Acts of Vanishing Read online

  The glass doors to her office had to act as her shelter, and she hung up her coat, turned the computer on, perched on the edge of her chair as she set about going through the piles of paper, forcing herself to pretend that everything was normal.

  ‘I know you don’t want to talk.’

  Beatrice’s voice came from the doorway. She was standing there, a bundle of lurid textiles against the doorframe, radiating friendship.

  ‘So I thought I’d bring us both a cup of coffee and sit here for a bit and moan about the fact that the printers have managed to screw up the layout in half of today’s edition. They’ve made my pictures from the power cut look a lot like what a drunk person might see when they close their eyes.’

  To her surprise, Christina felt herself smiling, and Beatrice sat down, placing Christina’s cup in the middle of the table.

  ‘And then, after a while, when we’ve had a bit of a chat, I was thinking I’d ask you whether you should really be here today.’

  Christina shrugged. For a long time they sat there without talking to each other, and in a weird way that was exactly what was needed. After minutes had passed, and coffees finished, Christina marked it with a deep sigh.

  ‘I’ll have a stern word with the printers,’ she said, as though that had been at the heart of their silence. But the smile hidden away in the corners of her eyes said something else–it said thanks, thanks for coming and sitting down, thanks for a bit of company that didn’t need to be about words.

  Beatrice stopped in the doorway on her way out.

  ‘I’ve still got the keys to the Volvo if you want me to drive you anywhere.’

  ‘Thanks. But I’m okay. If I do need to get anywhere I can drive myself.’

  Beatrice shook her head.

  ‘Not as long as I’ve got the keys you can’t.’

  ‘Get out of here before I give you the sack,’ Christina said without meaning it at all. And with that, a ringing phone cut short their conversation. ‘I’m serious. I’ve got work to do. You should try it some time.’

  She gave Beatrice a nod of dismissal, picked the phone up off the desk, and immediately felt her smile vanish.

  ‘I’m sorry, Beatrice. I really have to take this.’

  Once Beatrice had closed the door behind her, Christina pressed to answer the call, hoping it hadn’t already rung.

  ‘Has something happened?’ she said without any greeting or introduction.

  ‘I can’t talk for long,’ Palmgren said at the other end, also dispensing with the formalities. ‘But I want you to know, William’s in Warsaw.’

  ‘Is he safe?’ she heard herself ask.

  ‘I am afraid he might not be. The Polish police are preparing an arrest raid right now.’

  It took a moment for her to grasp what he was saying.

  ‘The Polish police? Why?’

  ‘Well this is the thing,’ Palmgren replied. ‘Have you got a computer there?’

  Everyone makes mistakes. That’s what Inspector Sebastian Wojda told himself as he sat in the back of the dark blue incident van. Around him were banks of screens and instrument panels, manned by operators with headsets and keyboards, all of them waiting for his order.

  Everyone makes mistakes, even the most accomplished criminals, even the ones who have managed to stay on the run for years. And a good cop is a lucky cop. More arrests than you would care to imagine only happen thanks to such mistakes being uncovered, and today he’d had luck on his side. All he needed to do now was concentrate on the job in hand, not query how it had happened.

  ‘Status report?’ he asked, just for the sake of saying something.

  ‘We’ve seen the target pass the window a number of times,’ said a young female operator, her blonde hair scraped back under the headphones and exploding into a curly inferno on the other side of the band. ‘The ceiling light is still on, everything points to him still being in the room.’

  It had all happened extremely quickly, and on the street ahead of him the vans were lined up ready for the raid. In each vehicle were six armed men wearing body armour. Yet he was far from happy. It wouldn’t take much for the situation to escalate, and despite having received direct orders not to kill their target, he was worried about what might happen. Asking people questions is markedly more difficult if you shoot them dead first. And questions were one thing Sebastian Wojda had plenty of.

  He had never heard of Karl Axel Söderbladh. The computer had delivered its verdict though: someone by that name had checked into a hotel in north Warsaw, and that had caused the system to react. Both the photo and the name were one hundred per cent matches with Interpol’s list, and now, less than half an hour later, the operation was in full swing. Yet something about it all didn’t feel right.

  Never mind the fact that Wojda had never heard of the guy. There were hundreds of faces on Interpol’s list of wanted fugitives, and even if international crime had been his remit he still wouldn’t have been able to keep tabs on all of them. And disregard his never having heard about a Swedish citizen being on the list. Perhaps he’d just missed that. What troubled him though was the idea that a wanted international criminal would check into a hotel under his real name. And do so after going to the trouble of finding an anonymous, old-fashioned hotel in a corner of the city where nobody spent the night if they had a choice. Why would he do that?

  It didn’t add up. But everyone, including the most hardened criminal, makes mistakes, and often it’s a silly error that ultimately brings them down. With that thought echoing around his brain Wojda nodded at the blonde mop.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  William yanked the TV away from the wall, tugging out the aerial and then the power cable until the screen went black and the hum of the old cathode-ray tube finally disappeared.

  It was classic displacement activity, he knew. The television wasn’t his enemy, and unplugging it wasn’t going to help. The problem was that someone knew he was there, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, someone who knew about the word amberlangs, and he stood, hands trembling, trying to calm down.

  Who the hell are you, he wanted to scream. What do you want and why are you doing this to me?

  They had found out that he was in Warsaw, but how? His credit cards were in Sweden, he’d never got his phone back, there was no way that he’d left a digital trail behind him since getting in that taxi outside Central Station. They simply could not know that he was here. And yet they did, and that was all that mattered: however they’d managed it, whoever they were, however much he just wanted to lie down and go to sleep, that window had now closed. He pulled on the new suit and jacket, as well as the dark grey baseball cap from the petrol station, doing up buttons with stressed fingers, untying shoelaces on the new, hard shoes to push his feet into them­—

  When the telephone on the bedside table gave a shrill, electronic ring, the whole world stopped moving.

  He sat completely still on the edge of the bed, letting his eyes wander around the room, panning past the mirrors on either wall, seeing them reflected in each other and producing long rows of William Sandberg on long rows of beds, sitting in perfect formation and disappearing into a yellow infinity. Where they watching him right now? Was there someone on the other side of the mirror?

  The silence when the ringing stopped was even more unsettling than before. And after a moment he stood up and walked towards the telephone, knowing it was going to ring again.

  He looked over at the door. It was locked. Door chain on. Looked at the window. Through the dirty pane, towards the building sitting in darkness on the other side of the road–was that where they were?

  When the phone did ring again William was so prepared that he had the receiver to his ear before the first ring had died away. He said nothing, just listened without breathing.

  ‘Karl Axel Söderbladh?’ said a female voice on the other end.

  She didn’t say any more than that, English pronunciation in a Polish accent. William swallowed hard.

&nbs
p; ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in English. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong number…’

  ‘I know you must have questions,’ the voice interrupted before he’d finished speaking. ‘But you don’t have much time.’

  ‘Time for what?’ He tried to sound stern, but didn’t really pull it off.

  ‘To escape.’

  The words sent another shiver through him. What was this? Help? Or a trap?

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said. ‘But I don’t intend to…’

  She interrupted him again: ‘Go to the window.’

  That was so daft that he heard himself snigger.

  ‘Sure. Anything else I can do for you? Put my fingers in the electricity socket perhaps?’

  On the other end, the woman took a breath to interrupt him, but William hadn’t finished.

  ‘Is it okay if I keep this shirt on, or should I put one printed with concentric circles on so it’s a bit easier to aim?’

  ‘Are you done?’ the woman shouted. ‘There are two vans parked at either end of the block. Three men have left one of them, all in body armour and carrying automatic weapons. We can keep exchanging snide remarks all night if you want, but I thought you should probably know that first.’

  William hesitated. He took one cautious step towards the window, aware of the fact that the main light was on, and stood pressed tight against the wall so he could peer out and down the street. All he could see was the pavement. Reflections in the puddles. Street lamps swaying in the wind and making the light dance, shadows growing and shrinking along the front of the buildings. No movement.

  ‘What is it you’d like me to look at?’ said William.

  ‘The building opposite,’ she said. ‘There’s an abandoned launderette on the ground floor.’

  At first he didn’t know what she meant. Away to the left, at the far end of the building, were two large windows, witness to the fact that this was an operation that hadn’t been open in a long time. Behind blackened, dirty windows, some kind of metal objects, quite possibly washing machines, were just visible. Apart from that, the premises were dark and abandoned, and the letters spelling the name of the firm that had once adorned the panes of glass were peeling off and flapping in the wind. And so what?

  He was just about to hiss at her when he saw something move.

  He adjusted his eyes, squinting to focus as far into the building as he possibly could, until his depth perception finally got it.

  The men lined up behind each other, their black gloves communicating with short, precise gestures, weren’t actually inside the launderette at all. They were pressed against the wall of the building he was in–the woman on the phone had got him to see their reflections in the windows: three of them, another two emerging from the car behind, all wearing bullet-proof vests and dark clothes and with assault rifles in their hands.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘There’s no time to talk,’ she said down the phone. ‘Whatever you do, don’t go through the lobby. There are people on the other side of the building too, two of them are already on their way in.’

  ‘And how do I know you’re on my side?’

  ‘Do what I am doing,’ she said. ‘Gamble.’

  He hesitated, but didn’t get the chance to answer.

  ‘I’m sitting in a Mazda 323. A hundred metres beyond the launderette. My name is Rebecca Kowalczyk.’

  39

  This was the first time in her life that Christina had been on Interpol’s website. Of course she’d known somewhere at the back of her mind that it existed, but now, actually looking at it, it was dizzyingly real. There she was, looking through a list of criminals–not just wanted, but most wanted–one of whom was her own husband.

  But, and this was the weirdest part, it also wasn’t him. Admittedly there was no denying it was William in the photo. He was haggard, almost as though it was a brand-new image, despite the date at the foot of the page indicating that it had been up there for months.

  The rest of it though. The rest of it was bloody miles out. The name was Karl Axel Söderbladh. The date of birth was completely wrong, height was almost right but a couple of centimetres out, and country of birth was listed as Sweden, even though William’s parents had met in England and that’s where he’d spent the first few years of his life. It wasn’t William. And yet it so blatantly was.

  In the ‘Wanted For’ column it said simply conspiracy to commit terrorism without any further explanation, and on that basis action was under way which Palmgren had described as ‘a major police operation’. A quick glance at Polish news sites revealed nothing, but of course that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe the major police operation had already taken place without the newspapers having got wind of it. Maybe preparations were still going on in secret.

  Either way, she couldn’t help feeling that William had been convicted in advance, and that it was largely his own fault. He’d run from the police. And now he was in—

  She tried to sort the thoughts in her head. What was William doing in Warsaw? Somehow it had to mean that he’d drawn the same conclusions as she had. That he’d seen the threads all leading back to a particular occasion, five years before. To the Futurology conference, and the Palace of Culture and Science, and Piotrowski. Was this his doing? That didn’t stack up. However much they were afraid of him, he was hardly capable of getting someone up on Interpol’s must wanted list. And even if Michal Piotrowski had somehow managed that, why would he ever have used anything other than William’s real name?

  She leaned forward, flipping through the pile until she found what she was looking for. The yellow envelope from the car. The CD.

  For a few short moments she just held it, weighing it in between her fingers, staring at the computer. She felt a pressing urge to stick it in the drive and see what was on it, but she knew she couldn’t. However ludicrous it sounded, the theory was that Sara’s CD had caused the great power cut, and it felt like bad idea for Christina to cause another. Instead, she dragged herself over to the keyboard and opened the newspaper’s central address directory.

  Two minutes later, when Christina put her coat on and headed back out into the open-plan office, Beatrice’s desk was her first stop.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said quietly.

  Beatrice looked up from her enormous colour screen.

  ‘The typesetting?’

  ‘No. About me being here.’

  Beatrice looked at her. Stood up, grabbed her coat from the back of her chair.

  ‘I’ll drive you home.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s where I’m going,’ said Christina.

  ‘Well then, I’ll drive you somewhere else. I can’t let you drive, not on your own, not today.’

  Christina sighed with gratitude and resentment. And then, after a quick glance at the desk, she took a slow, deep, breath. She sat on the edge of the table. Lowered her voice to a whisper.

  ‘You know me,’ she said. ‘I’m not the type to go around broadcasting how I’m feeling inside. And I realise that it must be difficult, that you want to grab hold of me and forcibly comfort me and force me to talk. For my own sake.’

  Beatrice said nothing.

  ‘But that isn’t what I need. Quite the opposite. I need to deal with my own thoughts. And I’m glad you’re offering, but also, I know I need to a heal a little bit on my own first.’

  Two seconds of silence. Then the smile.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Beatrice. A warm, friendly tone that said I know all that already. ‘I know you.’

  Christina nodded. Thanks.

  She stood up, mumbled something about hailing a cab, before she noticed that Beatrice was blocking her route like a big colourful wall.

  ‘The problem is that I don’t care about what you need.’

  Before Christina had the chance to do anything about it, she found herself in a warm, comforting hug that she couldn’t escape. All she could do was to accept it, and onc
e she had she realised she was holding on for dear life. They stood for a long time, comfort and warmth and a thousand other emotions.

  ‘If you don’t let go soon we’re going to end up in the gossip columns,’ Beatrice said into her shoulder, and Christina felt herself laugh, or perhaps cry, a single sound that could have been both.

  ‘We’re a tabloid newspaper,’ Christina replied. ‘No one believes anything we write anyway.’

  When they’d finally let go of each other and dried their eyes, Christina smiled a last thanks and then trudged through the office, straight past all the pitying faces for the second time in half an hour. This time though, she met their eyes, muttered a see you tomorrow, and disappeared towards the lift and the exit.

  As the doors closed around her she leaned against the wall and let her thoughts descend into calm. She was full of grief, had just lost her daughter, her life had been torn up by the roots. But in spite of it all, she still had a feeling that she was not alone. That was a feeling she could live with.

  With that thought playing on her mind she stepped out in the garage, found the editorial team’s light blue Volvo and unlocked it with the key she’d taken from Beatrice’s desk.

  40

  The hotel corridor was a short, angled passage through the building. It had barely a handful of doors on each side, and under the worn-out carpets a rolling, creaking wooden floor screeched with each step taken across it. The wallpaper was slowly trying to free itself from the walls, brown and black stripes illuminated by lamps with a collection of light bulbs of varying wattages. In the middle of the fourth floor the corridors were met by the knackered lift, next to which was the narrow, dark stairwell, and next to which, in turn, stood William. Tense, not breathing, motionless in order to identify the sounds from the ground floor.

  The woman on the phone had warned him at the very last minute. That was the good news. The bad news was that he was backed into a corner.