FABIAN WAS STANDING in the shower, looking down at his feet, which were almost entirely submerged in water. A sign that it was high time to snake the drain before it overflowed and flooded the bathroom. But it would have to wait until a different lifetime, after all of this was over.
He’d fallen asleep on the studio floor, next to Sonja in her coffin. The piece that had made her question herself and her art. Her whole life. Now she’d done a one-eighty, brought it home and climbed into it. Naked and exposed, into the dark.
When he’d woken up, the box had been empty, apart from a small handwritten note that explained that she was at an important meeting and Matilda had spent the night at Esmaralda’s. He’d dragged himself down to the bathroom and stepped into the shower.
He’d stayed under the hot jet for almost an hour. Time, important as it may be, was secondary right now. The drugs Molander had pumped him full of had to leave his system, and with each droplet of water that hit his skin, he felt a fraction cleaner.
After drying off and getting his circulation going, he realized the pain in the wound in his thigh was almost gone. But the itch between his shoulder blades was still there, possibly even worse than before. He could no longer hope it was a regular bug bite. This was different. If it were some kind of insect, it felt more like a parasite burrowing underneath his skin.
He made another attempt at reaching it, but was forever half an inch short. He could scratch it with his toothbrush, but that left him none the wiser, so he took a picture over his shoulder with his phone. It clearly showed there was something between his shoulder blades. He zoomed in and realized it was a few strips of surgical tape covering a small protrusion.
It had to be Molander’s handiwork. He opened the bathroom cabinet in search of a more effective poking tool than the toothbrush. The best he could find was Sonja’s foot file. With that, he could rub away the tape, however slowly and laboriously, until he could take a new picture.
This one showed a small wound across the little bump, a half-inch-long cut closed with three simple stitches. Molander must have cut him while he was sedated. But why? What kind of surgery had been performed on him? And why was it so bloody itchy?
He should go to a doctor, but Molander’s head start was already too big for him to sit around an A&E. Instead, he took the longest tweezers he could find, disinfected them with rubbing alcohol and carefully reached between his shoulder blades. After a few attempts, he managed to push the tip in under the top stitch and rip it out.
He felt blood stream down his back. The pain was considerable and normally he would have been unable to continue. But he was so focused on finding out what Molander had done to him that he could barely feel the tweezers digging around the wound in search of the next stitch.
Just then, his phone vibrated on the basin in front of him, and he saw it was a text from Molander himself.
Reply and say you overslept, but you’re on your way.
Before he could even start processing what that meant, his phone lit up again. This time, it was a call.
‘Hello, is that you, Fabian?’ Tuvesson said on the other end. ‘It’s Astrid. Hello?’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ he said.
‘Where are you? We’re all waiting for you to give us a report on the events out on Öresund last night.’
‘I’m sorry, I overslept,’ he heard himself say. ‘It was a late night last night and I—’
‘Fine, sure, I get it,’ Tuvesson broke in. ‘So long as you get yourself in here asap. We have a lot to get on with and above all, a couple of things to explain.’
‘I’m on my way,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘Good. And by the way, I set Theodor up with a lawyer. Jadwiga Komorovski. According to Högsell, she’s an expert on the Danish judicial process, and from what I’m told, she’s already in Helsingør.’
‘That’s great. Thank you. Thank you so much.’ Fabian could feel one of many loads being lightened, but he barely had time to end the call before his phone vibrated again.
There now, that went really well, don’t you think? But you might want to sterilize that wound so it doesn’t get infected. And put a big plaster over it, in case it starts to bleed. And don’t worry. It’s just a little GPS tracker, so I can keep an eye on you.
Had that bastard actually been in his house, installing his damn cameras? Had he… Fabian did a quick scan of the bathroom, which at first glance at least looked the same as ever. Actually, hold on. He was suddenly unsure. Didn’t the potpourri usually sit two shelves lower? And that painting. Had it always been there?
He had no idea. He’d been so absent lately that Sonja could have repainted half the house and he wouldn’t be sure what was different.
Molander could simply be assuming he’d found and started to dig around the wound between his shoulder blades, of course. If not, he’d somehow installed a hidden camera in their bathroom. A camera that should be placed somewhere high up behind him.
He looked up at the saucer-like ceiling light. Like the one in the bedroom, it had been there when they moved into the house, and he’d never given it much thought. Now, he was struck by how beautiful it was with its elegant glass facets and the brass knob in the middle, holding it in place.
Maybe it was just dust or dead insects, but something was blocking the light at the bottom of the glass bowl. He stepped up on the toilet lid, unscrewed the brass knob and carefully unhooked the glass.
A layer of dust covered the bottom. But he couldn’t see a hidden camera. Or cables, or a microphone. What he did find was a folded piece of yellowed paper, which he picked up and unfolded. A small rusty key fell out of it and landed somewhere on the floor below. But instead of climbing down to look for it, he read the handwritten message.
Father has gone underground
Working on something profound
In no time some things will be missed
In a room that does not exist
A question: when will it be found?
A poem. Or was it a limerick in the form of a riddle? And who’d written it? Matilda? No, it wasn’t her handwriting. On the other hand, she’d changed a lot since the accident, so why not her handwriting, too? It might be her friend Esmaralda. Some kind of game they were playing, perhaps? But the paper was old and yellow and had been buried under a layer of dust.
The first two lines about a father going underground to work could absolutely be referring to him. Over the past month, he’d practically been living in the basement on and off. And sure, he’d been fighting the clock. He still was. But what was that about a room that didn’t exist? Was that his improvised basement study or something else entirely?
His thoughts were pulling in a direction he wanted nothing to do with. But he was powerless to stop them, and they made him dizzy; and for the second time that morning, he had to lean on something to keep his balance – this time, the wall. That was when he spotted it. In the potpourri, just as he’d first thought.
The hidden miniature camera and its transmitter.