










The cafe door closed behind Flint. Doyle picked his teeth, contemplative.
He had barely said a word. Flint hadn't stopped talking.
Some people, he thought. Some people.
He took out his phone and turbo-dialled the lads.
'Yeah?'
He sighed. They were dragged up these days. Didn't they know
that was no way to answer the rucking phone?
'Get plotted up at the Mare Street Clinic,' he said.
'What? The doctors?'
'Yes, the fucking doctors! Get down there and wait until our friend
from the other night shows up, then ring me. Gottit?' He hung up.
His sausage was stone cold. It was turning out to be one of those
days.
'Got a telephone book handy, Nina?' he asked. 'And do us a favour
and sling this sausage back in the pan for a minute.'

Doyle tried the Hoxton Hospital, Barts and the Middlesex with no
luck. But when he rang the Royal London inquiring after FernleyPrice's
health they put him through to the ward. Bingo, he thought.
The nurse who answered snapped at him when he mentioned Fernley-Price.
'Is this someone from DCI Thompson's office? Again?'
Doyle responded in the affirmative.
'How many times do I have to tell you? He's still in a coma!
Please don't ring again. While we're dealing with your calls, people
are dying! Why don't you ring the officer if you need an update?'
She hung up.
Well, well, thought Doyle. They've got a man there. Must be
expecting trouble. His phone rang. The caller ID informed him it
was one of the lads.



'Any sign?'
'He's just come out of the Mare Street Clinic'
'Let's make him an offer he can't refuse,' said Doyle.





73

Berlin was putting as much distance as she could between herself
and the estate. Sheila would assume she was a grass the police had
sent in to set her up. The minute Sheila mentioned it, no doubt in
the same sentence as some choice expletives, the police would be on
the lookout for Berlin, hoping to bag a recent buyer as well as their
prize trophy, the dealer and murderer.
The sirens seemed even worse than usual and she kept dodging
into shop doorways as emergency vehicles and police cars raced
past.
Dempster must have ordered the raid on Sheila's place. He had
given her a heads up when she called, instead of leaving her to get
caught in the raid with no chance of talking her way out of it. So he
had her interests at heart after all. Maybe she had misjudged him.
She tried calling him again but kept getting flicked to voicemail.
She remembered she also had to check with Thompson about the
progress he was making with her computer. She hadn't responded
to any of his messages, which, like those she had left for Dempster,
were becoming increasingly urgent. He was probably wondering
where the hell she was, while she was wondering the same about
Dempster.
They were all bound by a chain of unanswered messages: small,
untethered pleas drifting in an abstract space. Call me. Please
ring. Help me. Banal and tragic in equal measure. She thought of


Nestor's last call, a final, plaintive cry.
She was teetering at the edge of incoherence, not even sure where
she was: the streets seemed unfamiliar with their mantle of white. It
struck her that the first thing we say when someone answers their
mobile is 'Where are you?' Location is critical. Everyone in their
place.
Berlin tried to focus on what needed to be done and not on the
despair she felt at having seen her last chance at peace of mind scattered
across Sheila's floor. She struggled to forget the bright promise
that the ampoules held, and the darkness that was now pouring in
to fill her chasm of need. Nature abhors a vacuum.
A shadow passed over her and she looked up. A dark pall of
smoke drifted to the east.





74

Thompson had never heard a sadder conversation than the one between
Nestor and Fernley-Price. He sat in a warm, bright office in
a glass tower that overlooked the river, and listened again as a man
was driven to a despairing death.
Fernley-Price was clearly drunk, but apparently was soon shocked
into sobriety. Nestor had a high blood-alcohol reading according to
the post-mortem report, but he only sounded drunk during his
opening attack on Berlin.
'Berlin, you think you know everything, you arrogant bitch, but
you never knew Juliet Bravo. When I said no further action I meant
no fucking further action! Now look what you've done!'
The next sound was an entry phone buzzer, according to the
technician. He'd even been able to identify the make. Nestor broke


from berating Berlin, presumably to admit Fernley-Price. The lift doors droned.
'So glad you could make it,' said Nestor to his visitor. His tone Ittd changed 
completely.
> 'I haven't got any money,' mumbled Fernley-Price. There was a thud, k 
> suggested the phone had been put down hard onto something
timber. Probably the desk, although they had found it on the floor.
Thompson wondered if Nestor had deliberately not hung up so
' that the conversation would be recorded on Berlin's voicemail.
'This isn't about money, old boy,' said Nestor. 'I'd just like you to
take a look at this.'
There was a pause.
'Jesus fucking Christ! What is this?' Fernley-Price's voice was a
whisper.
'It was taken by the pathologist. Did you do this, Jeremy?' Nestor
asked. His voice had taken on an eerie quality.
'I. . .1 thought she had left me,' said Fernley-Price.
'Did you kill her?' thundered Nestor.
'What? Are you fucking mad? Why would I kill her?' shouted
Fernley-Price.
'Because she informed on your business partner. Doyle was her
father.'
Something crashed to the floor. The computer? Fernley-Price
must have swept it off the desk. He was a big bloke and his finger?
prints were found on it. The post-mortem photo wasn't pretty.
'You are fucking mad!' screamed Fernley-Price. 'You're making
all this up. Like at school!'
There was the sound of a struggle, grunting, flesh on flesh, bodies
colliding with furniture. Then it was over. Neither man had the
heart for it.
'You stupid, vain, greedy fool. It's all your fault,' said Nestor. His
voice dripped misery.


'But it was her idea! She said she'd heard about Doyle from a reliable
source in the City.'
'I shut down the investigation Gina started,' said Nestor.
'To protect your money,' moaned Fernley-Price. 'She kept on at
me to get documents from Doyle. A paper trail.' He was talking to
himself. 'But he wouldn't cooperate. We had a terrible row about it
the night she walked out. It must have been the same night she...'
Thompson could hear ragged breathing, scuffing on the carpet.
Fernley-Price was pacing. 'I don't understand,' he said. 'She was
setting me up. Why?'
Thompson knew why. To bring Doyle down she needed evidence.
She had used Fernley-Price to try to get it. He was collateral
damage.
Nestor wailed, pitiful. 'It wasn't the damn money! I thought I was
protecting her. A prosecution would have ruined you. I thought it
would devastate her. She... she liked nice things.'
'Oh my God,' hissed Fernley-Price. 'You fell for her. All those
foursomes, boring fucking bridge evenings, awful dinners with
your bloody wine collection. You fancied her!'
There was a terrible silence.
'What would a woman like my wife see in a pathetic little bureaucrat
like you?' Fernley-Price's vicious laughter almost smothered
the sound of Nestor sobbing. 'If anyone's to blame for all this
it's you!'
Thompson closed the file and shut down the computer. He gazed
through the window at the cold, merciless river. He felt that Nestor
hadn't intended to kill himself until that moment.








Berlin barely heard her phone over the din of sirens. A police helicopter
flew over as she answered the call.
'Where are you?' asked Thompson. Tt sounds like a bloody war
zone.'
'What?' she shouted.
"They recovered your hard drive. When the voicemail was cleaned
up it was
She caught the inflection of emotion in his voice. He seemed to
be searching for the right word, but cleared his throat and finished
his sentence in a perfunctory, businesslike manner.
'Fernley-Price didn't murder Gina.'
Berlin heard the door slam on another suspect.
'Nestor killed himself because he'd lost everything, but she was
his biggest loss,' he said.
'What?' said Berlin.
Tt was unrequited, of course, but just being in love can sustain
a man.'
Berlin had no idea how to respond to Thompson's sudden bout of sentimentality.
'Doyle told Fernley-Price about your investigation,' continued
Thompson. 'Fernley-Price told Nestor his money was tied up with
Doyle. When his old school chum had given him the opportunity to recoup his 
losses, Nestor didn't ask how. He was an honourable
man who turned a blind eye. But love prevailed.'
'Love?'
'If Fernley-Price went down, so would Gina. Nestor wanted to
protect her,' said Thompson.
Berlin thought of Dempster.
'According to Fernley-Price it was all Gina's idea. She pointed
him in her father's direction,' he continued.


If it came to it, Gina was prepared to sacrifice her husband to ensure
her father's destruction. Berlin had a sudden vision of Doyle's
face when she'd told him Gina was married to his business partner.
'Thompson,' she said.
'Yes?'
'Doyle knows.'
'Knows what?'
'That Fernley-Price was married to Gina.'
She could practically hear his train of thought heading in the
same direction as hers. Doyle would think that Fernley-Price was
Gina's killer.
'Jesus Christ. How the hell? Nobody knows that except you and
me.'
She gritted her teeth, knowing that her silence would speak volumes.
She had traded Fernley-Price for the promise of dope.
'We'll discuss this later,' said Thompson. T have to sort this out.
Doyle might try to get at him.'
A plaintive beep told her he'd hung up.
Shit, shit, shit. She scrolled frantically through the contacts on
her phone, found Doyle and hit 'call'. It rang. And rang.
'Come on, come on,' she muttered as she turned south. 'Come
on, answer your damn phone.' But Doyle's phone just kept ringing.
She ran.





76

Thompson hurriedly shook hands with the relaxed geek who had
done the computer work for him and pressed the lift button urgently.


'See you soon,' said the geek.
'I doubt it, mate,' Thompson said. "This was a one-off. Extraordinary
circumstances. We just didn't have the resources in-house.'
The geek smiled. 'Haven't you heard? They're scrapping the forensic
service altogether. Everything's going to be contracted out.'
He rubbed his hands together, anticipating the windfall. The lift
arrived and Thompson stepped into it. 'Nice doing business with
you,' called the geek as the doors closed.
Christ Almighty, thought Thompson. What next?
Striding out of the lift and across the smart glass and granite lobby,
Thompson called the Limehouse Control Room and asked to
be put through to the supervisor. There was a delay, during which
Thompson felt his nerves fray.
'Send two cars to the Royal London now, and get me the mobile
number of the constable who's on duty there,' he demanded as soon
as the supervisor came on the line.
'Sir,' the supervisor began to reply, then paused.
Thompson instantly regretted his tone, but it was too late. No
doubt the supervisor was sick of detectives snapping their fingers
and ordering up resources that didn't exist.
'Sir,' the supervisor spoke slowly and deliberately. 'All teams are
attending a major incident. The constable on duty at the hospital
is a special and I don't have a mobile number for her. I'm running
three shifts with the same number of bodies that previously worked 'two and I'm 
not allowed to authorise any overtime. Is there anything
else I can do for you, sir?'
f Thompson hung up as he reached the revolving doors, which
lefused to budge. A security guard approached and pointed to
.ompson's visitor's badge.
'Sign out before you leave,' he explained.
Thompson snatched the badge off and thrust it at the guard. The
d gave a resigned sigh.


'No good. You have to sign out at the desk. They swipe the card
or the doors wont open.'
'For Christ's sake!' muttered Thompson, pulling out his wallet
and shoving his warrant card under the guards nose. 'Let me out,
now!'
The guard shrugged, unimpressed.
'Makes no odds,' he said. "The system doesn't care who you are.'
Thompson sprinted back across the lobby.





77

The Royal London Hospital had hosted the Elephant Man and the
surgeon who had assisted with the Jack the Ripper investigation.
Now it was home to Fernley-Price, although he didn't know it. Still
comatose, he had been moved from intensive care to a surgical
ward, at which time the Special Constable had arrived to replace
the sworn officer.
The officer told her she'd been given the job because the Control
Room Supervisor had asked the DCI how long he thought he
could get away with keeping a warm body assigned to one that was
almost cold. He thought it was funny, but she was confused.
She was a volunteer, and not entirely sure what she was supposed
to do. All she knew was that to get a proper job with the Met,
it was now pretty much expected that you would work part-time
for nothing for at least a year, despite insistence from the powers
that be that this was not the case.
So she would sit there and make sure no one came near the
bloke except doctors and nurses. And police officers, of course.




'Oranges and Lemons' was Doyle's favourite nursery rhyme. He
used to sing it to Gina when she was a little girl, swinging his arms
in an axe-like motion when they got to 'here comes a chopper to
chop off your head'. She would scream and giggle and run.
His phone kept ringing, but he wanted to hear the tune, so he just let it ring.

When a plainclothes bloke approached the special, gave her a warm
smile, flashed his warrant card and told her she could go and get a
cup of tea, it didn't occur to her that a detective would never be sent
to give a lowly volunteer a tea break. She legged it to the canteen.
But she was smart enough to record his name in her notebook.

Berlin felt empty, as if she had no substance. She flew along White
chapel Road, amdzed that her legs could still carry her. It was a
market day. The Bangladeshi stallholders stamped their feet to stay
warm and watched with only mild interest as she weaved through
their customers, glancing back to see who was chasing her.

Thompson's cab was stuck behind a number twenty-five bus, which
, was proceeding tentatively on the icy road.
'Okay, this will do!' he said, thrusting twenty quid at the driver,
ie jumped out. They'll never cough up for that on expenses, he
lought.
Just ahead he could see the brick arches of the hospital's por
and the clock just above them. The sound of the traffic was
wned out by the rapid approach of the air ambulance. Every'y
stopped to watch as it hovered over the hospital. Thompson
ughed on through the gawkers.

pungent scent of coriander and cinnamon, melded with diesel
es, caught in Berlin's throat. She gasped for air as she reached


the pedestrian crossing opposite the hospital and found herself
trapped amid a sea of Bengali housewives toting bright plastic
bags of produce, all waiting patiently to cross. Berlin tried to push
through them, but they stood shoulder to shoulder, all gazing up at
the helicopter, solidly repelling all comers.

Fernley-Price slumbered on, untroubled by the thrum of helicopter
blades, or the trembling hand that closed over his mouth and nose.
It was merely an instrument of the man who sat outside in the black
Merc listening to his phone play 'Oranges and Lemons'.

Coulthard stumbled down the worn stone steps, making a beeline
for the car. The passenger door swung open and he got inside.
'There. That wasn't too hard, was it?' said Doyle.
Coulthard couldn't speak. He jammed his hands between his
knees and squeezed, as if he could never again trust them to act in
accordance with his own wishes.
'Good thing you've had plenty of practice at impersonating a
police officer. It came in handy, didn't it?' said Doyle, as he pulled
away from the kerb and dialled a number on his mobile.

Berlin saw Coulthard slumped beside Doyle as the black Merc
sailed through the traffic lights. He looked as if he'd seen a ghost.
The lights changed and the housewives surged forward but Berlin
didn't move. She saw Thompson bounding up the hospital steps.
She knew he was too late.

In Coulthard's living room his girlfriend sat on the couch between
the lads, her elbows pulled in tight. When the mobile rang, one of
them answered.
'Yeah?'
Doyle's irate voice carried into the silent room.


'How often have I told you that's no way to answer the rucking
phone?'
'How may I help you?' mumbled the lad.
"That's more like it,' said Doyle. 'You can help me by letting her
go with a warning. Tell her the weather's cracking in Australia this
time of year. Then get your lazy fucking arses down to the lock-up.'
The lad hung up. He gave the girl a slap and Doyle's message,
then indicated to his mate they were off.
'That's it?' said his mate, disappointed. 'Pity. I was looking forward
to that.'





78

The moment that Thompson stepped out of the lift and saw the
special in the corridor crying, he knew he was too late. Nurses
were running in and out of the ward and a couple of the hospital's
security guards were standing around, slack-jawed, already denying
any responsibility. As Thompson approached, four policemen came
running up the stairs, led by a wheezing, fat sergeant who looked as if he 
might have a heart attack on the spot.
'Someone died,' gasped the sergeant.
'Well it's a hospital, isn't it?' joked one of the policemen.
Like the bloody Keystone Kops, thought Thompson. 'Get this lot out of here!' he 
yelled at the sergeant, pointing at the crowd in , the corridor. The special 
looked up, startled, and burst into a fresh
od of tears.
'Seal it off. It's a crime scene. Call the SOCOs!' ordered Thompson.
"They're all at a bombing,' said one of the uniforms.
Thompson thought things couldn't get much worse. Doyle had


murdered Fernley-Price right under his nose, despite a so-called police
guard, and in full view of the CCTV on every floor. Doyle had
done it, or had it done, without any bother at all, and had made a
complete fool of Thompson in the process.
He beckoned to the special. Eyes wide, she scurried over like a
scared animal, cowering in front of him.
'I'm ever so sorry, sir,' she said. 'He said I should go and have a
cup of tea.'
'Jesus Christ, you just walked away?'
'He was a detective. He showed me his warrant card!'
Thompson stared at her. 'Are you telling me this is down to a
police officer?'
She thrust her notebook at him. At the top of the page neat writing
recorded the time of her tea break and the name of the relieving
officer. Flint.
Thompson took a breath. 'Get me the CCTV footage,' he said to
one of the hospital security guards, who glanced at his mate, who
looked at the floor.
'Er... it's on the blink,' said the guard.

When Flint's phone rang and he saw Thompson's name displayed,
he was disinclined to answer. In fact, he was thinking he might not
ever be going in to work again. He'd disclosed information and
compromised an investigation, lost his warrant card and assaulted
a senior officer. Dempster would be well within his rights to lay
charges.
Now he'd given Coulthard up to a violent loan shark. He'd had
misgivings about that, thinking it might come back to bite him.
But by the time he'd called Coulthard to warn him, it was too late.
Doyle answered the phone. Flint had hung up, fast, praying that
Coulthard had Flint's number stored under a name that wouldn't
give him away.


All in all, it wasn't a good look for an Acting Detective Sergeant
on the rise. Plus, he was sick of being treated like a numpty by
Thompson. He'd be better off in the private sector. More money,
more respect, less hassle. Once he resigned, the Met couldn't discipline
him and they wouldn't want the sort of publicity that would
come with a criminal trial. They would let him go quietly.
The only problem was that in the current economic climate it
might take him a while to find a suitable gig. He was mortgaged up
to his eyeballs and a bit short of the readies. But he had a fair idea
where he might be able to lay his hands on some.
He touched his inside pocket, where he had put the envelope
Dempster had dropped at Berlin's. The contents had made interesting
reading.

Thompson listened to Flint's voicemail greeting but hung up without
leaving a message. It was all his own fault. He'd dropped the
ball on this one, big time, and ignored all the warning signs of an
investigation unravelling.
He felt something inside him snap. He had cut corners, compromised
himself and still he was no closer to Gina Doyle's killer.
Now he had another body on his hands and his Acting Detective
Sergeant was the prime suspect. Someone would pay.





79

The mean winter sun was fading fast. Berlin felt that she would disappear
with it - dissolve, absorbed in darkness, a cipher emptied of
humanity. Her phone rang and when she saw it was Thompson she
switched it off. There seemed no point in listening to his recrimina

tions; she was more than capable of self-loathing.
The market stalls were closing, the crowd was sparse and the
pavement was thick with crushed cardboard and rotting vegetables.
A few homeless people picked them over, competing with the pigeons
for edible refuse, and with one another for the driest pieces
of cardboard to sleep under.
Speculators and the poor: the driven and the desperate. She
glanced up at the Gherkin, the City's icon, cheek by jowl with the
East End. The dying light was trapped in the myriad panes of its
diamond carapace. Reflecting history. The South Sea Bubble. The
Great Depression. A royal bank bailed out by a levy on the citizens,
its barons richly rewarded for failure.
Berlin's mind wandered in lockstep with her restless feet, turning
away from the City. Money never sleeps. I never sleep. She would
just walk into the night, as she had done so many times before, and
at the end it would be just like the beginning. The need that drove
her on would find a way.
She tried to look forward to a time when Gina Doyle's death
didn't hang around her neck like an albatross and she had a steady
supply of good-quality dope. She would talk to Dempster and sort
things out with him. He would understand; he would say it was
okay. But her natural inclination was retrospective.
It had all started with Coulthard's bastardry and Nestor's weakness.
And her stubborn demand for evidence. It had started then.
Her compulsion to go back, to find the very heart of things, to seek
the source of rage, despair and murder, came from the same place
as her addiction. It gave her faltering legs the will to keep moving.
A beggar touched her arm and, starded, she raised a fist to ward
him off. He cowered, seemingly resigned to the blow - an emaciated
ancient, his eyes pearly with opaque cataracts. It had begun
generations ago.
She had looked back and seen a glimpse of her own history, a


80

Delroy closed the front door behind the police officers. Linda, his
girlfriend, emerged from the kitchen, none too happy.
'What did they want?' she asked.
'They're looking for Berlin.'
'What's she done now?' said Linda.
Delroy frowned. Linda thought Berlin was trouble and was going
to drag down his promising career. Delroy hadn't mentioned
the team's imminent demise, which was going to cut his career off
at the knees anyway.
'Nothing. The inspector on the Gina Doyle inquiry is looking
for her, that's all. Apparently she's gone off the radar.'
'She went off years ago, if you ask me,' muttered Linda.
He hadn't told her the half of it. The uniforms had told him the
DCI was on the warpath and had issued a BOLO; be on the lookout.
He wanted to interview Berlin about a murder down at the
hospital. The bodies were piling up around that woman.












'Stay there,' Doyle said to Coulthard as he parked the Merc outside
the lock-up. 'The lads will drop you home in a minute.'
Coulthard barely nodded. He was in no fit state to argue. All
mouth and no trousers, thought Doyle as he got out of the car.
The door of the lock-up opened and the lads hovered just outside,
clearly reluctant to leave the warmth of the old-fashioned paraffin
heater in the corner.
Doyle strode past them and they followed him back inside.
'Leave the door,' he said. He wanted to keep an eye on Coulthard.
'Any trouble with the girl?' he asked.
'Nah. She was packing her bags before we were out of the house.'
'Good. Now I want you to take him down to the Basin and
make sure he doesn't come back.'
The lads looked at each other.
'What?' said Doyle.
'Well, it's a bit different, innit?' said one. 'Breaking a few legs,
giving a girl one, all right. But this, this is like, well it's
'We want more money,' said the other one.
Doyle regarded them in disgust. The little shits. The Ivans were
moving into the manor and they were always looking for muscle.
He wondered if the lads had been headhunted.
'My daughter, my little girl, lies mouldering in her grave and all
you two can think about is money,' he snarled.
The lads looked sheepish. 'Yeah, well, he didn't do it, did he?'
said one, chancing his arm.
'No, you bleeding pillock!' bellowed Doyle. 'But we just blackmailed
him into killing the bastard who did! Did you think of that?
So now he's got the drop on us, on you, you fucking genius, unless
we get rid of him!'
The lad's face fell. It was clear he hadn't thought of that.


'Sort it!' commanded Doyle.
The lads shuffled out to the Merc.
'And take the fucking Mondeo!' he shouted after them. He
glanced at his watch. 'I've got to get over to Frank's.'





82

Frank opened the door and smiled. 'I always knew you would
come,' he said.
Berlin glanced back at the rusty iron gates. The padlock on the
chain hadn't been locked, but the gates were frozen and she hadn't
the strength left to force them open. She'd had to squeeze through
the small gap.
Even if she did change her mind, the tail lights of the cab were
already tiny red eyes in the distance. She wouldn't get far in her
condition. Every muscle felt like wire beneath her skin and she was
jarred by a dry, racking cough. Despite the freezing temperature her
hair was drenched with sweat and she stank. She felt like she'd lost
six pounds already.
But why would she run? The old man who stood before her in
his fingerless gloves, muffler and ancient herringbone tweed overcoat
looked harmless. His feet were encased in decrepit hobnail
boots. She could see the newspaper they were stuffed with peeking
through the toes. There was no hint of the villain with the fearsome
reputation.
Frank stepped aside and she crossed the threshold into the cold,
dark hall. When he closed the front door, it was pitch black for a
few moments, then he switched on a torch.
The beam glinted off icicles hanging from a pipe that ran along


the ceiling. She was seized by the notion that she was entering an
underworld where not only water, but time itself was frozen.
Frank led her down the hall, turning into ever narrower passages
constructed out of old doors. They passed doorways boarded up
with old planks, their missing doors apparently used to construct
the passages. The house was utterly silent. At last he turned into a
room and switched on a light. It was the kitchen. A heavy blanket
hung at the window.
'For the blackout,' Frank explained. 'Make yourself at home.'
Berlin sat down at the table. 'Mr Doyle,' she began, but he raised
a hand.
'Frank, please,' he said. He was looking at her with what she
could only describe as benign wonderment. He shook his head.
'You're the spitting image of your father.'
'I'm sorry, Mr Doyle - Frank. I came because... there's something
...' Bothering me.
'I believe you knew my father,' she continued. 'I only became
aware of this recently because of my involvement with Gina.'
Frank filled the kettle from a bucket of water and put it on the
gas. Of course, she thought. We're going to have tea.
'Gina,' said Frank with a big sigh. 'A right little madam, but the
apple of her granddad's eye, eh?'
The sensation of having fallen down a rabbit hole grew stronger.
'What took you so long?' he asked.
'Well, I - you know how it is,' she said. 'There's always something.'
Frank
nodded sagely. 'Hang on,' he said. 'I've got something to
show you.'
He left the kitchen, taking the torch, and Berlin heard his footsteps
fading into the nether regions.
She was on her feet straightaway, checking the cupboards, drawers,
and under the sink. She had no idea what she was looking for,


but if this was the only room Frank lived in, anything to be found
would be here. It was another habit: the need to know.
But everything was empty. Even the cutlery drawer. A single
knife, fork and spoon lay on the draining board. And two cups.
She lifted the corner of the blackout blanket. The sash window was
nailed down; beyond it a bleak, white wasteland.
She sat down again, overcome with fatigue and disappointment,
and decided she was a fool. Maybe she was kidding herself about
the real reason for coming all the way out here. She was as deluded
as Frank. He was a sad old man, and Doyle, for all his faults, was a
dutiful son who kept a close eye on him.
The clump of Frank's boots heralded his return. He came in carrying
an old brown photo album, coated in thick dust.
'Kettle's boiling! Don't waste the gas!' he said, plonking the album
on the table. He scuttled about making the tea with industrial
strength tea bags, a concession to modernity.
He passed her a cup then sat down at the table, dragging his
chair around so he could sit next to her. He flipped through the
pages of the album and she saw his eyes grow misty with memories.
Each page bore a small black and white photo. Holiday snaps
mostly. Post-war. Street parties for the Coronation. Southend Pier.
He kept turning until finally he found what he wanted.
'See!' he exclaimed, pointing at a snapshot. 'What did I tell you?
I'd have known you anywhere.'
Berlin leant forward and turned the album to catch more of the
light from the bare bulb that hung over the table.
Her heart lurched. Two young men stood side by side. They
wore wide trousers with turn-ups. Their hair was Brylcreemed into
quiffs. One was taller, stocky, his arms crossed to show off his muscles.
The other one was her father. Between them stood a little girl,
blonde, frowning. Berlin remembered the dress.
Doyle had told her Frank knew her father and here was the proof.


But what was the real nature of the connection between her father
and a family of East End villains? She had a feeling she should let
it lie. But couldn't.
Bethnal Green was a smaller, tighter community then. Her father
had his shop on the high road. It wasn't so surprising that
they knew each other. Frank was probably a customer. Perhaps
Archie Doyle's rings had once rested on black velvet in the shop
window.
The photo implied a closer relationship. Her father must have
taken her to visit Frank. They were smiling, standing shoulder to
shoulder. She had no memory of the visit, or of Frank, but by the
time she would have been old enough to take notice she was living
with her mother.
She closed the album and took a deep breath. 'Frank,' she said.
'What about Gina?' And there it was, almost rhetorical, more a plea
than a question, out of her mouth before she realised. The thing
that was bothering her.
This time, at the mention of the name, Frank frowned. 'Her
mother was here a few days ago. Or was it last week?' he said.
Jesus Christ. Nancy's alive, thought Berlin. Maybe she had heard
about Gina.
'You mean Nancy, your son's wife?' she asked, very quietly.
Frank looked at her as if he didn't recognise her. 'Shouldn't you
be in a shelter?' he asked. 'You should get down the Underground.
The Nazis are at it every night, bombing the docks.'
Berlin waited a moment and saw the thought leave him.
'What did Nancy want?' she asked.
Frank's fist came crashing down on the table. 'She wanted the
fucking ledger!' he roared, and flung open his overcoat to reveal a
thick black notebook tucked into his belt. Confusion clouded his
face again. 'But how could she know about it? She was dead before
I started the business.'


He seemed to have forgotten Berlin was there.
A gust of wind rattled in the eaves and she shivered.
Retired Senior Constable Marks and his chocolate bourbons
came back to her. He had said that Nancy had a nest egg and that
Frank Doyle wasn't in the sharking business in those days. He started
after Nancy had gone. The juxtaposition of the two facts came
into sharp focus.
Her confusion evaporated at the same time as Frank's. He regarded
Berlin with narrowed eyes, suddenly completely compos
mentis. Coldly rational.
A chill crawled up her spine.
'Who are you andwhat the fuck do you want?' he said in a quiet,
menacing voice.
'My name's Catherine Berlin. I'd like to ask you some questions
about Nancy and Gina Doyle.'
In an instant the old man became an enraged, scarlet gargoyle,
eyes popping, hands clenched in lethal fists.
Berlin pushed back her chair very slowly and rose with care,
afraid of provoking this ferocious creature who glowered at her,
ready to pounce.
That's why I'm here, she thought. They're all dead. My father,
Nancy and Gina. Her heart was pounding as she saw there were
only two possibilities. Either Frank knew Doyle had killed Nancy
or he had done it himself. She had disappeared the year they began
loan sharking. Using her nest egg.
She took a step back from Frank and the horrible symmetry
which presented itself. She had insisted Gina come up with hard
evidence, so Gina had come for the ledger. At first the demented
old man mistook her for her mother.
'Gina came out here after the ledger. She said it was her birthright,'
sneered Frank. 'She said her dad had killed her mum for her
bit of capital. As if he'd have had the balls to do it!'


Frank had remembered Gina's mother was dead because he had
murdered her. She was trapped in an icy labyrinth with a deranged
killer. Just as Gina had been.
Frank reached up and with his bare hand crushed the light bulb.
There was a bang and they were plunged into darkness.





83

Flint parked up against the wall, climbed on top of his car and
dropped over the wall into a foot of snow, which reflected the full
moon and bathed the scene in an eerie glow.
He carefully made his way to a garage attached to one side of
the sprawling bungalow. A thin strip of light from one window was
the only sign of life, but as he watched, it blinked out. All gone to
beddy-byes then. Good.
He pushed the roller door tentatively and, to his surprise, it slid
up in well-oiled silence. His penlight picked out racks of tools, cans
of paint and piles of junk. In the middle of it all was a car covered
with a heavy canvas. He lifted the corner, expecting an old rust
bucket, but the Jag was in pristine condition, apart from mud under
the wheel arches. It had been used recently.
His instincts were right; the bastards kept their buried treasure
out here somewhere. All that cash Doyle collected wouldn't be left
hanging around his flat in Bethnal Green, waiting for the burglars
to turn up. And he couldn't bank it. Flint tried the door which led
into the house. It was locked, and the lock was new.
But the timber was old. He reached for a rusty crowbar.
X marks the spot.



Doyle was surprised when he got out of the car and found the gates
ajar. He might not have secured the padlock, but he always yanked
the chain tight. Maybe it was the wind. He put his weight against
the gates and shoved. Bloody weather. At least they didn't grate on
the concrete any more - the ice had smoothed their path.
He was glad to get back in the car, which was warmer than it
would be inside the bloody house. He drove up the driveway and
stopped, but didn't get out, reluctant to leave the cosy cocoon.
There was no light on in the kitchen and Frank didn't open the
door. Doyle switched off the motor and sat in the sudden ticking
silence, enjoying the peace and quiet. What a bloody life he led. He
didn't understand the half of it. Then the silence was shattered by
an almighty racket coming from somewhere inside the house.

Berlin felt Frank's hands brush her face as he grabbed at her in the
dark. She ducked, and his hand closed around her hair. She kept
moving, gripped the edge of the table and overturned it. She heard
the torch strike the floor and felt Frank totter as the edge of the table
struck him. She struggled from his grasp, but his grip didn't falter
and she felt a fistful of hair torn from her scalp as she broke away.
He stumbled about, his heavy boots betraying his movements. He
went for the door, no doubt expecting her to do the same, but she
edged around the kitchen, reaching out until her fingers brushed
the blackout blanket. When he realised what she was doing he flung
himself across the room, kicking the table out of his way.
'Come here, you cunt!' he growled.
She felt his hot, fetid breath on her neck as she put all her weight
on the blanket and brought it down.
For a moment they were both shrouded in the dense, suffocating
fabric. She kicked back, using his body to propel her forward. The
window shattered and she fell out into starry nothing.




Frank flung open the front door and nearly collected Doyle, who
was trying to get in. Frank shoved him out of the way.
'Stop the bitch! She knows everything! Get her!' he screamed.
'What the fuck?' gasped Doyle as Frank shot down the steps and
ran around the side of the house. Christ, he thought, the old man's
really lost it this time, and ran after him.
When he turned the corner he was astonished to see someone
crawling away from the kitchen window. Frank was gaining on
them fast. The figure was in shadow and Doyle couldn't make out
who it was as they staggered to their feet and stumbled across the
strip of gravel, which was obscured by snow.
Suddenly the whole area lit up, dazzling Doyle. Frank must have
rigged a motion detector to the exterior spotlights. He blinked.
When his vision cleared he saw that Berlin woman fleeing across an
expanse of tall grass, the glistening tips rigid above the snow. Frank
was standing at the edge of it, watching her.
Doyle ran up to him. 'What the fuck's going on, Frank?'
'Don't worry, she won't get far,' Frank replied, suddenly placid, as
he tracked Berlin's stumbling progress.
Berlin stopped and looked back at them. Doyle watched her
weighing her options. The wall was too high for her to scale and
although the gates were only about fifty yards to her right, if they
moved fast, they could still cut her off.
'He killed them, Doyle.' Her voice carried across the still
night. 'Frank murdered Nancy and Gina. Your wife and your daughter.'
The
silence was rent by Frank's enraged howl. Doyle felt it as a
blow. Frank had told Doyle to stop Berlin because she knew everything.
He realised it was all true. He struggled to breathe, paralysed
by the horror.
Frank broke the spell. He bore down on Berlin and she fled.



Berlin ran towards the wall she couldn't climb: the wall she faced
in her nightmares. The cracks in it were closing now, crushing her
father, who was desperately trying to reach her, no longer whispering
but screaming at her to run.
The next thing she knew she was pitching forward. A ring of fire
bit into her ankle and she struck the ground. Jagged teeth tore at
her face. Agony obliterated time.

She lay beneath a sea of towering, frigid thistles on a frozen tundra.
The black sky bled sharp, silent crystals, which pierced the swollen
skin around each embedded tooth of the spring-loaded trap.
It clamped one cheek and jaw at an unnatural angle and crushed
her nose flat against the ridge of her shattered eye socket.
Her throat filled with blood from an almost severed tongue.
She couldn't open her mouth to release it from the grip of her
teeth. She tried to swallow and imagined she was encased in a
scolds bridle, the iron muzzle studded with spikes.
Above her, she could hear knuckles crack, bone on bone, and
the gasping wheeze of lungs fighting for air.
All she could see were legs and torsos twisted together, a knot
of serpents locked in a hissing struggle. Frank's hand clawed at
his belt buckle and the ledger fell to the ground. With a fierce
grunt he pushed himself free of Doyle, his clothes riding up as he
dragged off his belt.
The white expanse of his stomach was scored with deep purple
scars, the sort of scars that might be left by lances or burning pokers.
Or by the spikes of iron railings that had dug deep into your
flesh as you hung over them to haul a skinny boy from the midst
of a crushing stampede.
Berlin put her hand on her chest as she felt the breath squeezed
from her lungs. She tried to turn her head, but the teeth of the
trap bit deeper with every movement. No doubt it was designed


that way. She inched forward and a shrill pain shot down her
twisted spine. She passed out.

When she came around, there was silence. A figure loomed over
her, but she couldn't move her head enough to see who it was. The
figure crouched and bent to look her in the eye.
Doyle's face was wet with tears. 'I loved him,' he said. He fell to
the ground beside her, curled up like a baby and sobbed, his face
inches from hers.
'I loved them, too,' he gasped between despairing sobs. 'I loved
them and he killed them. He shouldn't ought to have done that. It
wasn't right!' he raged.
The pain of his loss covered them both, a suffocating blanket of
horror.
'Gina!' he screamed, calling her out of the night.
But there was no reply, only the explosive sound of ice as it slid
from the roof of the house and shattered. Icicles snapped in imitation
of bullets striking tin, pipes burst and released a torrent.
Berlin heard the cacophony of the thaw and wept.
Doyle's fingers crept around her throat, finding space to insert
themselves beneath the rusted steel bands of the trap. 'It's only
right, Miss, to put an animal out of its misery.' His hands tightened,
crushing her windpipe.

There were no nosy neighbours to call the cops so Flint had time
to search the house before venturing outside to inspect the carnage.
He'd heard glass breaking and Doyle's cry for Gina, but whatever
was happening was outside, so he took the opportunity to get on
with the job at hand.
When he emerged from the house the place was lit up like Christmas.
He followed the trail of crushed grass and disturbed snow until he came upon 
the old man. Two others lay close together in the


deep shadow just beyond reach of the floodlights.
He picked up the thick black notebook lying on the ground near
the body, flicked through it and knew it represented a gold mine.
Coulthard's name was in there, along with dozens of others. He put
it in his pocket. There was a collection of cash books like this one
in an old tin trunk he'd found inside the house, one for every year
since 1986. All the entries were in the same fine, meticulous hand.
There was money stashed all over the place, but he was a trained
expert and he'd pretty much managed to find most, if not all, of it.
Sod everything. Leave the crooks and the politicians to it. He was
off.
A small movement caught his eye. A cosy couple was locked
together. He walked towards them and stepped out of the light. In
the gloom he could make out Doyle and Berlin. She was caught,
head and foot, in two evil-looking animal traps.
Gobsmacked, he realised that Doyle's fingers were clenched
around her throat. If she was still alive, he was slowly choking the
remaining life out of her.
Flint saw a brighter future beckon. He picked up a slab of bro,
ken concrete, held it high and dropped it.
A skull shattered.
He flicked open his mobile and dialled. Acting Detective Serigeant
Flint here,' he announced. "There's been a murder.'













Berlin gasped and tried to claw at her throat. Someone restrained
her. She opened her eyes. It was a woman she didn't know.
'Take it easy,' said the woman. 'It's to help you breathe.'
The light was dim and there was a faint purr and click of machinery.
A battery of soft blue lights blinked on a monitor. Berlin
heard a voice and tried to turn her head, but it was held fast. It took
all the energy she had left to raise her hand and touch the cold steel
frame that encased one side of her face.
The woman, a nurse, fussed around her then disappeared from
her field of vision. A man appeared. She recognised Thompson.
'You're going to be all right, Berlin,' he said. 'Thanks to Detective
Sergeant Flint.'
She was aware of someone on the other side of the bed taking her
hand. She was able to move just enough to see that it was Delroy.
'Jesus, mate,' he said. He had tears in his eyes.
She must look a sight. She squeezed his hand and saw the surprise
on his face. It was probably the first affectionate gesture he'd
ever known her to make.
Thompson cleared his throat and she looked back at him.
'We found Gina's DNA in the boot of Frank's Jag. The ground
was frozen solid, so he couldn't bury her at Chigwell. Unlike her
mum. Nancy's remains were out there. Dug up and moved more
than once, from the look of it. We think she was killed for her savings:
the capital he needed to start loan sharking. And Frank's wife's
bones were encased in the concrete floor of the lock-up.'
How long had it taken them to uncover Frank's secrets? How
long had she been unconscious? She hadn't told anyone where she
was going. Lack of trust had nearly cost her her life.
She focused hard and mouthed 'Dempster?'
Thompson frowned.



She tried again. The croak she heard was her own voice. 'Dempster.
Ask him to come,' she rasped.
Thompson exchanged a glance with Delroy, then made a pantomime
of looking at his watch. 'I have to go. We'll talk when you're
better,' he said and disappeared from view.
The effort of speaking had exhausted Berlin. She closed her eyes.
Delroy whispered in her ear.
'The police found Coulthard's shoes at the Basin. They think he
went to top himself but it was frozen over, so he went into the river
instead. I reckon he's legged it to Spain.'
Berlin wanted to smile, but couldn't. She had stared into the
abyss and it blinked first. The dragon had been put to the sword;
hereafter night would mean sleep.
The nurse came back and started to rig up a device. 'You'll have to go now,' 
she said to Delroy, hooking a tube into the cannula in
erlin's arm. She adjusted a valve.
'What's that?' asked Delroy.
'PCA,' replied the nurse. 'Patient-controlled analgesia. She's goig
to be in excruciating pain.'
Berlin opened her eyes wide, alarmed. The nurse gave her a brisk,
isuring nod. "This will fix it,' she said.
Delroy watched as she curled Berlin's fingers around the device
d showed her how to control the flow.
'What is it?' said Delroy.
The nurse smiled. 'Morphine,' she said.











Sincere thanks to Ben Ball of Penguin Australia and Jason Arthur of
Random House UK.
Particular thanks to my very classy agent, Sarah Ballard.
Special thanks to Arwen Summers, my editor at Penguin Australia.
No thanks to those who told me a picture was worth a thousand
words.
;-. Heartfelt thanks to Peta Masters for the title, and just about everything
else.
ALSO BY ANNIE HAUXWELL


A BITTER TASTE

The eagerly awaited second installment in the
Catherine Berlin series

She was ten years old, but knew enough to wipe clean the handle
of the bloody kitchen knife. The night was stifling; the windows
were closed, sealing in the chaos. A table upturned, shattered
crockery. Her distraught mother, bare shoulders raw with welts,
knelt beside her motionless father. The child snatched up her
backpack, and ran...

London sweats in the height of midsummer, and Catherine Berlin
hides her scars from prying eyes. At the methadone clinic, she
meets an old friend, Sonja Kvist, who begs her to help find her
missing daughter. But the case is not as straightforward as it first
appears, and Catherine soon realises that in order to find the girl,
she must tackle a far greater threat...












V




For years the FBI hunted the so-called
'Kentucky Killer', their agents haunted by the
terrible Injuries he inflicted on his victims
through his signature device: a weapon
that squeezed the vocal cords shut. Has he
somehow returned from beyond the grave to
torture a new generation, or do they have a
copycat on their hands? And what does he
want In Sweden?



itto y ire to capture the killer, the team us collaborate with their colleagues 
in e F 31 on a desperate hunt that will take em from rainswept city streets to 
deserted
I enti cky farmhouses, and will push them to
the lii lits of their endurance.
Arne Dahl is an award-winning Swedish crime
novelist and literary critic. The Blinded Man, the first book in the 
internationally acclaimed
Intercrime series starring Detective Paul Hjelm,
was published in 2012. Bad Blood Is the
second in the series.





wit
THE
BLINDED
MAN
Also by Arne Dahl The Blinded Man
BAD BLOOD





ARNE DAHL


Translated from the Swedish by
Rachel Willson-Broyles














Harvill Seeker

LONDON
Published by Harvil Seeker 2013

2468 10 97531

Copyright © 1998 Arne Dahl

English translation copyright © 2013 by Pantheon Books,
a division of Random House, Inc.

Arne Dahl has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, and all names of places and 
descriptions
of events, are the products of the author's imagination and any resemblance to 
actual
persons or places is entirely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade 
or otherwise,
be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's 
prior consent
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and 
without a
similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent 
purchaser.

First published with the title Ont Mod by Bra Bocker AB, a division of
Albert Bonniers Forlag, Stockholm

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
HARVILL SECKER, Random House
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
Londond SwlV 2SA

www. rbooks. co.uk


Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.ukofmces.htm

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781846556760 (hardback)
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY

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Pain beyond words, he thinks. Now I know what it is.
Learn for life, he thinks, and his gallows-humour laugh is
silent. Learn for death, he thinks, and instead of laughter: yet
another mute, infernal scream.
As the pain mounts its next attack, he knows with a kind of
Crystal-clear certainty that he has laughed his last laugh.
The pain is no longer deepening. With what he can still
make out as a mixture of satisfaction and terror, he feels that
its intensity has reached its peak, and he understands just what
process is now under way.
The downward slope.
The graph of pain is no longer rising; it is levelling out, and
beyond it he can glimpse the steep incline that will, with the
inevitability of a playground slide, end in nothingness. Or - and he fights the 
thought - with God.
The images start to come to him; he knew they would. They come even as the pain 
increases to levels he couldn't have imagined in his wildest fantasies. He is 
surprised at the
possibilities that have lain hidden within him all these years.
So they do exist.
While his entire being explodes in cascade after cascade, the
pain seems more and more to shift from his fingers, genitals and
throat to a place outside himself. It somehow rises above his
body and invades his - and he can t help thinking of the word
- his soul. All the while he tries to keep his mind clear. But then
come more images.
At first he fought to maintain contact with the world, but
now the world outside, beyond the small window, is nothing
more than the giant aircraft lumbering past. Now and then the
figure of his tormentor sweeps by, holding the deadly tools.
Soon enough the roaring planes blend with the images, and now
even the planes are transformed into shrieking spirits.
He can t control the images, how they come, their order,
their structure. He sees the unforgettable interior of the labour
room where his son has been born, but he hasn't been there
himself; rather, as his son is born, he hears himself throwing
up in the bathroom. But now he is there, and it is beautiful,
odourless, soundless. Life goes on, clean and pure. He greets
people he recognises as great authors. He drifts through elegant
old corridors. He sees himself making love to his wife, and her
expression is joyful in a way he's never seen. He is standing at
a podium; people applaud wildly. More corridors, meetings,
conferences. He is on TV showered with admiring looks. He
sees himself writing with a white-hot passion, he sees himself
read book after book, pile after pile of papers.
But when the pain is interrupted and the rumble of the
planes brings him back to the room, it strikes him that all he
sees is himself reading and writing, not what he is reading and
writing. During those brief moments when he can catch his
breath, he wonders what this means.
It is clear now that the descent is starting. The pain no longer
reaches him. He is fleeing his tormentor; he will be victorious. He
even has the strength to spit on him, and the reply is a crunching
sound and a slight increase in pain. Out of the darkness comes
a roaring dragon, and it becomes an aeroplane that sweeps over
a football pitch where his son is casting nervous glances at the
sidelines. He waves to him, but his son doesn't see; he waves
more frantically and yells louder, but his son only looks more
resigned until he scores a goal for the opposing team, out of
distraction or protest.
Then he sees the young woman next to the bookshelf, her
impressed glances. They're walking along the large street,
eagerly demonstrating their generation-defying love. On the
Other side: two completely motionless figures, his son and his
wife, and he sees them and stops and gives the woman a deep
kiss. He's running, working out. The little needle presses down
into his scalp again and again, and finally his glorious thick hair
is back again. His mobile phone rings during a debate at the
book fair - another son. Champagne corks pop, but when he
gets home, they're gone.
And he's reading again, and in a final burst of consciousness
he thinks that something out of all he's read and written ought
to fly past, but the only thing he sees is himself reading and
Writing, and in one last shining second of lucidity that makes
him think he is truly dying, he realises that nothing he has read
or written has meant anything. He might as well have done
absolutely anything else.
He thinks of the threat. 'No one will be able to hear you
Scream.' Of how he didn't take the threat seriously. Because he
suspected-- a final burst of pain stops his last thought.
And so begins the end. The images come quickly now. It's as
though there's no time.
He's walking in the protest march; the police raise their
batons above him. He's standing in a summer pasture, the horse
racing towards him. A little grass snake slinks into his rubber
boots and winds its way between his toes. His father looks
absent-mindedly at his drawing of the enormous snake. The clouds rush by above 
the edge of the pushchair canopy, and
he thinks he sees a cat moving around up there. Sweet milk is
sprayed over his face. The thick, pale green cord leads the way,
and he travels through dark, fleshy canals.
And then he is no longer travelling.
Thinks somewhere: What a sleazy way to die.




2


Paul Hjelm was convinced that there was such a thing as a
motionless morning, and that this late-summer morning was
one of them. Not a leaf was moving on the slightly wilted plants
in the courtyard, nor a speck of dust in the office where he stood
gazing outside. Extremely few brain cells were moving inside
his skull. In other words, it was a motionless morning at police
headquarters on Kungsholmen in Stockholm.
Unfortunately, the past year had also been motionless. Paul
Hjelm was part of the police squad that had investigated the
remarkable so-called 'Power Murders', in which a serial killer
had single-mindedly started to wipe out the elites of Swedish
business and industry. Because the investigation had been a
success, the group was made permanent as a special unit within
the National Criminal Police, an auxiliary resource for 'violent
crimes of an international character', as the formal wording ran.
In practice, they were tasked with keeping up with new forms
of criminality that hadn't yet really reached Sweden.
And that was the problem. No other 'violent crimes of an
international character' had afflicted the country during the
past year, so more and more internal criticism was being levelled
against the existence of the A-Unit. It wasn't really called the
A-Unit; that was just the name that had come up a year and a
half ago when, in a state of panic, the group had been formed
at short notice. For purposes of formality and justification, the
group was now called 'the National Criminal Police's Special
Unit for Violent Crimes of an International Character'. Because
this name, in accordance with convention, was impossible to
say without laughing, they continued to call themselves 'the
A-Unit', which was itself pretty comical, but at least it had a
certain sentimental value.
But at this point, the group was close to being history. Idleness
among civil servants was hardly in keeping with the times,
and the group was slowly beginning to break up; it was given
various bullshit tasks, and its members were being lent out all
over the place. The group's formal boss, Waldemar Morner,
deputy commissioner of the National Police Board, worked like
a dog, but it seemed that the story of the A-Unit would soon be
over.
What the unit needed was a robust serial killer. Of a robust
international character.
Paul Hjelm, staring stupidly and motionlessly at the motionless
morning, watched a small leaf, one of the few that was
already yellow, quiver and flutter to the courtyard's dreary concrete.
He gave a start, which goaded him to pull himself together.
He strode over to a flaking shaving mirror that was nailed to the
wall in the generic office - and contemplated his blemish.
During the hunt for the Power Murderer, a red spot had
broken out on his cheek, and someone very close to him had
said that the blemish looked like a heart. That had been a long
time ago. She was no longer close to him, and the person who
had taken her place mostly thought it repulsive.
He looked back at the time of the Power Murders case with
sadness and a sense of unreality. The case had brought a peculiar
mix of professional success and personal disaster. And renewal,
painful in the way renewal is always painful.
His wife, Cilia, had left him. In the middle of one of the
country's most important murder investigations ever, he had
ended up alone with the children out in the terraced house in
Norsborg. This meant that the children had to drift around by
themselves while he was sucked deeper and deeper into the case
and found an ambiguous erotic release with a colleague. He still
had trouble separating what had actually happened between
them from what he had imagined.
But once the case was solved, the train of life returned to
its customary rails, as he had put it in poetic moments. One car
after another was pulled in from its siding and resumed its place
on the main track until the Hjelm train was once again its old
self. Cilia returned; family life went back to normal; the A-Unit,
and not least himself, were declared heroes; the group was
made permanent; he was promoted and was assigned regular
working hours; a few of his colleagues became close friends; the
female colleague found a new man; peace and quiet returned;
and everything was fine and dandy.
The question now was whether he had got an overdose of
peace and quiet, because suddenly one day, after the nearly
six months it took to tie up the Power Murder case and come
to a verdict, he realised that the mighty Hjelm train had been
transformed into a little model railway set. Wide-open spaces
and endless skies turned out to actually be the cement floor,
walls and ceiling of a games room; and the train's speedy
departure turned out to be nothing more than a perpetually
recurring circle.
His first doubts about the purpose of the A-Unit's existence
were accompanied by a whole series of further doubts. His
return to the same old ruts felt more and more like a bad stage
production of his daily routine. As though everywhere he went
were poorly constructed, as though there were no solid ground
under the railway tracks, as though the tiniest puff of air would
blow it over.
Hjelm looked at himself in the mirror: about forty, with medium-blond, 
standard Swedish hair and a receding hairline. In general, his was hardly an 
appearance that attracted attention
- aside from his blemish, from which he now removed a small flake of skin and 
onto which he rubbed a bit of skin cream. Then he returned to the window. The 
morning was still motionless. The small yellow leaf was lying still where it 
had landed. No breeze had descended upon the police headquarters courtyard.
What they needed was a robust serial killer, of a robust
international character, thought Paul Hjelm as he slid back into his orgy of 
self-pity
Sure, Cilia had returned. Sure, he himself had returned. But not once had they 
ever discussed what they'd really done and felt during their separation. At 
first he'd seen this as a sign of
mutual trust, but then he began to suspect that it was a chasm they would never 
be able to bridge. And how were the children doing, really? Danne was sixteen 
now, and Tova would be
fourteen soon, and sometimes when he caught their sidelong glances, he wondered 
whether he had used up all the store of trust they had in him. Had the strange 
summer almost a year ¦go left traces that would distort their lives long after 
his own death? It was mind-boggling.
And his relationship with Kerstin Holm, his colleague, also leemed to have 
entered a new phase. They ran into each other leveral times a day, and each 
time it felt more strained. Hiding behind their exchanged glances were abysses 
that hadn't been touched upon but that seemed more and more to demand 
attention. Not even his good relationships with his boss, Jan-Olov Hultin, and 
with his colleagues Gunnar Nyberg and Jorge Chavez seemed quite the same, as 
the little model train
Circled round and round in its stuffy room.
And then finally came the awful suspicion that the only thing that had changed 
was - him. Because he really had changed.
He listened to music he'd never even considered before, and
he found himself glued to books he'd never heard of. On his
desk, a portable CD player lay next to a tattered paperback.
In the CD player was John Coltrane's mysterious Meditations, one of the sax 
master's last albums, a strange mixture of wild
improvisation and quiet reverence; and the book was Kafka's Amerika, the least 
renowned of his novels but in some ways the
most curious. Paul Hjelm would never forget the chain of events
that is set into motion when the young Karl lands in New York
harbour, realises that he's forgotten his umbrella, and returns to
the steamer. He was convinced that that kind of scene comes
back to you when you're about to die.
Sometimes he blamed the books and the music for his metaphor
of the model railway. Maybe he would have been happier
if he still saw wide, open spaces and long, straight roads around
him.
His gaze returned to the courtyard. The little yellow leaf was
still there. Everything was motionless.
Suddenly and without warning, the leaf was lifted up into a
spiralling whirlwind, and several more leaves were torn away,
yellow ones as well as green ones; they performed a wild,
multicoloured dance between the walls of police headquarters.
Then the dance stopped as suddenly as it had started; the lone
whirlwind continued invisibly on its way, and all that was left
was a lonely pile of leaves on the drab cement.
The door was flung open. Jorge Chavez came in. The
presence of this thirty-year-old dynamo of a desk mate always
made Hjelm feel a decade older. But he could deal with it Chavez
was one of his best friends these days. He had come to
the A-Unit from the precinct in Sundsvall, where he had given
himself the title of the only blackhead cop in Norrland. Actually,
though, he was a Stockholmer, the son of Chilean refugees
in Ragsved. Hjelm never really understood how Chavez had
passed the physical requirements for entry to the police college;
he was no more than five foot six. On the other hand, he was
one of the sharpest policemen in the country - certainly the
most energetic one Hjelm had ever come across. In addition, he
was an elite-level jazz bassist.
Chavez's compact little figure slid to his end of the double
desk. He took his shoulder holster from the chair, fastened it
onto himself, checked his service pistol, and pulled on his
summer jacket of light linen.
'Something's up,' he said. 'Full speed ahead down the
corridor.'
Hjelm copied Chavez's movements, 'What do you mean,
"full speed ahead"?'
'Hard to define. But we're going to hear Hultin's voice within
thirty seconds, for sure. Want to make a bet?'
Paul Hjelm shook his head. He looked at the CD player and
the book on the desk, then at the pile of leaves in the courtyard,
shook some life into himself, and jumped onto the locomotive.
Time took on a new form.
A curt voice boomed over the intercom; it belonged to the
A-Unit's operative director, Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov
Hultin: 'Quick meeting. Everyone. Immediately'
Hjelm pulled his leather jacket over his shoulder holster and
he and Chavez half ran towards the room that had once gone by
the name 'Supreme Central Command' and that - he thought
hopefully - might do so once again. On their way through the
hall, a door flew open in Chavez's face, and Viggo Norlander
hurtled out. Though he had once been the group's dependable
rule follower, since the Power Murders Norlander had become
their bad boy; he had replaced his old, worn-out bureaucrat
suits with trendy polo shirts and leather jackets, and his slight
midlife flab was upgraded to a genuine six-pack.
The rest of the group was already assembled when Norlander
and Hjelm tumbled in. Chavez arrived just behind them with
a handkerchief to his nose. Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov
Hultin surveyed him sceptically from the desk at the front of
the unexceptional little room; he was sitting there like an owl,
or rather like a bored secondary-school teacher who'd been
forgotten by the pension board. His glasses were perched in their
proper place, like a small, natural growth, on his giant nose. No
newly kindled passion shone in his eyes, though something may
have smouldered in their corners. He cleared his throat.
All the members of the select group were actually there; all
of them had, as usual, clocked in early so they could go home
early, and none had been loaned out to some strange posting
elsewhere as punishment. Gunnar Nyberg, Arto Soderstedt
and Kerstin Holm were already sitting up front. Nyberg and
Soderstedt were of the same generation as Norlander, which
meant they were a few years older than Hjelm and many
years older than Chavez; Holm was somewhere between the
latter two. She was the only woman in the group; a short,
dark-complexioned Gothenburger, she was the third cog in the
trio of brains, along with Hjelm and Chavez.
On the other hand, she had something very important in
common with the group's purest bundle of energy, her office
mate Gunnar Nyberg: both sang in a choir and weren't ashamed
to be caught singing a cappella numbers in their office. Nyberg
had a colourful past as a brutal, steroid-using bodybuilder, but
nowadays he was a timid middle-aged man, a sloppily clad
mountain of meat with a lovely singing voice who could still
break out his old moves if necessary. During the investigation
of the Power Murders, having already taken a bullet in his
throat, he had tackled an accelerating car and put it out of
action. Soderstedt, for his part, was one of the strangest group
members, a Finland-Swedish, chalk-white former top lawyer
whose conscience had caught up to him; he always worked apart
from the others, following his own paths off the beaten track.
Norlander, Chavez and Hjelm took places in the row behind the trio. Hultin 
began in his customarily neutral voice, 'A
Swedish citizen has been murdered in the United States. But not just anyone, 
not just anywhere and not by just anyone. A relatively well-known Swedish 
literary critic was killed a few hours ago at Newark International Airport, 
outside New York. He was
sadistically tortured by a serial killer whose activity goes back
several decades. Up to this point, it has nothing to do with us.'
Apparently there was time for one of Hultin's dramatic
pauses, because what followed was that very thing.
'Our dilemma he continued, 'is that this serial killer is on his way here.'
Another moment of silence, a bit more loaded.
'The information from the FBI indicates that the killer took the literary 
critic's seat on the flight. At this very moment he is on flight SK 904, which 
will land at Arlanda in just under an hour, at 08.10. All together the plane is 
carrying 163 passengers, and the police in New York have chosen not to inform 
the crew of the situation. At present we are in a state of uncertainty as to 
the identity of the perpetrator, which isn't so strange when you
consider that he's been eluding the FBI for twenty years. But they hope to find 
out what name he's travelling under before the plane lands -1 have an open line 
to a Special Agent Larner in
New York. And so we need two parallel plans. One: we get the
name in time, in which case there's a risk of a scuffle. Two: we don't get the 
name in time, in which case we have to try to pick out from among 163 
passengers an elusive serial killer whose only known characteristics are that 
he is a white male, probably over forty-five years old.'
Hultin stood and pulled the zip of his old sports jacket up Over the butt of 
his pistol in its shoulder holster. He leaned
forward.
'This whole thing is really quite simple,' he said tranquilly. 'If
we fail, Sweden has imported its first real American serial killer.
Let's avoid that.'
He tromped off towards the waiting helicopter, leaving
behind the following words of wisdom:
'The world is shrinking, ladies and gentlemen. The world is
shrinking.'




3


The immense, irreplaceable calm that always appears comes in
expanding waves of bliss. He knows he will never stop.
Outside, the tremendous emptiness stretches on, with the
earth as a tiny, negligible exception. A magnificent speck of fly
shit on the great white page of perfection, a protocol error that
has likely destroyed the limitless divinity of the divine.
A thin sheet of Plexiglas separates him from the great, sucking
holes of nothingness that his serenity makes him part of.
The peaceful rocking of the clouds drives the images away.
They are far away now. He can even think about them. And at
no point does the peaceful smile leave his lips.
He can even think about the walk down to the cellar. It isn't a
series of images now - if it had been, he would have to conjure
it away, smoke it out by the burning sacrifice - it's a story, with a
logical, coherent structure. And even if he knows it will soon be
lost again and will call on its sacrificial smoke, he is able to find
pleasure in its sudden, crystal-clear perfection.
He is on his way.
He is on his way down the stairs he didn't know existed,
down into the cellar he didn't know existed. The secret passage
in the closet. The unforgettable, sweet-dusted air in the stairway.
The silent cement stairs that seem to go on forever. The raw,
clammy cold of the handrail.
The completely self-evident logic of the initiation. When eyes
can be raised and steps can follow steps on the stairs down into
the pitch black, the logic is indisputable. He has been chosen.
It has to come full circle. That is what has to be done now.
Then he can begin for real.
The stairs lead on. Every trace of light vanishes. He feels his
way ahead, step by step.
He allows himself to pause while the calm rocks him closer
to relieving sleep. He follows the imperfect wing of the plane as
it swings imperfectly out into the perfect swing of eternity.
Another light becomes visible, a completely different light,
and it accompanies his last steps down the staircase. Like the
frame of an icon around a darkness brighter than any light, the
light shoots out from behind the door. A halo showing the way.
A golden frame around a future work of art.
Which will now be completed.
He cracks open the door to the Millennium.
Outside the window, the Big Dipper slides into the Little
Dipper, making an Even Bigger Dipper.
'Tonight we can offer you the special SAS Swedish-American
drink for a long night's flight, sir,' he hears a gentle female voice
half singing.
But by then he is already asleep.




4


The A-Unit lifted off from the helicopter pad atop police
headquarters at 07.23 on Wednesday, 3 September. The seven
of them were crowded together. For a split second, Paul Hjelm
thought that they were just imitating a unit whose time had
come and gone, but the second passed, and he focused on his
task, like everyone else.
He was crammed between the huge, faintly panting body
of Gunnar Nyberg and the much thinner skeletal shell of Arto
Soderstedt. Across from him, Kerstin Holm's small, dark body
was squeezed between Viggo Norlander's now extremely
fit late-middle-aged muscles and Jorge Chavez's youthfully
unscathed compactness.
Between these two rows of people, Jan-Olov Hultin was
crouching in a position that shouldn't have been possible for
a man in his sixties - even if he was still a formidable centre
back on their police league football team. And he had such an
impressive pile of papers that it shouldn't have been possible
to gather them up at such short notice. He coaxed his glasses
up onto his monumental nose. The need to shout over the din
from the helicopter caused his voice to lose a bit of its clinical
tone.
'This is going to be complicated,' he said. 'The Arlanda
and Marsta police are already at the airport. Hordes of armed
officers have been rushing around in the international arrivals
hall, threatening tourists with aggravated assault. I think I've got
rid of them now. We're up against a man who'll stop at nothing.
That much I've understood - he's a well-programmed murder
machine, and if he starts to suspect anything, we're risking a
bloodbath and hostages and an all-round worst-case scenario. In
other words, we must act with great care.'
Hultin paged through pieces of paper.
'There are more than 150 people on the plane, and we can't
very well shove them all into some old hangar and check them
one by one. We would probably effectively kill several of them.
So instead, we'll have careful passport checks, done under our
supervision of course; and we'll do extreme vigilance over all
white middle-aged men - which will probably be quite a few
people on a typical business-class flight.
'In addition, customs has provided us with digital cameras
that allow the person who inspects passports to discreetly
photograph eachpassport photo. The immigration officers won't
be alone in their booths; you will be there behind them. You'll
be practically invisible from the outside. I've got the number of
passport control booths reduced to two, which will cause some
disruption in the flow of people, but it makes it possible for us to
have an overview of the flow. Kerstin and Viggo will be located
in these two booths. I urge you to be meticulous, attentive and
careful. Take action only in reaction to very strong indications;
otherwise use the radio.
'The risk shouldn't be as great during the passage through
the concourse from the gate to customs, which is critical in
and of itself, because there's no exit there. It's a straight stretch
through bars and boutiques. I've placed the Marsta police in the
concourse, under the leadership of Arto. So you, Arto, will go
up to the gate in question, where a gang of Marsta detectives
will be waiting. Above all, make sure they remain invisible. Your
task is to try to make sure that no one deviates off course on
their way to the passport check. Place people in the toilets, in
boutiques, in all accessible locations - there aren't many. The
rest of us will be spread out around the terminal and outside.
Because if anything is going to happen, it will happen there;
everything indicates that that's the case. Arto's job is really just
to herd the whole flock to passport control. Shepherd.'
'Are there any other planes arriving at the same time?'
Arto Soderstedt asked in his resonant, almost exaggerated
Finland-Swedish accent, looking doubtfully down at the E4
highway, which they were following like a helium-filled barge on
the Danube River. 'Black sheep,' he muttered nearly inaudibly.
Hjelm heard him and gave him a cutting side glance.
Hultin took another deep dive into the wind-whipped sea of
paper.
'No other arrivals in the vicinity, no.'
And the armed guys?' Nyberg said.
'They'll be immediately accessible. But only if necessary.'
'Sapo?' said Soderstedt.
Soderstedt was eager to bring up Sapo, the Security
Police. The line between the unit's jurisdiction and Sapo's
was incredibly narrow, which meant that there were frequent
overlaps, violations of taboos, and conflicts. The way Sapo had
horribly sabotaged the investigation in the Power Murders was
fresh in everyone's mind.
'They'll probably be there,' Hultin nodded with a sigh.
'But since they never tell us much, we'll act as though they weren't there. 
Anyway, as you know, there's only one exit out
of the arrivals hall, which divides into two parts like a T via the
customs area, just inside the main entrance. We need one man
on either side just outside: Gunnar, Jorge. Paul and I will try to
look like non-police somewhere near the baggage claim, to get
an overview of the arrivals hall itself. This means that there will
be something of a four-phase control: first the gate, Arto with
the other men; passport control, Kerstin and Viggo; the arrivals
hall, Paul and me; and finally the exit, Gunnar and Jorge. Is this
clear?'
'The placement is crystal clear,' said Hjelm. 'The question
is how it will survive confrontation by hundreds of hung-over,
jet-lagged passengers.'
Hultin let this remark pass without comment. All of it
depends, then, on our being able to move quickly from Plan A
to Plan B. If we get the name our man is flying under from the
United States before the passengers get to passport control, then that's where 
we have to focus our attention, and then we have
to take him on the spot. Is that clear? That's Plan A. But if he's
changed identities in the plane, or if we're not told his name,
then the responsibility that Viggo and Kerstin have in the booths
increases radically. That's Plan B. As it is now, Plan B is in effect.
But we haven't the slightest idea yet who the fuck he is. Right
now it's . . . seven thirty-four, and at any moment' - his mobile
phone rang with a silly Mickey Mouse ringtone, which Hultin
suppressed with a swift grab - 'Right. Special Agent Larner will
call.'
He answered the phone and turned away. The E4 ran on
through exhaust-fertilised fields that were dotted here and there with a 
bravely struggling tractor. It was a crystal-clear day, shot
through with indescribable sparks that portended autumn. Summer is over, Hjelm 
thought balefully. Autumn over Sweden.
An exceedingly misshapen complex of buildings towered in
the distance, beyond the fields.
Arlandastad, right?' Kerstin Holm shouted.
'Unmistakably!' Arto Soderstedt shouted back.
About five minutes left,' said Gunnar Nyberg.
'But why?' Hultin's jaw suddenly dropped. Then he listened
for another moment and ended the call.
'No,' he said, 'they aren't having any success in getting the
name. It seems the killer cancelled the flight in the murdered
Swede's name, then immediately booked the empty seat in a
fake name. So that's the name we'll have to go on, and I don't
get why it's taking such a fucking long time to find who booked
that last ticket. Plan B is in effect until further notice.'
The helicopter turned away from the E4 and swung over
the forests of Arlanda. They landed at Arlanda International
twenty-four minutes before flight SK 904 from Newark was due,
and five minutes later all members of the A-Unit had settled into
position.
Chavez stationed himself inside the doors of the main
entrance. Having ploughed his way through a crowd of
soon-to-be and former tourists, he found a bench next to a
Coke machine where he had a good view of his entire area of
responsibility: the far half of the exit from the customs hall. He
turned on his eagle eye. His level of ambition was, as usual, just
above the maximum setting.
Some thirty seconds later Gunnar Nyberg arrived, a bit
depleted by the helicopter ride. He sat down at a cafe table, his
face covered in both cold and hot sweat, and turned towards
Chavez and the other half of the exit. Needing extra energy, he
ordered a bottle of sports drink, of a brand he recognised from
his former career as a bodybuilder. As he downed the half-litre in
one gulp, he realised that these days the drink was prepared with
what was wrung out of left-behind workout clothes collected
from all the world's gyms. It was possible that he restored his
fluid balance; it was certain that he restored the balance of his
nausea.
Between the two men, a quintet who were not entirely difficult
to identify as officials trod, against the current, in through the
customs area. Hultin stopped and exchanged a few words with
the palpably nervous customs employees and joined the other
four A-Unit members inside the arrivals hall. He placed himself
last in a winding line to the currency exchange, where he had a
good view of the hall. The others continued towards passport
control, until Hjelm fell away and found himself standing and
staring like an idiot at a baggage carousel that wasn't moving.
Seldom has a policeman looked so much like a policeman, and
the harder he tried not to look like a one, the more he did. When
he felt the blue lights start circling on top of his head, he gave up
the charade and was more successful. He sat down on a bench
and paged through a brochure, the contents of which would
remain eternally unknown to him.
At passport control, the remaining officers were met by a
senior official who admitted Norlander and Holm into their
respective booths, where they perched on small, uncomfortable
stools in the shadows of the immigration officers. Their presence
was hardly noticeable from the outside, and if it was, it probably
wouldn't seem abnormal. They settled in, in anticipation of the
coming rush.
Finally, Arto Soderstedt shoved his way through passport
control and slalomed among stragglers up the escalator to
the concourse. He didn't need to consult the arrivals board
to identify the right gate. At gate 10, he found a collection of
stubbornly recognisable men who were all but neon-blinking
'police'. Soderstedt called together the Marsta officers and
assigned them more discreet positions. The toilets were the only
truly secluded areas, so he placed one officer to each toilet and
made sure that all the staff areas were properly blocked off. That
left the duty-free shops, bar and cafe. He stationed an officer by
the name of Adolfsson at the bar, where he managed to look
completely out of place, which was an achievement.
Soderstedt sat down at gate 10 and waited. The concourse
was still relatively empty. Scattered groups of passengers from
earlier flights were wandering around.
A slight change in the state of things induced Soderstedt to
push the loathsome little earpiece into his ear; he always felt as
if it disappeared deep in among the creases of his brain. The
fateful little word landed was now blinking after the notation sk 904 Newark on 
the arrivals board. Soderstedt looked to the
right and through the large panorama window saw the plane
roll by.
He pressed a button inside his belt, cleared his throat and
said, 'The game has landed.'



He stood, straightened his tie, slung the bag over his shoulder
and waited with his eyes closed. Children were snaking back
and forth between his legs; parents were yelling, sometimes
heart-piercingly and sometimes just piercingly. Experienced
wearers of suits kept economy passengers at a distance with well-practised 
smiles.
He remained still. People hardly noticed him. He didn' t
attract attention. He never had.
Then the line started moving rather quickly. The blockage
was sorted out, and he sauntered calmly through the fuselage of
the plane, then along the metal jetway and through the swaying
walkway.
He stepped into gate 10. He was here.
Now it would come full circle.
Now he would be able to start for real.



It was interesting to see how many faces one's brain could file
away before they started to blur together. Soderstedt found that
his limit was as low as fifty. The stream of passengers arriving
from Newark were mostly an anonymous, grey mass, and sure
enough, most of them were middle-aged white men travelling
solo.
He couldn't make out any signs of variation. The horde
shuffled more or less as one down the concourse. Some slipped
into a toilet; others stopped at a shop; still others bought
sandwiches at the cafe - and had their appetites spoiled at
the cash register. A few ended up in the bar and attempted to
converse with the human waxwork Officer Adolfsson, who
seemed about to pass out.
A tourist attraction, Soderstedt thought.
The first Newark travellers descended the stairs down to
passport control.
'They're coming,' he said out loud.
The words echoed in Kerstin Holm's ears like the declaration
of peace after World War II. She had been mentally composing
her letter of resignation from the police, inspired by the
stealth-farting immigration officer in the gas chamber that was
their booth. This wasn't what she was meant for. But then the
first American faces peered in through the glass pane and blew
away her sensations of odour. The immigration officer neatly
guided each passport into a small, computer-connected camera
device and discreetly photographed it. Each photo and name
were immediately registered on a computer. If nothing else,
they would have a picture of the killer.
Face after face swept by. In every smile and every yawn she
tried to imagine a killer without a conscience. A persistent tic in
the eye of a man who had been extremely reluctant to remove
his Ray-Bans almost convinced her to call Hultin. Other than
that, all was utterly tranquil.
Viggo Norlander's booth experience was a bit different. He
was the only member of the A-Unit who'd had a wonderful year.
After the fiasco during the Power Murders, when he'd run amok
and been crucified by the mafia in Estonia, he'd begun to work
out. He got a hair transplant and turned once again to the fairer
sex, which caused his stubborn bachelor life to take on new
dimensions. His stigmatised hands had proved an asset in that
respect. Unlike Holm's, the immigration officer in whose booth
he had ended up was young and female, and he had flirted with
her uninhibitedly. By the time the Americans arrived, she had
practically finished composing her sexual harassment report.
But in a second Norlander forgot her - he was immediately
on the ball. Pumped with adrenalin, he thought he recognised
a serial killer in every passenger, and when he notified Hultin
of his third suspect, a coal-black, eighteen-year-old junkie, he
received such a sharp reprimand that it reminded him forcefully
of his past, and he became more discerning in his judgement, as
he put it to himself.
He had been sitting in browbeaten silence for a few minutes
when a well-dressed man of about forty-five with a confident
smile handed his passport over to the immigration official,
who gallantly photographed it along with the name Robert
E. Norton. When the man caught sight of Norlander over her
shoulder, his smile vanished abruptly; he blinked and peered
round uncontrollably. Then he snatched back his passport and
dashed away.
'I've got him!' Norlander yelled into his invisible mini-radio.
'He's getting away,' he continued a bit inconsistently, then he
threw open the door and raced out through the arrivals hall
after Robert E. Norton. Norton ran like a man possessed, his
bag thumping hard against his shoulder. Norlander ran like a
man even more possessed. He sent women who were in his way
sprawling; he stamped on children's feet; he broke duty-free
bottles.
Norton stopped for breath and looked around in wild
desperation. Hjelm jumped up from his bench, threw down
the unread brochure and made a rush for Norton. The sight of
the two charging policemen was too much for the American,
who swung his bag above his head and flung himself towards
an unmoving baggage carousel. He leaped like a tiger through
the plastic ribbons that covered the opening of the conveyor
belt. His tiger leap was immediately followed by Norlander's.
Hjelm didn't take any tiger leaps; instead he carefully parted the
plastic ribbons and stepped off into the baggage area, where he
saw Norlander chasing Norton among piles of luggage. Norton
threw a suitcase at Norlander, who gave a muffled growl, hurled
himself at the man, took another suitcase to the face and tumbled
over. Norton tore loose and headed back towards the conveyor
belt. As Norlander rose on shaky legs, Norton came closer and
closer to Hjelm, who had climbed back inside to await him.
Norton ran straight into his arms, swung his bag and landed
a direct hit. It threw Hjelm backwards, but it felt as though he
turned in mid-air and was on top of the man. Norlander arrived
and threw himself into the pile, bent Norton's arms beyond
their physical limits, and planted himself atop him with his
knees on the back of the man's neck. Hjelm, with one hand on
his bleeding mouth, grabbed Norton's bag with the other and
emptied it onto the floor. Among the sundry items that fell out
was a small packet of hashish.
At that moment, Hultin's voice entered Norlander and
Hjelm's ears: 'I've got our man's name from the FBI now. Go
immediately from Plan B to Plan A. He's travelling under the
name Edwin Reynolds. I repeat: Edwin Reynolds. If the man
who has been so energetically chased through the arrivals hall
is not named Reynolds and doesn't seem to have anything to
do with this case, release him immediately and return to your
positions. Maybe we can still fix this.'
Norlander and Hjelm immediately released Robert E.
Norton to the Arlanda police, who had come to get him. They
charged into the arrivals hall through a side door and returned
to Norlander's passport control booth.
Hjelm took over. He thundered at the female immigration
officer, 'Fast as hell: Edwin Reynolds. Has anyone by that name
passed through?'
A few quick stabs at the computer gave her the answer. 'No.
Randolph. Robertson. No one in between.'
Norlander sank down onto his stool. Hjelm sank to the floor.
They pulled the door closed, caught their breath and licked
their wounds. Maybe there was still hope. Barely half of the
passengers had come through. If Reynolds hadn't been among
those whom Norlander trampled down, he was still back there.
Thus reasoned the two heroes in the booth and, in a haze
of testosterone, forgot the group's more oestrogenic member.
Kerstin Holm's voice sounded in everyone's ear canals. 'Eleven
minutes ago an Edwin Andrew Reynolds passed my booth. He
was among the very first.'
It was quiet for a few endless seconds.
Then came Hultin's voice: 'OK. Close passport control.
Don't let anyone else out. Demand ID from everyone you see
in the whole fucking airport. Discreetly, of course. Officially,
we're looking for drug smugglers. We'll use everything we've
got now. Get going. I'll arrange for roadblocks. Kerstin, do you
have a photo of him? What does he look like?'
'The one I have is really bad. He may be blond. It's a terrible
photo.'
'And neither you nor the immigration officer remembers
anything?'
'Unfortunately, no. He could have got pretty far in eleven
minutes.'
'OK. Get going - now.'
Norlander exhaled in relief - his blunder hadn't been crucial
after all. But Hjelm, as he stood up, thought Norlander's sigh
was almost criminal.
They emerged from the booth just as Holm stepped out of
hers. Her intensively searching gaze met theirs.
The white middle-aged men were everywhere. Armed men
poured out of the airport's hollows like maggots out of a corpse
and detained passengers where they were, demanding their
passports.
Hjelm ran through customs. Out of the corner of his eye
he saw Gunnar Nyberg being showered with passports from
a cluster of white, middle-aged men. His baggy lumber jacket
was unbuttoned.
Hjelm hurried outside and surveyed the congested pavement.
An airport bus came over the crest. Taxis swarmed. It was
impossible to get an overview.
He sprinted along the pavement. He questioned ten or so
potential serial killers, who watched his mediocre running pace.
They identified themselves without protest. As he skimmed
their passports, his suspicion became a full-fledged thought.
He did another second of futile surveying. Suddenly Hultin
was standing beside him. Each read his own thought in the
other man's eyes. It was Hjelm who formulated the unavoidable
conclusion: 'He's out.'
Hultin held his eyes for another moment and gave an
unofficial nod that was contradicted by his stern injunction: "We
have to go inside and continue. Don't stand here wasting time.'
Hultin disappeared. Hjelm stayed there for a minute, wasting
time.
He fingered his lips and was surprised by the blood. He
turned his face up to the darkening sky and received a chilly
sprinkle of rain.
Autumn had come to Sweden.




5


That afternoon the A-Unit reconvened in the room that had once
been called 'Supreme Central Command', whose quotation
marks had become less and less ironic as the Power Murders
investigation had gone on. Now a secret wish for a similar course
of events whistled through the somewhat stale air. Otherwise
the dominant atmosphere was relatively well-controlled fear;
there was no question about the gravity of the situation.
Jan-Olov Hultin came out of the toilet absorbed in some
papers that looked as though he had used them and forgotten
to flush them. He settled into his well-worn armchair and,
after ten seconds, began. 'The results of the Arlanda debacle
are discouraging. The only concrete result is three complaints
against officers. Two are against Viggo.'
Norlander's expression managed to combine shame with
pride.
'The first complaint is from the immigration officer at
passport control,' Hultin continued without looking up. 'She found your 
attention far too intense but says she'll be satisfied
if you are reprimanded. As if we didn't have other things to
worry about, Bonehead. The second complaint is in regard to
a little girl you ran over while you were chasing the seriously
drug-smuggling Robert E. Norton. You have a real flair for
handling the fairer sex, one could say. Double bonehead. The
third complaint is a bit hard to interpret. An officer from Marsta
has been reported for having been, quote, "out of control" in
the concourse bar.'
Arto Soderstedt laughed shrilly and abruptly. 'Sorry' he said,
calming himself. 'His name is Adolfsson.'
Since further clarification was not forthcoming, Hultin
continued neutrally. 'So, on to the essentials. Edwin Andrew
Reynolds does not exist. Naturally, the passport was a fake.
And despite the labourious efforts of our data technicians, the
passport photo is still not helpful.'
He turned the computer monitor round on the desk, to show
an enlargement of a completely dark face. One could make out
the shape of the face and a few contours; possibly he was blond.
Otherwise it was unrevealing, and the man was anonymous.
'We don't even know if he used his own picture. They will
accept ten-year-old photos, of course, and it's really not that
hard to use a photo that has only some reasonable resemblance.
In any case, customs' new photo devices were wasted - all the
pictures they took look about the same. They're blaming this
failure on the fact that the technology is brand new, and they
didn't have enough time to prepare properly, and so on.
'It's a given that information about our man has gone out
to hotels, Swedish Railways, airports, ferries, dungheaps, et
cetera. I hardly think we should count on anything from those
sources, but of course we will keep looking. One plus is that
the media doesn't know anything, even though the TV cameras
showed up quickly at Arlanda. I imagine you'll see the results
tonight. Our most esteemed boss Morner appeared and gave a
statement, which guarantees some sort of quality TV, at least.
Questions, anyone?'
'What happened with the roadblocks?' asked Gunnar
Nyberg.
'The only thing we accomplished was a few hours of
complete traffic chaos on the E4. The Arlanda traffic in every
direction is quite simply too dense. In addition, it took a hell
of a long time to set up the roadblocks. Only a true amateur
would have been caught. We're trying to identify all the taxi and
bus drivers who were working around Arlanda at the time in
question, but as you know, deregulation has made the taxi traffic
in Stockholm unmanageable, so we'll probably have to admit
defeat on that point. Anything else?'
'Not a question, really said Kerstin Holm. 'Just some
information. According to the data register, our man was
number eighteen to pass through my passport control. I've
tried to get my impressions in order, and I've talked to the
immigration officer, but neither of us has any memory of him
at all. Maybe something will come up eventually'
Hultin nodded and continued mysteriously. 'To be on the
safe side, I've made sure that all deaths reported to the police in the 
country, from now on, are reported directly to us, and
the same goes for all suspected crimes against Americans in
Sweden. If there's the least suspicion of foul play, our brains
must unanimously think: Could this have anything to do with
our serial killer? This is our case now, even in an official sense,
and it's our only one, and the whole unit is part of it, and it
is top-top secret, and no one around you must even catch a
whiff of the words bestial-American-serial-killer-loose-in-Sweden. Wherever 
you are, think: Could the serial killer have anything
to do with this bus being late? Might he have any connection
at all to this bike accident or to that man's incredibly bizarre
movements or to your better half's increasingly loud snores?
In other words, full focus.'
They understood.
'I have kept in rather intensive contact with the authorities in
the United States,' Hultin continued. 'Special Agent Ray Larner
with the FBI has supplied us with a detailed account of last
night's events and a brief profile of the perpetrator. Concerning
the results at Arlanda, more information will be streaming in
during the next few days. Here is the broad outline as it stands
right now.
'The Swedish literary critic Lars-Erik Hassel was tortured to
death just before midnight Swedish time in a cleaner's cupboard
at Newark airport. It was a few hours before he was found. He
had no ticket on him, but a flight to Arlanda that same night
was found to be written down in his diary. In other words, it
was likely that the killer had taken his ticket, but a person can't
check in if the name on the ticket doesn't match the name on
the passport, so they took a chance and checked with SAS to
see if Hassel's ticket had been cancelled. Why steal the ticket
otherwise? His wallet and diary and everything else was still
there, after all. And they got lucky - they got hold of a ticket
agent who remembered a late cancellation by phone, which
was quickly followed by a late booking. But of course this all
happened at night New York time, and in order to find the name
of the person who booked last, they needed a data expert who
could go into the computer and get exact booking times. They
finally managed to tear someone matching that description
from the arms of his sweetheart, and he dug up the name, after
which it was delivered to us. Eleven minutes too late.'
Hultin paused and let the A-Unit's slightly overloaded brains
absorb this information.
'This caused us to face certain problems. The likely scenario
is that the killer murdered Hassel, called in his name to cancel
his ticket, then called again and booked the recently cancelled
spot in his own fake name. What does this tell us?'
Since everyone realised that the question was rhetorical, no one was interested 
in answering it. Hultin complicated the
laws of rhetoric by answering it himself, with another question:
'The basic issue is, of course: Why Sweden? What kind of evil
thing have we done for this to happen to us? Let us assume the
following. A notorious serial killer finds himself in an airport.
His intention is to flee the country, hence the fake passport.
Maybe he can feel the FBI breathing down his neck. But in his
excitement, his desire to kill is acutely intensified. He waits
until a suitable victim comes close. He does his deed, finds the
ticket and gets it into his head that it's a good place to flee to;
the plane is leaving soon, after all. But when he calls to book
his seat, it turns out the plane is full. He knows, however, that
one seat is definitely free. He takes a peek at the ticket, finds
the difficult-to-pronounce name Lars-Erik Hassel along with a
booking number, and calls to cancel, at which point a spot is
vacant. What is wrong with this picture?'
'Spot the difference,' said Hjelm. No one laughed.
'It is actually almost possible to find several,' Chavez said
with an unintentional but hardly career-boosting dig at Hultin,
who didn't blink. 'The most important part of your scenario, Jan-Olov, is the 
coincidence. If he truly didn't get the idea to travel to Sweden until after 
the murder, one might ask if he would really go to that much trouble to get to 
such an arbitrarily
chosen country. The traffic to and from Newark is non-stop, after all. Why not 
just as well fly to Diisseldorf five minutes later or Cagliari eight minutes 
later?'
'Cagliari?' said Nyberg.
'It's on Sardinia,' Hjelm said helpfully.
'It was just an example,' Chavez said impatiently. 'The point
is, Sweden doesn't seem to have been chosen randomly at all. It
feels a little extra unpleasant.'
'And then one might ask,' Kerstin Holm added, 'if he would
really risk first going up to the counter and getting a no, then
calling in Hassel's name, and then returning to the counter a
few minutes later and asking the same question, only to get a
yes this time. A man who has been eluding the FBI for twenty
years would hardly take such a risk of attracting attention and
being directly linked to a corpse that could be discovered at any
moment.'
Hultin seemed thrilled by two such keen objections to his
scenario and countered his opponents: 'On the other hand,
there is an obvious moment of risk in what he actually did. If
they had got hold of a data expert eleven minutes earlier, we
would have had him. It was far from an idiot-proof plan.'
'I still think the evidence points to Sweden being his goal
when he set out for the airport,' Chavez persisted. 'But when
he arrives, it turns out the flight is fully booked. Then his plan
takes shape. Why not combine work and pleasure? Somehow
he locates a solo traveller to Arlanda, murders him in his
usual, pleasurable way, and takes his place, even though this
involves a definite but limited risk. The risk of discovery, on
the other hand, is an important ingredient in a serial killer's
enjoyment.'
'Then what does that suggest?' Hultin asked pedagogically.
'That his desire to come here to Sweden was so strong that it
caused him to take a risk that he probably wouldn't have taken
otherwise. And in that case, he has a very definite goal here.'
'Ice-cold calculation combined with impulsiveness and a
craving for pleasure. Something to sink our teeth into . .
'There's nothing to indicate Sweden in his profile?' Arto
Soderstedt wondered.
'Not according to the FBI.' Hultin paged through the file.
'Leaving the United States at all doesn't really fit with his profile.
His history is as follows.
'It all started twenty years ago in Kentucky, where victims
who had been killed in the same awful manner began to
show up. The wave then spread all over the Midwest. It blew
up in the media, and soon the notorious killer was going by
the name the Kentucky Killer. Within today's deeply alarming
serial killer cult, he's a legend, one of the original characters,
and he's thought to have inspired many budding practitioners.
He committed a series of eighteen murders in four years, then
stopped abruptly for a decade and a half. Just over a year ago
a new series began with exactly the same MO, this time in the
north-eastern United States. Hassel was his sixth victim in this
latest series, his twenty-fourth overall. His twenty-fourth known victim, I 
should probably add.'
'A break of almost fifteen years,' Kerstin Holm mused aloud.
'Is it really the same person and not a - what's it called?'
'A copycat,' said Hjelm, using the English word.
Hultin shook his head. 'The FBI has ruled that out. There
are details of the MO that have never been made public and that
only a few authorities at the bureau know of. Either he's hidden
his victims well for fifteen years, or else he quit and maybe
settled down, before his craving for blood got the best of him
once again. That's the FBI's scenario, anyway. That was why the
bulletin went out for a white middle-aged man. probability says
that he was just under twenty-five when he began, so he's just
under forty-five now.'
'And "white" is also based on probability, I assume?' said the
chalk-white Soderstedt.
Almost all serial killers are white men,' said Kerstin Holm. 'A
much-debated phenomenon. Maybe it's some sort of hereditary
compensation for the many hundreds of years of world
domination that they are about to lose.'
'Haphazard fascism' came flying out of Hjelm.
The A-Unit considered this expression for a few long seconds.
Even Hultin looked contemplative.
'What kinds of victims were they?' Chavez asked at last.
Hultin leafed through the pages causing Hjelm to ponder the
advantages of the Internet and encrypted email, something that
wasn't too common yet. That was Jorge and Kerstin's domain.
They were also the ones who looked most irritated when
information was slow in coming.
'Let's see,' said Hultin after a long pause.
Chavez groaned quietly, which brought him a look that could
mean yet another stain on his work record.
'There's a lot of diversity in the victims,' their wise leader said
at last. 'Twenty-four people of varied backgrounds. Five foreign
citizens, including Hassel. Primarily white middle-aged men,
to be sure, which an alert officer who's familiar with feminism
could easily interpret as implied self-contempt.'
'If it weren't for the fact that he wasn't middle-aged at all
when he began murdering,' Kerstin Holm countered promptly.
The icy chill in Hultin's long look could have been fatal. 'Quite
a few of them remain unidentified,' he finally continued. 'Even
though the list of missing persons in the United States is a book
as thick as the Bible, the number still seems disproportionately
large - ten out of twenty-four.'
'Is that something that's changed?' Soderstedt asked alertly.
Yet another look from Hultin. Then he paged frenetically
and got a hit. 'All six victims in the second round have been
identified. That means that ten of eighteen in the first round
remain unidentified. A majority. Maybe some sort of conclusion
can be drawn from that. However, I'm not ready to do that right
now.'
'Could it be the case that the MO itself has made identification
difficult?' asked Hjelm.
Clearly their minds were sharp. Many of them had been
waiting a long time for this very moment.
'No,' Hultin answered. 'The atrocities don't include torn-out
teeth or chopped-off fingertips.'
'What do they include, then?' Nyberg asked.
'Wait.' Chavez was staring down into his overflowing
notebook. 'We weren't quite finished. Who were the identified
victims? Does he concentrate on some particular social class?'
Hultin once again swung his mental machete through the
jungle of paper. While he searched, he said, 'Many of your
questions will be answered by the complete FBI report, which
Special Agent Larner is going to fax over this afternoon, but OK,
we might as well anticipate the events
Then he found what he was looking for.
'The eight people identified in the first wave were relatively
highly educated. He seems to have a weakness for academics.
The six in the second wave were more varied. Maybe he's gone
and become a democrat.'
'Get to sex sometime,' said Kerstin Holm abruptly.
A moment of bewildered silence ensued among the male
audience. Then Hultin understood: A single woman in the first
group, out of eighteen. Two out of six in the second.'
'There are a few differences after all,' Holm summarised.
'Like I said,' said Hultin, 'perhaps he's become a democrat
when it comes to sex, too. Let's wait and see what Larner has
to say about it. He's followed the case from the very start. In the
seventies, based on the MO, they narrowed it down to a group
of, if not suspects, then at least potential perpetrators. It turned
out to have certain similarities to a method of torture from,
believe it or not, the Vietnam War. A specific and extremely
unofficial American task force used it to get the Vietcong to talk
without screaming. An utterly silent method of torture, tailor
made for the jungle. Since the existence of the task force was officially 
denied and brushed off as just another Vietnam myth,
it was extremely difficult for Larner to get names. He hinted that
he was stepping on quite a few tender and highly placed toes,
and likely he was making a fool of himself and destroying his
chances for promotion to boot. But slowly and surely, he tracked
down the task force, which went by the disagreeable code
name "Commando Cool", and ferreted out the names of those
involved. Above all, one person who could almost have been
called a suspect crystallised: the group leader, a Wayne Jennings,
from none other than Kentucky. There was never any proof, but
Larner followed Jennings wherever he went. Then something
unanticipated happened. Jennings got tired of the surveillance
and tried to evade the FBI - and he got into a head-on car
collision. Larner was there himself and saw him burn up.'
'Did the murders continue after that?' Chavez asked.
'Yes, unfortunately. There were two more in quick succession,
and then they stopped. Larner was blamed for having hounded
an innocent man to death. There was a trial. He survived it,
sure, but he fell in the hierarchy. And it didn't get any better
for him when, after fifteen years of walking into a headwind,
he realised that the killer had started up again. For just over a
year now, Ray Larner has been back where he started with the
elusive Kentucky Killer. I don't envy him.'
'You should,' said Soderstedt. 'He isn't Larner's responsibility
any more - he's yours. He's the one who's free, not you.'
Soderstedt paused, then continued maliciously: 'You're taking
over from scratch after twenty years of intensive FBI investigations
that had resources equivalent to the Swedish GDP.'
Hultin observed him neutrally.
'So what was so special about Commando Cool's modus
operandi?' Gunnar Nyberg tried. 'How did that literary critic
die?'
Hultin turned to him with an expression that could have
been interpreted as suppressed relief. 'The point is that it's
two different things,' he said. 'The serial killer makes use of
what we can call a personal application of Commando Cool's
method. The method is based on a single special instrument:
specially designed micromechanical pincers that, when
closed, closely resemble a terrifying cannula. A big syringe.
It's driven into the throat from the side. With the help of
small control wires, tiny claws unfurl inside the trachea and
grip the vocal cords in a manner that makes it impossible
for any sound to escape the lips of the victim. He or she is
rendered completely silent. Even in a tight spot in the jungle
with Vietcong soldiers in the bushes all over, you can see to a
bit of refreshing torture.
'Once the victim is silenced, you can then heap on the
conventional methods, best directed at fingernails and genitals,
where small motions incur the most pain. And then you
just release the grip around the vocal cords a tiny bit so that
something like a whisper can slip out. The victim can reveal
his secret, quietly, quietly. For this purpose, Commando Cool developed related 
pincers, based on the same principles as the
vocal cord pincers, but these other ones were aimed at the
central ganglia in the neck, which are tugged and pulled a little
bit from the inside, at which point an appalling pain radiates up
into the head and down through the body. The two holes in the
neck with their associated internal injuries have been discovered
on all twenty-four victims of the Kentucky Killer, and there
have also been distinctive torture wounds on their genitals and
fingers.
Xarner has been a bit secretive about what distinguishes the
workings of our friend from those of the commando task force,
but obviously it has to do with the design of the two micro
pincers. It's as though something like an industrial development
process was used to make the pincers even more perfect for
their atrocious purpose.'
Hultin looked down at his lectern.
'I want you to restrain yourselves for a second now, so you
can absorb all this,' he said gravely. Xars-Erik Hassel died one
of the most horrific deaths a person can die. I would like you to
think carefully about what we're up against. It doesn't resemble
anything we've ever had to deal with in our whole lives. There's
not an ounce of similarity to our good old Power Murderer.
It isn't really possible to imagine such ice-cold indifference to
other people's lives and such twisted pleasure at their suffering.
This is a seriously damaged person of the sort that the American
system seems to produce on an assembly line, and that they
would have been welcome to refrain from exporting. But now
he's here. And the only thing we can really do is to wait for him
to start. It could be a long time; it could be tomorrow. But it will
happen, and we have to be prepared.'
Hultin stood to go to the toilet. As he left, he said to the
dispersing group, As soon as I receive Ray Larner's material,
you'll get copies. The outcome of this case hinges on you all
studying it diligently' He nodded at them and hurried towards
his private, special door.
Jorge Chavez interrupted his departure: 'How old is Edwin
Reynolds, according to the passport?'
Hultin made a stiff face, dug through his pile of papers with
his legs in a need-to-pee stance, and brought out a copy of the
photographed passport page. 'Thirty-two this year.'
Chavez nodded. 'Of course the passport was fake,' he said,
'but why choose to play fifteen years younger than he must, in
all likelihood, be?'
An element of risk, maybe,' said Hultin against his better
judgement, and rushed off with papers floating through
the air.
Chavez and Hjelm looked at each other.
Hjelm shrugged. 'Well, he could have bought or stolen a
ready-made fake passport
'Possibly said Chavez.
But no one could really shake the feeling that something was
wrong. Utterly wrong.




6


There really wasn't anything they could do.
Naturally, there was a microscopic possibility that this was
all coincidental, that the Kentucky Killer had been at Newark
airport not to flee the country but only to look for a new victim;
that poor Lars-Erik Hassel had cancelled his trip all on his
own and had thrown his ticket away; and that just after that,
a completely unrelated man with a fake passport had popped
up with a last-minute booking. The combination of all these
things, however, verged on the unbelievable. There was no real
doubt that the Kentucky Killer had come to Sweden. The only
question was why.
FBI Agent Ray Larner's more exhaustive report had come
in. According to the timetable, the plane had taken off from
Newark at 18.20 local time. At 17.03 a man who called himself
Lars-Erik Hassel had called and cancelled his ticket, and at 17.08
an Edwin Reynolds had managed to get the extra ticket; thus he
had waited five risky minutes so he wouldn't attract attention.
Around midnight a cleaner had made the macabre discovery in
a cupboard - just under two hours before the plane would land
in Sweden. A few minutes later an Officer Hayden had appeared
from the airport's local police station; he recognised the two
small holes on the victim's neck and contacted FBI headquarters
in Manhattan, which in turn contacted the Kentucky Killer
specialist Ray Lamer and got confirmation that it was a
hallmark of the famous serial killer. After examining Hassel's
belongings, Hayden had been smart enough to conclude that
the murderer had in all likelihood taken a seat on the victim's
flight to Stockholm-Arlanda. After a while he received verbal
confirmation from the night staff at the SAS ticket counter that
a ticket had been cancelled too late to have been rebooked,
at which point the tired ground hostess also remembered
that there had been a late booking. She could access only the
passenger manifest, however, and not the specific data of when each person had 
booked. While the FBI frantically searched for
someone who had access to that data, Hayden had contacted
the National Criminal Police in Stockholm and ended up with
Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin via the head of the NCR At that
point, it was 07.09 in Sweden. Hayden swiftly faxed over all the
material he had, and this turned into a portion of the pile of
papers Hultin had brought along to the quick meeting before
the helicopter ride to Arlanda.
Nothing in FBI agent Ray Larner's newly arrived, scrupulous
report indicated any departure from what had been said earlier;
nor did it indicate any imaginable ties to Sweden. Thus there
was nothing they could really do, other than wait for the first
victim, and that was unbearable.
Therefore they devoted themselves to mental preparation
for the intensive burst of activity that lay ahead. They spent the
rest of the afternoon on small tasks that not only gave them the illusion of 
meaningful work, the sensation of doing something,
but also involved individual activity. Each of them seemed to
need to digest the state of things on their own.
Hultin continued to collect and organise the material from
the FBI. Holm returned to Arlanda to see if any of the staff
had been struck by a flashback or a flash of genius, anything
at all. The cabin crew of flight SK 904 would, they had heard,
also be there, and she prepared herself for her speciality:
conversations, interviews, interrogations. Nyberg returned to
his usual routine: he set off for the underworld of Stockholm to
sound out the situation there. Soderstedt shut himself up in his
office and called all the places that he could in any way imagine
might be sheltering this Reynolds, who was surely no longer
called Reynolds. Chavez threw himself into the world of the
Internet; what he thought he could find there was a mystery to
the uninitiated. Hultin set Norlander to the task of scrubbing
all the toilets in the police station with an electric toothbrush,
which was viewed as a technical achievement within the noble
art of punishment.
And Hjelm set out on his own assignment. Just as small as
the likelihood that the Kentucky Killer had remained in the
United States was the likelihood that the literary critic Lars-Erik
Hassel's past had anything to do with the case. Nevertheless
Hjelm set off for the large newspaper office that had been
Hassel's workplace.
He allowed himself to walk there - a little habit that
the relative idleness of the past year had permitted him to
develop. He walked down to Norr Malarstrand by way of
Kungsholmstorg. The rainy weather from Arlanda, he couldn't
help thinking, was biding its time, waiting in the wings, getting
ready to sweep the city in autumn. But for now the sun was still
shining, if more weakly with every day that went by. On the
other side of Riddarfjarden, an enormous cat stretched out and
purred contentedly in the white rays of late-summer sunshine:
the head - Mariaberget - lapped Lake Malaren's waters with the
tongue that was Soderleden, while its body - Skinnarviksberget
- twisted greedily and stretched down towards its elegant back
legs, Langholmen, where the tail, formed by Vasterbro, pointed
the way to Marieberg and the newspaper complex.
The only thing Hjelm knew about Hassel was that he had
been a literary critic. He had seen the man's name in the arts and
leisure section of the big daily paper once or twice; other than
that he was blank.
He wandered along Norr Malarstrand and crossed
Ralambshovsparken, where the brannboll players went stubbornly
bare-chested, despite the goose bumps that were visible
from a distance of twenty yards. How did the old Farmer's
Almanac line go? Sweat the summer in; freeze in the winter?
At the newspaper building, the receptionist advised him
with a well-practised apologetic expression that the lifts were
temporarily out of order, and Hjelm found himself sweating
the winter in as he trudged up the stairs. In the arts and leisure
offices, the atmosphere was downhearted but bustling. Hjelm
asked to speak to someone in charge and was supplied with a
bundle of more or less aged issues of the arts and leisure section
while he waited for the arts editor, who was rushing back and
forth. He read the pages more carefully than he had in a long
time and found a few articles by Hassel. He devoted just over
half an hour to improving himself before the editor let him
into his office, where the piles of books seemed to grow as he
watched.
The editor stroked his grizzled beard, extended a hand and
said briskly, 'Moller. Sorry you had to wait. I'm sure you can
imagine what things are like here right now.'
'Hjelm,' said Hjelm, removing a pile of papers from a chair
and sitting down.
'Hjelm said Moller, sinking down behind his cluttered desk.
'Aha.'
He didn't say more, but Hjelm realised that the old epithets
'Hallunda Hero' and 'Power Murders' were not so easily gnawed
away by the tooth of time. Like all old heroes, he was confronted
day and night by his insufficient heroism.
'I'm sorry for your loss,' he said curtly.
Moller shook his head. 'It's a bit difficult to understand,' he
said. 'What actually happened? The information we've received
so far is scanty, to say the least. What should we write in the
obituary? We can't exactly pull out the old "after a lengthy
illness". That much I've understood.'
'He was murdered,' Hjelm said mercilessly 'At the airport.'
Moller shook his head again. At the airport. . . . Talk about
bad luck. I thought New York was safe now. The New York
model. "Zero tolerance", "community policing", and all that.
For fuck's sake, that's why he was there!'
'What do you mean?'
'He was going to get a cultural perspective on the new,
peaceful spirit of New York. I guess you could call it the irony
of fate.'
'Did he have time to write anything?'
'No. He was gathering impressions. He'd been there for a
week and was going to devote the week after he returned home
to writing the article.'
'So the newspaper was paying for the trip?'
'Of course,' said Moller, affronted.
'Was Lars-Erik Hassel on the permanent staff?'
'Yes. He had been on the editorial staff for almost twenty
years.'
A baby boomer.'
Moller glared at him. 'That's a term we prefer not to use
here. It's been corrupted by all manner of misuse.'
Hjelm observed him for a moment, then couldn't help but
argue a bit. 'The article on the new, peaceful spirit of New York
probably cost half a month's salary, say fifteen thousand kronor
including taxes and fees, plus travel and board, another twenty
thousand. All together, maybe more than fifty thousand kronor.'
Moller's face darkened, and he shrugged. 'You can't count
it like that. Some articles cost more, some less. What are you
getting at?'
'Did he have any contacts in New York? Friends? Enemies?'
'Not that I know of, no.'
'Did you or anyone else on the editorial staff have personal
contact with him during the past week?'
'I spoke to him once, yes. He hadjustbeen to the Metropolitan
and was very pleased.'
'And the visit to the Metropolitan was going to be included in
the fifty-thousand-kronor article?' Hjelm sensed that he had to
stop if he didn't want to lose Moller completely. He changed his
tone: 'We're going to need to speak to his family. What family
relationships did he have?'
Moller sighed deeply and looked at the clock.
A younger, bald man came storming into the office and
waved some papers. 'Sorry to interrupt,' he panted. 'We're
running out of time. Lars-Erik's obituary is almost finished, but
what are we going to put as the cause of death? Should I forget about it? We 
have to put something, don't we?'
Moller gestured tiredly towards Hjelm and asked, 'What can
we write?'
'That he was murdered,' said Hjelm.
The young man stared at him. 'Nothing more?' he said at
last.
'That should do,' said Hjelm.
The man rushed out again. Through the windows in the
office door, Hjelm watched him return to his computer and peck
at the keyboard with the light touch of a professional butcher.
'Obituaries for the young are hard,' Moller said tiredly. 'When
someone dies unexpectedly, you have to start from scratch. It
takes a lot of hard work.'
'And when someone dies expectedlyV said Hjelm.
'We have a store of obituaries.'
Hjelm couldn't believe his ears. 'You have a store of obituaries
for living people?'
Moller sighed deeply. 'It's clear that you're not particularly
familiar with editorial work. Are we ever going to get this over
with? Where were we?'
'Family relationships,' said Hjelm.
'Lars-Erik had lived alone for several years. He had two
marriages behind him, with one son from each. I'll get you the
addresses.'
Moller paged through a large address book, made a few
chicken scratches, and handed the slip of paper to Hjelm.
'Thanks. How was he as a writer?'
Moller considered this question quietly. 'He was one of the
country's leading literary critics. An author could rise or fall on
what he wrote. His byline on a piece always gave it a certain . ..
aura. A superb and versatile critic, who didn't hesitate to be
tough. And an underrated author.'
'He wrote books too?'
'Not recently, but there are a few gems from the seventies.'
'I skimmed some old arts and leisure sections out there and
found several of his pieces. He didn't seem to like literature very
much.'
Moller rubbed his beard and peered through the window
at the pale blue sky. 'Literature today is beneath contempt,'
he said at last. 'Positively beneath it. The young authors have
completely misunderstood their vocation. In general, we don't
write very much about literature any more.'
'No, I saw that you prioritise reporting on society and film
festivals and interviews with rock bands and official speeches
at awards ceremonies and conflicts within various bureaucratic
organisations.'
Moller thrust himself forward, over the desk, and his eyes
drilled into Hjelm's. And what are you? A critic?'
'More like a bit surprised.' Hjelm paged through his
notebook. 'I found an article in which a critic writes that critics
read far too many books and that they ought to jog instead.'
'Life is more than books.'
'Well, that's certainly a truism. If I were to claim that I would
be a better police officer if I spent less time on police work, that
would be a breach of duty. Then there was an article about how
authors today devote far too much time to sitting and pondering
the mystery of life. I thought that was the whole point.'
'It's clear that you know very little about this business,'
Moller muttered, staring out the window.
And you write that the young ones are a gang of anaemic
navel-gazers without direction. Here are some quotes from
Lars-Erik Hassel's pieces: "The question is if it's possible to get
very much more out of literature". "Poetry and the visual arts
alike seem to have had their day". "The great account of the
present day that we were all waiting for never came; this is the
tragic nature of literature". "Poetry seems to be nothing more
than a game". "Literature has long been the most overrated art
form of our time".'
When no response came from Moller, it was Hjelm's turn to
thrust himself across the desk. 'Was it not the case that one of
Sweden's most influential literary critics didn't like literature at
all?'
Moller's gaze was stuck up among the non-existent clouds.
He was gone. His exhaustion seemed monumental. It extended
right into the next life.
Because he didn't have much more to add, and because
Moller was unlikely to lift a finger in the next half-hour, Hjelm
decided to leave this site of human catastrophe. He stepped out
into the editorial office and closed the door on the fossilised
chief editor.
He walked over to the young man with the pecked-out
obituary. He had stopped pecking and was now reading through
the text on his monitor.
'Is it finished?' Hjelm asked.
The man gave a start, as though hit by a bullet. 'Oh, sorry he
panted, once he collected himself. 'Yes, it's finished. As finished
as it can be, under the circumstances.'
'May I have a copy?'
'It will be in tomorrow's paper.'
'I would like to have it now, if it's possible.'
The man looked at him with surprise. 'Of course.' He
pressed a key, and a laser printer expelled sheets of paper. 'It's
always a pleasure to be read.'
Hjelm skimmed through the text, which was signed Erik
Bertilsson.
'In accordance with all the rules of the genre,' said Bertilsson.
Hjelm peered up from the paper and zeroed in on him.
'Rather than those of the truth?'
Erik Bertilsson gave what was, to an experienced interrogator,
a very familiar now-I've-said-too-much look and fell silent.
'What kind of writer was Hassel, actually?' Hjelm said. 'I've
read a few rather strange pieces.'
'Read the obituary,' said Bertilsson resolutely. All I have to
say is there.'
Hjelm looked around the editorial office. Isolated staff
members were running around. No one seemed to be taking
any notice of the police visit.
'Listen carefully, Erik,' he said sharply. 'I'm only trying to
get an accurate picture of a murder victim. Any information
that can contribute to the capture of the killer is of the utmost
importance. What you say will stay within the investigation. It's
not a matter of slandering someone publicly'
'Let's go to the stairs,' Bertilsson sighed, standing up heavily.
They got to the empty stairwell.
Bertilsson squirmed as though he were standing in the flames
of hell. After a moment he came to a decision, released his
discomfort, and let out the ballast, a heavy chunk of frustration.
'It was an assignment to write this obituary, not my choice,'
he said with a glance over his shoulder. 'And I've never felt
like such a hypocrite. Hassel was part of Moller's inner circle.
They're the ones who make the decisions, quite simply, a
clique from the same generation and with the same values,
which they think are the same ones as in the golden sixties but
in fact are the diametrical opposite. They rabidly try to ring
in the sign of the times, and they happily follow the shallowest
trends, but their willingness to let outsiders into their inner
circle is non-existent. Hassel had power. He was allowed to
write about whatever books he wanted, and he always chose
things he didn't understand, just so he could cut those authors
off at the knees. All his aesthetic convictions date back to the
sixties, and they're based on the pretence that literature is,
by definition, fraud. He wrote a theoretical Maoist manifesto
and a few documentary novels in the seventies, but since then
all his work has been based on raking people over the coals.
It's almost impossible to count the promising authors he's
single-handedly sunk.'
Hjelm recoiled from the sudden, almost therapeutic oratory.
He tried to change tack: And privately?'
After cheating on his wife for years, he left her for a young girl
who allowed herself to be dazzled by his so-called refinement.
He knocked her up immediately - but when it was time for the
birth, he took off for Gothenburg in order to fuck himself silly
at the book fair. When he got back to Stockholm, she had left
with their newborn son. After that he spent most of his time
picking up impressed young girls who didn't know that his
refinement was just as transplanted as his hair. His performances
at department parties and publishers' parties are legendary; you
can't imagine them if you haven't seen one.'
Hjelm blinked in surprise. He stared down at the obituary
and compared Bertilsson's oral account of Lars-Erik Hassel's
deeds with his written one. A truly sulphurous, infernal abyss
opened up between them. 'Perhaps you shouldn't have taken it
upon yourself to write this.' He waved the sheets of paper.
Erik Bertilsson shrugged. 'There are assignments and then
there are assignments. You just don't say no to some of them, if
you want even a shadow of a career. And I do want that.'
'But surely there must be some critics who are somewhat on
the up-and-up?'
Bertilsson reprised his shrug. 'Those are the ones who don't
earn any money. You have no idea what a tough business this is.
Either you're in or you're out. There's no in between.'
Hjelm could have said much more but didn't. Instead
he regarded Bertilsson for a moment. He thought of the
revolutionary books he'd read in the past year and tried to find
any connection at all with the two representatives of cultural
life he had met today.
It was impossible.
He thanked Bertilsson and left him alone in the empty
stairwell. Bertilsson didn't move.




7


The long day trickled to its conclusion. Hjelm quite literally
slipped into the Metro car on a banana peel. After executing
a graceful ballet step on his left ankle, he sat down and
thoughtlessly swore, and for the entire journey to Norsborg he
found himself pierced by the burning glare of an old woman.
By the time they got to Mariatorget, he was able to ignore her.
John Coltrane's hypnotic sax haze carried him to another world
- or rather, as he preferred to think of it, deeper into this one. A
thought disrupted his universe of pure sound: maybe Lars-Erik
Hassel's character was not a completely negligible factor after
all. Even if he couldn't accept Bertilsson' s version as definitive,
Hassel surely had quite a few skeletons in his cupboard, and
conceivably they had risen again as vengeful spirits. Erinyes, he
thought, and he was reminded of an earlier case. That it could
in any way be connected with the Kentucky Killer was absurd,
of course, but he left the door ajar, knowing from experience
that as time went on, it was often through unclosed doors that
the solution came creeping.
By six o'clock the A-Unit had had time to round out the day
with one last meeting. Norlander was missing - perhaps he had
grown tired of scrubbing the toilets - but otherwise everyone
was there. No one had anything new to contribute. Hultin had
pieced together a whole lot about the Kentucky Killer that he
would take home to go through. Nyberg had wasted his time in
vain in the underworld, of course - no one there knew anything.
Chavez said he would get back to them with possible news
from the Internet world early tomorrow morning. Soderstedt
had found tons of potential Americans in hotels and hostels,
on Finland ferries and domestic flights; he activated a whole
armada of foot soldiers around Sweden, all of whom drew a
blank. Kerstin Holm's afternoon had been the most interesting,
possibly because she didn't come up with anything.
No one in the large flight crew could place the name Edwin
Reynolds, and no one was struck by even the most minuscule
whiff of retrospective suspicion. Perhaps one could trivially
conclude that he simply didn't stand out. An everyman, like so
many serial killers. One might suppose that a man who, hardly
an hour earlier, had carried out a bestial, tortuous murder would
stand out in some way, perhaps not with large, wild eyes, bloody
clothes and a dripping ice pick, but at least with something.
The staff had no such recollections. But even that fact, after all,
contained a certain amount of information.
Hjelm had compressed his rather baggy afternoon harvest
into a synopsis that he was quite pleased with: 'There are
differing opinions on Lars-Erik Hassel's abilities.'
At Skarholmen, Hjelm drifted out of the musical haze,
opened his eyes, and looked over at the next seat. The woman's
icy glare was still boring into him, as though he were the
Antichrist. He allowed himself not to give a damn about her,
fixed his eyes ahead, and was just about to close them when he
saw Cilia on the opposite seat.
'Who's watching the children?' slipped out of him. He bit his
tongue far too late and cried out in pain.
Cilia gave him a measured look. 'Hi yourself,' she said.
'Sorry.' He leaned forward and gave her a kiss. 'I was
somewhere else.'
She pointed at her ears with a scrunched expression.
He yanked out his earphones.
'You're yelling,' she said.
'Sorry he said again, feeling like a social wreck.
'The children are sixteen and fourteen, as you may recall.
They watch themselves.'
He shook his head and laughed. 'I bit my tongue.'
'Far too late,' she said.
The ice was broken, by one of the little moments when
they read each other's minds and overlooked each other's
shortcomings; when the positive aspects of habit triumphed
over the negative ones.
'Hi,' he started over, placing his hand on hers.
'Hi yourself.'
'Where have you been?'
'I bought a shower curtain at IKEA. The old one was mouldy.
Haven't you seen those black spots?'
'I thought you had been throwing snus around.'
She smiled. She used to laugh at his stupid jokes, but now she
smiled. He didn't really know what that meant. That he wasn't
as funny any more, or that she was worried that her teeth were
stained brown from coffee?
Or was that what they called maturity?
He still thought she was beautiful: her blonde hair in its
slightly dishevelled bob; the years that had gathered the right
way, around her eyes instead of her waist; her gift for dressing
sexily. And then her penetrating looks, too seldom in use these
days.
He loved to be seen through; this was an insight he'd had
late in life, but that's how it was. To be seen though is to be
seen a second time, and that didn't happen so often. Because first
impressions last - he hated that an advertisement was echoing
through him.
'Something happened at work,' she declared.
'We'll talk about it later,' he said happily.
'What happened to your lip?'
'You'll have to watch it on TV
They chatted a bit until Norsborg. He turned the job talk in
her direction. She was a nurse on a rehab floor at Huddinge and
was always ready with a heap of tragicomic stories. This time it
was a brain-damaged patient who had urinated in the handbag of one of her 
colleagues; the woman didn't notice until she
went to take out her SL card at the commuter train turnstile.
As they walked with their arms around each other through
the outskirts of a neighbourhood that everyone considered to
be a high-rise ghetto and that had once, what seemed like a very
long time ago, been his workplace, and as the sun generously
shared the nuances that had been well hidden during the day,
and as a bit of summer warmth lingered in the air, and as the
wasps buzzed in that dull, dying way, Paul Hjelm decided that
this was what love looked like once you stepped into middle
age. It could be worse.
They arrived home. Danne looked as if he'd been spilled
onto the sofa; he was watching MTV. A social studies book
with crumpled pages was open on the table. He was downing
greenish soda. 'It's past seven,' the boy complained.
'I told you there was food in the fridge,' said Cilia, who began
to unpack a shower curtain with gold Egyptian hieroglyphs on
a dark green background.
'We ate,' said Danne without taking his eyes from the MTV
screen. 'What kind of fucking sludge was that?'
'Mexican fucking sludge,' Cilia said calmly, holding up the
new shower curtain she'd bought. Apparently she was awaiting
a statement from her husband.
'What does it say?' he said.
She made a face and carried it to the bathroom.
He opened a beer and called, 'Maybe it's Egyptian porn!'
Danne glared at him from the sofa.
After a few minutes she returned with the old shower curtain
and showed him the horrible accumulation of mould: two small
black spots down in the corner.
'What does this say about our household?' Cilia asked
rhetorically, fingering the spots with disgust.
'That we take showers,' said Paul Hjelm.
She sighed and crumpled the old curtain into an overflowing
rubbish bin. Then she took out the remains of the Mexican
fucking sludge, put the plastic container in the microwave, sat
down in front of the TV and changed the channel.
Without a word, Danne took the remote and changed it
back.
As Hjelm poured beer down his throat, he thought about
how he had seen this scene before. Three thousand, four
hundred, and eighty-six times. 'What time is it?' he asked.
'Nineteen oh six and thirteen seconds,' said Cilia. She had
just countered her son by pushing the text-TV button. Now a
dark curtain of letters fell down across the MTV-filled screen.
t



54

'In just under four minutes, the clock will chime boomed
the voice of the master. 'I want to watch the local news
The battle on the sofa continued in silence. Thus far it had
been a game. He hoped it would remain so.
The microwave dinged. Tova came down the stairs and
groaned when she saw the spectacle on the sofa.
'Hi,' Hjelm said to his fourteen-year-old daughter.
'Hi she said. 'You're so late.'
'Cut it out.' He poured the Mexican fucking sludge onto two
plates, dug out two spoons, poured two beers, and managed to
balance it all as he brought it over to the living-room sofa.
'Isn't that a schoolbook?' he said to his son, who was attacking
the pocket where Cilia had shoved the remote.
'Cut it out,' Danne echoed, as he pulled out the remote and
got MTV back. It was on a commercial break, so he gave in. The
paternal hand snatched the remote, changed it to Channel 2,
and turned up the volume. There was about a minute left before
the local news.
Hjelm had time to ask, 'How's school going?'
His son had just started upper secondary school, and Paul
had devoted only a few wasted hours to trying to understand
the school system. Danne was in something that went by
the name 'Programme in Social Sciences', and his lessons
seemed decidedly simpler than the process of figuring out the
curriculum.
'Good,' said Danne.
The theme music of the local news came on, just as brief as
his son's reply.
'Here comes some great television art,' said Paul Hjelm. The
rest of the family looked at him sceptically.
It came on right away. The anchorwoman spoke excitedly
about a big crackdown on narcotics at Arlanda that morning and
about the dramatic assault of a top police officer in front
of their cameras. Sensitive viewers were warned. Hjelm's
expectations rose.
Then Waldemar Morner, the deputy commissioner of the National Police Board and 
the A-Unit's formal boss, appeared
on the screen.
His well-coiffed blond hair was impeccable, but he was
breathing heavily, as though he had just personally chased some
criminals through Arlanda. Presumably he had just tumbled
out of the helicopter before he had any idea of what had
happened; perhaps he had been jogging on the spot inside the
helicopter. Neither his breathing nor his ignorance stopped him
from looking confident and efficient - or from lying with no
inhibitions.
'Waldemar Morner, deputy commissioner of the National
Police Board the reporter began. 'What happened at Arlanda
today?'
'The NCP acted on indications from the American police
that a large quantity of narcotics would arrive at Arlanda today
from the United States. I can't go into specifics on the action
itself.'
'Has anyone been apprehended?'
At least one American citizen has been taken into custody
in connection with smuggling narcotics, yes. We are expecting
further apprehensions shortly'
A man in handcuffs was seen at the edge of the screen. Hjelm
recognised the notorious drug smuggler Robert E. Norton, surrounded
by four armed Arlanda police officers. As they watched,
he managed to kick Morner's backside, knocking Morner over
with a shrill cry. When he fell, he grabbed the microphone, so
the reporter followed him to the floor. The microphone cord
must, in turn, have been wound around the cameraman's
legs, because he plunged to his face. Over the lengthy footage
of Arlanda's ceiling, they could hear the camera man
whimpering, the reporter moaning and Morner's verbal gunfire:
'Fuckinghellgoddamndildofuck.'
The producer didn't cut until then; it wasn't hard to imagine
his sadistic smile.
Yet it was too early for the anchorwoman in the studio. As the
camera caught her, she shouted in a panic, Am I really supposed
to read this?' When she realised she was on the air, she pulled
herself together and struggled heroically to keep her composure
as she read 'Fortunately, no one was seriously injured in the
drug dealer's attack. Our reporter, however, suffered some oral
injuries when the microphone, which had been pushed into his
mouth, was removed.'
On the sofa in Norsborg, no one was required to keep their
composure. When the gales of laughter ebbed, Paul returned
the remote control to Danne. He caught Cilia's glance. As she
dried her tears and restored her face, her eyes were serious. She
realised something was brewing.
They went to bed rather early; both had long days at work
ahead. Danne was allowed to keep watching MTV; it wasn't
an evening when they really had the energy to be responsible
parents. Experience told them that he was probably doing his
homework as he watched.
Neither of them could really understand how multitasking
could be so quickly upgraded.
'What's going on?' Cilia asked with a flashing spark of
attention as sleep tried to envelop her.
'Nothing yet,' Paul said as he unpacked a few books onto
the bedside table. 'But the risk that something will happen has
increased.'
And what about the wound on your lip?' she said more
faintly.
'The TV celebrity' he snickered. 'The one who kicked
Morner in the arse.'
'Is it really all about drugs?'
'No,' he sighed. 'This thing kills faster.'
She was already halfway into the realm of sleep. 'A weapon?'
'Not exactly. It's best if I don't say more. But there's a risk
that I'll have to put in some overtime. Good thing summer's
over.'
Then she was asleep.
He patted her cheek, then turned to the pile of books on
the bedside table. On his way back from Marieberg he had
stopped by the library at Fridhemsplan and looked up 'Hassel,
Lars-Erik' in the new computer system. He got hold of the
Maoist manifesto from 1971 and two volumes of the somewhat
later documentary novels.
The manifesto was unreadable - not for ideological reasons,
but because it presupposed an understanding of the technical
terminology of dialectical materialism. Hjelm didn't understand
a word. And this was written by the man who later freely
lambasted Swedish authors with accusations of elitism.
The documentary novels, though, were profoundly educational.
The plot of one centred on a manor in Vastmanland at
the turn of the century. Step by step the reader could follow
each class, from the landowner, whose inherited brutality was
hidden behind fancy upper-class manners, to the oppressed
farm labourers' heroic struggle for their daily bread. Hjelm
was vaguely familiar with the concept. The problem was that
everything was hyper-idealised. The message overshadowed the
characterisations. The uneducated masses had to be schooled
in politics. It was like a medieval allegory, an undisguised
textbook in the true faith. The censorship of sleepiness was
relentless.
The day on which one of Sweden's last levees broke ended
with yet another assault on a police officer. Just as the living
room clock struck midnight, Lars-Erik mounted a posthumous
attack on Paul Hjelm: the right corner of The Parasite of Society struck his 
left eyebrow.
The Kentucky Killer's visit to Sweden entered its second day.



8


Arto Soderstedt lived with his wife and five children in the
inner city and thought it wonderful. He was convinced that
the children thought it wonderful too, from the three-year-old to
the thirteen-year-old. Every time he dropped them off at nursery
and school, he found himself surrounded by self-tormentors who
were convinced that their children's greatest dream was to have
their own garden patch to romp around in. He often thought
about the psychosocial mechanisms that caused the majority of
inner-city parents to have a constant guilty conscience.
The suburban parents he met were different. All of them
made an extreme effort to convince their friends that they had
found heaven on earth. As a rule, upon closer inspection, the
heaven that was suburbia turned out to consist of three things:
one, you could let the children out in the garden and avoid being
in their vicinity; two, it was easier to park your car; and three,
you could grill outdoors.
The contradiction between thwarted conscience and inflated
self-esteem often resulted in yet another family moving van
heading north, south or west.
Soderstedt had seen the grass on both sides of the fence.
When the A-Unit was made permanent, his family had moved
from Vasteras, with its private homes, to Bondegatan on
Sodermalm. Personally, he didn't miss the forced interaction
with neighbours he had nothing in common with, nor the
competition-orientated self-righteousness that came with
homeownership, nor the fixation on the car, nor the enormous
distance to everything, nor the useless public transportation
system, nor the barbecue parties, nor the tranquil state of
vegetation, nor the artificial proximity to nature, nor the
predictable discussions about hoses, nor the lawn and the garden
that sucked up more time than money, nor the architecture that
lacked history and fantasy, nor the empty roads, nor the absolute
lack of culture. And when it came to the children, he had
produced a small list of arguments for use by inner-city parents
when aggressive suburbanites pressed them up against the wall
with accusations of child abuse. Memories of childhood follow
a person throughout his entire life, and if these memories are
of playgrounds, car parks and lonely roads rather than diverse
building facades, church steeples and people, then that's a
deciding factor. In the city the likelihood that a child will get a
good education is greater, visits to the theatre and museums are
considerably more numerous, access to activities is enormous,
encounters with people of all sorts are legion. In general, in the
city one's powers of observation and vigilance are developed in
a way that lacks a counterpart outside.
What struck Soderstedt now, as he sauntered through this
very city, was that this whole manner of thinking was dictated
by a drummed-in guilty conscience.
What kind of societal stereotypes truly determined the
picture of happiness?
Not, in any case, the five-room apartment on Bondegatan
where the seven-person household was without doubt a bit
cramped. The question was whether it really mattered that
much.
Since Anja had taken care of the day's deliveries of
their children, he permitted himself to walk from Soder to
Kungsholmen; he had a feeling that it would be the last time he
would be allowed that luxury for a long time. When he stepped
into the police station on that beautiful early-autumn morning,
he continued straight to the service vehicle pool and checked
out a robust Audi. He pocketed the keys and stepped into the
lift.
Arto Soderstedt caught a glimpse of himself in the lift
mirror. He'd made it through another summer without getting
skin cancer, he thought, looking for some wood to knock on.
He had the kind of skin that only Finns and Englishmen have,
the absolutely white-through kind that doesn't have a chance
of turning anything other than red in the sun. It was the fourth
of September, and he had just managed to take the crucial leap
from SPF 15, the variety for newborns, to SPF 12.
Actually, he liked autumn best.
Except maybe not this autumn.
He had read up on serial killers in connection with the Power
Murders, and as usual he found himself giving a few lectures
to the group. Since then he had rationed them out. He was
afraid that the time for rationing would soon be over. Sweden's
last levee had broken, and violent crime of an international
character, to cite a familiar source, had arrived. It would hardly
be an isolated incident.
The fact was, he recognised the Kentucky Killer. He had read
about him and vaguely remembered him. He had been one of
the first in a long series of such killers.
There was something strange about his modus operandi,
something that didn't really match up with the profile of a serial
killer. Those terrifying pincers ... he couldn't put his finger on
it, but something was wrong. He needed to speak directly to Ray
Larner at the FBI, but he didn't know how to get past Hultin.
Certainly Hultin was the best boss he'd ever worked under, but
he lacked Soderstedt's own insights into the grey areas of the
workings of justice. Soderstedt had once been a defence lawyer,
one of the most prominent in Finland, and he had defended the
worst of the worst in the upper echelons. Then his conscience
had rebelled; he'd quit, fled to Sweden, enrolled in police college
at a slightly advanced age, and settled down as a policeman in
Vasteras. He had got it into his head that a lawyer s role as a
vicarious criminal could be useful in this case. There had to be
some sort of identification in order to catch a serial killer, he
knew that.
So lost was he in his reflections about inner-city parents and
serial killers that he didn't notice he was late. Which wasn't like
him. So he was quite surprised to open the door to 'Supreme
Central Command' and find not only everyone already gathered
there but Waldemar Morner himself sitting at Hultin's lectern,
drumming his fingers.
Because he hadn't had a chance to prepare himself for the
confrontation, he burst into spontaneous peals of laughter.
This didn't go down very well. Morner looked audaciously
fresh, unaffected by the incident at Arlanda, but Soderstedt's
laughter caused him to put a small, permanent mental mark on
Soderstedt's record. He wrinkled one eyebrow for a short but
murderous second. Then he was himself again.
'I hope lateness won't become a habit for you, Soderstedt,' he
said sternly. 'We're facing a task of a nature we have never come
close to in modern times in this country. But tempus jugit, and
we will too. Don't allow the four complaints from Arlanda to
disturb your work; instead let's move forward with the extensive
investigation.'
'Four?' said Norlander.
'Currently' Hultin said neutrally.
Morner didn't hear them but continued with glowing passion:
'After extensive work in the upper echelons, I have persuaded
them that this case should be entrusted into your warm hands,
and I sincerely hope that you don't fall short of the confidence
that I have placed in you. Inasmuch as a mustering of strength is
needed, I urge you to develop expanded horizons and widened
scopes. Your joint capital is firmly rooted in the visions of the
management team, and the future looks bright. The light is
visible at the end of the tunnel. Ahead of your great burden
lies a fair reward. Seize the day, make the most of every minute,
pull out all the stops. Work hard now, gentlemen. And lady, of
course. Lady. The welfare of Sweden rests in your hands.'
With these words of wisdom, Morner departed, glancing at
the clock.
The room fell silent. Language itself seemed to have become
constipated. After this address, no word would be innocent. Any
one might become a weapon of murder aimed at the heart of
the Swedish language.
'With friends like that, who needs enemies?' Hultin said
neutrally, grasping wisely at a proverb in order to normalise the
linguistic situation. 'I have spent the night with the Kentucky
Killer,' he continued.
Then he ought to be easy to locate,' said Soderstedt, who
hadn't quite collected himself yet.
Hultin ignored him. A summary has been distributed to
your offices. There is an enormous amount of material, and
somewhere in there is the hidden link to Sweden. My examination
didn't turn up anything new, but if you have extra time, you can
study it in detail. I'm afraid, however, that the killer will have to
start up again for us to obtain any adequate clues.'
'What if he's come here to retire?' Gunnar Nyberg asked.
'Then we'd sit here twiddling our thumbs until we're retired.'
The thought did not seem entirely repellent to Nyberg.
He had been shot in the throat during the hunt for the Power
Murderer. The industrious church vocalist had been close to
having sung his last note. After six months' convalescence, he
had returned to the Nacka church choir; his bass had become
deeper, taken on a more extensive tone, and these days he sang
in jubilation, less at the benevolence of God, even if that were
in his thoughts, than at the fact that he had a voice at all. For
Nyberg, the Kentucky Killer's vocal cord pincers were identical
to the devil's pitchfork. He ran the risk of becoming personally
engaged in a way that he carefully avoided these days, in
anticipation of his retirement. His problem was that that lay
twenty years in the future.
'He came here with fresh blood on his hands,' Hultin
an-swered. 'I don't think that's how a person ends his career.
He could very well have slunk in completely unnoticed, but his
craving got the upper hand. No, he has some sort of target--'
'That's something I've been thinking about,' said the other
church singer, Kerstin Holm. She was dressed in black as always,
with a little black leather skirt of the type that Hjelm couldn't
help reacting to. It suddenly threw him back in time to just
over a year ago. Yesterday's feeling seemed to have opened the
forbidden doors, and he found himself wondering how she really
felt, who the new man in her life was, and what she thought of
him now, afterwards. Their relationship had been intense but
unreal. Did she hate him? Sometimes he imagined so. Had he
left her? Or was she the one who had left him? Everything was
still shrouded in mist. Misterioso, he thought.
He was abruptly brought back to reality by her words.
'Serial killing is about being seen,' she said thoughtfully. Her
contributions always resonated in a slightly different way. A
womanly way, maybe. 'The victims are meant to see their
tormentor and therefore their murderer. A person doesn't
commit serial murders and then hide the victims. That would
be something else. What are things like on that front? Has our
man ever hidden a victim?'
Hultin flipped through pages again. 'It doesn't seem like
it, based on a quick look, but if you think it's important, you
should investigate further.'
'I think pretty much all of us have had a vague sense that
something is a bit wrong. Not a lot, but a little. He is bestially
bloodthirsty but takes a fifteen-year break. He brings a fake
passport to the airport but hasn't booked a seat. He murders
Hassel in the middle of the evening rush at one of the largest
airports in the world without leaving a trace, but he doesn't hide
the body. He has all the attributes of a classic serial killer, but at
the same time there's a bit of a clinical hit-man professionalism
to him. Does he really want to be seen? Or was he telling us
where he was going? Can we also find a clue as to why he came
here? We've discussed it before, but the combination seems not
only dangerous but also wrong. Somehow.'
It was that somehow, if anything, that everyone could get on
board with.
'Does it have something to do with Hassel personally, after
all?' Hjelm dared to ask. 'I've looked at his Maoist writings from
the seventies, and they're no trifling matter.' He picked at his
bandaged eyebrow. 'Let's toy with the thought that the Kentucky
Killer is KGB and that the wave of American murders is the
result of Soviet imports. Hence the many unidentified victims.
Did Hassel have some sort of information from the good old
seventies that he couldn't be allowed to divulge? Was he just one
in a series of security risks or traitors or double agents? Maybe
we could check unofficially with Larner to see if that idea has
come up before.'
'In any case,' Kerstin Holm replied eagerly, 'that could
explain the long break. He - or maybe a whole cadre - was quite
simply called home sometime shortly after Brezhnev's death
in the early eighties. The KGB decreased its activity then; that
fits quite nicely. Then fifteen years later discontent spreads in
Russia, the Communists make headway, agents are taken out of
the deep freeze, and our friend is sent back to the United States
to start afresh.'
'He's finished with the American list and switches over to
the Swedish one,' Hjelm took up the baton of their relay. 'He
weighs the risks with professional precision: "How can I get
the message to the intended victims that I'm coming, without
getting caught myself?" Because it obviously is a matter of being seen, but in 
a different way than we first thought; this is a
matter of being seen by those who are to be punished. He's on
a crusade; his goal is to strike fear in the hearts of all traitors.
They must be informed that the state isn't dead, that it's never
possible to flee the Soviet state; that it's in good health as a state
within a state.'
'On the other hand,' Holm added, 'he's aware that initially
the message will reach only the police. That means he's now
either waiting for the usual old leaks to start and for everything
to come out, or else he's aiming for the police and, if that's the
case, a very small group of police: just the ones he knows in
advance will take up the case.'
'If anyone here in the A-Unit, or higher up, has a past that is
similar to Lars-Erik Hassel's,' Hjelm continued, 'then he should
probably be on guard.'
And come forward,' said Holm.
'Come out of the closet,' said Hjelm.
It was quiet. Suddenly they had not only taken the leap to
international politics and the aftermath of the Cold War - they
had also dragged in the A-Unit personally. Could the Kentucky
Killer really be that sophisticated?
Was he after one of them?
'What do we know about Morner's background?' Hjelm said
wickedly.
In among the suspicious, sweeping glances, he caught
Kerstin's. It was the first time in a long time they'd exchanged
pleased looks, which hid a great deal. She smiled a reserved and
captivating smile.
Hultin did not smile. 'Morner is hardly a security risk for
anyone other than himself,' he said sternly. 'Is there anyone else
who feels like coming out of the closet?'
No one else felt like it.
Hultin continued silkily, 'All due respect to speculations, but
this one deserves the paranoia prize of the year. From the banal
fact that the body was discovered before the plane landed, you
are drawing the elegant conclusion that the KGB is targeting
the A-Unit, that the entire wave of serial murders in the United
States is based on Soviet indoctrination, that the twenty-four
victims, whom you have in no way investigated more closely,
were Soviet traitors, that all of this has gone over the heads of
the FBI, and that one of your close colleagues has had contact
with the KGB. You really covered a lot.'
'But wasn't it fun?' Hjelm said just as silkily.
Hultin ignored this rejoinder and raised his voice: 'If this has
anything to do with international political power plays, then we
are a very, very small piece in the game. Neither Lamer nor I
have overlooked that risk. But if it is the case, it hardly looks the
way you're describing it. We wouldn't be able to see more than
the contours of it.'
Anyway the point is,' said Holm, 'that there's a lot we can't
see.'
'Let's do this,' said Hultin in a conciliatory tone. 'You,
Kerstin, take on the American victims: make a close study of
who they actually were and what the FBI says about them, and
see if there is any sort of link among them, or between them
and Sweden. See if you can find anything from your point of
view that the FBI might have missed from theirs. It's a hard nut
to crack, so to speak, but blame yourself
Hultin rummaged through his papers and seemed, for
a second, to be as disorganised as they were. Then he pulled
himself together. 'This meeting was actually meant for Jorge,
who spent the whole night surfing the Internet.'
Chavez was sitting in a corner, exhausted. For a person
who spent a lot of time on the Net, paranoia was always a
temptation, and he appeared tempted. But also very, very tired.
'Well,' he said, 'I don't know if we can bear to listen to much
more right now. But I've chatted for several hours with a group
that is well hidden on the Net, namely FASK, Fans of American
Serial Killers, a shady organisation whose website required some
finesse and, I'll admit it, a financial contribution to get into. The
Kentucky Killer goes quite simply by the designation K, and the
crazies in FASK consider him to be a great hero. They knew that
Khad killed again but not, as far as I could tell, that he had made
his way to Sweden, which probably indicates that their contacts,
fortunately, don't go that high up.'
'I hope you didn't leave behind a bunch of tracks that would
lead here,' said Hultin, who had only moderate insights into the
Web.
'I was well disguised,' Chavez said laconically. Anyway,
they had a whole bunch of theories about K that it might be
good for us to be aware of. Most of them were crazy ideas like
Kerstin and Paul's, but others were more sensible. Even they
think there's some sort of professionalism involved. A few
think he's high up in the military. Apparently there was a secret
commander behind the Vietnam task force Commando Cool
who was somehow directly below the president. His identity
is unknown; that was the only thing Larner never caught, but
in these circles he goes by the name Balls; apparently they've
never seen The Pink Panther. The rumour is that Balls personally
invented the notorious vocal cord pincers, and that since then
he has occupied a central position within the Pentagon. Larner's
suspect, the guy with the country singer name, who died in the
car crash--'
'Wayne Jennings. Not Waylon,' corrected Hultin.
'Thanks. According to FASK, he was just Balls's henchman.
The truly important operations in Vietnam were carried
out under the personal leadership of Balls. Again, according
to FASK. They're also convinced that Balls is K. Apparently
he's a general at this point. According to the serial killers'
cheerleaders, he stopped killing when he was transferred to
Washington DC, and got Vietnam out of his blood, and he
started up again when he retired. The reasoning itself seems
pretty coherent, I think.'
'But it can hardly be your Balls who's come here,' Hultin
said. 'He was travelling with a thirty-two-year-old's passport.'
Chavez nodded with as much enthusiasm as his exhaustion
would allow.
'Exactly. That gives us a little perspective on the FBI's
reasoning. The whole theory that the Kentucky Killer has come
to Sweden actually rests on pretty flimsy grounds. It was a quick,
smart conclusion under the circumstances, but it is based on
something as trivial as Hassel not having a ticket on him. Then
the speedy hypothesis became an axiom. We don't even know when Hassel was 
murdered. Our literary critic could very well
have had some whim at the airport, thought of something else
he had to do, and decided to stay another night or two. Maybe
he called to cancel his own ticket, then threw it away. Maybe he
stuck around for a while and had a few drinks. On the way to
the toilet he was attacked and murdered. Meanwhile a young
criminal with a fake passport arrived at the airport, maybe on
the run from angry bookies or something, and wanted to get
the first international flight he could find a seat on. The plane
to Stockholm was going to take off in about an hour, and he
hopped on. In which case, the Kentucky Killer never left the
country. Does that sound unreasonable?'
Hultin looked around the room. Since no one else seemed
willing, he raised the objections himself. He did so honourably.
'Aside from the fact that there are a few too many coincidences,
it seems pretty bizarre that Hassel would have gone to the
airport only to change his mind once he was already there, not
bother to check in an hour ahead of time as is required, wait
for at least half an hour, and then call to cancel instead of just
walking up to the ticket counter.'
'To my ears it sounds like classic alcoholic behaviour,' said
Gunnar Nyberg. 'Maybe he arrived too late, wandered about
aimlessly, realised he had missed the check-in deadline, thought
that meant he'd missed the flight, and called the desk in order
to avoid facing the contempt of the ground agent. Then he kept
boozing at the airport and picked a fight with the wrong person.
In which case, Jorge's hypothesis would work better.'
'The problem,' Hultin said coldly, 'is that the autopsy didn't
show any elevated alcohol levels in the blood. And no drugs.
You would know that if you'd followed orders and read Larner's
report.'
'What happened to his luggage?' Nyberg asked, as if to
confirm Hultin's theory that he had read inadequately.
'It was recovered next to him,' Hultin said, 'which bolsters
the image of a cold-blooded murder. Not only did he silently
carry Hassel into a cupboard in the middle of the rush of people
at Newark; he also managed to get the luggage in.' He sighed.
'Let's try to apply some ice-cold logic here. The cancellation
came seventeen minutes before departure. The employees
obviously assumed that it was Hassel calling, and that he was
calling from outside the airport. But if he was calling from
outside to cancel, then why would he have gone to the airport?
Because it's clear that he did: for one thing, the crime scene
investigation shows that the cupboard was indisputably the
site of the murder; for another, it wouldn't have been possible
to carry a corpse in through a busy airport corridor. OK? So
two possibilities remain. One: that he himself called from the
airport, which is ruled out by its own absurdity, because in that
case he (a) would have made it to the plane - after all, Reynolds
did, and he arrived five minutes later - or (b) changed his mind
on a whim at the last minute, and then why call at all - if he
was sober? Why not just turn round and take a taxi back to
Manhattan? And two: that someone else called in his name and
if so, then this other person had a good reason to do so, and
the best reason seems, at the moment, to be that he wanted to
get on the flight to Stockholm at any price. Hayden's intuitive
hypothesis still seems to be a valid working hypothesis, if not
yet an axiom.'
'OK.' Chavez was acting as though he had sniffed some
ammonia during his break in the round. 'It wasn't my hypothesis,
anyway. Mine's based on Balls. If our man is now a retired general,
it shouldn't be too big a problem for him to put down some false
tracks; there would be lots of ambitious thirty-two-year-old
officers at his disposal to use as less-than-scrupulous stand-ins.
For some reason, Balls felt that now was the time to be rid of
the FBI; maybe he thought Larner's persistence was becoming
irritating. So then, what is the safest way to render the FBI
harmless? You leave the country. The FBI is not the CIA; the
FBI's domain is very distinct: within the borders of the United
States. So if you carefully choose a country where the police have
scanty resources, where the priorities are incomprehensible,
where the directors are appointed with strange methods, and
where the police are, to put it bluntly, likely to be bumbling,
and you then murder a citizen of that country, steal his ticket
home, and make sure that your stand-in is capable of suggesting
that you have arrived in the country in question, then the
FBI's conclusion is that you have got away. Just like Paul and
Kerstin, I am of the opinion that there might be a message in
the somewhat curious sequence of events at the airport, but
that it is directed at the FBI rather than at Sweden, and that the
entire Swedish part of this case might well be faked. I have my
doubts that he's here. The stand-in came in, switched passports
and went back without leaving Arlanda, and waiting at home
was a retired but far-from-powerless general who made sure the
stand-in advanced a few steps in his career.'
The A-Unit looked listless, as if about to hit a wall. So many
hypotheses had whizzed around during the past hour that
they needed fresh air. Viggo Norlander, the only one who had remained quiet, 
wearing a mental dunce cap after his own little
sequence of airport events, got to summarise the whole thing:
In other words, we're pissing in the wind.'
That's exactly right,' Hultin said good-naturedly.




9


The day went by.
Another day or two went by.
A few more days went by.
Nothing happened. No headline sirens blared in the media.
The A-Unit was allowed to work in undisturbed peace, which,
in its own way, made their idleness even more frustrating. They
quite simply had nothing to do, not even shoo away stubborn
reporters, which at least would have brought a sort of bittersweet
satisfaction.
All Swedish deaths that were reported to the police came
trickling in - as did all the reports of Americans suspected of
crimes. None of them seemed particularly promising as leads.
If the Kentucky Killer hadn't abruptly adapted to Swedish
circumstances and started surreptitiously murdering dementia
patients, which someone seemed to be up to at the moment
in a nursing home in Sandviken, then he was lying low. If he
wasn't a twelve-year-old who had kicked a pregnant woman to
the ground on the street so that her broken rib killed the foetus,
if he hadn't raped and murdered a sixty-two-year-old prostitute
and put her into a portable luggage trunk, stuck a one-year-old
into a freezer, killed himself with nose spray, mistaken sulphuric
acid for moonshine, or attacked his neighbour with something
as strange as a recently sharpened rake. Officially, Nyberg was
the one who kept track of the odd deaths; unofficially, the A-Unit
didn't give a shit about them. Nyberg preferred to stick to the
underworld, where he could terrorise old-guard small-time
criminals in peace.
Things were about the same when it came to the potential
criminal behaviour of visiting Americans. There Norlander was
the one holding the non-existent reins; he thought it was taking
an unusually long time for the mental dunce cap to wear off. A
man who was unwise enough to call himself Reynold Edwins
attracted Norlander's attention, more because of his name than
because of his activities, which consisted of going round to
primary schools in Malmo and picking up girls for porn films.
Three American businessmen purchased sexual favours at porn
clubs in Gothenburg and, when picked up, firmly maintained that
it was illegal for this to be illegal. An unidentified American had
had a forbidden key copied at a shoe repair shop in Gardet; the
owner hadn't called the police until afterwards, which resulted
in charges being brought against him, too. Another unidentified
American had been seen dealing hash on Narvavagen;
apparently he had a bad map. A third naively exposed himself
in Tantolunden and was assaulted by a women's football team.
A fourth bought a sailing boat with thousand-kronor notes that
had been badly photocopied; unfortunately the owner had been
so drunk that it took him a day to realise it, and by then the
American had already performed the unlikely achievement of
driving the sailing boat through a shop window in Vaxholm.
And so it went, uninteresting through and through.
Chavez became more and more virtual; Soderstedt drove
around in his Audi, personally investigating Americans staying
in lodgings fit for both princes and paupers; and Hultin endured
long, chaotic crisis meetings with Morner and the national
police commissioner, during which he entertained himself by
thinking about what sort of wrenches the young Communist
Morner could conceivably have thrown into the works of the
KGB.
Kerstin Holm worked intensively with the material from the
FBI, but the descriptions of the victims from the 1970s had faded
considerably, and the KGB hypothesis seemed less plausible. She
noted with some interest that Hjelm was in her presence a bit
more often than usual. They reasoned back and forth but never
got further than they had in that single associative minute when
they helped each other deliver a joint hypothesis that no one
really believed.
Without his virtual office mate, Hjelm turned to Kerstin,
and to his surprise, the very fact that he and Cilia were doing
better than they had for a long time made him draw closer to
Kerstin. There were so many things he wanted to ask her, but
all that came out were indirect insinuations, such as when he
played the tape of the interviews with Lars-Erik Hassel's two
exes. First the ex-wife:


'You were together during his more political period,
right?'
'Political. . . hmm
'He did take an active interest in the weaker members of
society
'Well... I don't know
'An active, genuine interest.'
'Yes . . . well. . . um . . . What are you getting at?'
'And then his interest in literature. Incredibly strong.'
'Are you being sarcastic?'


It had been a catastrophe, and he very much deserved the stern
side glance he received from Kerstin. Then he fast-forwarded
the tape to the other ex, the young woman who had left Hassel
before he had time to meet his second son:


'Has he seen his son since?'
'Yes . .. well. .. um ...'
'Has he ever met him at all?'
'I don't think you could say he has. I'm not one hundred
per cent sure that he knew he existed.'


Rewind, and back to the first:


'Did he have any enemies?'
'Well, there are enemies and then there are enemies ...
You can't be a critic for that long without attracting
someone's hatred, that's for sure.'
'Anyone in particular?'
'Throughout the years there have been a few, three of
them. And more recently I'm quite sure he received
a steady stream of hate emails, all from the same
nut job.'
'Hate emails?'
'Hate letters via email.'
'How do you know that? Did you still see each other?'
Xaban told me. They saw each other once or twice a
month.'
'Your son?'
'Yes. There was some kind of crazy person who sent
him emails. That's all I know.'


Then fast-forward again to the younger woman:


'How old is your son now?'
'Six. His name is Conny'
'Why did you leave him? It happened so quickly, after all.
He didn't even have time to see his son.'
'He had absolutely no desire to see him. My waters
broke as he was packing to go to the book fair in
Gothenburg. He called for two taxis, one to Arlanda
for himself, one to Karolinska for me. Gallant, huh?
Then he fucked around like a madman down there,
while his son was being born. Maybe he had time to
fertilise another one before the first one came out.
Always a bun in the oven.'
'How do you know that? That he - was so sexually
active in Gothenburg?'
'One of his colleagues called me, actually. A woman. I
don't remember her name.'
'She called you? At the hospital? To tell you your
husband was fucking around? So tasteful.'
'Yes. No, not very - tasteful.'
'Didn't you think it was a bit strange?' 'Yes, actually. But she sounded 
convincing, and besides,
I could see when he left that it was over. He thought
one kid was enough. Conny was an accident, but I
didn't want to have an abortion.'
'Can you remember what this colleague's name was?'
'I'm pretty sure her first name was Elisabeth. After
that, I don't know. Bengtsson? Berntsson? Baklava?
Biskopsnasa?'


And rewinding again. Kerstin watched him rewind with
raised eyebrows.


'Do you know if these hate emails are still on the
computer?'
'No. The only thing I know is that Laban said that they
upset Lars-Erik. I can t really picture it, but that's
what he said.'
'How old is Laban?'
'Twenty-three.'
'Does he live at home?'
'He has an apartment on Kungsklippan, if you want to
verify my statement, or whatever it's called. Laban
Jeremias Hassel.'
'What does he do?'
'Now don't laugh. [Pause.] He studies literature.'

Hjelm pressed stop again and was just about to fast-forward
when Kerstin pressed his very own stop button; it seemed
necessary. 'That's enough.'
He stopped reluctantly and returned to the present. He sank
down into the chair across from her and scanned the room. It
was the office that Kerstin shared with Gunnar Nyberg, the choir
room. Autumn light streamed in through its always-half-open
windows. Sometimes they sat here and practised scales and sang
in harmony, a cappella, he with his strong bass, she with her
husky alto. Hjelm compared it to his own office, where Chavez
surfed the Internet full time and where the conversation these
days mostly seemed to involve football. He felt short of breath.
He needed a little John Coltrane. And maybe he would be brave
enough to return to Kafka, even though the worth of literature
had been drastically devalued during the last few days.
But most of all he needed to tell Kerstin something.
He wondered what it was.
'Can't you give me a summary instead?' she said.
He looked at her. She didn't turn away. Neither of them
understood the other's look.
'Three things,' he said professionally. 'One: pay a visit to
the twenty-threc-year-old literature-student son, Laban Hassel.
Two: find out more about the colleague Elisabeth Biskopsnasa,
or whatever she is called, the one who called the hospital and
tattled. Three: check whether those threatening emails are still
on the computer, either at home or at the newspaper office.'
'Have you been to Hassel's home at all?'
'I swung by. No obvious KGB signs fluttering around like
vampires. A tasteful, large Kungsholm apartment with a few
bachelor touches. And exercise equipment. Do you want to take
a peek?5
She shook her head. 'There's something I have to check on.
Try to get Jorge out into the sunlight.'
He nodded, hesitated at the door for a second, and cast a
quick glance at the tape player. Then he left it with her.
She regarded it for a while. She looked at the closed door,
then back at the tape player.
She fast-forwarded to a point in between the passages
that Hjelm had so frantically toggled. Paul had asked the
ex-wife:


'Who is your new husband?'
'Surely that has nothing to do with this.'
'I just want to know what you've got instead of Hassel.
What you looked for instead. The differences. It
might tell me a few things about him.'
'I live with a man who works in the travel industry. We
do well together. He works hard but leaves work at
work and devotes his time to me when we're home.
We have a normal life together. Was that the answer
you were looking for?'
'I think so.'


Kerstin Holm looked at the closed door.
For a longtime.
Hjelm did get Chavez out into the sunlight. At a moment
when his desk mate complained about increasing bum sweat,
he jumped at the opportunity, and the two former Power
Murder heroes left police headquarters to the hands of more
permanently accomplished medallists like Waldemar Morner.
They hadn't been able to find out exactly what had happened with
the complaint from the news reporter, who had received, quote,
'massive lip injuries' when Morner shoved the microphone into
his mouth. Presumably the complaint had been considerably
easier to digest.
Out on the street, yet another sparklingly clear late-summer
afternoon offered up its services. Autumn had arrived in Arlanda,
but it was delaying its appearance in Stockholm. The somewhat
tired symbolism could hardly escape anyone.
Chavez could still comfortably wear his old linen jacket,
which needed washing more than its camouflaging grey colour
cared to admit. He stretched his compact Latin body intensely as
they walked along Kungsholmsgatan and crossed Scheelegatan.
'The Internet,' he said dreamily. 'Endless possibilities. And
endless amounts of shit.'
'Like life,' Hjelm said philosophically.
They turned onto Pipersgatan, trudged up the hill, and
started up the steep steps towards Kungsklippan, where
the rows of houses tried to eclipse one another's views
of Stockholm. Some stared out over City Hall and police
headquarters - they were hardly the most attractive ones while
others cast covetous glances past Kungholms Church
to Norr Malarstrand and Riddarfjarden; still others peered a
bit disdainfully out over the muddle of the city and beyond,
to upper Ostermalm. Lars-Erik Hassel's son from his first
marriage lived in one of these last.
They rang the doorbell. After a while a young man with a
thin goatee, a sleeveless T-shirt and baggy trousers appeared.
'The cops,' he said expressionlessly.
'Yes indeed,' said the cops in unison, above their IDs. 'May
we come in?'
'I guess it would be shooting myself in the foot to say no,'
said Hassel Junior.
It was a little studio with a kitchen nook. A frayed navy
blue window blind kept the sun at bay. A computer spread a
bluish flicker across the walls closest to the desk; otherwise the
apartment was coal black.
Chavez pulled the cord, and the blind flew up with a squeak
that was strongly reminiscent of the one Morner had produced
when Robert E. Norton kicked him in the rear. 'This isn't
opened very often,' Chavez observed. 'With a view like this,
maybe you should look outside once in a while.' Beyond the
window, Kungsklippan plunged down towards the junction
between island and mainland.
'Were you working?' Hjelm asked. 'Your mum said you
study literature.'
Laban Jeremias Hassel squinted at the sun and smiled with
indoor pallor. 'The irony of fate
'In what way?' Hjelm lifted an upside-down coffee mug from
the tiny counter. He shouldn't have done it - a whiff of the
mouldy fumes nearly flung him across the apartment.
'My father was one of Sweden's leading literary critics,'
said Laban Jeremias, observing Hjelm's actions indifferently.
'The irony is that I was born with a literary silver spoon in my
mouth. But really, my interest in literature is a rebellion against
my father. I don't know if it's possible to understand,' he added
quiet-ly lowering himself onto a thready, 1960s-style lavender
sofa.
The furniture in the little apartment was both sparse and
slovenly. Here lived a person without much interest in the
outside world - that much was clear.
'I think I understand,' said Hjelm, even if he couldn't really
reconcile Laban's trendy appearance with the inner chaos that
seemed to rule him. 'Your view of literature is the exact opposite
of your father's.'
'He never understood the importance of improving oneself,'
Laban Hassel mumbled, contemplating a birch table that
actually seemed to have rotted through. 'Literature was and
remained a decadent bourgeois phenomenon for my father.
So he felt no need to learn about it. Just tear it apart. And that
continued long after he himself had become the most bourgeois
of the bourgeois.'
'He didn't like literature.' Hjelm nodded.
Laban lifted his eyes to him for a moment with surprise. 7
do,' he whispered. 'Without it, I'd be dead.'
'Your childhood wasn't happy,' Hjelm continued in the same
balanced, calm, certain tone. A father's tone, he thought.
Or a mediocre psychologist's.
'He disappeared so soon,' Laban said, indicating that the
situation wasn't new for him. Many hours of therapy, it seemed,
were behind him. He started over. 'He disappeared so soon. Left
us. And so he became a hero to me, a personal myth of this great,
well-known, unapproachable thinker. And as I began to read
books, he became more and more interesting, with absolutely
no participation on his part. I decided to wait to read his works
until I felt ready. Then I would read them, and everything would
be revealed.'
And was it?'
'Yes. But in the exact opposite way from what I had imagined.
His whole cultural veneer was exposed.'
And yet you kept in touch up until the end?'
Laban shrugged and seemed to fall into a trance. Then it
came out. 'I waited and waited for him to reveal something
important, something crucial from the past. But it never came.
He always managed to keep up a raw-but-warm tone between
us. It felt like stepping right into the AIK locker room. Disgusting
guy talk. No chinks in the armour. I waited for them in vain.
Maybe they were there at the moment of his death.'
If I understand you correctly, your contact was extremely
superficial
'To say the least.'
'And still he confided in you that he had received threatening
emails.'
Laban Hassel kept his eyes on the rotting table. He seemed
broken. 'Yes.'
'Tell us everything you know.'
'I know just what he said - that there was someone terrorising
him.'
'Why?'
'I don't know. That was all. He just tossed it out in passing.'
'And yet you found it worth telling your mum?'
Laban looked at him in earnest for the first time. It wasn't a
look to mess with. It held a bottomless intensity that was rare
among twenty-three-year-olds. That look set the unemployed
but ready-for-action detective inside Hjelm into motion.
'My mother and I have a very good relationship,' Laban
Hassel said.
Hjelm didn't push him any further; he would need a new
angle of attack before he returned. Because he would return.
He and Chavez thanked the young man and left.
In the stairwell, Chavez said, 'What the fuck did you bring
me along for?'
'Kerstin thought you needed to get out in the sun,' Hjelm
said heartily.
'Not much sun in there.'
'To be honest, I needed a sounding board, someone without
any preconceived notions about Lars-Erik Hassel at all. So?'
They wandered down the stairs to Pipersgatan. The sun got
caught up in some stubborn bits of cloud and cast the northern
half of City Hall in shadow. The result was a strange optical
double exposure.
'Right or left?' Chavez asked.
'Left,' said Hjelm. 'We're going to Marieberg.'
They walked quietly down Pipersgatan. Down at Hantverkargatan
they turned right, wandered past Kungsholmstorg,
and stopped at the bus stop.
'Well,' Chavez returned to conversing, 'I wonder how
Laban's literature studies are going.'
'Check,' Hjelm said.



The bus had almost made it to Marieberg before Chavez,
calling on his mobile, managed to get past the switchboard at
Stockholm University and reach the Department of Literature,
whose telephone-answering hours were of the irregular variety.
Hjelm followed the phone-call spectacle from a distance, like a
director laughing covertly at the efforts of the actors. They were
crammed into different parts of the overcrowded bus, Hjelm in
the aisle in back, Chavez in the middle, leaning over a pram that
was cutting into his diaphragm. Every time he half-yelled into
his phone, the baby in the pram screamed back three times as
loud, accompanied by the mother's increasingly acid remarks.
By the time Chavez stepped off the bus at Vasterbroplan, he had
a vague idea of what hell was like.
'Well?' Hjelm said again.
'You are an evil person,' Chavez hissed.
'It's a difficult line of business,' said Hjelm.
'Laban Hassel was registered for basic studies in literature
three years ago. There are no results listed in the register today.
No courses at all.'
Hjelm nodded. They had arrived at the same conclusion
from different directions. He was pleased with the synchronicity.
They reached the newspaper building. This time the lift
worked. They walked into the arts and leisure offices purposefully.
If everything went well, this whole thing would be solved
before the A-Unit's evening meeting.
Erik Bertilsson was leaning over a jammed fax machine.
Hjelm cleared his throat half an inch from the man's red-mottled
scalp. Bertilsson gave a start, looking as if he'd seen a ghost.
Which, Hjelm thought, wasn't far from the truth.
'We could use a little help,' Hjelm said with a neutrality that
would have given Hultin's a run for its money. 'Can you get us
into Hassel's email inbox? If it still exists.'
Bertilsson gaped wildly at the man upon whom he had
unloaded his life's disappointments, and who he had thought
was out of his life. He didn't move a muscle. Finally he managed
to say, 'I don't know his password.'
'Is there someone here who knows it?' Bertilsson shuffled
over to a computer ten or so yards away, where he exchanged
a few words with an overweight woman in her early forties.
Her long hair, which was hanging free, was raven black; her
tiger-striped glasses were oval; her flowery summer dress was
tight. She sent a long, frosty look over at the duo of heroes and
returned to her computer.
Bertilsson came back and pecked in a password; Chavez
observed the keyboard concert attentively.
Access denied. He hit the screen in an outburst of rage and
returned to the woman. A short palaver played out that Hjelm
and Chavez observed in pantomime. The woman threw up
her hands and let the corners of her mouth fall - her entire
massive form radiated indifference. Then she lit up with a flash
of inspiration, stabbed her index finger into the air, and uttered
a word.
Bertilsson came back and wordlessly pecked out the key to
the electronic remains of the deceased.
'You can leave us now,' Hjelm said, unmoved. 'But don't
leave the office. We'll need to talk to you some more in a bit.'
Chavez felt immediately at home in front of the monitor,
but no exhibition of professionalism was forthcoming. He dug
around a bit in the in- and outboxes and consulted 'deleted
messages' but found only empty pages.
'There's nothing left here,' he said.
'OK.' Hjelm waved to Bertilsson, who arrived like a dog that
has been punished into loyalty.
'Why are all of Hassel's messages gone?' Hjelm asked.
Bertilsson, looking at the monitor rather than at Hjelm,
shrugged. 'He's probably deleted them.'
'No one else has cleaned them out?'
'Not that I know of. Either the whole mailbox and all the
addresses should be gone, or else they should still be there.
And that is probably everything. Maybe he was in the habit of
cleaning it all out - what do I know?'
'There are no short-cuts?' Hjelm asked Chavez. 'And no
chance of finding out who deleted them?'
'Not from here,' said Chavez. 'Network trashes are hard to
manage.'
Hjelm had to accept this remark without understanding,
like a true believer. He turned to Bertilsson again. 'Who
is your colleague Elisabeth B something? Is she still in the
office?'
'Everyone is still here,' Bertilsson said, in a tone of Everyone
is always still here. Then he roused himself: 'You're talking about
Elisabeth Berntsson, I assume.'
'Probably,' said Hjelm. 'Is she here now?'
'She was the one I was just talking to.'
Hjelm glanced over towards the black-haired woman, who
was typing like mad. 'What was her relationship with Hassel
like?'
Bertilsson cast a nervous glance around, one that ought to
have triggered the curiosity of anyone who wasn't asleep. But no
one reacted. Moller, sitting behind his glass doors, was staring
out the window. He didn't appear to have moved an inch since
Hjelm's previous visit.
'You'll have to ask her,' Bertilsson said resolutely. 'I've said
more than enough.'
They walked over to the writing woman, who looked up
from her computer. 'Elisabeth Berntsson?' Hjelm said. 'We're
with the police.'
She peered at them over her glasses. 'Your names?' she
said in a slightly hoarse smoker's voice, clearly experienced at
this.
'I'm Detective Inspector Paul Hjelm. This is Detective
Inspector Jorge Chavez. From the National Criminal Police.'
!Aha,' she said, recognising their names from the headlines.
'That means there's more behind Lars-Erik's death than we're
allowed to know'
'Can we go somewhere a bit more private?'
She raised an eyebrow, stood and walked towards a glass
door. They followed her into an empty office that was a carbon
copy of Moller's.
'Have a seat.' She sat down behind the desk.
They found a pair of chairs sticking up among the mess of
papers and took a seat.
Hjelm jumped straight in. 'Why did you call the maternity
ward at Karolinska Hospital during the book fair in 1992 to
inform the mother of Lars-Erik Hassel's newborn son that her
husband was engaged in sexual relations in Gothenburg while
her son was being born?'
Her jaw ought to have dropped, but it remained as steady as
her gaze. 'Well, what do you know, in medias res,' she said, not
missing a beat. 'Very effective.'
'It ought to have been,' Hjelm replied. 'But apparently you've
been expecting the question.'
'Because you two are who you are, I realised that you would
have ferreted it out.' Had she said it in another tone, they could
have taken it as a compliment.
'What was it? Revenge?' Hjelm asked abruptly.
Elisabeth Berntsson took off her glasses, folded them up and
placed them on the desk. 'No,' she said. 'Drunkenness.'
'Maybe as a catalyst. Hardly as a reason.'
'Maybe, maybe not.'
Hjelm switched tactics. 'Why did you delete all of Hassel's
emails?'
Chavez pointed out, 'That wasn't very difficult to trace.'
Hjelm gave him a look that he hoped would not be too easily
interpreted as grateful.
Elisabeth Berntsson, however, seemed to have other things
on her mind. An inner battle was being waged behind the naked
concentration on her hardened face. Finally she said, 'The
sexual relations you were talking about took place primarily
with me. Larsa needed something a bit more solid than that
twenty-year-old. It was practically over already; all I did was
hurry the process up a little. A catalyst,' she said with a sardonic
touch.
And then? Was it the two of you forever and ever amen?'
Berntsson snorted. 'Neither of us was particularly interested
in forever and ever amen. I suppose we were both too scarred
by the downsides of cohabitation. And had developed a taste for
the alternative. One-night stands are really nothing to sneeze at.
Me, I lead an active social life and want to be free to do what I
want. And Larsa's tastes were probably more in the vein of . . .
the younger age groups. For me, he was a decent lover and a
more or less reliable part of my life. Like a TV show, maybe.
Same time, same channel. And I do mean channel.'
Hjelm made a quick decision. 'Did he let you read the
threatening emails?'
'I got tired of them. They were all different variations on the
same theme. An almost unbelievable amount of persistence. A
fixation. Someone had found a scapegoat he could lay all his
life's frustrations on.'
'He?'
'Everything suggested it was a man. Male language, if that
makes sense.'
'How many were there?'
'There were only scattered sprinklings of them for the first
six months. During the past month, they accelerated into a
veritable flash flood.'
'So it's been going on for just over six months?'
'About that.'
'How did Hassel react?'
At first he was pretty shaken up. But when he realised that
they seemed to be written mostly for therapeutic purposes, he
became more thoughtful. As though he were pondering his past
actions and what he was being punished for. But later, when
they started to come more frequently, he got scared again and
decided to fly the coop for a while. That's how the New York
idea was born.'
Hjelm didn't comment on the cost of this escape. Instead
he said, 'Can you describe the contents of the emails in greater
detail?'
"Very explicit descriptions of how evil Larsa was and, above
all, what would be done to his body. They said nothing about
what wrong he had actually committed. That was what made
him nervous, I think: that the source was so vague.'
'Who do you think it was?'
She fingered her glasses, turning them at different angles on
the desk. Then she finally said, 'It must have been an author.'
'Why?'
'You've read what Larsa wrote.'
'How do you know that?'
'Moller told me. Which means you know that he didn't
mince words about things he disliked. That was what made him
stand out as a critic. That was how he built up his nationwide
reputation. But when you do that, you hurt people. And
sometimes when people are hurt, they never get back on their
feet. Bad blood always comes back round.'
Hjelm wondered at her strange final comment. Was she
quoting someone?
'Did the sender write like an author?' he asked.
'A fallen author. Yes.'
Hjelm usually didn't touch his cheek in public, but now he
scratched his blemish absent-mindedly. A small flake of skin
floated down towards his trouser leg. Elisabeth Berntsson
watched it expressionlessly.
He gave Chavez a meaningful glance, then said, 'So we're
back where we started: why did you delete all of Hassel's emails?'
I didn't.'
Hjelm sighed and turned to Chavez. His partner had had
enough time to fabricate a story, but Hjelm wasn't sure he was
in on the plan; after all, they'd got a little rusty.
Chavez was in. 'We arrived here at the editorial office at 15.37. At 15:40, 
Bertilsson asked you about Hassel's password.
At 15.41, he entered it; it was wrong. He went back to you, and
you came up with the correct password at 15.43. We got into
Hassel's inbox at 15.44. By then everything had been deleted. I
found the time stamp of the deletion: 15.42, two minutes after
you had learned what we were doing and given us the wrong
password.'
Chavez had done his homework and had outdone his teacher
by a mile: if you're going to lie, lie in great detail.
Elisabeth Berntsson stared deep down into her desk.
Hjelm leaned towards her. 'If you weren't the one who wrote
them, then why delete them? To salvage Larsa's reputation?
Hardly. Where were you on the night between the second and
third of September?'
'Not in Newark,' she said quietly.
'Have you been going around hating him all these years?
How did you have time to write all this hate mail? Did you do it
during working hours?'
Elisabeth picked up her glasses, unfolded the earpieces, and
settled them onto her distinguished nose. She closed her eyes for
a moment, then opened them to meet Hjelm's. The gaze he saw
was a completely new one.
'I suppose you could say I loved him. The hate mail was
about to break me.'
'So you hired a hit man to make the pain end?'
'Of course not.'
'But he told you who he suspected was behind them, right?
And you deleted everything to protect his murderer. Sort of
strange behaviour towards the dear departed, isn't it?'
Now she looked determined, but not in a self-confident way;
rather, she was determined not to speak at any price. She wasn't
going to say anything more.
But she said enough: 'It's private.'
Then she broke down. It was unexpected for everyone
present, including herself, but the repressed sadness came
tumbling out in long, sweeping waves.
When they stood up, Hjelm realised he liked her. He would
have liked to place a comforting arm around her, but he knew
the comfort he was capable of offering wouldn't go very far.
Her sorrow was much deeper than that.
They left her alone with her pain.
In the lift, Chavez said, 'A pyrrhic victory - isn't that what it's
called? Another victory like that, and I'm done for.'
Hjelm was silent. He told himself he was planning his next
step. In reality, he was crying.
Bad blood always comes back round.
In the taxi to Pilgatan, they didn't say much. 'It's lucky she
didn't check the times,' said Chavez. 'I was at least five minutes
off.'
'I don't think she was planning to let us leave without a
confession,' said Hjelm. Then he added, 'You did an excellent
job.'
He didn't have to tell Chavez where they were going. On their
way up the stairs of the stately building on Pilgatan, between
Fridhemsplan and Kungsholmstorg, he said, 'You remember the
password, don't you?'
Chavez nodded. When they arrived at the top floor, Hjelm
took out a set of keys and unlocked the three locks on the door
marked 'Hassel'. They stepped into a gym; the entire enormous
hall had been converted into an exercise room.
Apparently, in a previous life, Lars-Erik Hassel had been an
alchemist on the hunt for the fountain of youth.
They walked past modern glass vases and ceramic pots and
arrived at a computer on an antique desk in the middle of the
living room.
Chavez turned it on and settled into the grandiose easy chair
that functioned as a desk chair.
'Do you think he has a personal password?' Hjelm asked,
leaning over the seated hacker.
'No, not at home,' said Chavez. 'If he does, we might have a
problem.'
Hassel did have one. The computer blinked out a scornful

ENTER PASSWORD.
'I guess we'll try the same one.5 Chavez typed in the letters
L-A-B-A-N.
The scornful blinking of the computer halted. They were
in.
'Strange for a father and son to live so close to each other,'
Chavez said as the computer coughed to life.
Hjelm peeked out through the window towards the beautiful
old council building, which seemed to shiver in the shadow of
the clouds. If the window were placed at a slightly different
angle, he could have looked straight up at Kungsklippan.
Autumn seemed to arrive in just an hour. Heavy clouds rolled
up. Wind whined through the elegant gardens of the council
building, tearing both green and gold leaves from the trees. A
few raindrops spattered the windowpane.
While Chavez pecked at the keyboard, Hjelm explored
Lars-Erik Hassel's apartment thoroughly. Not only was it a
bourgeois turn-of-the-century flat, Hassel seemed to have
wanted to return it to its original condition. In the living room,
each detail seemed modelled on a Biedermeier aesthetic. He
had a hard time associating this almost ironically exaggerated
bourgeois taste with the critic who despised literature.
'Well, look at that,' Chavez said after a while. 'I don't even
need to go into his trash. He has a folder called "hate".'
'I thought he might.' Hjelm came up to the computer. Are
the emails there?'
A gigantic list unfurled across the screen. At the bottom left
corner it said '126 items', and the 126 files were numbered.
'Year, date, time,' said Chavez. 'Complete records.'
'Look at the first one.'
The message was short but to the point.


You evil bastard. Your body will be found in eight different
places, all over Sweden, and no one will know that this head
belongs with that leg; this arm with that cock. And they
don't, either. See you. Don't look over your shoulder.

'Dated the end of January' said Chavez. 'The most recent
ones are from the twenty-fifth of August.'
Hjelm nodded. 'The same day Hassel went to the United
States.'
'He didn't save any after that, of course. If more emails
showed up when Hassel was in the States - and it's probably
pretty important to know whether this bully kept threatening
him while he was gone - they disappeared when Elisabeth
deleted them. If the author of the emails is the murderer, or
hired the murderer, then he ought to have realised that this was
the final threat.'
'Let's look at it.'
The writer's style had, without a doubt, evolved during the
past months. The very last saved email read

You tried to change your email address again. There's no
point. I can see you; I can always see you; I will always be
able to see you. I know you're going to New York, you evil
bastard. Do you think you're safe there? Do you think I can't
reach you there? Death is on your heels. You will be found
in every state, with your cock in deep freeze in Alaska and
your bowels rotten with shit in the swamps of Florida. I
will tear out your tongue and split open your vocal cords.
No one will be able to hear you scream. What you have
done can never be undone. I am watching over you. Enjoy
the Metropolitan. I will be there, on the bench behind you.
Don't look over your shoulder.


Hjelm and Chavez looked at each other and saw their own
thoughts reflected back. New York, the Metropolitan: a striking
knowledge of details. Still, such information was relatively easy
to come by.
But splitting the vocal cords and 'No one will be able to hear
you scream' - things were heating up.
How had the writer known a week before it happened that
Lars-Erik Hassel's vocal cords would be taken out of commission
and that no one would be able to hear him scream?
'Didn't someone suspect that this had nothing to do with the
Kentucky Killer?' Chavez said self-righteously.
'Go back a bit,' Hjelm said. His focus had narrowed
considerably.
A random selection of the 126-file-strong 'hate' folder flew
by:


You evil bastard. You are the most bourgeois of the
bourgeois. Your repulsive remains will rot in small silver
jars and then be distributed to your cast-off mistresses one
by one, and they will be forced to masturbate with your
deceased organ.


You tried to change your email address. Don't do that.
There's no point. One day the source of all the excrement
you produce will be exposed. Everyone will be able to
see the defective digestive system of your rotten soul.
Your intestines will be wound round the glass cock on
Sergels Torg. All will be revealed. Those intestines held
the only intellect you ever had. Never look over your
shoulder.


I am going to slit the throat of your little son. His name
is Conny, and he'll be six years old soon. I know where he
lives. I have the code to their door. I know what school he
goes to. I'm going to fuck his cut-open throat, and you will
be called to identify your son, but because you've never
seen your son, you won't recognise him. You will deny both
head and body. It has happened before. Your whole cultural
veneer will be exposed.

There are cracks in your rotten wall. At the moment of
death you will see them. They will overwhelm you when I
torture you to death.


They had read enough.
'Are there any disks here?' asked Hjelm.
Chavez nodded and saved the whole 'hate' folder onto one
of them.
'What do you say?' Hjelm asked.
'The choice of words seems familiar.' Chavez put the disk into his pocket. 
"What would the scenario look like? Was he
so personally familiar with the Kentucky Killer's habits that he
could copy them perfectly? In that case, where did he get the
information?'
'Wouldn't your Fans of American Serial Killers have it? And
he seems to be familiar with computers.'
'So he found out exactly when Hassel's trip back to Sweden
was booked and waited for him at the Newark airport? The rest
was a coincidence?'
'Or the opposite: he planned it in great detail. Strictly
speaking, Edwin Reynolds could have been Laban Jeremias
Hassel.'
Chavez was quiet for a moment, sorting through his
impressions. Then he summed it up: 'He arrives at Newark
from Sweden on an earlier flight, waits an hour or so at the
airport, strikes, and comes back with a false passport. It's
entirely possible. Although he might just as easily have hired a
professional.'
They considered this scenario.
'Shall we go?' Hjelm asked at last.
Chavez nodded.
They passed through the deserted neighbourhood via
Hantverkargatan and cut diagonally across Kungsholmstorg
and up Pipersgatan; it was like coming full circle. Or tying up a
sack. The rain whipped at them sideways.
They reached the stairs, climbed up to Kungsklippan and
went into the building. Outside the apartment door, Chavez
took out his pistol and said, 'She may have warned him.'
Hjelm drew his service weapon too and rang the bell.
Laban Hassel opened the door right away. He stared
expressionlessly into the barrels of the pistols and said quietly,
'Don't make fools of yourselves.'
Their scenario collapsed like a house of cards. Laban Hassel
was either extremely cunning or completely harmless.
They followed him into the darkness; the blinds were down
again, and the computer screen emitted its listless light. Chavez
raised the blinds again; this time there was no sun to stun them.
Laban hardly blinked as the pale light filtered into his eyes - it
was as though he were beyond all earthly reactions.
He took a seat at the rotten table. Everything was familiar,
yet everything had changed. The two police remained standing
and kept their service weapons up. Laban let himself be frisked
without protest.
'Elisabeth Berntsson from the newspaper called,' he said
calmly. 'She thought I should run away.'
' "Don't look over your shoulder,"' Hjelm quoted as he took
a seat and put his pistol into his holster.
Laban Hassel gave a crooked smile. 'Eloquent, isn't it?'
'Did you kill him?' Hjelm asked.
Laban raised his eyes, stared intensely into Hjelm's, and said,
'That is a very, very good question.'
'Is there a very, very good answer?'
But Laban said no more. He just looked fixedly at the table
and kept his mouth shut.
Hjelm tried again. 'What happened in January?'
Absolute silence.
Another attempt: "We know that you registered at the
university three years ago but didn't complete a single course.
Perhaps you were able to cheat your way into student loans
for a while. But for the next two years - what did you live on
then?'
'CSV,' said Laban Hassel. 'Cash Support for Unemployment,
I think it means. Then it ran out.'
'In January this year,' said Hjelm.
Hassel looked at him. 'Do you know how demeaning it is
to apply for welfare? Do you know what it's like to be openly
distrusted and then meticulously investigated? Do you know
what it feels like when they find out that your father is too well
known and well-to-do for you to qualify for welfare? It's not
enough that he's been hanging over me like a repressive shadow
all my life - now because of him, I can't even get money to
survive.'
'That added to your hatred.'
'The first threat was spontaneous. I just vented on the
computer. Then I realised that I could send my outburst as an
email. Then it became an idee fixe.'
'Why did you threaten your half-brother Conny?'
The look on Laban Hassel's face could not be described
as anything other than self-loathing. 'That's the only thing I
regret.'
'Cut the throat of a six-year-old and fuck the severed
throat?'
'Please stop. I wasn't threatening the boy, only my father.'
'Have you met Conny?'
'I see him now and then. We're friends. His mother, Ingela,
seems to like me. We're almost the same age. Do you know
when I saw her for the first time?'
'No.'
'I was probably about fourteen, fifteen. I was out walking
with my mum along Hamngatan. And as if it weren't bad enough
to be out walking with your mum at that age, we caught sight
of my father on the other side of the street. With Ingela. He saw
us, but far from being embarrassed by the seventeen-year-old at
his side, he started crudely making out with her in the middle of
the street. Mum and I got a private show.'
'Was that before the divorce?'
'Yes. Sure, all our relationships were hellish at home, but
from the outside we still looked like a family. That day ripped
the veil from the illusion.'
'Hellish in what way?'
'People seem to think that it's much worse for children if
the parents argue rather than shutting up and pretending to be
friends. But that's the worst kind of hypocrisy, because children
can always see through it. Our house was dominated by an
icy silence. Hell isn't warm, it's cold. Absolute zero. I went
frostbitten through the polar landscape of my childhood. And
besides that, he could go missing at any time: football matches
he promised to come to but never showed up at, always the
same thing. And then he'd come home only to freeze the whole
fucking apartment.'
'You have literary talent,' said Hjelm, 'I can hear that. Why
waste it on hate letters to your dad?'
1 think it was an exorcism,' Laban said thoughtfully. 'I had to
get that bastard out of my blood. That cold bastard. But I might
as well have chosen not to send that shit to him.'
'It could have been a novel.'
Laban looked into Hjelm's eyes and blinked intensely.
Perhaps some sort of connection was forming between
them.
'Maybe,' he said. 'On the other hand, I wanted to see how
he'd react. I wanted to see if I could notice anything in him
when we met. Maybe I also had some sort of vain hope that
he would confide in his son. If he had hinted that he was being
threatened even once, I would have stopped right away, I'm
sure of that. But nothing. He showed no trace. He spouted the
same old, tired jargon every time we met. I don't even think
he ever considered that the evil that the letters accused him of
committing had to do with his role as a father.'
'I'm not so sure of that,' said Chavez from over by the
window. 'Do you know what the password on his computer
was?'
Laban Hassel looked over his shoulder.
'Laban,' said Chavez. 'L-A-B-A-N.'
'Why do you think Elisabeth Berntsson called you?' Hjelm
asked. 'She was prepared to take the blame herself in order to
keep you out of it. Why do you think she suspected you?'
'Why do you think your father saved all your emails in a
folder called "hate"?' Chavez asked. 'Every single file we looked
at had been accessed at least ten times.'
'You were waiting for him to take the first step,' said Hjelm.
'And he was waiting for you to.'
Laban seemed to disappear into himself again, but they
didn't let him go completely. 'What happened a month ago?'
Hjelm asked. 'Why did you suddenly start firing off more
emails?'
Laban slowly raised his eyes; it seemed like an enormous,
purely physical effort. His gaze fastened on Hjelm.
'That was when I got close to Ingela. She told me about
Conny, about his birth, that he had never even wanted to see
him.'
' "Got close to"? How close?'
'I decided to murder him for real.'
Hjelm and Chavez held perfectly still. Hjelm tried to
formulate the right question, which ended up being 'You started
piling on threatening emails with the intent of murdering him?'
'Yes.'
'And in the last one, you let him know that you knew about
his New York plans and that you were going to kill him in a way
that would make it impossible for him to scream out his pain?
Do you know how he died?'
'He was murdered.'
'But the details?'
'No.'
'He was tortured to death, and his vocal cords were cut so
that no one could hear him scream. When did you go to New
York?'
'I haven't--'
'When? Were you there waiting for him, or did you arrive
just as the plane was about to take off?'
'I--'
'How did you learn about the Kentucky Killer's MO?'
'Where did you get the Edwin Reynolds passport?'
'How did you sneak past the police at Arlanda?'
Laban Hassel gaped into the crossfire.
Hjelm leaned forward and said emphatically, 'Where were
you on the night of the second and third of September?'
'In hell,' Laban Hassel said almost inaudibly.
'Then you must have run into your father there,' said Chavez.
'I don't think any living person could come closer to hell than he
was right then.'
In the dramaturgy of investigative techniques, Laban
should, at this point, either have broken down or clammed
up. What happened was something in between. His lips hardly
moving, he said to the table flatly, 1 can t understand it. I had
almost made up my mind to take that step, and then he died.
Then someone else murdered him. It was completely crazy.
Or rather completely logical. Divine justice. A desire so strong
that it materialised. It couldn't be a coincidence; it had to be
fate, a fate as grotesque as life itself. A message from above.
And only now, now that nothing can be taken back, do I realise
that I never would have killed him. And that I didn't even want
to. On the contrary, I only wanted to punish him. I wanted to
talk to him. I wanted to get him to show some tiny trace of
remorse.'
The room was quiet for a moment. Then Hjelm repeated,
'Where were you on the night between the second and third of
September?'
'I was in Skarmarbrink,' Laban whispered, 'at Ingela and
Conny's place.'
And Chavez repeated: 'What happened a month ago? How
close to Ingela did you get?'
'Very close,' said Laban calmly. 'Too close. It's not enough
that I slept with my brother's mother, not enough that she
slept with the son of her son's detested father, and that these
insights slugged us hard in the face. We were also confronted
with something we had in common, something horrible with
the same root cause, and that was what caused me to make my
decision. That was what made me send more and more letters.
By then it was mutual.'
'And what was it that you had in common?'
Laban Hassel bent his neck way back and stared up at the
ceiling. 'We had both been sterilised.'
Hjelm looked at Chavez.
Chavez looked at Hjelm.
'Why?' they said in unison.
Laban got up, walked to the window and opened it.
Dusk had fallen. Rain clouds swept across the city, borrowing
a bit of street light now and then. A gust of autumn blew
through Laban's hair and into the musty room.
'Bad blood always comes back round,' said Laban Hassel.




10


It's time.
He's on his way.
Now it will begin.
He moves silently through the empty cottage. The bag is
resting over his shoulder. It rattles slightly in the dark.
He stops at the window next to the front door. He hears
a weak, drawn-out, hollow cry as the autumn winds whine
through the round hole next to the lock.
He raises his eyes from the hole in the pane of glass and takes
in the night's autumn storm, which heaves great sheets of rain
across the pitch-black landscape. When he steps out onto the
porch and the rain whips his cheeks, it is another wind he feels.
It is dry, dry as a desert. It sweeps down from Cumberland
Plateau and whistles through the ice-cold house.
Through the night, he sees the shadow in the closet as a
darker darkness. He follows it.
He wanders through the rain. It doesn't exist. All that exists
is a target. A darker darkness.
He gets into the beige Saab and drives away The roads
are more like paths. He carefully avoids the flood-like rivulets
and balances on the banks of the river until the first lights of
civilisation colour the bands of rain, and he discovers the stairs
behind the secret door that catches the arm of a jacket. He takes
the first step, and the next. The lights disappear; the dusty-sweet
scent comes, the same one that is thick in the car that is just
turning out onto the big road. Occasional headlights sweep by.
The illuminated facades of buildings take shape around him.
There are nuances to the darkness now: he can not only feel the ice-cold, damp 
handrail; he can see it too, see it as a hazy
band hurtling down towards the abyss in an endless, snake-like
copycat of the stairs, which crunch with sand; and the skyscraper
towers, strangely alone, at the entrance to the city. He sees it,
a bit to the right, and drives along the street with the green
swath in the middle. He doesn't know its name, just knows the
street, knows the number of steps, the exact number of steps
down to the light-framed door that he can almost see now, a
tiny glimmer at the very bottom. He knows exactly where each
correct movement ought to happen, and then he turns round
the stadium with the old clock tower, and he's very close. Forest
again; he is balancing at the edge of civilisation: complexes of
buildings on one side, forest on the other, a nocturnal jungle
that he drags himself through until the contours of the door are visible. Like 
an icon frame around a darkness that's brighter
than any light, the light shoots out from behind the door. A halo
that shows him the way.
He enters to the right. Dimly lit contours of ships give faint
illumination to the rows of empty offices and warehouses.
Otherwise, nothing.
He stops the car in an empty car park and walks with even,
distinct steps down to the water. The rain is flung from side to
side; it can't get to him. Now he can tell it's a door; the light is
coming from inside it. Not a sound can be heard. A few steps
left. Something makes a clinking sound behind him. The key
clinks softly in the lock. He turns it, pulls open the heavy door,
closes it behind him and opens the bag. He places a hand towel
on the floor just inside the door and stands there dripping. Then
he changes shoes, puts the wet towel and the wet shoes back in
the bag, takes out a torch, and climbs down the stairs, the back
point of a solitary cone of light. He stops in front of the door
with the glittering halo swarming around it. He stands there. He
can't breathe.
He lets his torch sweep through the cellar. Nothing has
changed. The junk in one corner, the collection of carefully
stacked boxes in the other and the empty surface a bit further
away; the always well-scrubbed cement floor with the drain and
the heavy cast-iron chair. He pushes his way behind the furthest
row of boxes, sits down with his back against the cold stone
wall, turns off his torch, and waits.
He loses contact with time. Minutes pass - or seconds, or
hours. His eyes adjust to the darkness. The image of the humid
cellar develops slowly. The door appears clearly, above the stairs,
about ten yards away. His eyes do not leave it.
Time passes. Everything is quiet. He waits.
Then a key is pushed into the lock. Two men step in, one
older and one younger. He can't make out their features. They
converse quietly but intensely in a foreign language as they walk
down the stairs.
Suddenly something happens. It goes so quickly. The older
man presses something against the throat of the younger one.
He immediately loses consciousness. The older man drags him
over to the heavy cast-iron chair, takes a number of leather
straps out of a case, and binds the man's legs, arms and body.
Then he bends down to the case again.
That is when he opens the door and everything is revealed.
The light streams out. He steps into the Millennium.
The older man lifts a large syringe out of the case and, with
an experienced hand, guides it into the unconscious man's
throat from the side. He adjusts a few small knobs on the upper
part of the mechanism.
He gives a start behind his boxes; he is close to knocking
them over.
Then the older man lines up a series of surgical instruments
on the cement floor, in careful order. Furthest to the right is
another large syringe-like gadget.
Finally he pats the unconscious man on the cheeks, harder
and harder until he starts to shake. His head is stabilised. Intense
jerks course through the restrained body, but the chair remains
completely still. There is not a sound to be heard.
The older man says a few toneless words and bends down
towards the second syringe. When he leans to the side to inject it
in exactly the right spot, a faint light comes in from an unknown
source and illuminates his face. For one second, it is completely
clear.
That is when he truly gives a start. A box falls.
The older man stands stock-still. He places the syringe on
the floor and starts to move. He's approaching fast.
It's time, he thinks, and steps out of his hiding place.




11


The minibus imitated the gliding flight of a bat through the
rainy night. Its night vision was turned on; its perception of
space was perfect.
Although maybe bats don't glide.
And was it really night vision they had?
He wished he hadn't had that last whisky.
'Where the hell are we?'
'Damn, Matte broke down up there.'
'Fuck, isn't that the leaning tower? Did you drive us to Spain,
you bastard?'
'Italy! Italy! I long for Italy, the lovely beaches of Italy . . .'
'Shut up!'
'It's the gas tower - the only thing that's leaning is your head.'
'The leaning brain of Skarpnack.'
'The leaning minibus of Frihamnen. What curve-taking
skills!'
'Where the fuck are you going? Matte!'
He looked over his shoulder.
It was an awful mess back there. It would take the whole
morning to clean up after them. The bottles were mixed up with
their bandy sticks, and the hazy figures seemed to be throwing
themselves on top of each other in a cluster of snakes.
'Gardet,' he said. 'You live there, Steffe. As you may recall.'
'But you drove around all of fucking Gardet! We shouldn't
have let you drive.'
'Says the man who blew the driving test six times.'
'Come on, try to go the right way. I know you're from
Nynashamn, but you must have been to Stockholm once or
twice.'
'Or heard of it.'
'The king lives there. Maybe that'll help.'
'Does he really live in the palace? Or is it Drottningholm?
Trick question.'
'What the hell? Are you going to send him fan mail?'
' "Dear King, can you send a lock of Victoria's pubic hair to a
pining bachelor with roots in the working class of Saffle?"'
'Take a right. A right, you moron!'
'Dumbass!'
He got tired of it all and turned left out of pure spite. A
general bellow spread through the minibus.
'Psycho!'
'Dipshit!'
'Idiot!'
The minibus glided on along a little dark road that split into
four; he randomly chose one of them, and it seemed like the
bus might be stopped at any second by a sudden iron fence and
a severe Latino border guard with a cigar in the corner of his
mouth.
That didn't happen. Instead, he could see a Volvo station
wagon fifty yards away. Fumes were rising from its exhaust pipe.
The car was blocking the road.
He braked until they were almost standing still. They were
thirty yards from the car when he saw a man next to it. His
head was covered by a balaclava. He shoved something into the
back of the car, threw himself round the side and roared away
with shrieking tyres. When the smoke settled, Matte noticed
something lying on the ground. A large package with alarming
contours.
Three of the guys who were somewhat sober leaned forward,
above him.
'What the fuck was that?'
A burglary?'
'Fucking hell! What have you got us into, Matte? Let's split.'
He let the bus slowly glide up to the blanket-wrapped
package. The headlights made the rain come alive. It whipped
at the blanket.
He stopped the bus and went out into the storm. They
followed him. He bent down and started to unwrap the blanket.
A face stared up at him. Chalk-white, with surprising facial
features under the ruptured eyes. The rain beat against the eyeballs. The 
eyelids made no effort to avoid the drops.
They recoiled and stared silently at the white face that stuck
out of the dripping blanket, shining through the night.
'Shit!' someone whispered.
'Let's split,' someone else whispered.
'We can't just leave him,' he said.
Someone grabbed the lapels of his jacket and brought his
face close. 'Yes. We can. Do you hear me, Matte? This has
nothing to do with us.'
'You've been drinking,' someone else said soberly. 'Think of
the consequences.'
They went back to the minibus. The mood was different
now.
He remained standing there for a moment, observing the
corpse with reluctant fascination. It was the first time Matte had
seen a dead person.
He returned to the driver's seat. The bus was dripping
with rain that would eat its way into the upholstery and make
it mould. But that was the furthest thing from his mind as he
turned the key in the ignition.




12


Gunnar Nyberg lived in a three-room apartment in Nacka, just
one street away from the church where he would much rather
be, singing loudly. When his bed had collapsed a few nights ago,
he saw it as an omen. He awoke with two microscopic pincers
driven into his throat. They grasped his vocal cords; he would
never be able to sing again. It took a long time to get them out
- not out of his throat but his head. He lay there among the
wreckage of his bed and let the pincers fade away. Sharp, broken
planks were sticking up around him. It slowly dawned on him
how lucky he'd been. He started to laugh. It was several minutes
before he was able to stop.
His near-accident resulted in two concrete actions. For one,
he started a diet. It was hardly the right time, with the Kentucky
Killer running riot outside his window, but his need for it had
become more and more acute, and the collapse of his bed
was the last straw. For another, he bought a new bed, specially
designed for overweight sleepers; it was looking the truth in the
eye, he thought, pulling himself together.
In this specially designed bed for the overweight, a classic
bachelor dream about intensely horny young women was
interrupted by a horrible ringtone. It had been a long time since
he had received a night-time phone call, and it took a long time
for him to realise what it was. At first he thought it was, strangely
enough, his ex-wife. Had something happened to Gunilla? When
he heard a police voice echo through the receiver, it struck him
that he was probably the last person who would be contacted in
that case.
Is anyone there?' the police voice said for a second time.
Nyberg got some life into his voice, which he thought
sounded like a threshing machine: 'Nyberg here.'
'This is the Stockholm police,' said the voice. 'We have
standing orders that so-called "suspicious deaths" must be
reported directly to you. Is that correct?'
'I don't really know what it means, but that's correct, yes.'
'We have a murder in Frihamnen that can probably be
classified as such.'
Nyberg's reaction was immediate. 'Does the victim have two
holes in his neck?'
'Are you awake?' the police voice said suspiciously. 'Vampires
belong in dreams.'
'Just answer the question.'
'I don't know,' the voice said tersely.
Nyberg obtained directions, hung up, shook some life into
himself, pulled on his customary sloppy clothes, got his apartment
key and car key, dashed - he thought - down the stairs,
and drove off in his old Renault.
He had the rain-whipped streets to himself. He tried to think
about the Kentucky Killer; about the little pincers that, with one
simple motion, could rob a person of her most unique outward
feature, her voice; and about the series of similar American
influences, but it didn't really work. His awakening had forced
onto him the thing he was trying to repress most of all.
During the early 1970s, Gunnar Nyberg had been Mr Sweden,
an internationally recognised bodybuilder; he was also on active
duty with the Norrmalm police and had a certain amount of
contact with what would later be called the Baseball League, the
most ruthless cops in the history of the Swedish police. But by
then he had already moved to Nacka and shelved the steroids.
And lost his family.
He had been a truly rotten bastard. When he thought of it,
he always had to close his eyes, which actually worked very well
out on the empty Varmdoleden.
Everything poured through him when he closed his eyes for
just a second ... all the abuse, all the patience he'd lost before
anything even happened, all those steroid attacks of extreme
rage.
About a year ago he'd started speaking in schools pretty
regularly. He was an early victim of the side effects of anabolic
steroids, and in his work he saw each day how their abuse was
increasing out on the streets; he could sniff out a steroid user
immediately. His pastor had asked if he might consider helping
out, and with great reluctance he had gone to the first school and
spoken. But they listened; even though most of his muscle mass
had gone to the fat that broke his bed, he was still an impressive
figure. He kept a low profile and showed frightening pictures
while talking in a matter-of-fact voice, and possibly someone
somewhere had abstained from using steroids thanks to him.
But the veil of penance was thin. Behind his eyelids came
what he knew would come - it always did. The last time he
abused his wife, he split - no, burst - Gunilla's eyebrow, and
her frightened look, and the frightened looks from Tommy and
Tanja, settled in his brain forever. He knew that those memories
still existed. The family had moved to Uddevalla to get as far
away from him as possible. He hadn't seen them for over fifteen
years, not once. If he had run into his children on the street, he
wouldn't have recognised them. His life had closed up around a giant void.
He had to stop the car.
J sing for you! he shouted without making a sound, as though
pincers were clamping his vocal cords. Don't you realise I sing for
you?!
But no one heard him, no one in the world.
He drove slowly out onto Varmdoleden again, rounded
the long curve at Danviksklippan, and crossed the Danvikstull
bridge in the pounding, smacking, striking rain.
Then he was there. He didn't know how it had happened; it
was as if the last few miles were gone, blown into the great void.
When he'd gone some way into the port warehouse district,
he saw the familiar blue lights rise, sweeping through the rain
clouds. He followed their signal, drove slowly in on the narrow
roads, and stopped the car at the blue-and-white stripes of the
police tape.
There were three police cars there, and one ambulance. And
Jan-Olov Hultin.
He was standing under an umbrella in the middle of the
soaking-wet collection of police officers, and even in this
weather and this situation, he was managing to look through a
bunch of papers.
Nyberg sneaked in under his umbrella, but three-quarters of
his body didn't fit. 'What have we got?' he said.
Hultin looked at him neutrally over his owlish glasses. 'See
for yourself.'
'Holes in his neck?'
Ill

Hultin shook his head.
Nyberg sighed heavily. He walked over to a bundle of
blankets in the middle of the narrow road. A white face with
dead eyes looked up at the black-as-night skies. The rain struck
the irises relentlessly.
Nyberg bent down and took mercy. He closed the eyelids
and, crouching, studied the body.
It was a man of about twenty-five. A young man.
It could have been Tommy, he thought.
Then he shuddered. Maybe it was his son. There was no
chance he would recognise him.
Nyberg shook his uneasiness away, a giant bulldog in the
pouring rain.
He looked at the exposed throat. No marks. But right
where his heart would be, in a perfect pattern, were four bullet
holes. Very little blood had run out. Death must have been
instantaneous.
Groaning, he pulled up his heavy body and returned to
Hultin, whose papers were still dry under the umbrella.
'Does this really have anything to do with us?' Nyberg asked.
Hultin shrugged. 'It's the most promising thing so far. There
are certain details.'
Nyberg waited for him to continue. There was no point in
trying to get under Hultin's umbrella; the last dry spot on his
own body had disappeared.
'At three twelve a security guard from the company LinkCoop
called the police and reported a break-in on their premises. By
then the police were already on their way. Because just before
that, at three oh seven, emergency dispatch got a call from an
anonymous man in a telephone booth at Stureplan. Want to
hear?'
Nyberg nodded.
Hultin bent down into one of the police cars and popped
a cassette into the stereo. At first there was a crackling sound.
Then an agitated male voice: 'The police, please.'
Then silence and crackling again and a woman: 'Police.'
'There's a corpse in Frihamnen,' the excited voice hissed.
'Where, exactly?'
'I don't know the name of the road. A narrow road, some
way in, near the water. He's in the middle of the road. You can't
miss him.'
'What is your name, and where are you calling from?'
'Forget that. A guy in a balaclava was shoving a similar bundle
into a car. We surprised him. He drove away really fucking fast.'
'Make of car, number plate?'
Then just the crackling sound and then silence.
Hultin popped out the tape and put it back in his inner
pocket.
And that was all?' said Nyberg.
Hultin nodded. 'It could be a double murder. And the
balaclava might indicate a certain amount of professionalism.'
'That's still quite far from our man,' said Nyberg. 'Is the
security guard here?'
Hultin nodded and gestured. They pushed their way through
the throng of police. The ambulance crew moved the corpse up
onto a stretcher; out of the corner of his eye, Nyberg could see
that it was as stiff as a board.
They made their way round a few rows of buildings and
arrived at a sentry box in front of a row of warehouses that
belonged to LinkCoop; an almost bizarre logo was blinking
spiritedly, in four colours, above the entrance, in glaring contrast
with the faint light that floated out through the rain from the
sentry box.
They stepped into the microscopic sentry box, dripping
water. A uniformed guard was having coffee with three police
officers, also in uniform.
'My, what a well-guarded guard,' said Nyberg.
'Out in the rain said Hultin neutrally.
The three officers went off with their tails between their legs.
The guard rose quickly and stood to attention. He was a
young man, apparently in his twenties, with a nearly shaved skull
and genuinely pumped-up muscles. The scent of steroids struck
Nyberg's very sensitive olfactory organ with force. As the guard
stood there at attention, he recognised the type: a commando
or ranger background, solid training in the hierarchy, substantial
use of steroids, possibly a few rejected applications for officer
and police training, a not entirely tolerant attitude towards
immigrants, homosexuals, people on welfare, smokers, civilians,
women, children, people . . .
Gunnar Nyberg had to be careful not to throw stereotypes
around as heartily as his imagined stereotype did.
The guard presumably spent his nights here, along with
an extensive selection of men's magazines, Nyberg thought,
sinking deeper into the swamp of stereotypes. He would have
liked nothing better than to glimpse a CD of Schnittke's Requiem and the 
magazine Modern Art Forum in the quickly closed desk
drawer; unfortunately, what swept by under the experienced
hands of the guard was the porn mag Aktuell Rapport.
Hultin paged through his bone-dry papers. 'Benny
Lundberg?'
'Present,' Benny Lundberg said distinctly.
'Sit down.'
The guard followed orders and took his place at his worn
desk in front of eight television monitors, all of which displayed
the pitch-black interiors of warehouses. Hultin and Nyberg
pulled up stools, already warmed by police backsides, and sat.
The rain beat on the little booth intensely.
'What happened?' Hultin asked curtly.
'I was going on my usual three o'clock rounds, located a door
on one of our warehouses that had been broken into, went in,
found the warehouse in disarray and called the police.'
'End of story said Nyberg.
'Yes,' said Lundberg seriously.
'Was anything stolen?' Hultin asked.
'I can't answer that. But boxes were lying all over the place.'
'What kind of boxes?' Nyberg asked without much interest.
'Computer equipment. LinkCoop is an import-export company
in the computer industry.' Lundberg sounded like he was
reciting something he'd memorised.
'Shall we look at the warehouse?' Hultin said with about the
same amount of interest as Nyberg.
The guard led them through the rain towards the LinkCoop
buildings. They took a left at the entrance with the absurdly
blinking logo and approached one of many doors on a loading
dock alongside the building. The blue-and-white plastic police
tape was already in place.
They looked for stairs but found none nearby, so they had
to heave themselves up; it took some time. Inside the forced
door were the same three police officers who had recently
been having coffee in the sentry box. Perhaps they should have
expected that their superiors might be on their way.
'You sure don't like rain, boys,' Nyberg observed, surveying
the building. It was a classic warehouse; boxes of various
dimensions were stacked on well-marked shelves. Many of
them were on the floor now. Computer equipment peeked out
of some of them, a bit jumbled. Very little seemed to have been
stolen.
'Maybe they had other things to do,' Nyberg said aloud.
Hultin gave him a quick but expressionless glance and turned
to Benny Lundberg. 'Is this exactly how it was when you came
in?'
Lundberg nodded and cast a furtive glance at the three
unfortunate fellows, who were still standing inside the door, at a
loss since no orders had been forthcoming.
Hultin and Nyberg dutifully poked around the large
warehouse, then thanked Lundberg and went back out into the
autumn night.
'Two unrelated incidents?' said Nyberg.
'Hardly,' said Hultin.
A dispute between burglars about the division of loot?'
'Hardly,' Hultin said, with little variation.
At three oh seven our anonymous tipster calls about the
body. Five minutes later, the steroid stereotype Benny calls
about the break-in. The time is now four oh six and ten seconds,
beep. Where's the connection?'
'You'll have to talk to LinkCoop tomorrow.'
'Today' Nyberg corrected him, wondering whether there
was any point in going home and sleeping for two hours.
'You look like you need those two hours,' said Hultin
telepathically.
He himself appeared to be thoroughly need-free as he made
his way dry-footed through the rain towards his Volvo Turbo.



13


To claim that progress had been made would certainly have
been a lie - and yet something had changed during the night.
The atmosphere in 'Supreme Central Command' had been, if
not transformed, at least upgraded.
Arto Soderstedt had taken the liberty of using an official car
to transport his five children to various nurseries and schools;
nowhere would the extra miles around Sodermalm be reported.
Paul Hjelm still hadn't signed out an official car but took the
Metro from Norsborg, undisturbed by the rush-hour traffic, and
listened to music for as long as possible.
Jorge Chavez, however, got stuck in the traffic from his
bachelor's studio in Ragsved, where he had returned after
having rented a room in town. Every morning he found himself
experiencing the same infantile surprise at the extent of the
traffic; it was as though cars were becoming more and more
central to people's lives, as though the distinct metal borders
were replacing the increasingly diffuse borders of self-identity.
Every morning he promised himself he'd leave his old BMW
home the next day; every morning he broke his promise. It was
like an ineffective magic spell.
Gunnar Nyberg had gone home; he lay down with his
clothes on in his bed for the overweight, slept like a clubbed
seal - and woke two hours later like a completely pulped seal.
He felt as though an aggressive Norwegian had lost his head
during seal clubbing and kept going until all that was left was
a nine-foot-square steak tartare. He finally ceased fantasising
about his similarities to small, cute, white, threatened baby
seals, joined the line of cars on Varmdoleden along with all the
other sourpusses, and decided that his right to be a sourpuss
was superior to that of his fellow drivers.
Viggo Norlander had defied the long working hours and gone
to King Creole for a last-chance pickup at three in the morning.
It had worked, but somewhere inside himself he began to
realise the advisability of getting to know the lady in question a
little bit before the act was allowed to commence. The fact was,
tonight's lady turned out to have had the sole goal of becoming
pregnant; immediately after the fait accompli she pulled on her
clothes and rushed through the door fertilised and happy and
spitting in the face of menopause, leaving behind a detective
inspector who felt as if he had lost his mind. It took him half
an hour to find it. On the morning bus from Ostermalm, he fell
into a trance-like fantasy about an unknown, successful son who
tracks down an old bachelor cop father at the nursing home.
Kerstin Holm moved in mysterious ways from her new
two-room apartment somewhere in Vasastan; possibly burned
by a few collapsed relationships with colleagues, she kept a
distance between her private life and her work life. But that
was nothing compared to Jan-Olov Hultin, the man without a
private life. Rumour had it that he lived with a wife and without
an empty nest in a villa somewhere north of the city and that
he played intercompany football with startling brutality in the
Stockholm Police Veterans team, but it was impossible to find
out more than that. He was his job. He was like a god - pure
presence, pure action - or like a father figure viewed through
the eternally selective eyes of a five-year-old.
Sure enough, by the time they all arrived at 'Supreme Central
Command' from these various directions and experiences, each
sensing the heightened atmosphere, he was already there.
The rain continued its ravages outside. At least, since rain
always had a certain dampening effect on crime, fewer false
leads would be scattered about.
The item they discussed by way of opening the meeting
was the false lead of Laban Hassel. Hjelm and Chavez's quick
summary filtered out the unfathomable tragedy: a father-fixated
son threatens the absent father to get attention, then turns to his
half-brother's mother in a half-incestuous relationship, where
they both discover they've taken their ability to procreate out of
the game because of the father, who is murdered in almost the
same way that the threats had described.
It sounded like the synopsis of a soap opera that they were
pitching to the director of programming at a commercial
television channel. The director of programming replied with
an awful tone of rejection: 'And he didn't do it?'
'No,' they said in unison.
Hjelm added, 'But we'll keep that door open.'
'OK. Gunnar?'
Sullenly and laconically, Gunnar Nyberg recounted the
night's events in Frihamnen.
When he was finished, Soderstedt said, disenchanted, 'It
sounds about as promising as the flasher in Tantolunden.'
Targeted by their stares, he elucidated, 'The one who got beaten
up by the women's football team.'
'In any case, we'll keep that door open as well,' Hultin said.
Despite the rather worthless reports and the lack of
responses, the atmosphere remained heightened. Somewhere
in what had been said lay the potential for more.
'Who was he?' said Chavez. 'The body in Frihamnen?'
'Unidentified,' said Hultin. 'The fingerprints didn't tell
us anything. A classic John Doe, as the Americans like to call
their unidentified bodies. About twenty-five, medium-blond,
nothing more. The autopsy didn't tell us anything. Four shots
to the heart can probably be considered reason enough to die.
Otherwise he was hale and hearty'
'Hale and hearty, he lay on the autopsy table,' Soderstedt
said indifferently, counting on being ignored, as he was.
'We're looking around Frihamnen for any vehicle he might
have left behind,' Hultin continued. 'Gunnar will go to the
company, LinkCoop, to discuss the break-in. We'll send the
fingerprints to Interpol for examination, and some people
whose next of kin are missing will come to look at the body.
Viggo can go to the pathologist and get a statement. Otherwise
we'll keep on with what we were doing before.'
What they were doing before was, in practice, waiting.
Considering the circumstances, it was surprising that all of them
left with renewed hope. No one could explain it as anything
other than an intuition, and intuition was really the only thing
they had in common; it had been the decisive characteristic
when, once upon a time, Hultin had handpicked them.
Even Viggo Norlander, whose task could once again be
seen as suitable for a dunce, felt uplifted - which couldn't be
explained by his lingering conviction that his genes were, at this
very moment, being perpetuated. Sure, he was being forced to
spend the rest of the day with more or less desperate next of kin
who would probably never find their loved ones, but even he
was sucked into the slightly indefinable sphere of hope.
He stopped by his office to retrieve his trendy but slightly
dirty-old-mannish leather jacket. Up until the Russian mafia had
nailed him to the floor in Tallinn, he had always worn a pretty
respectable civil-servant suit at work, and he had in general been
a respectable police officer with faith in the system, the hierarchy
of command and the social order. He had been brought up in a
different world from the one he was part of now; this fact had
become more and more obvious during the Power Murders, and
it was that insight that had led him to take the desperate measure
of setting aside all the order he'd had so much faith in and going
alone to Estonia to solve the case. The stigmatisation he had
suffered there would never leave his extremities. The robust
strikes of the hammer had emphatically ended the era of faith in
his life. Never again would he trust anyone other than himself.
And never again would he really trust himself. Instead he took
refuge in sex, which had never seriously interested him; his pot
belly, his bald spot and his civil-servant suit all disappeared. He
changed to polo shirts and the leather jacket he'd just fetched
from the office.
His office mate, his former adversary Arto Soderstedt, had
sat down at the computer, but his gaze was far off in the nasty
autumn weather. They were good friends these days, not least
because they hadn't the slightest thing in common and thought
that excellent grounds for friendship. A little affirmative nod
was enough, as Norlander picked up his leather jacket. He then
made his way through the corridors and down to the garage
under the police station, where his service Volvo was parked.
He got behind the wheel and came out onto Bergsgatan, which
closely resembled the Tome River just after the ice has melted.
An autumn flood was streaming down towards Scheelegatan,
but Norlander fought his way upstream towards Fridhemsplan
so he could continue on towards Karolinska Hospital.
In the not-too-distant future, he would turn fifty. Nearly
thirty years ago, he had been married for a few incredibly
misery-tinged years; since then all relations with the opposite
sex had lain fallow, only to bloom now, in a fifty-year-old's crisis
of uncritical one-night stands. Up until the night before, he had
attributed it to repressed horniness; now he began to suspect that
he was hearing the ticking of his biological clock. An endless line
of forefathers extended back in time from him to Adam himself,
and each of them was tapping on his successor 's shoulder,
and the tapping was magnified into a demanding, biological tick-tock-tick-tock, 
and the line of men lifted their thunderous
voices in unison and said, 'Do not let it stop here. Do not break
the line of descent. Do not be the last one.' And if he hadn't
even come close to thinking about being a father, not once, it
was now the only thought that prevailed: he would become a
father, he wanted to become a father, he had to become a father.
And all because of that strange woman, almost his own age,
who had swept into his bachelor pad on Banergatan like a spring
breeze, allowed herself to be fertilised, and disappeared out into
the autumn storm. It had all happened in fifteen minutes. Now
she was carrying his life inside her. About that, he was sure. The
more he thought of it, the more certain he became that he had
seen it in her even then.
The arrangement was ideal. His genes would live on, the
line of men would cease tapping his shoulder - and he wouldn't
even have to take part in the difficulties of fatherhood. At most,
he would be looked up by his Nobel Prize-winning son, who
would suddenly realise where his exceptional gift had come
from, and who would invest all his intelligence and a great deal
of his enormous capital into contacting his father before he died
so that he could fall to his knees and thank him for everything.
A honking truck brutally yanked him back to reality, or rather
to the correct half of the street, just in time for him to make
the turn to the pathology department at Karolinska, where the
unknown body awaited his glorious arrival.
Viggo Norlander wandered through corridors that were
much like those at the police station, made his way down to the
notorious basement, and was welcomed by a none-too-warm
nurse. There he stood before the legendary medical examiner
Sigvard Strandell, a man of at least seventy-five, infinitely distinguished
and infinitely slovenly - a combination that, within
the medical profession, only researchers and pathologists
could allow themselves to be; the risk that their patients would
complain was minimal. Everyone called him Stranded; he had
become stuck in this job as soon as he'd started. His speciality
was hackneyed corpse jokes, one of which was immediately
forthcoming: 'Norlander, of all people. Are you here for a
follow-up?'
'You know why I'm here,' Norlander said in a measured tone.
Stranded jangled a small plastic bag and its contents and
handed it to Norlander. 'His belongings. Travelled light, as
they say. Otherwise I have nothing new to add. A sound and
healthy young man, whose last meal probably consisted of
hamburgers of the fattier sort. With honey on them, strangely
enough. The death probably occurred between midnight and
three in the morning; it's not possible to be more exact. Four
shots right into the heart and out again. Immediate death. His
watch is still ticking, though - unfortunately.' He pointed at
the plastic bag.
Norlander was shown to a spot next to a desk outside the
cold chamber and supplied with copies of autopsy reports; there
he awaited the visits from potential next of kin.
Six of them showed up. First came an older couple, Mr and
Mrs Johnsson, whose son-in-law had disappeared a few weeks
earlier. Norlander's papers said that the son-in-law had run off
with the daughter's not-insignificant fortune to Bahrain, where
he had procured a harem that would have been a bit pricey to
run, so the viewing was merely a formality.
The Johnssons' faces went from hope to despair when they
saw the dead man, and they shook their heads; nothing would
have made them happier, it seemed, than to be reunited with
their son-in-law in these environs.
It was with the Johnssons that Norlander saw the corpse for
the first time. It lay there, in the ice-cold, stripped-bare room
with refrigerator doors along the walls, and seemed to glow
white in the horrid, naked fluorescent light. He was immediately
struck by the ordinariness of the young man. He had not a
single distinguishing feature. If someone were to draw a specific
individual and send a copy into outer space with the Voyager as
an example of a male Homo sapiens, this youngster would have
been made for the role, thought Norlander with astonishment.
Next came a couple of experienced visitors whose sons had
disappeared as small children in the 1970s. They had never given
up hope and never made peace or accepted a fait accompli.
Norlander shared their sorrow; their lifelong powerlessness and
protracted grief moved him deeply.
Then came a long period of waiting. Norlander skimmed
the difficult autopsy report and emptied the man's possessions
from the plastic bag. There were three things: a fake Rolex that,
sure enough, was still keeping time; a long tube of ten-kronor
coins; and a shiny key that seemed to have been made very
recently. Nothing more. It told him nothing. And so it seemed
quite fitting.
After that came two women, in quick succession, who had
male family members who had disappeared the night before.
First was Mrs Emma Nilsson, whose junkie son was to have
come home from detox but never showed up. Norlander could
have told the middle-aged woman that the dead man wasn't her
son, but still he led her, with her prematurely crooked back, to
the body. In the seconds while it was pulled out of its cooler box,
fear was mirrored in the unfathomable darkness of her eyes.
Once she saw the corpse and shook her head no, she seemed
liberated, almost happy; there was still hope.
It was a different story with Justine Lindberger, a young,
dark beauty with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs whose equally
young husband and co-worker Eric hadn't come home the
night before. While the cooler box was opened, she waited,
paralysed with fear, radiating desperation, convinced that the
corpse would be her murdered husband - and when that turned
out not to be the case, she broke down and wept. Norlander's
attempts to comfort her were beyond awkward; he had to call
in personnel from psych, who gave her an injection of a rather
heavy sedative. When Norlander sat back down at the desk, his
body was trembling.
Last up was Egil Hogberg, an old rapids-shooter from Dalsland
who'd had both legs amputated. He'd been driven down
from the nursing home in his wheelchair by a young female
aide.
'My son,' he said to Norlander in a toothless, quavering
voice. It must be my son.'
Norlander did everything in his power to ignore Hogberg's
monstrously bad breath. The gum-chewing aide just rolled her
eyes. He let the odd couple into the room and opened the cooler.
'It's him,' Hogberg declared calmly, placing his rheumatic
hand on the dead man's icy cheek. 'My only son.'
The aide tapped Norlander lightly on the shoulder, and they
left Hogberg alone with the dead man. Norlander closed the
door.
The aide said, 'He doesn't have a son.'
Norlander looked at her sceptically and peered through
the window at the elderly man, who was now laying his cheek
against the corpse's.
'He gets unmanageable,' she continued, 'if he doesn't get to
come down and look at the new bodies. We don't know why,
but it's best to let him have his way'
Norlander didn't take his eyes from the old man.
'Presumably he's preparing to die,' said the aide.
'Or?' said Norlander.
'Or else he's an old necrophile,' said the aide, blowing a big
pink bubble.
It was quiet for a moment. Then someone said, 'Or else he
wishes he had a son.'
After a while, Norlander realised that he'd said it himself.
He opened the door. Egil Hogberg looked up from the
corpse and sent his crystal-clear gaze straight into Norlander's.
'The line of descent is broken,' he said.
Viggo Norlander closed his eyes and kept them shut tight for
a long time.




14


The first thing that struck Gunnar Nyberg was the contrast
between LinkCoop's headquarters in Taby and its warehouses
in Frihamnen. The only link between them was the vulgar
logo that blinked in all the colours of the rainbow as though
advertising Stockholm's most lavish brothel.
At closer glance, the 1980s-style two-storey building was a
well-camouflaged skyscraper that had prophesied the conclusion
of the decade by falling over. The luxurious atmosphere inside the
company gates had more in common with a golf club than with
a factory building. LinkCoop didn't manufacture anything; the
company was merely a link between east and west, as advanced
computer equipment made in a variety of places streamed in
from the east and out towards the west and vice versa. Nyberg
didn't really understand how this enterprise could be as profitable
as the building suggested it was. On the other hand, economics
was not his strong suit, and he felt some trepidation about the
terminology that he would soon have to face.
Nyberg drove his Renault past a security gate that was
disguised as a vehicle reception, then headed towards the main
building. He obstinately parked across two handicap spots,
because he couldn't imagine that anyone with a handicap
worked at LinkCoop; the spots were the only two empty ones
and reeked of artificial political correctness. Striding through
the overzealous rain, he couldn't see a single vehicle in the car
park that had cost less than 200,000 kronor. Either the cleaners
and receptionists used public transport, or there was a hidden
lower-class car park somewhere, along the lines of a good old
kitchen entrance to a gentry flat.
In other words, Gunnar Nyberg was properly worked up as
he loped through the autumn storm, fat jiggling, and arrived at
the main entrance. Once he was inside the automatic doors, he
shook off the water like a walrus on amphetamines. The twin
receptionist beauties had clearly been forewarned, for their only
reaction to this antibody in their bloodstream was a tandem
smile of the kind that could soothe even the most inflamed of
souls.
'Mr Nilsson is waiting for you, Mr Nyberg,' they said in
unison.
Mr Nyberg stared at them. Was this Villa Villekulla? Was
Pippi Longstocking's horse waiting in the wings?
He collected himself, returned the smile, and accepted what
tonight's dreams would have in store. That was apparently the
duo's mission: to supply the customer's subconscious with a
positive image; LinkCoop would be present at even the most
intimate moments.
The exquisitely beautiful duo were separated, however, as
one of the receptionists led him through the sober rooms, his
impressions of which were unfortunately diminished by the
tempting dance of the miniskirt. In only a matter of seconds,
Nyberg had been transformed from a radical champion of the
working class to a drooling dirty old man - the result of some
carefully planned PR work.
The seduction of capitalism, he thought helplessly.
Finally they reached a door, which opened the instant
they reached it. The security system must have been perfect.
A thoroughly elegant middle-aged woman appeared, nodded
curtly to the receptionist, noticed Nyberg's wandering eyes and
shook his hand firmly. 'Betty Roger-Gullbrandsen,' she said, 'Mr
Nilsson's secretary. Please follow me.'
Pippi Longstocking herself, Nyberg thought inappropriately, downgraded to Mr 
Nibson's secretary. He followed Betty RogerGullbrandsen
into a gigantic room where the only piece of
furniture was a large desk. It was empty except for a well-designed
computer and an equally well-designed telephone, on which she
pressed a button and said: 'Detective Inspector Gunnar Nyberg
from the National Criminal Police is here.'
'Send him in,' replied an authoritative, distortion-free voice
from within the keypad.
Betty Roger-Gullbrandsen gestured towards a door at the
far end of the room and sat down at the computer without
conferring upon him a single further look.
Nyberg stepped into the CEO's office, which was about
twice as large as the secretary's atrium. The whole room - it was
sacrilege to call it an office - had a well-balanced, utterly showy
unshowiness; a splendid, crystal-clear, pure style. An impeccably dressed man 
in his forties stood behind a gleaming oak desk and
extended his hand. Nyberg took it. His handshake was firm, to
say the least.
'Henrik Nilsson, CEO,' said the man distinctly.
'Nyberg,' said Nyberg.
Henrik Nilsson pointed at a chair in front of the desk, and
Nyberg took a seat.
'I don't believe I said either "detective inspector" or "National
Criminal Police" when I announced myself out there,' said
Nyberg.
Henrik Nilsson smiled self-confidently. 'It's Betty's job to
have all available information.'
'And to show it,' Nyberg said, but was ignored. He was used
to it.
'National Criminal Police,' Nilsson said. 'That means that
you think there's a link between the banal break-in at our
warehouse and the corpse outside it.'
'It's likely'
'And furthermore, it means that the corpse isn't just any
corpse, but a corpse of national concern. And furthermore, that
LinkCoop has somehow been dragged into a national murder
case, which we would prefer not to happen. In other words,
we're at your service.'
'Thank you,' Nyberg said, instead of saying what he bit away
from his tongue. 'Was anything stolen?'
A great deal was destroyed. Nothing stolen. The door has to
be replaced. Otherwise we came out relatively unscathed this
time.'
'This time?'
'Our goods are so theft-prone that they're hard to insure
these days. We've had a few break-ins recently. The goods are
sold to the east.'
Nyberg thought for a moment, then said, 'So the guard
ought to have been on alert?'
'Without a doubt.'
'Then how did it happen that he didn't see the crime being
committed on his monitors? Even your Betty out there could
see me walk from reception up here to her custom-designed
computer.'
Henrik Nilsson shook his head. 'You'll have to speak to our
chief of security about that. It's his responsibility'
'I will. But first I'd like some information about the company.
You buy computer equipment from west and east and sell it to
east and west. Is that the business concept?'
'The best one there is today,' said Henrik Nilsson, not without
pride. 'As long as the trade routes between east and west are
as blocked as they still are, the kind of link we provide plays a
crucial role.'
'And when the blockade is lifted?'
Nilsson leaned forward and fixed his gaze on Nyberg. 'It
never will be. It's a fluctuating branch of commerce. Old
businesses collapse; new ones are always springing up. The only
constant is us.'
'What kind of computer equipment is it?'
'Everything.'
'Even military?'
'Within the boundaries of the law, yes.'
And was it military equipment that was in the warehouse
that was broken into?'
'No, that was regular computers. Taiwanese WriteComs. I've
compiled the information for you in this folder, a complete list
of what was stored in that warehouse. As well as information
about the company. You can get someone with experience to
look at it, of course.'
Nyberg ignored the sarcasm and took the elegant, burgundy
leather folder. The company logo that adorned the front was
toned down into a single colour - gold. 'Thanks,' he said. Then
there isn't much more to ask. I just want to speak to your chief
of security'
'Robert Mayer,' said Nilsson, who stood and extended his
hand again. 'He's waiting for you. Betty will show you the way'
Once again Betty popped in at exactly the right second,
herded Nyberg out of the monumental CEO room and into
the corridor, walked past a few doors and stopped outside
the furthest one. After a few seconds of embarrassing delay, a
broad man in his fifties opened the door. He could probably
be considered a rather typical chief of security at a high-risk
company: former police or military, sunburned, weather-beaten
face, close-cropped hair, sharp eyes, handshake as firm as a rock.
Since the former Mr Sweden had had enough of firm-as-a-rock
handshakes, he answered with one that was even firmer; he
couldn't help it.
'Robert Mayer,' said Robert Mayer with slightly raised
eyebrows and a slight accent. It wasn't German, as Nyberg had
expected, but Anglo-Saxon.
'Nyberg,' said Nyberg. 'Are you an Englishman?'
The eyebrows went up a millimetre or so. 'I'm originally
from New Zealand, if that is of interest.' Mayer made a slight
gesture, and they stepped into the first of the chief of security's
rooms: a relatively small nook where the walls were covered in
monitors. They sat down at the desk.
Nyberg decided to skip all the chit-chat. 'How did it happen
that the guard, Benny Lundberg, didn't see the break-in
happening on his monitors?'
Robert Mayer, behind the desk, didn't seem to lack the
ability to concentrate. 'It's simple he said. 'All together, our
storage at Frihamnen is made up of thirty-four buildings
of various sizes. We have monitor coverage on only eight
of them, the most important ones. Maintaining thirty-four
monitors would require us to post at least two more guards,
which, with round-the-clock observation, would involve at
least six full-time positions, many of them with odd working
hours. Along with the cost of materials and installation, the
extra cost would far exceed the potential returns. The building
where the break-in occurred, in other words, doesn't have
monitor coverage.'
A straight answer, Nyberg thought, and shifted tactics. 'How
well do you know Benny Lundberg?'
'I suppose I don't really know him, exactly, but it's hardly
possible to find a more dedicated guard.'
'Mr Nilsson pointed out that you've had a number of
break-ins down there recently. What happened with those?'
'There have been eight break-ins in the last two years, which
isn't a catastrophe, but it isn't acceptable, either. Three of them
were stopped by our security guards, Lundberg among them;
two failed for other reasons, while three were truly devastating
pro jobs. It was after the last one that we got our own guards instead of 
relying on security companies. Since then we've done
well.'
'So Lundberg has been on staff for - only a year?'
A bit more than a year, yes. Since we switched over. And
that's another reason everyone's thinking it was an inside job, if
that's what you're fumbling for: not a single successful break-in
has occurred since we got our own squad of guards. The boys
do an excellent job.'
'What was stolen during the "successful" break-ins?'
'I've put together a file.' Mayer handed him a folder bearing
LinkCoop's gold logo, which gave Nyberg a sense of deja vu.
'It contains copies of our police and insurance reports from
all eight break-ins. All the information is there. You can get
someone with experience to look at it, of course.'
Gunnar Nyberg observed the man in front of him. Robert
Mayer was the perfect chief of security, a rock that a company
could lean on, professional, clear-sighted, experienced, hard as
nails, cold as ice. The steel-blue eyes met his, and he sensed that
his bodybuilder handshake had not been forgotten. For a second
he wondered what Mayer had actually done when he was in
New Zealand.
Then he relaxed. There was nothing more to add.
He wondered what a chief of security earned.
The seduction of capitalism, he thought, and bade farewell to
Robert Mayer.




15


When Jan-Olov Hultin returned on the well-worn path from the
toilet, he found a nervous man in his forties standing outside
his door. His first thought was that the Kentucky Killer had
quite coolly walked into police headquarters to stick his tongs
into his neck. The man s strangely clear, green eyes calmed
him, however; he looked more like a humiliated school student
outside the headmaster's office.
Having realised this, Hultin could curse the security procedures
down at reception a bit more level-headedly.
'Can I help you?' he asked calmly.
The green-eyed man gave a start. His fingers fumbled along
the knot of his tie as though they had a life of their own.
'I'm looking for someone who's working on the murder in
Frihamnen,' he said uncertainly. 'I don't know if I'm in the right
place.'
'You are.' Hultin let the man into his office.
As the man sat down on the practically unused visitors' sofa,
Hultin waited for him to speak.
'My name is Mats Oskarsson,' he said. 'From Nynashamn. I
called on the night of the murder.'
'At three thirty-seven from a telephone booth on Stureplan,'
Hultin said neutrally.
Mats Oskarrson from Nynashamn blinked a few times. His
eyes looked like a starboard light with battery problems.
'I don't really know when it was, but it was from Stureplan.'
'Get to the point,' said Hultin. 'You've already done enough
to obstruct our investigation.'
By this point, Oskarsson had been degraded to a primary school student. 'The 
others didn't think I should call at all.'
'What others?'
'On my bandy team. Stockholm Lawyers' Bandy Club. We'd
had a late away game up in Knivsta, and we were on our way
home.'
'Let me see if I understand,' Hultin said mildly, and little
did Mats Oskarsson suspect how ominous this mildness was. A
gang of the guardians of the law were on their way home from
a bandy match at three in the morning, ended up in Frihamnen,
witnessed a murder and intended to keep it from the long arm
of the law. Is that correct?'
Oskarsson stared down at the table. 'It was late,' he said.
'Late on earth,' Hultin said even more mildly.
'I beg your pardon?' Oskarsson asked.
Are you a lawyer?'
A tax lawyer at Hagman, Grafstrbm and Krantz, yes.'
And you were the one driving the car?'
'Yes. A Volkswagen van.'
'Do you want me to try to reconstruct the chain of events?'
Hultin asked rhetorically. 'You played bandy, got creamed,
drank it off, lost your way in Frihamnen of all places, ran into a
murderer who had left a body behind, realised you were all shit
faced and decided to hell with it all. Then you were struck by a
pang of conscience, maybe after having dropped off the whole
gang to avoid any digs, and called from a telephone booth at
Stureplan, even though you all surely had pockets stuffed full
of mobile phones, but of course you wouldn't want to leave
behind any traces in the registry. Were you driving drunk?'
'No,' said Oskarsson. His eyes were drilling green holes in
the desk.
'Yes, you were,' Hultin said, still mildly. 'You called even so,
and now you're here. I'm sure you're basically a conscientious
person, unlike your law colleagues in the ball club, and that the
only reason you could have had for calling anonymously was
that you were driving drunk. But of course, that's not something
that can be proven.'
'No,' Oskarsson said, with unintentional ambiguity.
Time for a change of tone. Hultin bellowed, 'Spit it all out
now, the whole fucking story, and we'll see if I can save you
from being charged.'
Mats Oskarsson sighed and spat it out with a lawyer's
precision. 'It was a few minutes past two thirty. The man was a
bit taller than average, rather powerfully built, and was wearing
black clothes and a black balaclava over his face. He was driving
a ten- or twelve-year-old dark blue Volvo station wagon with a
number plate that started with B. He had just loaded a bundle
of blankets into the boot and was about to load the other one
when we interrupted him.'
'So it was more than half an hour before you called?'
'Yes. Unfortunately. I'm sorry'
The too. If that information had been reported immediately,
there wouldn't be a raving serial killer running loose in
Stockholm today. I hope your daughters are his next victims.'
Hultin didn't usually go too far, even in his most agitated
moments, but his firmly rooted distrust in the guardians of the
constitutional state caused him to go over the limit. A raving
serial killer.5 He had to smooth things over. 'Do you remember
anything more than the B in the number plate?'
'No,' Oskarsson mumbled.
The man didn't have more to say. Hultin could have given
him a thorough lecture on the corrupt legal practices in the
buy-and-sell world of Swedish jurisprudence; on how the
Western democracies were gradually selling out the constitutional
state; on how laws that were established to protect
citizens were being transformed into market games and
low-odds competitions between high-cost old-school lawyers
and recently graduated low-budget prosecutors; and on how
a whole busload of lawyers hadn't for one second considered
setting aside their own egos in order to catch a double murderer.
But Mats Oskarsson had shown at least the beginnings of moral
courage, and in addition he seemed already pounded into the
ground by the contents of the non-existent lecture. He slunk
towards the door. He had just opened it when he heard Hultin's
subdued 'Thanks'.
For a split second, Hultin met the man's clear green gaze. It
actually said more than a thousand words.
Jan-Olov Hultin, now alone, stretched his legs out under
the desk, emptied his consciousness and let his eyes sweep over
the walls of his office. For the first time in a long time, he was
struck by the room's anonymity. There was not a single trace of
him in here. It was purely a workroom. He hadn't even taken
the pains to put up a photo of his wife. When he was at work,
he was one hundred per cent policeman, maybe even a little
more. The rest he kept to himself. Not even after the success
with the Power Murders had he let anyone in. He didn't really
know why. The intercompany football wasn't a secret any more.
One night Hjelm and Chavez had popped up on the AstroTurf
field at Stadshagen and seen him in action. Unfortunately, the
Stockholm Police Veterans team had been playing Ragsved
Alliance, which had a sharp attacker named Carlos, and Hultin
had clipped Carlos's left eyebrow with a thundering header, so
the blood gushed out. Carlos's last name was, unfortunately,
Chavez. He didn't know whether Jorge had informed his father
that it was Jorge's boss's skull that had transported him across
the street to St Goran's Hospital.
His short, weak smile was interrupted by the ringing of a phone.
'Yes,' he said into the receiver. 'Yes. Yes. I understand. Yes.'
Then he thought for a few seconds as his finger hovered over
the internal telephone's keypad. While he thought, he dialled
Kerstin Holm's number.
'Kerstin, are you there?'
'Yep,' came Holm's alto, in a reproduction that didn't do it
justice.
'Are you busy?'
'Not particularly. I'm trying to familiarise myself with every
detail of the FBI's material. It's a huge volume.'
'Can you run a check on a dark blue Volvo station wagon,
model years, say, eighty to ninety? The number plate should
start with a B. We've got a better witness report on Frihamnen.'
'Hell, that's great! Of course.' She hung up on him before he
had time to hang up on her.
His finger hovered again. Soderstedt? Nah. Norlander, who
would be back by now? No. Was Nyberg back from LinkCoop?
Nah. Chavez? Not alone.
His hesitation, he knew, was more of the democratic than
the realistic sort. He dialled Hj elm's number. 'Paul?'
'Yes.'
'Come see me. Bringjorge.'
It took thirty seconds.
'Is the Laban Hassel story over and done with?' he asked as
they stood there like schoolboys. Why was everyone always
standing in front of him like schoolchildren?
'Yes said Chavez. 'We've tried to find a basis for bringing
charges, but we might as well admit that we don't really want to
charge him. We can only hope things go well for him and Ingela.
Despite their sterility.'
'OK, then. I've just received information about a clue in
Frihamnen. A car that doesn't seem to belong to anyone has
been found a few streets from LinkCoop's warehouses. A beige
Saab 900. Two things make it interesting. One, it was completely
clean, with not a fingerprint anywhere, neither inside nor
outside. And two, it's registered to Andreas Gallano. Does that
name mean anything to you?'
'Gallano,' said Hjelm. 'Repeat offender down in Alby, right?'
'Right.'
'Yeah, yeah, Andreas Gallano. I had a few confrontations
with him during my time in Huddinge. Quite a bit of violence,
as I recall. He's way up in the chain of drug distribution, but still
a classic street hooligan. No conscience. We put him away once
for assault and battery and once for selling drugs.'
'Oh yeah!' Chavez exclaimed. 'He escaped from Hall Prison.'
'That's right,' said Hultin. 'He was in Hall for assault and
battery again until just over a month ago. He and three violent
criminals escaped through the kitchen. A bold plan.'
Hjelm and Chavez nodded. It had been a noteworthy escape.
Hultin looked at them. He tried to inventory his intuitions
one by one. 'It must have something to do with this, right?' His
question mark was nearly an exclamation point.
They nodded.
'Gallano's car, left behind, without fingerprints, a break-in,
two bodies,' Hjelm summarised, and concluded, 'Oh, yeah.'
'The body wasn't him, was it?' Chavez asked.
'If it were, the fingerprints would have screamed it out,' said
Hjelm. 'But he must have played some part in the drama.'
'The only thing we don't have any indication of is the
Kentucky Killer,' Hultin mumbled.
'Except hunches,' said Hjelm. 'Latest address?'
'Same as ten years ago.'
'We'll take it.'
The duo were on their way - Chavez's BMW got to play
police car. They raced wordlessly through the rain-soaked city
and came out on Essingeleden. Riddarfjarden seemed to have
risen to biblical-flood proportions. It would gush up over the city
at any moment, and who, in these times, would have received
forewarning to build an ark?
No one, Hjelm thought misanthropically, sitting beside the
violently accelerating Chavez. Not a single one of us would be
forewarned by God. We would all drown in the same sticky
sludge and be swallowed up by the angry earth, and from out in
the universe, the earth would look exactly the same. A negligible
little disturbance in the balance of eternity, nothing more.
He raised his eyes from his morass of pessimism and
launched a vain attack against evil. It felt as though they were
tilting at windmills.
No passers-by out on the E4 could have told Alby from
Fittja or Norsborg from Hallunda. The crazy buildings climbed
sky-high, brutally similar along the hills, as in a self-fulfilling
prophecy, they had filled up with criminals. The building was the
result of the same social-building spirit that had once planned to
level Gamla Stan to the ground so that Le Corbusier could build
a row of glass-and-concrete palaces.
But no one knew better than Paul Hjelm that this place also
contained an inaccessible alternative culture, with small-scale
everyday heroism, infinite inventiveness and a continuous battle
against all odds. He had been stationed here for all of his working
life up until the remarkable change just over a year ago, when,
instead of being booted from the force, he was transported to
inner-city mode, more specifically A major, A as in the A-Unit,
major as in success.
His transfer had come in large part thanks to Erik Bruun,
his old chief at the Huddinge police, whose contacts with his
former colleague Jan-Olov Hultin had been crucial, and it was
outside his office that they now stood. Hjelm had succeeded in
walking past his former colleagues unnoticed and knocked on
Bruun's door. The light system on the doorpost shone yellow as
in 'wait', and Hjelm was seized by apprehension. Bruun's light
was never yellow as in 'wait'.
They waited in the hallway for three excruciating minutes,
under continual threat of discovery, before Hjelm had had
enough and barged in.
The Bruun room, once covered in health-injurious rings left
behind by smoke, was now bright yellow. The wallpaper paste
didn't seem to have dried yet.
Behind Bruun's desk sat a forty-year-old man in a suit and tie,
his chestnut-coloured hair brushed back over the beginnings of
a bald spot. As they entered, his hand moved instinctively in the
direction of his service weapon.
'Where is Bruun?' Hjelm demanded.
The man refrained from drawing his pistol, but he kept his
hand at the ready. 'It says to wait out there, in case you can't
read.'
'It says wait, and it says Bruun. Where is Bruun?'
'Who are you?'
'Hjelm. I worked here once. Under Bruun. Where is he?'
'Hjelm. Aha, the man who was kicked upward.'
'Exactly. Where's Bruun?'
'Hjelm, well - not long ago I sat down and went through
your file. I hope you're not here to get your old job back now
that the A-Unit has packed it in. There's no room for you here.'
'Where's Bruun?'
'There's no room for heroes and mavericks here. It's time to
clean up. Close up the ranks a little.'
'Where's Bruun?'
'I guess you'll have to brush off the old uniform, then, and
get ready for a good old time on patrol.'
Hjelm had had enough. He did an about-face and nearly ran
into Chavez, who was waiting at the door. Behind him he heard:
'Bruun had a heart attack a week ago. Just thinking about how
this office looked ought to be enough to cause one.'
Hjelm did another about-face. 'Is he dead?'
The man at the desk just shrugged. 'I have no idea.'
Hjelm had to leave immediately; otherwise time on patrol
would have seemed like Utopia. He went downstairs to the
break room.
It was as though no time had passed. Every mug and sugar cube seemed to be in 
the same place as they had a year and a half
ago. And every cop. They were all sitting there: Anders Lindblad
and Kenneth Eriksson, Anna Vass and Johan Bringman. And
there was Svante Ernstsson, who had been his partner for over
a decade. They had been best friends; now it had been many
months since they'd spoken.
'Well, look at that,' Ernstsson said with surprise. 'A special
visitor.'
Their handshake was firm and almost ridiculously manly.
'First off,' said Hjelm, 'is Bruun dead?'
Ernstsson looked at him gravely, then burst into a smile. 'Just
a scratch, as he said himself.'
'Who's the clown?'
'New chief inspector, Sten Lagnmyr. A stain on our
department. Instead of Bruun we got a real brown-noser. With
a taste for yellow, to boot.'
'This is Jorge Chavez, by the way. Sorry. My new colleague.'
Chavez and Ernstsson shook hands. Hjelm was struck by
a strange vision - for a split second, he saw Cilia and Kerstin
shaking hands. He pulled himself together. 'We're not here to socialise 
ourselves, as Lena Olin said, but to get some help. Do
you have any more active investigations going on about our old
friend Andreas Gallano?'
Ernstsson shrugged and raised a curious eyebrow. 'Not more
than what you'd usually have on a fugitive.'
'Do you know if he's here at all?'
'What is this all about?'
'The murder in Frihamnen.'
Ernstsson nodded and stopped being stubborn. 'We have
no indication that he's returned; that'd be pretty stupid after
escaping from Hall. His apartment was empty and undisturbed.
There was six-month-old milk in the fridge. As usual, we're
overloaded with work, and he's not a top priority. We were
going to start working on it next week.'
'I'm going to make sure that Hultin takes care of Lagnmyr
- then you can help out a bit more officially. Is it still best to go
through, what was his name, Stavros?'
'Stavropoulos. No, he died. Overdose. Gallano had to get
new contacts and fought his way into a new gang with slightly
greater resources, synthetic drugs. We got him through a dealer,
Yilmaz. We still have pretty good means of investigating him, if
you're not too worried about privacy protection.'
'It'll all work out. What could we get from Yilmaz?'
'Gurra gets his junk there. You remember Gurra?'
'Hell, yes!' Hjelm exclaimed. 'Crazy Gurra. Childhood
friends.'
'If anyone has any idea where Andreas is, it would be Gurra.
For old times' sake,' Ernstsson added a bit ambiguously.
'How should we go about this?'
'Yilmaz distributes in a pretty good place, stakeout-wise,
so we've let him be. The old storeroom of the ICA that shut
Ml

down. We just lie there on the upper floor and look right
down. Ideal.'
'It's not possible to get hold of Gurra some other way?'
'He keeps out of sight. This is best.'
'Right away?'
Ernstsson shrugged. 'Let's just do it,' he said briskly.



Jorge Chavez was trying to get an idea of the partnership between
Hjelm and Ernstsson. Had it been like his and Hjelm's was now?
Had they been close to each other? Did their teamwork work as
well? He observed them as they all waited in the filthy old upper
floor of the ICA store. Wasn't there something hesitant, even
guilty, about the way Hjelm related to his former colleague,
something strained in their body language? But then how
coloured was his own view?
Their stakeout position was slightly strange. They really
could have peered straight down through the floor and
observed Yilmaz's law-defying transactions, but that would have
meant lying on the floor with their cheeksin rat droppings and
syringes, hour after hour. It was a bit simpler, they found, to
tape a miniature camera to the hole and observe the spectacle
on a monitor. It was in front of this monitor that all three were
now crouching.
A steady stream of customers passed through Yilmaz's hardly
hidden pharmacy. It was like a cross-section of society, from
peculiar relics of the 1960s trying to escape their overdoses in
unfathomable ways to fresh-looking middle-class kids on their
way to raves; from prostitutes with advanced Aids to executive
secretaries on secret missions. If Hjelm felt a pang of nostalgia
for his old workplace, it had long since passed.
Yilmaz was sitting like a pasha on an old chest freezer and,
with great control, fishing the orders up out of another one.
To his drug customers, he was God. His goodwill meant the
difference between heaven and hell. He found pleasure in
waving the keys to the pearly gates for a few seconds.
Hjelm hated every one of those seconds, not only because
the line of the downtrodden was endless but also because time
crept on and Gurra was conspicuous by his absence. Yilmaz's
visiting hours would be over soon, and the day would be wasted.
Three hours had passed. It was already afternoon. The dampness
sucked itself deeper and deeper into the rotten building. The
steady stream of customers began to subside.
Yet another young middle-class boy showed up to treat
himself to some small, colourful pills with funny figures
imprinted on them. He was about sixteen or seventeen and
strode self-confidently up to the pasha on the freezer. In the
background, a friend was waiting with his hands in his pockets
and his shoulders hunched. He stood with his back to the camera
and stamped his feet nervously while his buddy extended his
hand to Yilmaz. Then the friend threw a short, ultra-nervous
glance over his shoulder - at which point Hjelm saw his face.
It was more than enough for Hjelm. His body contracted
into an incredible convulsion that threw him sideways, and he
vomited straight out. Even as it happened, his reaction surprised
him. Shame and guilt rippled through him. He saw the procession
that is said to pass before the eyes of the dying. His whole life as
a father passed by, and he saw every false step, every wounding
shot that he had inflicted upon his son over the years.
When he looked up after thirty seconds, transfixed, and
stared past his astounded colleagues, Danne was still there,
standing with his back to the camera. His friend's transaction
had been temporarily interrupted. A truly rock-bottom junkie
came in and fussed at Yilmaz.
'It's Gurra,' Svante Ernstsson whispered.
Hjelm didn't give a damn. He stood up so violently that his
chair flew over, and he took off. All the eyes on the lower floor
looked straight up at the camera. Before Yilmaz could close his
shop, Hjelm charged downstairs, drawing his weapon. Not until
they saw him do so did Ernstsson and Chavez think to follow
him.
The massive bodyguard who had been standing beside
Yilmaz was now sprawled flat on the ground. Hjelm dug a large
western-style revolver out of the man's waistband and tapped
its barrel lightly against Yilmaz's forehead. Chavez took over and
kept a gun trained on Yilmaz and the bodyguard. Gurra tried to
slink away unnoticed, but Ernstsson yanked him to the ground.
Hjelm walked over to the teenager, who was in the process
of stomping the colourful pills into the rotten wood floor. He
grabbed the kid's collar and pulled his deathly pale face close
until there were only a few fiery inches between it and his own.
'Your face is engraved on my corneas, you bastard.' His nose
told him the kid was pissing himself in his grip. He let him go.
The kid collapsed, sniffling.
Hjelm then turned to his son, who was cowering in the
doorway, gawking in astonishment. His jaw was moving, but no
words came out.
'Go home,' said Hjelm neutrally. And stay home.'
Danne took off and disappeared.
His friend stared wildly. 'Get out of here,' Hjelm ordered,
and the kid scrambled away.
Hjelm then turned to Gurra, who was lying under Ernstsson
with his back in the rat crap. Somewhere behind the practised
sneer he could see genuine pallor.
Andreas Gallano,' Hjelm said, with emphasis on each
syllable.
'What the fuck are you talking about?'
Hjelm bent over. His facial expression was nothing to mess
with, Gurra noticed. 'Try again,' said Hjelm softly.
'I haven't seen him since he went in.'
'But?'
'But he . . . well. . .'
'It's simple. Speak and live. Keep silent and die.'
'Yeah, yeah, what the hell, he thinks he's so fucking fancy
now anyway. He has a secret cabin somewhere up north. Riala, I
think it's called. I have the address. In my address book.'
'I'm surprised,' Hjelm said, fishing damp, folded papers from
Gurra's inner pocket. 'Not only do you have an address book, it
contains the address of an escaped criminal.'
'Encoded,' Gurra said sophisticatedly. 'It's listed under Eva
Svensson.'
Hjelm tore out the page with Eva Svensson's address in Riala
and put the address book back in Gurra's pocket.
He heard sirens in the distance; Ernstsson had called for
backup. They shoved Gurra into the freezer corner next to
Yilmaz and the bodyguard. 'Have you got this, Svante?' Hjelm said, already on 
his way.
'Keep an eye on them,' Ernstsson said to Chavez, then took
Hjelm aside. 'You ruined our best stakeout spot, Palle,' he said,
a dash of disappointment in his voice.
Hjelm closed his eyes. This hadn't occurred to him, even for
a second. 'I'm sorry' he said quietly. 'The circumstances were a
little special.'
Svante Ernstsson stepped back and looked at him. 'They've
actually managed to change you.' Then half turning, he added,
'I hope it works out with Danne.'
Hjelm nodded heavily.
'Now get out of here,' said Ernstsson. 'I'll take care of this.
Lagnmyr's gonna love it.'



Hjelm remembered to contact Hultin from the car. The
detective superintendent promised, without having received
more than an outline of the course of events, to contact Sten
Lagnmyr and try to salvage the situation. As for everything
else, Hjelm was at a loss.
Chavez felt petrified. It had all gone so fast, all of it. He had
seen sides of Paul Hjelm that he'd never seen before, but that
wasn't unpleasant. Not until they reached Skarholmen did it
occur to him that the teenage boy must have been Paul's son. He
decided not to mention it. 'Aha' was all he said. Hjelm turned to
him expressionlessly, then went back to being out of it.
They avoided Stockholm. These days one could easily get
from the southern to the northern suburbs without passing Go.
Still, the price had been high.
Around Norrtull, Chavez began to organise his thoughts.
Without having exchanged a word with Hjelm, it was clear
that they were on their way to Riala, in Roslagen, between
Akersberga and Norrtalje.
Judging from the police atlas, the address belonged to a cabin
in an isolated forest.
Are we going to do it alone?' said Chavez.
He didn't receive an answer. Hjelm just stared out the
window.
Are you ready for this?' Chavez said a bit more sharply.
Hjelm turned to him with the same blank facial expression.
Or was it resolute?
'I'm ready,' he said. And we're going to do it alone.'
'If we look at it rationally, then Frihamnen could have been a
drug deal. And in that case, of course, a whole lot of shit might
be waiting for us up in Riala. Gallano's cabin, for example, could
be a centre for his new drug syndicate.'
'Then why would they leave the car in Frihamnen, completely
wiped?'
'Maybe he was the other body, the one in the car. Our
unknown body could have been a foreign companion. Maybe
they were superfluous and were weeded out. But the cabin
could have tight security.'
That could be,' said Hjelm, 'completely rationally. But let's
be completely irrational. Here's a piece of paper and a pen,
and I'll take some paper and a pen. We'll write down what we
think we'll find up there, fold up the papers and put them in our
pockets. Then we'll compare them later.'
Chavez laughed and wrote something. Hjelm was back.
They placed the pieces of paper in their pockets.
Then Hjelm disappeared again. His gaze dissolved in the
unending cascades of rain.
Fatherhood. How incredibly easy it was to inflict irreparable
wounds. A random word, a moment of indifference at the
wrong time, too hard a grip on an upper arm, demands, not
enough demands. If the parents have a rotten relationship,
what's best - silence, constant fighting, divorce? An icy hell,
like the one Laban Hassel would always be frozen in? Or the
white-hot, crackling, absurd hell of fighting? Last summer the
Power Murders, the separation - how had their absence affected
the children at their most sensitive age? And how much of their
behaviour was inherited?
The banner of biology waved grandly nowadays. It didn't
seem to matter any more what people were subjected to;
everything was pre-programmed in their genes. This ought to
have given Paul Hjelm some comfort: maybe it wasn't his fault that his son 
associated with drug dealers. Maybe there was a
gene for drug abuse that made his upbringing irrelevant. But he
refused to believe it. Somehow or another Danne's behaviour
was his fault, but how? What the fuck was the problem? That he
hadn't been able to change nappies without throwing up? That
he chose to converse in relatively masculine jargon? That he was
a policeman? What the fuck was it?
He knew that there wasn't one answer. That was one
advantage of his job. For each case there was one answer, one
guilty person. Your focus narrowed, filtering out anything
ambiguous and complicated.
The rain poured down.
Two hunters travelled north on Norrtaljevagen.
Two pieces of paper burned in two pockets.



Riala had a small business area, but the district was spread
out across a large region in heavy pine woods, and the map
took them further and further from the main area. In the end,
the road was nothing more than a cow path through virgin
forest.
'Stop here,' Hjelm said with his eyes on the police atlas.
Chavez stopped the car.
'Two hundred yards or so. Up the rise and then to the right.
It's isolated
Chavez nodded, took out his service weapon, checked it and
put it back into his shoulder holster. 'Do we dare leave the car
unlocked?' He grinned.
Hjelm gave a weak smile and hurled himself out into the
pouring rain. It was past five o'clock. The waterlogged skies
were made more ominous by the suggestion of dusk; the forest
lay in a dense gloom.
Hunching slightly, they ran through the autumn storm.
The crowns of the trees danced above their heads and released
copious needles, which the rain carried through their hair. A
bolt of lightning lit up the forest with piercing clarity. For a
fraction of a second, the trunks of the trees were separate from
one another; when the thunder came, hard and heavy, only a
few seconds later, they merged again.
The cabin was wedged among trees up on a hill; if they
hadn't known it was there, they probably would have missed
it. It was small, brown and dark. From where they stood, not a
single sign of life was visible.
They made their way up to the door, their weapons raised,
ready.
Next to the door was a glass pane with a round hole in it.
Hjelm pressed the door handle down silently. The door was
locked.
He extended his hand through the hole in the glass pane and
turned the lock. Then he kicked the door open, and they rushed
in.
Even before Chavez found the light switch and the light
blinded them, the stench struck them. They exchanged glances.
Both knew immediately what it was.
They searched around the cabin; it didn't take long to
get through the living room, the kitchen nook and the tiny
bedroom. Everything was empty, unused. Had it not been for
the hole in the glass and the stench, they would have put their
pistols away.
There was another door, just next to the sink. Hjelm
cracked it open carefully. A dark cement staircase led down
to a cellar. There was no light switch. Keeping close to each
other with their weapons raised, they trod carefully down the
stairs.
They could see nothing. Then they were down. The stench
intensified.
They felt their way along the ice-cold stone wall. Finally,
Chavez found a light switch.
A naked, faint light bulb on the ceiling lit up.
In a chair sat Andreas Gallano.
His eyes stared lifelessly at them. A pain that was beyond
words remained in his eyes.
In his bare neck were two small holes.



They went back upstairs. Hjelm sat on the floor and, his hand
trembling, dialled Hultin's mobile number. Meanwhile Chavez
leaned over the sink and splashed water on his face. Both of
them still had their service weapons in hand.
Chavez stared out into the loud darkness for a moment.
A flash of lightning lit up the forest. It looked horribly
insignificant.
He sat down next to Hjelm. The crash of thunder came. He
moved a bit closer. Hjelm didn't move away. Their shoulders
were rubbing. They needed it.
Almost simultaneously they fished their pieces of paper out
of their pockets and, with effort, unfolded them.
Chavez's read 'Corpse with holes in its neck5. Hjelm's read
'Neck-perforated stiff'. They smiled weakly at each other.
Such good teamwork.




16


Retired. He tried the word in his mouth a few times on his way
down to the boathouse. He still hadn't really got used to it.
A life full of activity. Always in a tight spot. The conference
rooms. The meetings. The trips. That suppressed jubilation
when the contract was signed.
He missed it all. It was a fact that was impossible to run away
from.
Now there was only the boat. His wife had been dead for
many years; he hardly remembered her, a vague fluttering
somewhere on the edges of the landscape of his past.
Everything was fixated on the boat now. His pride and
joy. A fine old two-masted wooden yacht of the classic and
tragically forgotten brand Hummelbo. From 1947, in superb condition.
But only because it was so well cared for.
Twice a day he went down to the boathouse. He had turned
into the boat club's unpaid guard.
Not even the worst autumn storm could stop him. It didn't
usually look like this in September, did it? Had the greenhouse
effect started to show its ugly mug? He rejected the thought - he
didn't believe in it. An infantile fantasy of the green movement.
They were always blaming industry and cars. Didn't they
understand what industry and cars had done for the Western
world? Did they want to live without them? By the way, how
much shit did Greenpeace's old ships release?
But the storm was irrefutable. He fought his way down
towards the Lidingo coast and entered the boat club's grounds
with the help of a robust set of keys. Another couple of keys got
him out on the pier.
He could hardly see his own hand in front of him. He was
standing right next to his Hummelbo yacht before he could see
it at all. Every time the same little jolt of happiness and pride
coursed through him. His life in a nutshell.
He checked the locks. The chain was in place; the trap which
resembled a bear trap - was in its place. He got down
on his knees, hunched forward, and let his hand slide across the
well-polished stem.
Such a pleasure.
He bent a bit further forward, and his hand slid along the
stem until it reached the waterline. He caught something in his
hand. The persistent rain meant that he couldn't really see what
it was. Sticky. Like seaweed.
Seaweed? But he had cleaned the stem of seaweed as recently
as this morning.
He got a good grip on the bunch of seaweed and lifted it
upward.
And stared into a pair of open eyes.
He immediately let go of the body and screamed.
As the body splashed back down into the water, he noticed
two small red holes in the pale white neck.
Vampires in Lidingo?




17


Viggo Norlander was back on his dunce task, but he hadn't
realised until now that it had nothing to do with dunces. Quite
the opposite: it was important work, and he had been placed
there because of his competence.
He had arrived at his spot in the pathology department
before the new corpse did, which he considered to be of merit.
This time, unfortunately, he wasn t alone.
He didn't really understand how it had happened, but several
of the unpleasant morning's visitors were already present.
The Johnsson couple were there, the ones who dreamed of
finding their son-in-law in the morgue at Karolinska instead of
in his Bahraini harem. The old rapids-shooter Egil Hogberg,
accompanied by a new aide, was there, ceaselessly repeating 'My
son, my son'. And Justine Lindberger, the young civil servant
from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was there, intensely
missing her missing husband. Norlander did his best to cool
down the heated atmosphere.
By the time old Sigvard Strandell peeked out of the loathsome
cold chamber and gave Norlander a quick nod, the latter had
already decided to prioritise Justine Lindberger.
She appeared to have collected herself after the morning's
breakdown, but Norlander made sure that there were still
medical personnel on site.
He led her carefully into the cold chamber. Unlike the
unidentified corpse from Frihamnen, the new body had not yet
been placed in a cooler box; it was lying on a gurney in the middle
of the room, covered by a sheet. Strandell was there to make
sure that no damage was done to his future working material. It
was he who pulled the sheet aside for Justine Lindberger.
This corpse was a man almost as young as the previous,
unidentified one. The dark hair gave a ghostly contrast against
the whitish-blue face, slightly swollen from its stay in the water
- and it had two small holes in the neck.
Justine Lindberger squeaked, nodded, and ran out into the
hallway. The staff outside were ready, caught her up and gave
her an injection. Before it took effect, Norlander had time to
ask the unnecessary question: 'Do you recognise the dead man?'
'It's my husband,' said Justine Lindberger faintly. 'Eric
Lindberger.'
And then a gradually developing mist brought her long,
horrible day to a merciful end.




18


Supreme Central Command finally lost its quotation marks. The
clear indication was that the whiteboard had been set up be-hind
Hultin's desk. It was time for brainstorming. The markers lying
there seemed to be simmering with impatience.
The case had let out a giant blob of ketchup. First came
nothing, then nothing - and then everything. So far perhaps
only a little of America's favourite condiment garnished the
Swedish bread. Perhaps the sandwich would soon be covered in
sticky red sludge.
In any case, the Kentucky Killer had begun. Two definite
victims had, in the course of a few hours, been added to the
probable one. Things had been set in motion, possibly in
escalating motion.
It was after nine o'clock at night. Everyone was there. No one
even thought of complaining about the unreasonable working
hours.
Jan-Olov Hultin was rummaging through his papers, then
found what he was looking for, stood, grabbed a marker and got
the meeting going.
'So,' he said evenly, drawing squares and arrows on the
whiteboard, 'at eight ten on the third of September, the
Kentucky Killer arrived in Stockholm under the name Edwin
Reynolds after having murdered the literary critic Lars-Erik
Hassel at Newark International Airport outside New York
during the night. After his arrival, it seems he promptly went to
Riala in Roslagen; the degree of decomposition of drug dealer
Andreas Gallano's body suggests that he was murdered just over
a week ago, which matches up quite well with the Kentucky
Killer's arrival in Sweden. Andreas Gallano had escaped from
Hall and apparently taken shelter in a cabin that, by way of
various fronts, belongs to a tax evader named Robert Arkaius,
who had once been Gallano's mother's lover. What happened
in the cabin we don't know, other than that the Kentucky Killer
put Gallano to death with the method he is in the habit of using.
There is reason to believe that he then lived there for over a
week with an increasingly stinking corpse in the cellar. That he
almost immediately made his way to such a perfect hiding place
indicates previous contact with Gallano or his drug syndicate.
This must be verified.
'Then what happened? Here it gets complicated. Gallano's
beige Saab is discovered near the site of a double murder. Of
course, it may have been there for a long time, for completely
unrelated reasons, but for the time being, all signs indicate that,
the night before last, on the twelfth of September, the Kentucky
Killer took Gallano's car to Frihamnen. There with his usual
pincers he murdered two more people: an as-yet-unidentified
man, whom we'll call John Doe as the Americans do, with
four shots to the heart; and a thirty-three-year-old civil servant
with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eric Lindberger. Just as
Hjelm and Chavez were finding Gallano, Lindberger s corpse
was discovered at a Lidingo boat club by the retired executive
Johannes Hertzwall. Eric Lindberger has the same vampire
bite on his neck as Gallano and Hassel did. An examination
by Strandell has shown that he died at about the same time as
John Doe; that is, less than twenty-four hours ago, and the boat
club is situated a reasonable distance from Frihamnen. So it is
extremely likely that Eric Lindberger is the corpse that was seen
being shoved into a decade-old dark blue Volvo station wagon
with a number plate that starts with B by a man with a balaclava
at two thirty in the morning.'
Hultin paused. His students were like lit light bulbs, in front
of the horribly expanding diagram on the whiteboard.
'May I suggest a scenario?' he continued. 'The Kentucky Killer
goes to Frihamnen to commit a pair of seemingly well-planned
murders. He travels there in Gallano's car, but has another one
waiting.
'He commits his crimes in some deserted cellar, wraps the
victims in blankets and starts to load them into the second
car. Then he's surprised by a gang of lawyers who are lost,
brandishing bandy sticks and bottles of vodka. That means that
he has time to load only one of the bodies - Lindberger. He
leaves behind the other, our unidentified twenty-five-year-old
John Doe. Convinced that his car has been reported to the
police, he thinks he has to get out of there quickly and hurries
to Lidingo, where he dumps the victim rather carelessly and
scrams.'
'In this scenario,' said Gunnar Nyberg, 'you're assuming that
the break-in at LinkCoop's warehouse doesn't have anything to
do with the murders.'
'I can't get a failed break-in at a warehouse to fit. Does anyone
here have an opinion? ... No? No, I think it's an irrelevant event.
One thought, of course, is that the break-in failed because the
burglars happened to witness a considerably worse crime and
got out of there.'
'Or maybe this,' said Kerstin Holm thoughtfully. 'You're
probably right that it was a well-planned crime, but only for
Lindberger. Sure enough, the poor guy had a visit from the
pincers in the neck. But if the Kentucky Killer shot someone in
the heart, too, then that's the first time he's broken the pattern.
It could be that our John Doe is the burglar, and that he happened
to see the murderer as he was dragging his victim, and was
discovered and shot. I would bet the Lindberger murder was
planned, but the John Doe murder wasn't.'
Hultin nodded calmly. 'Back to basics, then. Why did the
Kentucky Killer come to Sweden? He obviously knew Gallano
in some way, but was Gallano the reason he emigrated? Once
he'd done what he came to do - murder Gallano - wasn't the
rest just a matter of continued bloodthirstiness? That after
nine claustrophobic days of increasing corpse stench, his desire
became too strong, and it was time to kill again? Or was Gallano more of a 
means than an end? Was Eric Lindberger the real
target? The strange murder location would suggest it - you
don't just go down to the deserted Frihamnen at night to search
for victims. No, he knew Lindberger would be there. So Eric
Lindberger must also be carefully investigated.'
'Of course, it's not at all certain that Eric Lindberger was there,' said 
Kerstin Holm. 'He could have been taken there.
The killer could have randomly chosen him as a victim in the
city, chloroformed him, and taken him to a deserted place with
suitable buildings. Or perhaps they planned to meet for one
reason or another, and Lindberger went along willingly. Both
the victim and the location might very well be random.'
Hultin nodded; he was getting used to his scenarios being
torn to shreds. Was he starting to lose his edge? Was it time
to hand the controls over to his first officer? And Kerstin Holm
(who many years later would actually become his successor) was
very much a first officer at present.
'We need to find the site of the murder,' he said. 'There must
be hundreds of places just in the area near where we found John
Doe.'
'Well, LinkCoop is closest,' said Nyberg, remembering his
visit to Taby
Hultin gathered his strength. 'The problem is, we know too
little about the Kentucky Killer,' he said. 'You have the best idea
of what's up, Kerstin. Isn't there a lot missing?'
'If we're going to have a chance of finding the Swedish
link,' she said, 'we'll probably have to go to the United States
and consult the FBI and Ray Larner. That's my assessment. It's
not at all certain that the Americans would recognise a Swedish
link if it jumped up and bit them on the arse. They hardly
know where Sweden is. Swiss watches and polar bears in the
street . . .' Holm paused. 'He's slipped through our hands this
time, thanks to your lost lawyers. We can investigate Gallano,
the drug syndicate, Lindberger, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and LinkCoop all we want, but I think the only reasonable path
is the American one. We have to know who he is and what he's
doing in Sweden. Once we understand these things, we can
catch him. We can't otherwise.'
'Now it's been confirmed that he's here,' said Hultin. 'It
wouldn't have been possible for us to waste the taxpayers'
money on a visit to America before it was certain. Now it is. And
now we have quite a bit to work with - and, for that matter, to
offer the FBI. Tomorrow I'll ask Morner for permission to send
a pair of you to the United States. One would be the person who
knows the material best. That's you, Kerstin. And the second
would be a more, hmm' - he mumbled, giving Hjelm a sidelong
glance - 'a more action-orientated person.'
Hjelm gave a start. Against his will he was being yanked away
just as things were starting to move. He had just discovered
a horribly tortured and rotten corpse in a basement in the
wilderness; tonight when he went home, he would have to find
out whether his son was a junkie; and now he was being given
notice of a trip to the United States. Along with Kerstin, of all
people. It was too much.
'Lagnmyr is out to get you,' said Hultin expressionlessly. 'It's
a good opportunity to get away'
Tm going to the United States?' Hjelm said, confused. And
what the hell is Lagnmyr?'
'Svante Ernstsson bore as much of the brunt as he could,'
Hultin continued, unperturbed, 'but Lagnmyr saw right through
him. I don't think he even knew about the stakeout spot before
you ruined it, but he doesn't like you, that much is for certain.
So go to the United States. Tell Larner about your KGB theory.
I'm sure that'll go down well.'
'But I can t go to the United States,' Hjelm continued, still
confused. 'It's all happening here.'
'We'll see what happens with Morner.' Hultin tried to
smooth things out. 'Pack a bag anyway. The provisional division
of labour this evening is as follows: Paul and Kerstin go to
the United States, Jorge takes on Gallano, Gunnar works on
LinkCoop, Viggo takes John Doe, and Arto takes Lindberger and
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Does that sound reasonable?'
No one spoke. It was getting late, after all.
'One more thing,' said Hultin quietly. 'We can't keep this
from the media any longer. It's begun - they're going to whip
up the mood and hunt for headlines. Swedes are going to install
hundreds of thousands of extra locks on their doors; they'll
procure thousands of weapons, legally and illegally; and security
firms will do great business. So far American serial killers have
been an exotic but distant threat, but all at once we're coming
a great deal closer to the American social climate. The last
breath of relative innocence is going to disappear in a tornado
of general mistrust. Everyone will be looking over his shoulder.'
Hultin leaned forward across his desk.
The devil is here, ladies and gentlemen, and even if we catch
him, no exorcism will be able to drive out what he brought with
him.'




19


His only protection against the rain a borrowed police umbrella,
smartly stamped with, abundant police logos, Paul Hjelm
wandered through the Norsborg night. The rain seemed here
to stay. The pitch-black sky warned of the biblical flood, as he
thought more and more often.
What was happening to Sweden, that little country in the
sticks, up by the Arctic Circle, whose populist movements had
once conceived of the first democracy that truly extended down
into the ranks of the people, but that had never brought it to
fruition? The country had finagled its way out of the horrors
of World War II, kept all its skeletons in the cupboard, and
ended up with a fabulous competitive advantage compared to
all other European countries. For that reason, it could play the
self-righteous world conscience until other countries, or at least
those unhampered by intrinsic sluggishness, caught up; and
then Sweden would see the end of not only the world's highest
standard of living but also of its status as the world's conscience.
Swedes' strange, naive, deterministic conviction that everything
would work out for the better meant that during the 1980s
they, more than any other people, surrendered themselves to
international capital, and they let it run more freely there than
anywhere else.
The inevitable downfall brought a decisive collapse of all
political control over the fickle whims of computerised capital.
Everyone had to pay to clean up the mess - except business. As the country 
neared bankruptcy, its large-scale companies were
maximising their profits. The burden of payment was placed on
households, on the health care system, on education, on culture
- on anything that was fairly long-term. The slightest suggestion
that business ought also to pay for a tiny, tiny bit of the mess it
had made was met by unanimous threats of leaving the country.
All at once the whole population was forced to think of
money. The soul of the Swedish people was filled to bursting,
from all directions, with financial thoughts, until only small,
small holes were left unfilled - and there, of course, nothing
long-term could find room. There was room only for lotteries,
betting and shitty entertainment on television; love was replaced
by idealised soap operas and cable TV porn; the desire for some
sort of spirituality was satisfied by pre-packaged New Age
solutions; all music that reached the public was tailor-made for
sales; the media stole the language and made themselves the
norm; advertisements stole emotions and shifted them away
from their proper objects; drug abuse increased considerably.
The 1990s were the decade when capitalism test-drove a
future in which the hordes of lifelong unemployed had to be
kept in check so they didn't revolt. Numbing entertainment,
drugs that didn't require a lot of follow-up care, ethnic conflicts
to give rage an outlet, gene manipulation to minimise the future
need for health care, and a constant focus on the monthly act of
balancing one's own private finances - would it take anything
more to ruin the human soul that had developed over the
millennia? Was there still dangerous ground somewhere, where
a free, creative and critical thought could be suppressed and
redirected before it had time to flower?
The Power Murders had been a reaction, but a directed reaction. Blindly 
striking, conscience-free violence hadn't
yet shown up in this country, that extremely frustrated and
ice-cold, sympathy-constipated reaction against everything
and everyone. But now it had begun. Everything would
change - and that was logical. One can't be choosy about what
is imported from the rulers of the universe. If one chooses to
import an entire culture, then the dark sides will come along
too, sooner or later.
Through the impenetrable deluge of water, Paul Hjelm
glimpsed the illuminated contours of a city-planning project
that was meant to destroy the last remnants of human dignity.
He stopped, closed his umbrella with the illusory insignia of the
police, and let the torrents wash over him. Who was he to cast
the first stone?
He squeezed his eyes shut. What was left of the simple
private ethics that functioned when one wasn't seen, when
people did good without needing to show it? Of do unto others
as you wish them to do unto you? Was it all in ruins?
He had planned to end the day by checking out a service
car, but now that he was suddenly on his way to contemporary
culture's place of birth, he wouldn't need one. So he had taken
the Metro home again. And now, having wandered through
Norsborg, he set himself in motion. He ran. He ran through the
volumes of water with his umbrella folded under his arm. He
needed to run until exhaustion filled his entire soul and pushed
everything else away. He did so by the time he reached the door
of his terraced house. There he stumbled into the hall, panting
alarmingly. It was dark, past eleven o'clock. He could see a faint
light coming from the living room: it wasn't the television light
for once - more like a small, flickering flame. He stopped in the
hall until his breathing returned to normal. He pulled off his
leather jacket and hung it up in the overcrowded hall. Then he
turned the corner.
Danne was sitting in the living room waiting. No MTY no
comic book, no video game. Just Danne and a little flame.
Paul rubbed his soaking-wet eye sockets hard before he
could attempt to meet his son's eyes. It still wasn't possible.
They were boring deep into the table next to the little tea light
that glimmered in an icy grotto of glass.
He walked over and sat down on the sofa next to his son.
A few minutes passed in silence. Neither of them knew how
to begin, so no one began.
Finally Danne whispered, as though his voice had been cried
away, 'He just dragged me along. I didn't know where we were
going.'
'Is that a fact?' Paul Hjelm said.
Danne nodded. It was quiet for another moment.
Then the father placed an arm around his son's shoulders.
He didn't recoil.
Becoming an adult just means being able to hide your
uncertainty better.
'I've seen it too often,' Paul said quietly. 'Do it just a few
times, and you ruin your life. You can't let that happen.'
'It won't.'
First had come the sight of the sky, the sun, the moon, the
forest, the sea. The first human gaze saw all of this. Then came
fire, which first scared people to death but was soon tamed and
became man's companion. The little flame in front of them
became a campfire. The clan gathered around it. It was a matter
of survival of their blood. They remained in front of the ancient
sight, and it brought out the memory of blood.
Bad Hood always comes back round.
They stood up. Their eyes met.
Thanks,' said Paul, without knowing why.
They blew out the flame and walked upstairs together. As
Paul opened the door to his bedroom, Danne said, Tou were
awfully . . . tough today
'I was scared out of my mind
He felt paradoxically proud as he fumbled his way through
the pitch-black bedroom. He didn't shower or brush his teeth;
he crept right into the bed next to Cilia. He needed her warmth.
'What was happening with Danne?' she mumbled.
'Nothing he said. And meant it.
'You're cold as ice,' she said, without pulling away.
'Warm me up.'
She lay still and warmed him. He thought of his upcoming
trip to America and all its potential complications. All he really
wanted was for things to be as simple as this: children to delight
in and a woman to warm himself with.
'I'm going to the United States tomorrow,' he said, testing
her a little.
'Yes,' she said, sleeping.
He smiled. His umbrella was closed, and he was dry. For the
time being.




20


Arto Soderstedt didn't usually miss the sun. He was a lover
of nuance, and as a newcomer to Stockholm, his manner of
enjoying the city fell in a grey zone between a tourist's superficial
fascination and a native's experienced gaze. The sun promoted
both types of relationships, but the more profound pleasure of
the newcomer required a certain degree of cloudiness, enough
that the colours could come into their own without being
flattened by the distorting light of the sun. That his theory
might have something to do with his own sensitivity to the sun
was not something he'd reflected on.
But now he'd had enough of clouds. He was standing in one
of his favourite places in the city and could barely see his hand
in front of his face, and he definitely couldn't see either Operan
or the Arvfurstens Palace, home to the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. That was where he was strutting off to now, under his
silly Bamse cartoon umbrella, which he had grabbed at home
by accident; he could visualise his next-youngest daughter's face
staring up into a heavenly arch of police logos. As he climbed
the venerable steps, he had to admit that he truly missed the
sun.
He wasn't the envious type, but he felt a bit aggrieved that
he hadn't been considered for the trip to the United States; he
was the serial killer expert, after all. Instead he was now treading
the monotonous paths of fieldwork all the way to the reception
desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The receptionist informed him in a reserved tone that Justine
Lindberger was off sick, that Eric Lindberger was deceased,
and that a day of mourning had been announced for the entire
ministry. Soderstedt found it unnecessary to tell her that this
information was superfluous, not only because he was working
on the case but also because his eyes were open. After all, the
story had appeared in every single morning paper and news
broadcast. Not even a sleepwalker could have missed the fact
that the dreadful Kentucky Killer had come to Sweden, nor that
the police had known about it for almost two weeks without
saying a word or giving citizens a chance to protect themselves.
Soderstedt had counted eight pundits who demanded that all
responsible officials' heads roll.
'Did the Lindbergers work in the same department?'
The receptionist, a distrustful woman in her fifties, was sitting
behind glass and looking like a work by a modern Velazquez, a
thoroughly true-to-life but still incredibly mean depiction of a
dying class. Soderstedt realised that, after all was said and done,
he preferred this languishing, contrary sort of receptionist to
today's streamlined version.
The woman was paging with obvious reluctance through
a folder. After a great deal of toil, during which she almost
groaned audibly, she answered, 'Yes.'
An exquisite answer, Soderstedt thought. 'Who is their closest
supervisor?'
More groaning, toiling, and effort. Then: 'Anders Wahlberg.'
'Is he here?'
'Now?'
No, the first Tuesday after the Ascension Day before last, Soderstedt
thought, but said with an ingratiating smile, 'Yes.'
Then she began again the customary procedure of extreme
effort; in this case it consisted of pushing two keys on the
computer. After this almost superhuman amount of work, the
woman was unable to answer with more than an absolutely
breathless 'Yes'.
'Do you suppose I might be able to speak to him?'
The look she gave him was the sort that had once met
plantation owners with ox whips. The slave was once again
forced to demean herself. She pressed no fewer than three
buttons on an internal telephone and, with the last remnants of
her anguished voice, said, 'The police.'
'Oh?' an indifferent male voice rasped out of the telephone.
'Is it OK?'
'Now?'
Yes.'
'Yes.'
As a result of this inspiring dialogue, Soderstedt wandered
through one chandelier-lit corridor after another. He got lost
twelve times. Finally he found the venerable door behind which
the department's deputy director general, Anders Wahlberg,
kept himself. He knocked.
'Come in' came a thunderous voice.
Arto Soderstedt opened the door into an elegant atrium with
a mute secretary and then entered an even more elegant office
with a view of the Stockholm Sound. Anders Wahlberg was in
his early fifties and wore his corpulence with the same tangible
pride as he did his mint-green tie; it looked like Arto's youngest
daughter's bib after a full-blown food fight.
'Arto Soderstedt,' said Arto Soderstedt. 'National Criminal
Police.'
'Wahlberg,' said Wahlberg. 'I understand it's about Lindberger.
What a story. Eric couldn't have had a single enemy in the whole
wide world.'
Soderstedt sat on a chair opposite Wahlberg's candelabra
adorned mahogany desk. 'What did Lindberger work on?'
'Both of the spouses concentrate on the Arab world. They
have primarily devoted themselves to business with Saudi Arabia
and have worked with the embassy there. They're young and
promising. Future top diplomats, both of them. We thought. Is
it really an American serial killer?'
'It seems so,' Soderstedt said curtly. 'How old are they? Or
were?'
'Justine is twenty-eight; Eric was thirty-three. Dying at
thirty-three
'That was the average age of death in the Middle Ages.'
'Certainly,' said Wahlberg, surprised.
'Did they always work together?'
'Essentially. They had slightly different concentrations with
their business contacts. In general, their tasks were the same: to
facilitate trade between Sweden and, first and foremost, Saudi
Arabia. They had close cooperation with industry representatives
from both countries.'
'Different concentrations?'
'Eric worked primarily with the big Swedish export firms.
Justine worked with the somewhat smaller ones. Simply put.'
'Did they always travel together?'
'Not always, no. They made lots of trips back and forth and
weren't always synchronised.'
'And no enemies at all?'
'No, absolutely not. Not a single problem. Irreproachable
and solid work, in general. Cash cows, you could have said, if
it didn't sound so vulgar. Justine was to have travelled down
there one of these days, but I'm assuming she won't be able to
now. The plan was for Eric to be based at home for a few more
months. Now it will be home base forever and ever amen.'
'Do you know what Justine's trip "one of these days" was
about?'
'Not in detail. She was going to brief me today, actually.
Some kind of problem with new legislation about small business
trade. A meeting with Saudi government representatives.'
And with the best will in the world, you can't imagine that
Eric's death was because of anything other than randomness or
fate?'
Anders Wahlberg shook his head and looked down at his
desk. He seemed on the verge of tears.
'We were friends,' he said. 'He was like a son to me. We
had booked time to play golf this weekend. It's inconceivable,
horrible. Was he - tortured?'
'I'm afraid he was,' said Soderstedt, realising that his
sympathetic tone sounded false, so he changed to a harsher one.
Tm sure I don t need to remind you how important it is that we
catch this murderer. Is there anything else you can remember,
professionally or privately, that might be of significance? The
tiniest little thing could be important
Wahlberg shoved his sorrow behind the mask of a true
diplomat and appeared to think it over.
'I can't think of anything. Between you and me, they were
probably the only truly happy couple I know. There was a
natural affinity between them. I don't have any children of my
own, and I'll miss Eric as I'd miss a son. I'll miss his laugh, his
natural integrity, his humble composure. Shit.'
'Can you think of any reason for him to have been at
Frihamnen at two thirty in the morning?'
'No. It sounds crazy. He hardly ever even went out for a beer
after work on Fridays. He always went straight home to Justine.'
'I need to take a peek at his office. And if you could make
sure that all his data files are copied and sent to me, I would be
extra grateful.'
Anders Wahlberg nodded mutely and stood. He took
Soderstedt out into the corridor and stopped in front of
Lindberger's door. Then he disappeared back into his den of
sorrow.
Soderstedt took a few steps. The door to the right of Eric
Lindberger's was Justine's. The spouses lived and worked
literally side by side. He went into Eric's office.
It was smaller than Wahlberg's, it lacked the secretary's
atrium, and the view wasn't of the Sound but of Fredsgatan.
There was a connecting door into his wife's office; he checked
and found it unlocked.
The desk contained a moderate jumble of work papers,
nothing more. A wedding picture showed a very young, dark
Justine and a slightly older but just as dark Eric. They were
smiling the same broad smile, and it didn't seem nearly as
pasted-on as the genre invites; it was professionally practised
but natural nonetheless. The happy couple gave the impression
of belonging to a higher class of citizen by virtue of birth and
force of habit, with full knowledge of all its etiquette. Neither of
them appeared to have fought particularly hard for their career;
on the contrary, both seemed born to be diplomats.
But perhaps he was reading too much into a standard
photograph.
As for the rest of the room, Soderstedt found some notes
written on everything from official Ministry of Foreign Affairs
stationery to yellow Post-its, as well as a rather thick planner;
he hunted for the correct term, fax something, Filofax - was
that it? In any case, he collected everything, put it into his
briefcase, and took it with him as he opened the connecting
door and slipped into Justine's office. It was all but identical to
her husband's.
He inspected her desk, too. It was decorated with the same
wedding photo, or rather another from the same series. Their smiles were a bit 
less pronounced, and there was something less
self-sufficient in it; a vague sense of unease hovered over them, a
disturbance. The minor difference between the photos spoke to
Soderstedt's extremely well-developed sense of nuance.
Just as in her husband's office, in Justine's there were many
notes scribbled on various pieces of paper, on the desk and
in the drawers, which he rooted through even though the act
could hardly be characterised as legitimate. He copied the
occasionally cryptic notes and fished an identical Filofax out of
a desk drawer. He peered around the room and spotted what he
was looking for, a small photocopier, and he nervously copied
a month forward and a month backwards in the planner; that
ought to be enough.
He packed the copied notes and the photocopies into his
briefcase, next to what he had already confiscated, and put
Justine Lindberger's Filofax back where he'd found it. Then
he returned to Eric's office, stepped out into the corridor and
went down the stairs. He nodded cheerfully at the receptionist,
who looked as if she'd been eating dog shit, opened his glorious
Bamse umbrella and rushed out into the pouring rain.
He'd had to park his service Audi on the other side of Gustav
Adolfs Torg, over by Operan, and now he ran straight across the
square with his briefcase glued to his body to keep it dry; the
Bamse umbrella barely protected more than his head.
He jumped into the Audi and opened the briefcase. He
skimmed through the pale copies of Justine Lindberger's
planner so that he would have a few trump cards in his hand
when he met the recent widow; he hoped he wouldn't have to
use them.
Then he turned the car out along the Stockholm Sound, drove
past Operakallaren, crossed Blasieholmen and Nybrokajen,
drove up Sibyllegatan, and took a right onto Riddargatan at the
Army Museum; the stupid hot-air balloon that had been filled
with tourists and raised up and down all summer was still there,
but it looked deserted in the rain.
Partway up the hill he stopped, did a seriously illegal parking
job outside the unloading dock of a boutique, and rushed into a
doorway where, sheltered from the rain, he pressed the intercom
button next to the names eric and justine lindberger. After four rings he heard 
a faint 'Yes?'
'Justine Lindberger?'
'Not the press again, I hope?'
'The police. Detective Inspector Arto Soderstedt.'
'Come in.'
The lock buzzed and he went in, climbed six lift-free flights
of stairs, and found Justine Lindberger standing in the door.
Viggo Norlander hadn't been exaggerating when he described
her delicate beauty in fairly unpoetic terms.
'Soderstedt,' he panted, waving his police ID. 'I hope I'm not
disturbing you too much.'
'Come in,' she said again. Her voice was weak from crying.
The apartment looked about as he had expected: elegant
through and through, high-class but not flashy - rather, austere
and subtle. He fumbled internally for adjectives.
In the living room Justine Lindberger offered him a spot
on the leather sofa, which seemed unused. Of course, it was
comfortable to the point of immediately inducing sleepiness.
Opposite a low, lemon-shaped glass table, she sat down on the
edge of a stylish Windsor chair. A glass door led to a balcony
that looked out on Nybroviken and Skeppsholmen.
Tm sorry for your loss,' he said quietly. 'Have the media
been difficult?'
'Yes, I've been feeling horribly pressed.'
It never bodes well to start off with a misunderstanding,
so he refrained from quibbling over the meaning of the word press. In addition, 
he had to decide quickly whether to use the
informal version of the pronoun you or the more formal one.
He decided on informal: 'Can you think of any reason at all for
your husband's murder?'
'No.' She shook her head and scrupulously avoided meeting
his eyes, as she had since he arrived. 'If it's a serial killer, I guess
it was just by chance. The most awful kind imaginable.'
There's no other possibility? It's not something connected
with your contacts in the Arab world?'
'Our contacts have been utterly peaceful.'
'You were supposed to go to Saudi Arabia on Friday. What
was that all about?'
She finally met his gaze. Her dark brown eyes were brimming
with sorrow, but for a split second he seemed to see a deeper
sorrow there, a guilt even deeper than the survivor always feels
towards the dead partner; all the unfinished things that would
forever remain unfinished, everything a person ought to have
said but had always put off. It was something more than that, he
was certain of it, but her eyes moved away before he had time
to define it.
'It was about details of some new Saudi import laws - the
consequences for small Swedish businesses. What could that
have to do with this?'
'Most likely nothing. I just have to get a clear picture of the
situation. For example, is there anyone who would profit if you
were excluded from the meeting'?'
She nodded heavily, then met his gaze again; there might
have been a tiny new spark in her eyes. 'Do you mean that it
might not have anything to do with - what was he called - the
Kentucky Killer?' She spat out the word.
Tm trying to find possibilities other than pure chance,'
Soderstedt replied mildly.
'My job is to facilitate the business activity of Swedish
companies in Saudi Arabia, at the expense of domestic and other
foreign companies. For the time being, I'm the only person who
is completely familiar with the situation, and my absence could
potentially mean a certain competitive advantage for companies
from other countries.'
'Which sectors are affected by these new Saudi laws?'
'Primarily the machine industry. But the changes in question
are far too small to motivate anyone to commit any sort of
crime, least of all murder.'
Soderstedt nodded. 'How would you describe your
relationship with Eric?'
'It was very good,' she said immediately. "Very, very good. In
all ways.'
'Isn't it difficult to work alongside your husband?'
'On the contrary. We share an interest. Shared. Past tense!'
she shouted, then suddenly stood and ran to the bathroom.
He heard the tap running as ferociously as on an upper-class
Japanese toilet.
Soderstedt got up and started walking around the apartment.
It gradually dawned on him that it was much larger than his
first impression had led him to believe. He walked and walked,
but it never ended, and then he was suddenly back where he'd
started. Three doors led out into the stairwell; the Lindberg
home encompassed the entire floor, which had originally been
divided into three apartments. He counted at least ten rooms.
Three bathrooms. Two kitchens. Why two kitchens?
Employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he knew, had
a good basic salary and their daily allowance nearly doubled it,
but an apartment like this must have cost tens of millions of
kronor. Likely a substantial amount of family capital had been
invested from both sides.
He sat down, and when she came back, he looked as though
he hadn't moved. Her face was reddish, as if it had just been
scrubbed. Otherwise everything was the same.
'Please forgive me.' She returned to the edge of the white
Windsor chair.
'No problem,' he said grandly. 'You don't have any children?'
She shook her head. 'I'm only twenty-eight. We still had
plenty of time.'
'This is a pretty big apartment for two people.'
She met his gaze, immediately on the defensive. 'Shall we
stick to the point?' she asked cuttingly.
'I apologise, but we do need a clear picture of the
circumstances of the inheritance. What are they? Do you inherit
everything?'
'Yes. Yes, I inherit everything. Do you think I tortured my
own husband? Do you think I let him suffer for an hour of hell
while I stuck horrific pincers into his neck?'
Now, now, he thought. Smooth things over now.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I apologise.'
It wasn't enough. She had risen to her feet again and was
half shouting, the panic in her voice rising. 'Small people like
you can't have the slightest idea of how much I loved him. And
now he's dead - gone - gone forever. Some fucking lunatic has
tortured my beloved and thrown him into the sea. Can you even
imagine what ran through his head during that last horrible
hour? I know that the last thing he thought of was me; I have to
find solace in the fact that it gave him comfort. It must have. It
was my fault that he died! I should have died, not him! He died
in my place!'
Halfway through the torrent of words, Soderstedt was at
the telephone. He was about to call for an ambulance when
Justine Lindberger suddenly went quiet and sat down. To be
sure, her hands were still twisting around in her lap, but she
was calm enough to announce, 'I took a few tranquillisers in the
bathroom. They're starting to work now. Continue.'
Are you sure?'
'Yes. Continue.'
Soderstedt returned a bit clumsily to the sofa. Now he too
was sitting on the edge of the furniture. "What did you mean by
saying you should have died instead?'
'He was a happier person than I am.'
'That's all?'
'It's not just that. It would have been enormously fortunate
for the world if I had died instead.'
Soderstedt thought of the minute difference in the wedding
pictures on the couple's respective office desks and was secretly
happy for hitting the nail on the head. 'Can you expand on that
a little?'
'Everything was so easy for Eric - he floated along without a
care in the world. I don't do that. Not at all. I don't want to say
more than that.'
Soderstedt decided not to push her, out of concern for her
condition. Instead he asked, 'Can you think of any reason why
he would have been at Frihamnen at two thirty in the morning?'
'None at all. I don't believe he went there on his own. He
must have been taken there.'
He changed tack, partly because he was flustered: 'What is
the situation like in Saudi Arabia now?'
'What do you mean?' she asked, surprised.
'In regard to fundamentalism, for example.'
She eyed him somewhat suspiciously but answered professionally:
'It's there. But for the time being, it doesn't cause
any hurdles for business. The government keeps it in check,
often with rather tough measures.'
'What about the women? Aren't there a few compulsory
veils?'
'Don't forget that fundamentalism is a popular movement,
and what seems compulsory to Western eyes may not always be
so. We're a little too quick to believe that our norms are the only
correct ones. There are actually still considerably more people
who wipe their arses with their left hand than there are people
who shake hands with their right.'
'Of course,' said Soderstedt, bracing himself. 'But isn't it
the case that the Gulf War had a much different effect than
intended? The Americans concentrated their efforts against
Saddam Hussein, who is more of a secularised dictator; they
uninhibitedly murdered civilians, women and children; they
kept Saddam in power; they united the Muslims; and they threw
so many resources at Saudi Arabia, for the sake of oil, that a
large portion of that money benefited Saudi fundamentalism.
Saudi fundamentalism is, after all, the richest and best-organised
system in the Arab world, the spider in the worldwide net, and
it's been supported to a great extent by American funds. Isn't
that ironic?'
Justine Lindbe'rger stared in amazement at the strange,
chalk-white, slender Finland-Swedish policeman who was
candidly airing his political theories. At last she said in a measured
tone, 'Maybe you ought to become a politician.'
'No, thanks,' said Arto Soderstedt.




21


The biblical flood refused to end. The rain's eternally drumming
gloom drowned out every spark of clarity, and dampness found
its way into every corner and rotting, mouldy hole. It seeped rapidly into the 
core, into the very source, a shaking, roaring
inferno, the birthplace of the biblical flood; a deeper darkness,
thoroughly incomprehensible. And then the plane came out the
other side, to clarity, serenity, light; to the broad view that made
the earlier darkness seem so small, distant and understandable.
Paul Hjelm wished life were like a plane taking off in an
autumn storm.
Or at least that this case were like that.
The sun was as blinding as darkness for the snow-blind. It
lit up the tops of the pitch-black masses of clouds and made
them shine with a Renaissance-bronze colour, like Rembrandt's
backgrounds.
He couldn't tear himself away from the play of colours;
colours had been missing for so long. In real time, the autumn
storm had been going on for only a few days, but real time had
nothing to do with it - the rain had erased all his memories of
summer in one fell swoop. His memory had stopped with the
Kentucky Killer's arrival in Sweden, which swept everything
that had come before into darkness.
He hoped that the successive encounters with the sun that
would come during the flight would mean a clear sort of
non-time; the plane would land at approximately the same
time it had taken off. If it didn't crash.
He was scarcely afraid of flying, yet those seconds when
the acceleration ceases and the wheels leave the ground always
caused him a deep thrill, as he unconditionally put his life in the
hands of a stranger.
Only after fifteen minutes of losing himself in pure
fascination did he even think of turning to Kerstin Holm. When
he did, she was still there. He recognised the expression he had
never seen on himself, but which, after the fact, he realised he
must have had. When the drinks trolley went by, they exchanged
something like a normal glance, but they were still far from
words.
Here the serial killer had sat, maybe in this very seat, staring
out not into the blinding sun but into the equally blinding
darkness. What had he thought about? What had he felt,
experienced? He had just murdered a person - what had flowed
through his darkened soul?
And why had he come to Sweden? In the answer to that
question, after all, lay the solution to this strange and elusive
case. He tried to recap it roughly. In the late 1970s, a man
starts to murder people in the American Midwest, in a manner
reminiscent of a torture method used by a special task force in
Vietnam called Commando Cool. The victims, eighteen of them
in four years and primarily in Kentucky, have mostly remained
unidentified. Most of the ones who are identified are academics,
both foreign and American. The FBI focuses on the special task
force's squad leader, Wayne Jennings; possibly they also try to
find Commando Cool's unknown commander, who goes by the
name Balls. Jennings dies in a car accident after sixteen murders
have been committed. Two more murders follow; after that
there's a timeout for more than a decade.
Then the murders start again. All signs point to the same
perpetrator. This time he is active in the north-eastern United
States, especially in New York. And this time the victims are all
identified, and they come from very different backgrounds. The
pattern seems more random this time. After the sixth murder in
the second round, the twenty-fourth overall, the murder of the
Swede Lars-Erik Hassel, the killer suddenly leaves the country
and arrives in Stockholm on a fake passport. There he goes to
drug dealer Andreas Gallano's secret cabin, about forty miles
north of Stockholm, which, according to the latest information,
is free of fingerprints and fibres, meticulously cleaned. About
a week later, he sets off from the cabin in Gallano's Saab,
leaving behind Gallano, who has been murdered in the serial
killer's distinctive method. Probably the killer leaves the cabin
at night. He goes to Frihamnen, where he murders two more
people: Erik Lindberger of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
a still-unidentified twenty-five-year-old. Lindberger has been
tortured to death in the same way, but the unknown man, the
John Doe, is shot to death. This is the only known occasion
when the murderer deviates from his usual method and uses
a firearm. Presumably he changes now-patriotic cars, from the
Saab to a ten-year-old dark blue Volvo station wagon with a
number plate that starts with B. There's been no sign of him
since.
How the hell did it all fit together?
'How the hell does all this fit together?' said Kerstin Holm,
her first words since the plane had taken off from Arlanda and
set course for New York. She and Hjelm were apparently on the
same wavelength.
'I don't know,' said Paul H jelm.
Then it was quiet.
The sun shone blindly, as though it belonged to no particular
season, outside the trembling Plexiglas aeroplane windows; it
could just as easily have been a winter sun as a summer one
but it was an autumn sun. They found themselves in a detached
moment. It was a journey through time, the only possible kind.
Time passed and no time passed. It was a place for contemplation.
He would have liked to have a whisky and soda and listen to
music and read a book. All of that would have to wait.
Should he use the time to develop hypotheses, then? No,
those would have to wait. This was more a time to establish
openness, a critical receptiveness, to all the information and
impressions that would come streaming towards them in the
new world. They would have to keep the questions coming
without trying to answer them too quickly. For there were so
many questions.
Why does he kill? Is it for the same reasons before and after
his break? Why did he take a break for almost fifteen years? Is it
really the same killer? Why does everyone feel there's something
wrong with the image of him as a classic serial killer? Why
was Lars-Erik Hassel murdered at the airport? Why did the
murderer go to Sweden? Why did he use a thirty-two-year-old's
passport if he is over fifty? How did he find Gallano's cabin in
Riala? Why did he change cars in Frihamnen? Was it because
he wanted Gallano's corpse to be traced via his car? After all,
Lindberger's corpse was easy to find, too. Does he, like most
serial killers, want to display his art for an audience? Why
did he murder Lindberger, an employee of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs? What was Lindberger doing in Frihamnen in
the middle of the night? Where was he murdered? Is the failed
break-in at the computer company LinkCoop's warehouse
connected to the case? Why did the killer shoot John Doe
instead of torturing him? Who the hell is this John Doe, who
can't be found in any international registry? Are we asking the
right questions?
The last question was perhaps the most important. Was there
a link between all these questions, something you couldn't see
until you got up high enough and looked down at the darkness
in the crystal-clear sunlight, and then it would be obvious?
Right now it didn't feel like it.
But at least they were on their way.




22


A wasp had come into the room to die. How it had survived the
storms of the past few days was a mystery. Perhaps, more dead
than alive, it had managed to hide from the madness in some
musty hole but hadn't died there. Instead it had come out with
its stinger drawn, ready to wound even in the last moments of
its life. A doomed survivor with all its senses but the sixth gone:
the sixth sense, that of a killer.
The wasp made a few wobbly rounds of the fluorescent tube
light up on the ceiling, as unaffected by heat as it was by light. It
buzzed suddenly; it was no longer the usual drone of a wasp but
was duller, more aggressive. Then it rushed downward, a last
kamikaze attack with its stinger raised. It came closer.
Chavez executed a mercy killing. A precise backhand using a
yellowed issue of Expressen sent the body into the corner under
the churning old dot-matrix printer; the stinger stuck straight
up from the crumpled body. The body would almost certainly
lie there until next year, when a light spring breeze would reveal
it to be a collection of dust that stuck together only out of habit.
As he stared at the wasp, he had a lightning-like but wordless
insight. For a split second he thought he saw the core of the
case, crystal clear.
Then reality returned and concealed his clarity with a data
list that was growing and curling up on itself, on the floor over
the wasp. A shroud of everyday, routine work enveloped the
detective's stroke of genius.
The printer stopped printing. Chavez got up, tore off the
list, tore at his hair, and observed his own future as though in
an utterly trivial crystal ball. The list of dark blue Volvo station
wagons with number plates that started with B and that were
registered in Sweden was long, surprisingly long. He was bored
with this task before he'd even started.
He would start by crossing out all those Volvos that were
older than fifteen and newer than five years old. After that he
would concentrate on those in the Stockholm area. That would
bring the cars down to a manageable number - sixty-eight.
Jorge Chavez threw the list down onto his desk and picked
up a list he had made himself. There he wrote, as point number
three, 'The Volvo shit'. Point number one was 'The cabin shit':
to return to the nightmarish cabin in Riala in full daylight to
assist the industrious technicians, who, to their vociferous
surprise, had not found a single strand of hair at the site of the
murder and therefore were continuing their intensive search.
Point number two was 'The Hall shit': to go to Hall and
talk to Andreas Gallano's fellow inmates and go through his
belongings, which he had left behind after his escape a month
ago.
Chavez had drawn Gallano in the lottery, and as if that
weren't enough, the damn Volvo had been assigned to him, too.
This was the work he'd inherited from Kerstin, and he couldn't help harbouring 
an envious grudge; he and Hjelm could damn
sure have been of much greater use to the FBI. They were, after
all, the ones for whom things had been moving along; first with
Laban Hassel, then with Andreas Gallano.
He wondered, in his not-entirely-peaceful conscience, what
he had done to earn the dunce cap. He hadn't run over small
children at Arlanda or groped chicks in the passport check. He
hadn't taken off for Tallinn on a purge a la Charles Bronson and
ended up on the floorboards like a fallen version of the only
begotten son. And yet here he sat with the worst job of all while
that nobody Norlander was gathering up the few brain cells he
had and destroying the next most stimulating job: taking on
John Doe. That job demanded the right man - and Norlander
was definitely not that man.
Chavez's modest request for a change had brought him two
things: an icy look from Hultin and a list of two hundred dark
blue Volvos.
He turned on the coffee-maker with the tip of his toe and
watched the spout until the first drop hit his freshly ground
Colombian beans. Then he gazed across the desk, where Hjelm
was conspicuous by his absence.
The man with the golden helmet, Chavez thought maliciously.
The fake Rembrandt. Perhaps the most admired of the master's
paintings, and it turned out to have been done by an anonymous
pupil.
He missed him already.
Then he gave a deep sigh, artfully poured the coffee while the
hot water was still bubbling, and dived into the Volvo inferno.
The future was not his.




23


The non-time had passed. The hours that didn't exist no longer
existed. They landed at Newark in a boiling-hot noonday sun
that embraced the entire unending system of runways; from up in the sky, they 
had glittered in the sun like an inexperienced fly
fisherman's tangle of lines.
Paul and Kerstin hadn't exchanged many words during the
flight, not only because they had been contemplating the case;
the disruptions in their relationship seemed to keep spreading although
neither of them thought much about it.
They were shepherded through passport control and had to
wait more than half an hour for their luggage. After clearing
customs, they finally entered the enormous arrivals hall,
where a crowd of people were holding signs with the names
of their unfamiliar arriving guests. After a few minutes, they
realised that a sign in the hand of a tall suit-clad man, with the
Lewis Carroll-inspired text 'Yalm, Halm', must be directed at
them. The renowned comedy duo of Yalm & Halm politely
greeted the gigantic man, whose name they made out as Jerry
Schonbauer, and who shepherded them to a slightly calmer part
of the arrivals hall.
Waiting there was an equally well-dressed but slightly less
stiff and slightly less FBI-like black man in his fifties. As the
enormous Schonbauer took his place in the hierarchy just
behind him, the black man extended his hand with a genuinely
welcoming smile. 'Ray Larner, FBI. You must be officers Yalm
and Halm from Stockholm.'
'Paul Hjelm,' said Yalm.
'Kerstin Holm,' said Halm.
'So he's started again now?' said Larner with a regretful
smile. 'A pair of fresh eyes is probably what this case needs.'
'It's basically a matter of adding our information to your
vast archive of knowledge,' said Kerstin with gently ingratiating
humility.
Larner nodded. As you know, I've devoted a great deal of my
professional life to this character, and yet I still don't know what
he's up to. He is the most mysterious of all our serial killers.
With most of them, you can come up with an approximate
motive and psychological profile pretty quickly, but K deviates
from almost all the usual norms. You will have seen my report,
of course
They nodded. Larner called the Kentucky Killer 'K', as did the
diehards in FASK, Fans of American Serial Killers, with whom
Chavez had Internet contact. They shivered a joint shiver.
Jerry Schonbauer picked up their luggage, which hanging
from his fists looked like toiletry bags. As they started walking,
Larner asked them, 'What do you say to the following schedule?
We'll drive you to the hotel so you can freshen up after your
journey. Then we'll have a late lunch at my favourite restaurant.
And then we'll start work. But first' - he nodded at Schonbauer,
who was drifting with their bags towards an exit glimmering
in the distance - 'a little guided tour of Newark International
Airport.'
Larner took them up the stairs to the check-in hall. They
wandered for quite some time through an indoor landscape that
never seemed to change; even the steady stream of travellers
remained static.
Finally they stopped at a small door amid the sea of people.
Larner pulled out a bunch of keys, slipped one in and yanked
it open. It was a cleaner's cupboard, large model: fluorescent
lights on the low ceiling, clean, whitewashed floors, and shelves
with meticulously arranged cleaning equipment - rags, brushes,
buckets, towels. They made their way around the shelves
to a more open area with a chair and a desk with a few old
sandwiches on it. On the wall above was a tiny window through
which one could see the giant bodies of arriving and departing
planes sweeping past.
This was where Lars-Erik Hassel spent the last hour of his life.
And what an hour.
Hjelm and Holm looked around the cupboard. There wasn't
much to see. It was a clinical place in which to die a clinical
death.
Larner pointed at the chair. 'We've taken the original chair,
of course. Aside from Mr Hassel's bodily fluids, there wasn't a
trace on it. There never is.'
'Never?' said Kerstin Holm.
'When we began, of course, there weren't any real
possibilities for DNA testing.' Larner shrugged. 'But judging by
the six murders in this new series, we probably weren't missing
anything. The closet is spotless. Like he's superhuman. K.'
This last word was just a letter, but his tone took it to
astronomical heights.
'Nine,' said Kerstin Holm.
Larner looked closely at her and nodded.
As they left the cupboard, Hjelm lingered for a few seconds
in the open area. He wanted to be alone there. He sat in the
chair and looked around. So sterile - such an American brand of
sterile efficiency. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine just a
tiny bit of the horrible, silent pain that these walls had encircled,
tried to make some telepathic contact with Lars-Erik Hassel's
suffering.
It didn't work.
It was there, but it was beyond words.



Agent Schonbauer drove with a practised hand through
chaotic traffic of abnormal dimensions. Larner sat next to
him, talking to Hjelm and Holm in the back seat: about the
late-summer heat in New York, about 'community policing',
the city's new and successful model for fighting crime,
about the structure and strange priorities of the Swedish
police system, about the autumn storm in Stockholm, and
extremely superficially, about the FBI and the Kentucky Killer.
Throughout, Hjelm watched Larner, whose body language
said something different from what the official, dark FBI
costume projected. His controlled, cheerful relaxation and
smooth, exact motions seemed to beg forgiveness for his
get-up. Hjelm amused himself by comparing expected and
actual appearances. First and foremost, he had not expected
Larner to be black; embedded in that assumption, of course,
was a whole package of prejudices. But he hadn't expected
him to be so alert, either, after all the setbacks with K: the
futile search twenty years ago; the pursuit of the apparently
innocent Commando Cool leader Wayne Jennings, which had
ended in Jennings's death; the resultant lawsuit and Larner's
demotion; and then the reboot, when everything started up
again. But Larner seemed detached, as if he were watching
the spectacle with an indulgent smile. He seemed to possess
the divine gift of being able to separate his professional and
personal lives; he radiated, in some way, a happy home life.
They entered the gigantic Holland Tunnel, passed under the
Hudson River, and came out on Canal Street, then turned left
into SoHo. They drove up Eighth Avenue and arrived at a small
hotel by the name Skipper's Inn near Chelsea Park. Because a
free parking spot was as rare as a Swiftian Utopia, they were
dropped off on the pavement after being informed that Larner
would return in an hour and a half. They climbed the stairs to
the peculiarly long, narrow building that was crammed like a
turn-of-the-century relic between two considerably glitzier
Manhattan complexes of pearly glass.
They were given adjoining rooms, each with a window
facing out onto West 25th Street, and thus took up a quarter of
the sixth floor of this lodging house, which actually succeeded
in feigning resemblance to an English inn - or rather, several
inns stacked on top of one another. Their rooms were small and
cosy, with a rustic touch, if you could ignore the roar outside
the non-functional, quadruple-paned windows. Although the
air conditioning was spurting air at full force and was competing
with the racket from the street, it wasn't able to cool the room
below body temperature.
Hjelm lay down on the bed, which rocked precariously. He
had never been to the United States before, but there were two
things he associated with the country: air conditioning and ice.
Where was the ice? He got up and went over to the minibar.
The top half of the small fridge was a freezer, and sure enough,
it was filled with ice cubes. He took a few, returned to the bed,
and let the ice cubes balance like horns on his forehead until
they fell to his ears.
How he had longed for the sun in the Stockholm rain! Now
he longed for the Stockholm rain. The grass is always greener, he
thought, cliched; his brain felt mushy.
In American films, New York was either sparkling with
hysterical but happy Christmas snow, or it was boiling like a
cauldron in the midsummer sun. Now he understood why. In
mid-September, the happy Christmas snow was months away.
He made his way to the shabby but amicably shabby bathroom.
There was a shower in a grungy little bath, and he made use of
it, without preparing toiletries or a change of clothes - he just
went straight in, satisfied that he'd remembered to take off what
he was wearing. When he was finished, he didn't dry off but
went over to the sink and drank from it. After five gulps it struck
him that perhaps he shouldn't drink the water, and he spat and
sputtered. The last thing he needed was to get a juicy case of
travellers' diarrhoea.
He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. In keeping
with the style of the room, it was properly cracked. His
reflection somewhat split, he met his own gaze a bit cubistically.
The blemish on his cheek was the same as ever, but he gave
thanks to various creators that it had at least stopped growing.
For a while he had worried that it would end up covering his
whole face.
Why did Kerstin's presence always make him think of that
blemish?
He wandered into the bedroom, naked, and by the time he
covered the twelve feet, he was dry; when he lay down on the
bed, the sweat began to return. He lay there and pondered his
male organ. He considered masturbating - that was always a way
to make oneself feel at home - but the circumstances weren't
right. Instead, he practised an appropriate breathing method, as
strength-preserving as possible, and quickly fell asleep.
In his dream, just at the right moment, Kerstin popped in.
He was in a different hotel room. He was sleeping in his sleep
and dreaming in his dream. Or rather, in his dream, he found
himself in a state between dream and wakefulness. Then she
came in. From nowhere, her small, dark figure sailed through
the room. In his dream they had talked about sex earlier that
evening, a bit tipsily but openly, maturely, modernly. It didn't
have to result in anything.
He had happened - if you could call it happened - to mention
his favourite fantasy, and now she was lying beside him and
masturbating, just a few feet away. His subconscious had
pedantically stored the memory of each of her movements,
and for a year it had drawn them forth at night, every little
singularity in the way she touched herself, every caress; and a
whole collection of his desires and longings were interspersed
with every movement. Then there was a knock, and she drew
her hand down through the triangle of hair like a harrow; there
was a knock, and she slowly, slowly spread her legs; there was a
knock, and she caught hold of . . .
There was a knock.
He shot straight up in bed and looked down at his erection.
'Paul?' a feminine whisper came through the door. 'Are you
awake?'
'Yes! I'm naked!' He was almost awake. 'Awake!' he called a
bit louder, hoping that the door was resistant to Freudian slips.
Is it time already?'
'Not really,' said Kerstin. 'Will you let me in?'
'Hold on,' He was finally awake. His erection was still
awfully stiff. He came up with a white lie: 'I'm in the shower,
wait a minute!'
Why couldn't he work with this woman without making her
into a sex object? Was he not a grown man? He thought he had
a relatively healthy view of equality and women's rights and all
that, but lust was a tyrant that would always live on. If anything,
he thought, he was making her into a sex subject, but where the
fuck was the limit?
Ridiculously, his erection didn't give up. He laughed at
himself. What a fool! And the fool had to make a choice: put her
off, and risk burning up the last vestiges of their built-up trust,
or else be honest - and risk burning up the last vestiges of their
built-up trust.
He teetered on the brink for a few seconds, then: 'I've got an
erection.'
'What the hell are you saying? Let me in.'
He grabbed a towel from in the bathroom and wrapped
it around himself. It looked so pathetic that it no longer was pathetic by the 
time he reached the door and turned the key She
stepped in, clad in an elegant, tight little black dress.
'What did you say?' she asked the more or less presentable
newly showered person.
'I was in the shower,' he said, gesturing awkwardly. 'I didn't
think it was time yet.'
'But you're dry' she said sceptically.
'The heat. Everything dries right away.'
'It isn't time yet,' she said in a more professional tone, and
sat down on the edge of the bed. 'I just thought we could talk
through our strategy'
'Strategy?' He bent over the suitcase on the other side of
the bed. His towel wasn't on tightly, so he had to hold it with
one hand and undo the straps of the suitcase with the other. It
wasn't all that easy.
'That looks hard,' she said maternally, turning away. 'Let go
of the towel. I promise not to look.'
Relieved, he let go of the towel, took out fresh clothes and
put them on. 'Why do we need a strategy?'
'It's the FBI we're going to meet. They're going to see us as
the country cousins on a visit to the big city. They'll consider
it to be their primary task to make sure we don't get run over
or robbed and murdered or become junkies. We have to know
exactly what we want to do here and stand firm. They're the
ones who are going to supply us with tasks, not the other way
round; the killer is on our turf. So what is it we're actually doing
here?'
He took out a narrow purple tie and started to tie it. 'We're
going to fish for clues and see if they've missed anything.'
'But we can't put it that way ... Are you going to wear that?'
He looked down himself. 'What?'
'We probably shouldn't look more countrified than we are.
We are from a big city, after all, even if it is a small one.'
'What's wrong?' he said, mystified. 'What colour is your shirt?' she said 
pedagogically.
'Blue,' he said.
'It's closer to azure. And your tie?'
'Purple?'
'Do those go together?'
He shrugged. 'Why not?'
'Come here.' He obeyed her. She untied the tie and started
to unbutton his shirt.
Control yourself, he ordered his unruly nether regions. 'What
are you doing?' he asked calmly.
'Since I'm assuming you only have one tie with you, we'll
have to change the shirt. What have you got?' She rooted around
in his suitcase and took out a white one. This'll have to do.' She
tossed it to him.
'No,' she said, changing the subject abruptly, 'we can't present
it as though we're here to correct their mistakes. That might be
a sensitive subject - if not for Lamer, then for his superiors.'
'So we ought to focus on the Swedish stuff?' he said,
buttoning his shirt.
'I think so, yes. But first and foremost we ought to share our information 
liberally. It could be that they'll be able to add
something, of course, but above all it's a goodwill gesture. If
we lay our cards on the table, maybe we'll get a few cards back.'
'So our strategy is, one: unconditionally blurt out everything
we have, and two: say we want to go through the material to try
to find a Swedish connection.'
'And assure them that we're here to work on it only from
a Swedish perspective. We won't step on any toes. We'll be
diplomatic. Can you handle that?'
He ought to have felt insulted, but this was the first thing
she'd said that approached a personal remark. 'Yes.'
'As you know, I've gone through all the material we've had
access to pretty carefully. I don't know how complete it is, but
Larner seems to have latched on to Wayne Jennings a little too
early. When Jennings disappeared from the scene, all the ideas
disappeared, too. There's not a single tiny hypothesis among
the material from after the break. Maybe I'm being unfair, but
Larner seemed to give up after his failure with Jennings. Now
he's just collecting facts. It feels like there should be a lot more
to do, not least with the later portion of the case.'
He nodded. Even with his considerably scantier knowledge
of the details, he saw that the American side was at a loss when
faced with the Kentucky Killer's return after fifteen years.
'So you don't think we ought to mention the KGB theory?'
he said seriously.
'We can hold off on that for a bit,' she said, just as seriously.



Ray Larner's lunch consisted of a magnificently authentic
pasta carbonara at a little restaurant annexe called Divina
Commedia on 11th Street. Paul and Kerstin were surprised
to see the meal served with Loka brand bottled water, but as
people said, the world was getting smaller. Larner was on top
form and talked exclusively about the art of Italian cooking;
he waved off everything else as irrelevant. A long and painfully
prestige-loaded argument over whether the world's best olive oil
came from Spain or Italy ended in a thrown game when Kerstin
suddenly remembered her diplomatic strategy and let Italy win.
Hjelm countered with Greece but scored no goals. Australia got
a few unexpected points from a neighbouring table.
'When I retire, I'm moving to Italy,' Larner said loudly. 'The
privileges of a retired widower are endless. I'm going to die with
my mouth full of pasta, olive oil, garlic and red wine. Anything
else is unimaginable.'
It was no exaggeration to say that he deviated from the
stereotypical image of an FBI special agent.
'So you're a widower?' Holm said with soft sincerity.
'My wife died about a year ago,' Larner said, chewing
good-naturedly. 'Fortunately the sadness is followed by an
almost rash feeling of freedom - if you don't kill yourself or
become an alcoholic. And that's almost always what happens.'
'Do you have any children?' Hjelm asked.
'No,' said Larner. 'We talked about it up until I took on K. He
robbed me of all my faith in humanity. You can't bring children
into a world that can create a K. But that's a line of reasoning
you've heard before.'
'I have,' Hjelm said. 'Had children, that is.'
'You had no K then. Wait and see if you have any
grandchildren.'
'Children were born despite Hitler,' said Holm.
Larner was quiet for a moment, then leaned towards her.
'Do you have kids, Halm?'
She shook her head.
'What I'm going to show you this afternoon' - Larner
leaned back in his chair - 'will keep you from doing it for all
time.'



Zero tolerance was a term that played an important part in
New York's new spirit. A euphemism for intolerance, it worked
extremely well. Quite simply, the police were ordered not
to tolerate any behaviour that fell outside the bounds of the
law. Committing the slightest offence meant that one would
immediately be taken into custody. The theory behind it was a
sort of vertical domino effect: if the little criminals fall, the big
ones will too. It was based on the idea that those who commit
serious crimes also commit a great many minor ones, and that's
when it's possible to catch them.
As a federal officer, Ray Larner was outside the operations
of the state police and hence this project. Although he worked
in the heart of New York, he observed its workings at a
distance. His candour, of which they had already seen ample
proof, never extended an inch into controversial territory. Yet
something in his tone of voice grated a bit as he described the
results of the New York spirit alongside Jerry Schonbauer in
the FBI car. Did a trace of a grim view of the future surface in
his intonation?
A few years ago, law enforcement had been forced to do
something about the state of things in the largest city in the United
States. Crime had run amok. There were countless murders. The
police and the justice system were at a loss and faced a choice
between a long-term path and a short-term one, prevention and
punishment. Unfortunately, they had let the situation become
so acute that they really only had one alternative. It was too
late to equip people with enough self-esteem that they would
see an alternative to drugs and easy money. Not only would
that approach take too long, but it would also require a break
with a centuries-old tradition. The best solution seemed to be
a synthesis that would unite the short term with the long term:
prevention by punishment.
'Community policing' turned out to be more successful than
expected. Suddenly there were police on every corner, and in
the rankings of the world's most murder-heavy cities, New York
fell from a pole position to almost last place. The decent citizens
- that is, the somewhat well-to-do - were of course thrilled. Once again you 
could jog through Central Park without getting
a switchblade between your sixth and seventh ribs; you could
take the subway without needing ten seats. In general, it was
once again possible to move around the city.
But how high a price did the city pay? First and foremost,
it required an absolute acceptance of the status quo. The
thought that criminals could better themselves in one way or
another vanished. The city was no longer interested in making
sure people didn't become criminals - it just wanted to banish
them once they had. In the past the prevention side had at least
managed to snap up a few crumbs of resources, but now the
whole tiny pie was allocated to the punishment side. No one
in his right mind spoke any longer of America's old central
idea - equal opportunity - and the vision of a melting pot was
transformed into a sheer myth; nowhere were people so
separate as in the United States. The new police strategy - to
be able to show up anywhere, at any time - without a doubt
carried historic baggage. The question was whether inequality
was already so severe that the police state was the only available
method of upholding law and order.
In addition, there had been an uncomfortable shift in the view
of human rights when it came to the death penalty. Thirty-eight
of the states had capital punishment, and recently the country
had seen an unprecedented increase in the number of death
sentences handed down and carried out. The latest stroke of
genius was the policy according to which no one who opposed
the death penalty on principle could be permitted to serve on a
jury in a trial where the death penalty was a possible sentence.
This 'death-qualified jury' quite simply disqualified any liberal
layperson from the legal process and paved the way for rash and
hasty verdicts. The fact was that the crime rate was no lower
in states that had the death penalty than in the minority that
still resisted it. So the most important argument for the death
penalty - that it was a deterrent to crime - was lost, and the
only remaining argument in its favour was the victims' desire
for retribution. Revenge.
Larner's neutral demeanour when he explained this situation
rivaled Hultin's. The question was, did it conceal as much anger?
Or did Larner - as Holm had suggested - quite simply dedicate
himself to the collection and reporting of facts?
Hjelm was about to query Larner on his opinion of the death
penalty - the test that, in his opinion, constituted a fundamental
dividing line between two sorts of people. But just then, the car
reached the top of the Brooklyn Bridge. Larner cut short his
own explanation and said, 'Look out the back now.'
They turned round, and Manhattan, bathing in sunlight,
stretched out its fabulous cityscape before their eyes.
'A strange kind of beauty, isn't it? Every time I drive this
way I think about the eternity of beauty. Would our forefathers
also have found it beautiful? Or would they have thought it
disgusting? Is there such a thing as eternal beauty?'
The sight was overwhelming. Hjelm didn't return to the
question of the death penalty. The view of Manhattan had, in
some strange way, opened the door to the city, and he eagerly
awaited their arrival at the FBI's New York field office.
Schonbauer drove them to the end of the Brooklyn Bridge,
then turned the car round and drove back the way they'd come;
apparently he had brought them there only for the sake of the
view. They followed the bridge back and headed to the majestic
City Hall, turned down one of Manhattan's few diagonal streets, Park Row, which 
bordered City Hall Park, came out onto
Broadway, passed City Hall again, and after a few cross-streets
arrived at Federal Plaza, where a garage door opened and they
glided in.
This was the FBI's Manhattan headquarters, 26 Federal
Plaza. The bureau also had local offices for Brooklyn-Queens,
on Long Island, and at JFK.
The foursome strolled through corridors that did not much
resemble the ones in police headquarters on Kungsholmen.
Everything was bigger, cleaner and more clinical. Hjelm
wondered if he would be ever able to work here - the place
seemed immune to the wild kind of thinking that he considered
his speciality.
Hjelm soon stopped counting the number of security
doors they went through with the help of various cards and
codes. Schonbauer acted as gate boy while Lamer rambled on,
uninterrupted, spouting information of the sort one might find
in a brochure: the number of employees, the departments, the
nature of basic training, the expert groups, everything but what
was relevant.
Finally they approached one last security door, which opened
on its monumental hinges, and then they were standing before
a system of corridors that belonged to the serial killer squad at
the FBI's New York division. Larner's and Schonbauer's names
were inscribed on two adjacent doors. Schonbauer went into
his office without a sound, and the rest of them stepped into
Larner's.
'Jerry's going to prepare a little multimedia show for you,'
Larner explained, sitting down at his desk. The office was small
and lived-in, Hjelm noted gratefully; it had at least a shade of
the personal touch. The walls had bulletin boards instead of
wallpaper, it seemed, and tacked up on them were all kinds
of notes. Behind Larner stood a whiteboard, and the familiar
pattern of arrows, rectangles and lines could have been mistaken
for Hultin's.
'Well, here we have everything in concentrate.' Larner
followed Hjelm's gaze. 'Twenty-four rectangles with tortured
bodies. Forty-eight holes in twenty-four necks. A sober outline
of the un-outlineable. Gruesome terror reduced to a few blue
lines. What else can we do? The rest of it, we carry inside us.'
Hjelm looked at Larner. Without a doubt, the FBI agent
carried a great deal inside himself.
'One question first,' said Larner calmly. 'Is it true that you
think he shot one of the victims?'
'It seems so,' said Hjelm.
'If it is, it changes in one blow the minimal psychological
profile we've scraped together.'
'On the other hand,' said Kerstin Holm, 'your original theory
was that he was a Vietnam veteran. They aren't usually too far
from firearms.'
Larner made a face. 'You know what happened to that
theory'
'Of course,' said Holm, and Hjelm almost thought she
blushed. A diplomatic faux pas in her first remark. He could tell
that she was cursing herself. But she didn't seem to want to give
up. 'Could you explain why you let all the other members of
Commando Cool go?' she asked. 'They weren't analysed in the
material you sent to Sweden.'
Larner stretched and gathered the information from the
considerable archive in his brain. 'The group seems to have
been made up of eight members, all specially trained. Its focus
was torture in the field - a somewhat brutal way to put it, I
suppose. Once someone explained to me that its more official
purpose was "active-service collection of information", but I
got the sense that they invented this term specifically for me - it
was never the plan that even a tiny crumb of information would
leave the inner circle.'
'Who was in the inner circle? Was it the military in general?'
Larner gave her a sharp look. 'Military intelligence
There was more on his mind, she noticed. 'That was all?' she
prompted.
'Commando Cool - just the obnoxious name suggests it
wasn't meant to become public . . . Anyway, Commando Cool
was somehow directly below Nixon. It was established during
his administration, toward the end of the war, and you get the
impression that it was done out of desperation. Publicly its role
was said to be military intelligence, but other powers were at
work behind the scenes.'
'The CIA?' Holm seemed to have left her diplomatic mask at
the hotel.
Ray Larner swallowed and gave her a look that indicated that
their relationship had changed - not necessarily for the worse.
'With many layers of top-secret stamps, yes, possibly. You
have to understand how tense the relationship between the CIA
and the FBI is. And if it in any way gets out that I've said this, I
can forget ever having a pension. My personal phone has been
monitored, and I can only hope there aren't any bugs in this
room. They're always a step ahead of me. But you understand,
I've already said too much. Try to forget it.'
Already have,' said Holm. 'We're just here to find links to
Sweden. Nothing else will end up in our reports.'
Larner regarded each of them for a minute, then nodded
briskly. 'It had eight members,' he resumed.
"What about Balls?' Kerstin interjected recklessly.
Larner burst out laughing. 'Have you been consulting FASK?
Fans of American Serial Killers, on the Internet?'
They looked at each other.
'Follow me.' Larner leaped to his feet and rushed out into
the corridor. A few offices down, he knocked on a door marked bernhard Andrews 
and ushered them in.
A seemingly out-of-place young man in his early twenties,
with jeans and a T-shirt, looked up through round glasses from
a huge computer and smiled broadly. 'Ray,' he said cheerfully,
holding out a printout. 'Yesterday's haul. A cotton executive in
West Virginia, a golf club in Arkansas and a couple other little
goodies.'
'Barry,' said Larner, taking the list and scanning through it,
'these are officers Yalm and Halm from Sweden. They're here
about K.'
Aha,' said Bernhard Andrews jovially. 'Colleagues of Jorge
Chavez?'
Their jaws dropped.
'Born in Sweden in 1968,' Andrews continued. 'In Ragswede,
right? To Chilean parents with left-leaning associations.'
'It's called Ragsved,' Hjelm said, bewildered.
'Chavez was in the FASK site a week ago,' Andrews explained
smugly. 'He had a good but slightly transparent disguise. He put
up a hundred and thirty dollars of taxpayers' money to get in. A
little development aid from the Swedish people to the American
tax coffers.'
They gaped at him, their jaws rattling against their kneecaps.
'Barry's a hacker,' said Larner calmly, 'one of the best in the
country. He can get in anywhere. We were lucky to grab him.
Also, he's FASK.'
'Fans of American Serial Killers,' said Andrews. 'Nice
meeting you.'
'Barry set up FASK as a way to attract potential serial killers.'
Larner waved the printout. 'No matter how hard they try to
disguise themselves, he catches them. We've caught three with
FASK's help. I would venture to say that Barry is the country's
most obscure hero.'
Bernhard Andrews smiled broadly.
'So Balls doesn't exist?' said Kerstin Holm, who was quicker
on the uptake than Hjelm.
'I got it from The Pink Panther,' said Andrews. 'The expert
in disguise whom Inspector Clouseau hires and who survives every bombing 
attack. When it comes to serial killers and their
fans, the only thing that's certain is that they have no sense of
humour. Humour seems to be the antidote to everything.'
'He used the name Balls to fish out a protest from someone
who knew better,' said Larner. 'But so far we haven't had a bite.'
They said goodbye to Fans of American Serial Killers, who
gave them another broad smile and waved.
In the corridor, Larner said, 'Very little is as it seems in the
world today'
He led them back to his office and sat at his desk. 1 didn't
think you had ethnic minorities in your police corps,' he said,
putting his finger precisely on a Swedish sore spot. 'But not
even Chavez can be told about FASK. Barry is one of our most
important secret weapons in the fight against serial killers.' He pulled out a 
drawer and took out a few sheets of paper,
laid them on the desk, and placed an FBI pen on each sheet.
'It's not that I don't trust you, but my superiors have prepared
these papers for you. It's an oath of confidentiality that, if
broken, will result in penalties in accordance with American law.
Please read through them and sign them.'
They read. The small print was difficult to interpret. Both
Hjelm and Holm felt an instinctive aversion to putting their
signatures on such ambiguous papers, but diplomacy reaped yet
another victory - they signed.
'Excellent,' said Larner. 'Where were we? Commando Cool.
Eight members, no Balls. The team leader was the very young
Wayne Jennings, who was already a veteran when they netted
him - twenty-five years old and with six years of war behind him
and God knows how many dead. All the best and most formative
years of his life spent in the service of death. Twenty-seven
when the war ended, thirty when Kbegan to be active. Returned after the war to 
his dead father s farm in eastern Kentucky, at
the foot of the Cumberland Plateau, if that means anything to
you. Didn't do much farming, just lived on his veteran's pension.
He was without a doubt the most likely suspect; according to
statements, he was very skilled at handling the pincers. The third
body was found just thirteen miles from his home.
'As for the others in Commando Cool, three died in the
final stages of the war. Besides Jennings, there were four left;
you'll find their names in the complete material, which you'll
have access to. One came from Kentucky, Greg Androwski, a
childhood friend of Jennings's, but he fell apart and died a junkie
in 1986. He was alive during It's four years in the Midwest, but
he was pretty worn down and quite unlikely to be a killer.
Completely destroyed by Vietnam.
'Three left. One came to New York, Steve Harrigan, who
became a stockbroker and was one of the wizards of Wall Street
during the 1980s. Another went to Maine: Tony Robin Garreth,
who makes his living taking tourists on fishing tours. Both
were pretty safeguarded against suspicions. The last one, Chris
Anderson, moved to Kansas City and sold used cars.'
'Swedish background?' said Kerstin.
Larner smiled faintly. 'Four generations back. His greatgreat-grandfather
came from someplace called Kalmar, if you've
heard of that. Anderson was actually number two on our list,
Jennings's second-in-command, just as icy, just as destroyed by
the war. But his alibis were a tiny bit better than Jennings's. And
Jennings was nastier - that was my main argument, just based
on a feeling, that is. I managed to push the whole thing pretty
far.'
'How sure were you, really, about Jennings?'
Larner leaned back in his chair with his hands on the back
of his neck. He deliberated for a moment. 'Completely,' he
said. 'One hundred per cent.' He fished a thick folder out of an
old-fashioned filing cabinet that stood next to the whiteboard.
Jerry Schonbauer peeked into the room. 'It's ready,' he said.
'Five minutes.' Larner tossed the folder to Holm, who
opened it. A small bundle of photographs unfolded like a fan.
The first one was a portrait. Jennings in his thirties, a young,
fresh-looking man with light blond hair and a broad smile. But
he also had a steely blue coolness in his eyes, which sharply
divided the picture into two parts. Kerstin held her hand over the
upper part of his face and saw a happily smiling young person;
but when she moved her hand to the lower part, she saw the icy
gaze of a man who was hard as nails.
'That's it,' Larner said almost enthusiastically. That's exactly
it. When we first visited him, he was pretty amiable, really
pleasant - the lower half. As we persisted, we saw more and
more of the upper half.'
They looked through the rest of the photographs. A teenage Jennings in uniform, 
Jennings slightly older in a circle of
identical field uniforms, Jennings with a big tuna fish, Jennings
pointing a Tommy gun at the camera with a fake attack face,
Jennings at a dance with a beautiful Southern woman with
two first names, Jennings with a small child on his lap, Jennings
with a Vietnamese prostitute - and then Jennings roaring with
laughter as he presses a pistol to the temple of a grimacing,
naked, kneeling Vietnamese man who is pissing himself in a
deep hole in the ground. Holm lifted it up towards Larner.
'Yes, that,' he said. 'It's like it makes you forget the others.
It's a fucking awful picture. I would get a lot of money if I sold
it to Time magazine. I don't understand how he could keep it.
We found all of these pictures when we raided his house after
he died.'
'What happened when he died,' Holm said, 'exactly?'
'Well,' Larner began, 'at the end we had him under surveillance
twenty-four hours a day--'
'For how long?' she interrupted.
'It had been going on for a month when he died.'
'Were any murders committed during that time?'
'The bodies were usually found in a state of decay that made
them hard to date. But all sixteen that preceded his death had
been found by then. It was one reason I was so persistent, even
though every imaginable authority was against me: the longer
we watched twenty-four hours a day and no new victims were
found, the more likely it was that he was the murderer. May I
continue now?'
'Of course,' said Holm, ashamed. 'Sorry'
'I tried to be there in the car as often as possible, and I was
there that day, the third of July 1982. It was broiling hot, almost
unbearable. Jennings came rushing out of the house and yelled
at us; he'd been doing that for the last few days. He seemed at
the end of his rope. Then he rushed over to his car and tore
off. We followed him north along a county road for maybe ten
miles, at a crazy speed. After a while, a bit ahead on the road,
past a long curve, an incredible cloud of smoke rose up. When
we got there, we saw that Jennings had crashed head-on into a
truck. Both vehicles were ablaze. I got as close as I could and saw
him moving a little in the car, burned up.'
'So you didn't see the collision itself?' said Holm.
Larner smiled again, the same smile of understanding and
indulgence that had become characteristic of their relationship.
Hjelm felt a bit like an outsider.
'I know why you're persisting in this, Halm,' said Larner.
'No. We were a few hundred yards back, and there was a curve
in the road. And no, I didn't see his face as he burned up. Did
he fake the accident and flee the scene? No. For one thing, there
was nowhere for him to go, just flat, deserted earth all around,
and no other vehicle was in the vicinity; and for another - and
this is crucial - the teeth from the body in the car were his. I had
to spend a great deal of time convincing myself that he actually
died in that car.
'But he did. Don't believe anything else. Don't do what I did
and get stuck on Jennings. It destroyed any chance of moving
forward on this case. I can't even come up with a sensible
hypothesis any more. K remains a mystery. He must have been
sitting somewhere, laughing out loud, while I harassed a tired,
unemployed war veteran and drove him to his death. Then, just
to show me how wrong I'd been, he killed two people within
six months; both of them died long after Jennings did. And then
vanished into thin air.'
Larner closed his eyes.
'I thought I was done with him,' he said slowly. 'I kept
working on the case, going through every little detail with a
fine-toothed comb for several years after the eighteenth and
final murder. More than a decade went by. I started working
on other things, chasing racists in the South, taking on drug
traffickers in Vegas, but he hung over me the whole time. And
then that bastard started again. He'd moved to New York. He
was mocking me.'
'And you're dead certain that it's him?'
Larner touched his nose, tired. 'For security reasons, we
make sure that only a very tiny number of agents know the
crucial details of each case. For K, it was me and a man by the
name of Camerun. Don Camerun died of cancer in 1986. Not
even Jerry Schonbauer knows this particular detail - I'm the only
one in the bureau who does - it's about the pincers. It's the same
pincers, and they're inserted in the same, exact, exceedingly
complicated way. Because it's your case now, you two will also
be given access to the description; I strongly recommend that
no one else learns about it.'
'What happened with this Commando Cool character who
moved to New York?' Holm persisted. 'The stockbroker?'
Larner laughed. 'Apparently all of my old thoughts are
floating in the air and you're catching them, Halm.'
'Kerstin,' she said.
'OK, Charstin. You're absolutely right, Steve Harrigan isn't
mentioned in the report I sent you. But I've checked up on him.
He's in the complete material that you'll get to look at. Harrigan
is a billionaire, always on the go. He's been abroad during each
and every one of the six murders in the second round. And he
is definitely not in Sweden now. So now that considerably more
than five minutes have passed, let's join Jerry in the showroom
and watch a movie.'
He led them through the corridors and into an auditorium
that, sure enough, resembled an actual cinema. The giant man
was sitting on a table up front, below the screen, dangling his
feet. His trouser legs were slightly pulled up, exposing a pair of
extremely hairy calves above the regulation black socks. When
he saw them, he hopped down and showed them to seats in the
front.
'Jerry had just come in from the Kentucky office, when the
second round started,' Larner said, wiggling into one of the
sleep-inducing chairs. 'He's a damn good agent. Took Roger
Penny alone, if you've heard of him. Go ahead, Jerry. I'm gonna
take a nap. It's awful at first, but you'll get used to it.'
The lights went down with a dimmer function; it really did
feel like a cinema.
The special effects did, too. Unfortunately, they were not
Hollywood brand.
'Michael Spender.' Schonbauer's bass accompanied a picture
of a man whose only whole body part was his head, under which
two conspicuous red dots shone from his neck like lanterns. His
head was canted backwards, white and swollen. He was naked.
The look in the dead eyes had retained the same horrible pain
as Andreas Gallano's. The nails on his hands and feet had been
ripped away, the skin had been cut from his trunk in narrow
stripes, and his penis had been split down the middle from glans
to base and lay open, two bloody rags, one on each side of his
groin.
Their nausea was abrupt and mutual. They very nearly had
to run from the room.
'Spender was the first victim,' Schonbauer continued expressionlessly,
'a computer engineer at Macintosh in Louisville.
Found by a berry-picker in the woods in north-western
Kentucky about two weeks after his death. Went missing from
his workplace after lunch on September fourth, 1978. Was
discovered on the afternoon of the nineteenth, sixty miles from
his home town. Worked on the development of the first big
Apple computer.'
The next victim was unidentified, a large man with Slavic
features. The picture was a bit more stomach-friendly. He was
partially dressed, but his fingers and genitals were disfigured.
'Looks a bit Russian,' Hjelm said, thinking of the absurd
KGB theory.
'Without a doubt,' said Schonbauer. As soon as it was
possible, we sent the fingerprints to the Russian police, but
it didn't result in anything. We don't have any information at
all, except that he was found in southern Kentucky about two
months after Spender. In an old outhouse near a deserted farm.
He had been dead for over a week.'
The next picture showed another unidentified victim. A thin,
fit white man in his sixties, naked, disfigured in the same way
as Spender. The picture was gruesome. It was dusk, there was
a dim light above the treetops, and the only thing that gleamed
was the body, sitting straight up on a rock in the woods. Rigor
mortis. The arms were sticking straight out from the body, as
though they had been lifted by an inner, irresistible force; the
bones were sticking straight out of the hands, like nails that
had been driven out from the inside. The eyes stared, openly
accusing.
Hjelm didn't get used to it; on the contrary, he felt even
closer to throwing up.
They rolled on, a terrible cavalcade of the remains of
suffering. It was beyond the limits of human comprehension.
The very quantity made the crimes even more gruesome.
Slowly but surely, the extent of the case became clear to them
- the incredible accumulation of human suffering. Holm cried
out twice, silently; Hjelm felt her shoulder lightly nudging his.
He cried out once too, but more loudly.
'Do you want me to stop?' Schonbauer asked calmly. 'I
couldn't make it all the way through till my third try. I'm pretty
used to it now.'
Larner was snoring audibly next to them.
'No, keep going,' said Hjelm, trying to convince himself that
he had recovered.
'We have so many of them,' Schonbauer said in a subdued
voice. 'So incredibly many serial killers, and no one can really
understand a single one of them. Least of all themselves.'
In the end their defence mechanisms kicked in, and although
they never started snoring, they slowly became indifferent.
Like a horrible conclusion, Lars-Erik Hassel woke them up. He
was sitting on his chair with shredded fingers, sprawling in all
directions; his genitals were a swamp of half-floating remnants.
Through the small window in the background, they could see
part of a large aircraft.
His head was craned back; he stared at them upside down,
his pain mixed with disgust, his suffering with paradoxical relief.
Maybe, Hjelm thought, he was relieved that it wasn't Laban.
The lights came up again. Schonbauer returned to the table
and sat with his legs dangling once again like a teenage girl's.
Larner awoke in mid-snore with a start and snuffled loudly.
Hjelm rolled his shoulders. Holm was sitting stock-still. No one
looked at anyone else for some time.
Larner stood, yawned, and stretched until his compact body
creaked. 'And now, do you two have some dessert for this party?'
Kerstin handed over the Swedish folders wordlessly.
Larner opened them, skimmed through the pictures, and
gave them to Schonbauer, who would soon add them to the
series of images. Then he got up to leave.
Kerstin and Paul thanked Schonbauer, who gave a curt nod,
and they all followed Larner out. Walking through the corridors,
they came to a door without a name on it. Larner opened it.
They stepped into an empty room.
'Your workroom,' he said with a gesture. 'I hope you can
work together.'
The office looked exactly like Larner's, minus all the signs of
life. The question was how much of their own they could offer.
The desk had been pulled out from the wall and furnished with
two chairs, one on each side. Two computers rubbed shoulders
on the desk next to a telephone and a short call list. Larner
picked it up.
'My number' - he pointed - 'Jerry's number, my pager,
Jerry's pager. You can always get hold of us. Below are names of
the files in question, descriptions of them, personal passwords,
and guest passes with codes so you can get in, but only in here.
Locked doors are doors that you don't have admittance to. You
have no reason to leave this corridor, nor any possibility of doing
so. Bathrooms, women's and men's, are a few doors down.
There are a couple of cafeterias -1 recommend La Traviata two
floors down. Any questions?'
No questions. Or an endless number, depending on how you
looked at it. None were asked, in any case.
'It's 6 p.m. now,' Larner continued. 'If you like, you can
work for a few hours. I stay till about six. Unfortunately I'm
busy tonight, otherwise we could eat dinner together. Jerry has
offered to eat with you and show you around town, if you'd like.
You can let him know.
'So all that's left is to wish you good luck. You don't need to
worry about getting into the wrong things on the computers
- they're customised for you, and everything confidential is
elsewhere. Contact me or Jerry if problems or questions come
up. Bye.'
He disappeared. They were alone.
Holm rubbed her eyes. 'I don't actually know if I can handle
this,' she said. 'It's midnight Swedish time. Shall we accept
Swedish time and go back to the inn?'
'Maybe we shouldn't leave right away,' said Hjelm. 'We have
to continue being diplomatic'
She sensed a slightly sarcastic bite and smiled. 'Yeah, yeah,
curiosity got the better of me, I admit it. My strategy went to
hell.'
'CIA--'
'OK, OK, rub it in. I made the judgement that he wouldn't
be angry'
'I don't think he was. More like relieved. What do you
think?'
'I don't know. But I understand why he got stuck on
Jennings.'
'But he's right that we have to think past him.'
Are you sure?'
They looked at each other. Their jet lag, combined with the
overdose of impressions, made them giggle foolishly. Their
exhaustion was about to get the better of them. Hjelm liked
the irresponsible stubbornness that had fallen upon them;
their defence mechanisms were starting to be taken out of the
game.
'Shall we say to hell with Schonbauer's tour?' he asked.
'Can you be diplomatic and let him know in a nice way?'
'You're the diplomat.'
'In theory. This is in practice. You were much better at it than
I was.'
'I was just absent-minded,' he said, dialling Schonbauer's
number. 'Jerry, this is Paul. Yalm, yes, Yalm. We're going to try
to work on this as long as we can manage, and then we'll let our
jet lag take over. Can we put our tour of Manhattan off until
tomorrow? Good. OK. Bye.'
He hung up and exhaled. 'I think he was relieved.'
'Good,' said Holm. 'Should we get an overview of what we
have and let the details wait? I've had enough details for today.'
The computers contained all the necessary information.
Detailed lists of all the victims. Folders with all the crime-scene
investigations. Folders for every individual case investigation.
Expert psychological profiles of perpetrators. Folders with all
the autopsy results. Folders with all the press cuttings. Files with
descriptions of weapons, FYEO.
'What does that mean?' Hjelm asked.
'For your eyes only. This must be where he has the top-secret
details that connect the first round with the second.'
They glanced through the files; an incredible amount of
information. How the hell could they add to this enormous
investigation even a tiny bit? It seemed hopeless enough to
motivate them to stop working. They turned their computers
off after the countdown 'one potato two potato three potato
four!' and felt blissfully frivolous.
'Do you think we can run away from the FBI?' said Kerstin
Holm.



Of course it would have been an experience to get out and see New York by 
night, but they weren't disappointed that they'd
declined Jerry Schonbauer's offer. They enjoyed a quiet dinner
in the hotel restaurant instead. It was 2 a.m. in Sweden, nine
o'clock local time, when they came down to the lobby and
looked for the restaurant in the restaurant. It was, in other
words, very small.
Skipper's Inn continued to play at being an English inn. What
the restaurant lacked in variety and elaborateness, it made up
for in quality. They chose one of the two possible entrees, beef
Wellington, and a bottle of Bordeaux in an unfamiliar brand,
Chateau Germaine. They sat at a window table and got at
least a small, indirect view of Manhattan's street life. The little
restaurant, where they had been the first guests, filled up, and
soon all twelve tables were occupied.
Paul Hjelm was struck by another sensation of deja vu.
Last time they had sat alone, enjoying a quiet dinner in a
restaurant in an unfamiliar place, the consequences had been
unmistakable. He squirmed slightly, thinking of Cilia and the
children and the sense of family that they had so strenuously
won back. He thought of the extreme temptation that the
woman on the other side of the table still represented, of
how she invaded his dreams and remained a pressing mystery.
She had put on a modest but noticeable amount of make-up
and had changed into a little black dress with tiny straps that
criss-crossed her otherwise bare back. She was so small and
thin, and her face seemed smaller than usual within the frame
of her dark, slightly messy bob. Had she tidied herself up on
purpose?
He couldn't help saying, 'Do you remember the last time we
sat like this?'
She nodded and smiled, incredibly attractively. 'Malmo.'
That husky Gothenburg alto. Her duets with Gunnar Nyberg
echoed in his ears. Schubert lieder. Goethe poems. Was he
trying to get away or to get closer? When he opened his mouth,
he didn't know what his next step would be. He let it happen.
'That was one and a half years ago,' he said.
'Soon,' she said.
'You remember?'
'Why wouldn't I?'
'You know..."
The social wreckage bobbed on the surface. He tried to force
it down and said abruptly, 'What was it that happened?'
She could interpret that as she wished. She was quiet, then
said at last, 'I had to go another way'
'Where to, then?'
'As far as possible from work. I was close to quitting.'
'I didn't know that.'
'No one knew besides me.'
Not even him? He thanked his creator that he didn't say it. 'Not even him,' she 
said.
He didn't question it. She could go whatever way she wanted
or needed to.
After you and your agonising over decisions, I planned to live
without a man,' she said quietly. 'I needed time to think. Then
I met him, a silly coincidence. He kept calling at work, too, so
soon everyone knew I had a new man. What no one knew was
that he was sixty and a pastor in the Church of Sweden.'
Hjelm said nothing.
With her eyes on her fork, she poked distractedly at the
half-eaten beef Wellington. 'No one thinks you can have a
passionate relationship with a sixty-year-old pastor in the
Church of Sweden. But that's what it was. That's the only kind
of relationship I seem able to handle these days.'
She looked out to the crowds of people on West 25th Street.
'He'd been a widower for twenty years,' she continued in the
same toneless voice. 'The pastor in the church where I sang in
the choir. He cried when I sang, came up, and kissed my hand.
I felt like a schoolgirl who finally got some attention. I was a
daughter and a mother at the same time. After a while, out of
that, a woman was reborn.'
She continued to avoid his gaze.
'There was so much unfinished in that man, but he finished
a little of it with me. He carried so much quiet and lovely life
wisdom - I don't know if it's possible to understand - an ability
to enjoy the little gift of every day. If nothing else, he taught me
that.'
'What happened?'
She finally looked at him for a split second, her eyes slightly
veiled but very much alive. 'He died.'
He took her hand and held it, unmoving. Both looked out
onto the street. Time nearly stopped.
'He was already dying when we met,' she continued quietly.
'I didn't realise that until now. He had so much life in him and
wanted to pass it on. Give a farewell gift to the living. I hope he
got a little bit of me to take with him. Some passion, if nothing
else.'
He had stopped thinking of how he ought to act and just
listened. It was nice.
'It went quickly. He was actually supposed to go through
his third round of chemotherapy. He didn't bother - he chose
one last period of health instead of a fight to the finish. I kept
a vigil over him for a week, every day after work. That was last
spring. It was like he just shrank up. But he smiled almost the
entire time. That was strange. I don't know if it was the giving
or the taking that made him happy. Maybe just the exchange. As
though he had received one last insight into the mysteries of life
and could await the big mystery without fear.'
She turned to him for another split second, as if to make sure
he was listening. He was. She turned away again.
'I don t know she said. 'Those pictures today . . . you think
you can prepare yourself, but you can't. You think you've seen
everything, but you haven't. It's like there were different deaths.
My pastor friend was in pain, too, horrible pain, but he smiled.
There were no smiles here, just the horrific faces of suffering,
like a frieze of horrible medieval pictures of Christ, made to
strike terror into the viewer. A warning. Like he's trying to warn
us away from life, as medieval prelates were. And he almost
succeeds.'
'I don't know,' Hjelm tried. 'I don't really see a message
in what he does. I think looking at those bodies is more like
being confronted with waste products, remainders, industrial
waste, if you know what I mean. It feels like the mechanical,
industrial deaths of Auschwitz. If anything can ever feel like
that. . .'
Now she looked into his eyes. She had got what she needed.
There and then, in her deep, distressed, empty eyes, he saw the
spark ignite again. The fabulous inexhaustibility of her eyes.
He wondered what she saw in his face. A clown who runs
around trying to hide his erection? He hoped there was a trace
of something more.
'Maybe they're not incompatible,' she said, and her
new-found energy didn't erase her thoughtful tone. 'Expressing
contempt for life and clinical perfection in one and the same
action. It is one and the same action, after all.'
They sank into pondering. The professional and the private
blended uncontrollably into each other. Nothing in this life was
isolated.
He sensed that it was his turn. He took her hand again.
She didn't resist.
'Was what we had before just sex?' he asked without
quavering. 'Is there such a thing as "just sex"?'
She smiled grimly and kept hold of his hand.
'There probably isn't,' she said. 'And in any case, what we
had wasn't that. It was - confusing. Too confusing. I had just
got out of a hellish relationship with a man who raped me
without understanding that that's what he was doing. He was
a policeman, you know that much, and then I ended up with
another policeman who was the complete opposite. Hard-boiled
and full of bright ideas as a cop, tender and awkward privately.
The pictures got all mixed up. I had to get away from it. You fled
back into the bosom of your family. I didn't have anything like
that, so I fled in my own way'
'In one way, life is easier than ever,' said Paul. 'In another, it's
harder.'
She looked into his eyes. 'How do you mean?'
'I don't really know. I have this feeling that the walls are
closing in around us. We've cracked open the door, but now
it's being closed again. And the walls are beginning to creep in.'
He was searching for words, but it was going slowly. He was
trying to formulate things he had never formulated before. 'I
don't know if it's comprehensible.'
'I think it is,' she said. 'You actually have changed.'
'A little bit, maybe,' he said, and paused. 'Just a little on the
surface, but it has to start somewhere. Our inherited patterns of
habit break us down before we even get a chance to start living.
I haven't gone through any revolutionary outer changes, as you
have; it's actually been a pretty uneventful year. But a few new
possibilities have opened up.'
She nodded. The conversation died away but seemed to be
continuing inside them. Their eyes drifted away into nothing.
Finally she said, Tm starting to understand how important it is
that we catch him.'
He nodded. He knew what she meant.
They left the restaurant and walked hand in hand up the
stairs. They stopped outside his room.
'What should we say?' she said. 'Seven?'
He sighed and smiled. 'OK, breakfast at seven o'clock.'
Til knock on your door. Try not to be in the shower.'
He chuckled. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and went
to her room. He remained standing in the corridor for a few
minutes.




24


They came, they saw, they conquered - their jet lag. But hardly
anything else. Their focus narrowed, cutting out all of New
York, targeted at two computers on a desk.
Sure enough, there was a gigantic amount of material, thousands
of pages with impressive detail that extended to ten-page
interviews with truly unimportant people, like those who
had found bodies and neighbours of neighbours; pedantically
scientific comparisons with earlier and contemporary serial killers;
immensely elaborate maps of the crime scenes, socio-political analyses by 
university professors, autopsy reports that made note of the victims' incipient 
gum problems and developing kidney
stones, extremely carefully executed crime-scene investigations,
and Ray Lamer's labouriously compiled description of
Commando Cool's actions in the South East Asian jungles.
It probably wasn't the right place to start, but Hjelm picked
the last item. If Larner had got hold of the truth, which was
in no way certain, President Nixon had created Commando
Cool by direct order, after he received information about the
steadfastness of the NLF soldiers who had been captured in
the field; they tended to die before they had time to talk. What
was needed was a small, secret, active-service, mobile group
of torturers with combat experience, even if the word torturer was, of course, 
never mentioned. The task of creating it went
to military counter-intelligence - and here Larner had placed
quite a few question marks - which collected eight top men,
each one younger than the last, and forced the operation into
existence. It was in constant use during the final stages of the
war. Where the pincers came from was uncertain, and Hjelm
read 'CIA' between Larner's lines.
He opened the top-secret file about the pincers. There they
were, in black and white: to the left a photograph of Commando
Cool's vocal cord pincers; to the right a sketched reconstruction
of It's pincers. Their function was the same in principle, but
the differences were striking. It's pincers were of an advanced,
refined design, which seemed to have undergone some sort of
industrial process of improvement. Scrupulous descriptions of
their function followed: how the micro-wires moved through
the tube with the help of miniature wheels, penetrated the
throat, and fastened themselves around the vocal cords with
small barbs, putting the vocal cords out of commission. A slight
turn of one of the two small wheels then made it possible for
whispers to force their way out. When they had forced their
way out, all one had to do was turn the wheel again and end
the job, in complete silence. The version on the right, It's, was
designed so that it was easier to make a puncture correctly.
But Commando Cool had never used it during the war; it kept
using the older model to the very end. The differences between
the sets of pincers meant two things: one, that it was not at
all certain that K was someone from Commando Cool; and
two, that the horrible invention from the Vietnam War had
been further developed. Why? And by whom? There were no
hypotheses in Larner's report.
After this came the second pincers, the pincers of pure
torture, the one that twisted and prised at the cluster of nerves
in the neck. This one had changed, too; someone had located
new points on the nerves that were capable of increasing the
pain even more, thus making the pincers even more effective.
Here, too, the file provided a scrupulous description of the exact
progression of pain, how it shot down to the back and shoulders
and then up into the brain itself, resulting in explosive attacks.
The point was that the same pincers had been used in the first
and second waves; they weren't just identical models - certain
characteristics of the wound formation indicated that the exact same pincers 
were used, and this was invoked as justification for
saying that the perpetrator was the same. K.
If the pincers were the result of an industrial improvement
process, then many people must have been involved in the task
of development, whether it was military counter-intelligence
or the CIA or something else. But at this very point, where a
considerable number of further suspects could have been sifted
out, Larner had hit a wall of silence. Had he and the hacker,
Andrews, invented Balls because he suspected that there
actually was a Balls, a secret commander who would have been
promoted all the way up into the Pentagon to effectively choke
off all access to information? How had Larner obtained the
information about the members of Commando Cool when he
hadn't got anything else?
He called Larner and asked.
All that was a strange process Larner answered on the
phone. 'It took a lot of bribes and string pulling and veiled
threats. After running into every wall imaginable, I worked
my way to an anonymous official who, for several thousand
dollars, copied the entire top-secret file on Commando Cool for
me. Everything ought to have been there, but the only thing it
contained was a list of the group members. The military just
didn't have the rest of it.'
'Was that when you started thinking CIA?'
Lamer chuckled. 'I guess I had been thinking that the whole
time,' he said, and hung up.
Kerstin pulled up the list of victims and printed it out.
The macabre inventory contained the sparsest amount of
information imaginable: name, race, age, job, place of residence,
site of discovery and approximate time of death.

1)Michael Spender, white, 46, civil engineer at
Macintosh, resident of Louisville, found in NW
Kentucky, died around September 5,1978.
2)Unidentified white male, 45-50 years of age, found in
S Kentucky, died in early November 1978.
3)Unidentified white male, approximately 60, found in
E Kentucky, died around March 14, 1979.

4)Yin Li-Tang, Taiwanese citizen, 28, resident of
Lexington, biologist at University of Kentucky in
Lexington, found on campus, died on May 9, 1979.
5)Robin Marsh-Eliot, white, 44, resident of Washington
DC, foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, found
in Cincinnati, Ohio, died in June or July 1979.
6)Unidentified white female, about 35, found in S
Kentucky, died around September 3, 1979.
7)Unidentified white male, about 55 years of age, found
in S Illinois, died between January and March 1980.
8)Unidentified Indian male, about 30, found in SW
Tennessee, died between March 13 and 15, 1980.
9)Andrew Schultz, white, 36, resident of New York,
pilot for Lufthansa, found in E Kentucky, died October 1980.
10)Unidentified white male, about 65, found in Kansas
City, died December 1980.
11)Atle Gundersen, white, Norwegian citizen, 48, resident of Los Angeles, 
nuclear physicist at UCLA,
found in S West Virginia, died May 28, 1981.
12)Unidentified white male, 50-55, found in Frankfort,
Kentucky, died August 1981.
13)Tony Barrett, white, 27, resident of Chicago,
chemical engineer at Brabham Chemicals, Chicago,
found in SW Kentucky, died between August 24 and 27, 1981.
14)Unidentified white male, 30-35, found in N Kentucky,
died in October or November 1981.
15)Unidentified white male, 55-60, found in S Indiana,
died January 1982.
16)Lawrence B. R. Carp, white, 64, resident of Atlanta,
vice president of RampTech Computer Parts, found in
his home in Atlanta, Georgia, died March 14, 1982. [Death of primary suspect 
Wayne Jennings, July 3, 1982]
17)Unidentified black male, 44, found in SW Kentucky,
died October 1982.
18)Richard G. deClarke, white, South African citizen, 51, resident of Las 
Vegas, owner of a Las Vegas porn
club, found in E Missouri, died between November 2 and 5, 1982.
[Nearly fifteen-year break]
19)Sally Browne, white, 24, resident of New York,
prostitute, found in the East Village, Manhattan, died July 27, 1997.
20)Nick Phelps, white, 47, resident of New York,
unemployed carpenter, found in SoHo, Manhattan, died
November 1997.
21)Daniel 'Dan the Man Jones, black, 21, resident of
New York, rapper, found in Brooklyn, died between
March and April 1998.
22)Alice Coley, white, 65, resident of Atlantic City, New
Jersey, on disability, found in her home, died between
May 12 and 14, 1998.
23)Pierre Fontaine, white, French citizen, 23, resident
of Paris, tourist, university student, found in Greenwich
Village, Manhattan, died July 23-24, 1998.
24)Lars-Erik Hassel, white, Swedish citizen, 58, resident of Stockholm, 
literary critic, found at Newark
International Airport, died September 2, 1998.
25)Andreas Gallano, white, Swedish citizen, resident
of Alby, drug dealer, found in Riala, died between
September 3 and 6, 1998.
26)Eric Lindberger, white, Swedish citizen, 33, resident
of Stockholm, civil servant with the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, found on Lidingo, died September 12, 1998.
27)Unidentified white male, 25-30 years of age, found in Stockholm, died 
September 12, 1998.

Could no other conclusions really be drawn from this list,
other than those that Larner had drawn? She was struck by a
short, brutal suspicion that Larner hadn't put all his cards on
the table.
She turned to the psychological profile. A group of experts
had made an attempt to explain the fifteen-year gap. Apparently
it hadn't been simple; she perceived that they had had differences
of opinion that they tried to bring into line with one another,
and the result was fascinating. She wondered why the profile
hadn't been part of what Larner had delivered to Sweden.
The first murders, according to the group of experts,
suggested a rather young man's hatred of authority, personified
in an older, well-educated man. His inferiority complex turns into delusions of 
grandeur when he is able to silence the voices
that have kept him down and possibly denied him admittance
to the university. It makes the inaccessible accessible, and it
makes them feel the same pain he felt. He can even control
how much of the pain they express; all he has to do is turn a
wheel. Because wasn't that how they had behaved towards him,
denying him the opportunity to speak, keeping him, with one
fell swoop, from the higher education that would have made
it possible for him to understand and express his suffering? His behaviour is a 
distorted variation on 'an eye for an eye'; his
retaliation imitates what he feels he has been subjected to. He
wins back the power. The great number of victims indicates not
that he is becoming increasingly bloodthirsty - there is no real
acceleration - but rather hints at the degree of oppression he
has experienced. It takes eighteen deaths for him to get his nose
above the water so that he can take his place in human society.
For perhaps his bloodthirstiness gradually diminishes, and he
reaches equilibrium; the murders have a truly therapeutic effect.
He reaches the point where he feels he has attained a balance in
status between himself and authority, and then he can stop and
work his way to a position of authority himself. That is what he
does during these fifteen years.
He gets the upper hand. Perhaps he has managed to get an
education and become a leader or boss. But naturally his past
has not left him unscathed. Now he has become the oppressor
himself; that is what he trained to be. And then he cracks down
on those who are weaker. His hatred of authority is revealed
as envy - he was envious of their power. And now he is the
one who strikes first; he pokes out the first eye, instead of just
getting revenge. He plays a decisive role. His actions no longer
only reflect those of the more powerful, he is more powerful.
And this can go on forever.
Thus the Kentucky Killer is likely a white man in a position
of power who has had to fight his way up against all odds. This
was the gist of the expert group's report.
Kerstin Holm once again neglected to be diplomatic and
called Lamer.
'Ray, Kerstin here. Halm, yes, Halm, dammit.' This last word
was in Swedish. Tm wondering why we didn't have the opportunity
to read the expert group's psychological profile earlier.'
'Because it's bullshit,' the phone reverberated.
'What do you mean? There are a lot of aspects we haven't
thought of in here.'
'I was in the group of experts. I agree that it's a coherent
narrative. It works. But the story swallowed up the troublesome
objections from the police officer in the group. The desire to
create unity forced the most fundamental fact to the side.'
'And what's that?'
'It's professionalism.'
'What do you mean?'
'K isn't trying to even out any positions; it's not a process
but rather an ice-cold series of exterminations. He leaves no
red-hot evidence behind, only frostbitten remains. The corpses
are ruins, not buildings.'
She didn't say anything - she recognised the argument. She
thanked him and hung up.
'He agrees with you,' she said.
Paul Hjelm, who had just been scrutinising the delicate line
between the pincers, gave a start. 'What are you talking about?'
he said, irritated.
'Nothing,' she said, and tried to press on through the material.
It didn't really work. She called Larner again and got straight to the point. 
'Is it really professionalism in the second round?'
'As you have surely noticed' - his voice remained patient - 'I
have very little to say about the second round. I don't understand
it. It is the same professionalism, the exact same course of action.
The victims are what has changed character.'
'But why?' she nearly shouted. 'Why did he go from engineers
and researchers to prostitutes and retired people?'
'Solve that, and you've solved the case,' Larner said calmly.
'But is the distinction really that clear-cut? After all, you've
recently had literary critics and diplomats and drug dealers die.
Both kinds, one might say.'
'I'm sorry,' she said remorsefully. 'It's just so frustrating.'
'When you've worked on it for twenty years, you'll see what
frustration is.'
She hung up and reluctantly went on. The difficult thing
was not to come up with hypotheses, to resist venting them and
just get to work. To expand their horizons instead of narrowing
them. To wait for the right moment.
They devoted the whole day to getting a reasonable overview.
As well as the evening. Their tour of Manhattan would have to
wait yet another day.
The next day they began to narrow their focus and take a
fine-toothed comb to the thousand pages to find possible Swedish
threads. Why had the killer gone to Sweden? Somewhere in
these pages was the solution.
Hjelm took upon himself the investigation of the eleventh
victim, the Norwegian, the nuclear physicist Atle Gundersen;
there might be something there. He contacted UCLA and tried
to find potential Swedish colleagues from the early 1980s; he
contacted the family in Norway. He burned up half a day but
drew a blank.
Holm turned to the descendant of Swedes in Commando
Cool, Chris Anderson. She even called him. He sounded
exhausted. He had been grilled many times and was sick and
tired of it. Vietnam was far away now; weren't they ever going
to let him bury the memories that still haunted him at night?
They had done terrible things, but it was war, and they had
worked almost directly under the president, so what could
they have done? No, he didn't know exactly how the chain of
command and the issuing of orders had worked; it should be in
the reports. Yes, he had been close friends with Wayne Jennings,
but they had drifted apart after the war. And now Anderson had
no contact at all with the land of his forefathers - he didn't even
talk to his parents.
They searched on, intensely. As soon as any tiny, burning
question appeared, Larner threw his patiently smothering
blanket over the flame. He seemed to have thought of everything
after all. They began to re-evaluate his work. The lack
of hypotheses and ideas seemed more and more to be because
there were none to find. He had kept a cool head and hadn't let
wild hypotheses take over in the absence of sensible ones.
Moving forward without having any clues to follow was the
most difficult balancing act in their line of work.
And yet they felt - and they talked a lot about it, talked too
much in general, were on their way to becoming friends instead
of lovers - that all they needed was one small, crucial piece for
the whole puzzle to become coherent; they felt frustratingly
close without having the slightest reason for such a feeling.
'There's something we've missed,' Paul said one evening in
the hotel restaurant. By now they had no thoughts of placing
their bodies anywhere but at the FBI building, in the taxi, or
in the hotel. It was becoming a routine. He kept acceptable
amounts of contact with Cilia and his family in Sweden; at first,
before he knew how it was going to go with him and Kerstin,
he hadn't felt very motivated to call - something had held
him back. But as they became more and more like pure police
officers, his uneasiness fell away, and his conversations with Cilia
felt completely normal. He missed her sometimes - when there
was time.
'What do you mean "missed"?' Kerstin said, biting into a
braised fillet of cod. 'We miss things all the time. The more we
find, the more we miss
Paul watched her sip her wine. Had he got so close to her that
she had stopped being beautiful? He contemplated her larynx
as the wine ran down. No, he hadn't. But perhaps his lust had
found an alternative route that hadn't been on his map earlier.
He was treading upon virgin territory - and the intractability of
fucking metaphorical language.
'I always have the feeling that we don't need to know more,' he said.
'Then what are we doing here?'
'Looking for the little surge of impulse that runs through it
all and brings it together.'
'You romantic' She smiled.
Had he seen that smile so often that it had stopped being
captivating? A ridiculous thought.
They stopped counting the days, simply swam like two fish
in an aquarium. One early morning, Larner appeared in the
door. He was worked up, and with his service weapon in place
under his armpit.
'Are you tired of this?' he called, exhilarated.
Four square eyes looked at him sceptically.
'What do you say to some real police work? Want to be
foreign observers at a raid on a drug den?'
They exchanged a glance. Maybe that was what they needed.
'OK,' Larner said as they half ran through the corridor behind
Jerry Schonbauer; the floor shook substantially, as though his
steps had transplanted the fault line from the west coast to the
east. 'We're on loan to ATE They don't really know what do
with us now that you guys are working on K. The rest of the
state's seria] killers are in other hands. We're going to a crack
house in Harlem - you'll have a chance to stare American reality
in the eye. Come along.'
They were out on the street. Big black American cars drove
up, and Hjelm and Holm threw themselves into one of them
alongside Larner and Schonbauer, all four in the back seat.
The two agents pulled on jackets with luminous yellow letters
on the back: ATF, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Like a funeral procession out to prevent the gravesite from
being stolen, the caravan forced its way through the New
York traffic and reached northern Manhattan, the hopeless
neighbourhoods, the sacrificed and buried neighbourhoods.
The building facades became more and more dilapidated; finally
it looked like a bombed-out city. Shadows of Dresden. The
faces in the streets became darker and darker, till finally they
were only black. It was a terrible but logical transformation,
a gradual transition from the white downtown to the black
Harlem. There was no possibility of trying to explain it away.
That was just how it was.
The cars stopped in a well-mannered line. Equally
well-mannered lines of ATF-clad experts poured out with
weapons drawn, then ran through a ragged, burnt garden,
ravaging what plants were there.
'Stay back,' Larner said, joining the ravagers. They gathered
in a more or less invisible line along the pavement on the next
block. All eyes were on one single building, a ramshackle
house, one of two buildings that remained in the rubble of the
neighbourhood. It was already surrounded by a well-organised
series of ATF men with sub-machine guns. They were
everywhere, pressed up against dirty stucco walls that seemed
to crackle in the desert-like sun. The asphalt quavered. It was
silent and desolate amid, instead of black faces, black jackets
with yellow letters. A few pigeons flapped up and flew around
the house in strangely rising circles, as though aiming for the
sun. The sole streak of cloud broke up before their eyes.
Everyone was in position, as in a photograph, a still image.
Then all at once, everyone moved, streaming into the ruin, an
army of superior ants intent on taking over the disintegrating
anthill. Finally Hjelm and Holm were alone on the street, a
vulnerable duo of foreign observers who might at any moment
be dragged into a doorway and given a liberal taste of American
reality. They heard sporadic gunshots from inside the house,
muffled, somehow unreal, as though Hollywood had supplied
some sound effects. A few sub-machine-gun rounds. Individual
shots. A minor explosion. It only took a minute, then silence. A
figure popped out the door, black with a black jacket, and waved
in their direction. It took a moment for them to realise that it
was waving at them, and even longer for them to realise that it
was Larner. They made their way over to him.
'Come on,' he said, waving his pistol. 'This is reality
Inside a light haze of dust met them, crystal-like, with the
sun dazzling through it - it stung in their throats. Gradually
they realised that the cloud that they were breathing in was
drugs - crack. Big black men were lying on the floor with their
hands behind their heads. The bodyguards, disarmed. Two were
without their hands on their heads; their torsos were half lying
against the walls, their legs and spines at strange angles. Blood
oozed out of an open wound, drop by drop, looking increasingly
viscous until the last drop hung in the air and seemed to be
sucked back in.
They went up to the first floor. Room after room looked
like one chemistry lab after another, with shattered flasks, overturned
bottles, flickering Bunsen burners - and thicker clouds
of dust. A dead body lay among the shards on a table, shot
to pieces, segmented, half covered in white dust that became
pinker and pinker until it finally turned to red and ran into a
body upon the body. People were on the floor here, too, with
their hands on the backs of their necks. All was silent. The calm
after the storm. The silence of the storm warning.
The next floor, the second. Chemistry workshops here too,
with different devices. Packs of plastic bags with white contents,
half open, the dust still rising, like a mist sliding over a lake.
Hands on necks. A dead person half hanging out the window,
a piece of glass like a shark's fin straight up through the trunk.
Windows were opened. The cloud of dust was carried out over
the city. Drugged pigeons cooed audibly. A white wind swept
through the house, reaching well-wrapped bundles of dollars in
the room furthest in, the inner room. The paper band around
one bundle was torn; the wind caught the green notes, and they
whirled about the room, were seized.
The room spun. A brown spot spread out around a prostrate
jeans-clad backside. They were all the way in, in the very
innermost room. Larner smiled, and his smile seemed to split
his head. Half his skull flew up eighteen inches and then fell
back. His skin was drawn down from his head, his skull flopped
around, his skin was sucked back up.
Hjelm staggered towards the open window and greedily
inhaled the dirty but uncrystalline air.
'You'll be drugged for a few seconds,' said Larner. 'It'll pass.'
Holm sat down on the floor next to the window and hugged
herself. Hjelm leaned out through the window, tried to find
stability, to focus his eyes. Everything was flying around. The
still image was heaving behind them. The silence died. People
were being moved out, with shouts and bellows. They didn't
see it.
A pair of pigeons descended unexpectedly from the sky and
landed gently on the slightly lower roof of the neighbouring
building. Hjelm stared at them as they sat placidly on the ridge
of the roof. A fixed point in the spinning world.
'You have to avoid inhaling for a while Larner said behind
him. 'You learn from your mistakes. Trial by error.'
He was punishing them - Hjelm realised that now. He kept
his eyes on the pigeons. They flew off some way and pecked
at something, then took off again but stayed within sight. He
followed their flight; they were doing aerobatics, mimicking
each other precisely. When they reached the stinking crater of
the crack house, they swept upward, then glided down through
the filthy air and stopped on a windowsill on the top floor of
the building next door. The window shone like gold in the sun.
Hjelm looked through the dirty but golden windowpane and
saw a man and a boy. As if in slow motion, the father lifted
his hand and struck his son, a classic, traditional box on the
ear, several times, using exactly the same motion, as though a
minute in time were being repeated again and again, just for
him, demanding his attention, and each image ended up on top
of the last in a fabulous multiple projection. The son's expression
after the blows, peering up at his father, inexhaustible. It was like
Laban Hassel, looking up at his father; like Danne, looking up at
his; then Gunnar Nyberg's children, looking up at theirs. Finally
K. The very last in the bunch, K looking up at K.
Bad blood always comes back round.
'Holy shit!' he yelled.
Holm staggered over and saw that he had it.
'This is it!' he yelled again, like an idiot.
The collective glares of the ATF men ate into the back of his
neck. He didn't give a damn.
'What is it?' Holm shouted in a strange, muted voice.
'The impulse,' he said with sudden calm. 'Clear as a bell.'
He turned abruptly and went over to Larner, who was
regarding him with deep scepticism.
'I've got him,' he said, his eyes boring into Larner's.
Then he rushed down the stairs. Larner looked at Holm,
bewildered. She nodded, and they rushed after him. He was
outside on the street with Schonbauer, who had just shoved a
substantial drug manufacturer into one of the black cars.
Schonbauer got into the driver's seat in one of the other
cars; Hjelm hopped in, and Holm and Lamer scrambled into
the back. They drove off. Hjelm didn't say a word.
'What are we doing?' Larner said after fifteen minutes.
'Looking at a picture,' said Hjelm.
They said no more on the way back to the FBI building.
When they arrived, they reached the corridor, and Hjelm got
to Larner's office ahead of the others. He grabbed Wayne
Jennings's thick file and flipped through the photographs. He
found the horrible picture of Jennings and the Vietnamese man
and placed it to the side. Then he held up the photo of Jennings
with a child on his lap.
'Who is this?' he asked.
'Jennings's son,' Larner said, surprised. 'Lamar.'
Hjelm placed the picture on the desk. Jennings was dressed
like a cowboy, minus the hat: jeans; a red, white and blue flannel
shirt; and sandy-brown snakeskin boots. He had his hand on his
son's head, but he wasn't smiling; his face was expressionless, and
the ice-cold blue gaze penetrated the camera. You might almost
get the impression that he was pressing his son's head down, as
if to hold him in place. The son was perhaps ten years old, just
as blond and blue-eyed, but his eyes hardly seemed to see. Upon
closer examination, one could make out an absentness in them,
as if he were only a shell.
'This is K,' Hjelm said. 'Both of them.'
His manic state ending, he shed the dramatic persona
and became a policeman again. He cleared his throat. 'What
happened to Jennings's family after he died?'
'They lived in the same place for a few years. Then his wife
killed herself. The boy ended up in an orphanage and then with
foster-parents.'
'How old was the boy?'
'He was eleven, I think, when Jennings died.'
'He must have seen it.'
'What are you talking about?'
Hjelm ran his hand through his hair and collected himself.
'He must have seen it. He must have seen his father in action.'
He took a deep breath.
'That explains the difference between the first and second
rounds, and it explains why he went to Sweden. The first round
was Wayne Jennings's work, just as you thought all along, Ray.
They are executions, professional jobs - we can come back to
why. But the second round is the work of a seriously damaged
person. It is the work of his son.
'He must have surprised his father, while he was torturing
someone, when he was around nine or ten. It destroyed him
- what else could it have done? We have to assume that it was
the culmination of a hellish childhood of abuse and iciness, the
whole shebang. When his father dies, the son gets his hands
on his pincers; he's seen him do the worst with them, the
most nightmarish deeds imaginable, and he knows every little
movement. They become heirlooms, but he doesn't know what
to do with them; he's no murderer, he's the murdered. Then at
some point something happens. I bet he somehow finds out. . .
that his father is alive.
'I'm convinced that Wayne Jennings is alive, that he faked
that car accident. It took some resources, but he had a lot of
resources behind him. He went underground and committed
another couple of murders, mostly, I think, to punish you, Ray,
for your stubbornness and in order, so to speak, to posthumously
prove his innocence. Murders number seventeen and eighteen
resulted in your ending up in a trial.
'Then Jennings flees the country. The wave of murders stops.
Jennings's so-called widow kills herself; either she knows that
her husband is the Kentucky Killer and has known it the whole
time and can't take it any longer, or else she works it out and
kills herself in horror. Much later when their son is an adult, he
finds out his father is alive, and he realises that even his mother's
suicide was the work of his father. In addition, he now has a
culprit to blame for his own suffering.
'He is already broken, beyond all hope; now he becomes
a murderer as well. His are crimes of insanity; he's letting
off steam or murdering for lust, we don't know which, but
he's practising, too: practising for the real murder, the only
important murder, the murder of his father. Somehow, he finds
out that his father is living abroad - in Sweden - and decides
to hunt him down. He somehow obtains an address in Sweden
- it's a hidden cabin some forty miles north of Stockholm.
He travels there with a fake passport. What happens next is
unclear - but in any case, we don't have just one Kentucky
Killer in Sweden, we have two.'
Larner sank down into his chair, closed his eyes and thought.
'I remember that boy so well,' he said slowly. 'He seemed
pretty disturbed - you're right about that. Always sat in his
mom's lap, never said a word, seemed almost autistic. And it
would explain an awful lot. What do you think, Jerry?'
Schonbauer sat on the desk, dangling his legs; apparently this
was his thinking position. He was silent for a bit while his legs
were swinging. The table creaked alarmingly.
'It's a long shot,' he said. 'But it might be worth looking into.'
'It might be easy, too,' said Holm. 'Do you have a phone
book?'
Chuckling, Larner threw an enormous phone book up onto
the desk.
Holm paged through it. Then, without asking permission,
she tore out a page. 'There's one Lamar Jennings in New York,'
she said. 'In Queens.'
'Let's go,' Larner said.
On the way to the car, Lamer led them into an area with
quadruple safety locks and triple PIN codes. Out of a large metal
cabinet he took two complete shoulder holsters and tossed them
to the Swedes.
'Special permission,' he said. They strapped themselves in
for a journey into the heart of darkness and followed Larner out
to the car.



It was a nondescript apartment building in an immense, fortresslike
row of identical buildings on a cross-street of Queens's
enormous Northern Boulevard. The neighbourhood was poor,
but not dilapidated; a slum, but not a ghetto. The stairwell
was dark and cluttered. Pieces of junk were strewn around the
stairwell; no one had cleaned here for a long time.
They crept up the stairs, flight after flight. The stairwell
became darker and warmer, bathed in a stagnant, dusty, dry
heat. They were dripping with sweat.
Finally they were standing outside a door that bore an
ordinary nameplate reading 'Jennings'.
All four of them drew their weapons. Their jaws were tense,
their breathing suspended. They feared for the welfare of their
souls more than their bodies. They were on their way into the
lion's den. What gross distortions of human life would they
encounter in there?
Schonbauer rang the bell. No one answered, and they heard
no movement inside. He carefully pulled on the door handle.
Locked. He looked at Larner, who nodded slightly. Schonbauer
kicked the door in, causing splinters to fly. One kick was enough.
He rushed in; they followed as if he were an enormous shield.
No one was home. The meagre light that followed them in
through the busted door was the first light that had been there in
a long time. As their eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, the
room's contents emerged slowly - it was perplexingly empty,
naked, blank. The air was still and hot. Motes of floating dust
swirled in pirouettes. There were no human skins hung up on
the wall, no rotten heads on stakes, no signs of the devil at all,
just a bare studio apartment with a shabby desk and bed, an
empty kitchen nook and an empty bathroom. A black Venetian
blind was pulled down over the only window.
Larner raised it. The sun sent in its unfiltered rays. But the
almost obscene light unveiled few signs of life, Lamar Jennings's
American legacy.
Hjelm glanced over the desk's bare surface and saw a pile
of ashes and half-burned paper that had eaten its way into the
wood. Maybe, in a final task, Jennings had intended to set the
apartment on fire. A farewell fire. Hjelm reached for the remains
of paper in the pile.
'Don't touch anything,' Larner stopped him, and put on a
pair of plastic gloves. 'You two are still observers. Jerry, can you
check the neighbours?'
Jerry left. Larner considered the pile of ashes.
'Was he planning to start a fire?' Hjelm said.
'I don't think so,' Larner said, touching the paper remnants
lightly. 'It's something for the crime-scene techs to get their
teeth into. Must not be moved a fraction of an inch.'
He took a mobile phone out of his pocket and punched in a
number.
'Crime techs, first unit,' he said briskly. 'One forty-seven
Harper Street, Queens, eighth floor. ASAP.'
He put the phone back in his pocket. 'Go around to the other
side of the desk, carefully,' he continued. 'The tiniest breeze
could cost us a word.'
Hjelm moved carefully. Larner pulled out the top desk drawer.
It contained a single object, but that was plenty. It was a portrait
of Wayne Jennings, wearing a youthful smile. A pin nailed the
photo to the desk drawer through the man s throat, as if he were
a mounted butterfly. It hardly seemed an exaggeration.
Larner chuckled mildly and shook his head. 'It's for me,' he
muttered. 'Twenty years. How the hell did you do it? I saw you
burn. I saw your teeth.'
He pulled out another drawer. In it were several torn-up
pieces of paper, small fragments a quarter-inch wide. A date was
visible on one of them.
'A diary?' said Hjelm.
'He's left just enough for us,' said Larner. 'Enough to give us
a hint of the hell he lived through. But no more.'
They found nothing else in the apartment, nothing at all.
Jerry Schonbauer came back in with a small, nearly transparent
old woman who came up to his hip. They stopped in the
door way.
'Yes?' said Larner.
'This is the only neighbour I've found who knew anyone
lived here at all,' said Schonbauer. 'Mrs Wilma Stewart.'
Larner walked over and greeted the old woman. 'Mrs
Stewart, what can you tell us?'
She looked around the room. 'This is exactly how he was,'
she said. 'Expressionless, anonymous. Tried to avoid being seen.
Reluctant to say hello. I invited him for a cup of tea once. He
declined, not politely, not impolitely, just said no thanks and left.'
Larner made a small face.
'What has he done?' said Mrs Stewart.
'Do you think you could help us make a portrait?' said Larner.
'We'd be very grateful.'
'He could have murdered me,' she said quietly and
insightfully.
Larner gave her a small parting smile, and Schonbauer
es-corted her to the door.
In the hallway, they met a small army of crime-scene
technicians. One of them approached Lamer, standing in the
doorway. 'We'll take it from here,' he said briskly.
Larner nodded.
He waved the Swedes over. 'Now we have to wait,' he said,
'as though we haven't done enough of that.' They all began
working their way down the eight flights of stairs.
A few flights down he turned to them. 'The devil's lair never
looks like you expect,' he said.




25


When two heads that were not usually the cleverest were
put together, something new was born. Viggo Norlander
was working on John Doe; Gunnar Nyberg was working on
LinkCoop. At a certain juncture, their labouriously struggling
thoughts met, and the world took on a new shape.
At first Norlander got nowhere with his unknown body.
He had incredibly little to go on. He sat in his office and read
through the autopsy report, time after time.
Directly opposite him sat the considerably more swiftly
working Arto Soderstedt, who had obtained his very own
whiteboard and was playing mini-Hultin.
'What the hell are you working on?' Norlander said, irritated.
'The Lindbergers,' Soderstedt said distractedly, continuing to
draw.
'Do you need a whiteboard for that?'
'Hmm, need ... He left behind a lot of notes that have to be
sorted out. And she had some, too . . .'
'She? You swiped her notes?'
Soderstedt looked up with a scornful smile. 'Not swiped,
Viggo. A policeman never steals. Just as a policeman never
harasses female immigration officers and never runs down little
girls
'Idiot!'
'A policeman never steals. He makes copies.' He continued
to fill in his squares.
'Like that's any better,' said Norlander.
Soderstedt stopped again. 'It's much better. Not least because
you can compare what you've copied with what she chooses to
share. The difference is what's essential. As soon as I'm finished
with this, I'm going to ask to look at her planner and see if she's
removed anything. Comprende?'
'That's a grieving woman, for fuck's sake! Leave her alone.'
Soderstedt put down his marker. 'Something feels wrong
about them. They're in their thirties and live in an enormous
apartment in Ostermalm - eleven rooms, two kitchens. Both
of them work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and are gone
half the year. In Saudi Arabia. If they're up to something in the
Arab world, and if it has anything to do with Eric's death, then
she is quite possibly the next victim. I'm not trying to harass her,
Viggo. I'm trying to protect her.'
Norlander made a tired face. 'Then put her under watch.'
'It's still too vague. I have to work it out. If I get the chance.'
Norlander threw out his arms. Tm very fucking sorry,' he
said.
He tried to return to the autopsy report but couldn't.
Thoughts of his unknown son, who was only just coming into
being, wouldn't let go. He stared out through the window.
It was late afternoon; soon it would be time to go home.
Outside the darkness was thick; rain was still drowning
Stockholm. He thought of the flood in Poland a year or two
earlier, the one that had contaminated the Baltic Sea. How
much rain would it take for Lake Malaren to run over?
The door flew open, and Chavez put his head in. 'Hi,
middle-aged white men,' he said cheerfully. 'How's it going?'
'Hi, swarthy young man,' Soderstedt replied. 'How's it going
with you?'
'Incredibly badly. I was just at Hall sniffing Andreas Gallano's
old underwear. What are you two doing?'
I'm trying to work out John Doe,' Norlander said grimly. 'If I get the chance.'
'OK, OK,' said Chavez, closing the door. He continued
through the hallway till he reached Hultin's door. He knocked,
heard an indefinable mutter, and stepped in.
Hultin pushed his owlish glasses up towards his forehead and
scrutinised him coldly.
'Have you heard anything from the United States?' said
Chavez.
'Not yet,' said Hultin. 'Leave them alone. How's it going?'
'I've just returned from Hall. None of the other prisoners
had anything useful to say; no one knew whether Gallano had
contacts in the United States. And that new drug syndicate he's
supposed to have belonged to is invisible - no one knew anything
about that, either. Here's a list of what he left behind when he
escaped: underwear, a few reminders from various authorities,
electric shaver, and so forth. A total failure. Then I went to
the cabin in Riala, talked to the techs. They've given up now,
I think, incredibly frustrated that they didn't find a single clue.
Except what was in the fridge, and here's a list: butter, a few
packages of tunnbrod, hamburgers, cream cheese, honey, parsley,
mineral water, bananas.'
Hultin sighed and took off his glasses. And the blue Volvos?'
'It will take some time. There are sixty-eight dark blue
Volvo station wagons with number plates that start with B
in the greater Stockholm area. Thanks to the rank and file,
forty-two of them have been inspected and eliminated. I
myself have looked at eight, and they were clear. If that isn't
a contradiction in terms. Two that are still missing are fairly
interesting: one belongs to a company that doesn't exist, at
an address that doesn't exist; the other belongs to a habitual
criminal by the name of Stefan Helge Larsson. We haven't had
time to look at the other twenty-four yet, because I had to go
to Norrkoping.'
Hultin observed his frenzy neutrally. 'Proceed.'
'I'm on it,' said Chavez, and rushed out into the corridor.
Outside the two middle-aged white men's office, he couldn't
resist the temptation to yank the door open and yell 'Boo!'
Soderstedt drew a broad line straight across the whiteboard.
Norlander jumped almost two feet. He threw the autopsy
report at the door, but it was already closed.
'Fucking idiot,' he muttered as he bent down to pick it up.
Soderstedt chuckled as he carefully erased the line.
Norlander once again opened the autopsy report. Four shots
to the heart, each one of which would have been immediately
fatal. No bullets were left behind, probably nine-millimetre
calibre. The victim was generally in good shape. He had some
old scars, probably from razors along his wrists, that were at least
ten years old, and some even older circular scars spread out over
other parts of his body. 'Cigarette burns?' Stranded had written
in his sprawling, old-man handwriting. How had the old devil
missed the computerisation of the world? What planet did he
live on?
Clothes. A blue T-shirt with no print. Beige lumber jacket.
Jeans. Tennis shoes. Dirty white socks. Boxer shorts. None of
that told him a thing.
He switched his attention to the man's possessions. How
many times had he dumped the contents of the little plastic bag
onto the desk? Apparently often enough to get a frown out of
Soderstedt.
A fake Rolex, a roll of ten-kronor coins, a key. The key
seemed very new. He turned it over and over.
It was a pretty substantial door key. Its lock must be much
bigger than you would find on a regular door, a safety lock of
some sort; but it was hardly possible to say more than that. The
key said 'CEA' and 'Made in Italy' and could have been made in
any shoe repair shop anywhere.
But did shoe repair shops really manufacture such large
safety keys?
Somewhere in the back of his head, a diligent brain cell went
on the loose. Hadn't he, at some point during this case, run into
this very thing, just in passing, something that flickered in the
corner of his eye? On one of the dunce jobs, perhaps? Yes, sure
as hell, at the very beginning of the case, he had been in charge
of all the idiotic reports of 'crimes committed by Americans
in Sweden'. One American had exposed himself and got
beaten up by the women's football team, another had copied
thousand-kronor notes in Xerox machines - and another had
copied a forbidden key at a shoe repair shop. Could that incident
be connected with this key?
Norlander turned to the computer with an intensity that
made Soderstedt look up in surprise. He dug into his archive,
feeling like a hacker. He found the case, with a reference
to the fraud squad of the Stockholm police. Why the fraud
squad? After enough hard work to put an end to any hacker
aspirations he harboured, he came to a minuscule document
from the uniformed police. There it was. It had been the
fourth of September. A little shoe repair shop on Rindogatan
in Gardet. The owner, Christo Kavafis, had copied an illegal
key from a plasticine original, was seized with remorse, and
was then stupid enough to report the whole thing to the
police. He was arrested, but the case was dropped for lack of
priority.
Norlander didn't have all the threads clear in his mind, but it
was time for action. He grabbed his leather jacket and rushed
out into the corridor. As he passed Gunnar Nyberg's door,
another stubborn brain cell in the back of his head started to
dance. He stopped. That computer company - what was it
called? And the key - weren't they connected? He approached
the door and took it right to the head.
Nyberg came out and stared at the crouching, swearing
Norlander.
'Just the man I was hoping to run into,' said Nyberg, perhaps
unaware of the double meaning of this expression. 'Didn't your
John Doe have a key on him? I wonder if we should test it out
down at LinkCoop's warehouse. Something about that break-in
still seems mysterious.'
Norlander forgot his pain in a flash and held the key up to
Nyberg's face, as though he were trying to hypnotise him.
'I'll drive,' said Norlander.
Nyberg followed him willingly. The two stout men half
jogged through the corridors, and the local seismograph
registered an unexpectedly high reading on the Richter scale.
They reached the basement and drove out in Norlander's
service Volvo, which he had been refusing to return for four
years, and set out for Frihamnen.
That was the planned destination, anyway. But they got stuck
in traffic as soon as they got down onto Scheelegatan. It was
the middle of rush hour, and it seemed to get worse every day.
Shouldn't the sky-high unemployment levels mean that fewer
people had reason to be in the city at five thirty, the time when
they gave up?
'Let's stop and eat,' said Nyberg.
'Weren't you on a diet?' said Norlander.
'Yes. Past tense,' said Nyberg.
Norlander parked in a highly illegal spot on Kungsbroplan.
They ran through cascades of rain into the closest restaurant.
It was called the Andalusian Dog and was so pleasant that they
nearly forgot their urgent business. Norlander dug into some
Mexican fucking sludge. Nyberg gulped down four baked
potatoes with skagenrdra.
'You could diversify a little, you know,' said Norlander.
'It's skinny food,' Nyberg said, with half of his fourth portion
in his jaws.
By six thirty they were full, and the traffic had become a bit
lighter.
'Dammit, he's probably closed by now,' Norlander exclaimed,
standing.
'Who?' said Nyberg.
'The shoe repair. On Rindogatan.'
'We'll take our chances and drive by. It's on the way, after all.'
They took their chances and drove by. Kungsgatan to
Stureplan, Sturegatan to Valhallavagen, Erik Dahlbergsgatan
to Rindogatan.
'Lidingovagen would have been better,' said Nyberg.
'Lay off,' said Norlander. 'But umbrellas would have been
good.'
It was pitch black, as if it were the middle of the night;
actually it was only quarter to seven. The shoe repair shop was
a short way up the long hill of Rindogatan. There was a faint
light coming from the little workshop. They hurried out into
the pouring rain and pounded on the window, where old soles
and keys from the 1960s were lying and collecting dust.
A small Greek man in his sixties peeked discreetly out the
window. He gaped in fear at the dripping, pounding Nordic
giants. Polyphemus, he appeared to be thinking. Two of them.
'Police,' Norlander mimed, showing his ID. 'Can we come
in for a minute?'
The Greek opened the door and, with a small gesture, let the
cop-Cyclopes in. On the ancient work table lay an open book
under a small, weak shoemaker's lamp. The man walked over to
it and held it up. It was in Greek.
'Have you heard of Konstantin Kavafis?' he asked.
They stared at him like idiots.
'Never has the modern Greek language sounded so sweet,'
he said, stroking the cover of the book. 'He lifted us up to the
level of the ancients. I always sit here for a while after closing
time and read him. A poem a day keeps senility away. He was
my grandfather's uncle.'
'So you're Christo Kavafis?' Norlander said briskly.
'That's right,' said Kavafis. 'To what do I owe the honour?'
'A few weeks ago you copied a key from a plasticine original,
right?'
Kavafis turned pale. 'I thought I was free.' He felt the threat
of grievous bodily harm nibble at the back of his neck. My name
is No One, he seemed to be thinking.
'Yeah, yeah, you are free, don't worry. Tell us about it.'
'I have already told about it.'
'Do it again.'
A young man who spoke English with an American accent
came in and asked to get a key made from a clay impression. I
knew it wasn't legal, but it was such a challenge. I don't come
across that many challenges in my work, so I couldn't resist.
Then I regretted it and called the police, and they came and
arrested me. I was in jail for the night. I haven't been that scared
since the civil war. All my memories came back.'
'What did he look like? The American?'
Kavafis shook his head. 'It was a long time ago. Ordinary.
Normal. Young. Pretty blond.'
'Clothes?'
'I don't remember. Grey jacket, I think. Tennis shoes. I don't
know.'
Norlander took out the key and held it up to Kavafis.
'Is this the key?'
The Greek took it and turned it over. 'This might be it. It was
one like this.'
'Can you come up to see us tomorrow and help us try to get
a picture of him? It's very important.'
Kavafis nodded.
Norlander fished out his wallet and took out a dirty business
card, which he gave to the Greek. Then they said goodbye.
Kavafis looked hesitant. 'I wonder,' he said, 'if I don't
remember one more thing. He paid in ten-kronor coins. Out of
a long roll.'
Nyberg and Norlander exchanged glances. They had been
right. John Doe was an American. He had made a clay impression
of a security lock. He had gone to a shoe repair shop in Gardet
to get a key made. Then he had been shot in the heart. Why?
Where? In the rush to get going, they couldn't really get all the
threads to come together, but they had to get to Frihamnen;
they knew that much.
It was almost seven thirty when they reached the sentry
box outside of LinkCoop's warehouses. It was pitch black, the
heavens were wide open and they had no umbrellas. They had
at least thirty-four doors to test. They didn't hesitate.
Tonight it wasn't Benny Lundberg sitting in the sentry box
but another of the guards. Nyberg went over and waved his
police ID in the air.
'We need to take a look at the premises in connection with
the break-in,' he said to the cracked window hatch. 'Isn t Benny
working?'
'He's on holiday' said the guard.
'How long has he been gone?'
'A few days. Since the break-in.'
'Strange time for a holiday' Nyberg felt a twinge of suspicion.
'I know,' said the guard. He could have been mistaken for
Benny Lundberg. The stench of steroids trumped the perpetual
ozone scent of the storm. 'He took a holiday in August, so it is a
little odd. He travelled somewhere. Out of the country, I think.
Was it the Canary Islands?'
Nyberg nodded.
Norlander camejoggingup after having parked the car round
the corner. They entered the grounds and walked to the door
where the break-in had taken place. Thick planks were nailed
up across the door as a temporary repair job. Nyberg heaved
himself up onto the loading dock and inserted the key. It went
in. But it didn't turn in the lock.
'Right kind, anyway' he said. 'I guess we should start from
the left.'
They followed the loading dock past the series of doors up to
the far end of the large warehouse. There were about as many
doors to the left of the entrance as there were to the right. There
ought to be more on the back of the building as well. Mayer, the
chief of security, had talked about thirty-four units; after testing
ten doors it felt like considerably more. They were soaking wet.
The torrents of rain were splendidly combined with loathsome
gusts of wind. Two cases of pneumonia sailed through the air,
searching for their rightful owners.
The key fitted in all the locks but was never the right one.
They reached the entrance and began to work their way through
the other half. It felt more and more hopeless. A fool's errand.
And a voluntary one, at that. They were doing overtime that
they didn't know if they dared to put in for. Couldn't they have
waited until tomorrow?
They approached the end of the row. By the time they came
to the last door, they were resigned.
'What do you think?' Nyberg held the key a few inches from
the lock.
Aren't there any doors on the other side?'
'That remains to be seen,' said Nyberg, who inserted the key.
He turned it. It was the right one. 'Ha ha.' Laughing, he pulled
the door open a few inches.
It was violently kicked the rest of the way open, straight into
his nose. He tumbled over. A black-clad figure in a balaclava
jumped over him and raced along the dock in the pouring rain.
Norlander drew his pistol and set off after him. Nyberg got
up, his hand to his face. He roared. He felt the blood welling
between his fingers. He was about to throw himself after them
when he turned to the storage unit.
Looking down a set of stairs, he saw Benny Lundberg, the
guard. He was naked and tied to a chair. Blood was streaming
from his shredded fingertips. A needle was threaded through
his genitals. And out of his neck stuck two gently quivering
syringes.
Gunnar Nyberg stiffened. His own pain vanished immediately.
He took his hand from his face and let the blood flow
out of his nose. He went down the stairs. He was trembling. A
small, bare light bulb radiated a ghastly glow over the macabre
scene.
Benny Lundberg was alive. His eyes had rolled back; only the
whites were visible. Spasmodic jerks passed through his face.
Convulsions were ripping through the pumped-up body. White
foam bubbled out of his mouth. No hint of sound.
Gunnar Nyberg was looking at pain beyond words.
His large body shook. What could he do? He didn't dare touch
the horrible pincers in Lundberg's neck. Any movement could
have disastrous consequences. He didn't even dare to unfasten
the leather straps around his arms and legs. What would happen
if Lundberg convulsed and fell to the floor? The only thing he
could do in the way of a small attempt at care was to pull the
long needle out of his male organ. He did so.
Then he got his mobile phone out of his inside pocket, and,
with concentration, managed to dial the number. He didn't
recognise his own voice as it asked for an ambulance. A doctor
has to come too it said. A neck specialist.'
Then he bent towards Lundberg. He placed his hand on
the shaking cheek. He tried to speak comfortingly to him. He
embraced him. He tried to be as brotherly as he could.
'There, there, Benny, take it easy. Help is on the way. You can
do it. Hang in there, Benny. There. Everything is OK. Nice and
easy'
The spasms and twitches began to subside. Benny Lundberg
grew calmer - or was he about to die in his arms?
Gunnar Nyberg realised he was crying.



Norlander ran after the man in black. He was in good shape
these days, and he was gradually gaining on the man. But the
man was quick and lithe. He threw himself down from the
loading dock and kept running, past the sentry box. Just as
Norlander ran by, the guard peered out. 'Call the police!' he
bellowed as he ran.
The man in black dashed into a side street and vanished from
sight for an instant. Norlander approached the spot. He saw the
man disappear behind a building about ten yards away. Without
thinking, he ran that way. His weapon was dangling from his
hand. The man in the balaclava peeked out and shot at him.
Norlander threw himself forward into the mud. He checked
himself out for a second, then was up again. His pistol was
muddy. He tried to wipe it off as he ran. He raced up to the
corner and carefully peered round it. It was empty back there,
an alley. Crouching, he ran to the next corner and peered round
it. Empty again. Up to the next corner. Peer around it carefully.
One step was all he heard behind him, a faint splash. Then an
incredible pain on the back of his neck. He fell into the mud like
a pig. He was nearly unconscious. He looked up into the rain
clouds. Everything was dancing. The man in black was staring
down at him through his balaclava. He couldn't make out his
eyes. The only thing he could see was the silencer on the barrel
of the pistol that was pointed at his face.
'Get out of here,' the man hissed. 'Beat it.'
Then he was gone. Norlander heard a motor start up. He
stood and peered round the corner of the building. He was
dazed. The world was spinning. He could vaguely see the
contours of a car in the middle of the centrifuge. Maybe brown,
maybe a jeep.
Then he fell down into the sludge.




26


The sun in New York had become as insane as the rain was in
Stockholm. Time was out of joint. All that was missing was for
horses with two heads and jackdaws with beaks sticking out of
their arses to be born.
It was excessively hot. Not even the FBI's hyper-modern air
conditioning could combat it. Hjelm could have testified that
Eenie meenie miney moe didn't work either. He was bored; he
felt as if he had been stopped mid-step.
They waited. Waiting never promotes tolerance for irritation.
Everyone was irritating everyone else. Even Jerry Schonbauer
had a fit and tore off his soaking wet shirt, causing his buttons
to fly off. When one of the buttons knocked the contact lens
out of Holm's left eye, he resumed his timid self and begged for
forgiveness.
'I didn't know you wore lenses,' Hjelm said after a while.
' "Wore" is right.' She examined the two pieces of the contact,
which were stuck to her thumb and index finger respectively.
'Now you'll get to see me in glasses.'
She took out her right contact and threw it away. Then she
dug out a pair of classic round glasses and secured them on her
exquisite nose. To avoid bursting into confidence-shattering
peals of laughter, he concentrated on being irritated with the
heat.
It didn't work. He burst into laughter.
'Look at that funny bird,' he said unconvincingly, pointing
out the window.
'I'm glad I can be of service,' she said sulkily, pushing the
glasses up towards her forehead.
They had been to visit the young computer expert Bernhard
Andrews, who hacked his way into every branch of the Internet
on the hunt for Lamar Jennings. Maybe he would find a photo.
But as expected, he was nowhere. Not one single tiny directory
could produce anything at all on Jennings; he had kept himself
out of the monitoring systems of society for twenty-five years.
The only thing that turned up was his birth certificate. It seemed
that he hadn't existed since his birth.
Mrs Wilma Stewart had failed miserably to create a portrait
of Lamar Jennings. As the image took shape on the computer
screen, the old woman had shaken her head time after time.
'Thicker lips .. . Thinner lips, I said, young man .. . Listen here.
I said thicker lips.'
The heat claimed another victim. She nodded off in front
of the computer and promised to come back later and try
again.
Finally the crime techs dropped off the first of the materials
they had finished processing from Lamar Jennings's apartment.
They had attempted to reconstruct the pages of Lamar Jennings's
diary from the remains they had found and made four copies.
Each of the four took one and began reading. Schonbauer sat on
Larner's desk, dangling his legs, clad in a ridiculous string vest
that had been revealed after the shirt catastrophe. Larner sat in
his chair with his legs on the desk beside Schonbauer. Yalm &
Halm sat in visitors' chairs at a respectable distance from each
other.
The fragments were incoherent, like key words out of a life
story. Apparently Larner had been right in saying that Lamar
Jennings had left just enough to indicate the depths of his pain.
Each fragment bore a small amount of information.

'don't know why i'm writing, pleading? am i trying to stop
myself before i have time'
'a grave in the great perfection of futility'
'the old neighbour woman wanted to have me for tea, said
no, thanks, would have vomited on her, got permission
to'
'they are so small, they don't want to understand how'
'stronger and stronger. Why do they get stronger and st'
'in the middle of the night, shadow in the closet, it's stuck,
invisible hinges'
'reduced to nothing, less than zero, there is a life under
zero'
'in passing, the glow of a cigarette, can already hear the
sizzle, can already smell the stench, but i can never
predict the pain, only'
'April 19. What power they have now, can't resist any
longer'
'grandma dead. OK. A package came. Just crap, except
for a letter. Going to read it soon. The handwriting is
worrying.'
'earth a grave, people maggots, where is the corpse? is it
the dead god we eat up?'
'stairs out of nothing in nothing, like a dream. Comes in
flashes now, like it travels inside me, like i'm being driven
toward a goal'
just go there, say i'm sick, try to get help'
'if the images can become a story'
'July 27. Who am i trying to kid? There is only one help.
The Aztecs killed in order to live. Human sacrifices. I'
'follow the shadow, the arm of a jacket has got caught, a
door, stairs'
'theletterislyingthereimwaitingicantitwontwork'
'Grandma dead. Try again. Grandma dead. OK.'
'The light behind the door like the frame of an icon, a
darker darkness, have to get out, have to plead'
'the stairs straight down, can't follow, only flashes'
'the cellar the cellar the cellar'
'sick SOB at the bar, Arkaius, fucking name, bragging
bragging bragging, tons of houses all over the world,
suck him off, dead as a doornail, need the address now,
reward'
'open the letter, read, i knew it, it was impossible for him to
be'
'open the door, into the light. Chaos, have to get out,
have to'
'glow of a cigarette, our little secret, our little hell'
'why us in the middle of all this perfection, the tiniest
mollusk is more adapted to life on earth, can't feel pain'


As they read, they sneaked glances at each other.
When they were all finished, Larner said, 'This is why
it didn't all fit together. This is a classic serial killer of the
more intellectual sort, incredibly wounded, very intelligent.
It couldn't be reconciled with the early coldness. I ought to
have realised. On July twenty-seventh we have a date. On
July twenty-seventh, 1997, the prostitute Sally Browne was
murdered in Manhattan. That was Lamar Jennings's first
murder. It starts there: "The Aztecs killed in order to live".
Any other thoughts?'
Arkaius,' said Kerstin Holm. 'Robert Arkaius is a Swedish
tax exile. He owns the cabin where Lamar committed his first
murder in Sweden. Apparently he got the address in exchange
for sexual favours. Arkaius couldn't return to Sweden anyway.
Of course, he didn't know that his former lover's son, Andreas
Gallano, had holed up there after he'd escaped from prison.'
Larner nodded mutely.
Schonbauer said, 'That must have been after he opened that
letter and found out that his father was in Sweden, when he had
already started the murders. He goes out and looks for Swedes
in sketchy bars in order to get his hands on a good place to stay
in Stockholm. Sex doesn't seem to have anything to do with
it, other than that. The trauma seems to have occurred before
puberty.'
'Our reconstruction of his profile,' said Larner, 'is quite close
to the one you've already done, Yalm. As a child, he is abused
by his father - that's probably the glowing cigarettes we see.
Sure enough, the culmination comes when he goes down some
stairs and opens that door and sees his professional murderer
of a father at work. After that, he is never the same again. Then
comes blow after blow. His father dies, his mother commits
suicide after a few years, possibly because of that letter that
reaches her in some unknown way and ends up in an untouched
box at his grandmother's house. When his grandmother dies,
the letter ends up in the hands of the now-twenty-four-year-old
son in New York, where he - as the apartment indicates - lives
half outcast from society. It confirms what he's suspected all
along: his father is alive. His tormentor still exists; he hovers
over him and possesses him.
'His repressed images of the past start to return, moving in a
certain direction, "like it travels inside me, like i'm being driven
toward a goal". Finally the images drive him down to that door.
He opens it and is confronted with the most repressed image
of all, his father above a victim who's foaming at the mouth,
with the micro-pincers in his neck. He has to get rid of it, and
that can only happen with homeopathic magic: like pleads to
like. He has the pincers; now he can use them. The image in
his memory is exact; he knows exactly what to do. As soon as
the images appear, he must go out and kill. It calms him: "if the
images can become a story". The murders make the lightninglike,
hard-hitting pictures into a more easily handled story.
'But as you said, Yalm, at the same time it's about preparing
himself for the big, decisive murder. He has to get rid of his
father, he must die by his own methods, the very ones that
haunt him. He's finally got hold of the address of a safe house in
the Stockholm area - it's time. Apparently the letter has revealed
that his father is in Stockholm, and even more important, it's
revealed what he calls himself - otherwise the whole project is
hopeless. The techs have to be finished with the burned letter
soon. If we're lucky the name will be there.
Anyway, he gets a fake passport under the name Edwin
Reynolds and goes to Newark airport. Annoyingly, the next
flight to Stockholm is fully booked. It's not really a catastrophe,
but somehow he happens to stumble upon Lars-Erik Hassel.
Maybe the images came to him again in the airport; maybe he
decides to kill two birds with one stone: getting his hands on a
ticket, and simultaneously getting rid of the images and having
a peaceful flight; avoiding six hours of inferno might be worth
the relatively minor risks. Hassel somehow reveals himself
as a traveller to Stockholm who hasn't yet checked in, which
means his seat can be made available. Jennings gets Hassel and
his luggage into the janitor's closet and does his deed; maybe
he uses sex as a temptation again. Then he snatches Hassel's
ticket, calls and cancels in his name, books himself the seat with
Reynolds's name, and has a nice, calm flight.
'Presumably he has no idea how close you are to catching
him at Arlanda. All he has is carry-on luggage - he just goes
right through, gets in a taxi, stops somewhere on the way and
buys some food, and goes straight to the cabin. Your drug
dealer happens to be there, but by now Lamar Jennings is a
practised killer. He gets in easily and murders the drug dealer;
the sight now and then of the body in the cellar is enough to
keep the images at bay as he searches for his father and plans
the best way to deal with him. What happens next is your
business.'
No one had any objections. That was surely how it happened.
In the meantime, Hjelm's thoughts had gone in a slightly
different direction. 'Was there a cellar on Wayne Jennings's
farm?'
Larner looked at him. He had expected to be able to catch
his breath after his account, but now he had to make a sharp
turn-around. 'There was a small cellar, yes. But it was a sort
of rec room, a cosy room with a fireplace, and we checked it
several times. It wasn't the scene of the murder.'
'Who lives there now?'
'I seem to recall that it went round and round in the media
for so long that it became unsellable. After his wife died, it was
left to rot. It's deserted.'
'There's something about a closet that Lamar apparently
wants to tell us. A shadow in the closet at night, a door that's
got caught on "the arm of a jacket", then the stairs. Might there
have been another cellar, a secret one? The very origin of the
entire story of the Kentucky Killer?'
Larner thought it over, then picked up the phone and dialled
a number. 'Bill, how long is the letter going to take? OK. I'm
going to Kentucky. Jerry will hold down the fort here.'
He hung up and looked at them urgently. 'Well, are you
coming?'
They flew to Louisville, Kentucky, in a flash. At the airport,
an FBI helicopter was waiting to carry them eastward. A tall
mountain range towered up in the distance.
'Cumberland Plateau,' Larner said, pointing.
The helicopter landed at the edge of a tobacco field, and
Larner and three bundles of muscle from the FBI, along with the
two Swedes, jogged through the field and out onto the country
road alongside. A grove of tall, unidentifiable deciduous trees
lent shadow to a decaying farm out on the wilderness land;
there wasn't a neighbour for miles.
Seen at a closer distance, the farmhouse looked haunted.
Fifteen years had left their mark. Houses always seem to do their
best when inhabited - otherwise they wither. Wayne Jennings's
farm had withered. It didn't look as if it had felt very well
from the start, but by now it had reached a state of complete
abandonment. The front door was crooked and warped, and it
took the efforts of the collective FBI muscle mass to tear it open,
which was the same as tearing it apart.
They entered the hall. The house hadn't been airtight.
Everything was covered in a thin layer of sand. Each step
was followed by a small, rising puff of sand. They passed
the kitchen; dishes were laid out under the layer of sand, as
though time had stopped in the middle of a regular day. They
passed the stairway that led down to the small cellar; Hjelm
cast a glance down the steps. Three beer bottles stood on a
small table. The sand had glued itself along their edges; they
were like three pillars of salt. They entered a room with a bed.
A few disintegrating posters were still clinging to the wall:
Batman, a baseball team. A book lay open on the desk: Mary
Poppins. On the pillow sat a threadbare teddy bear, covered
with sand. Kerstin lifted it up; one leg remained on the bed.
She blew it off and studied it. Her heart seemed about to
break.
They went from Lamar's room to his parents'; it was furthest
off towards the wide-open spaces, which stretched on, flat,
towards Cumberland Plateau. Larner pointed at the double bed;
in the place of one pillow there was a large hole; down was still
floating in the sandy air.
'This is where Lamar found his mother one hot summer
morning,' he said quietly. 'A shotgun. Her head was almost
completely blown off.'
They went back out into the hallway and through the next
door entered a guest room, which had its own entrance from
the terrace.
'It has to be here,' Larner said.
He went over to the cupboard and opened the door.
The assembled FBI forces stepped in with sturdy tools and
instruments of measurement. They pulled a microphone along
the wall. 'Here,' said one of the FBI men. 'There's empty space
behind here.'
'See if you can find the mechanism.' Larner moved back.
They kept looking; he sat down on the bed, where the Swedes
were already sitting.
'You can probably put that down now,' he said.
Holm stared down at the teddy bear that was sitting in her
lap. She placed it on the bed. Sand had run out of the hole at
the leg until it was just a fake shell of skin. She held up the
scrap.
'The things we do to our children,' was all she said.
'I warned you,' said Larner.
It took time, almost fifteen minutes of intense, scientific
searching. But finally they found a complicated mechanism,
behind a piece of iron that had been screwed into place.
Apparently Wayne Jennings hadn't wanted anyone to make their
way down there after his so-called death. But his son evidently
had - and had retrieved his pincers.
A thick iron door slid open inside the cupboard; Hjelm
even thought he could see the jacket arm that had got stuck
one night and kept the door from closing again as it should. He
walked over to the door to the guest room and crouched down,
simulating the view a ten-year-old would have. Lamar had stood
here; from here he had seen the shadow glide into the cupboard,
and then he had followed. The thick metal door hadn't closed
properly.
Larner went into the cupboard and pulled open the door;
the mechanism was a bit rusty and creaked in a way it surely
hadn't twenty years earlier. He turned on a powerful torch and
disappeared. They followed him.
The narrow stone staircase had an iron handrail. Sand
crunched under their feet as they made their way down the
staircase, which was surprisingly long. Finally they came to
a massive, rusty iron door. Larner opened it and shone his
powerful torch around.
It was a shabby cellar, cramped, almost absurdly small, a
concrete cube far below ground in the wilderness. In the middle
a large iron chair was welded to more iron in the floor; leather
bands hung slack from the armrests and chair legs. There was
also a solid workbench, like a carpenter's bench. That was all.
Larner pulled out the drawers under the bench. They were
empty. He sat in the iron chair as the little concrete cube filled
with people; the last FBI man didn't even fit and had to stand on
the stairs.
'These walls have seen a lot,' said Larner.
For a second Hjelm thought he had made contact with
all the suffering that the walls guarded: a wind that was
simultaneously hot and ice-cold went through him. But it
was beyond words.
Larner stood and clapped his hands. 'Well, we'll do a
complete crime-scene investigation, but there's no doubt that
this is where most of the Kentucky Killer's victims met their
long-awaited deaths.'
They went back upstairs - claustrophobia wasn't far off.
What had happened when ten-year-old Lamar had stepped
into the torture chamber? How had Wayne reacted? Had he
beaten him unconscious? Threatened him? Did he try to comfort
him? The only person to ask was Wayne Jennings himself, and
Hjelm promised himself and the world that he would ask him.
For he was becoming more and more certain that if father
and son confronted each other in Sweden, the father would be
victorious. He would kill his son for a second time.
They took the helicopter back to Louisville and caught
a flight back to New York. The whole foray had only taken a
few hours. It was afternoon at JFK, a long, hot afternoon. They
took a taxi back to FBI headquarters, where they found Jerry
Schonbauer sitting with his legs dangling, leafing through a pile
of papers as though nothing had happened.
But it had.
'Good timing,' said Schonbauer. Tve just received a
preliminary crime-scene report, including a preliminary reconstruction
of the burned letter. That's the only thing of interest.
The rest of the investigation didn't turn up anything - the
apartment was completely clean. Here are your copies of the
letter.'
It had been possible to make out the date: April 6, 1983.
Almost a year after Wayne Jennings faked his death. It was a
letter he wouldn't have needed to write nor, presumably, been able to write. 
That he had done it anyway revealed a trace of
humanity that Hjelm didn't really want to see.
'When did his wife kill herself?' he asked.
'The summer of 1983,' said Larner. Apparently it took a few
months for her to understand the extent of the whole thing.'
The envelope had been among the burned remains. The
Stockholm postmark had been clear. The address was that of
the farm; apparently Wayne Jennings had been relatively certain
that the FBI wasn't reading his widow's mail a year after his
death.
What could be reconstructed read as follows, with the
technicians' comments in brackets:


Dear Mary Beth. As you can see, I'm not dead. I hope one
day to be able to expla [break, burned] see you in another
life. Maybe in a few years it will be p [break, burned] have
been absolutely necessary. We were forced to give me this
dis [break, burned] pe that you can live with this knowledge
and [break, burned] ucky Killer is me and yet it's no [break,
burned] now go by the name [break, cut out] ty that Lamar is
better off without me, I wasn't always [break, burned] lutely
must burn this letter immedia [break, burned]. Always,
your W


'Lamar didn't want to give us the name.' Larner put down
the letter. 'Maybe he did want to give us the rest - it depends on
how seriously we should take this half-failed incineration. But
he didn't want to give us the name - he cut it out before he set
fire to the letter.'
A loving husband,' said Holm.
'What does it actually say here?' said Hjelm.' "The Kentucky
Killer is me and yet it's not" - is that how we should interpret it?
And: "We were forced to give me this - disguise"? "We"?'
'That could mean Jennings was a professional killer,
employed by someone else,' said Larner pensively. 'Suppose,
in the late seventies, it was suddenly necessary to get a great
number of people to talk - engineers, researchers, journalists and a whole 
cadre of unidentified people, probably foreigners.
They called in their torture experts, who may have been on ice
since the Vietnam War. They had to disguise the whole thing as
the actions of a madman. The serial killer was born. And the
consequences were plentiful.'
It hung in the air. No one said it. Finally Hjelm cleared his
throat. 'CIA?'
'We'll have to attend to that bit.' Larner sighed. 'It won't be
easy'
Kerstin and Paul looked at each other. Maybe the good
old KGB theory hadn't been so far off target after all. Maybe
it was top-level politics. But it was the victims who were KGB.
Maybe.
'If I were you,' said Larner, 'I'd look closely at Sweden's
immigration register for 1983. The last victim died at the
beginning of November 1982. The letter was written from
Stockholm in April 1983. Maybe you'll find him listed among
the immigrants during that interval.'
An FBI man looked in. 'Ray, Mrs Stewart has come up with
a picture.'
They stood in unison and followed him. Now they would
find out what Lamar Jennings looked like.



Chief inspector Jan-Olov Hultin looked sceptical. ' "Get out of
here"?' he said.' "Beat it"?'
'That's what he said,' said Viggo Norlander.
He was lying in a hospital bed at Karolinska, dressed in a
bizarre hospital gown. He had a large compress on the wound
in his neck and still felt a bit groggy.
'So in other words, he spoke Swedish?' Hultin ventured
pedagogically, bending down towards the once-again-defeated
hero.
'Yes,' Norlander said sleepily.
'You don t remember anything else?5
'He was dressed all in black. A balaclava. His hand didn't
shake so much as a fraction of an inch when he sighted me with
the pistol. He must have missed on purpose when he fired. Then
he took off in a pretty large car, maybe a Jeep, maybe brown.'
'This is an insane serial killer with many lives on his
conscience. And he's shot people before. Why didn't he kill you?'
'Thanks for your support at this difficult time,' Norlander said, and passed 
out.
Hultin got up and went over to the other bed in the hospital
room.
In it was yet another once-again-defeated hero. Both of his
bundles of muscle had been flattened by the same man; that
didn't feel so great.
Gunnar Nyberg's bandage was more extensive. His nasal
bones were cracked in three places; he found it incredible that
such small bones could be cracked in so many places. But his soul
hurt much worse. He knew that no matter how hard he tried,
he would never get that horrible image of Benny Lundberg out
of his mind. He would probably die with it before his eyes.
'How's he doing?' he asked.
Hultin sat in the visitor's chair with a little groan. 'Viggo?
He's recovering.'
'Not Viggo. Benny Lundberg.'
Aha. Well, the latest news isn't good. He's alive, and he'll
survive. But his vocal cords are seriously injured, and the nerve
paths in his neck are one big mess. He's on a respirator. Worst
of all, he's in a state of extreme shock. The perpetrator literally
terrified him out of his wits. He pushed him over the line of
sanity, and the question is whether there's any way back.'
Hultin placed an incongruous bunch of grapes on Nyberg's
table. 'Your clear-headedness saved his life,' he said. 'You should
know that. If you'd tried to pull out the pincers, he almost
certainly would have died right away. That neck doctor you got
there struggled for over an hour. He had to operate at the scene.
It was good that it was you and not Viggo who went in; I guess
I can say that now that he's out.'
Hultin looked into Nyberg's eyes. Something had changed.
'Are you OK, by the way?' he said quietly.
'No, I'm not OK,' said Gunnar Nyberg. 'I'm furious. I'm
going to put a stop to this guy if it's the last thing I do.'
Hultin was in two minds about that. Certainly, it was excellent
that Nyberg was coming out of his recent apathy towards work
and his longing for retirement; but a furious Nyberg was like a
runaway steam engine.
'Come back as soon as you can,' Hultin said. 'We need you.'
'I'd be back already if it weren't for this damn concussion.'
'That's something we've got plenty of right now,' Hultin said
neutrally.
'If we hadn't stopped to eat, we could have saved him,' he
said bitterly.
Hultin looked at him for a moment, then said goodbye,
and stepped into the corridor. Before he stepped out into the
evening's downpour, he opened an umbrella with police logos,
which kept the deluge in check until he reached his turbo Volvo,
the only privilege of his rank that he accepted.
He drove through the pitch-black city, up St Eriksgatan, then
Fleminggatan and Polhemsgatan, but at this moment he was
an unfit driver. Mixing facts with intuitions as he was, he was
a grave danger in traffic; fortunately, though, the night-time
traffic was non-existent. Why Benny Lundberg? What had the
security guard seen or done that night? After all, Hultin had
been there and talked to him that same night, and everything
had seemed normal. And yet there must have been something
strange about that break-in. Immediately afterwards Lundberg
had taken holiday time and was later discovered half murdered
by the Kentucky Killer, who had spoken Swedish, flattened
two solid, professional policemen, and refrained from killing
Norlander even though he'd had him in his sights. If they hadn't
had the background information on the killer, Hultin would
have immediately thought: inside job, a criminal cop.
He went into the dark police building. Everything was
still. The rain's uninterrupted rumble had been absorbed into
the background noise; when the rain stopped sometime in
the future, something would feel wrong, like a disturbance in
the normal state of things.
He arrived in the A-Unit's corridor. A little light was shining
- he realised where from. Chavez hopped out from his office
and rushed up to his boss.
'Come take a look at this shit,' he said, as hyper as a
seven-year-old.
Jan-Olov Hultin wanted to think, not look at shit. He had
been doing quite enough of that during the past few weeks. He
felt like a grumpy old man - which, it struck him, he was. He
followed Chavez without protest.
In Hj elm's place at the desk sat a small older man with
Mediterranean looks. His face was illuminated by the large
computer monitor in front of him.
'This is Christo Kavafis,' said Chavez, 'the locksmith. I took
the liberty of bringing him in. Christo, this is Jan-Olov Hultin,
my boss.'
'My pleasure,' said Christo Kavafis.
Hultin nodded and looked with surprise at Chavez, who
hurried over to the Greek man.
'I was struck by a flash of genius when I heard that John
Doe's key allowed admittance to the site of the murder,' Chavez
said eagerly. 'Everything seems to indicate that the American
who got into Sweden under the name Edwin Reynolds looks like this.' He turned 
the computer monitor a quarter of the way
around.
Hultin stared into the face of the Kentucky Killer. It was John
Doe, their unidentified body.
He was silent for a minute. The pieces were starting to fall
into place. 'So there are two Kentucky Killers,' he said.
'Now there's just one,' said Chavez.
Hultin picked up his phone and dialled Hjelm's number in
the United States. It was busy. Very strange - the number was to
be used solely for this purpose.



Kerstin and Paul approached the computer monitor above
Wilma Stewart's small, nodding head.
'That's just what he looked like,' said the old woman. 'Just
like that. Lamar Jennings.'
Kerstin and Paul stared into the face of the Kentucky Killer.
It was John Doe, their unidentified body.
Hjelm took out his mobile phone and dialled Hultin's
number in Sweden. It was busy. Very strange - the number was
to be used solely for this purpose.



Hultin didn't give up. He called again. This time he got through.
'Hjelm,' Hjelm answered on the other side of the Atlantic.
'John Doe is the Kentucky Killer,' Hultin said abruptly.
'One of them,' said Hjelm.
'I'm looking at composite of him right now.' The too.'
Hultin gave a start. 'I just tried to call.' The too.'
Hjelm had difficulty getting everything straightened out.
Hul-tin kept talking instead of explaining.
'Norlander and Nyberg almost got him. The second one. He
speaks Swedish.'
'He's lived in Sweden since 1983. How close did they get?'
'Close enough to take a licking, both of them. In LinkCoop's
warehouse. He had Viggo in his sights but didn't kill him. Is he
a police officer?'
'Sort of. We'll talk about that later. So he's free?'
'Yes, but just by a hair. We have the pincers. And a half-dead
guard.'
'Benny Lundberg?'
'Yes. Unfortunately, he's probably going to be a vegetable.
Can you explain all this?'
'There are two killers, Jennings father and son. The son went
to Sweden to kill the father. Their roles were reversed.'
'So it was Wayne Jennings .. . that means he's alive?'
'He's been living in Sweden for fifteen years. It's his son
Lamar who's dead; we know that now. That explains why he
shot John Doe without torturing him. Presumably Lamar was
waiting in ambush and saw his father Wayne torturing Eric
Lindberger. It turned into a horrific deja vu. The son discovered
the father and got shot. It's likely that Wayne Jennings doesn't
even know it was his son he shot.'
'So Wayne was the one who was surprised by the
bandy-playing lawyers.'
'Yes. There are two different perpetrators for the Swedish
victims. Hassel and Gallano were chosen at random, one for
his plane ticket and the other for the cabin. John Doe was their
murderer - Lamar Jennings. Lamar was murdered in turn by
Wayne, also randomly. What we have left is Lindberger. His
death is not random; Wayne doesn't kill at random - he's a
professional.'
'Professional killer and "sort of" a police officer? Your
insinuations reek of--'
'Don't say it. But it's right.'
'OK. I need everyone at full capacity now. It sounds like
you're starting to wrap it up. Can you two come home?'
'Now?'
'If possible.'
'OK.'
'Say hi to Larner, and thank him.'
'Absolutely. Bye.'
'Bye.'
Hjelm hung up and stared at the phone. The unit had been
close to getting Wayne Jennings. Norlander and Nyberg, of all
people.
'Did you hear?' he said to Holm who was leaning over him.
'Yes,' she said. 'He goes to Sweden to avenge a "life under
zero", as he wrote, once and for all. He prepares extremely
carefully, locates his father, follows him, and waits for the right
moment to strike. Then he wavers somehow - and he's killed
immediately. A second time. By his father. Who doesn't even
know it. There's some horrible irony here.'
'Don't think about it too much. We're going home. Now. To
get him.'
She nodded.
They went to see Larner and explained the situation.
'So he threatened him?' His tone was measured. 'He had
your colleague in his sights but refrained from shooting him. A
professional through and through, you have to admit.'
'Yes,' said Hjelm. 'But we're going to get him.'
'I'm actually starting to believe you will. You came sweeping
in here like cousins from the sticks and solved the case in a few
days. I'm feeling really old and rusty. But you lifted a burden
from my shoulders.'
'It was pure chance,' said Hjelm. And you were the one
who solved the case - don't think otherwise. Your stubbornness
got him to leave; you were the one who drove him to
flee the country. That he then forgot an old truth is another
matter.'
'And what old truth is that?'
'Bad blood always comes back round.'




27


The next morning, strangely enough, everyone in the A-Unit
was in their place. Only two should have been present, besides
Hultin: Chavez and Soderstedt. But the old, experienced comedy
duo Yalm & Halm arrived straight from the airport with red
eyes, and at the back sat a fresh duo: everyone's favourite
bandage-skulls, NN; it would have taken a lot to keep Norlander
and Nyberg on the bench now.
Hultin didn't look like he'd been celebrating any triumphs of
sleep, either, but his glasses were where they should be, and so
was his sharp look.
A lot has happened,' he said. 'We're nipping at his heels.
Has everyone had a chance to take a look at the summary I put
together last night with the help of a little conference-calling
across the Atlantic?'
'I've accidentally pulled out that phone they have in the
armrests a lot of times, but this was the first time I used it,'
Hjelm said sleepily.
'Have you had a chance to look through it?' Hultin repeated.
Everyone appeared to nod, if a bit sluggishly here and there.
'Then you know what our main task is: to find out Wayne
Jennings's Swedish name. Besides that, the questions are, one:
Why has he been using a warehouse at LinkCoop to carry out his
business? Apparently it was a habit; otherwise his son wouldn't
have copied the key. Two: Why did he torture Benny Lundberg,
the security guard? Three: How does the failed break-in at
LinkCoop relate to the murders of Eric Lindberger and Lamar
Jennings, at the same time, about ten doors away? Four: Why
was Eric Lindberger killed? Five: Did it have anything to do with
his links to the Arab world? Six: Is Justine Lindberger at risk, too?
I'm putting her under surveillance for safety's sake. Seven: Can
we find Wayne Jennings in the immigration register for 1983?
Eight: The difficult and delicate question - is Wayne Jennings
CIA?'
'We could always go the official route said Arto Soderstedt,
'and just ask the CIA
'I'm afraid that if we do, we'll guarantee that he'll disappear
one way or another.'
'As far as I can tell from this Chavez said, waving Hultin's
summary papers, 'he could just as easily belong to military
intelligence. Or he could have been recruited by the opposing
side or the Mafia or a drug syndicate or some nasty maverick
organisation.'
Agreed,' Hultin said. 'It's far too early to identify him as
CIA as any sort of main theory. Anything else in general? . . .
No? Then to details. Arto keeps working on Lindberger, Jorge
on the Volvo. Viggo and Gunnar can stay in today - take on
the immigrations. Paul can go down to Frihamnen and sniff
around. Kerstin can take on Benny Lundberg. How's it going
with Lindberger, Arto?'
'Eric Lindberger left behind a lot of notes, which I've checked
out, and they contain no mysteries. But his calendar includes
an extremely interesting entry: a meeting scheduled for the
night before his death. His corpse was loaded into the Volvo
in Frihamnen by Wayne Jennings at two thirty in the morning
on the twelfth of September, we know that. At ten o'clock the
night before, the entry for the appointment says "Riche's Bar" unfortunately
nothing more. I went down and waltzed around
Riches yesterday afternoon, trying to find someone who had
been working at the bar at ten that night. There are a lot of
staff members, so it was hard, but finally I found a bartender,
Luigi Engbrandt. He racked his brains to remember, but it's
a busy bar. He thinks he might remember Lindberger; if he's
right, he hung around the bar for a while, waiting for someone.
Unfortunately, Luigi has no memory of anyone ever coming.
I also checked Eric's bank account. He leaves behind a decent
but not exceptional fortune, six hundred thousand kronor all
together. Today I'm going to see Justine.'
'Why Justine?' said Norlander. 'Leave her alone.'
'Discrepancies,' said Soderstedt. 'The large apartment, the
spouses' collaboration, a few strange things she said when we
last spoke. There are also some interesting items in her Filofax
that I'd like her to comment on.'
'OK,' said Hultin. 'Did you get any further with the cars,
Jorge?'
'The cars.' Chavez made a face. As you know, I've set a whole
fucking armada of foot soldiers to work. Soon they will have gone
through all the cars. Volvos seem to be owned by dependable,
average middle-class Swedes as a rule. None of the ones we've
checked so far has been stolen or was loaned out the night
of the murder. Stefan Helge Larsson, the small-time criminal
whose car had disappeared along with him, has returned from a
month-long stay in Amsterdam. The traffic cops in Dalshammar,
wherever that is, caught him, quote, "exceptionally under the
influence of drugs" on the E4. He was driving the wrong way
down the highway. My interest is focused more and more on the
car that's registered to a non-existent business. That's what I'm
going to work on today'
'I think everything else is settled,' Hultin said briskly. 'Let's
go. We have to get him. Preferably yesterday, as stressed-out
businessmen like to j oke.'
'What's going on in the media?' said Kerstin Holm.
'The witch hunt continues,' said Hultin. 'Sales of locks,
weapons and German shepherds have increased considerably.
Orders have been given for platters containing the heads of
those responsible. Mainly mine. Morner's too. He's in a full-time
panic. Do you want me to call him down so he can give you a
little morale-boosting speech?
'Better than a blowtorch in your arse,' he remarked to the
now-empty Supreme Central Command.



Arto Soderstedt called Justine Lindberger right away. The widow
was home. Her voice sounded surprisingly upbeat.
'Justine,' she said.
'Soderstedt here, with the police.'
'Oh.'
'Do you think I could take a peek at your diary?'
'My Filofax, you mean? It's still at my office, I'm afraid.
And I don't understand what that could have to do with
anything.'
'I can pick it up there, if it's too tough for you to go.'
'No! No thank you - I don't want the police nosing around
in my desk. I'll have them send it here by courier. Then you can
come and have a peek.'
'Right away?'
'I'm barely awake. It's ten past nine. How's eleven?'
'Great. See you then.'
So she has time to make a few adjustments, he thought slyly.
The next step was to call her bank. The same bank as her
late spouse. The same bank manager. He called. 'Hello, this is
Soderstedt,' he said in his sing-song voice.
'Who?'
'The policeman. Yesterday you kindly gave me access to the
deceased Eric Lindberger's accounts. Today I need to look at his
wife Justine's.'
That's different. I'm sorry, but that's not possible.'
'It's possible,' he sang. 'I can go the official route, but I don't
have time, and if it comes out that you've held up the most
important murder investigation in modern Sweden, I'm sure
your boss will be very pleased.'
It was quiet for a minute. Til fax it,' said the bank manager.
Xike yesterday,' Soderstedt sang. 'Thanks so much!'
He hung up and tapped the fax machine. It soon began to
spit out pages decorated with numbers. While it did, he called
the housing cooperative and found out about the ownership of
the apartment. He called the vehicle registry, the tax authorities,
the boat registry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the land
registry. And he called the men who were to watch Justine
Lindberger.
'You'll come along with me to Lindberger's at eleven,' he
said. 'From that moment on, you can't let her out of your sight.'
Then he half danced out the door.
At eleven on the dot he was at the door intercom on
Riddargatan. One minute later he was sitting on Justine
Lindberger's sofa.
'Nice apartment,' he said.
'Here's my Filofax.' She handed it to him. He skimmed
through it and seemed unconcerned, but his brain was working
overtime. There had been seven mysterious characters in her
uncensored agenda, which he had copied at the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs: G every other Monday at ten; PS on Sundays at
four; S, who showed up at various times in the evenings; Bro, who
appeared every Tuesday at different times; PPP on 6 September
at 1.30; FJ all day on 14 August; and CR on 28 September at 7.30
p.m. He had them all in his head and was struggling to look dumb
as he battled his way through the official version of the Filofax.
'What's G?' he said. 'And PS?'
She looked embarrassed. 'G is manicures; my manicurist's
name is Gunilla. PS means parents; we have a family dinner at
four o'clock every Sunday. I have a large family'
'PPP and FJ? How can you keep all these abbreviations
straight?'
'PPP was a girls' lunch on the sixth, with Paula, Petronella
and Priscilla, to be exact. FJ was a conference day at work,
foreign journalism. Aren't you about finished?'
'CR?' he persisted.
'Class reunion,' she said. 'I'm going to see my old class from
upper secondary'
'S and Bro?' he said.
She looked like she'd been struck by lightning. 'There's
nothing like that,' she said, trying to remain calm.
He elegantly returned the Filofax. 'S on occasional evenings,
Bro every Tuesday at various times,' he said with a chivalrous
smile.
'You've got a screw loose.'
'Those entries were in there, in ink, so you had to go out and
buy a whole new Filofax to replace the pages with S and Bro.
What does S mean, and what does Bro mean?'
'You had no right to go through my things,' she said, close to
tears. 'I've lost my husband.'
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but actually I had every right. This is a
murder case of enormous proportions. Talk to me now'
She closed her eyes. And didn't say anything.
'This apartment is yours,' he said quietly. 'It was purchased
two years ago, and you paid 9.2 million kronor cash. You also own
an apartment in Paris that's worth two million, a summer home
on Dalaro worth 2.6 million, two cars worth 700,000, and all
together you are worth 18.3 million kronor. You're twenty-eight
years old and you earn 31,000 kronor a month at the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. In addition, you get substantial expense
allowances when you're abroad. You come from a reasonably
wealthy family, but none of them have the kind of money you
do. Can you explain that? How did you explain it to Eric?'
She looked up. Her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying, yet.
'Eric accepted it without questions. My family is rich, I said,
and he was satisfied with that. You should be, too. He was
satisfied with anything that brought a little joy into this life.
Well-invested money. Superior money. If you have a fortune, it
works for you. Money is what earns money in this country now;
people like you have to accept that, too.'
'I don't,' said Soderstedt, without changing his tone.
'It's best that you do!' she shouted.
'What do S and Bro mean?' he said.
'Bro means Bro!' she yelled. 'Every Tuesday I met a man by
the name of Herman in Bro. We fucked. OK?'
'Did that bring joy into Eric's life, too?'
'Stop it!' she cried. 'Don't you think I feel guilty enough
about it? He knew what I was doing - he accepted it.'
'And S?'
She stared at him fiercely. Her body seemed to contract. Had
he pressed too hard?
'That's when I jog,' she said calmly, exhaling. 'That's my
jogging session. I work so much that I have to schedule my
jogging.'
'S as in "jogging"?'
'S as in "stretching". It takes longer to stretch than to jog.'
He looked at her with amusement. 'You schedule stretching?
And you want me to believe that?'
'Yes.'
'And the money?'
'Successful gambles in the stock market. It's possible to earn
money in Sweden again, thank God.'
'And it has nothing to do with shady Arab transactions?'
No.'
'Excellent. Fifteen minutes ago you were placed under watch
by the guard unit of the National Criminal Police. We are of the
opinion that you are in mortal danger
She glared at the crafty Finland Swede, full of hate.
'Protection or surveillance?' She maintained her calm.
'Take your pick said Arto Soderstedt, and took his leave of
her.
It could have gone a little better, but he was satisfied.



Jorge Chavez had put one hundred cars to the side and was now
concentrating on a single one. He was taking a bit of a chance.
The non-existent company's name was Cafe Havreflarnet,
which sounded harmless - it was named after a biscuit - and
was therefore an excellent front. It was supposed to be located
on Fredsgatan in Sundbyberg, but there was no fucking Cafe
Havreflarnet there, just a boring old Konsum grocery.
He pored with his usual intensity over the patent office's
business register and finally came upon the name of an
authorised signatory, a Sten-Erik Bylund, who had been living on
Rasundavagen in Stockholm when the business was established
in 1955. The National Social Insurance Board showed that the
firm had gone bankrupt, and Chavez was obliged to consult a
large manual register and page through lists of bankrupt estates.
Finally he found Cafe Havreflarnet and learned that it had gone
bankrupt in 1986. The Volvo with the B number plate had been
registered three years later, in 1989. So even then the practically
non-existent business had been the owner of the car. Taxes and
insurance were paid up, but the money didn't come from Cafe
Havreflarnet.
He tracked down a current address for Sten-Erik Bylund in
Rissne. Without further ado, he set out to meet force with force,
but that tactic turned out to be inadequate, because the address
belonged to a long-term-care institution, and Bylund was a
seriously senile ninety-three-year-old. He didn't give up; rather,
he sat across from the snacking elderly man and watched him
stick bananas in his armpits and pour blueberry soup over his
bald skull. Perhaps the cafe was not a CIA front after all.
'Why did you register your Volvo station wagon under the
name Cafe Havreflarnet, even though the business had gone
bankrupt three years earlier? Who pays the bills? Where is the
car?'
Sten-Erik Bylund bent towards him, as though he were about
to tell him a state secret. 'Nurse Gregs has wooden legs,' he said.
'And my father was a strict old woman who liked a quickie or
two on the go.'
'On the go?' Chavez said, fascinated. Could it be a code?
'Yes indeed. He ran like a bitch on heat among the mutts.
Brother Kate's breasts are great.'
Chavez was beginning to have his doubts, not least when
Bylund stood up and exposed his genitals to an old woman, who
only yawned loudly
'It was different with my Alfons,' she said to her neighbour
at the table. 'He was well hung, let me tell you. A real hunk
of beef just hanging there jiggling. Unfortunately, it just hung
there jiggling.'
'Well, dearie,' her neighbour replied, 'one time my Oliver
and I were sitting there kissing in the dark, and he reached it
out to me. I said, "No thank you, dear, I don't really feel like a
smoke." But he could go on for hours and hours until a person
was really tender, you know, dearie. Even though a person had
seen bigger, if you know what I mean.'
Chavez's mouth was hanging open.
As he left he heard the women tittering, 'Wasn't that the new
doctor, darling? Why, he must be from Lebanon. The smaller
the body, the bigger the member - that's what they say down
there in the tropics, you know.'
'I think it was Oliver. He visits me sometimes. For being
dead, he's kept his backside in very good shape, dearie.'



Paul Hjelm shivered. He'd crossed many borders in the past
twenty-four hours, but the weather transition was the most
awful. As he stood under a police umbrella, he saw LinkCoop's
long row of warehouses standing out against the streaky
perpetual-motion machine that was the rain. He understood
what Nyberg had meant when he talked about fallen skyscrapers.
A downtown skyscraper in Taby and a slum skyscraper in
Frihamnen. Both had fallen over.
He passed the sentry box with his ID raised, then moved
to the right along the building with its loading dock. Hell had
many manifestations, he thought. He had been in a crack house
in Harlem, in Lamar Jennings's dismal Queens apartment, in
a torture chamber in Kentucky: so alike, yet so different. And
now this dismal, grey warehouse in Frihamnen, where the only
upgrade that had been done in decades was the business logo,
which glimmered and flashed in spectacularly spectral spectra.
Here Eric Lindberger had experienced his hell, Benny Lundberg
his and Lamar Jennings his.
He peered behind the blue-and-white police tape that
surrounded the door on the far right end of the long row of
buildings. Beyond the curtain of rain he could see crime-scene
techs moving back and forth carrying various tools. He entered
and went down the stairs to the storage area - and found a set-up
surprisingly reminiscent of Wayne Jennings's secret torture
chamber in Kentucky. The cast-iron chair that was welded to
the floor appeared to be identical, as did the cement walls and
the bare light bulb.
'How's it going?' he called to the technicians.
'Pretty good,' one of them called back. 'Lots of organic
material here. Mostly the victim's, I expect, but since the perp
didn't have time to clean up after himself, we might get lucky.'
Seen in daylight, Hjelm thought, the premises looked
relatively harmless, defused. So this was where the confrontation
had taken place, he mused. Lamar Jennings had got in with the
key made from a clay imprint, stationed himself behind the
boxes in the corner, and awaited his father; that seemed the most
likely scenario. Wayne Jennings arrived with Eric Lindberger,
who was either unconscious or not, placed him in the chair,
took out the pincers and set to work. For Lamar, the sight of
the diabolical father he'd thought was dead for fifteen years,
performing the very actions that had given rise to the most
horrifying of his mental images, was too much; he couldn't
keep his cool and showed himself. Wayne heard him, took out
his pistol and executed him.
So they could hardly call it a confrontation. It was more
like a quick elimination, without reflection, as when you kill a
mosquito without interrupting your lawnmowing. A fitting end.
Hjelm strode back over to the entrance, under the large,
grotesque LinkCoop logo, and spoke to the receptionist, a
tanned forty-five-year-old woman who was dressed in overalls
because she was also the warehouse's organiser.
'What kind of warehouse is the one at the far end?' Hjelm
asked.
'It's a resource building,' she said without looking up;
apparently she had already said this a few times today. 'That
means it's empty. If we get a larger delivery than expected, we
have a little extra space. We have a few like that.'
'Is there anyone who often hangs out there?'
'You don't hang out in a warehouse,' she rebuffed him. 'You
keep things there.'
He chatted idly with the warehouse workers. None of them
knew anything; none understood anything. Break-in, yes, we've
had those before, but murder - that's insane.
He grew tired and went home.
Home to police headquarters.



Kerstin Holm didn't feel up to holding a difficult, demanding
conversation, such as one with Benny Lundberg's parents. Not
only was she feeling her jet lag, she had a stressful work week
behind her. She wanted to sleep. Instead she was sitting in a
small apartment in Bagarmossen at the home of shocked and
grieving parents who blamed her personally for their son's ill
fortune.
'The police are falling apart,' said the father, who kept up the
resentful facade even as his every word revealed the depth of
his sorrow. 'If they would fight crime instead of devoting themselves
to affirmative action and other shit, our son wouldn't be
lying there like a fucking vegetable. Every other fucking cop is a
woman. I'm just an old, fat school caretaker, but I would easily
be able to get ten police birds off me and scram, believe me.'
'I believe you,' said the police bird, trying to move on.
'Let the men do their thing and the women do theirs, for
fuck's sake.'
'It was a man who assaulted your son, not a woman.'
'Thank God for that!' the father yelled, disconcerted. A
man's home is his castle. Everything is going downhill.'
'Stop it!' she finally had to bark. 'Sit down!'
The large man stared at her, struck speechless in mid-speech,
and plopped down like a chastised little mischief-maker.
'I am truly very sorry about your grief,' Holm continued,
'but what Benny is going to need is your help to come back, not
a mercy shooting.'
'Lasse would never do that,' sniffled the small, shrunken
mother. 'He's just so--'
'I know,' Holm interrupted. 'It's OK, just take it easy and try
to answer my questions. Benny lived here at home. He had a
holiday in August. Do you know why he took time off almost
immediately again?'
The father sat there, stiff. The mother trembled but answered,
'He went to Crete with some friends from the military in August.
He hadn't planned any more holidays. But he hardly talks to us
these days.'
'Didn't he say anything about why he took more holiday?'
'He had got extra holiday time. That was all he said. A bonus.'
'A bonus for what?'
'He didn't say'
'How did he seem the last few days?'
'Happy. Happier than he had been for a long time. Like he
was expecting something. Like he had won some money at
Bingo or something.'
'Did he say anything about why?'
'No. Nothing. We didn't ask, either. I was a little nervous that
he was up to some sort of trouble, now that he'd finally got a
proper job.'
'Had he been in trouble before?'
'No.'
'I'm here to catch his' - she was about to say murderer - 'his
tormentor, not to put him away. Tell me.'
'Benny was a skinhead, before. Then he went through
coast-al commando training and became a new person. He tried
to become a career officer and applied to the police college,
but his grades weren't good enough. Then he got that security
guard job. It was wonderful.'
'Is he on the criminal registry?' she said, cursing her own
laziness; she should have found out ahead of time instead of
asking the parents. Couldn't someone who was more familiar
with this aspect of the case have taken care of it? Gunnar
Nyberg wanted nothing more than to go out into the field, after
all. She had just come straight from the United States, after all. Old 
bastard, she thought, thinking of Hultin.
A few assault convictions in his teen years,' the mother said,
embarrassed. 'But just against blackheads.'
God in heaven, thought Kerstin Holm. 'Nothing since then?'
'No.'
'OK. What can you tell me about yesterday?'
'He was pretty tense. Stayed closed up in his room and talked
on a phone a lot.'
'You didn't happen to hear what he was saying?'
'Do you think I eavesdrop on my own son?'
Yes, thought Holm. 'No, of course not. But you can just happen to hear things.'
'No, you can't.'
Not her too, thought Holm, groaning, imagining that she kept
most of her groan internal. 'I'm sorry. Then what happened?'
'He went out around five. He didn't say where he was going,
but he seemed nervous and keyed up. Like he was going to pick
up some winnings or something.'
'Did he say anything that might give some hint as to where
he was going or what he was doing?'
'He said one thing: "Soon you'll be able to move out of here,
Mum.'"
'Have you touched anything in his room?'
'We've been at the hospital all night. No, I haven't touched
anything.'
'May I look at it?'
She was shown to the door of what seemed to be a teenage
boy's room. Old, peeling stickers from packs of gum covered
the surface.
Once inside the room, she thanked the mother and closed
the door in her face. An enormous Swedish flag covered two of
the walls; it was creased in the middle, behind the bed. She lifted
the fabric and peered behind it. A few banners were hidden
there. She couldn't really see them, but she recognised the black,
white, gold and red stripes; they were probably miniature Nazi
flags. She flipped through the CDs. Mostly heavy metal, but also
some white power albums. Benny Lundberg hadn't broken very
radically with his skinhead past, that much was certain.
She went to the telephone on the bedside table and looked
for a notepad. She found it on the floor. It was blank, but she
could see impressions on the top page - something for the
crime-scene techs to sink their teeth into, she thought, feeling as
if she were quoting someone. She lifted the receiver and pressed
redial. The speaking clock rattled off numbers in her ear. She
was disappointed. The only thing she found out from this was
that Lundberg had had an appointment that he didn't want to
miss for any reason.
She dialled a number.
'Teleservice? This is Kerstin Holm, National Criminal Police.
Do you see the number I'm calling from on the screen? Good.
Can you run a quick check on outgoing and incoming calls
for the past twenty-four hours and email it to Chief Inspector
Jan-Olov Hultin, NCP? Top priority. Thanks.'
She did a quick check of the cluttered desk. Comic books,
porno magazines out in the open - what would Mum say?
Company pens, military magazines, rubbish. In the top drawer
were two items of interest: a small bag of pills, doubtless good
old pinkies, anabolic steroids; and a small jar of keys, probably
spares: house key, car key, bike key, bike lock key, suitcase key, and
then a key that seemed vaguely familiar. Was it to a safe-deposit
box? What could Benny Lundberg have in a safe-deposit box? A
weapon? Surely there was a whole arsenal under the floorboards.
No, a safe-deposit box didn't really fit the profile. She lifted the
receiver of the phone again and dialled.
'Is this customer service at Sparbanken? Hi, my name is
Kerstin Holm, National Criminal Police. Do you have a central
register of your safe-deposit-box customers? Or do I have to . . .
OK, I'll hold ... Hi, Kerstin Holm here, National Criminal
Police. Do you have a central register of your safe-deposit-box
customers? Or do I have to go to each individual branch?... OK,
excellent. . . It's Lundberg, Benny. Spelled like it sounds . . . No,
OK. Thanks for your help.'
She called a few more banks with the help of directory
assistance. Finally she got a nibble. Handelsbanken on Gotgatan,
near Slussen. Thank goodness. She took the notepad and the
safe-deposit-box key with her; that would have to do.
She yanked the door open without warning. Not unexpectedly,
Benny's mum was standing right outside, polishing a spot on the
door jamb.
'Do you have a recent picture of Benny?' Holm asked briskly.
The mum looked for a while and found one of the whole
family. Benny was standing in the middle with his arms around
his parents, who looked undeniably small. His smile was wide
and a bit fake. OK, that would have to do.
When she left the parents with their crippling grief - and
what grief isn't crippling? - the father was still installed on the
sofa, as if he were frozen.
She took the Metro to Slussen, a brief trip, then battled her
way up Peter Myndes Hill in the pouring rain. She turned onto
Gotgatan, walked a few feet further, passed the ATMs, and
reached Handelsbanken. She ignored the queue, resulting in
audible protests from the lunchtime patrons, and held up her
police ID.
Tm here about a safe-deposit box,' she said to a teller.
'That will be over there.' The teller pointed to a man in a tie
who was cleaning his nails in the middle of the lunchtime rush.
He stood up automatically when he saw her police ID.
'Safe-deposit box. Benny Lundberg,' she said briskly.
Again?' said the man.
She gave a start. 'What do you mean, again?'
'His father was just here, right after we opened, visiting the
box. He had a signed power of attorney in good order and both
his own and his son's IDs.'
'Shit,' she said. 'What did he look like? Like this?' She held up
the photo of the Lundberg family.
The bank employee took it but handed it back immediately.
'Absolutely not. This is a work ... a completely different type
of person.'
'This is Benny Lundberg's father,' she said. The man's face
fell. 'What did he look like?'
An older, distinguished man with a beard.'
'There you have it,' she said. A beard and everything. Come
along to police headquarters and help us with a composite
sketch.'
'But I'm working.'
'Not any more. First I'll take a quick look at the safe-deposit
box, which will probably be empty. Number?'
'Two fifty-four,' said the man, showing her the way.
Benny Lundberg's safe-deposit box was indeed empty.
Absolutely.
She took the bank employee outside and got in a taxi. Time
for another composite sketch. She was starting to get tired of
sketchy types.



Viggo Norlander had a headache. Gunnar Nyberg had a
headache. Norlander had gathered up his things, moved into
Nyberg's office and quickly taken over Kerstin Holm's spot.
They were both there now, avoiding putting their clever heads
together.
A thick list of data lay between them: the immigrants of
1983, gathered in one place, like an extremely compressed and
thorough ghetto. The names were arranged in chronological
order. Chavez, who had produced the printout, had made sure
that the names of American immigrants had a star next to them.
There were thousands of names, but only about a hundred
Americans. It still took time. A lot of information had to be
sorted through, checking sex against age and this and that.
Norlander felt ill. He had left the hospital way too soon. The
microscopic lines of text were dancing before him. That damn
overzealous Chavez creep must have deliberately picked out a
font that would sustain headaches and promote nausea. He ran
out and threw up.
Nyberg heard him through the open door. It was a splendid
cascade, the sound waves echoing through police headquarters.
'That did the trick,' Norlander said when he came back.
'Go home and sleep,' said Nyberg, fingering the bandage on
his nose.
'I will if you do.'
'OK, let's get to it. No more breaks.'
Norlander gave him a murderous look and kept working.
In the end, a list of twenty-eight people crystallised: American
immigrant men who claimed to be born around 1950. Sixteen
of them had been in the Stockholm area in 1983. Then they
checked those names against the national registry to see which
of them were currently still in Sweden and in the Stockholm
region. There were fourteen.
Are diplomats included on this list?' said Nyberg.
'Don't know. I don't think so. They aren't immigrants, after
all.'
'Could he have ended up with the American embassy?'
'The Kentucky Killer? Surely that's taking it a bit too far?'
'Yes. It was just a thought.'
'Forget it.'
'Guest researchers, then? This list isn't complete.'
'I have to get out.' Norlander, like a chameleon, had begun
to take on the colour of his bandage. Til take the top half, up to
- what does it say? - Harold Mallory in Vasastan. A to Ma. You
take the bottom half.'
Norlander rushed off before Nyberg had time to warn him against taking the car. 
He didn't want to find him, quote,
'exceptionally under the influence of drugs' in Dalshammar.
Gunnar Nyberg studied Norlander's scratches, a transcribed
list of seven American immigrants from 1983. Morcher, OrtonBrown,
Rochinsky, Stevens, Trast, Wilkinson and Williams.
Trast was Swedish for thrush, like the bird. Could Trast be a
name? Daddy blackbird. Did it even mean the same thing in
English?
Nyberg didn't really feel relieved, although he should have.
To him the grunt work felt hopeless, routine. He wanted to go
out and punch the killer in the face. He had worked past the
shock of encountering Benny Lundberg, but he still could not
digest the fact that Wayne Jennings had been allowed to knock
him down.
No one knocked Gunnar Nyberg down. That was rule
number one.
He went over to the wall and observed his face in the mirror.
His bandage had been reduced to a nose cone, a plastic splint of
the sort that heroic football players wear after the doctor stops
the flow of blood. It was held in place with bizarre rubber bands
around his neck. Bruises were still spreading out around the
cone. He refrained from imagining what it looked like under
there. Why the hell did he always have to look like a battlefield
just when a case was moving towards its conclusion?
Because this case was moving towards its conclusion, right?
He returned to his desk and sank down into his chair. It
creaked alarmingly. He had heard ghost stories about office
chairs that had gone crazy and transformed into horrible
instruments of torture, mechanisms that flew up eighteen
inches through your rectum. He thought of his broken bed and
rocked lightly in the chair. It actually did sound a bit murderous. Revenge of 
the Office Chair IV. The Hollywood blockbuster that
played to sold-out houses. Worn-out cinema seats jubilated and
shot off springs that drilled into the screen. Not a single monitor
was dry. Curtains blew their noses on themselves. Office after
office revolted throughout the entire United States.
Distracted was an understatement. There was usually a
reason for his attacks of distraction. Something, somewhere
was chafing, irritating him. Something was causing him not to
be really one hundred per cent satisfied with the list.
He sorted the names, to come up with a suitable priority
ranking. Three were in the inner city, two in the northern suburbs,
one in the southern suburbs. They were probably working now.
So, places of work. Huddinge, two in Kista, two at the Royal
Institute of Technology, Nynashamn, Danderyd. Order of
priority: Danderyd, the Tech, Kista, Huddinge, Nynashamn. Or
Kista, Danderyd, the Tech, Huddinge, Nynashamn. Maybe that
was better.
He put the list aside and stared at the wall. He tried his voice,
working his way through a scale. An ugly, nasal tone. This
injury too had affected his singing voice. Something about that
made him uncomfortable. Punishment? Reminder? A reminder,
maybe. A commemoration.
Suddenly they were there again. Gunilla. The burst eyebrows.
Tommy and Tanja's eyes, as large as platters. Do you have to come
right now?
His past had a single redeeming feature: he had never touched
the children, had never lifted a hand against Tommy and Tanja.
Was that why he always took beatings that distorted his
voice? So that he would never forget why he sang? For the very
reason that it came at such an incredibly inconvenient time, he
seized the opportunity.
There were two Tommy Nybergs in Uddevalla. He called
the first one. He was seventy-four and deaf as a post. He called
the other. A woman answered. An infant was crying in the
background. A grandchild? he thought.
'I'm looking for Tommy Nyberg,' he said in a surprisingly
steady voice.
'He's not home,' said the woman. She had a lovely voice.
Mezzo-soprano, he guessed.
'May I just ask, how old is Tommy?'
'Twenty-six,' she said. 'Who is this?'
'His father,' he said.
'His father is dead. Come off it.'
'Are you sure?'
'Dead as a doornail. I'm the one who found him. Stop fucking
with me, you old creep.' She threw the phone down.
OK, Tommy wasn't necessarily still living in Uddevalla.
Besides, he was twenty-four, he quickly calculated. Fucking
old creep? he thought, laughing. Gallows humour. He had one
chance left.
There was a Tanja Nyberg-Nilsson. Married. And not a word.
He called. A woman's voice answered, 'Tanja.' Sweet.
Tranquil.
Who was he to disturb the peace? Hang up, hang up, hang up, said a voice. Your 
bridges are burned. It's too late. 'Hello,' he said, swallowing heavily.
'Hello, who is this?'
Yes, who was it? He had tossed out the word father to a
strange woman without thinking it over. Was it really a title he
had earned?
'Gunnar,' he said, for lack of anything else.
'Gunnar who?' said the woman, in a west coast dialect. It
sounded like the Gothenburg dialect and yet did not. 'Gunnar
Trolle?' she said a bit suspiciously. 'Why are you calling? It's been
over for a long time, you know that.'
'Not Gunnar Trolle,' he said 'Gunnar Nyberg.'
Silence. Had she hung up?
'Dad?' she said, almost inaudibly.
Her eyes, large as platters. Was it possible to keep going?
Are you OK?' he asked.
'Yes,' she said. 'Why . . .'
She fell silent.
'I've been thinking of you all recently,' he said.
'Are you ill?' she asked.
Yes, it's something completely enormous.
'No. No, I - don't know. I just have to make sure - that I
didn't completely destroy you. That's all.'
'You promised never to contact us, Mum said.'
'I know. I kept my promise. The two of you are grown up
now'
'Pretty much,' she said. 'We never talked about you. It was
like you never existed. Bengt became our dad. Our real dad.'
'Bengt is your real dad,' he said. Who the hell was Bengt?
'I'm something different. I would like to see you.'
'I only remember yelling and violence,' she said. 'I don't
know what difference it would make.'
The neither. Would you forbid me to come?'
She was quiet. 'No,' she said at last. 'No, I wouldn't.'
'You're married,' he said, to hide the rejoicing inside him.
'Yes,' she said. 'No kids yet. No grandchildren.'
'That's not why I'm calling,' he said.
'Yes, it is,' she said.
'How is Tommy?'
'Good. He lives in Stockholm. Osthammar. He has a son.
There's your grandchild.'
He received the small blows right on his nose cone, with a
smile.
'And Gunilla?' he said hesitantly.
'She still lives in the house, with Dad. They're thinking about
switching to an apartment and getting a summer place.'
'Good idea,' he said. 'Well, see you. I'll be in touch.'
'Bye,' she said. 'Take care of yourself.'
He would. More than ever before. That soft Uddevala dialect.
The girl who had spoken such pronounced Stockholmish. He
remembered her little Stockholm-accented vowels so well. It
was possible to become someone else. To change dialects and
become someone else.
Then it hit him. There and then, it hit him.
There and then Gunnar Nyberg caught the Kentucky Killer.
He didn't have to be an American. It would even have been
more convenient to become some other nationality. Maybe not
a Norwegian or a Kenyan, but something plausible.
He paged frantically through the lists. He went through
name after name after name and ignored the stars.
Hjelm came in and regarded the intensely reading giant with
surprise. An enormous aura of energy was rising up above him
like a storm cloud.
'Hi yourself,' Hjelm said.
'Shut up,' Nyberg said amiably.
Hjelm sat down and shut up. Nyberg kept reading. Fifteen,
twenty minutes went by.
April, May. 3 May: Steiner, Wilhelm, Austria, born 1942;
Hun, Gaz, Mongolia, born 1964; Berntsen, Kaj, Denmark, born
1956; Mayer, Robert, New Zealand, born 1947; Harkiselassie,
Winston, Ethiopia, born 1960; Stankovski, B Gunnar
Nyberg stopped short.
'Bing bang boom,' he roared. 'The famous Kentucky Killer.
Get a photo of Wayne Jennings. Now!'
Hjelm stared at him and slunk out, suddenly immeasurably
subordinate. Nyberg stood up and paced, no ran, around the
room, like an overfed rat in a tiny hamster wheel.
Hjelm returned and tossed the large portrait of Wayne
Jennings as a young man onto the desk.
'Haven't you seen it before?' he said.
Nyberg stared at it. The youth with a broad smile and
steel-blue eyes. He placed his hands on the photo, letting only
the eyes peer out. He had seen those eyes before. In his mind he
made the hair grey and moved the hairline up. He added a few
wrinkles.
'Meet Robert Mayer,' he said, 'chief of security at Link-Coop.'
Hjelm looked at the photo, and then at Nyberg. 'Are you
sure?'
'There was something familiar about him, but I didn't put it
together. He must have undergone some sort of plastic surgery,
but you can't get rid of your eyes and your gaze that easily. It's
him.'
'OK.' Hjelm tried to calm down. 'We have to get confirmation.
It would be logical for you to contact him after the Benny
Lundberg incident.'
The?' Nyberg gaped. 'I'd just give him a whipping.'
'If anyone else goes, he'll get suspicious. It has to be you. And
it has to seem routine. Play dumb - that ought to work. Bring
along some lousy, unrelated photo.' He rummaged in the desk
drawer for a photograph of a man, any man at all. He found a
passport photo of a man in his sixties smiling serenely. 'This will
be good,' he said. 'Who is it?'
Nyberg looked at the picture. 'It's Kerstin's pastor.'
Hjelm stopped short. It hadn't occurred to him until now
that he was sitting at Kerstin's desk. 'Do you know about it?' he
asked.
'Yes,' said Nyberg. 'She told me.'
Hjelm felt a little twinge and fingered the picture clumsily.
'OK. It'll have to do. We'll wipe it, and then you make sure to
get Mayer's fingerprints.'
'Can't we just bring him in? Once we get the fingerprints,
it's over.'
'We might not get that far. There are powerful interests
involved. A lawyer could get him released before they even get
to fingerprints. And we can't ask him - he'll run. I'll check with
Hultin.'
He called Hultin, who came right in, as though he had been
waiting outside. He quickly got a clear picture of the situation,
then nodded at Hjelm.
'OK, let's do it. Gunnar will go back to Frihamnen. Mayer
ought to see it as pure chance that Gunnar and Viggo showed
up in Frihamnen, which it is - he's had the idea to check the
rest of the storage spaces there. He shouldn't have any idea
how far we've got. Provided it doesn't leak at the FBI. I just got
a report from Holm - she's on her way. Benny Lundberg had
some secrets in a safe-deposit box, but they were picked up this
morning, probably also by this Robert Mayer with a ridiculous
fake beard. We're getting a composite sketch.'
'How will we do the fingerprint checks?' said Hjelm. 'There
are these new micro-variants, you know.'
'Can you do them?'
'No. Jorge can.'
'Get him. We'll all go together. In case he tries to run when
Gunnar is there.'
Hjelm ran into his office and found Chavez contemplating
'Nurse Gregs has wooden legs' and 'Brother Kate's breasts are
great'. Were those children's rhymes?
'Get a laptop with fingerprint equipment,' said Hjelm. 'We're
going to take K.'
The children's rhymes dissipated. Chavez was the last one
to arrive at Hultin's car and threw himself into the back seat
beside Hjelm, placing the small computer on his lap. Hultin
drove like a madman towards Taby. Gunnar Nyberg was in
the passenger seat. He had pulled himself together and called
LinkCoop, sounding perfectly blase. Robert Mayer was there.
He would be available for another couple of hours. Nyberg
asked to discuss last night's incidents with him. He needed to
show him a photo.
That was fine.
They turned off of Norrtaljevagen, drove past Taby's city
centre, which they could vaguely see through the drizzle, and
arrived on a small side street.
'This isn't good,' Nyberg said. 'They have mega-security.
Sentry boxes at the gates. Monitoring systems. He'll see
everything.'
Hultin drove to a bus stop and pulled over. He thought for
a moment, turned round and drove back. It was incredibly
frustrating. In the garage at police headquarters, Nyberg
changed cars - he hopped into his own good old Renault. Then
he followed them to Taby.
Hultin's Volvo turned off into a parking spot next to an
industrial building a few hundred feet before LinkCoop's gate.
There it stayed, in the storm.
When Nyberg drove up to the sentry box, everything was
just as it had been at his last visit. On the surface.
The twin receptionists were the same too. Although he
insisted that he could find his way to Mayer's office himself,
one of them walked ahead of him through the stylistically pure
building; he became more convinced than ever that this was a
well-thought-out marketing strategy. This time, however, his
interest in the miniskirt and what it hid was minimal. Incredibly
tense, he entered chief of security Robert Mayer's office with
the blinking-monitor walls.
Mayer fixed him with his ice-blue gaze, Wayne Jennings's
gaze, while Nyberg made the utmost effort to seem effortless.
Mayer was otherwise relaxed; only his gaze was firmly focused,
and it seemed to see right through him. The evening before,
Mayer had tortured Benny Lundberg, beaten Viggo Norlander
unconscious and broken Nyberg's own nasal bones in three
places. Mayer himself seemed fresh as a daisy.
'That doesn't look good,' he said, tapping his nose lightly.
'It's a tough job,' Nyberg said, shaking Mayer's extended
hand. He refrained from using his Mr Sweden grip this time.
'I've been looking more closely at what that building has
been used for recently,' said Mayer, sitting down and folding his
hands behind his head. 'It really has been empty - all that's there
is old empty boxes. So it's been accessible to anyone at all. And
apparently for any purpose at all.'
Nyberg was blinded by Mayer's professionalism. 'It's a
horrible story'
'It really is,' Mayer said sympathetically.
Nyberg felt like he was going to throw up. 'Naturally, this
places the break-in in a slightly different light.'
Mayer nodded thoughtfully. 'Yes. Benny reports a break-in in
one place while at the same time the Kentucky Killer is at work
nearby. Then he's nearly murdered himself in that very same
spot. What do you make of that?'
'Nothing, for the time being,' Nyberg said nonchalantly. 'But
one wonders what Benny Lundberg was up to.'
'It certainly seems very strange,' said Mayer. 'We knew, of
course, that he had a past as a skinhead, but we thought he
deserved a chance at a new life. I suppose most of this would
now indicate that he had something to do with the break-in.'
'I don't quite understand,' said Nyberg with meticulous
stupidity.
'I'm not going to get involved in your work,' Mayer said
briskly. That's hardly necessary. You were close to getting him,
after all.'
'It would be nice to have that honour, but the truth is that we
were only down there doing a routine check of all the buildings
in the vicinity' Nyberg took out the photo of Kerstin Holm's
deceased pastor and extended it to Mayer. Upside down.
Mayer took it and had to turn it round. He glanced at it and
shook his head.
Nyberg took the photo back and put it in his wallet.
Tm sorry,' said Mayer. 'Should I recognise him?'
'We picked him up in a car that was leaving Frihamnen at high
speed. One of the warehouse workers thought he recognised
him. That he might have worked at LinkCoop.'
'No, I don't recognise him.'
Nyberg nodded doggedly and stood. He extended his hand
towards Mayer, and they shook in a civilised fashion.
He had to check himself so that he didn't run through the
corridors. He smiled at the twin receptionists and received a
double dividend. His car rolled calmly out through the gates
and rounded the curve slowly.
Then for the last twenty yards he stepped on it; he thought
he could allow himself that much. He bolted over to Hultin's
car and got in, dripping.
'Everything OK?' asked Hultin.
'I think so.' He handed the photo to Chavez in the backseat.
Hjelm watched the hand over. There was something deeply
macabre about the Kentucky Killer's fingerprints being on the
timid, cancer-ridden pastor's face.
Wearing plastic gloves, Chavez put the photo into a little
scanner fastened to the side of the laptop. Everything had been
prepared in advance. Nyberg's fingerprints had been fed in, as
had Jennings's. After an uncomfortably long time, the computer
beeped. 'Match' was blinking on the screen.
'We have a match for Gunnar Nyberg's fingerprints said
Chavez.
No one answered. They waited. The time dragged unbearably.
Each second was a step towards hopelessness.
Then another ding - another match.
'Not Nyberg again?' said Hjelm.
'Match for Robert Mayer,' said Chavez. 'Wayne Jennings and
Robert Mayer are the same person.'
A silvery grey turbo Volvo in an industrial car park in Taby
heaved a sigh of relief.
'We can't just storm in,' said Hultin. 'He'd see us at least
two minutes beforehand. I imagine that ten seconds would be
enough for him to disappear into thin air.'
They were quiet for a moment. Their thinking could have
been called brainstorming if a storm hadn't been howling as if
through the skulls of the dead.
'I'll have to take him myself,' said Nyberg. 'I think I seemed
dumb enough to have forgotten something.'
'You have a concussion,' said Hultin.
'That is correct,' said Nyberg, hopping over to his car.
He rolled down the window. 'Be prepared. I'll call as soon as
anything happens.'
'Be careful,' said Hultin. 'This is one of the most experienced
professional killers in the world.'
'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' Nyberg waved, irritated, and drove off.
At the sentry box he said he'd forgotten to ask about
something; he was let in. By this point Mayer-Jennings had had
him in sight for fifteen seconds; he might already be gone. He
hoped with all his heart that he had given the impression of
being useless, a sloppy cop. The twin receptionists smiled and
announced him, and he managed to resist the dancing miniskirt;
at least she wouldn't die. Ideas and plans teemed through him.
How should he act? In all likelihood, Mayer would have access
to a weapon within a tenth of a second. At any hint of a threat,
he would immediately kill Nyberg, who wouldn't have a chance.
But he wanted to meet his grandchild. He made a decision.
Mayer stood waiting in the corridor outside his office; he
looked a bit suspicious, which probably meant that he was
churning with suspicions.
Nyberg lit up when he saw him. 'I'm sorry,' he said
breathlessly, tilting his head. 'I remembered that there was one
more thing.'
Mayer raised an eyebrow and was ready. His hand moved
a fraction of an inch towards the lapel of his jacket and pulled
back.
Gunnar Nyberg delivered a tremendous uppercut that tossed
Mayer through the corridor. His head crunched into the wall.
He didn't get up.
And that was that.




28


'Brilliant plan,'Jan-Olov Hultin said sternly.
'Well, it worked,' said Gunnar Nyberg, grimacing. Three
fingers on his right hand were broken. The cast had hardly had
time to dry.
Nyberg had dragged Mayer into his office and called Hultin.
They decided to keep the media at bay so as not to limit the space
they had to work in. Together they came up with a strategy.
Hjelm, saying he needed to get hold of his colleague Nyberg,
had got into LinkCoop and followed one of the dance-happy
twins through the corridor. Together the somewhat injured duo
had located a handy back door, out of which they moved Mayer.
While Hjelm stood guard, Nyberg walked coolly back through
the corridor and left the premises in due order; his smile at the
twin receptionists had been a bit forced. He drove his car round
to the back of the building, and he and Hjelm loaded Mayer into
the trunk. Then Hjelm, too, left LinkCoop via the reception
area. The twin receptionists were indeed sparklingly lovely.
For a while they worried that Nyberg had actually killed
Mayer, which might not have been legally justifiable. But the
man was a professional even in that respect. In the small, sterile
and nearly secret cell in the basement at police headquarters, he
came to after half an hour. No one else actually knew he was
there; Hultin had chosen to keep an extremely low profile, even
internally. The staff doctor confirmed a concussion as well as a
cracked jaw and cheekbone. In other words, no broken jaw Mayer
could speak. But he didn't.
Hultin made the first attempt. Hjelm sat on a chair behind
him and to the side, while Viggo Norlander and Jorge Chavez sat by the door. 
Along the other wall were Arto Soderstedt and
Kerstin Holm. The whole gang. No one wanted to miss this except
for Gunnar Nyberg. He bowed out.
'My name is Chief Inspector Jan-Olov Hultin,' Hultin said
politely. 'Perhaps you've seen my name in the papers. They're
demanding my head on a platter.'
Robert Mayer sat, bound to a fixed table with handcuffs, and
regarded him neutrally. A competitor, thought Hultin.
'Wayne Jennings,' he said. 'Or should I say the Kentucky
Killer? Or perhaps K?'
The same icy gaze. And the same silence.
'So far no one seems to be missing you at LinkCoop, and
we've arranged it so that the press doesn't get wind of the story.
As soon as your name comes out in the papers, things will be
a bit different, you see. Not even your superiors at LinkCoop
know you're here. So tell us what's going on.'
Wayne Jennings's icy gaze was truly unsettling. It seemed
to nail you down. You felt like you were in the cross hairs of a
telescopic sight.
'Come on, now. What are you up to? Who do you work for?'
'I have the right to make a phone call.'
'In Sweden we have a number of controversial terrorist laws
that I personally dislike, but they are actually quite useful in
situations like these. In other words, you do not have the right
to make a phone call.'
Jennings said nothing more.
'Benny Lundberg,' said Hultin. 'What did he have in his
safe-deposit box?'
No answer was forthcoming.
He held up a drawing of Jennings with a beard. 'Why a
beard?'
Nothing, not a movement.
'May I suggest a scenario?' Hjelm said from his corner. 'My name is Paul Hjelm, 
by the way. We have an acquaintance in
common. Ray Larner.'
Jennings's head turned an inch to the side, and for the first
time Paul Hjelm met Wayne Jennings's eyes. He understood
how the Vietcong must have felt in the jungles of Vietnam. And
how Eric Lindberger must have felt. And Benny Lundberg. And
tens of other people who had met their death with these eyes as
their last point of human contact.
'The night of September the twelfth was tough for you,'
Hjelm began. 'Several unexpected things happened. You had
Eric Lindberger, a civil servant with the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, with you in your private torture chamber in Frihamnen.
Incidentally, it's very similar to the one under your farm in
Kentucky. Did you bring along your personal architect?'
Jennings's eyes might have narrowed a little. Possibly they
took on a new sharpness.
'We'll come back to Lindberger, because that's the whole
point in continuing this case. Anyway, you make sure that he
loses consciousness, and you fasten him into the chair. Maybe
you have time to start the procedure. You drive your pincers
into Lindberger's neck with surgical precision. Then suddenly
the empty boxes fall down. A young man is crouching behind
the boxes. You take him out immediately. Bang bang bang bang,
four shots to the heart. But who the hell is he? Are the police on
your trail? Already? How is it possible?
'He has no ID, none at all. You search his bag. You find - a
set of vocal cord pincers and a set of nerve pincers. Maybe you
even recognise your own tools. What was this? Did you know
who he was even then, or did you think he was a competitor? An
admirer? A copycat? We'll get back to that.
'You finish torturing Lindberger and are forced to get away
from there with two corpses instead of one, and what's more,
you're surprised by a coach load of drunken lawyers, so you have
to leave the strange man behind. You're certain that the lawyers
have called the police and reported your number plate, so you
have to hurry. You drive out to Lidingo and dump Lindberger in
the reeds.
At the same time, you know that the police are going to show
up and search the warehouses and find your torture chamber.
This means that you have to redirect their attention. There's only
one thing to do. Benny Lundberg. In your capacity as chief of
security, you call the sentry box and order him to fake a break-in
at one of the other storage units. You promise him money and
time off. Sure enough, the police go to the place where Benny's
fake break-in has occurred and are satisfied. The corpse can be
assumed to be left over from the break-in. Everything ought to
be just fine.
'But Benny Lundberg has other plans. He tries to extort
money from you. He has hidden a letter in some unknown place,
in which he's written in detail about the night's events, as life
insurance. Unfortunately, he doesn't know that your speciality
is getting people to talk. You get him to do just this, right before
two police officers arrive on the scene. You injure the officers,
but you don't kill them. One of them gets a bit angry and knocks
you out. And now you're here.'
Jennings's gaze was fixed throughout the account. Wheels
were turning behind the cold blue eyes. His face was swelling
and colouring; it didn't seem to concern him.
'So there are two basic questions,' Hjelm continued. 'One,
what was Eric Lindberger expected to reveal? And two, do you
know who you shot and killed?'
Pause. Nothing. Nothing at all.
'The second one is a trick question,' Hjelm continued.
'Because it was the Kentucky Killer.'
The icy eyes narrowed. Or Hjelm thought they narrowed.
Perhaps it was an illusion.
'You know, of course, that there has been a copycat running
riot in New York for a year. Someone got hold of your old pincers
and went out on the town. You've also read in the Swedish media
that he's come to Sweden; no one can have missed that. He was
twenty-five years old, and he was out to get you. You shot him
in cold blood. Do you know who he was?'
Jennings held him with his gaze. Was there a trace of curiosity
in there? Had he really not guessed?
'You're not going to like it,' said Hjelm. 'His name was Lamar
Jennings.'
Wayne Jennings leaned backwards four inches. It was a lot in
a situation like this. The icy gaze wavered, then flew up towards
the ceiling. And then it returned. Steady as a rock.
'No,' he said. 'You're lying.'
'Think about it. What happened to your pincers after you
fooled Lamer and went underground? You left them behind in the cellar. A 
striking blunder. If you were going to keep
killing and put Larner away, you needed them. They had to be
identical, so they would leave identical marks and prove that K
was still alive. Without them, you had to manufacture new ones
and make sure they were identical, with the same scratches and
idiosyncrasies. That must have been pretty tricky.'
Jennings stared at the wall.
'Your son surprised you one night down in the torture
chamber in Kentucky. It was the culmination of several years of
abuse. Why the hell did you do that to him? A child? Don't you
understand what you created? A monster. He copied you. He
came here to give you a taste of your own medicine, and you
shot him like a dog. Bad blood always comes back round.'
'It's "what goes around comes around",' said Jennings.
'Well, now it's "bad blood always comes back round". You've
changed a proverb.'
'Was it really Lamar?'
'Yes. I've read his diary. Hellish stuff, just hellish. You
murdered him twice. What did you do to him when he startled
you down in the cellar? A ten-year-old, for Christ's sake! What
did you do to him?'
'Hit him, of course,' Wayne Jennings said tonelessly.
He closed his eyes. There was an enormous amount of
activity behind his eyelids.
When they finally opened, it was as though his eyes belonged
to someone else, both more single-minded and more resigned.
'I was war-weary' he said. 'You can't imagine what that's like
- in this country you haven't had to fight a war for two hundred
years. He was a reminder of what I'd once been, just a regular
weakling. He got on my nerves. I only burned him a little, with
cigarettes. He became my outlet. I wasn't that much different
from my own father.'
'Tell us,' said Hjelm.
Jennings leaned forward. He had made a decision. 'You
were right not to let this get out to the public. It would have
been devastating. I'm the good guy. You don't believe it, but
I'm actually on the right side. The uglier parts of the right side.
I'm distasteful but necessary. It was all about getting enemies to
talk.'
'In what way was Eric Lindberger an enemy?'
Jennings fixed his eyes on Hjelm's. 'Wait on that. I have to
think about the consequences.'
'OK. How did all this start?'
Jennings braced himself and began.
'I don't know if you can understand what patriotism is. I
went to war to escape from my father. I was seventeen. Poor
white Southern trash. I was a child who killed other children.
I noticed that I had a talent for killing. Others realised it, too. I
quickly rose through the ranks. And then suddenly I'm called to
Washington and I'm standing eye to eye with the president, at
just a little over twenty years old. I'm going to be in charge of
an extremely secret special task force in Vietnam, one that will
be directly below the president. Civilians train me to use a new
secret weapon. I become an expert. Then I train the others in
the group. I'm the only one who has contact with the civilians.
The whole time it's just me - I don't know who they are. After
the war, all they say is "Keep yourself available" and pay my
salary. It's extremely strange. I'm completely destroyed when I
come back. I can't get close to my wife. I badger my son. Then
they suddenly contact me. They emerge.'
'CIA?' said Hultin.
Hjelm widened his eyes in surprise.
Jennings shook his head. 'We'll hold off on that,' he said. 'In
any case, I suddenly realised what was expected of me. At this
point, in the late seventies, the Cold War was moving into a new
phase - I can't go into it in detail, but it was truly war. There
was an immediate threat - they needed information, lots of
information. The same thing was happening on the other side.
One by one I picked up the agents who were under surveillance.
Professional spies and traitors alike. Academics who sold state
secrets. Soviet agents. KGB. I got an incredible amount of vital
information out of them.
'Someone got the brilliant idea that it would be handy if it
looked like the work of a madman, I don't know who, so I had
to play serial killer, even if it meant I got caught. And that's how
I got Larner on my case. You have no idea how hard that man
worked to find out about Commando Cool. He was a threat to
national security.
'On the political front, the Cold War started to calm down.
Brezhnev died, the Soviet Union was on its way to dissolution,
and other enemies were emerging. I would be more useful
in some border state between east and west, where the trade
exchange of the future would take place, and in my escape I
would bring down Larner, make a laughing stock of him.'
'So it was time to escape. Your teeth and someone's remains
were in the car.'
'It took weeks of preparation. A lot of night work out there
in the wilderness. Colleagues who were ready to go at any time.
Rigged equipment. A perfect set of teeth. A disguised Soviet
agent whose teeth had been extracted. A concealed hole in the
ground that I could roll into, along with some colleagues, and
stay for a day or two. Everything is possible; the impossible takes
a bit longer.'
Hjelm, satisfied, still had to ask, 'What kind of ideal are you
working towards? What does the life that you're defending with
all this violence look like?'
'Like yours,' said Wayne Jennings without hesitation. 'Not
like mine, like yours. I have no life. I died in Vietnam. Do you
believe that you live this freely and with this much privilege at
no cost? Do you believe that Sweden is alliance-free and neutral?'
He paused and looked at the wall, then moved his gaze
towards Norlander. He met eyes filled with hate. It was hardly
the first time. He ignored it.
"Where is Gunnar Nyberg?' he asked.
'Taking care of his broken hand. Why?5
'No one has ever taken me out before. And no one has ever
fooled me like that. I thought he was an idiot.'
'He identifies with Benny Lundberg. He sat with him as he
was going through the worst of his suffering. His warmth saved
Benny's life. Is that something you can understand?'
'Warmth saves more than cold. Unfortunately, cold is also
necessary. Otherwise we would have an eternally cold earth.'
'Is that what the Lindberger story is about - eternal cold?
Nuclear weapons? Chemical or biological ones? Or is it
LinkCoop? Computers, or control devices for nuclear weapons?
Saudi Arabia?'
He smiled inwardly. Maybe he was even a little impressed
by the Swedish police - and by Paul Hjelm. 'I'm still thinking
about it. I could ask you to contact a certain authority, but I
don't know. There are risks.'
'Are you aware that you are sitting here because you committed
twenty murders and one attempted murder? That you
are a criminal? An enemy of humanity? Someone who destroys
all the human worth that we have spent several thousand years
building up? Or do you think you can get out at any time? Do
you think you can just choose the right second to get up from
the chair, free yourself from the handcuffs and tear my head off?'
Jennings smiled again, that smile that never reached his
eyes. 'People should never make murder machines out of other
people.'
Hjelm looked at Hultin. Suddenly they began to feel
threatened. After all, the only thing that separated them from a
murder machine was a set of handcuffs.
'You don't kill police officers,' Hultin said with bombproof
certainty.
'I weigh the pros and cons of every situation. The alternative
with the most pros wins. If I had killed that policeman' - he
nodded towards Norlander - 'you wouldn't have handled me
this mildly today. And then we would have had a problem.'
'You were counting on being caught? You're joking!'
'It was in fifteenth place in the list of possibilities. It went
down to seventeenth after Nyberg's visit. That was why I wasn't
on my guard. That was an excellent tactic'
Jennings closed his eyes and weighed the pros and cons.
Then he made an extremely fast movement and was out of the
handcuffs.
Chavez had his pistol up first. Holm was second, Norlander
third. Soderstedt was sluggish, and Hultin and Hjelm sat still.
'Nice reaction over there in the corner,' said Jennings,
pointing at Chavez. 'What's your name?'
Chavez and Norlander approached him with pistols raised.
Hjelm took his out to be on the safe side. All three held
Jennings in check while Holm and Soderstedt cuffed him again,
considerably tighter this time.
'I've had a full month's training on handcuffs,' Jennings said
calmly. And I mean a full month. We need to understand each
other here.'
'OK,' said Hjelm. 'You've made your point. So how did the
pros and cons look on 6 April 1983?'
Jennings performed a quick search of his memory bank, then
he flashed a smile. It passed. 'I understand,' he said.
'What is it that you understand?'
'That you're not a bad policeman, Paul Hjelm, not bad at all.'
'Why did you write that letter to your wife?'
'Weakness,' Jennings said neutrally. A pure con. The last
one.'
'The episode with Nyberg, then?'
'We'll see,' he said cryptically.
'We found the letter, almost completely burned up, in
Lamar's apartment.'
'Was that where you found my name?'
'Unfortunately, it wasn't. If it had been, Benny Lundberg
wouldn't be lying half terrified to death at Karolinska right now.
Why did you write your name? Surely it didn't matter to Mary
Beth what you called yourself. It was really quite infantile. And
it drove Lamar to come here, which killed him.'
'It was a farewell to my last remnants of a personal life. The
letter was supposed to have been burned immediately. She got
her revenge by not burning it.'
'Or else she wanted one last memory of the man she had
once made the mistake of loving. It's called human emotion.
For you, it's something other people have, something you can
exploit.'
'It was a final farewell,'Jennings said.
'This final farewell killed your whole family. It made your son
follow you and get killed by you; it made your wife kill herself.
A cute farewell.'
Was it possible to hurt him? Hjelm wondered, as Jennings
looked at him with narrowed eyes. Had he found a sore spot?
'Did she kill herself? I didn't know that.'
'Your deeds are never done in isolation. You can't kill
someone without it having a wide array of consequences. You
spread clouds of evil and sudden death around you - do you
really not understand that? Do you know how many serial killers
you have inspired? You have a fan club on the Internet. You're a
fucking legend. There are K T-shirts, small biscuits in the shape
of a K that say "The Famous Kentucky Killer", badges that say
"Keep on doing it, K", liquorice versions of your pincers. You
have actively contributed to the fact that a frightening number
of serial killers are running riot in the country you think you're
protecting. You're a madman who must be stopped. Stop yourself,
for God's sake.'
'I'm hardly alone,' he said, looking up at the ceiling. 'I follow
orders and receive a salary each month. If I disappear, there'll be
a job opening, and a lot of people will apply'
Are you finished thinking?'
'Yes,' he said abruptly. 'I'll make it short and concise listen
up. LinkCoop is a shady company. It survives on illegal
imports and exports of military computer equipment; the rest
is a front. The CEO, Henrik Nilsson, is a crook. LinkCoop has
got hold of control devices for nuclear warheads, just as you
said, Hjelm. Eric Lindberger from the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs was the middleman between LinkCoop and the Saudi Islamist movement. I 
thought I had stopped the deal by taking
out Lindberger. By the way, he's the only one who hadn't talked
under pressure - I was impressed. But great sums of money
have been transferred to LinkCoop's secret accounts today. This
means the equipment is in the hands of the Swedish middleman,
in an unknown location, and will soon be on its way to a Swedish
harbour, I don't know which one, in order to be transported on
to those in the fundamentalist movement.'
'Perhaps Eric Lindberger withstood your torture simply
because he didn't know anything. Perhaps he was innocent, and
the Swedish middleman was someone else.'
'I received reliable information from ... my sources. They've
never been wrong before.'
'How did the message read, exactly?' Arto Soderstedt asked
from over by the wall.
Jennings's head turned the necessary fraction of an inch, no
more.
Soderstedt had his turn to meet the gaze. Hard core, he
thought.
'It was a coded message,' said Jennings, 'and it went "E
Lindberger MFA". It was unambiguous.'
'Elisabeth Justine Lindberger,' Soderstedt said coldly.
The eyes narrowed again. A tiny movement in the corner of
one of them. 'Oh,' said Jennings.
'Not "O" but "E",' said Soderstedt. 'That letter subjected an
innocent person to a hellish journey into death.'
'Do you have her under surveillance?' Jennings said.
Arto Soderstedt reduced everything on the tip of his tongue
to 'Yes.'
'Increase it right away'
'Let me see if I understand this,' said Hultin. 'You're
giving us orders? One of the worst serial killers in history has
finally been caught, and he's sitting here giving orders to the
police?'
'Not me,' said Jennings. 'I'm not giving any orders. I'm No
One. But I can summarise the choice you have to make in two
questions. One: Do you want a nuclear war or not? Two: Which
world order do you prefer - American capitalism or Islamic
fundamentalism? It's a globalised world these days - that's
irreversible. So it's more important than ever that there be a world order. And 
you can pick-just the seven of you.'
'I wonder if it's that simple,' said Hjelm.
'Right now, in the next few hours, it really is that simple.
After that you can do whatever you want with me.'
'What was the authority that you were debating whether we
should contact?' Hultin asked.
'It won't work now. It will take too long. There's only one
possibility, and that's for you to make sure that that ship is not
allowed to leave the harbour.'
'Does Henrik Nilsson at LinkCoop know any of this?'
'No, he makes himself ignorant as soon as he has the money.
The middleman moves the materiel to a neutral place. From
there it's transported to the harbour. Both the neutral place and
the harbour are unknown. The ship will leave harbour sometime
today or tomorrow. That's all the information we have. Except
for Mrs Lindberger.'
'The ship's destination?'
'Faked. Could be anywhere at all.'
'OK,' Hultin said. 'Gather outside.'
They stood up one by one and left.
Hjelm lingered for a second and looked at Wayne Jennings.
'All of this,' he said, 'the whole admission and confession and
everything was just a way to buy time, wasn't it, to size up the
situation? Get us over on your side? Is any of it true?'
'It's the result that counts,'Jennings said coolly.
'And Nyberg?' said Hjelm. 'What was your assessment when
he came walking towards you down the corridor? Did you
already see this scenario in front of you? Was there no surprise
in that uppercut?'
Jennings's eyes bored into Hjelm's. Hjelm thought they were
like primeval darkness, the eyes of a shark.
'You'll never know,' said Jennings.
Hjelm took a step closer and bent over him. Positioned this
way, Jennings could have killed him in a tenth of a second. Hjelm
didn't know why he was purposefully sticking his head into the
lion's mouth. Had he heard a call from the other side? A siren's
song? Or did he want to sneer in the face of death?
'For the first time in my life I have some understanding of
the death penalty he said.
Jennings smiled fleetingly. It had nothing to do with happiness.
'Of course as an individual I deserve the death penalty' he said.
'But I'm not an individual, I'm an - authority.'
Hjelm left him then and joined the others out in the corridor.
Arto Soderstedt was speaking into a mobile phone.
'Is he telling the truth?' Kerstin Holm said. 'Is it all about
control devices for nuclear warheads? Or is he sending us off on
some crap errand so he can find a way out?'
'He's the devil's right-hand man,' Hjelm said grimly. 'His
methods are inscrutable. What the fuck is he doing with us?
What kind of game is he playing?'
'Isn't this Sapo's domain?' said Chavez.
'Don't we have to take it up to the government level?' Holm
said.
Hultin stood motionless. Was he thinking, or was he
paralysed?
'Let's go in and kill him,' Norlander suggested eagerly.
Soderstedt hung up his phone and sighed deeply. 'Justine has
escaped the surveillance.'
Hultin made a face, his first sign of life in a long time. 'We'll
do it ourselves. Whatever Justine is up to, it's illegal. Take her.
And check all planned departures from all Swedish harbours in
the next twenty-four hours.'
'And Jennings?' said Hjelm.
'Put him under more stringent guard. I'll arrange for it. Arto,
do you still have all Justine's notes?'
'In my office.'
They went. Gunnar Nyberg, contemplating the cast on his
right hand, stayed behind, observing their departure sceptically.
'You've made a pact with the devil,' he stated. 'Watch out, for
Christ's sake. I won't be a part of it.'
'You're part of the team, Gunnar,' said Hultin. 'We have
to find Justine Lindberger. We're talking about international
politics here.'
'Fuck you.'
Hultin looked at him dispassionately.
'He's fooled you all,' Nyberg continued. 'Can't you see that
he's messing with you? He messed with me. He let me hit him.
I saw his eyes. It was all a game. I realise that now'
'It's possible,' said Hultin. 'But the fact is that Justine
Lindberger has escaped her surveillance. We need you.'
Nyberg shook his head. 'Never.'
'Then you're on sick leave, starting now. Go home.'
Nyberg gawked at him wildly. Snorting with rage, he left
the room, paused in the corridor and then charged down to
the basement where the cell was. Two powerfully built officers
in civilian clothes had just taken up stations outside the door.
They sat on chairs in the dark corridor, with a table and a deck
of cards between them. They eyed Nyberg uncertainly as he
planted himself in a third chair along the wall.
'Play your game,' he said. 'I'm not here.'
He was there, and he intended to stay. He had suddenly
seen it all. The corridor in LinkCoop. His steps forward. Robert
Mayer's eyes. The tiny, tiny movement towards his jacket. The
hand pulled back. The ice-cold acceptance of the blow.
Here he intended to stay.
Meanwhile Arto Soderstedt went over to his whiteboard,
which was covered with cascades of writing.
'All the notes from the Lindberger couple. Justine's on the
right, Eric's on the left.'
'Is there anything that could be the name of a ship or a date,
today or tomorrow, or the name of a harbour?' Hultin asked.
'Or something that seems to be in code?'
Soderstedt scratched his nose. 'She may have met a contact
code-named S now and then. That was one of the things she
chose to remove from her Filofax. She claims it's her jogging
session, S as in "stretching". Unfortunately I have no more
information about that. The other thing she removed was
dates with her lover Herman in Bro. I have nothing more
about him. She has three friends that she seems to be close
to: Paula, Petronella and Priscilla. I have their full names
and addresses. Beyond that she has a relatively large family,
which also seems to be quite close-knit. This should all be
checked.
'We have a few things here on the board that might be
something. A little piece of paper that said "Blue Viking". That
could be code for a place - a bar, for example - but I haven't
found anything. This might be something, too - I can't make
head-or-tail of it. It's a small yellow Post-it that says "orphlinse",
and that's all. Then I might also mention that it was in
Ostermalmshallen that Justine disappeared from her mediocre
surveillance team.'
'We'll have to divide it up,' said Hultin. 'Paul will try to find
Herman in Bro. Kerstin can take the friends and family - call
everyone you can find. Viggo will check with the surveillance
team about exactly how and when she disappeared - take them
along to Ostermalmshallen. Jorge will take on Blue Viking and
the other note. Arto, you and I can check the harbours - we do
have a few of them in Sweden. Let's go.'
Hjelm discovered that Bro was a commuter town with six
thousand inhabitants between Kungsangen and Balsta. Checking
various databases from his office in police headquarters, he
found eight Hermans in Bro. Two were retired; the others were
possibilities, between the ages of twenty-two and fifty-eight. He
called them. Three weren't home; none of the others admitted
to knowing Justine Lindberger, even though he impressed upon
them how important it was and guaranteed confidentiality,
which made one of them - Herman Andersson, forty-four very
angry. After more research, he found the workplaces of the
other three and got hold of them at their jobs.
None of them knew Justine; all seemed genuinely surprised
by the inquiry.
And suddenly he had nothing left to do. It made him crazy
after just a few minutes, so he decided to drive up to Bro.
Filled with misgivings, he left police headquarters for a tour of
Uppland. At that point it was three o'clock, and rain was still
pouring down.
Kerstin Holm got hold of PPP. Paula Berglund sobbed at the
thought of her friend being hunted by a madman and recalled
that at various times her friend had unexpectedly travelled
to Vasteras and Karlskrona and maybe another place as well.
Petronella af Wirsen laughed aloud at the fact that Justine
had fled the police and assumed she was in her apartment
in Paris or her villa in Dalaro. And Priscilla Bafwer recalled
various unexplained trips to Gotland, Sodertalje, Halmstad and
Trelleborg. All the relatives were less responsive and demanded
the heads of the entire Swedish police force on a gigantic platter.
'Little, confused Justine,' said the only communicative one,
Aunt Gretha, whom Holm had located only by chance; 'she
always was the black sheep in the family, the one who wasn't
interested in money and power, the one who sympathised with
the poor weak lambs on the edges of society.' Aunt Gretha was
bewildered to hear of Justine's immense fortune; it quite simply
couldn't be her own.
Jorge Chavez slaved away at Justine's notes. He mobilised all
his energy and all his mathematical knowledge to decipher the
two that Justine Lindberger had left on her desk at the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs: 'Blue Viking' and 'orphlinse'. After taking
detours through multitudes of conceivable codes, he went the
direct route and managed to find a few pubs in various parts
of Sweden called Blue Viking: Cafe Blue Viking in Harnosand,
Blue Viking Restaurant & Bar in Halmstad, Cafe Blue Viking in
Visby, and food stands called Blue Viking in Teckomatorp and
Karlshamn. Harnosand, Halmstad, Visby and Karlshamn were
all harbour cities.
When it came to the other note, he cursed himself that
it took him so long to stick a full stop in 'orphlinse' so that it
be-came 'orphlin.se' - that is, an address for a Swedish website.
It was the Swedish branch of Orpheus Life Line, an international
humanitarian organisation with special focus on Iraq. The song
of Orpheus, said the programme description, was so poignant
and strong that he had been able to sing the dead up out of the
kingdom of the underworld. This was the organisation's goal.
At the moment they were engaged in the situation in Iraq after
the Gulf War and the blockades and the weapon-inspector crises
- it bore a frightening resemblance to a kingdom of the dead.
The website listed a whole series of matters in which human
rights had been disregarded. Apparently the organisation kept
its members secret, so that it could work fairly undisturbed in
Saddam's domain. Chavez wondered why Justine had had the
Orpheus Life Line's web address on her desk. Did she have a
general interest in the Islamic world, or was there some more
specific reason?
Viggo Norlander arrived at Ostermalmshallen along with
the two rather shamefaced colleagues whom Justine had eluded.
Detective Werner had been stationed in the surveillance vehicle on 
Ostermalmstorg, keeping watch down Humlegardsgatan,
while Detective Larsson had been, quote, 'glued like a shadow'
to Justine. Norlander's investigation revealed that this strange
metaphor had concealed a distance of fifteen yards, which
was rather a lot among the aisles and stalls of a busy market.
Larsson had stood just inside the entrance doors and pointed
into the hall, where the most surprising animal parts hovered
like defective helicopters in the aromatically complex air.
Justine had disappeared somewhere on the far left-hand side.
So there were three possible stalls from which she could have
gone underground: a classic Swedish delicatessen, a small
Thai restaurant and a cafe that served coffee in tiny cups. After
doing a few routine checks that had not been performed earlier,
Norlander realised that she could only have escaped via the
cafe. She could have hidden temporarily in the delicatessen or
the Thai restaurant, but only the cafe, via a long aisle, had direct
contact with the world outside. Norlander followed the aisle,
keeping his gaze on the shamefaced Larsson every moment.
They emerged some distance down Humlegardsgatan, where
a wet storm wind met them. Norlander strode over to Werner
in the car and gave him the same evil eye that he had given
Larsson. Then he went back inside and, without a word,
took the violently protesting cafe owner with him to police
headquarters.
Now Fawzi Ulaywi from Baghdad was sweating in one of
the interrogation rooms, as the police watched him through a
one-way mirror. 'He must have unlocked it for her,1 Norlander
said. 'He must have followed her into the back room and
unlocked the door. He works alone in the cafe, and the door to
the aisle that leads to Humlegarden was locked.'
'What is he?' said Chavez, studying the printout of Orpheus
Life Line's website. 'An Iraqi? Isn't this about Saudi Arabia any
more?'
'What did we say about the harbours?' said Hultin. 'Which
ones have popped up several times?'
' "Several" is probably an exaggeration,' said Soderstedt, 'but
Blue Viking and the witnesses would point to Halmstad, Gotland
and possibly KarlskronaKarlshamn, in Blekinge County. Six
vessels will leave Halmstad in the next twenty-four hours, three
from Visby and sixteen from Blekinge.'
'I don't think we have anything that makes one more likely
than the next,' said Holm. 'Shall we split up?'
'When is the next departure?' Hultin asked. And where the
hell is Hjelm?'
'In Bro,' said Holm.
'It's four thirty' said Soderstedt. 'We have a few departures
left today The next is Vega, departing Karlshamn for Venezuela
at six o'clock; then Bay of Pearls, departing Halmstad for Australia
at seven forty-five; then Lagavulin, departing Visby for Scotland
at eight thirty. Those are the next ones coming up.'
'We need something more, something to tilt us in one
direction,' said Hultin. 'Just a little more testimony about one of
the places. Jorge and Arto can help Kerstin. Press the relatives.
Viggo, you and I will talk to our friend the cafe owner.'
Hultin and Norlander went in to see Fawzi Ulaywi, who was
sweating a great deal. His stubborn facial expression concealed
terror, as though he had been in this situation before and was
trying to avoid thinking about what had happened then.
'My cafe,' he said. 'My cafe is standing there completely
empty. Anyone could take my things and my money'
'We have competent guards there for the rest of the day,'
Norlander said sardonically. 'Officers Larsson and Werner.' He
remained by the door looking large and brutal.
Hultin sat down across from Fawzi Ulaywi and asked calmly,
'Why did you help Justine Lindberger escape earlier today?'
'I haven't done anything,' Ulaywi said single-mindedly. 'I
don't understand.'
'Have you heard of the organisation Orpheus Life Line? It is
active in Iraq.'
Ulaywi fell silent. A breeze of worry blew across his face and
left furrows behind. It was obvious that he was thinking things
over, carefully. 'It's been ten years since I left Iraq,' he said finally.
'I don't know anything about what goes on there today'
'Are these Orpheus people involved in the nuclear weapons
affair?'
Ulwaywi gaped wildly at him and seemed to be trying to put
the erratic information together.
'You have to tell us now,' Hultin continued. 'It's far too
important to play games.'
'Just torture me. I've survived it before.'
Hultin looked at Norlander, who blinked uncertainly. He
wasn't planning to torture anyone - what had Hultin's expression
meant?
Hultin continued calmly, 'I'm going to say the names of a few
Swedish harbours. Tell me what they mean to you. Halmstad.
Karlskrona. Visby. Karlshamn.'
Terrified that ten years of nightmares were about to be made
real again, Ulaywi tried so hard to think, he creaked.
'Halmstad,' he said at last. 'A woman came to me in the cafe
and said she was being followed by a rapist. I helped her escape.
She said something about having to get away - I think she said
Halmstad.'
Norlander and Hultin exchanged glances. Hultin nodded,
and they went out into the corridor. As they spoke, they watched
Ulaywi through the one-way mirror. He was still sweating but
may also have looked a bit satisfied.
'He's part of it,' said Hultin. 'He's somewhere in the line of
smugglers. He won't say any more. We can cross off Halmstad.'
'Cross it off?' Norlander burst out. 'But--'
'He's trying to throw us off. Look at him. That's not a man
who talks.'
Hultin went to the guys manning the phones. They were
spread out over three rooms, so he had to repeat three times,
'Blekinge or Visby. Not Halmstad.'
Then he took out his mobile phone and dialled. 'Paul? Where
are you?'
'Norrtull,' said Hjelm from within the heart of electronics.
'I've destroyed the familial peace in a number of Bro households.
Never more will the wives trust their Hermans. I got a licking
from an angry wife.'
'No bites?'
'None of these Hermans can reasonably have had anything
to do with Justine Lindberger from Upper Ostermalm. It's been
a complete waste of time.'
'Come home quickly. We're down to possibly Visby,
Karlskrona or Karlshamn. Possibly.' 'OK.'
Holm came running out of her room and yelled, 'Aunt
Gretha had a mobile phone number that didn't exist anywhere
else.' She held out a piece of paper with a number on it.
Hultin hung up on Hjelm and dialled the number.
'Yes?' they could hear faintly from the receiver. A woman's
voice.
'Justine?' Hultin said.
'Who is this?'
'Orpheus,' he chanced. 'Where are you?'
Justine Lindberger was silent for a moment. Then she said,
'Password?'
Hultin looked at Holm and Norlander. They shook their
heads.
'Blue Viking,' said Hultin.
'Fuck,' said Justine, and hung up.
'Shit,' said Hultin.
'Background noise?' asked Kerstin Holm.
Hultin shook his head. He dialled the number again. No
answer.
He went into his office and closed the door. It was quarter
to five. The freighter Vega would leave Karlshamn in just over
an hour. They would miss it. The information that pointed to
Karlshamn was extremely vague: just a friend's suggestion that
Justine had been in its neighbour city Karlskrona, which had
a bar called Blue Viking, which should perhaps be put under
surveillance immediately, but then he would have to bring in
the Blekinge police, and how would they explain the situation?
He didn't even really understand it himself. Should he let Vega get away or get 
the provincial police on it? He remained in his
room, his shoulders pressed down by an endless weight.
Meanwhile Kerstin Holm and Viggo Norlander were still in
the corridor.
Everything seemed foggy. Where were Hultin's thoughts
heading? they wondered.
Hjelm showed up with a black eye. 'Don't ask. Women,' he
said cryptically.
'Bro,' Kerstin said, pointing at him. 'There was something on
the tip of my tongue about Bro.'
'Bro, bro, brcja,' Norlander said, quoting a children's rhyme.
He seemed to have given up. He threw a bitter glance at Fawzi
Ulaywi. 'He's sitting here, the fate of the universe resting on his
shoulders, and he's not going to talk.'
'Who is that?' said Hjelm.
'Isn't Bro a pretty common place name?' said Holm.
'He's the one who helped Justine escape,' Norlander
told Hjelm. 'An Iraqi. One of the people who hide behind
Orpheus Life Line, a fake human rights organisation.
Presumably they're fundamentalist spies. He's our only link to
the warheads.'
'They're control devices,' said Hjelm, 'for nuclear warheads.'
'Did anyone hear me?' said Holm.
'He ought to be speared on his warheads,' said Norlander.
'Wouldn't we be morally justified in going in there and pressing
him? Hard?'
'The way Wayne Jennings does?' said Kerstin Holm. 'Has he
transformed us into copies of himself? So quickly?'
'What was it you said?' said Paul Hjelm.
'We've become the Kentucky Killer's puppets,' she said.
'Before that. About Bro.'
'Isn't Bro a pretty common place name?'
Are you saying I was in the wrong Bro? Where are the other
ones?'
'I don't know. It was just a guess.'
'If Herman is a lover and they meet there every Tuesday, it
can t be that far away'
'But maybe Herman isn't a lover. Arto pressed Justine,
surprised her with his little photocopier trick, and she had to
make something up quickly. Maybe Herman was the right
name, but she covered it up with the lie that he was her lover.'
They half ran into Holm's office and took out a road atlas.
Bro in Uppland, Bro in Varmland, Bro in Bohuslan - and Bro on
Gotland.
'On Gotland. Only a few miles from Visby,' said Holm. 'A
little church village.'
Norlander started up the computer and accessed the large
telephone registry. There were two Hermans in the little Bro
north-west of Visby.
Hjelm unlocked his mobile phone. Holm took it from him
and dialled the first of the two numbers.
'Bengtsson,' said a ringing Gotland accent.
'Herman,' said Kerstin, 'it's Justine.'
It was quiet. The longer the silence went on, the higher their
hopes rose.
'Why are you calling again?' said Herman Bengtsson at last.
'Has something happened?'
'Just double-checking,' Kerstin croaked out. 'I'm on my way.'
She ended the call, then clenched her fist for a second. And
then they ran in to Hultin.
The helicopter took off five minutes later from the platform
atop police headquarters. Decently fast, Hultin thought, as he
sat there next to Norlander, reading through his papers. 'The
freighter Lagavulin will leave Visby harbour at twenty thirty.
Right now it's quarter past five. We ought to get there in plenty
of time.'
'Isn't Lagavulin a malt whisky?' said H jelm.
'The best,' said Chavez. 'Extremely smoky and tarry'
The last islands of the archipelago were visible below them,
drowning in the pouring rain; Hjelm thought he recognised
Uto. Then it was open sea, a windswept sea, almost whiter than
black. The helicopter swayed and reeled in the storm. Hjelm
glanced at the pilot; he didn't like the look on his face. Nor was
Norlander's face particularly confidence-inspiring - he grabbed
a helmet that was hanging on the wall of the helicopter and
threw up into it. Hjelm was happy that he had not been the
receptacle of choice.
Others were feeling ill, too. The pilot took out some
plastic bags to protect the remaining supply of helmets. Arto
Soderstedt's white skin developed a mint-green tinge, and what
came up in Hj elm's own heave was the same colour. Only Hultin
and Holm retained their stomach contents.
Just east of Visby, a mediocre collection of police officers
streamed out onto the hidden helicopter platform, where
two hire cars awaited them. They stood for a second, letting
themselves be washed by the rain - it was surprisingly cleansing.
Their facial colours returned to normal. They were alive again
and ready to find out what Justine Lindberger had waiting for
them down at the harbour.
They circled around Visby and glided down to the harbour
along Farjeleden. They passed the large Gotland ferries
and approached Lagavulin. The vessel lay some way out on the
pier at the northern breakwater, heaving against a pile of car
tyres.
Lagavulin wasn't really a freighter. She was too small, more
like a large fishing boat. She was alone, way out there, and there
was no sign of life within her. A flock of large gulls circled the
ship, like vultures around a cadaver in the desert. Out on the
Baltic, a large oil tanker went by, its lanterns gleaming weakly
through the storm; swaying slowly, it passed like a large, cold,
inaccessible sea monster. The sky felt unusually low, as though
the thick rain clouds had come down to lick the surface of the
earth, as though they were witnessing the great flood. Was
there great, pure, sun-drenched clearness on the other side of
the clouds? Or was that just a Utopian dream? Was there even
room any more for clarity?
They emerged from the cars, which had been parked out
of the way, by the secondary school. Almost invisible in the
darkness, they made their way over to the pier and ran out along
it, hunching over. The scent of the sea drowned out the faint
ozone odour of the rainstorm.
They were close now. There was no hint of any surveillance.
They gathered around the gangway, dripping wet.
Chavez and Norlander went aboard first, quietly, with
weapons drawn. Then Hjelm and Holm, followed by Soderstedt
and Hultin. All had their safeties off.
They made their way past the bridge and moved towards the
stern. Everything was dark. The boat seemed deserted. Then a
few faint voices rose in the storm. They followed the voices until
they were standing by a door next to some windows with pulled
curtains. Behind the curtains they could see a faint, flickering
light.
Norlander assessed the strength of the door, then got ready,
his back against the railing. Hjelm tried to turn the door handle,
but it was locked. Norlander immediately kicked it in. One giant
kick was enough. The lock hung quivering on the wall for a few
seconds, then fell to the deck.
Inside what looked like a dining hall, five people sat around
a screwed-down kerosene lamp. A young blond man in Helly
Hansen clothes, three large, swarthy late-middle-aged men in
thick quilted coats - and Justine Lindberger in a rain coat and
trousers. When she caught sight of Soderstedt in the rear, she
seemed to exhale.
'Hands on your heads!' Norlander yelled.
'It's just the Swedish police!'Justine yelled at the three men.
They placed their hands on their heads.
The Helly Hansen man stood up and said in a Gotland
accent, 'What is this? What are you doing here?'
'Herman Bengtsson, I presume,' said Hultin, pointing the
pistol at him. 'Sit down right now and place your hands on your
head.'
Bengtsson reluctantly obeyed.
'Search them,' Hultin ordered.
Norlander and Chavez searched wildly. None of those
present were carrying weapons. The signs were starting to add
up, and they were alarming.
'You're the ones who called me,' Justine Lindberger said, as
furious mental activity seemed to be going on in her brain.
'Where's the computer equipment?' Hultin asked.
'What computer equipment?' said Herman Bengtsson.
'What are you talking about?'
'How many more people are on board?'
'None,' said Justine Lindberger, sighing. 'The crew is coming
in an hour.'
'And the guards? You can't carry control devices for nuclear
weapons without a guard.'
Justine Lindberger froze. Then an idea seemed to strike her.
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and when she opened
them, they were more resigned, almost mourning. As if she
were before a platoon of executioners.
'We're not smuggling nuclear weapons,' she said. 'It's the
other way round.'
'Jorge, Viggo, Arto - run and search. Be careful.'
They disappeared, leaving Jan-Olov Hultin, Paul Hjelm
and Kerstin Holm in charge of Justine Lindberger, Herman
Bengtsson and three dark men with the marks of death on their
faces.
Justine spoke, as though her life depended on getting the
words right. 'Herman and I belong to Orpheus Life Line, a
secret human rights organisation that is active in Iraq. We have
to remain secret; our enemies are powerful. Eric was part of it,
too. He died without revealing anything. He was stronger than
we thought.'
Then she gestured towards the three men.
These three are high-ranking officers in the Iraqi army.
They've deserted. They have extremely important information
about the Gulf War, which neither Saddam nor the United States
wants to get out. They are on their way to the United States,
to be put under the protection of a large media organisation.
The information will be released from there; it won't be possible
to stop it. The American mass media are the only force that is
strong enough to resist.'
Hultin looked at Hjelm, Hjelm looked at Holm, Holm
looked at Hultin.
'You have to let us be,' said Justine Lindberger. 'Someone has
tricked you. Someone has used you.'
Hjelm saw Wayne Jennings in his mind's eye and said, 'You
will never know' He felt like he was going to vomit, but he had
nothing left to throw up.
'In that case, they're on your trail,' said Kerstin Holm. 'We
have to get you out of here.'
'Regardless, we can't let the boat depart,' said Hultin. 'It has
to be thoroughly investigated. So we'll take you with us now,
quickly'
'It's your duty to protect us,' said Justine Lindberger, looking
very tired. 'You've led them here - now you have to protect us
with your lives.'
Hultin looked at her with an expression of deep regret and
backed out past the broken door. He slid aside. Holm came out.
Then Herman Bengtsson, the three men, Justine and Hjelm.
They stood out on the deck. The wind howled. The rain poured
down on them.
They moved towards the gangway.
Then it happened, as though an order had been given - as
though they themselves had given it.
Herman Bengtsson's head was torn off; a cascade of blood
sent him down onto the deck. The three men were flung by
cascades of bullets into the wall of the ship. Their coats turned
red, and down exploded out. They collapsed as though their
bodies had no joints. Kerstin threw herself over Justine; she
didn't think - she was a living wall. A bullet grazed her shoulder;
she saw it drill into Justine's right eye just four inches away.
Justine vomited blood into Kerstin's face - in one last exhalation.
Hultin was petrified. He stared up at the town of Visby,
which rose like a distant, illuminated doomsday castle far away.
Hjelm's pistol was raised. His body spun round, but he had
nothing to aim at, nothing at all. He returned the pistol to his
shoulder holster and suddenly realised what it was like to be
raped. He placed his arms around Kerstin, who was sniffling
quietly.
Bloody, rain-soaked down slowly covered the nightmarish
scene in a blanket of oblivion.
Everything was quiet. Visby harbour was calm.
As though nothing had happened.




29


Gunnar Nyberg needed to pee. He had been sitting motionless
in a chair in the basement of police headquarters for several
hours. Not for a second had his attention flagged. The two
guards had played blackjack for a few hours, and then they had
been relieved, and now a new pair of guards were sitting there
playing blackjack.
In other words, the monotony was monumental. The
architecture, without a doubt, contributed its share. The walls
had been sloppily painted a light yellow, and the lights, covered
by a faint layer of dust on top, shone a loathsome glare through
the corridor. Now the urge to pee crept over him and struck in
a dastardly ambush.
Food was delivered to Wayne Jennings. That was a worrying
moment. The incongruous bowl of soup remained standing on
the guards' table for so long that the steam stopped rising from it.
Their hand of blackjack seemed to be taking years. Isn't blackjack
a relatively quick game? his urge to pee said. Up to twenty-one in a
few puny cards, and then you're done?
The guards looked at him sternly. Then they picked up the
tray with the soup bowl, the bread and the mug of milk, and
prepared to enter.
They went in. They locked the door behind them. Nyberg
remained seated in the corridor. He took out his service weapon,
took off the safety, and aimed it straight at the thick door with
his healthy left hand. He feared what would come crawling out
of there. He was sitting five yards from the door, and he would
shoot to kill.
Time crept on. The guards were still gone. With every
second, his conviction grew stronger. He pushed his urge to pee
back into the wings.
The door slid open.
Wayne Jennings actually looked surprised when he saw
Nyberg sitting there with the pistol aimed right at his heart.
'Gunnar Nyberg,' said Jennings courteously. 'Nice to see
you.'
Nyberg stood up. The chair fell with a clang that echoed
through the corridor, echoing back and forth in this wild beast's
cave.
He held the weapon steady, aimed at his heart.
Jennings took a step forward.
Gunnar Nyberg shot. Two shots, right to the heart. Wayne
Jennings was thrown backwards through the corridor. He lay
still.
Nyberg took a few steps towards him, keeping the pistol
aimed straight at the body.
Then Wayne Jennings got up.
He smiled. His icy gaze did not smile.
Nyberg trembled. He was six feet away. He emptied the
magazine into the Kentucky Killer's body It hurtled back again
and lay on the floor.
Gunnar Nyberg was close now.
Wayne Jennings got up again. The bullet holes shone like
black lights in his white shirt. He smiled.
Nyberg shot again. The pistol clicked. He threw it aside.
Then he threw an uppercut. This time Jennings would not get
up.
He hit the air. There was no one there.
A terrible pain went through his large body. He had never
imagined that his body could shake so violently. He lay on the
floor; Jennings was pinching a point on the back of his neck. He
stared up into Jennings's serious face.
'Forget me now,' said Wayne Jennings. 'You have to erase me
from your consciousness. Otherwise you will never find peace.'
He released him. Nyberg tried to sit up, but he was still
trembling.
The last thing he heard before everything went black was a
voice that said:
'I am No One.'
The rain had not ceased. Some of Stockholm's streets had
been closed off due to flooding. A few historic buildings had
been destroyed and had to be evacuated. It was worse in some
suburbs. Entire neighbourhoods were under water. The storm
had taken out electricity and phone service in parts of Sweden.
Now they were approaching a state of disaster.
Police headquarters, however, was still intact. But 'Supreme
Central Command' had reclaimed its quotation marks. They
flapped like scoffing vampires through the room.
'I should have aimed for his head said Gunnar Nyberg. 'I
could have put a single shot in his head. Fuck, that was dumb.'
'You couldn't have known that the guards were wearing
bulletproof vests,' said Hultin, 'or that he had taken one of
them.'
'I should have stopped them from going in.'
'There's a lot we should have done,' Hultin said sombrely
from his lectern. 'And above all, there's a lot we shouldn't have
done.'
Nyberg looked like hell. In addition to his nose cone and the
cast on his hand, he now had a large bandage on the back of his
neck. Of course, he shouldn't have been there; he should have
been on sick leave, sleeping off his double concussion. But no
one could get him to leave.
Hultin's owl glasses were in place, but other than that he was
hardly himself. His neutrality had been all but blown away. Age
seemed to have caught up with him. He looked smaller than
usual; the era of this Father of His People was at an end. Perhaps
he would be able to pull himself together before he retired.
He spoke with a slow, thick, almost old-man's voice. 'Both
Gunnar and the guards escaped without permanent injuries.
Jennings used Gunnar s police ID to get out of the building - it
was found a few hours later in a rubbish bin at Arlanda. It was a
little signal for us. A "thanks for the help", I suppose
He paused and paged slowly through his papers, then continued.
'What we saw were the effects of at least three identical
high-precision automatic weapons with exceedingly effective
ammunition. We can assume that they followed us by helicopter
to Visby, came to the harbour and took up suitable positions in
the city heights. It may have been a productive collaboration
between the CIA and Saddam; we'll never know. Nor will we
ever know what the three deserting army officers had to reveal
about the Gulf War.
Above all, we have to forget this case. The corpses have been
taken care of. As you know, we had to use Sapo - they'll take the
case from here.
'Nothing has reached the media, but even if we wanted to talk
to the press, what would we say? The case will appear unsolvable;
people will keep buying weapons and hiring security firms. And
maybe they're right to do so. And you all know what Fawzi
Ulaywi said when we released him - I'll never forget it: "Fucking
murderers!" He was right, of course. And now his identity has
probably been revealed. Maybe he'll go underground and avoid
being assassinated, maybe not. He, Herman Bengtsson and the
Lindbergers were the Swedish branch of Orpheus Life Line.
Now there's nothing left of that branch.'
He fell silent. He appeared old and tired. They had solved the
case, in all its aspects, but now he was going to be hung out to
dry, like a failed Olof Palme-murder detective. The demands for
his resignation could become loud. And they would be justified
- but for completely different reasons.
'Is there anything else?' he said.
'Justine Lindberger's bank account was emptied a few hours
after her death,' said Arto Soderstedt. 'We can only hope that
the emptier was Orpheus Life Line, saving what was left of their
capital. Otherwise it went towards Wayne Jennings's salary. The
Lindbergers' large apartment will go to their already-rich family;
Orpheus will lose its Swedish headquarters and central office,
in addition to four of its most loyal members. And everything
else.'
Soderstedt looked up at the ceiling. He, too, seemed very
tired.
'I treated her like shit,' he said quietly, 'and she turned out to
be a hero.'
'Lagavulin was empty,' said Chavez, looking small and
insignificant. 'It contained no control devices for nuclear
warheads. And LinkCoop is an ordinary, computer-orientated
import-export company, totally legitimate. The CEO, Henrik
Nilsson, was very sorry that its excellent chief of security Robert
Mayer had disappeared. He took the opportunity to report it to
the police.'
'Benny Lundberg died this morning,' said Kerstin Holm.
'His father turned off the respirator. He's been arrested - he's
one floor down.'
Gunnar Nyberg suddenly got up and bolted from the room.
They watched him go. They hoped he wasn't planning to go
down and kill the unfortunate Lasse Lundberg.
Hjelm had nothing to say. He was thinking about the concept
of 'pain beyond words'.
'We know that Lamar Jennings shadowed his father for more
than a week,' Hultin continued. 'It can't have been too hard for
him to find Robert Mayer - he's in the phone book. Lamar copied
the key to the warehouse the day after he arrived in Sweden.
He must have followed Wayne Jennings to LinkCoop; maybe
Wayne had already committed a murder; maybe there are
hordes of dead people we'll never discover. Anyway, something
caused Lamar to copy the key - and something enabled him to
glean the information that his father would show up on that
fateful night with Erik Lindberger in tow. We don't know how
- or why - Lindberger followed Jennings to Frihamnen after
their meeting at Riche, and we don't know why they met there.
Maybe Lindberger thought it was about Orpheus; the members
do remain secret, after all. In general, there's a lot we don't
know
Hultin paused, then continued in a more intense tone. 'The
Cold War is over. What has replaced it almost feels worse,
because we don't understand what it is. The world is shrinking,
and above all, we seem to be shrinking. We did fantastic police
work - I suppose that can be of comfort among all the grief,
but it's not enough. We made political and psychological
misjudgements that show that we're not really up to par with
the rest of the world. Violent crime of an international character
is slipping through our fingers. This blind violence is a mirror of
the goal-orientated crime. Lamar Jennings was a hall-of-mirrors
version of his father. "Bad blood always comes back round," as
they say'
Paul Hjelm laughed, filled with scorn for himself. He hadn't
even got the saying right. Wayne Jennings had corrected him.
'It's "what goes around comes around",' he said, drying his tears.
They only seemed like tears of laughter.
The others looked at him for a moment. They understood
how he felt, and at the same time they understood how
impossible it was to ever understand even the tiniest thing about
another person.
'Do any of you have anything to add?' said Hultin.
'Well, at least the United States has one less serial killer,'
Kerstin Holm said, smiling bitterly. 'He was serial-killed by
another serial killer. Once again Wayne Jennings shows us he's
the good guy'
'It's the result that counts,' said Hjelm. None of his words
were his own any longer. Nothing was his own. Everything had
been occupied. He was a little model train going round in a
circle.
'Well then.'Jan-Olov Hultin rose to his feet. 'I have to go take
a piss. We can only hope that God stops all of this soon.'
They didn't really want to disperse. It was as though they
needed to be close to one another. But at last they were dismissed
out into the world, as alone as they had come into it and as alone
as they would leave it.
Hjelm and Holm were last to go. Paul stopped Kerstin just inside the door.
'I have something of yours.' He dug in his wallet, found the
photo of the old pastor and handed it to her. When she looked
at him, he couldn't tell what she was thinking - sorrow, pain and
a strength that pushed through the darkness.
'Thanks,' she said.
'Wipe it off,' he said. 'He has Wayne Jennings's fingerprints
on his nose.'
'Yalm & Halm.' She smiled. 'In another world we could have
been a real comedy duo.'
He bent forward and kissed her on the forehead.
'We are in this one,' he said.




31


Gunnar Nyberg came out of 'Supreme Central Command'
steaming with rage - he didn't know how he was supposed
to get rid of it. Three times a filicidal murderer had inflicted
bodily injury on him. Now here was another father who had

murdered his son. Lasse Lundberg was now in the cell from
which Jennings had escaped. Nyberg went down there. His first
impulse was to let Benny's dad have everything he had failed to
give Lamar's. He shook off the guards' protests and entered the
corridor with the cells. He arrived at Lundberg's and peered in
through the small window. Lasse Lundberg was hunched over
with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, shaking
uncontrollably. Nyberg watched him for a moment, then did an
about-face, reminded of a certain other father's sins.
He set out for Osthammar, two hours north of Stockholm,
in his Renault. He had a lot of time to think as he drove, but
his thoughts were wrapped in the after-effects of a double
concussion. This case was supposed to have been calm and
easy as he awaited retirement. No personal engagement, no
risk-taking, no excessive overtime. Cutting back, some time
for peaceful vegetating. And what the hell had happened
instead?
The road he took, Norrtaljevagen, was flooded. The road
seemed more liquid than solid. Even when he was driving uphill,
he met masses of water; driving downhill, he sloshed through
water. It felt ridiculous.
He passed Norrtalje. He passed the exit for Hallstavik and
Grisslehamn, and then he was in Osthammar, a small, peaceful,
depopulated village. The Stockholmers who holidayed there
were back in the city now, so Osthammar was once again
identifiable as the little farming village it was.
With the help of the extremely detailed police map, he drove
far out into the countryside. The rain fell incessantly. The roads
were nearly impassable - his tyres dug into the mud. At one
point the Renault's left rear wheel got stuck in a veritable crater.
He got out, enraged, and lifted up the fucking car.
Sometime later the farm appeared over the crown of a hill.
Small as the incline was, it seemed hard to conquer. He stepped
on it and pushed ahead. He barely made it but finally turned the car onto the 
grounds.
Next to the barn he saw a tractor - its enormous back tire was
half sunk in the mud. A large man with a gold-and-green cap,
muddy overalls and green size-eighteen boots was crouching
next to it. His back was to Nyberg, who stepped out of the car
and trudged over to him in the pelting rain. The man pounded
the tractor with his large fist, whereupon it sank further into the
mud. Fuming, the man yelled, 'Fucking tractor!5
And then he lifted the tractor out of the mud.
At that moment, Gunnar Nyberg realised he was in the right
place. He took a few steps closer.
The large farmer heard him sloshing and turned to see a
gigantic mummy approaching him through the deluge. The
sight would have terrified anyone. But not this farmer. He
stepped towards the apparition.
Soon Nyberg could discern his face. He was about
twenty-five. And he looked just like he himself had, at that age.
This man wasn't Mr Sweden - he was a hick. But he appeared to
feel much better than Mr Sweden had.
The man stopped a few yards from Gunnar. Was it himself
or his father that Tommy Nyberg recognised? 'Dad?' he
thundered.
Gunnar Nyberg felt a warm wave stream through him.
Tommy Nyberg stepped up to him and scrutinised him.
Then he took off his work gloves and extended his hand. 'Holy
shit! Dad! And you're still a cop?'
Nyberg adjusted his nose cone with his healthy left hand,
then extended it and managed a rather awkward handshake. He
was incapable of speech.
'What are you doing here? Come on in, dammit! It's a little
wet.'
They plodded over the waterlogged ground, past the tractor,
past the barn and past a tyre swing in a water-filled hollow in the
yard; it was floating with its chain hanging slack.
'Oh yes,' said Tommy. 'You'll get to meet him soon.'
They reached the run-down house. It was neither big nor
impressive. Boards stuck out in some places, the result of
makeshift repairs; the old red paint was flaking. Here and there
patches of mould spotted the surface. Patina, thought Gunnar
Nyberg; the house fitted him perfectly.
They stepped up onto the porch. The stairs creaked
alarmingly, first under Tommy, then under Gunnar. They went
in, straight into the dining room. A small, thin, blonde woman
in her early twenties was seated at the large table, feeding a fat,
blond baby in a high chair.
She tossed an unruly lock of hair over her head and stared at
the giant duo in surprise. The boy started bawling at the sight of
his seriously bandaged grandfather.
'Tina and Benny,' Tommy Nyberg said as he pulled off his
size eighteens. 'This is my dad. He popped up out of the storm.'
'His name is Benny?' said Gunnar Nyberg from the entryway.
'He's Gunnar?' Tina said uncertainly. 'Your real dad?'
'I suppose you could call him that,' Tommy rumbled, and
gave Benny an audible kiss so that he stopped crying, and then
he sat at the table with a crash. 'After all,' he added with a broad
smile.
'Come in,' said Tina, rising to her feet. 'Don't just stand
there!'
Gunnar Nyberg took off his shoes and took a seat at a
respectable distance from the child. He felt ill at ease.
'Hi.' Tina extended a hand across the table.
Nyberg greeted her awkwardly. 'Hi,' he said softly.
They were quiet for a moment. The silence ought to have
been uncomfortable, but it wasn't. The three of them looked at
Gunnar, curiously, not hatefully.
'This is your grandfather Tommy finally said to one-year-old
Benny, who looked as though this information would bring
on another attack of crying. But a scoop of porridge from his
mother distracted him.
'Well then,' said Tommy, 'where have you been keeping
yourself?'
'I didn't know you lived here,' Nyberg whispered. 'It's been
so long since we've seen each other.'
'Oh well, you're here now, anyway. Would you like some
coffee?'
Nyberg nodded and watched his son disappear into the
kitchen.
'He's been talking about contacting you ever since we moved
here,' said Tina, sticking a spoon of porridge into Benny's
mouth.
'Has he said anything else?'
She inspected him, as if searching for a motive. 'Just that
the family moved to the west coast early on, and that you had
promised not to contact them. But I don't know why'
Gunnar Nyberg knitted his eyebrows. For the first time he
felt distinct pain in his nose and hand. It radiated up through
him, in one fell swoop. Like a vague recollection of Wayne
Jennings's nerve pinching. Or rather, as though a long-acting
anaesthetic had worn off.
'Because I was an extraordinarily bad father,' he said.
She nodded and regarded him curiously. 'Is it true that you
were Mr Sweden?'
He laughed, long and noisily, and his voice seemed to return
after an eternity in exile. 'It's hard to believe, isn't it? I'd have
been happy to have done without that, believe me.'
He looked at Benny's stout little body. The child snatched
the spoon from Tina's hand and threw it at him. Gunnar caught
it in mid-air. Porridge spattered on his clothes. He let it be.
'Do you want to hold him?' asked Tina.
She lifted his grandchild over to him. The boy was heavy,
compact. He'd probably become a strapping fellow.
Bad blood always comes back round.
That wasn't true. It was possible to break the cycle.
It wasn't even true that what goes around comes around.
There was such a thing as forgiveness. He understood that
now.
Tommy reappeared from the kitchen brandishing the coffee
pot. Suddenly, at the threshold, he stopped and took off his wet
farmer's cap.
'Hey, Dad, what the hell?' he said. Are you crying?'




32


Paul Hjelm emerged from police headquarters and lingered at
the entrance, feeling that something was wrong. He went back
in to retrieve his umbrella.
He came back out again, feeling as if he had been wandering
around the hold of a ship for a month. In the raw autumn night,
he opened the umbrella; the small police logos beamed down at
him powerlessly. The storm pummelled the rain horizontally,
from all directions at once. After he'd gone just a few yards on
the flooded Bergsgatan, the wind shredded his umbrella; he
chucked it into a rubbish bin at the Metro entrance.
He had called Ray Larner and told him every detail of the
case, without inhibition. He didn't give a damn about the
consequences. Larner had listened, then said, 'Whatever you
do, Yalm, don't keep looking. You'll go crazy'
He wouldn't keep looking, but he would keep thinking - he
wouldn't be able to stop; he didn't want to stop. The case of
K would always be in his consciousness, or just under it. He
hadn't yet absorbed its horrible, awful knowledge more than
superficially. Knowledge was always good, after all; he was
enough of an Enlightenment rationalist to be certain of that.
The question was what effect one would allow knowledge to
have on one's own psyche. The risk in this case, he realised, was
that it would make him crazy.
Wayne Jennings had turned an apparently hopeless
disadvantage into a pure victory. Hjelm felt a reluctant pang of
admiration.
But who could really tell whether it had been a success
or a setback? Who knew, today, what the three Iraqi officers'
disclosures would have resulted in had they been able to speak
to the press? Was it true that the media today were the only
counterforce against military and economic might? Or were the
media themselves the actual threat? And was fundamentalism
the only real alternative to an unrestrained market? Nothing
anywhere seemed particularly attractive.
What is the worth of a human life? What sort of life do we
want to have, and what sort do we want others to have? What
price do we pay for living as well as we do? Are we ready to pay
that price? And what do we do if we're not?
Simple, basic questions echoed within him.
'I haven't tickled the bass in six months,' Jorge had said,
plucking a few strings on an imaginary double bass. 'Now I'm
going home to play all night, until the police come and take me
away'
People had died in their arms, heads had been torn off before
their eyes, other people's blood had washed over them, and no
one outside their own little circle would ever know. What could
they do? Play. And put their whole blackened souls into it. It had
to come out somehow.
He bought an evening newspaper and took the Metro for the
brief stretch from City Hall to Central Station, then switched to
the train to Norsborg. He read the headline: 'Still no trace of the
Kentucky Killer. The police defend their passivity, citing limited
resources.'
Morner was the one who was quoted. Hjelm laughed. His
fellow riders looked at him. It did not interest him.
Nor was he interested in the behind-the-scenes action that
would follow. Right now he just felt like sticking headphones on
his ears and sinking down into his train seat.
John Coltrane, Meditations. He stepped into that vague state
between wakefulness and sleep - the privileged space of serenity.
We thought something had only just come to Sweden, he
mused. The truth was that it was already here, and had been for
a long time. It just had to be aroused.
He would get himself a piano. That decision ripened as
he got out of the train at Norsborg and ambled through the
rain. The standardised terraced houses seemed to watch him
through the flying mists. He crept along slowly, allowing the
rain into every pore. He needed to be thoroughly washed. Time
after time.
It had been a long time since he'd seen the moon, and there
was none tonight. In the United States he hadn't thought to look.
He had become close to Kerstin in a way he hadn't expected.
Somewhere inside he had longed for her, but his childish wish
for a hot affair on the side had changed to something different.
Was he getting old? Or was he growing up?
He arrived at his terraced house. It looked grey and dreary,
as impersonal as a high-rise, but disguised as a tiny rise in status.
It was all fiction. Nothing was as it seemed.
Above all, it wasn't grey and dreary inside. On the inside,
nothing is the same. That was something, at least. Some little
trace of comfort after what he had been involved in.
He had, as Larner said, caught the Fucking Kentucky Baby
all on his own. Well. The inspiration had been his own, anyway.
And not just one, but two. That the other had slipped away was
not his fault - it was more a law of nature. Or at least he could
pretend that that was the case for a while.
Cilia was sitting on the sofa. A little candle was burning in
front of her. She was reading a book.
'You can't read in that light,' he said. 'You'll ruin your eyes.'
'No.' She put down the book. 'That's one of those lies that
people spread. You can't ruin your eyes by reading in too little
light. There can never be too little light.'
He smiled faintly and walked over to her.
'Wait, don't sit down.' She disappeared, then came back with
a few towels and placed them on the sofa.
He sat on them. 'I could have got them myself,' he said.
'I wanted to get them,' she said, 'if that's OK.'
There was silence for a moment.
'What were you reading?' he asked at last.
'Your book,' she said, holding up Kafka's Amerika. 'You never
have time to read, after all.'
'What do you think?'
'Tricky' she said. 'But when you get into it, you can't put it
down. You think you understand, and then you realise you don't
understand anything.'
'I understand,' he said.
'Do you?' she said.
They laughed briefly.
Then she fingered his clothes. 'You're really wet. I'll help you
get them off.'
'You don't need to--'
'Yes,' she said, 'I need to.' She slowly undressed him.
He allowed himself to enjoy it, wholeheartedly.
'I'll probably have more time to read now,' he said as she
pulled off his trousers. 'And we'll probably have a little more
time together, too.'
'But you haven't caught that Montana Murderer yet.'
'Kentucky Killer.'
'When are you actually going to catch him?'
'Never,' he said calmly.
She pulled off his soaking-wet underwear and threw it onto
the pile of drenched clothes on the floor. 'You don't look too bad,
Paul Hjelm,' she said, 'for a middle-aged, lower-level official.'
'You don't look too bad, either,' he said. 'As you can see.'
She smiled and started to undress.
He reached for the candle. He put it out - and burned
himself. 'Ow, hell.'
'You're so clumsy,' she laughed, lying down beside him.
He watched the wick. The glow ebbed until no light was
left. 'There can never be too little light,' said Paul Hjelm, letting
himself go.
Outside, the rain streamed down.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Arne Dahl is an award-winning Swedish crime novelist
and literary critic. Bad Blood is the second book in the
Intercrime series.



ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Rachel Willson-Broyles is a freelance translator and a
PhD candidate in Scandinavian Studies at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. Her other translations include
Jonas Hassen Khemiri's novel Montecore and the play INVASION!. She lives in 
Madison, Wisconsin.


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