Project Nirvana (27 page)

“Promise me that you’ll eat a proper dinner this evening, Dad,” she had said.

“I promise,” Walter had lied, thinking what took the least time to warm up in the microwave. A pizza or a frozen lasagne.

“I don’t believe you, Dad,” she had said, looking at him with that smile, which had always made her dimples appear.

“Am I such a bad liar?”

She had nodded sternly. “Completely transparent.”

“This time, I promise,” Walter had sighed, resignedly.

She hadn’t looked as if she believed him.

As usual, he had watched her go out of the street door and wave to him. Had he known, he would have stopped her from going. But helping others had given her young life a purpose. Without it, she could not breathe. The world had so much injustice and she could make a difference. He had been proud of her. When her friends from college were hanging out at nightclubs and discos, Martine had been tending the wounds of children in Sudan. Gradually, Walter had understood the joy of giving. The satisfaction of helping others had made life seem meaningful. Exactly as she had described it. So Walter had started to pay four thousand crowns every month to the Red Cross. A lot of money, given his miserable police salary after tax. But the knowledge that his money had made a difference compensated for his lack of material wealth.

He knew that Martine would have been extremely proud of her father.

For a parent to attend their child’s funeral was something he would not wish on another human being. He had tried to put the pain into words, but had been unable to do so. For days, he had sat with a blank piece of paper.

Jonna had kindled a new spark of life in him. In that way, she resembled Martine. So much so, they could have been twin sisters. The same righteous compassion and uncompromising morals. He saw the same fire in her eyes and the same unselfish desire to help others.

“Drive,” said Tor, poking Walter hard with his arm. “We’re going to Luntmakargatan,” Tor explained. “It seems we no longer have the cops on our tail.”

“You can trust me,” Walter said. “When I said that my colleagues would not follow us, they didn’t.”

Tor glared at Walter for a moment. Then he turned to the window and looked out into the darkness.

Walter let a few cars drive past before driving up Solna Kyrkväg towards Stockholm’s inner city.

“Pull over, here,” Tor ordered, as they arrived at Sveavägen.

Walter pulled into the kerb.

“Who is that Borg, anyway?”

Walter studied Hedman. His voice and expression had changed. He could see signs of doubt in Hedman’s eyes. “We don’t know much,” he said. “I shouldn’t tell you, but he works for the Security Service.”

“SÄPO?” Tor exclaimed.

Walter nodded. There was nothing to be gained by lying. Luntmakargatan was about five hundred metres away and this was probably Walter’s last chance. He had to work on Hedman’s creeping insecurity.

“But he’s not working by himself,” Walter continued. “Borg has others with him.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know yet. I was hoping you could give us some answers.”

“I have nothing to do with him,” Tor snarled, his face closing up.

“Yet you follow his instructions.”

Tor fidgeted.

Walter said nothing. Don’t mess with tinder while it is starting to ignite, he reasoned.

“Hell!” swore Tor suddenly, stamping the floor of the car a few times.

“Calm down,” Walter entreated him, squinting at Tor’s trigger finger in the rearview mirror.

“Borg is a total fucking psycho,” Tor began. “He snuffed out Jerry like a ciggie.”

“How do you know that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tor snarled.

“Were you there?”

“Where?”

“At Gnesta,” Walter said.

Tor shook his head.

“So how do you know that he shot Jerry?”

Tor paused. “I just know that he did,” he replied.

“Not unless you were there,” Walter said. “Only a few people even know that Martin Borg was Ove Jernberg’s partner at Gnesta. You couldn’t know that unless you were there.”

“Shut up!” roared Tor.

Walter kept on. “Borg would never have told you.”

“I don’t give a shit what you believe,” Tor said. “It’s like I said.”

“But you can’t . . .”

“Shut your mouth!” Tor interrupted.

Walter realized that he would not get any further. Hedman’s mind was in a state of shutdown. He would have to change tactics.

“Remember the time we had to let you go for the Nacka murder?” he began.

“Sure, I remember,” said Tor and started to think back.

“I know that you shot and killed the guy.”

“You had no proof.”

“No, but you still did it.”

Tor laughed.

“Frankly, I couldn’t care less,” Walter said. “In fact, you did society a favour.”

“What do you mean?”

“The man you shot was a known paedophile,” Walter lied. “He had just finished a four-year stretch at Norrtälje prison for raping an eight-year-old boy whom he left in a forest, mentally and physically wrecked.”

Tor paused. “I still didn’t do it,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter now. He won’t be hurting any more children.”

“What’s this got to do with the psycho cop?” Tor asked.

Walter rubbed his eyes. He needed to be focused, but fatigue was making him drowsy.

“You can do a good deed, that will serve in your favour if you help us bring down Borg,” he said.

“What do you mean? You want me to become a grass?”

“Informant,” Walter said. “Do as he says and . . .”

Tor stamped the floor again.

“Do you think I’m soft in the head?” he screamed, saliva spraying from his mouth. “You just told me I was a goner if I did what he said.”

Walter needed to find a way out of the logical dead end that he had managed to create.

“Look, you can’t keep on running,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time before you are nicked, and it will happen soon. No villain is going to protect you now. I can put you into a witness protection programme if you testify against Borg. You’ll get a new identity and can do your prison time in another EU country. In three years, you’ll be free and have a fresh identity. You can start over. Move to Norrland or somewhere nobody knows you. Get a job or go unemployed and live on benefits. Do what you want. You can even start breaking into houses again if you feel like it. As long as you testify against Borg.”

Tor stared at Walter as if he was speaking gibberish. Which Walter was, in part. He had made promises that he could not keep. Both the Chief Prosecutor and a high-ranking police officer had to approve witness protection. Given Hedman’s history, the outcome was uncertain. Yet he still had to try. Martin Borg was a strong enough reason. He would also be risking Hedman’s life – whatever a murderer’s life was worth nowadays.

“Drive to Luntmakargatan,” Tor said.

A feeling of despondency grew in Walter’s chest. In the space of a second, his hopes of success had been dashed. What hold did Borg have on Hedman that made him so loyal? Walter could not figure it out.

He followed Tor’s instructions and pulled out onto Sveavägen again. He drove to Tegnérgatan, where he turned left and then right into Luntmakargatan. Two hundred metres farther down on the right, he saw a rusty brown garage entrance behind a locked gate.

That must be it, he thought.

A car was behind them. Tor watched nervously in the rearview mirror.

“Turn left!” ordered Tor suddenly.

It took a few seconds before Walter reacted. The car rocked as he swerved into the side street.

“Drive up there!” Tor continued, nodding at Kammakar-
gatan.

Walter drove up the hill as the car behind them continued on Luntmakargatan. On the right, there was a sign with the words “The French School”. A few teenagers were running across the street, so Walter braked.

“Keep fucking driving!” Tor yelled.

Walter revved the engine and a young boy quickly threw himself to the kerb, terrified. Walter continued up the hill and around the Johannes church. Tor ordered Walter to park behind a lorry on the corner of David Bagares Gata. Tor’s leg was twitching restlessly and his eyes were frantic.

“Fuck it,” he swore and started stamping on the floor again.

Walter said nothing. It was just as well to let Hedman get it out of his system.

“I don’t give a fuck any more. Do you hear me? I’m legging it now.”

“Where to, then?” Walter asked calmly.

“Away from this fucking city!”

“Just how long do you think you can hide from us and everyone else who’s after you? A month? Maybe two? What do you think will happen when Borg realizes you’re not turning up?”

Tor was rocking his body agitatedly. “No fucking idea.”

Walter felt beads of sweat appearing on his forehead under the duct tape. He was hoping that Tor’s trigger finger was not going to tighten from his moving about.

“I’ve given you a better deal than you deserve,” he said. “Take it.”

A silver Volvo with dark passenger windows passed them and Tor’s eyes followed it until it was out of sight.

“How do I know you aren’t talking bullshit?”

“Have I told you anything but the truth so far?”

“I do know that you have to get the OK from some fucking police chiefs and the Chief Prosecutor,” Tor said. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“I already have a green light from the Chief Prosecutor,” Walter lied. “Why do you think I’m sitting here with you?”

Tor looked at Walter, thinking.

The old man
examined the contents of the bag. The object he was looking for lay under some women’s clothes. He eagerly opened the sealed envelope. Leo knew that they had recovered the correct envelope this time. “What did you do to Alice McDaniel?” he asked, between coughs.

“She is fine,” the old man said. “Do you really believe we use more violence than is necessary?”

“You haven’t had a problem with that so far,” Leo replied in a cold voice.

“We don’t expose ourselves unnecessarily in public places,” the old man smiled.

He handed the CD to a man whom Leo had not seen previously and began to read the documents.

After a while, he was nodding with satisfaction. “Not that I know much about molecular biology, but this does look promising.”

“The contents of the CD seem to be correct this time,” the new guy said.

“You don’t know what to look for,” said Leo.

“You are going to help us.”

“I will need access to the company’s computer system to make any sense of the data on the disk.”

The old man sat up. He lit a cigarette and stared taciturnly at the ceiling as he blew a virgin smoke ring.

“You know,” he admitted, “when we first heard about you, I was, to say the least, doubtful. Some among us wanted to use your expertise on Drug-X. I thought it was a naive way to try to advance our cause. There are no significant rewards in us drugging a few selected Muslims so that they commit insane acts of violence. They are capable of doing that without resorting to your rage drug. But then we found the connection to the Dysencomp business in Germany and Günter Himmelmann. Our comrades in Germany immediately researched this connection and the deeper they got, the more intriguing it became.”

Leo leaned against the damp stone wall. He watched the old man as he stubbed out his cigarette on the wet, concrete floor. How much did he really know?

“What do you want me to tell you?” Leo asked, unsure of the direction of the conversation.

“Why were Günter Himmelmann and three other scientists murdered in Germany? What were they working on?”

Leo looked incredulously at the old man.

“Do the contents of the CD and the documents describe the compound we call Drug-X, or is it something else?”

Leo met the old man’s inquisitive eyes. “What do you mean by ‘murdered’?” he asked.

“We know of your connection to Günter Himmelmann and Project Nirvana. Don’t pretend to be surprised.”

Leo had been incarcerated by these maniacs too long to know about recent events. “Tell me what’s going on?” he begged.

“No,” the old man replied brusquely. “It is you who should tell me what’s going on.”

Leo could not believe his ears. Who would murder Günter Himmelmann and the others in the Nirvana group? “I don’t know,” he said.

The old man looked Leo’s straight in the face. He was right next to him and Leo could smell his stale breath.

“Who murdered them, and why?” he snarled. “Why did Himmelmann erase all the research data just before he was killed?”

An intense pressure started to build in Leo’s diaphragm. Could what the old man was saying be true? “I don’t know,” Leo answered truthfully.

“Did he say what he was working on? Some biological weapon, perhaps?”

“Quite the contrary,” answered Leo.

“What’s on the CD?”

“Parts of the research that I’ve been doing over the past ten years.”

“What type of research?” the old man asked impatiently.

Leo paused. He did not know if they would believe him. “Parts of the origin of life.”

“Of what?” shouted the old man. He sat down on the stool and took out a hankerchief to wipe his forehead.

Leo gingerly turned to face him. “Current science can copy a human body,” he explained. “Already in 1996, a sheep had been cloned at the Roslin Institute. It’s no longer a theory any more advanced than for treating a throat infection, if one ignores the ethical ramifications.”

“But you weren’t cloning sheep?” the man said.

Leo shook his head. “No, something much more sophist-
icated.”

Jonna looked at
the time. She had been sitting for almost half an hour, waiting for Martin Borg to leave the garage. Perhaps he had used another car this time, or had taken one of the six unobserved exits. Jonna feared that Borg had slipped away. Then her mobile phone rang.

“I think I see him,” Jörgen’s photographer said.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“As sure as one can be, considering the bad photo. Whatever you do, don’t look for work as a photographer.”

“I promise, as long as you don’t lose sight of him,” Jonna answered.

“He’s walking towards Sankt Eriksgatan.”