And so we did. On the way up the stairs we saw two police officers standing and talking to a neighbour who lived three floors below Wolfgang.
‘A camera in the garage?’ we heard him say. ‘No, I don’t know anything about that. You’ll have to ask someone on the committee.’
Time was running out. Lucy and I tried not to draw attention to ourselves by racing up the stairs, but walking normally was a strain when we were in such a hurry. We stopped outside Wolfgang’s door, but just as Lucy was about to put her finger to the doorbell I stopped her.
‘Damn, we’re going to have to phone him instead,’ I said as quietly as I could.
The police officers in the stairwell could hear us as well as we could hear them. They’d only be curious if we started ringing on our neighbours’ doorbells, all out of breath.
Quickly we ran up to my flat. Thankfully Wolfgang answered after the first ring.
‘I can’t hear you very well,’ he said. ‘I’m out shopping.’
I drew a sigh of relief.
‘Listen very carefully,’ I said. ‘That camera in the garage. I think it could cause serious problems for you. You need to stay away for a few days. Can you do that?’
That was the second time in one day that I’d told someone to leave town and go into hiding. I had become death’s tour-guide. Wolfgang protested, naturally. First he said he didn’t have anywhere to go. Then he admitted that he did, but that he didn’t want to go.
In the end he listened. He promised not to return to his flat. We agreed to meet up two hours later, in a car park at Kungens kurva. I promised to take a bag of clothes and other things he might need.
‘It isn’t the police I need to worry about, is it?’ he said.
What could I say?
‘I hope not. But unfortunately I don’t think we can be sure of that.’
I hadn’t really had time to think that through properly. Were the police involved? If so, at what level – were individual officers being paid to pass on information, or were there others who were involved to a more serious extent?
‘Dear God,’ Wolfgang muttered.
He was an old man. I hoped I hadn’t frightened the life out of him.
‘Any medication?’ I said.
‘I always carry it with me,’ Wolfgang said.
He was that generation. The ones who lived through the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The ones who had their cellars full of tinned food and always carried things like passports and medication with them.
‘Excellent,’ I said.
Lucy and I guessed that Wolfgang was about the same size as me. We packed a bag of essentials at once. I felt extremely hesitant as I folded some underwear and put it in the case. Because two men being the same size was no guarantee that they shared the same taste. Without ever having seen Wolfgang’s underwear, I felt absolutely certain on that point.
‘Toothbrush,’ Lucy said.
‘I’ll have to buy one on the way.’
‘If they’ve got you under surveillance, they’re going to be hysterical when they see you going off and buying toiletries. They’ll think you’ve gone on the run.’
‘They won’t,’ I said. ‘I’ll shake them off along the way. Otherwise I may as well not bother meeting Wolfgang.’
I’d become an expert at shaking off potential followers. If it went on like that I’d soon be able to join the police again. A thought I dismissed instantly. I didn’t want to remember my time as a police officer. Not the shot that was fired, nor the guy I had killed. And definitely not the heat and the hard shovel in my hands as I dug another man’s grave.
Benner, we’re going to bury this problem.
The nightmares had been driven out temporarily by an increasingly grim reality. But Lucifer was still there. A man who had evidently known who I was long before I heard of his existence. A man I mustn’t try to find. A man Sara had said I knew.
‘What is it now?’ Lucy said when she saw me standing there deep in thought.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Or too much. Depending on how you choose to look at it.’
She gave me a quick kiss just as I was about to leave. The first in far too many hours.
‘Shouldn’t Belle be home soon?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
I looked at my phone. No missed calls from Signe. The anxiety was ever-present. If Belle went missing again I’d go completely mad.
I hadn’t got to the end of that thought before someone put a key in the lock. Belle and Signe almost tumbled into the flat when Belle pushed the door open before Signe had time to pull the key out. The relief. Impossible to put into words. But it made my eyes very moist.
Two childish hugs later I was on my way out of the flat. I was planning to cycle to a different car-hire firm. And pay cash, like any sensible criminal.
‘By the way,’ I said to Lucy when I was already halfway through the door. ‘Do we know anyone called Sebastian? Or Sebbe?’
She tilted her head. From the kitchen I could hear the chink of porcelain. Someone was playing with the tap in the sink. Then Signe’s voice: ‘Belle, wash your hands like a big girl.’ As if bacteria on her hands were the greatest threat to her wellbeing.
‘No,’ Lucy said. ‘Well, I suppose we know Sebastian Berg. At the Ministry of Finance.’
I laughed.
‘I’m pretty sure it’s not him,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of a child.’
Lucy laughed too. Not because it was all that funny, but because she needed to.
‘That makes it even harder,’ she said. ‘I can’t think that Belle has a friend called Sebastian.’
Just then Belle came out into the hall.
‘Or have you?’ Lucy said. She has far greater confidence in Belle’s ability to explain things than I do. ‘Have you got a friend called Sebastian or Sebbe?’
Belle’s little face turned serious.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not a nice one, anyway.’
Lucy and I blinked.
‘Okay, not a nice one. How about one who’s mean?’ I said.
‘Sebbe with the doggy,’ Belle said.
We were getting warmer, I could feel it. Sebbe with the doggy. I searched my memory, but everything was a mess.
‘Was it a real dog?’ Lucy said.
‘The sort you have to clap,’ Belle said.
There, that was it. The memory drifted up to the surface like a secret that had been sunk in water but then pulled loose of the weights holding it down. Belle had come home very upset from a birthday party last summer. So upset that I felt I had to call the birthday-child’s mother to ask what had happened. She was, it had to be said, a very courageous woman. She had freely opened her home to ten three-year-olds without asking their parents to stay. Utterly incomprehensible. When Belle has a birthday I rent a room somewhere and make sure all the parents stay.
‘You clapped your hands and it moved when it heard the noise,’ I said.
The memory made me giddy. How could she remember? One of the boys who was asked to the party had taken along a toy dog that reacted and moved in response to different sounds. Belle, who loves dogs but knows she’s never going to have one as long as she lives with me, was extremely taken with the toy dog. And distraught when the boy hid it from her. She still talked about that dog. Every time we passed a toy shop. It was the dog rather than the boy that she remembered.
The mother I spoke to on the phone had made me laugh. Because the boy had evidently told Belle that if she didn’t leave his dog alone, he’d send his dad after her. And he was a policeman.
‘Perhaps you know him?’ the mother had said. ‘You must have plenty of dealings with the police, seeing as you’re a lawyer.’
Then she had said his name, which had made me laugh even louder.
‘That can’t be right,’ I muttered to myself as we stood in the hall.
Lucy was staring at me anxiously.
‘Don’t you know who the father of the boy with the dog is?’ I said.
Lucy shook her head.
‘I know you talked about it, but I don’t remember the details.’
‘Didrik,’ I said. ‘It was Didrik’s son who took the dog to the party with him.’
I went back inside the flat. Wolfgang’s bag felt heavy on my shoulder.
Lucy was holding her head.
‘Hang on a moment,’ she said. ‘What have you got into your head now? That Didrik’s son Sebbe is Herman Nilson’s godson? That Didrik, of all people, had a child at the same preschool as Mio? That sounds extremely unlikely. He doesn’t even live in Flemingsberg.’
Thoughts were moving through my head with the same unstoppable force as a freight train on a straight piece of track. I thought about the bruises on the child that the preschools had reacted to. There was no way Didrik was the sort of man who hit his child. Was there?
‘We think Rakel knew Herman Nilson,’ I said slowly. ‘Who in turn was godfather to a child called Sebbe. Who attended the same preschool. You might not remember, but Didrik and Herman Nilson do know each other. Didrik was at that crayfish party out in Årsta havsbad. I didn’t get the impression that they knew each other well, but I know their wives spent half the night chatting in the kitchen. Maybe that’s how their families are connected.’
Lucy still looked doubtful.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘It’s too far-fetched.’
‘Far-fetched? Baby, sorry, but are you crazy? This whole fucking story is far-fetched. That’s the whole basis of it. But there must be something holding it together – there just has to be. And now there is. I met Rakel that evening I was out with Didrik. Who happens to be Sebbe’s father. What more do you need?’
‘So you think Didrik used to hit his son? And that’s why Rebecca has moved to Denmark?’
I shook my head.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, no.’
But I was actually feeling quite relieved. Finally I had some sort of framework for all the disconnected thoughts I’d been fumbling with.
Belle moved closer to Lucy and wrapped her arms round her waist. When did she get that tall?
Lucy stroked Belle’s hair.
‘It must be possible to sort this out fairly easily,’ she said. ‘We can call the preschool tomorrow. Or find someone else who knows something.’
Herman Nilson. That name came back to me. He, if anyone, would know what there was to know. Possibly without realising it himself, but that was irrelevant.
‘I’ll get hold of Nilson tomorrow,’ I said.
‘Martin, that’s a hell of a gamble.’
‘Maybe. But this has to end somehow.’
‘I’m all too aware of that. But didn’t Susanne say anything else about this kid called Sebbe? What his parents’ names were, for instance?’
‘She didn’t know.’
Lucy sighed.
‘There aren’t many of us who know things we ought to,’ she said. ‘You didn’t even know that Didrik had moved to Denmark.’
I almost started to laugh again.
‘That’s not the sort of thing we talk about,’ I said.
I’d have to explain why another time.
I winked at Belle.
‘Sebbe with the doggy,’ I said. ‘Woof, woof.’
Lucy smiled, but Belle was serious.
‘He was mean,’ she whispered. ‘The boy with the doggy was mean.’