ELECTRICAL ROOM – NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS read the only sign on the door. No name and no letter box with stickers saying no to circulars. Nothing that suggested anyone lived there. But it took more to fool him. This was where the little Indian man had been registered as recently as a few months ago, before he’d gone to ground with Dunja.
The lock pick’s performance was impeccable this time, too, and the moment Sleizner stepped into the hallway and quietly closed the door behind him, he was sure he was in the right place.
True, the hallway looked much the same as other hallways, a rectangular passageway with doors on both sides. But other than a basket full of threadbare slippers and a coatrack with a see-through raincoat, it was empty. There was virtually no furniture and the bare walls were as empty as you might expect in the flat of a shady hacker who cared about nothing but the light from his screen.
The door on the left stood ajar and led into a windowless bathroom. He turned on the naked bulb above the bathroom mirror, looked around and immediately spotted the top prize on the edge of the bath in the form of a pink Venus razor and a bottle of intimate soap of the exact same brand he’d seen in Dunja’s bathroom during one of his visits.
This was where she lived. Just as he’d thought, Dunja, the Indian man and the Chinese elephant freak had swapped flats.
He dragged his finger along the inside of the bath and noted that it was still wet. He was close. No question about it. With a bit of luck, he might even surprise her in the bedroom before she was dressed.
He picked up the razor, sniffed it and counted about ten pubic hairs stuck between the blades, plus quite a bit of shaving cream. So the little slut was freshly shaved.
He extracted the dark pubic hairs from the razor with a pair of tweezers and dropped them into a small sealable plastic bag. You never knew when they might come in handy. Then he stepped back into the hallway, popped his head into a messy kitchen whose grimy windows looked out on a smaller side street and turned to the closed door opposite.
There were no signs on it, nothing specific to indicate it was a bedroom door. And yet he was completely convinced it was. He just knew, and why wouldn’t he? Until now, his gut had been right at every juncture. Everything was how he’d thought it would be.
He went right up to the door, administered a few puffs of mouth spray and waited until every muscle in his body was tense and poised, then he opened the door as quietly and quickly as he could and entered.
As expected, it was a bedroom, with an unmade bed and a nightstand topped with a stack of books. Clothes were piled on a chair in one corner. Blouses, a red bra and a pair of knickers that unfortunately smelled clean, so he didn’t bother pocketing them.
A clothes rack with a small number of hangers stood along one wall and each item of clothing on it looked like it had been purchased at some moth-eaten second-hand dump. There were tattered dark jeans, a few sets of gym clothes and tops with different patterns, each more hysterical than the next, which was apparently part of her new feminist look, along with a shaved head, bright red lipstick and big earrings.
He pulled out his phone and took a picture of each piece of clothing as well as the trainers and the heavy boots on the floor. Then he walked over to the nightstand to take a closer look at the books, which all seemed to be about bugging and surveillance. That was concerning, but worse was the receipt lying next to them, which revealed that they had all been purchased at Bog & Idé in Holbæk, of all places. That could be a coincidence, obviously, but something told him he should be seriously worried.
A sudden gust from the window, which was open a crack, interrupted his reverie. Somewhere a door had opened, creating a cross-breeze that subsided as abruptly as it had arisen. He hurried back into the hallway, only to discover that it was as deserted as before. Had the little bitch really managed to sneak out behind his back? Or had a window been opened? There was, after all, one last closed door at the far end of the hallway.
He walked up to it, pressed his ear against it and thought he could hear someone walking around whistling on the other side. So this was when it was going to happen. The moment he’d been looking forward to for months was finally here.
The door seemed to open of its own accord the moment he put his hand on the handle, with the effect that his entrance ended up not being the surprise he’d envisaged. He literally staggered into the room and almost fell over before managing to right himself.
The room was considerably larger than all the others put together, and apart from a single removal box in the middle of the floor, it was virtually empty. Or, more accurately, emptied. But that wasn’t what made the ground disappear from under his feet. Nor was it that there was no sign of Dunja. It was the realization of what the room had once been.
The walls were lined with desks, emptied of computers, screens and everything else. What was left were cut cables, stray extension leads and a handful of soldering irons, and on one of the desks, a small transistor radio playing the whistled melody he recognized from a Tarantino film.
This had been a proper command centre. He could see it. The computers, screens and strange boxes with blinking, multicoloured diodes. The wire harnesses, exposed circuit boards and control panels. All to get under his skin and hit him where it hurt the most.
Goddam fucking hell… The words echoed through his mind. Goddam bloody fucking shit hell… He had to sit down on the floor in the middle of the room to keep from falling over and try to slow his heart rate by breathing like he’d learned at yoga.
When he stood back up, he realized he was in a different building than the one he’d originally entered, and that there was a door at the other end of the room. He walked over to it, opened it and discovered it was in fact another front door leading straight into a stairwell that would take him down to the side street. This, too, said Electrical room – No unauthorized access. Was this how she had escaped while he was in the bedroom? He could certainly feel the same cross-breeze as he had done then.
He closed the door and looked around the abandoned room. They must have known he was coming. There was no other explanation. Somehow, they’d bloody well figured out he was going to show up today, right now.
He’d thought he was a step ahead. That he was in control, with a firm grasp on the tiller. When in reality, the opposite was true. Pathetic, was what it was. So goddam fucking pathetic.
The only silver lining was the removal box on the floor. Granted, it could be them taunting him again. After all, this was Dunja Hougaard, a goddam fucking bitch cunt. He prudently studied the box from every angle before finally bending down and opening it.
The sight of the piles of circuit boards, cables and disassembled mobile phones was enough to let him know they’d been so rushed they simply hadn’t managed to take the box with them. Whatever it was, it wasn’t something they’d want him to have.
He picked up one of the phones, which was connected to a circuit board via a number of electrodes and thin wires. That meant nothing to him, but there was bound to be someone back at headquarters who could explain it to him. Deeper down was a small, resealable plastic bag containing ten or so SIM cards. At least he knew what they were for.
It was the eight digits, written in felt-tip on the bag, that finally made the penny drop and for the second time in just a few minutes, he had to sit down in order not to fall down.
They could have been any eight digits. But they weren’t. Together, they formed a number. His phone number.