Bubble: A Thriller (9 page)

He tried to mimic Hellström’s slightly nasal voice:
Henrik Pettersson, you are being held on suspicion of crimes against the state for not returning your library books on time. How do you plead?

Guilty as charged, fuckface!

He grinned and blew another column of smoke, this time aimed toward the top of the bookcase.

Suddenly he realized he was hungry. How long was it since he last ate? Properly, rather than just stuffing his face over the sink with a nuked Gorby pie?

He couldn’t actually remember . . .

But the rumbling from his stomach was a good sign, as if the old library book had made his brain jump track and return to more solid ground. A shower and a bit of decent food would probably do wonders for his mood. Chinese, or why not a serious kebab down at the Jerusalem? Mmm!

He glanced at the clock on the television: 10:25.

A bit early for lunch, he’d have to hold out at least another half hour. Shower first, then. He stood up, but instead of going straight to the bathroom, he went over to the bookcase, stretched up on tiptoe, and reached for the book.

His fingertips just managed to catch the edge and he shuffled the book a few centimeters closer.

The Catcher in the Rye,
by J. D. Salinger. A definite favorite; he must have read it at least ten times. In all likelihood the book was from the library down in Bagarmossen, which meant that the theft had passed the statute of limitation some ten years ago, if not more.

On the basis of this new information, my client wishes to change his plea to—not guilty!

He reached up a bit more, got a better grip with his fingertips, and tried to grab hold of the book. But he lost his balance and the book slipped over the edge of the bookcase. The object on top of it fell with it, hitting him hard on the head before tumbling to the floor.

A phone.

A shiny, silvery phone, with a glass touch screen.

♦  ♦  ♦

The pass card was white, and unlike the one she had borrowed from Runeberg a couple of days before, it didn’t contain any visible information at all. No name, no logo, and certainly no photograph of its owner. Just a small, plain white card that had appeared in a padded envelope with no sender’s name given.

Presumably the anonymity was another security measure. A bulky window envelope with a bank logo on it reeked of credit card, and thus must increase the risk of its being stolen by several hundred percent.

They clearly took security very seriously.

She handed her driver’s license to the man on the other side of the counter, and he inspected it carefully before typing her ID number into the computer.

It was the same man as before, but even though only a few
days had passed since her last visit, he showed no sign of recognizing her. If anything, he actually seemed even more formal than before.

“Thank you.”

He handed her license back to her.

“Are you familiar with the procedure?”

“No.”

He moved to the corner of the counter and pointed at the door behind him.

“I’ll open the door for you, and when you’re inside the air lock you run your card through the reader. Then the far door opens and you can get into the vault . . .”

She nodded to show that she understood.

“Inside there are a number of rooms containing safe-
deposit boxes. The doors are kept locked, but the one containing your box will be unlocked. Then you will have to use your key to open the right compartment.

“You do have your key with you?”

“Absolutely,” she replied, patting the bag hanging from her shoulder while she did her best to suppress a smile.

Judging by the look on his face, she didn’t quite succeed.

“Inside the compartment is a metal box. Usually clients take the box into one of the private booths at the end of the vault. There’s less risk of being disturbed there than out in the vault itself . . .”

He paused for a moment, but something in her expression seemed to prompt him to go on.

“The booths aren’t covered by surveillance cameras . . .” he added.

“I understand,” she replied curtly.

He pressed a button and the dark steel door behind him swung open.

Rebecca stepped inside the little air lock. In front of her, only a meter or so away, was another metal door, even sturdier than the one she had just passed through.

She turned her head slightly and glanced at the security camera in the ceiling, and tried to look as calm as possible. She actually had a perfectly legitimate reason for being there, so why was she so nervous?

The door behind her closed and the sound made her jump.

Calm, now, Normén!

She took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then slowly breathed out.

Then she ran the pass card through the little reader. For a couple of seconds there was total silence. Then the steel door in front of her swung open.

The vault was considerably more exclusive than she had been expecting. Discreet uplights around the concrete walls and a faint smell of lemon, both presumably intended to alleviate any hint of nuclear bunker and of being shut in. It worked fairly well.

A curved path of fluorescent paint on the shiny marble floor led her between a row of barred gates. In the rooms beyond she could see a great number of brass-colored lockers. At the far end of the vault were what looked like changing-room doors. Presumably the booths mentioned by the guard.

A green lamp was shining above the fourth gate on the left-hand side. She took hold of the handle and the gate swung open without a sound. The room within was small, probably no more than a couple of square meters. Another of the spherical cameras stared down from the ceiling but she did her best to ignore it. So, which of the two hundred or so compartments in the room was hers?

She ran her fingers over the doors: 115, 120, 125 . . . There it was, almost at the bottom of the row.

She knelt down, pulled the large bunch of keys from her bag, then inspected the brass door carefully. One of the medium-sized doors, about thirty centimeters square?

The keyhole was fairly wide, which meant she could dispense with a good number of the keys, but there were still about a dozen that might fit.

She glanced up at the camera and imagined she could see the lens moving to zoom in on her. As if they already suspected that she shouldn’t be there, that the box and its contents weren’t actually hers and belonged to someone else.

No, she really did have to try to calm down. The bank had contacted
her,
and had sent
her
a pass card. And as for Henke, he clearly wasn’t bothered enough about his possessions not to leave her to pay the bill for their safekeeping.

In other words, she had every right in the world to open the box.

She gave the camera another quick glance, then leaned forward and selected the first key of the ones she thought most likely.

Too big, much too big. Which meant she could dispense with that one, and another that was even bigger.

She tried a slightly smaller key. It went into the hole, but once it was in it just spun around without getting any purchase. So she discarded that one and another that was even smaller.

Four possible keys left. She inspected them carefully.

One of them was slightly crooked and looked too old, so she decided not to try it. But a couple of the others looked much more promising.

Neither of them worked, however, nor did her third choice.

She was just about to try the slightly crooked key when there was a faint noise from out in the vault. She started and flew up to her feet, turned around, and peered cautiously out into the corridor.

Empty, of course.

The door to the vault was motorized, and if it had opened, there was no doubt at all that she would have heard it.

She went back to the locker and put the crooked key in the lock. It fit, but she couldn’t manage to turn it. After a couple of attempts she took it out.

Damn it!

It looked as if her guess about the bunch of keys had been wrong. Henke had probably hidden the key somewhere else entirely, so her best hope of opening the box was gone.

She could probably persuade the bank to drill it open eventually, but given the number of security procedures they had in place, that was bound to take several months.

Which of course would give Stigsson and his team plenty of time to find out about the box.

So what was she going to do now?

The crooked key had at least fit, so maybe it could be straightened?

She removed the key from the bunch, put it on the floor, and put her heel on the bent part a couple of times. Then she picked it up again and looked at it carefully.

It was worth a last attempt, at least.

She put the key in the lock and carefully turned it.

The lock clicked and the little brass door opened.

The metal box inside surprised her. Not only because it was locked, with a combination dial on the front, but also because its color and shape really didn’t seem to belong in this exclusive, almost sterile bank vault. The box had prob
ably been green once upon a time, but the paint had peeled badly. In a couple of places she could make out the remnants of yellow letters and numbers. And the thick tin was badly buckled in places, almost as if someone had tried to open it with force. Slowly she pulled the box from the compartment. It was seventy to eighty centimeters long, and much heavier than she had been expecting, but fortunately there was a handle at the back, enabling her to pick it up and carry it over toward one of the small cubicles without difficulty.

She closed the door carefully behind her, turned the little lock, and then put the box in the middle of the desk.

The combination lock looked vaguely familiar. She had an idea she had actually seen something similar in a small police station that had a safe instead of a weapons room.

You started from zero, picked a number between one and a hundred, then back to zero, followed by the next number, until you had entered the right combination.

Three numbers apart from the zeros, that was usually the case. So what should she try?

Suddenly she heard the noise from out in the vault again and stiffened. This time it was clearer. A quick little squeak, like someone treading too quickly on a marble floor with a rubber-soled shoe.

She hadn’t heard the vault door open, so someone must have been inside when she arrived.

Unless there was another entrance that she hadn’t noticed . . . ?

She turned the lock, cautiously opened the door a crack, and peered out into the corridor.

“Is anyone there?” she said quietly. No answer.

She waited a few seconds before carefully closing and locking the door.

If she was going to open the box, she had to focus on working out the combination.

She tried Henke’s date of birth, but without success.

Then she tried Mom’s. No good.

If Henke had picked numbers out of thin air, she would have to find another way of opening the box.

It was far too large to go in her bag, and she wondered whether she could just carry it out. Was that allowed?

She stood motionless for a few moments and realized that she was listening for sounds from the vault. But apart from the faint rumble of the air-conditioning, everything was quiet.

Suddenly she had an idea and tried a new combination of numbers. Zero, then nineteen, back to zero, then six, back to zero, seventy-five.

Slowly she moved the dial back toward zero. The lock made an audible click.

Henke had used her date of birth as the combination!

The box had a false bottom that divided it into two sections. In the top part she found a bundle of dollar bills. Beside the money was a little pile of small booklets, held together by a thick brown rubber band. As she picked them up the dry rubber snapped and they spilled out across the table. It took her just a fraction of a second to realize what the variously colored booklets were.

Foreign passports, most of them a few years old, since she didn’t recognize them immediately.

She opened one of them and found herself staring at a grainy photograph of a fair-haired man with a mustache and dark-framed glasses. He reminded her of Henke. The hairline, the set of his eyes, and his prominent cheekbones.

John Earnest, born 1938 in Bloemfontein, South Africa,
according to the details in the passport.

But that was impossible. In spite of the color of his hair, the glasses, and the mustache, she was quite certain. The man in the picture was her dad.

♦  ♦  ♦

It took him almost a whole minute before he even dared touch the phone. His hands were shaking so much he could hardly get a grip on the metal.

He could feel the numbers with his fingertips and didn’t even need to turn the thing over to check.

1

2

8

Of course. Anything else would have been out of the question.

He put the phone down gently on the coffee table, then walked around the sofa. Then walked around it again . . .

The book was still on the floor. It had brought down a couple of serious dust balls with it from the top of the bookcase, but, just like the phone, the front cover was completely clean, which could mean only one thing. Both objects must have been left up there very recently.

He got the list of confiscated property from the kitchen. Five crumpled pages of A4, on which each item seized from his flat by the cops was listed in pedantic detail. Halfway down the third page he found what he was looking for.

103. One book, “The Catcher in the Rye” J. D. Salinger.

The message was perfectly clear. Someone had retrieved the book from wherever the cops had been storing it and put it back in his flat together with the phone. Just as Erman had
said, the Game was everywhere, and the book on his living room floor proved that not even the Security Police were immune.

Fucking hell!

He slumped down on the sofa, staring at the phone on the coffee table as he ran his fingers through his hair.