stood and where the person who
There was a pleasant breeze blowing on Sankt Eriksbron as he looked out over the boats, trains, cars-that was what he liked so much about walking, being able to pause for a while, to look.
He had heard Paula's version of events and the tension last night on his mobile phone, and now that he had had the opportunity to study the flat in peace and quiet, it looked like what he said was true. He knew that Paula was capable and that if the choice had been between life and death, Paula had both the strength and the ability to kill. It could easily have been he who fired the shot, but Wilson was now certain that that was not the case. Paula had sounded more and more harassed and frightened with every phone call. After nine years working together as handler and infiltrator the close contact had developed into trust, and Erik Wilson had learned to hear when he was telling the truth.
He stopped in front of the door to Sankt Eriksplan 17, brittle glass in an old wooden frame, so close to the heavy traffic of the main road. He looked around. A face passed by but didn't notice. He checked again, then went in.
He had left the marks and splashes of blood in .V.stmannagatan, then taken the waiting taxi to Kronoberg and finally to an office in the homicide unit. According to the Duty Management System, a detective had already been assigned to the case. Ewert Grens, assisted by Sven Sundkvist and Mariana Hermansson. Grens and Wilson had worked together in the same unit for a number of years, but he didn't really know the strange detective superintendent. He had tried to make contact for a long time, without any response whatsoever, and had then just given up, decided that he did not need an old man in his life who had once been the best, but now just listened to Siw Malmkvist and was bitter. Erik Wilson stayed in front of the computer. He switched from the DMS to the Crime Reporting system and searched for Vastmannagatan 79, and found three hits in the past ten years. He called up the most recent entry, dealing in stolen goods, one ton of refined copper that was sold by a man with a Finnish name in one of the flats on the ground floor.
Erik Wilson closed the door to Sankt Eriksplan 17 and paused in the silence, away from the traffic frenzy. The stairwell was dark and when he was unsuccessful in his third attempt to turn on the lights he decided to take the small elevator up to the fifth floor, getting out into a construction site. The flat was being totally renovated, so the tenants had been moved out. He stood on the brown paper and listened to nothing until he was certain that he was alone, then opened the locked door with STENBERG written on the letter box, went in to the two rooms and kitchen and checked over the furniture that was protected by transparent plastic sheeting. This was how he operated. A couple of the biggest private landlords in the city gave him the keys and work schedules for flats that were empty and being renovated. This was number five. Wilson had used it for just under a month; he'd met several different infiltrators here. He would keep it until the renovation was finished and the tenants had moved back in.
He pulled back the plastic from the kitchen window, opened it, and looked out over the communal gardens at the back, with carefully raked gravel paths and some new outdoor furniture over by the two swings and short slide. Paula would be there in a minute. He'd come out of the back door of the house opposite that had an entrance at Vulcanusgatan 15. Always in an empty flat, always with a communal garden at the back that could be accessed from another address.
Erik Wilson closed the window and taped the plastic back against the glass, just as the door below opened and Paula hurried along the gravel path.
Ewert Grens impatiently clutched the folder that contained Nils Krantz's photographs of a dead man. Ten minutes earlier, he had sent one of them to a fax machine in the crime operations unit in Copenhagen, a photograph of a head that had been washed, but still had skin, before the autopsy. There were three other pictures in the folder and he studied them while he waited. One taken from the front, one from the left side, one from the right. A considerable amount of his working day was taken up looking at pictures of death and he had learned that it was often difficult to distinguish whether someone was asleep or actually dead. This time it was fairly obvious as there were three great holes in the head. If he hadn't been to the scene or been handed a photograph by someone from forensics or received it by fax from a colleague somewhere else, he usually started by looking for the shiny steel stand that the head always rests on, and if he found it, it was a photograph from an autopsy. He looked at the pictures again and wondered what he would look like, what a person studying the photo of his head on a steel stand would think.
'Grens.'
The phone finally rang and he put the folder down on the desk. 'Jacob Andersen, Copenhagen.'
'Well?'
'The photograph you faxed.'
'Yes?'
'It's probably him.'
'Who?'
'One of my informers.'
'I can't say. Not yet. Not before I'm absolutely certain. I don't want to disclose an informer unnecessarily. You know how it works.'
Ewert Grens knew how it worked and didn't like it. The need to protect the identity of covert human intelligence sources-CHIS- had increased as they had become more numerous, and sometimes was more important than the need for the police to provide each other with correct information. Nowadays, when each and every policeman could call themselves a handler and had the right to make their own CHIS contacts, the secrecy was more often a hindrance than a help.
'What do you need?'
'Everything you've got.'
'Dental impressions. Fingerprints. We're waiting for the DNA.' 'Send it.'
'I'll do that straight away. And I assume that you'll call again in a few minutes.'
The head on the steel stand.
Grens stroked his finger over the smooth photographic paper.
An infiltrator. From Copenhagen. One of two people who spoke Swedish in a flat when a Polish mafia execution took place.
Who was the other one?
Piet Hoffmann walked down the gravel path through the dull communal garden. A quick glance up at the fifth floor of the building opposite, where he caught a glimpse of Wilson's head in a window that happened not to be protected by plastic. He had left Frederic Chopin on the first plane just after eight, the Polish carrier LOT. He had spent the night with his forehead pressed against a cold windowpane, but he wasn't particularly tired. Anxiety and adrenaline from a day that had included a person being killed and an important meeting in Warsaw jostled in his breast; he was definitely heading somewhere and had no idea how to stop. He had called home and Rasmus had picked up the phone and didn't want to let go of the receiver because he had so much to tell; it hadn't been easy to follow it all, something about a cartoon and a monster that was green and horrible. Piet Hoffmann swallowed and shook, as you do when you miss someone more than you were physically prepared for-he would see them this evening and he would hold all three of them tight until they asked him to let go. He got to the fence and opened the gate, and moved from the garden of Vulcanusgatan 15 to that of Sankt Eriksplan 17, and then in through the back door to the stairs that remained dark, even though he flicked the switch for the lights several times. Five flights of steep stairs, never a elevator with the risk of getting stuck, each step covered with brown paper that made it difficult to move without making a noise. He checked the bells and names on the letter boxes. The door with STENBERG on it opened from inside at eleven hundred hours precisely.
Erik Wilson had taken the plastic off two chairs and the table in the kitchen and was now uncovering the gas cooker and a cupboard under the sink. He hunted around until he found a pan and a jar of something that looked like instant coffee.
'The Stenbergs' treat. Whoever they are.'
They sat down.
'How's Zofia?'
'I don't know.'
'You don't know?'
'We haven't seen much of each other in the past couple of days. But her voice-we spoke for quite a long time
