At home she encountered the next family tragedy.
Martin was still asleep even though lunchtime had come and gone. A half-empty whisky bottle on the floor by the bed implied he had tried the hair of the dog. Quite a lot of hair, at that. Sara hadn’t seen him this low in many years – possibly never, in fact. Just to be on the safe side, she asked him whether he needed to see to his beloved Uncle Scam before the man left the country, but Martin didn’t answer. Instead, he merely slurred something inaudible and curled up under the duvet.
He would have to take responsibility for his American superstars himself, Sara thought to herself before leaving. She was working tonight, so he would have to grapple with his hungover angst by himself. Perhaps she ought to do her husband a little kindness and go and buy some crisps and fizzy drinks for his hangover munchies? They usually had everything necessary down in the Munkbrohallen grocery store.
Romantic dinners would have to wait for a while. Martin was going to be a wreck all day, Sara realised. The best-case scenario was that he would be back on track tomorrow, worst, it might take another couple of days. In the meantime, every manner of junk food was the best way for Sara to show her love for Martin.
Just as she put her hand on a bag of cheesy puffs down in the shop, her mobile emitted a beep: a new email. Given everything that had been going on over the last few months, Sara opened her inbox right away.
It was a video clip from Malin. An old black-and-white film that her childhood friend must have got some poor archive monkey to dig up and digitise. After all, Malin worked at SVT and had been accustomed to telling people what to do since the early days.
Not until the name appeared did Sara recognise the young girl the clip focused on.
The sequence was from an episode of the quiz show A Thousand Answers. And the contestant, according to the presenter, was Eva Hedin, aged just thirteen. Who got a question wrong about Clark Gable. The question was in which order Clark Gable had a) become a grandfather, b) had a son and c) died. The correct answer was that he had become a grandfather, died and then had a son. But young Eva Hedin had said that it was impossible to have children after having grandchildren, and answered b-a-c. When she found out she was wrong, she claimed, with desperation in her voice, that she had misunderstood the question. But the presenter, Stellan Broman, didn’t offer her a second chance. She was obliged to leave the TV studio to the sound of cheery music played by the band. Meanwhile Stellan joked about her hasty retreat, making the audience roar with laughter.
It was admittedly true that she had been humiliated by Stellan, but was that what had driven Eva Hedin to unmask the TV star as a Stasi spy? The circumstantial evidence pointing to his guilt had been truly overwhelming, but Hedin still didn’t know that Stellan had actually been innocent. He had been guilty of many atrocities against young girls and he had been very positively disposed towards East Germany, but he hadn’t spied on their behalf. The spy, Geiger, had been someone else entirely.
The question was whether Sara should tell Hedin the truth.
And whether she dared to mention her involvement in A Thousand Answers.
But just as she was thinking about that, she received a text message. It was from Tore Thörnell.
Sara looked around the shop. Surely there were no threats to speak of here?
Then suddenly everyone looked equally dangerous: the Japanese tourists, the old man with his walking frame, the young girl with a nose ring, the bloke in a suit whose trousers were too short and whose bare feet were slipped into loafers, the mother of the small child in a pushchair. They were all transformed before Sara’s very eyes into disguised terrorists. Nothing was as it seemed – that was her new perspective on reality.
He’d never done this before. It had to be about something important.
No answer.
OK. Lars Johansson?
It didn’t mean anything to her. Why was Thörnell suddenly being so cryptic? Had Rau bugged her phone, and if so, did the colonel know about it? Had he decided to suddenly go against Rau? If he had wanted to lure Sara into a trap, he would hardly have messed it up, and he definitely wouldn’t have warned her. She would have to go on gut feel. She had to solve the riddle.
She searched for ‘Lars Johansson Stockholm’ in the online phone book and got fifty-eight companies and eight hundred and thirty-six people in her hits. It was impossible to sift through them. Wikipedia gave her sixteen Lars Johanssons to choose from, ranging from several politicians to Joe Labero’s real name.
Sara knew that Labero had performed at Berns, and that wasn’t all that far away. But was a magician really the reference that Thörnell would choose?
Then she spotted the name Lasse Lucidor in the Wikipedia list. It sounded familiar. It transpired that Lasse Lucidor was a poet who had been killed in 1674, in a duel at the tavern known as Källaren Fimmelstång. According to Wikipedia, it had been located at 14 Kindstugatan three hundred and fifty years ago. But the address was still there, so Sara began to walk towards it.
She headed up Tyska brinken, past both Lilla Nygatan and Stora Nygatan.
She was constantly on tenterhooks, worried about Thörnell’s warning.
It turned out to be well-founded.
In the crowd at the crossroads with Västerlånggatan she heard footsteps approaching quickly from behind her. And she felt someone very close to her.
She instinctively took a step to one side and saw the blade of a bayonet shoot past.
If she hadn’t stepped aside, it would have gone into her body.
She looked at the man holding the bayonet. An older man with a shaven head, dark eyebrows and a pointed white beard. His green eyes stared at her wildly.
‘Looking for me?’ said the man, flashing a contorted smile. Sara recognised the voice from her calls to Günther Dorch. She hadn’t found him, but he had found her.
Dorch drew his hand back to take another swing and Sara leapt away again.
Thoughts rushed through her head and she considered crying out for help, drawing attention from the people surrounding them, but she was afraid that someone might get hurt.
At the same time, Dorch grabbed hold of Sara’s collar with his free hand to assume control of her and have an easier target.
‘Stay still,’ he said.
Sara twisted sideways as he took the next swing but she didn’t manage to completely avoid it.
The bayonet pierced her fluttering jacket and scratched her abdomen.
The feel of the sharp edge set her adrenaline pumping. Sara pulled out her gun, smashed the barrel against Dorch’s nose and then shot the bayonet out of his hand.
The gunshot rang between the old building walls. People nearby jumped.
For a few seconds, Günther Dorch looked at her in shock. Then he shouted loudly:
‘Gun!’
As the tourists around them began to scream and run in different directions, he shoved Sara aside and vanished into the crowd.
Västerlånggatan quickly emptied of people and Sara decided to disappear too.