The Man Who Watched Women (26 page)

There was nowhere to park, so Vanja drove halfway up onto the pavement, far too close to the pedestrian crossing. They both got out and crossed the road. Vanja took the two small steps leading up to the café in one stride and pushed open the door. Sebastian heard the familiar tinkling sound of the little bell on the inside. He was just about to follow Vanja up the steps when he stiffened.

A memory.

Just before they'd passed the entrance to police headquarters. Parked on the right-hand side. A blue Ford Focus. Pale blue. The blue of a little boy's pyjamas. A man wearing sunglasses in the driver's seat.

His thoughts wandered back to the day he had decided to tidy his study. He had looked out of the window. Looked down at his old parking space outside the antique shop. There had been another car there at the time. A pale blue car.

‘Are you coming?' Vanja was still waiting, holding the door open for him. Sebastian barely heard her. His mind was whirling. The visit to Stefan. When he had gone out to fetch milk. The men failing to unload the piano. Behind the van. A pale blue car. Possibly a Ford Focus.

‘Sebastian?'

Without a word Sebastian turned, crossed the road and set off in the direction from which they had come. Towards the parked car.

‘Where are you going?' Vanja shouted after him, but he didn't reply. He increased his speed. Far behind him he heard the little bell tinkle again as Vanja let go of the door and followed him. He broke into a run. The suspicion grew into certainty as he saw the person in the driver's seat of the pale blue Focus begin to move.

The driver leaned forward.

Started the car.

Sebastian lengthened his stride.

‘Sebastian!'

The blue car pulled out. Sebastian ran between two parked cars and out into the street. Some idea in his head of blocking the road with whatever he had. His body. For a moment it looked as if the driver of the Ford was intending to do a U-turn, but Sebastian could see that he would never be able to swing around; the street was too narrow. Evidently the driver realised the same thing; he straightened up the car and put his foot down instead. Aiming for Sebastian.

‘Sebastian!' Vanja again. Too far away. More urgency in her voice this time. She realised what was about to happen.

The car was only a dozen metres away from Sebastian, and showed no sign of slowing down. Quite the reverse. The sound of the revving engine grew louder and louder. The car was picking up speed. Realising that the driver had no intention of stopping, Sebastian hurled himself sideways, between two parked cars. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he felt the Ford catch the heel of his shoe as it raced past.

It continued at high speed. Vanja drew her gun, but knew she couldn't shoot at a fast-disappearing car in the centre of Stockholm, and slid it back into its holster. She ran to the spot where Sebastian had fallen. From where she was standing it had been difficult to see whether the car had hit him or not. She crouched down beside him.

‘Are you okay?'

Sebastian turned towards her. Out of breath. Shaken. He was bleeding from a small cut on his temple, and the palms of his hands were grazed.

‘The number. Get the number of the car.'

‘Already done. Are you okay?'

Sebastian considered the question. Raised a hand to his head and stared at the blood. He must have hit one of the parked cars as he fell. Used his hands to break the fall. It could have been much worse. He let out a long breath.

‘Yes. I'm okay.' He got to his feet with Vanja's help and dusted himself off as best he could, then they set off towards their illegally parked car.

‘Did you manage to get a look at him?' Vanja wanted to know.

Sebastian shrugged his shoulders. It hurt a bit. He must have fallen more heavily than he had first thought. ‘Sunglasses and a cap.'

They walked the rest of the way to the car in silence. Before Sebastian got in, he turned to Vanja. ‘Billy was right. Someone was following me.' He realised he was stating the obvious, but he needed to say it. Put it into words. Someone had been following him. Everywhere. He hadn't had a clue. It was an almost unreal feeling. Unreal and unpleasant. He had been under surveillance.

‘Yes.' Vanja gazed back at him across the roof of the car, and this time she didn't look annoyed. Even the least positive interpretation of her expression would reveal a certain sympathy. Sebastian decided there and then that whatever happened he would stop following her. Never stand outside her apartment block again. Never travel in the next carriage on the subway. He would ring Trolle and tell him to pack in the whole thing. Enough.

An hour or so later they parked and got out of the car. It was going to be another glorious summer's day, and the heat struck them as they opened the door. They had barely spoken during the drive, which had suited Sebastian very well. He needed to be left in peace with his thoughts.

Vanja's mobile rang. She took the call as she locked the car, and moved away slightly. Sebastian stayed where he was, looking over at the impersonal concrete building behind the high fence. Another greeting from his past. Another place that turned out to be more or less unchanged. This wasn't the plan at all. He was supposed to be picking up his life again. A new beginning. A fresh start. That was the idea of trying to get back into Riksmord.

To get a life before he could become part of a life.

But then the past had caught up with him. Hinde. The dead women. Everything about this case was dragging him back. Many years had passed since he was last here. He had completed his interviews with Edward Hinde in the summer of 1999 and left Lövhaga for what he thought would be the last time. And now here he was again. Behind those barred windows, the high fence topped with barbed wire and the reinforced doors was Sweden's most dangerous and most disturbed criminal. Sebastian realised he was a little nervous about the forthcoming encounter. Edward Hinde was extremely intelligent. Manipulative. Calculating. He had the ability to see through most things. You needed to be on top form for a meeting with Hinde, otherwise he quickly gained the upper hand. With everything that had happened, Sebastian wasn't sure he could manage to keep his guard up.

Vanja came over to him. ‘We were already looking for the Focus. It was reported stolen from Södertälje. In February.'

Sebastian looked enquiringly at her as if to check that he had heard correctly. She nodded. That didn't necessarily mean that someone had been following him for six months, but it was a possibility. Sebastian took a deep breath. One thing at a time. He needed to concentrate on the interview with Hinde. Together he and Vanja set off towards the gate and the security guard who had been watching them in silence ever since they got out of the car.

‘So what's Hinde like?' Vanja asked curiously, her voice free of the judgemental tone she usually used when speaking to him. It was as if she sensed that they were walking into the lion's den.

Sebastian shrugged. He was certain that Vanja had never met anyone like Edward Hinde. Few people had. Hinde wasn't the usual perpetrator: the jealous husband or the uneducated young thug from a broken home. Hinde was something completely different, which meant she had no reference points. She couldn't possibly imagine the depths of evil that lay within Hinde. Comparing him with any of the perpetrators Vanja had encountered over the years would be like comparing an eleven-year-old in a physics lab with a Nobel Prize winner.

‘You need to read my books.'

‘I have read your books.'

Vanja walked up to the security guard. ‘Vanja Lithner and Sebastian Bergman, Riksmord.' They showed their IDs and visiting order. The guard took the documents and went into the small booth next to the gate; it looked as if he was making a call.

Vanja tried again with Sebastian. ‘Come on, you've met him.'

‘And soon you will have met him too.'

‘Is there anything in particular I need to bear in mind?'

The gate buzzed and Sebastian pushed it open; he let Vanja pass, then followed her inside. The guard gave them back their papers.

‘Be careful,' Sebastian warned.

Edward Hinde was sitting in the visitors' room once more. He had been brought down ten minutes ago. Two guards. Manacled hand and foot.

Into the room.

Onto the chair.

Shackled to the table.

Everything was the same, except for the fact that there were two chairs on the other side of the table this time. Riksmord were on their way in. Vanja Lithner and Billy Rosén, that was what Thomas Haraldsson had said they were called, the officers who were coming to talk to him. He wondered what they wanted to talk about. How far they had got.

The door behind him opened and once again he resisted the urge to turn around. Wait. Let them come to him. An immediate if minor advantage. They were approaching the table. From the corner of his eye he saw them pass on the same side. His right. He carried on looking out of the window, even when they were both standing in front of him. He didn't allow his eyes to move until the woman sat down opposite him. Blonde, attractive, around thirty, blue eyes, and fit, judging by her upper arms beneath the short-sleeved blouse. She placed an anonymous black folder in front of her on the table and met his searching gaze without blinking. Edward didn't say a word, but simply switched his attention to her colleague, who was still standing by the wall next to the table.

It wasn't Billy Rosén. It was someone very, very familiar. Edward had to exercise every scrap of self-control to avoid showing how surprised he was.

Sebastian Bergman.

They had got a long way.

Much further than he had dared hope.

Edward kept his eyes fixed on Sebastian until he was absolutely certain that his voice would hold. Then his face broke into a satisfied, almost welcoming smile. ‘Sebastian Bergman. What a surprise.'

Sebastian did not return his greeting. Edward didn't take his eyes off him. Sebastian remembered that look. Searching. Observing. Penetrating. You sometimes got the feeling that Edward wasn't just looking you in the eye, but that he could see right through into your brain, where he picked out the information he wanted, information to which he wouldn't otherwise have access.

‘And this is …?' Edward continued, sounding relaxed as he turned to Vanja.

‘Vanja,' she replied before Sebastian had the chance to introduce her.

‘Vanja.' Edward seemed to be savouring the word. ‘Vanja … Vanja what?'

‘Vanja will do fine,' Sebastian broke in. There was no reason to give Hinde any more information than necessary.

Edward turned to Sebastian again, still wearing a disarming smile. ‘And to what do I owe the honour of a visit after all these years? Are the royalties drying up? Are you considering making it a trilogy?' Once again Edward directed his attention to Vanja. ‘He's written books about me. Two of them.'

‘I'm aware of that.'

‘I was his claim to fame … That's the correct phrase, I believe?'

Vanja sat motionless, her arms folded over her chest, apparently uninterested in Edward's comments.

‘Anyway,' Edward went on, ‘first he helped to get me arrested, then he revealed … the mechanisms behind the monster.' He smiled again. Not at Vanja this time, but more to himself, as if recalling a fond memory, a better time. Or as if he was just extremely happy with the way he had expressed himself.

‘We topped the bestseller lists. Book signings. Lectures all over Europe. Perhaps the USA too – how did that go, Sebastian?'

Sebastian didn't respond either. He leaned indolently against the wall and folded his arms just like Vanja, while keeping his eyes fixed on Edward with an almost challenging expression.

Hinde met his gaze and tilted his head slightly to one side before addressing Vanja once more. ‘He's not saying anything. Good plan. We don't like uncomfortable silences in this country. So we fill them. Babble on. Give ourselves away.' Edward paused, as if to consider whether he had said too much, whether he had just provided an example of the very fault he had described. ‘I'm a psychologist too,' he explained to Vanja. ‘I was two years above Sebastian. Did he mention that?'

‘No.'

Sebastian was watching Hinde carefully. Where was he going? Why had he mentioned that? Nothing Edward Hinde did was unplanned. Everything had a purpose. The only question was what that purpose might be.

‘He doesn't want to admit how alike we are,' Hinde was saying. ‘Middle-aged psychologists who have a complex relationship with women. That's what we are, isn't it, Sebastian?'

Hinde released Vanja from his gaze and looked up at Sebastian. Suddenly Vanja had a strong feeling that Sebastian was right. Hinde
was
mixed up in the four murders. Not only as the inspiration, but actually involved. For real. Somehow. She had no idea how, but he knew why they were here.

It was only a feeling, hard to get hold of – intuition. It came to her now and again. She was sometimes struck by it when she was sitting with a suspect or double-checking an alibi. A sudden deep conviction that there was a link. That there was some kind of involvement, perhaps guilt. Even when there was no physical proof, perhaps not even a chain of circumstantial evidence pointing in that direction. But the feeling was there. It could come from anywhere: body language, how the person in question looked her in the eye, or a tone of voice that struck a false note in an otherwise perfectly ordinary conversation. Vanja knew she was good at spotting that false tone, and there was something about the way Hinde had spoken to Sebastian. A tiny, almost imperceptible undertone of smugness and triumph. Easy to miss. But it was there, and that was enough for Vanja. Torkel had probably been right, even if it would be virtually impossible for her to come out and admit it: putting Sebastian in front of Hinde in this room had been the right decision.