MemoRandom: A Thriller (39 page)

The little path came to an abrupt end. In its place was a sixty-five-foot drop, down which a flight of steps zigzagged toward Regeringsgatan.

Sarac tried taking two steps at a time. He felt tempted to jump the last of the first flight of steps but stopped himself at the last second. His shoes slipped on the loose grit on top of the ice and he almost lost his balance. He grabbed one of the iron railings, swung himself around to the right, and set off down the next flight.

The hooded man was about one flight behind him. Sarac lengthened his stride, taking three steps at a time. His right leg was wobbling badly, forcing him to keep one hand on the railing. He swung left and set off down the next set of steps. Not far to go now. But the hooded man was getting closer. Just before the last flight Sarac slipped, his right leg buckled, and his knee hit the ground.

He struggled to his feet, forcing his legs to obey. He could
see the man clearly out of the corner of his eye now. He thought he could see a face. His lungs were burning and he could taste blood and adrenaline in his mouth.

The man was close now, right at his heels. Sarac took three steps at a time, not caring whether he fell. A car drove by on the road, just thirty feet away.

Sarac tried to call out, but all that emerged from his lips was a dry croak. He thought he could feel the man behind him reaching out for him, a hand brushing his shoulder.

He summoned the last of his strength and shot across the sidewalk and straight out into the road. He saw the headlights and managed to spin around. Blue, white, some lettering. Such a familiar word. The lights dazzled him, the studded tires shrieked on the tarmac. He held up his hands as the front of the car headed straight for him.

He shut his eyes.

•  •  •

Atif tapped in the code and opened the locker. Inside was a small, beige Fjällräven rucksack. He glanced quickly over his shoulder before pulling the zipper open. The angular shape was unmistakable. A nine-millimeter Glock, the model with a seventeen-bullet magazine. A decent gun, better than he had been expecting.

The car key was in the outer pocket of the rucksack. The consultant’s men worked fast. Atif closed the zips, slung the rucksack on his back, and shut the door of the locker. The little white van was parked in a loading zone a short distance away, exactly as he’d been promised. A few blue, peeling company logos on the front and sides made it blend into its surroundings perfectly.

He unlocked the door, slid in behind the wheel, and put the rucksack on the floor in front of the passenger seat. He had almost everything he needed. The cop’s address from Abu Hamsa, weapon and van from Hunter. And no hassle. As long
as both Abu Hamsa and Hunter thought he was working for them, no one would bother him. And with a bit of luck Cassandra and Tindra would be safe as well, at least as long as no one worked out he was playing a double game. He was close now. Just one thing left to do, then he’d be ready for a meeting with a certain detective inspector.

•  •  •

“David Sarac, it is you, isn’t it? Jesus! I hardly recognized you. Are you okay?” the police officer said.

The lights were still blinding Sarac. The patrol car had stopped just an inch and a half from his knees.

“Fucking idiot! You can’t just run out into the road like that!” The driver of the police car was out of the vehicle as well now. The first officer held his hand up.

“Calm down, Jocke. This is David Sarac, he’s a cop.”

The driver stopped. “Oh, okay.”

“Sarac,” he went on. “Weren’t you the one who crashed in the Söderleden Tunnel? We saw the wreckage, you must have had a guardian angel.”

Sarac looked around. “Where did he go?” he panted.

“Who?”

“The guy in the hood, he was right behind me.”

The two police officers exchanged a glance.

“We only saw you. It’s a stroke of luck that we managed to stop in time. You came tearing out like you had the devil himself after you.”

•  •  •

He gave them his address, then sat in the backseat of the police car and closed his eyes. Almost at once he felt that they were going in the wrong direction. When he opened his eyes he saw the officer in the passenger seat fiddling with his cell phone. But he was too exhausted to start arguing.

They headed east along Valhallavägen and turned left at the
Swedish Film Institute, then right, across the empty parkland of Gärdet. Snow had drifted across the road in several places, but the four-wheel-drive Volvo had no trouble sticking to the almost invisible little road.

The black 4x4 was waiting in the cul-de-sac among the patch of trees at the top of the hill. The police officers stopped the car and got out. They were hardly visible in the darkness. Sarac could see a number of shapes outside. He already had an idea who they were.

Less than a minute later the door beside him opened.

“Get out, David,” Molnar said abruptly. “It’s time for us to have a serious talk.”

They pushed Sarac into one of the seats in the back of the big 4x4. Molnar got in beside him, with Josef in the driver’s seat as usual.

No hugs this time,
Sarac thought as he watched the taillights of the patrol car disappear into the snow swirling over the field.

“You don’t trust us, do you, David?” Molnar said. His voice was dry, neither friendly nor hostile.

“First you cracked the code in your notebook and found Sabatini, without telling me.”

Sarac didn’t answer.

“And now you’ve talked to Jan Dreyer. Let me guess . . .” Molnar frowned. “He told you that you worked for him. That you were on your way to see him when you crashed.”

Sarac didn’t answer.

Molnar exchanged a quick glance with Josef in the rearview mirror. Then he took a deep breath.

“Dreyer’s smart, he’s trying to manipulate you, David. Trying to implant things in your head that never actually happened. Did he say anything about a traffic report, and damage caused by another car?”

Sarac still kept quiet.

“That was floating around at the start, but closer examination couldn’t find any proof, except for what looked like some much older damage to your car. But I bet you Dreyer said someone tried to make you crash. Maybe even one of us?” Molnar shook his head. “Dreyer’s crazy. Properly mad, I mean.
Why do you think he works for the Internal Investigations Department? Josef, you tell him!”

“Because he’s made himself impossible to work with anywhere else,” Josef muttered from the driver’s seat.

“Exactly! Once upon a time, before he became the most hated man in the force, Dreyer was a damned good cop. He and Eugene von Katzow set up the whole CI handler program. In those days every detective had his own contacts, there was no coordination at all. But the pair of them began to structure the whole thing. Started using systems to evaluate the reliability of different sources, all the sort of stuff we take for granted these days.

“But something went wrong. I’ve asked the Duke what happened, but he won’t talk about it. Anyway, Dreyer ended up with a serious drinking problem. His wife left him, they had to sell their house, and it messed with his head.”

The police radio crackled, but Josef switched it off.

“Dreyer got paranoid, got it into his head that the Duke was building up a secret intelligence service that was spying on everyone and everything.” Molnar looked up at the roof with a sigh. “After that he was on sick leave for a long time. And got a transfer to Internal Investigations, who were stupid enough to take him on.”

Sarac squirmed in his seat. A gust of wind showered some loose snow against the window.

“Dreyer set off on his crusade against von Katzow and managed to get a miserable old prosecutor on board. Secret operations, unaudited accounts, all manner of accusations. The fact is that they conducted over fifty interviews. They got warrants to search our offices, even the Duke’s apartment in Gamla stan. But the only thing Dreyer managed to get him on was a few cases of inadequate record keeping. The sort of thing you could find in any police department. Complete nonsense.”

Molnar shook his head, more forcefully this time.

“The Duke was suspended for six months and was hung out
to dry in the media. The papers wrote no end of articles about it all, the Duke running his own private intelligence service, recruiting celebrities, politicians, and businessmen, paying them from secret accounts. The whole thing was made up, gossip without a shred of evidence to support it. Then it all came to an end with two pathetic charges of professional misconduct and a few lines hidden away on page twenty-five. Dreyer was taken off the case and given strict instructions to stay away from us. Ever since he’s been waiting for a chance to get revenge. To ruin, once and for all, what he helped to put together long ago. Your accident and the missing list gave him the opportunity. Not to mention your memory loss.”

Sarac looked up. He remembered the whole story now, almost every detail. But there was something else there, something to do with Eugene von Katzow. Molnar’s words interrupted his thoughts.

“The Duke realized he couldn’t carry on. He’d become a burden to the department, so he left. A lot of people interpreted that as an admission of guilt. No smoke without fire and all that. The bosses all competed to distance themselves. The Duke’s name is still like a red rag to a lot of people,” Molnar said.

“And that’s why you don’t think he’s involved in the Janus operation?” Sarac asked.

Molnar nodded. “Eugene was something of a mentor to me. We talk regularly, he can be a bit secretive, but I can’t really believe he wouldn’t have mentioned something like that to me. And, like I said, Eugene isn’t well.”

Sarac tried to think. Molnar’s explanation sounded genuine, and Dreyer had certainly seemed a bit erratic up at the hospital. Not to mention all the cloak-and-dagger stuff before their meeting, the alcoholic tracery of veins in his face, the overdose of aftershave, and all that nervous, compulsive fiddling with the cigarillo. Everything suggested a man who wasn’t entirely stable but was trying hard to hide it.

“You don’t have to trust me, David,” Molnar said. “To be honest, you’re one of the best police officers I know. The idea that you could be an infiltrator, a rat . . .” Molnar pulled a skeptical face.

Sarac swallowed and tried to maintain his poker face. Suddenly the feeling that he had done something unforgivable was back, this time twice as strong as usual. But neither of the other two men seemed to have noticed anything.

“Dreyer’s desperate,” Molnar said. “He’s prepared to do whatever it takes to get the whole lot of us. Lying, manipulation, all manner of promises and threats. The most important thing is for us to get hold of Janus. To limit the damage he’s done. If we can do that, no one will have anything on us. Not even Dreyer.”

“Hansen,” Sarac said, without really knowing why.

Molnar nodded. “What do you remember? Be honest, David.”

“I remember meeting him in his car on Skeppsbron. And that he died.”

Molnar exchanged a glance with Josef in the rearview mirror.

“That’s what we suspected but didn’t want to say anything. Not until we knew more.”

“My cell phone, the calls you said couldn’t be traced?”

Molnar nodded slowly. “You called Hansen. Probably just an hour or so before . . .”

“I shot him!”

“Is that what you believe?” Molnar said.

Sarac shrugged. “I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore, Peter. Everything’s just one big mess of theories, blurred memories and pieces of a puzzle that won’t fit together.”

“I’m not going to pretend I can imagine what things are like for you, David. But the team and I are doing our best to help you. You’re one of us.”

Sarac swallowed again and looked down at the floor, thinking about the secret accounts and all the money.

“Brian Hansen was a total bastard,” Molnar went on. “He had his own little sideline that the rest of his biker gang knew nothing about. Methamphetamine, sometimes heroin, not much, but more than enough. We found out about it and raided his home. Didn’t find any drugs, but a computer full of pictures. Little girls, ten years and younger.”

“So I approached him with a proposal,” Sarac said. “No charges if he agreed to work for us, was that it?”

“Yep, a fully paid-up gang member owned by us, one who didn’t even dare go for a piss without calling you first. Pure gold,” Molnar said. “We used him to break up an entire chapter down in the Southern District. But I think Hansen gradually realized that you were taking drugs. He was terrified of being uncovered as a rat and ending up in some gravel pit with his cock stuffed down his throat. So he changes tactics and threatens to expose you, see to it that you get fired from working as a handler, maybe even chucked out of the entire force.”

The high-pitched voice was suddenly echoing through Sarac’s head.
I was thinking of suggesting a deal. Your secrets in exchange for mine.
So that’s what the meeting had been about. Hansen trying to bargain his way to freedom.

“You and Hansen agree to meet at Skeppsbron,” Molnar went on. “He’s scared, so he chooses somewhere public. But he’s got that wrong. It’s dark, it’s snowing hard, and there’s no one around. You meet in the car and he tries to blackmail you into letting him go. But Janus knows about the whole thing. Maybe you’d even confided in him. If you get fired, his secret is in danger. So he follows you, and halfway through your meeting he jumps into the backseat. And gets rid of the threat to both you and him.”

Another gust of snow lashed the windows, but Sarac was listening so intently that he hardly noticed.

“But instead of being grateful that the problem is solved, you’re badly shocked by what’s happened,” Molnar continued. “One of your informants has died, right in front of your eyes.
Murdered by someone you’ve promised to protect. Your most important source. So you shoot yourself full of drugs, then you call me, babbling about something unforgivable happening. We arrange to meet but you drift through the streets in your car instead, high, stressed out, and paranoid. Until you end up in the Söderleden Tunnel. And just as we catch up with you the pressure in your head gets too much.”