The Glass Devil (17 page)

“I’m not trying to keep you from speaking with Rebecka.”

“Yes, you are.”

Christian fished out the tea bag and threw it into an empty mug in the middle of the table.

“Maybe you’re right. I want to protect her. She doesn’t have the strength even to think about what’s happened, not to mention talk about it. She gets sick if you even refer to . . . what happened.”

“How long has she been sick?”

He quickly looked up but then looked away again. “What do you mean? Since the murders—”

“No. She was depressed before.”

“How do you—? September.”

“Has she out sick since September?”

“No. She has been able to work quite a bit. It’s been good for her, distracted her from sad thoughts and anguish. But sometimes she became unable. . . . Listen here, what does this have to do with the murders in Sweden?”

Irene interjected, “We don’t know. We’re looking for a motive. Did you ever meet Rebecka’s parents, or her brother?”

“No.”

“Did Rebecka say anything to you about someone in her family having been threatened?”

At first Christian looked surprised, then he said, vaguely, “No, she didn’t say anything. But wasn’t there something in the papers about a clue which led to Satanists?”

“The papers wrote that, yes. Has Rebecka said anything to you about Satanists?”

He sipped at the hot tea, while he appeared to be trying to remember.

“It was quite a while ago. Her father asked for her help in tracking Satanists via the Internet.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Rebecka mentioned it in the fall, saying that he’d asked a year before that. So, more than a year and a half ago.”

“And she never said anything to you about personally feeling threatened?”

“No. Never,” he said firmly.

“Did she say or do anything unusual at the beginning of last week?”

“You mean before the murders were discovered?”

“Yes. On Monday or Tuesday.”

“No. Everything was normal. Both of us worked all day Monday. It was probably a bit too much for Rebecka. She went to bed early, around five thirty, because she had a headache. I went to Shakespeare. That’s the pub on the corner. A group of us usually meet there on Mondays and put together our betting pool for the week.”

“What did you do afterward?”

“I went home.”

“Did you see Rebecka?”

“No. She had gone to
her
place.”

Glen couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Don’t you live together in this house?”

“Yes, and no. I’ve owned the house next door for some time, the one which now has a blue door. My office was located on the ground floor and I lived on the two other floors. The office felt too small, and I was looking for a new location when this house became available. I bought it and offered Rebecka the same living arrangement as I have, including breaking through the wall on the first floor and expanding the office. As you can see, it worked out very well.”

“So you don’t live together as a couple?”

Christian Lefévre glared angrily at Glen. “No. And I don’t see how that has anything to do with your investigation.”

“It does. Rebecka is the only surviving member of the Schyttelius family. Everything which affects her life is important to the investigation,” Glen told him.

It wasn’t really true that everything was important, thought Irene, but it quieted the Frenchman, if he truly was a Frenchman.

Lefévre squirmed in his chair. Finally, he said, “If there is nothing else, I’d actually like to get back to work.”

“I’m glad you said that. What exactly is your work? Are there other employees?” Glen asked.

Christian sighed heavily before he answered. “Here, in London, it’s just Rebecka and myself. Andy St. Clair has moved up to Edinburgh and works from there. But he has a lot of other businesses to run as well. So it’s mostly Rebecka and I who work together. We take on different projects from companies and organizations that deal with computers and networks. Right now, we’re working on exponential and open networks. We look at security questions. Our client is a secret, but I can reveal that there’s a military interest in this. The risk that terrorist groups could completely paralyze the Internet is actually quite high.”

“But you can’t paralyze the whole Internet! There are millions of Web sites that would have to be destroyed,” Irene objected.

“Not at all. It’s quite simple. The Internet is an open network. It’s not sensitive to occasional problems, but it’s sensitive to attacks against the important computers and servers that make up the backbone of the system. Through an attack directed at these servers, the interconnected Internet could be reduced to isolated islands.”

“I’ve never heard that,” Glen said. “What are exproportional networks or whatever they’re called?”

Sincere interest and curiosity could be heard in his voice. Christian had relaxed as he spoke about the Internet. Apparently, he felt much more comfortable in cyberspace. “Exponential networks don’t have any servers. All the computers are equally strongly linked to each other, peer-to-peer. This makes the network sensitive to occasional problems but protects it against attack.”

“Does Rebecka also work on these things?”

“Yes. We’re specialists on everything that has to do with different networks, where one’s own organization’s competence isn’t enough.”

“Is there a lot of money in this sort of thing?”

Lefévre treated himself to a smile for the first time since he had opened the door for them. Without attempting to conceal his satisfaction, he said, “Yes. Lots.”

Glen rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “Let’s see ... we’ve spoken about Monday. Nothing unusual happened on Tuesday?”

Christian’s smile disappeared as if someone had shut off a circuit breaker. “No. Nothing strange happened on Tuesday. Except that I slept late in the morning. I guess I had too much beer and whiskey at the pub the night before. But I bought croissants and Danish pastry to make up for it. Rebecka had already eaten breakfast, but she took a Danish anyway.”

“What time was it then?”

“Nine thirty, ten o’clock. Something like that.” Christian threw his hands up as he shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of bafflement at their interest.

“Did you both work here during the day?”

“Yes. But I told Rebecka to stop at around four. Personally, I sat here until nearly eight o’clock.”

“Did Rebecka receive any strange phone calls during those two days?”

“No.”

“And as far as you know, there hadn’t been any strange phone calls earlier?”

“No.”

“And nothing via E-mail either?”

“I said no.”

Christian couldn’t hide his irritation any longer. He rose and started clearing the table. Irene remained sitting because Glen did. Neither broke the silence.

“Will you go now? I have a lot to do.” Christian’s self-control broke. He walked to the door and held it wide. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he tried to swallow his anger. “Get in touch if you have any further questions but right now I don’t have any more time,” he said as calmly as he could manage.

Irene and Glen walked through the impersonal white computer room with the beautiful green plants and on toward the dark entrance. John Lennon’s voice in “Hey Jude” accompanied them out. Now Irene understood why the vestibule was so narrow. It was split by a wall and a door, which led to Rebecka’s apartment.

“Are the apartments identical?” she asked Christian.

“Yes.” His facial expression told her that he considered it to be none of her business.

“HE’S HIDING something. He seems tense. Maybe he really is only trying to protect Rebecka’s weak nerves, but I doubt it,” Glen said as they walked back to the hotel.

“Hard to say. But what would he be hiding?”

“Don’t know. Maybe there’s some threat that he doesn’t want to reveal. Or maybe he really doesn’t know anything. Then he is what he says he is: a young hard-working millionaire in the IT business who’s trying to protect his business partner.”

Glen had voiced something which Irene had been mulling over for a while.

“Don’t you also think that he’s very keen on his partner? I mean, he let Rebecka move into the house next door and he renovated it.”

“True. But it could have been for simple, practical reasons. That part about expanding the offices. Space is terribly expensive in London these days. He’s probably saving a lot by having his office at home in a building he owns,” said Glen.

They walked through different parts of Bayswater than the ones they had passed through before. Here the streets were wider and people swarmed on the sidewalks. Commerce was in full swing in shops and restaurants. Irene started wondering what to buy as a souvenir. Yet again, Glen displayed a creepy ability to read her thoughts.

“If you want to do some shopping, we can go to Whitley’s. It’s nearby, all sorts of shops in one place. I usually take the wife and kids there when it’s time for a shopping trip. They buy, and I sit in the pub on the top floor and read the paper.”

He smiled his infectious smile and Irene was strengthened in her opinion that he was very pleasant. A man who willingly went along on shopping trips! Although he cheated a bit and sneaked off to the pub, he was still there.

They walked up to a building which looked like a shining white wedding cake in the sunshine, more like a grand cathedral than a department store. Glen stopped inside the colonnade but outside the large glass doors. “We’ll meet here in an hour, then we can have lunch. While you’re shopping, I’m going to try to reach Dr. Fischer.”

Irene went in and out of the shops, realizing she wouldn’t have time to visit a fraction of them. She determined that the Swedish krona wasn’t worth much against the pound. At the same time, there were a lot of things which awoke her “must have” craving.

The most intriguing store covered two floors and carried only women’s lingerie. She had been lured in by the display of wonderful garments in every imaginable color. She selected a light-blue bra and panties, each of which cost twelve pounds. She was standing there pondering as to whether it was expensive or cheap, when a young woman appeared in front of her.

“Let me take your measurements and I’ll help you find the right size and model.”

Somewhat skeptically, Irene allowed herself to be led into a fitting room and was measured around the bust and hips. The salesperson disappeared and quickly returned with four bras with matching panties. Irene decided in favor of two of them. Holding the exclusive light yellow bag with its gold inscription, she walked back toward the entrance where she was going to meet Glen. Now she was starving.

TO IRENE’S disappointment, Glen had chosen a restaurant called Mandarin Kitchen. She didn’t want to eat Chinese food now that she was finally in London, since Göteborg has lots of Chinese cafés. But she changed her mind once the food arrived. They didn’t serve half-manufactured food here. Everything was fresh from the market. Based on Glen’s recommendation, she ordered the scallops with garlic, which smelled and tasted heavenly. The cool beer washed the exhaust fumes and dust of the big city from her throat.

Neither of them wanted dessert with coffee. Glen took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Irene, who declined. He lit a cigarette and took a sensual drag.

“I got in touch with Dr. Fischer. He spoke to Rebecka. She has agreed to meet with us at the doctor’s office tomorrow if he’s allowed to be present during the interview. Apparently it’s okay with him. Does that suit you?”

“Of course.”

“We decided on eleven o’clock at his office.”

“That will be fine.”

Glen smiled through the smoke, saying, “Now I need to get back to work. I’ll drop you off outside New Scotland Yard; unfortunately, I don’t have time to show you around. I have a meeting. I can leave you at the stop for the sightseeing bus. It’s on Victoria Street.”

“Great. I don’t know much about London.”

“Then a sightseeing tour will be perfect. Estelle will be waiting for you in the lobby at seven o’clock. You can go together to Vitória.”

“Vitória?”

“Mamma’s restaurant. My grandmother’s name was Vitória. I’ll see you there tonight.”

NEW SCOTLAND Yard was an enormous building made of glass and concrete. It looked like it had been designed by an architect who was still in his Lego phase. On the other hand, the surrounding older buildings were beautiful and impressive.

“That’s the Houses of Parliament, the seat of Parliament since the fifteen hundreds. And over there you can see Big Ben. It’s not the tower but the clock itself which is called Big Ben,” Glen told her.

He dropped Irene off at the bus stop near the Thames, not far from a bridge which, according to the signs, was Westminster Bridge. She realized that she needed a map. A friendly, white-haired lady in a kiosk next to the bus stop sold both maps and one-day sightseeing tickets.

“You can get on and off the bus wherever you want,” the little lady said, smiling a sunny toothless smile.

Irene sat on the open top deck of the bus and buttoned her jacket tightly around her neck since the wind off the water was cold.

IT WAS five thirty when she dragged herself through the door of the hotel room. Her head was spinning and her feet ached. She was completely exhausted. She threw shopping bags on the bed and went into the bathroom, turned on the faucet in the tub, and started filling it with hot water. A bath was her primary need—right after caffeine, that is. Thankfully, she noted that the hotel provided a small water heater in each room. Next to the white ceramic cups, there was a bowl with tea bags, instant coffee in single servings, and sugar. Irene filled the flask with water, plugged it in, and poured the bowl’s three packages of coffee into a cup.

She had gotten off at Oxford Street on the way home, just outside Selfridge’s department store. A quick sweep of the floors had revealed that the prices were too high for her. To her glee she saw an H&M store a bit farther down the street, and there she found a nice light green sweater and a black top decorated with glitter. Attractive and cheap, since the sweater was on sale for half price. Irene was very pleased with her finds, but slightly embarrassed at the same time. To travel to London only to shop at H&M was really like crossing a pond to get water from the far side. If someone were to ask her where she had bought the sweater or the top, she decided to just answer, “In London.”