HE WAS SITTING IN “The Heart,” his control room. “The Brain” would have been a more fitting name, but he preferred the former; he thought it sounded cosier. The Heart was just one of several rooms he had spent several years secretly excavating under his one-storey house, two and a half metres below ground. He had spent the past couple of months turning this subterranean space into his permanent abode, and only occasionally did he go up into the house. He could live underground and survive for more than a year if he had to.
He had a small kitchen with running water and a pantry that was well stocked with canned and dried food. There was a warmed waterbed in the bedroom that was even more comfortable than his regular bed. Since there were no windows, he’d spent a lot of time working on the lighting before he was satisfied. When he was finished he could brag that on a cloudy day, he had more daylight underground than there was outside.
His biggest problem had been the ventilation. The easiest solution would have been to put the inlet and outlet somewhere in the yard, but the noise from the fans would have been too obvious. Instead, he’d attempted to channel the air up through the house and out of a new chimney, but no matter how much insulation he used, the humming sound broke through, revealing that there was more than just a one-storey house there. He ended up staging a little bit of roadwork outside the house to “repair a water leak,” so that he could move the ventilation system all the way over to the corner of the plot next to the electrical box. Yes, it had been complicated, but it was well worth the effort.
He was still the most pleased with The Heart. It was the shape of a hemisphere, just over two metres in diameter. It functioned like a cockpit, with everything he needed within an arm’s reach. He had painted the concrete walls red, and used gold spray paint on the semicircle of the control panel and his chair. A recessed cabinet to his right held three custom-built computers. They made the most expensive computers on the market look about as advanced as a Commodore 64. He also had two NAS servers that held eight terabytes each. Everything was cooled and soundproofed. Each computer had a dedicated connection of one hundred megabytes per second in both directions. When he was online he used several proxy servers so that no one could trace his actual IP addresses.
He could see the police standing around staring at Rune Schmeckel’s body on one of the six screens in front of him. Everyone was there except Fabian Risk, who had been taken to the hospital to have his burns treated. He had burst into wild laughter when he saw Risk catch fire. It was too good to be true. He hadn’t even planned it. If he believed in God he would have taken it as a clear sign that God was with him in this mission. Although, as far as he was concerned, chance was just as good. Chance was absolutely perfect.
Whether it was chance that had helped Risk find Rune Schmeckel several days ahead of schedule, he didn’t know. But a nagging worry told him that chance had nothing to do with it and that Risk was quite simply a dangerous adversary. He had already realized this a while ago, but this was further confirmation.
He had suspected this very thing might happen when he’d been forced to leave the Peugeot behind. And Rune was just the beginning. If his luck really went sour, the car could become a much bigger problem than he’d counted on. But for every problem, there was usually a solution. All he had to do was anticipate the problem in time — and for him, the solution’s name was Risk.
It would have been simplest just to kill him now. But who said it would be simple? He had poured so many years and so much money into it that he wasn’t about to settle for half-assing anything. He had already implemented the biggest changes in his plan: Risk was going to be the crowning glory of Plan B, so he had to be kept alive a while longer. All he had left was some recon to get the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place, which he would do tonight while Risk was in the hospital.
He pushed up one of the faders on the soundboard so that he could hear the police, who were standing around discussing Rune Schmeckel.
“It would be best if we could keep this internal for as long as we can. The longer it takes for the killer to learn that we’ve found Schmeckel, the better,” said the female chief.
“So you’re saying we’re sure Schmeckel isn’t the killer?” the cute one said, looking down at the dead body.
“Are you suggesting he might have taken his own life?”
“Why not? It’s a spectacular suicide. Look around — the gravel has even been raked. The whole point of all this must be that we’re meant to see it.”
“Yes, but I’m sure we got here earlier than he’d planned. He couldn’t have expected Risk to sniff this place out so quickly. And to be completely honest, I still don’t quite understand how he did.”
“Not to mention it would have been impossible for him to fasten himself down like that,” the crime scene investigator added, kneeling down and pointing at the strap, which had cut into Schmeckel’s wrist. “Look at these marks: clear signs that he tried to get free.”
“How long could he have been here?” the fat one asked.
“Hard to say right now. But the burn marks will help us out.”
“How?”
“The earth’s rotation around the sun makes each burn unique. So the burn would have started in a new spot each day and slowly moved across his body.”
He couldn’t help being impressed with the investigator’s deductive reasoning. Not everyone was capable of putting their emotions aside, but this particular guy seemed to be undisturbed by the naked man in front of him — a man who had obviously been forced to endure indescribable suffering before death took over and dulled the pain. A man they had been on the hunt for until now. A killer turned victim.
None of this seemed to affect the investigator in the least. Instead, he was totally absorbed in interpreting the burns and finding out how long Schmeckel had been bound to the plate of glass. Impressive, he thought. He was sure that he would have also made a good crime scene investigator. It certainly would have been fun. He had actually thought about pursuing it before, but that would have to be in another life now.
He had chosen to be self-employed, and he loved his job. He enjoyed nothing more than spending time in his workshop and working out new, innovative solutions. Sometimes he worked non-stop for several days, without pausing to eat or sleep. His work made him lose track of time and space. It helped him to forget what a pathetic guy he really was. He was sure that it was just the same for the investigator he was watching on the screen.
*
“LOOK HERE, FOR EXAMPLE,” Molander said, pointing at a line of burns that ran from the left hip and up across the chest and face, with a few gaps in between. “This is one day.”
“But if that’s only one day, why isn’t he burned here or here?” Lilja pointed at the empty spaces in the line.
“Those are probably from a tree or cloud that was blocking the sun.” Molander looked annoyingly smug, Lilja thought.
“So all we have to do is count the lines?”
“Exactly.”
“But you’ve already done that, haven’t you?”
Molander nodded and adjusted his glasses. “Seventeen.”
“Seventeen days? He’s been lying out here for over two weeks?!” Tuvesson exclaimed.
“That can’t be right,” Klippan said. “The decay would be more advanced, especially with this heat.”
Molander took off his glasses and polished them slowly and ceremoniously. “Just because he’s been lying here for seventeen days doesn’t mean he’s been dead for seventeen days. A person can survive for several months without food, and ten days without water.”
“Yes, but not in this heat.”
“Agreed. He must have had access to water in some form or other,” Molander continued, bending down and looking under the glass plate. “Just as I suspected.” He pulled out an empty drum with a transparent tube that led up through a small hole in the plate under Schmeckel’s neck.
“So, when did he die?” Tuvesson asked.
“Braids will have to take a look, but my bet is two or three days ago, max.”
Tuvesson and the others stood around the burned body looking at it in silence. It seemed that they had just now realized how much pain Rune Schmeckel had been forced to endure in his last few days of life. The case was completely baffling. They were now more puzzled than ever.
*
THE AMBULANCE STAFF APPROACHED with a stretcher and asked if they could remove the body. Tuvesson nodded mutely. They cut the straps with their forceps and lifted the body.
Some sort of moss was growing under the glass plate, following the exact contours of the body. The moss had flourished in Schmeckel’s shadow. It was shrivelled and burned in all the places that the sun had been able to reach. Rune Schmeckel was on his way to the ambulance in a body bag, but it almost looked as if he were still lying in the moss.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Klippan asked.
No one had an answer, not even Molander.