Acts of Vanishing Read online

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2016 by Fredrik T. Olsson

  Translation copyright © 2017 by Michael Gallagher

  Cover design by craigfraserdesign.com

  Cover art © Alexandre Cappellari / Arcangel Images (landscape); © Sašo Novoselič / iStockphoto (sky); © Hello Mart (map)

  Author photograph by Caroline Andersson

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  First ebook edition: April 2018

  Originally published in Swedish as Ett vakande öga by Bonnierförlagen, 2016

  First publication in the English language by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, a division of Hachette UK, 2017

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-33505-8

  E3-20180322-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Day 1. Monday 3 December: AMBERLANGS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Day 2. Tuesday 4 December: ROSETTA

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Day 3. Wednesday 5 December: COGITO ERGO SUM

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Day 4. Thursday 6 December: A LITTLE LIFE

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Discover More Fredrik T. Olsson

  About the Author

  Also by Fredrik T. Olsson

  Prologue

  No one could possibly have known that he was going to be right here, simply because he hadn’t known himself.

  He hadn’t made his final decision until two days before. He had booked trips to various destinations, rebooked, and then collected tickets he had no intention of using. Quite deliberately, he had left everything open until the very last minute, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone must have known exactly what he was thinking. Of course no one could–that was impossible, he of all people should know–but even so, the thought sent a chilling anxiety through him.

  He’d got rid of the greying, tufty beard. He’d trimmed his hairline to make it look like he was receding, even though he wasn’t. His eyebrows, which over the years had converged into a single, long and bushy skein, had been plucked and tweaked into two thin lines. For the first time in his life he had spent hours standing in front of a mirror, concentrating on his own face. By the time he was finished he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to pick himself out in a crowd.

  He’d rented a year-old BMW in a garage that could, at best, be described as dubious. He had paid in cash without proving his identity, and no one could have seen him, no one could know where he had gone. He was safe.

  And yet, here he was. Sitting in the dry silence of the car, hearing nothing but the thud of his own heart, and the rhythm of rain against the roof.

  Maybe he should’ve known something was up.

  Perhaps not as soon as the level-crossing barriers blocked the road in front of him, not then, even if he’d felt a twinge of fear in his belly as he rounded the long bend. As the red-and-yellow pole reached across the road in front of him, right there in the darkness, the bell hammering peevishly alongside.

  He had stopped with the blinking red eye of the crossing gate just in front of him, one lone car in the darkness. Waited a minute, maybe two. No trains passed, yet the bell stopped.

  That brought another wave of anxiety. The silence as the clanking died out, the mechanical movement as the barriers rose, leaving just him and the level crossing, strangers in the silent winter night, deep in rural Skåne. All he could see was the darkness and the wide expanse of field on the far side of the tracks. Empty slabs of rock-hard clay seemed to go on for ever until they disappeared into the grey-white mist, red dots glared at him from high in the air where lonely turbine blades rotated out of sight.

  He had forced himself to snap out of it. There was nothing to be afraid of. The train must have passed before he arrived, or maybe it had broken down or got stuck at the points somewhere–it didn’t matter. What mattered was he needed to get going. He was in a foreign country, with a long trip ahead of him, and no time to lose.

  He’d started the engine and gently rolled up and over the tracks. And that’s when everything had happened.

  The world around him had gone black. The whole car switched off at a stroke: the headlights that should have illuminated the road ahead, the rear lights that should have cast a
faint red glow behind the sloping rear windscreen, and above all–the engine.

  He turned the key in the ignition to restart it. Nothing. Once more, and then again, and he heard himself bark Start for fuck’s sake, slamming his hands against the wheel.

  The moment he grabbed the door handle was the moment he realised what in fact he knew already: that no matter how much he heaved and strained, the doors would stay closed and locked, and nothing was going to change that. It was the same with the windows: however hard he pushed, however much he stabbed at the buttons in the door panel, no matter how he struggled, the car was going to stay just as locked and dark and dead.

  It was then that the barriers started coming down again. It was then that he heard the hissing, and it was then that he knew.

  He was lying stretched across both front seats when he caught the first glimpse of the lights. He stamped his soles against the window, his pulse raging inside his eardrums, the taste of terror and iron and blood even in the few seconds left until it would happen.

  He could see the glass shudder under his soles but not give way, the approaching headlights flooding the dirty surface, and he closed his eyes and all he could hear were the sounds. The wailing thrill from the rails beneath him. The heartbeats thick in his mouth.

  And then the horn as the train driver spotted the blacked-out car, a relentless honking that would be the last thing he ever heard, the grating scrape of iron biting into iron, trying to brake when it was already too late.

  Day 1. Monday 3 December

  AMBERLANGS

  I have no first memory.

  No matter how hard I try to look back, I can’t.

  I remember no birth.

  I remember no places.

  All I know is that I am alive now, that behind me is an infinite then, and somewhere within that is all that is my past.

  And I cannot stop wondering what it was.

  I have no first memory.

  I just think to myself that if I had had one, everything would have been better.

  1

  The days that change your life for ever start off like all the others.

  No one wakes you saying today might be a bit tough, so have another piece of toast, take your time and enjoy your coffee, because it will be a while before you learn to enjoy life again. There’s no one putting an arm around you, preparing you for what’s about to happen. Everything is as normal, right up until the point where it no longer is.

  As the afternoon gloom descended over Stockholm on Monday the third of December, no one knew that the threat level in the country had just been raised to ‘elevated’. No one knew that inside the Swedish Armed Forces’ great brick-built headquarters on Lidingövägen, men and women with uniforms and name badges were sitting waiting for the worst to happen.

  And no one knew that the massive power cut that was about to hit at six minutes past four was just the start of something much bigger.

  The men sitting inside the white van up on Klarabergsviadukten, the road bridge over Stockholm’s Central Station, had no idea what they were waiting for. Or rather, who. They didn’t know what he was going to do, who he was going to meet, how it was all going to look. Nor did they know why, which was of course what worried them most.

  Inside the van’s cramped loadspace, the silence was absolute. From the outside, it looked like any other anonymous delivery vehicle. Presumably, it had seemed spacious and generously proportioned when they bought it. After that, they seemed to have got carried away. Someone had given free rein to a team of technicians with an extravagant budget, and now the van was so full of screens and electronics that it felt less like a workplace and more like a boy’s bedroom full of expensive kit.

  A cubic metre’s worth of space nearest the driver’s cab had been consigned to computers and other electronic gizmos that probably carried out important tasks, but appeared not to do much more than flash red and green. Along one side hung two banks of flat screens, and behind a long thin desk below the screens sat four grown men, which was at least two too many.

  The two who sat at the keyboards were of markedly different ages but unfortunately shared a similar BMI. Immediately behind them were the two men in charge: the one who the others called Lassie when he was out of earshot, and the one called Velander, an IT expert in civilian clothes, of completely indeterminable age, with glasses that seemed to get constantly steamed up in the heat inside. They stood hunched against the roof, shoulder to shoulder, eyes glued to the screens and the fuzzy grey CCTV images being relayed from within the station.

  It was the older man who spotted him first, two minutes ahead of schedule.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  His voice was no louder than a whisper, but everyone heard, and once they’d spotted the subject they saw it too.

  It might have been something about his movements–the jerky gait, perhaps–or maybe something else. Whatever it was, a burst of concentration filled the tiny space, the same sudden alertness that comes when you catch sight of an ex in the corner of your eye during the interval at the theatre, someone you haven’t seen for years but who stands out from the crowd and holds your gaze.

  He’d changed.

  He was trotting, rather than running, his hair untidy in the breeze, as though he’d just got up–although it was late afternoon. This from a man who’d always been so well dressed, so well coordinated. Who’d been sharp, in good shape, who no one quite believed when he told them he’d turned fifty–several times, as had been the standing joke these last three birthdays. Last time was so much fun I thought I’d turn fifty again this year.

  It was as though, in the space of just three months, age had suddenly caught up with him. He looked tired, broken, with his overcoat hanging as if it had just been thrown over him and his jeans soaked with slush up to the knees. As he jostled through the crowds and across the blue-grey marble floor, a blue-grey mac in a sea of blue-grey passengers, he did so with movements that were forced and spasmodic, full of a buzzing intensity.

  He kept appearing and disappearing as he moved between cameras, rushing onto the vaulted concourse, past the great frescoes and over towards the new escalators at the far end.

  Surely it wasn’t him they were waiting for? But if it wasn’t, what was he doing there, now?

  ‘What do we do?’ asked the one with the steamed-up glasses.

  ‘We wait,’ said the one whose name wasn’t Lassie.

  And then, for two long minutes, not a word from anyone inside the van.

  It had been only seven minutes to four when the bright yellow taxi stopped on Vasagatan outside Stockholm’s main station to drop William Sandberg off into the slushy afternoon gloom that was Monday the third of December.

  Thick layers of dark grey cloud hung where the sky should have been, the air so thick with mist that the noise of the traffic and all the roadworks seemed to meld into a single indistinct clamour. Construction lights and Christmas illuminations struggled gamely to overcome the murk, and the scaffolding and tarpaulins that clung to the surrounding buildings gave the impression that someone had clad the whole city in an orthodontic brace to reset it.

  He was tired today, just like yesterday, and the day before that. If he’d given it any thought he would probably have noticed that he was hungry too, but if there was one thing he’d managed to cut out it was thinking of stuff like that. He’d stopped when he realised that his feelings were consuming him, literally eating him up: they were gnawing him from the inside with big, brutish bites, and now what was left of what was once William Sandberg was at least ten kilos lighter.

  It’s the method the tabloids forget, he used to say. Find yourself something really worth worrying about.

  He picked his way through the heavy, wet snow outside the main entrance, following it into the departure hall, where it turned to a cinnamon-brown mush, and where the fusty smell of dirt and damp clothes mixed with the aroma of takeaway lattes and people on their way home.

  William Sa
ndberg, though, noticed none of it. Not the smell, not the flush of his face as the wind gave way to the still warmth indoors, or the irritated elbows that jerked out in frustration as he pushed his way through the crowd towards the northern exit.

  It had been less than two weeks since that first email, and in precisely seven minutes’ time he’d be in position, on the Arlanda Airport Express platform.

  Precisely, because that’s what it had said.

  All he felt was hope–and fear–they came in tandem.

  He’d been waiting by the bright yellow ticket machine for at least five minutes before he realised that he’d been looking for the wrong thing.

  The platforms had been full of businessmen with briefcases, people with blank looks who seemed to be hibernating inside their own heads, waiting for a train to take them to somewhere they didn’t want to go. But William had been looking for something else: faces that didn’t want to be seen, people in dirty coats, with heavy plastic bags and loop after loop of damp scarves muffling their restless, freezing eyes. The kind who hid themselves behind bulky clothes, layers protecting them from both the biting cold and any unwanted contact with the rest of the world.

  Maybe, he’d allowed himself to think–maybe one of them had finally got in touch. Someone, at last, with something to tell him, who’d made contact to reveal an address or even point the way, anything at all that would help him along.

  Sandberg had hoped. And if only he hadn’t, he probably would have seen the man on the other platform much sooner.

  He was well over thirty. He had a headset in one ear, a studied vacant look despite being perfectly alert, and clothes so painfully ordinary that once you’d noticed him he stuck out like a child trying to hide behind a curtain.

  His suit was silver grey. On top of it he wore a short overcoat that was so tightly buttoned at the waist that the bottom of his suit jacket poked out like a short pleated skirt, and below his trousers sat a pair of clumpy, anonymous trainers. All in all, it was a look that screamed discreet! as loud as it possibly could.

  What caught William’s eye, though, was the phone call. It seemed to contain more silence than talk. There were long periods when the thin wire just hung from his ear with nothing to do, and when the man eventually did open his mouth it was for single short interjections. That was it. In between he stood waiting impatiently, head darting distractedly from side to side looking at nothing in particular.