Acts of Vanishing Page 17

Far away, in the darkness, one of the police pulled up his headset.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘That’s the thing. Sveavägen and Gamla Stan.’

  ‘In that order?’

  ‘No. Simultaneous.’

  After that, the radio fell silent for what must have been at least thirty seconds. And throughout, Lars-Erik Palmgren could feel himself smiling in the back.

  30

  The woman was lying with her cheek to the ground, eyes closed and praying to a god she didn’t believe in. The knees she could feel in her back were too many to count. Her wrists were screaming with pain as the policemen gripped them, she felt the gravel on her face and the light in her eyes and all the time they kept asking her name.

  ‘Karin,’ she told them, and then again, ‘Karin,’ over and over. It was the truth, she just hadn’t said it for so long that when she finally did it she couldn’t stop.

  She didn’t really know when, but at some point she’d started calling herself Cleo. Somehow that had made everything easier to bear, as though her true self was bound up with her name, and she’d just put it in storage for a little while. As if it would still be there, unchanged and unspoiled, as long as she didn’t use it.

  That was how she wanted to see herself. Still the singer in a metal band, still a talent with the future at her feet, all she’d done was lock herself in a safety deposit box while the bad years blew over. The bad years, though, had stayed. She was over thirty now, and here she lay, on the tarmac outside NK, with her arms bent up between her shoulder blades and the cold of the ground against her body.

  Yet inside, she was still smiling. Less than an hour ago she’d woken up on a warm air vent in a tiled underpass beneath Vasagatan. A man had been standing over her. She instinctively recoiled, backed away towards the wall, but he had crouched down next to her with a warm, reassuring voice.

  ‘Cleo?’ he’d said. ‘I need your help.’

  It had taken several seconds for her to realise that it was him. The very first time they met he’d offered her money, which had scared her, but all he’d wanted in return was information about his missing daughter. Cleo had been honest, told it like it was. She didn’t know anything, had never seen her, couldn’t help.

  He’d pushed a hundred note into her hand anyway, and that’s how it carried on, each time they met, always a hundred, sometimes two. Again and again he’d begged her to keep an eye out. To send him an email if she saw anything.

  Now he was sitting there, hunched over next to her, even more tired and distraught than she’d seen him before. He was wet and cold and had a face so devoid of emotion that she wanted to do something, hold him, comfort him even though she’d forgotten how to.

  ‘Have you found her?’ was all she ended up saying.

  The man shook his head.

  ‘There’s one last thing I want you to do for me.’

  Now she was sitting in the police car and could feel the warmth returning to her body, the window next to her steaming up from her damp clothes.

  She’d managed four cashpoints before they caught up with her. Four times five made twenty thousand, sitting there in her inside pocket, and which no one could prove was not rightfully hers. She’d be sleeping in the warm tonight, then they’d ask her a never-ending string of questions, and she would answer them perfectly honestly, just as he’d told her to.

  ‘They will get you,’ he’d told her, ‘and they’ll ask you a thousand questions, and then a thousand more. The money you withdraw though, they can’t take off you. See it as a gift. And the longer you can evade them, the better for both of us.’

  She’d wanted him to give him a hug to say thanks, but he’d explained that he was in a hurry, that he had another four cards he needed to hand out. And yet he’d looked at her as if he wanted to stay, as though she was the last bit of security he had left. Maybe she was.

  He was already halfway down the subway when she called out: ‘I hope you find her.’

  When he stopped, she could only see his silhouette. But that was enough.

  ‘I’m not looking any more.’

  The taxi was official, with yellow plates, but it wasn’t from a firm. The logo consisted of the word TAXI and nothing more, a magnetic sign stuck on the front door, and the first thing the driver said as he pulled up to the kerb was that he couldn’t take cards as payment.

  For William Sandberg, that was just fine.

  He didn’t have any credit cards any more. He had twenty-five thousand krona in cash in his pocket, and he’d known as he was withdrawing it who he was going to ask for help. He’d run along the metro tunnel all the way from Slussen, cutting through underground passages he’d learned about from them, and in the darkness five of them were given a credit card each. Faces he’d met on his walks, faces that needed his credit more than he did. And while they were busy emptying his accounts, William had one last thing left to do.

  As he walked into the internet café by Hötorget he felt the memory of the CCTV footage stabbing at his insides. As though deep down he was expecting her to still be there, that everything that had happened in the ambulance was yet to happen, and now was his chance to change it all.

  It wasn’t like that, of course. Instead he gave a hundred krona to Bum-fluff on the till, asked him about the girl who was there yesterday afternoon, never mentioning the fact that he was her father.

  She’d left nothing behind. The place where she’d been sitting was empty and sad and meant nothing. But before he left, he sat down at one of the computers and logged in to his Hotmail account. No new emails had arrived in AMBERLANGS inbox, not from ROSETTA, nor anyone else, and he closed the window, treated himself to a couple of seconds with his eyes closed, wondering what it meant. Why hadn’t he turned up? If Piotrowski was trying to get hold of him, where was he now?

  When William had seen enough, he stood up and walked out. In one corner was the camera that had captured Sara on film for the very last time, perhaps recording him right now too. But before anyone saw those pictures, he was planning to be long gone.

  Now he was sitting in the unmarked taxi, and beyond the windscreen the empty motorway rushed towards him with a soporific rhythm, white lines replaced by other white lines, concrete estates giving way to forests and then fields.

  With the driver delivering a never-ending monologue about the weather, William kept nodding at regular intervals, his breathing growing steadily heavier as relief slowly sank in.

  He’d made it. He was getting away from the city. And as he saw the lamps rushing past, shifting from dots to large discs, and then coalescing into great swathes, he knew that he was falling asleep.

  31

  As morning dawned on the fourth of December, snow covered the ground. It lay as a thin film of white reflecting Christmas illuminations and car headlights in sparkling dots, making the world seem quite a comforting place after all. If you didn’t know better.

  As Christina wandered through town, hands in pockets and eyes to the ground, she met the very last dregs making their way to work for the day. It was after ten, and the flows had begun to thin out, the pavements were slippery with snow compacted by thousands of morning feet.

  The news room was only a fifteen-minute walk from the hospital, but she headed in the opposite direction. She couldn’t go there, not yet. She couldn’t face meeting them, answering all her colleagues’ questions, receiving their sympathies. Or, worse still–if they didn’t yet know about it–having to be the one to tell them.

  Home? She didn’t have one. What she needed to do now was to look up, force herself to go forward, and the mere thought of that bloody flat in Sollentuna made her gasp for breath as though she suddenly wasn’t getting any oxygen. And over on Skeppargatan was an apartment she couldn’t get into, whose keys she had posted through the letterbox, convinced that she would never want to return.

  She headed down Fleminggatan instead, towards the city centre. When she got close to Central Station, she picked one of the hotels, checked in ev
en though the lobby was full of people checking out, and got a room with huge soundproofed windows overlooking the street. She stood there for a long time without moving, watching people and buses and emergency services pass by in silence.

  She wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she was going to have a shower, try and eat, and maybe then she’d realise what she should be doing next. One step at a time.

  As Mark Winslow jumped out of the taxi on Brompton Road, he reflected on the night before. He’d spent the latter part of the evening in his sparsely furnished flat, and the later it had become, the more he’d been haunted both by his heartburn and all the thoughts that always popped up in the darkness. When one had led to the other for long enough, he’d treated himself to a couple of sleeping pills and got into bed.

  He’d dreamed sweaty, troubled dreams, because he always did. Thoughts floated through the fuzziness of the tablets colliding with each other, the same thoughts he had when he was awake, only now in a single, feverish column. And then, as the night went on, the dreams had started to be about his dad.

  They did that sometimes. Always when he was stressed, when he was feeling insecure, never helping the least. Each time they would wake him up with a feeling of emptiness that was actually just phantom pain, a grief he had felt as a child but that he had swapped for something else along the way–for a fear that one day he was going to end up like him. That one day the stress and the worry would finally break Mark Winslow too, just as they had his father, and it all became a vicious circle that generally didn’t start to ease off until long into the afternoon.

  They said it wasn’t hereditary. But how could he be sure?

  When the taxi door slammed behind him, he hadn’t been up more than forty minutes. Yet last night’s dreams were already gone without a trace. Mark Winslow had more important things to worry about.

  The first thing he’d noticed when he woke up were the unread text messages. He’d received twenty during the night, all from his boss, each one an increasingly irritated order to call him, now, where the hell are you, ring me now!

  Winslow had leapt out of bed, rushed into the bathroom, and realised that on top of everything he’d overslept by two hours. Sleeping pills never failed. And as he was thinking about that the twenty-first text arrived. This time though, it wasn’t from his boss. The text had been sent directly by one of the servers in the department, an automatic message. Briefing 0900. Compulsory.

  Each detail added a new layer of burning sensations in his guts. Briefing–not a meeting. That meant something had happened. Compulsory meant that it was something big. And the time? Half an hour’s notice for God’s sake…?

  He’d thrown yesterday’s clothes on and rushed onto the street for a cab, and when he’d finally got hold of one his phone had bleeped again. This time though, it was his boss. Where the hell are you? We’ve had to start without you. We have a problem. H

  I’m in a cab, he wrote, before adding, in traffic on Millbank, as though it was somehow less embarrassing if he claimed to be closer than he actually was.

  Outside, the traffic was crawling, inching forward in between long standstills, and with each passing second Winslow felt the heartburn building to a black, compelling strain. A weight settling on his shoulders, a nausea that sooner or later was going to explode. Not hereditary? Are you sure about that? He forced himself to stare out of the window, count cars, whatever.

  It was going to take at least another twenty minutes to get to the ministry. The briefing, it seemed, was already under way. The only thing left to do was to close his eyes and relax, and he leaned back in his seat, told himself to at least try and listen to the radio. And soon he realised that without knowing it, he was getting the briefing anyway. North-west of London, the radio said, the A40 was closed in both directions, around RAF Northolt. An accident overnight was causing chaos in the rush-hour traffic.

  ‘Something’s going on,’ said a voice from the front seat.

  Winslow looked around, catching the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Believe you me,’ he said. ‘They’re hiding something.’

  ‘Who are “they”?’ asked Winslow.

  ‘Dunno. The authorities.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  The driver pointed at the radio. ‘I came on duty last night,’ he said. ‘I live out that way. The road was already closed at one a.m., long bloody diversion. Accident? Do me a favour.’

  ‘What was it then?’

  ‘I saw the smoke. It was coming from the airbase.’

  Mark Winslow asked the driver to stop. He passed him a note without even looking to see what denomination it was, then threw himself out onto the pavement of Brompton Road, along with all the other stressed people on their way somewhere. Moments later he was bent over an electricity box and vomiting, watching as the passers-by gave him as wide a berth as possible.

  Twelve hours ago, he had suggested that John Patrick Trottier should head off to Stockholm. Now Winslow had twenty missed text messages from the Minister, a high-level briefing was under way at the MoD, and an accident had occurred at RAF Northolt. That was enough for him. And he stayed there, slumped against the box, feeling the aftershocks passing through his body.

  As soon as he’d finished throwing up he was going to run all the way to the MoD on Whitehall and find out what the hell was going on.

  32

  They say that every man has his price, and the price of the Norwegian truck driver who spoke with a thick Western accent and smelled of service-station aftershave was five thousand krona and a handshake.

  It was well past midnight when they were finally allowed to board the delayed boat at Nynäshamn. The big power cut had paralysed various systems for hours, said the driver. He was tired, hungry and irritable, but by taking the money he was at least getting something out of the fucking night, he’d thought to himself. And he wasn’t even really expected to do anything in exchange.

  He spent the night in one of the cabins, as usual. He got up as they entered Polish waters, had a quick shower and then put yesterday’s clothes back on, and no one batted an eyelid when he bought two lots of breakfast in the truckers’ lounge, one of which he took with him down to his wagon. No one asked why, and why should they? No one takes any notice of an extra coffee and a cheese roll.

  Three hours later, he stopped at a petrol station outside Łódź. He filled up with diesel for the drive down to the Czech Republic, and stocked up on crisps and water in the shop. The last thing he did as he was leaving was to nod a greeting towards the man waiting in the queue for the toilets, who was looking even rougher than he had the night before–crumpled and bereft and carrying a little bag of newly bought toiletries in one hand. He blinked his response, nothing more, a greeting that said thank you and good morning all at once, and then the toilet door opened and he went in, locking the door behind him.

  That was the last the Norwegian trucker saw of William Sandberg, the man who’d slept in his trailer and who’d paid him five thousand to not ask why.

  Inside the stinking toilet, William pulled the thin door to and turned the lock. He looked in the mirror. It hadn’t been twenty-four hours since he’d seen that same face in the bathroom mirror on Lidingövägen, yet the person behind it was far from the same. At that point he’d still been someone’s father, and he hadn’t yet gone on the run.

  Now, life was a fevered dream. As though he was watching himself from a distance, kicking damp sheets, fighting the fears that would vanish just as soon as he finally woke up.

  But there was nothing to wake up from. William Sandberg was suspected of aiding terrorists. He’d forced an ambulance off the road. And now he was in Poland after a night in the trailer of a Norwegian HGV. He’d lain all night, all morning, slipping in and out of sleep, shivering in the dark in between heavy crates, and woke up to the sound of the clunking diesel engines and the creaking of vehicles as the vessel pitched and yawed.

  And all the time, he was trying to und
erstand what Michal Piotrowski had to do with the attacks, and why the fuck he’d pulled William into it.

  There was only one way to find out. William spat the last of the toothpaste into the stainless-steel sink, put on the dark grey baseball cap he’d chosen at the till, then left the petrol station without having shown his face to the cameras even once.

  33

  It was well past lunch by the time Christina finally left her room and wandered in to the closed dining room. The young waitress who she met on the other side of the partially closed doors explained with teacherly patience that it was much too late for breakfast. The buffet closed at ten thirty on weekdays, she informed her, and went on to explain that many other hotels finished their service earlier than that. Rules are rules, her hostess explained, and where would it end if anyone could come and ask for a sandwich at any time of day or night?

  Then she’d seen something in Christina that changed her mind. Maybe it was her sad smile, her polite attempts to ask them to at least throw a plate together that she could take up to her room. Maybe her voice showed traces of having cried through the night. In the end, the girl smiled at her, a real smile. The touch of her hand on Christina’s back as she led her to a table came as such a surprise that it almost burned, making her eyes swell up all over again.

  She got a table at the far end of the room, laid all the newspapers she’d picked up from the lobby out in front of her, and then forced herself to do what she always did–read them all, carefully, from cover to cover. The paper editions were always first, those were the rules, and only when she’d read them was she allowed to get her phone out and see what was being reported online.

  She felt that the news should be read in chronological order. If you read the newest stories first then you missed out on the getting there, the speculation and the distractions and the details that proved to be irrelevant, and without them there was no whole, and without being whole, news was just a series of detached headlines with no story.