Watching You(6)

Their eyes locked. And didn’t move. If Allan was joking, he was hiding it very well. In the end he looked away from Berger, sighed deeply and shook his head. ‘So what’s your next move?’

‘I’m going to go through the case with Deer, as soon as I can. We need to get back to basics.’

‘You can’t go round calling a female colleague “dear”, that’s just weird, Sam. I’ve already heard people complaining about sexism around here.’

‘Her name is Desiré Rosenkvist,’ Berger said. ‘And no fucking way can a cop be called Desiré Rosenkvist. Deer is short for Desiré, and is spelled with two e’s. Deer as in not an elk. She’s got a deer’s eyes, after all.’

‘Oh well, that makes it much less sexist,’ Allan said, and shepherded him out.





5




Sunday 25 October, 19.37

Berger realised he was smiling as he walked down the dimly lit corridor and turned off at the pillar that marked the start of the open-plan office. And sure enough, Deer was the only person left. She looked up at him.

‘A bollocking?’ she asked.

‘Big bollocking,’ he confirmed. ‘For instance, I have to stop calling you Deer.’

‘He could have asked me first.’

‘Because, of course, it’s all done out of consideration for you.’

Laughter. Weak, though.

‘Listen,’ she said.

An agitated female voice rang out: ‘Look, I’m pretty sure I saw her just now, you know, her, that girl, through the window … Well, I’m not sure it was her, but she had that thing, I don’t know, that pink leather strap round her neck with that crooked cross, the Greek one, I don’t know if it’s Orthodox, but she’s a genuine blonde, for God’s sake, can’t have any Greek roots.’

Deer stopped the torrent. ‘What does “pink” mean here?’

Berger shrugged. ‘It was vital. That was what got us moving.’

‘Yes,’ Deer said thoughtfully. ‘It was a Russian cross, not a Greek one, but Orthodox all the same. She could have seen that in the media. But not the fact that the leather strap was pink, that’s never been made public. But I’m thinking more about, I don’t know, proximity. How close would you have to stand to see that a strap round someone’s neck is pink?’

‘She wasn’t standing anywhere,’ Berger said. ‘Because she doesn’t exist.’

Deer looked at him for a few moments, then restarted the audio file: ‘Yes, er, the address. It’s the last house up by the edge of the forest, the derelict one. I don’t remember the name of the road, but the guy who lives there’s a real weirdo, you never see him and if you do he hurries away. He could easily have …’

Deer stopped the playback. ‘Then of course she remembers the name of the road and gives us a full address. Forensics estimate that it’s been at least two days since the cellar was emptied, probably longer. So this witness can’t have seen Ellen through the window this morning. The woman claimed to live nearby, and there really is a Lina Vikstr?m at the address she gave. The reason we haven’t been able to get hold of Lina Vikstr?m is that she’s travelling in south-east Asia. One of those get-in-touch-with-your-real-self holidays without a mobile. Lots of yoga.’

‘Really?’ Berger said. ‘That’s new.’

‘Claiming to be this unreachable Lina Vikstr?m suggests in-depth knowledge of the area.’

‘And rather more than that, actually.’

‘Obviously this raises a number of fundamental questions,’ Deer said. ‘Is there a female accomplice? Is this witness’s voice actually the kidnapper’s, run through a voice changer? Or is our perpetrator in fact a woman?’

‘Nothing from the audio experts?’

‘Not yet, no. But if we’re dealing with some sort of distortion device, these days there’s a chance of recovering the original voice.’

‘I’m not holding out much hope of that,’ Berger said. ‘If Forensics did manage to come up with the original voice, that would be a deception as well. One way or another. He only leaves clues that he wants to leave. If they fulfil a function.’

‘No woman involved, then?’

‘That’s my guess. He’s working alone.’

‘But he’s done it before? You got there “too late again”?’

Berger bit his tongue. He twisted Deer’s desk lamp so that it shone on the nearby whiteboard. It contained the entire case. Which wasn’t much. Almost three weeks and not a single decent lead; Allan had been right about that. But they did have a jumble of dead ends.

Purely because they refused to see the case from a historical perspective.

Berger moved the beam of light across the confusion of Post-it notes, photographs, receipts, documents, drawings and arrows. It was all manual, old-fashioned, no gadgets. The dull cone of light came to rest on two pencil drawings.

Deer pointed at the photofit on the right. ‘We’ve had this one since day one. A man in a van seen outside Ellen Savinger’s school in ?stermalm, just before the end of the school day. Two independent witnesses agree on this likeness. And then this more recent picture, produced by a neighbour in M?rsta, the only person so far to have seen the “weirdo” on the edge of the forest.’