The Memory Man Page 12

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘The eye was brown. I’m looking at a photograph of the Monsignor right now. His eyes are blue-grey. Definitely not the same colour.’

  ‘Well, that’s bad news for someone else then, as that means we’ve got another corpse out there missing an eyeball.’

  ‘And another unknown victim in the wind. Just to be sure we’re on the same page, we’re thinking grudge, right? This has to be personal.’

  ‘Driven by hatred,’ she agreed. ‘Sending part of the previous victim to the next, it’s meant to instil fear. It’s meant to do to the recipient exactly what it did to Patrick Dooley. It’s meant to make them give up. But what if it is more than just fear? What if the body part itself is relevant? Dooley received an eye, Tournard a tongue … You see, you speak, that kind of thing?’

  ‘I like the way you think,’ Ash said. ‘I mean, if every victim received a finger, we’d assume that was a message, wouldn’t we? That the killer was pointing the finger, or something like that. So, it makes sense the body parts are chosen for a reason. And they’re parts of the body that aren’t easily identifiable. You can’t just run a tongue through the tongue database to get a match like you could a finger. So, if it’s deliberate, the question is why a tongue? Why an eyeball? Both are considerably more difficult to excise than a finger. And your theory about the message, sight and sound, I like it. It works. Can I say something stupid?’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘What if we’re literally missing something here?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The Monsignor received a tongue and a note to meet someone, a note that also mentioned Bonn. The priest was sent an eyeball and a similar note, also mentioning Bonn. The thing is though, and I can’t believe I haven’t asked you this before now, but was your politician sent something? A similar note. A random body part? Or is he victim zero, where it all begins? Because that makes a difference, doesn’t it?’

  She thought about it. She’d checked his office and his apartment in Vasastan, and nothing had turned up there. But he kept a room in chambers, too, and had a summer house out in the archipelago. Uniform had checked his room in chambers, and SAPO had cordoned off the summer house, so by rights if there was something to be found it would have turned up by now. But that wasn’t the same as there being nothing to find. ‘We haven’t found anything.’

  And this had bothered her from the beginning. Anglemark must have been lured to the rendezvous, same as the other victims. Everything about this all seemed so carefully orchestrated. The planning left little margin for error. And that meant there must have been some sort of message to lure him out, whether it was delivered to his office, or to one of the other residences. Any sort of threat sent to chambers would have immediately raised alarms with SAPO, and any suspect package – especially one containing human flesh – would have run afoul of the Riksdag’s security.

  No threat was going unnoticed.

  It was impossible.

  ‘SAPO are deconstructing every aspect of Anglemark’s life. They’re going through his phone logs and retracing every step he made over the last month, looking for any anomalies. Assuming he was lured to a carefully chosen meeting place, it can’t stay secret. There are always traffic cams, CCTV, eye-witnesses. They will reconstruct the last hours of his life.’

  ‘Changing MOs doesn’t make sense, so even if there wasn’t some grisly souvenir, I’m betting there was a card.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Frankie said, ‘changing MOs doesn’t make sense. So if every other victim was lured to their death with a note telling them to remember Bonn you can bet Anglemark received one, too.’

  ‘Then where is it?’

  ‘I can’t think about that now. I have a press conference in ten minutes. I am supposed to sit in front of the cameras and tell my country what has happened without telling them anything.’

  ‘I don’t envy you.’

  THIRTY

  The room was as sterile as the briefing they delivered. An array of cameras and microphones caught every angle and every missing nuance as the man beside her, Henrik Frys, leaned forward. He was well aware of the cameras and that every word and change of expression would be analysed and repeated on the endless news cycles of the world as soon as they were out of his mouth. Everyone in the room already knew what he was about to say, word had leaked out last night, tipping their hand and forcing the press conference.

  Frys lowered his head before beginning to address the gathered reporters. Frankie felt for him. The next few words out of his mouth would write a new chapter in the history of their country. They would be in text books and on documentaries in twenty and thirty and forty years’ time and talked about long after they were themselves dead.

  He looked up.

  Frys said, ‘It is with great sadness that I must confirm that the body of a man fished out of Riddarfjärden two days ago was in fact Sweden’s Minister for Children, the Elderly, and Gender Equality within the Social Health Department, Jonas Anglemark—’

  And before he could go on, the first question was called out from the gathered reporters. ‘Did he take his own life?’

  Frys’s glare lived up to his name. He waited to answer, and when he finally did it was to ignore the question. ‘I would appreciate it if you could save your questions to the end, thank you. Our thoughts and the thoughts of everyone in our nation are with his partner, Mikael, at this incredibly difficult time. There are not the words to express our grief. It feels unreal. Jonas was working side by side with us just a few days ago, passionately advocating for the victims of the Syrian conflict who even now wait to discover the outcome of their asylum appeals and whether they will be allowed to stay permanently in their new homes. Jonas was an incredible man. He was passionate. Fierce. Loyal. You hear things like this all the time, but he was the best of us. He believed intensely that as the open and caring society we claim to be it falls to us to protect the weak, to take in the needy and nurture them. Without that guiding goodness, we are nothing.

  ‘And yet, personally I feel a great sense of anger at his loss, and what it means for our society. For the wounds it inflicts upon the hearts and minds of our cities, because he was right, we have a duty to those who cannot help themselves to do everything we can to help them. I feel a sense of bewilderment, wanting to understand how it could happen, again. How he could be gone, like that, from our lives. I feel a sense of shame that people will walk our streets tonight and not feel safe. Everyone has the right to feel safe in their own city. But most of all I feel an intense sadness that I have lost a man I called my friend.’

  There were tears in his eyes, and they were reflected in the eyes of many of the assembled journalists who hung now on his every word, hurting.

  ‘So, I ask you to join me in a moment’s quiet reflection, to think about the friend we have lost and what he means to us, and then I will hand you over to the officer leading the investigation into Jonas’s death, Francesca Varg.’

  Frys lowered his head again.

  This time there were no questions.

  The silence that fell over the room was freighted with grief.

  Frankie closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until she heard Henrik Frys say her name.

  ‘Detective Varg?’

  She nodded. She didn’t have the same stirring words to move them, but what she had was, she hoped, more important in terms of how the next days and weeks played out.

  ‘It is believed that Jonas Anglemark died in the early hours of Sunday morning, more than a week after his disappearance. We are currently appealing for witnesses, for anyone who might have seen something around Riddarholmen, Gamla Stan, and the Parliament on the night in question, or anyone who believes they have information that could shed some light upon his whereabouts during the days he was missing to come forward to help us with our investigations.’

  ‘You’re treating it as murder?’ the same journalist called.

  Frankie nodded. ‘We have reas
on to believe that he was the victim of a criminal assault, yes.’

  The questions kept coming.

  ‘Do you have any leads?’

  ‘We are currently pursuing a number of avenues which we hope will give us a better understanding of the events leading up to his death.’

  ‘Are you looking at any particular groups or individuals?’

  ‘At this moment in time we are not limiting the scope of our investigation to any one suspect pool.’

  ‘Could it be an assault on the LGBTQ community, with Anglemark singled out because of his profile as a gay man?’

  ‘At this moment in time we would rather not speculate,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Could it be linked to his advocacy for the Muslim immigrants?’ a woman at the back called over the heads of the assembled journalists.

  ‘Again,’ Frankie answered, ‘at this moment in time we would rather not speculate. It benefits no one if we look to assign blame to the very people Jonas spent his entire life trying to help.’

  ‘Right-wing extremists then?’

  Frankie ignored the question. It was painfully obvious where the press conference was heading. ‘For all that we’ve lost, it is important we don’t lose sight of who we are. Of who we want to be. We owe it to Jonas Anglemark to carry on with all the good work that he has done advocating for the vulnerable people in society, not looking to blame them for what has happened. So, please, if anyone watching has information they think might help the investigation I would urge them to contact us. We all want the same thing. Justice for Jonas Anglemark. And I can assure you we will find the person responsible for this crime. You have my word.’

  She pushed back her chair and rose, indicating her part in the charade was over.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Peter Ash had been right.

  Frankie couldn’t get it out of her mind for the entirety of the press conference. They were missing something. Anglemark must have received some physical form of communication to draw him out. Even if it wasn’t a body part. The killer had an established pattern, a way of doing things that felt safe and familiar to him. He wouldn’t have started out improvising. It didn’t make sense. A man who took a tongue and an eyeball didn’t improvise. They added an imperative to the invitation; Frankie was working under the hypothesis that their inclusion was nothing more subtle than a threat. Fail to make the rendezvous, this is what happens to you.

  She was a great believer in instinct. It was what set good cops apart from great cops. That ability to see threads that bound the lies of the heart together. Sometimes you didn’t need to see them to know that they were there, like in this case. Something had happened in Bonn that tied all these people together. The threads were there, and like secrets, they couldn’t stay hidden for ever, not once she started pulling at them. They would eventually unravel. That was just the nature of threads. And it wasn’t just her, this time. Ash and his resource manager – that was the term Division used: the last time she’d encountered it had been out on active duty, and then it was used as a euphemism for bodyguard – pulling at those invisible threads.

  Something had to give.

  She looked at her phone.

  Three missed calls.

  There was a voicemail waiting. She knew what it was going to say before she listened to it. Yet another link in the chain higher up demanding to know what progress was being made. The call had come through while she was on air. She’d felt the phone vibrate against her thigh. She didn’t have anything more to say to them than she’d said in the press conference, but of course they wouldn’t be content with that, so she needed to work out exactly what she was prepared to say before she hit reply.

  So, work it through. Think smart. If he hadn’t received the summons through the mail in his office, and there was no sign of it in his apartment, how had the killer reached him? It didn’t make sense that some random telephone threat would draw him out, but it was possible, though the risk factor was high. Electronic media made so much more sense.

  And that meant Kalle Lindholm. Kalle lived and breathed the shadowy half-world of digital surveillance. He was as close to a verified genius as she’d ever met and had all the social grace of a brick to the side of the face, but that was just all the more reason to love him.

  ‘Ah, if it isn’t the wolf herself,’ the voice said before she had even had the chance to speak. ‘Are you going to blow my house down?’

  ‘Only if you ask nicely,’ she said.

  ‘I see you drew the short straw.’

  ‘So you know why I’m calling you, then.’

  ‘I figured you’d want to use me and then cast me aside, like usual.’

  ‘That’s really not fair, Kalle.’

  ‘Isn’t it? You remember what you promised me last time I stuck my neck out for you?’

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  ‘So why should I trust you’ll pay up this time?’

  ‘Because I’m sorry?’ she said.

  ‘Of course you are, Frankie. You’re so sorry it’s taken you eleven months to call back. You must be really cut up about it.’

  ‘It’s not personal,’ she said.

  ‘Of course it is. By definition it’s personal. What else can it be? I put myself out there, you left me hanging.’

  ‘You don’t really want the prize, anyway, Kalle. I know you, the fun is in the chase. Once you win, you lose interest. I’d hate for you to lose interest in me.’

  ‘That could well be true,’ he agreed with her, ‘but it’s beside the point. You owe me.’

  ‘Double or quits,’ she said.

  ‘Double? OK, I’m liking the sound of that. You got a sister you want to bring along?’

  ‘That would be telling.’

  ‘And this is for the Anglemark case.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let me get this right, highest-profile crime in a decade and you come to a black-hat hacker rather than go through official channels?’

  ‘You’re too clever for your own good,’ she said. ‘Which is why I like you.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Something someone higher up the food chain has decided I don’t need to know.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I need access to Anglemark’s emails.’

  ‘You want me to hack a murdered politician’s email account? I’m going to jail for this, you know that, right?’

  ‘Not if you are good. Chances are I won’t need to read the mails. I’m after specific mentions of Bonn, or The EuropaChild Foundation. Specifically, anything that came in in the last ten to twelve days.’

  ‘And you don’t want to go through channels?’

  ‘Not if I can avoid it.’

  ‘You do realize I expect sex for this, right? Lots of it. Very nasty sex. The kind of thing you don’t want to imagine your parents doing.’

  She laughed at that. ‘I know what you’re expecting. If you’re lucky you’ll get a Big Mac.’

  ‘That sounds positively perverted.’

  ‘Well, it’s bad for your health,’ she agreed.

  Kalle laughed. It was a deep, guttural, and distinctly unattractive laugh.

  ‘So, can you do it?’

  ‘For a Big Mac I’ll do anything.’

  ‘I knew you were the only man for me.’

  ‘Damn, woman, if only you weren’t talking about an actual burger,’ the hacker said. ‘I could fall in love with a woman like you.’

  ‘Which is why you’re only getting the Big Mac. I don’t do love. Now, listen up, I’m going to tell you something I shouldn’t, but you need to know. There’s been at least one other death and a disappearance connected to Anglemark’s murder.’

  ‘Hence the Bonn connection and the charity? You think you’ve got a serial killer?’ That shouldn’t have excited him as much as it did.

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘What other possibility is there?’

  ‘Multiple killers working in tandem. We have three victims from three different cou
ntries.’

  ‘And the other shoe drops. Now I understand why it’s on your desk, not the Secret Service. That explains everything.’

  She wasn’t about to tell him that she’d been bought onboard before they knew that there was more than one victim, but that suddenly set her mind racing on a very different train of thought. If someone important was blocking her investigation they already knew the case crossed international borders before they came calling. But that immediately made it a government-level conspiracy, and that way led madness.

  ‘And this charity? The EuropaChild Foundation?’

  ‘Just a name at this stage. I’m not really sure how it connects, if it even connects, but Bonn is crucial, that much we do know. Two of the three victims received threats telling them to remember Bonn.’

  ‘Leave it with me, wolf. I’ve got your back. Any mails referencing Bonn or traffic involving the charity. You sure there’s nothing else you need once I’m in there?’

  ‘That’s all I need from the emails.’

  ‘I like the way you said that, because it’s absolutely obvious what you’re really saying is hell yeah there’s something else I need. Come on then, spill.’

  ‘Do this, and you never know, I might just weaken,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you tease.’

  ‘Anglemark has two addresses in the city, an apartment in Vasastan and a rented room in chambers, but there’s a family home in the archipelago and a stuga up beyond Kebnekaise …’ Frankie let the statement dangle for a moment to see if he would bite.

  The silence was deafening.

  She let it roll on, knowing the power of silence.

  Finally, he broke it, but only to say, ‘I’ll call you back,’ before killing the call abruptly.

  She stood there like an idiot, phone still pressed to her ear even though the hacker was long gone.

  She walked down a narrow set of concrete steps and out onto a busy street. Sometimes being surrounded by so many people was the best way to keep your secrets. She crossed the road, walking under the colourful neon awning of one of three cinemas and on to one of the new espresso bars that had sprung up in this part of town. She raised two fingers, meaning a double shot, and tapped her contactless card against the card reader.