He shrugged.
The lump of ice she had had in her chest all morning suddenly felt twice the size. She wanted to protest, scream at him that he was wrong, that he was an idiot. That all this could be fixed …
But instead she slowly turned round. Then gave him a weary look over one shoulder.
She left the room, closing the door carefully behind her.
Her things fitted in a plastic bag.
A couple of files with her payslips, employment contract and various other formal papers. The old police cap that shed kept hanging on the wall, along with a couple of framed photographs from the time she was training to become a bodyguard. She put the pot-plant Micke had given her when she started in the bin, then changed her mind and put it back on the windowsill.
All of her guards were out on jobs, and the office staff had long since gone home. She picked up the bag and headed downstairs.
First to the vault, where she locked her gun away, then she emptied her locker. All that remained was leaving her keys and passcard in the personnel departments pigeon-hole. But instead of going back upstairs she went onto the street through the basement door and started to walk towards the underground station.
She felt in her pockets for her travel card and found it in her inside pocket. But when she pulled it out the business card that Uncle Tage had given her outside the flat came with it. A rectangle of thick white card with a large royal coat of arms in gold, red and blue to one side of it.
Followed by a telephone number and an email address, but, oddly enough, no mobile number.
Then, on the back, written in blue biro:
For some reason the short message put her in a slightly better mood.
He followed the brick wall for a while until he came to an opening.
Even though the place hadnt been a prison for more than thirty years, the old institutional buildings still looked really creepy, especially now, in the middle of the night. There was an Arkham Asylum vibe that was hard to shake off. The large, walled gravel yard he was standing in had once been the prison courtyard. Somewhere way ahead he could hear music mixed with the sound of traffic on the Western Bridge high above.
A few weary streetlamps in the carpark over in one corner had company from a couple of lights in the windows of the low buildings straight ahead, which was where the music seemed to be coming from.
But all the windows of the huge building to his right were dark, and when he walked up to the door he discovered why.
The Youth Hostel is closed for refurbishment.
See you again in the autumn!
Shit! Hed been looking forward to a shower and a night in a proper bed.
But he wasnt entirely out of luck. Hed spotted a portacabin and a couple of toolsheds at one end of the building, and when he went round the building he found a temporary plywood door.
Two metal catches and a simple padlock were all there was to keep trespassers out, and he forced them open easily with the help of a brick.
Inside the door was a pitch-black corridor that smelled of brick dust, but at least his trusty lighter gave him a bit of light.
A few metres in he reached the large cell block. It looked almost exactly the way he had imagined.
The faint light of the summer night was falling through the skylights high up in the roof. It had to be twenty metres high. In between were several open landings lined with cell doors.
To the right was a metal staircase, and he briefly considered climbing up to look for a bed straight away. Then he realized that he really did have to clean himself up first.
His stomach was still cramping, and in spite of the involuntary bath he could still smell the shit in his trousers. In other words, a shower was priority number one.
He carried on through the ground floor, holding the lighter high enough to get a better idea of where he was.
Obviously the building was now a youth hostel. But they had retained the prison atmosphere, and in the darkness that feeling was intensified many times over. Hundreds, presumably thousands of poor bastards must have done time here over the years.
Cramped cells, thick stone walls, heavy bars over the windows. Hard labour six days a week on a meagre diet of bread and water.
Fuck, this was a long way from his own experience of prison, and that had been bad enough …
A sudden sound made him jump. A metallic clang from somewhere in the darkness off to his right.
He stopped for a moment, trying to move the lighter so he could see better. But the room was far too large and the flickering patch of light was quickly swallowed up by the thick darkness.
He gulped and couldnt help shuddering. Hardly surprising, really, seeing as the place really was fucking creepy, and given that he was soaked through and had shat himself.
The sound must have come from a fuse-box, or something like that.
Just to be on the safe side he waited another minute, but everything was quiet.
Time to find that shower …
A couple of metres away he could just make out the shape of a metal sign sticking out from one of the thick walls. He raised the light to read what it said:
Washroom
Yes!
She put her bags down inside the door and went into the living room without switching the light on.
It smelled dank.
Last winter they had talked about whether she should get rid of her flat. Mickes two-room flat was both bigger and closer to the city centre, and with the money they made from the sale theyd be able to buy the one-room flat next door and knock through.
But she had procrastinated and avoided the subject long enough for the neighbouring flat to be sold. Maybe shed already had a suspicion that it wasnt going to work out, and that she was going to need a backup plan.
She opened the window and let in some cool night air. Then she tipped out all the belongings she had picked up from his flat onto the bed.
A failed relationship, boiled down to a toothbrush, a few crumpled clothes, a couple of dog-eared books and a few other random possessions.
Fired and dumped on the same day. Nice work, Normén …
Weirdly, losing her job hurt more. Getting fired was somehow the ultimate failure. She and Micke had been on the slide for a very long time, he had actually been right about that. There were reasons why she had preferred the time when they dating without any fuss, then later when she was going behind his back and seeing Tobbe Lundh. All the security and predictability that most other people seemed to crave made her skin crawl. Kept her awake at night.
And the happy pills hadnt been much help.
Over the past few months she had tried to find new ways of handling her restlessness. More time in the gym and the firing range, and, most of all, more work. Loads of work.
But that had all just been a way of postponing the inevitable. She simply wasnt in love with Micke any more, and maybe she never had been.
Not properly …
A shame, because he was a nice bloke, really nice.
But if she looked in the rear-view mirror, nice blokes didnt really seem to be her thing. According to convention, she was now supposed to shut herself away in her flat, put on her dressing-gown, eat Rocky Road straight from the tub and fast-forward through ten seasons of some American sitcom.
But what she felt was mostly just weary disappointment mixed with a few spoonfuls of relief. Besides, she didnt have time to feel sorry for herself.
The safe deposit box, Uncle Tage / André Pellas, and everything she had seen up in Henkes flat – the whole lot was probably connected somehow, and she needed to work out how.
She opened the bathroom cabinet, found the right box and took her evening medication.
Then she got the business card out of her pocket and fetched her phone.
The pills, the wet packet of cigarettes, lighter, the key to his flat and a roll of soaking wet notes from his secret stash …
He lined the objects up on the windowsill in the spacious shower room. The tiles on the walls reflected some of the light from outside, enough for him to get his bearings without the lighter. In one jacket pocket he found the pay-as-you-go mobile he had been given by the gang in the vets clinic.
Shit, he thought hed ditched it in the park.
But so what, the cheap plastic gadget was full of water now and bound to be stone-dead.
He turned on the shower, and to his surprise discovered that there was hot water. After rinsing off the worst of the dirt and mess, he moved on to cleaning his clothes.
His underpants were ruined, there was no point even trying to rescue them. But he scrubbed his jeans hard on the rough floor until most of the shit was gone.
The jacket and t-shirt were easier, and he draped everything across some hooks in the corner of the room to dry. When he was finished he sat on the floor as the water continued to rain down on him.
He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. The spiral of thoughts in his head slowly began to slow down.
Spinning sloooower
and
sloooooooweeer …
You were very easy to find …
The voice came out of nowhere.
He flinched, hitting his head on the tiles and making himself dizzy.
Then he tried to stagger to his feet as his heart raced and his brain tried to work out where he was and who the hell had crept up on him while he was asleep.
Not very impressive, is he?
The mans voice again, evidently addressing someone else. HP squinted at the door where the voices seemed to be coming from.
Instinctively he moved his hands to cover his crotch. The gruff voice sounded familiar.
Two dark figures emerged from the darkness and he took a step back.
Here, we brought some new clothes …
He definitely recognized that voice.