I'm Travelling Alone (8 page)

Chapter 13

Mia Krüger sat on the rock watching the sunset over Hitra for the last time.

The seventeenth of April. One day to go. Tomorrow, she would rejoin Sigrid.

She felt tired. Not tired in the sense that she needed sleep, but tired of everything. Of life. Of humanity. Of everything that had happened. She had found a kind of peace before Holger had shown her the photographs in the folder but, once he had left, it had crept over her again. This vile feeling.

Evil.

She took a swig from the bottle she had brought with her and pulled the knitted beanie further over her ears. It had grown colder now; spring had not come early, after all. It had only tricked everyone into thinking it was coming. Mia was pleased that she had the bottle to warm her up. This was not how she had imagined her last day. She had planned to cram as much as she could into her last twenty-four hours of life. The birds, the trees, the sea, the light. Have a day off from self-medicating so that she could feel things, be aware of herself, one last time. It had not worked out that way. After Holger had left her, her desire for sensory deprivation had only increased. She had drunk more. Taken more pills. Woken up without realizing that she had been asleep. Fallen asleep without realizing she had been awake. She had promised herself not to care too much about the contents of the file. Stupid, obviously – when had she ever been able to distance herself from anything in these cases? Her job. Well, it might be a job for other people, but not for Mia Krüger. Each case affected her far too deeply. They reached right inside her soul, as if it were her own story, as if she were the victim. Kidnapped, raped, beaten with iron bars, burned with cigarettes, killed by a drug overdose, only six years old, hanged from a tree with a skipping rope.

Why wasn’t Pauline Olsen’s name on the schoolbooks?

When everything else had been planned down to the last detail?

Sod it.

She had tried blanking out the image of the little girl hanging from the tree, but she could not get it out of her head. Everything seemed so staged. So theatrical. Almost like a game. A kind of message. But who for? For whoever found her? The police? She had trawled through her memories to discover if the name Toni had cropped up in any case she had been involved with, but had found nothing. This was exactly the kind of thing Mia used to be so brilliant at, but she no longer seemed to be able to function. And yet there was something here, something she could not quite put her finger on, and it irritated her. Mia watched the sun sink into the sea and tried to concentrate. A message? For the police? An old case? A cold case? There were only a few unsolved cases in her career history, thank God. Even so, one or two still troubled her. A rich, elderly lady had been found dead in her flat on Bogstadveien, but they had been unable to prove that it was murder, even though Mia, personally, was fairly sure that one of the daughters was responsible for the old lady’s death. She could not remember the name Toni in connection with that investigation. They had helped Ringerike Police in a missing person’s inquiry some years back. A baby had disappeared from the maternity ward, a Swedish man had claimed responsibility, killed himself, but the baby had never been found. The case had been shelved, even though Mia had fought to keep it active. No Toni in that investigation either, not so far as she could remember. Pauline. Six years. Hang on – wasn’t it six years since that baby disappeared? Mia drained the bottle and let her eyes rest on the horizon while she tried to guide her gaze inwards. Backwards. Six years back. There was something here. She could almost taste it. But it refused to rise to the surface.

Damn.

Mia rummaged around in her trouser pockets for more pills, but found none. She had forgotten to bring more. Her medication was laid out on the dining table now. Everything she had left. Plenty of it. Ready for use. She had imagined waiting until dawn, until the light came. Better to travel in the light, had been her thinking; if I travel in darkness, perhaps I’ll end up in darkness – but right now she didn’t care. All she had to do was wait until the clock passed midnight. When the seventeenth of April became the eighteenth.

Come to me, Mia, come.

It was not the ending she had imagined. She got up and hurled the empty bottle angrily into the sea. She regretted it immediately: she should not litter; this rule had stayed with her since her childhood. The beautiful garden. Her parents. Her grandmother. Instead, she should have written a message and put it in the bottle. Done something beautiful in her last few hours on earth. Helped someone in need. Solved a case. She wanted to go back to the house, but she could not get her legs to move. She stayed where she was, hugging herself, freezing, on the rocks.

Toni J. W. Smith. Toni J. W. Smith. Toni J. W. Smith. Toni J. W. Smith. Pauline. No, not Pauline. Toni J. W. Smith.

Oh, hell.

Mia Krüger suddenly woke up. As did her head, her legs, her arms, her blood, her breathing, her senses.

Toni J. W. Smith.

Of course. Of course. Of course. Oh, dear Lord, why had she not seen this earlier? It was so obvious. As clear as day. Mia ran towards the house – she tripped in the darkness, but got back on her feet – stormed into the living room without closing the door behind her. She continued into the kitchen. She knelt down by the cupboard below the utility sink and started going through the bin. This was where she had tossed it, wasn’t it? The mobile he had left for her.

In case you change your mind.

She found the mobile in the bin and rummaged around for the scrap of paper which had accompanied it. A yellow Post-it note with a pin code and Holger’s number. She went back to the living room, could hardly wait now, turned on the mobile. Entered the code on the small screen with trembling fingers. Of course. Of course. No wonder it didn’t add up. Everything had to add up. And it did. Toni J. W. Smith. Of course. She was an idiot.

Mia rang Holger’s number and waited impatiently for him to pick up. The mobile went to voicemail, but she rang the number again. And again. And again, until she finally heard Holger’s sleepy voice on the other end.

‘Mia?’ Holger yawned.

‘I got it,’ Mia said breathlessly.

‘What have you got? What time is it?’

‘Who cares what time it is? I’ve got it.’

‘What?’

‘Toni J. W. Smith.’

‘Seriously? What is it?’

‘I think that J. W. is short for Joachim Wicklund. The Swedish suspect in the Hønefoss case. Do you remember him?’

‘Of course I do,’ Munch mumbled.

‘As for Toni Smith,’ Mia continued. ‘I think it’s an anagram:
It’s not him
. Joachim Wicklund didn’t do it. It’s the same perpetrator, Holger. As in the Hønefoss case.’

Munch was silent for a long time. Mia could practically hear the cogs turn in his brain. It was almost too far out to be true, but even so. It had to be an anagram.

‘Don’t you think?’ Mia said.

‘But that’s insane,’ Munch said at length. ‘Worst thing is, I think you might be right. So, are you coming?’

‘Yes,’ Mia replied. ‘But this case only. Then I quit. I have other things to do.’

‘Of course. It’s up to you,’ Munch said.

‘Are we back in Mariboesgate?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll catch the plane tomorrow.’

‘Great. See you there.’

‘You will.’

‘Drive carefully, will you?’

‘I’m always careful, Holger.’

‘You’re never careful, Mia.’

‘Screw you, Holger.’

‘I love you, too, Mia. Good to have you back. See you tomorrow.’

Mia ended the call and stood for a moment, smiling cautiously to herself. Now feeling calm, she walked into the living room and looked at all the pills she had lined up on the dining table.

Come to me, Mia, come.

In her mind she apologized to her twin sister. Sigrid would have to wait a little longer. Mia Krüger had a job to do first.

Chapter 14

Gabriel Mørk felt vaguely twitchy as he waited to be met in Mariboesgate. As far as he knew, Oslo Police had its headquarters in Grønland, so that was where he had expected to go, but it turned out not to be the case. He had received a short text message.
Go to Mariboesgate. Will pick you up at 11 a.m.
No sender. Nothing. Strange, really. Come to think it, his whole week had been strange – entertaining up to a point, sure – but Gabriel Mørk still didn’t know just what exactly he had signed up for.

A job. He had never had one of those before. Reporting to a boss. Working as part of a team. Joining the real world. Getting up in the morning. Becoming a responsible member of society. Not something this twenty-four-year-old was used to.

Gabriel Mørk liked staying up at night when the rest of the world was asleep. Much easier to think then. With the dark night outside and just the light from the screens glowing in his bedsit. Calling it a bedsit was a slight embellishment. Gabriel Mørk was always reluctant to admit that he was still living at home. Yes, he had his own entrance and his own bathroom, but his mother lived in the same house. It was not very rock ’n’ roll and definitely not something he would bring up on the rare occasions he met new people or bumped into old schoolfriends. Not that it was a problem. He knew several hackers who did the same. Who still lived at home. But even so.

However, his situation was about to change. Completely out of the blue. It was all happening a little too quickly. Or was this what he had been waiting for his whole life? He had met her online only seven months ago, and already she was pregnant. They were looking for a place together and now he was standing in the street having got himself a job working for the police. Gabriel Mørk had never felt that he was very good at anything, except computers – then, few were better than him – but not in other aspects of life. At school he had kept mostly to himself. Blushed whenever a girl had come over to invite him to join in something. During sixth form, he had spent his evenings at home while his classmates had drunk themselves senseless at Tryvann. He had signed up for some computer courses after sixth form, but never attended any lectures. What would be the point of that? He already knew all there was to know.

He glanced around nervously, but there was no sign of anyone coming to meet him. Perhaps it had all been a joke? Working for the police? At first he had thought some of his cyber friends were messing with him. He knew a couple of people who would think a prank like this was hilarious. Wind people up. Hack their medical records. Hack solicitors’ offices. Send messages to strangers telling them they were pregnant. False paternity claims. Wreak as much havoc as possible. Gabriel Mørk was not that kind of hacker, but he knew many who were. It was possible that someone was setting him up, but he didn’t think so. The guy who had called him had seemed very credible. They had got his name from GCHQ in Great Britain. MI6. The intelligence service. Like most of his acquaintances, Gabriel Mørk had had a go at Canyoucrackit?, a challenge which had been posted on the Internet the previous autumn. To ordinary people, it was a seemingly unbreakable code. One hundred and sixty pairs of numbers and letters with a clock counting down to zero to increase the tension. He had not been the first to solve the code, but neither had he been very far behind. The first had been a Russian, a black hacker, who had cracked the code only a few hours after it had been uploaded to the Net. Gabriel Mørk knew that the Russian had not cracked the code itself, he had merely reversed engineered it by hacking the website,
canyoucrackit.co.uk
, and found the HTML file, which was supposed to contain the solution. Kind of fun, but not really the point of the challenge.

Gabriel Mørk had spotted straightaway that it was machine code, X86, and that it implemented the RC4 algorithm. It had not been a piece of cake – the creators of the code had put in place numerous obstacles, such as hiding a block of data inside a PNG file, so it was not enough merely to decrypt the numbers, but despite that it had taken him only a couple of nights. A fun challenge. The solution to the code itself was not quite as entertaining. The whole thing had turned out to be a PR stunt on behalf of GCHQ, a section of the British intelligence service, a test, a job application.
If you can break this code you are smart enough to work for us.

He had entered his name and explained how he had cracked the code. Why not? He might as well. He had received a friendly reply that, yes, his solution was correct but, unfortunately, only British nationals could apply for jobs with the service.

Gabriel Mørk had thought nothing more of it. Not until his mobile had rung last Friday. Today was Thursday, and here he was with his computer under his arm, meeting a stranger before starting some kind of job. Working for the police.

‘Gabriel Mørk?’

Gabriel almost jumped, and turned around.

‘Yes?’

‘Hi, my name is Kim.’

The man who had spoken his name stuck out his hand. Gabriel had no idea where he had appeared from; he looked very ordinary, perhaps that would explain it. Somehow, he had been expecting flashing blue lights and sirens, or a uniform – at the very least, a brusque tone – but the man now standing in front of him could have been anyone. He was practically invisible. Ordinary trousers, ordinary shoes, an ordinary jumper in colours which did not stand out from the crowd in any way, and then it struck Gabriel that this was precisely the point. He was a plain-clothes police officer. He was trained to blend in. Not to stand out. Suddenly to appear out of nowhere.

‘Please follow me. It’s this way,’ said the man who was called Kim, and led Gabriel across the street to a yellow office block.

The police officer produced a card outside the front door and entered a code. The door opened. Gabriel followed the man to the lift: same procedure here, you needed a card to operate the lift as well. Gabriel watched the man furtively as he entered the code in the lift. He didn’t know exactly what to say, or if he should say anything at all. He had never had any dealings with the police. Nor had he ever taken a lift which required a code. The police officer called Kim looked completely at ease, as if he did this all the time. Met new, unknown colleagues in the street. Entered codes in lifts. The two men were the same height, but the police officer was of a slimmer build and, despite his invisibility, he looked in great physical shape. He had short, dark hair and had not shaved recently. Gabriel was unable to tell if this was on purpose or whether he had just not got round to it. He did not want to stare, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye how the police officer suppressed a small yawn, so it was probably the latter. Long days. Heavy caseload would be his guess.