“He used number five, the one in the corner,” the man says. “I need to see your ID.”
Joona hands over his police ID, and the man looks confused as he writes it all down in the log.
“Go ahead and start surfing.”
“Thanks,” Joona says in a friendly way as he walks over to computer number 5.
Joona takes out his cell phone and places a call to Johan Jonson, a young man in the CID’s department for cyber crimes.
“Just a mo,” answers a ragged voice. “I’ve just swallowed a piece of paper… an old tissue… I blew my nose and at the same time breathed in to sneeze and… no, I really don’t have the energy to explain everything. Who am I talking to?”
“Joona Linna, detective inspector with the National Criminal Investigation Department.”
“Oh, damn. Hi, Joona, what a surprise.”
“You’re already sounding better.”
“Yes, I’ve swallowed it.”
“I need to see what a guy was doing on a computer this past Friday.”
“Say no more!”
“I’m in a hurry. I’m sitting in an Internet cafe.”
“Are you on the same machine he used?”
“Right in front of me.”
“Much easier. Much easier. Try to find History. It’s probably been erased. That’s what they do after each user, but there’s always something left on the hard drive. All you have to do is… or really, the best thing to do is to take the thing away and bring it along to me so I can go through the hard drive with a program I’ve designed for-”
“Meet me in a half an hour in the meditation room at Saint Goran’s Hospital,” Joona says as he unplugs the computer, takes it under his arm, and heads toward the exit.
The man with the coffee mug stares at him, astonished, and tries to block him.
“Hey, wait! The computer can’t leave the premises!”
“It’s under arrest,” Joona says in his friendliest manner.
“What’s it suspected of?”
The man’s pale face stares at Joona as Joona waves at him with his free hand and walks out into the bright sunshine.
36
The parking lot in front of Saint Goran’s Hospital is hot and the air is thick and muggy.
Inside the meditation room, Erixson easily maneuvers his wheelchair around what has truly been converted into a base of operations. Erixson has accumulated three phones, which now all ring at once.
Joona carries in the computer and puts it on a chair. Johan Jonson is already there. He looks to be about twenty-five years old. He wears an ill-fitting black tracksuit, has a shaved head and thick eyebrows that grow straight across his face. He comes up to Joona shyly. He shrugs off the shoulder strap of his red computer bag, and shakes Joona’s hand.
“Ei saa piettaa,” he says, while he pulls out a thin laptop. Erixson pours some Fanta from his thermos into small, unbleached paper cups.
“Usually I put the hard disk in the freezer for a few hours if it’s wobbly,” Johan says. “Then I plug in an ATA/SATA contact. Everyone has a different method. I have a pal over at Ibas who uses RDR and he doesn’t even meet his clients in person-he just sends all the shit over an encrypted phone line. Usually you can save most stuff, but I don’t want to just get most of it-I want it all! That’s my way, getting each and every crumb, and then you need a program like Hanger 18…”
Johan Jonson throws his head back and pretends to laugh like a mad scientist: “MWA-HA-HAH!”
“I’ve written it myself,” he continues. “It works like a digital vacuum cleaner. It picks up everything and arranges it according to time down to every microsecond.”
He sits down on the altar rail and connects the two computers. His own computer clicks faintly. Typing commands at a furious pace, he studies his screen, scrolls down, reads some more, and types in a new set.
“Is this going to take a while?” Joona asks after a few minutes.
“Who knows?” Johan replies. “Not more than a month.”
Johan swears to himself and writes a new command and then observes the blinking numbers.
“I’m just joking,” he says after a while.
“I realized that.”
“In about fifteen minutes we’ll know how much can be retrieved,” Johan continues. He looks down at the piece of paper where Joona has written the time and date for Bjorn Almskog’s cafe visit.
“The history is usually erased in batches, which can be difficult…”
Fragments of old graphics pass over the sun-bleached screen. Johan shoves a piece of snuff underneath his lip without paying any attention to it. He wipes his hands on his pants and waits with half his attention on the screen.
“They’ve done a good job cleaning this one,” he says. “But you can’t erase everything. There are no secrets anymore… Hanger 18 finds places no one knows exist.”
Johan’s computer begins to beep and he writes something down as he reads through a long table of numbers. He writes something else and the beeping stops at once.
“What’s that?” Joona asks.
“Not much. It’s just hard to get through all the modern firewalls, sandboxes, and faked virus protection. It’s amazing that a computer can even work at all with all these preventive measures.”
Johan shakes his head and licks a bit of snuff away from his upper lip.
“I’ve never even had one antivirus program and-hey, look out.” He interrupts his own lecture.
Joona comes closer to look over Johan’s shoulder.
“What do we have here? What do we have here?” Johan says in a singsong voice.
He leans back and rubs his neck as he starts writing with his other hand. He presses ENTER and smiles to himself.
“Here we are.”
Joona and Erixson stare at the screen.
“Just give me a second… this is not easy. It’s coming out in small bits and fragments.”
Johan hides the screen with his hand and waits. Slowly letters and pieces of graphics appear.
“Look here, the door’s opening… now we’ll be able to see what Bjorn Almskog was up to.”
Erixson puts the brakes on his wheelchair and leans far forward so he can see the screen.
“Damn it all, this is just a few dashes.”
“Look in the corner.”
“Okay. He’s used Windows,” Erixson says. “Very original.”
“Hotmail,” Joona says.
“Logging in,” says Johan Jonson.
“Now things are getting interesting,” says Erixson.
“Can you see a name?” Joona asks.
“It doesn’t work like that; you can only move through time,” Johan says as he scrolls down.
“What’s that?” Joona points.
“Now we’re in the folder for sent mail.”
“Did he send something?”
On the screen there are graphic fragments of advertisements for cheap trips to Milano, New Y k, Lo dn, P ris. Farthest down in the corner, a light gray tiny number, a time: 07:44:42 a.m.
