‘Good cameras, good lenses, ultra-HD,’ Johan nods approvingly.
Joona lays out a map showing the location of every camera in the Foreign Minister’s property, numbered one to thirteen.
‘OK, let’s burn some rubber,’ Johan mutters as he types commands with a rapid-fire clatter of keys.
The row of computers begins to click, fans whirr into life and diodes start to flash.
‘Up comes the underworld … slowly but surely,’ the analyst says, tugging at his short beard.
A grey image appears on the large screen, like iron filings gathering around shifting magnetic fields.
‘It’s too old,’ Johan whispers.
Several layers of flickering shadows appear, and they can make out parts of the garden. Joona sees two ghostly silhouettes walk down the drive. One is the Foreign Minister, and the other is Janus Mickelsen of the Security Police.
‘Janus,’ Joona says.
‘The Foreign Minister was his first deployment with the Security Police,’ Johan murmurs as he types new commands into the main computer.
The image disappears, the house is just about visible through the grey fog, and the snow-covered garden flickers into view.
‘The garland’s still folded up, but we can start pulling the gingerbread men apart now … June fourth, June third, June second …’
Pale shapes glide to and fro at a rapid pace, passing straight through each other. It looks like an X-ray, with the outlines of figures moving inside one another, through cars reversing and driving into the garage.
‘May fifteenth, fourteenth … And here we have thirteen lovely versions of the last day of April,’ Johan J?nson says softly.
With the footage running at eight times normal speed, they watch the Foreign Minister and his wife leave the house at 7.30 in separate cars. A landscaping company appears two hours later. One man cuts the hedge and another blows leaves. The postman drives past, and at 2.00 a boy on a bike stops and looks into the garden as he scratches his leg. At 7.40 the first car returns to the double garage and lights go on inside the house. Half an hour later the second car arrives, and the garage door closes. Around 11.00 the lights start to go off, and by midnight everything is dark. Then nothing happens until 3.00 a.m., when Rex Müller climbs over the fence and weaves his way across the lawn.
‘Now let’s check the cameras in real-time, one by one,’ Joona says, moving closer.
‘OK,’ Johan says, tapping a new command. ‘We’ll start with number one.’
On the large screen they see a perfectly sharp image of the front door and a view of the illuminated garden down towards the gate. Every so often pink petals from the flowering Japanese cherry trees drift down.
87
After three hours they’ve looked through that night’s footage from all thirteen cameras. Thirteen different angles of a sleeping house on the morning of May 1 between 3.36 and 3.55. Four cameras captured Rex during those nine minutes, from the moment he puts his bottle down in the middle of the road and clambers over the black iron railings, until he leaves the garden and delightedly ‘discovers’ a bottle of wine in the middle of the road.
‘Nothing,’ Johan sighs.
Rex is in the grounds for nine minutes, and during that time there is no sign of anyone else in any of the recordings, no vehicles on the road, no movement behind the curtains.
‘But he saw the murderer,’ Joona says. ‘He must have, his description matches what other witnesses have said.’
‘Maybe it was a different day,’ Johan mutters.
‘No, this was the night it happened … He saw the murderer, even if we can’t,’ Joona says.
‘We can’t see what he saw – all we’ve got are these cameras.’
‘If only we knew exactly when he saw him … Start with camera seven, that’s the one pointing at the pool.’
Once again they see Rex on the edge of the screen as he stumbles onto the deck at the outer limit of the lens’s distorted perspective.
He walks over to the side of the pool, sways for a while, then opens his fly and urinates in the water, before weaving over to the navy-blue garden furniture and letting his urine cascade over the recliners and table.
He buttons his trousers, turns towards the garden and looks at something. He lurches slightly, then walks back towards the house, where he stops in front of the patio door and looks into the living room. He leans against the railing, then disappears out of shot.
‘What’s he looking at just after he zips his fly? There’s something in the garden,’ Joona says.
‘You want me to enlarge his face?’
On the screen Rex moves backwards towards the pool, circles the furniture and turns his back to the camera.
When he starts to move forward again, Johan zooms in on his face and follows it as he urinates on the table. He rests his chin on his chest, closes his eyes and lets out a sigh before zipping his trousers.
Rex turns towards the garden, sees something and smiles lazily to himself before his face slips offscreen as he loses his footing.
‘No, it’s not there … keep going,’ Joona says.
Rex turns to face the house and starts to walk towards it, and Johan zooms in even closer. Rex’s drunk face fills the whole screen: bloodshot eyes, bottom lip dark with wine, stubble starting to grow out.
They see him stop in front of the patio doors and look into the living room. He opens his mouth slightly, as if he realises he’s been spotted, before the look in his eyes becomes concerned, scared, and he turns away and disappears.
‘There! That’s when he sees him,’ Joona says urgently. ‘Run it again. We need to take another look.’
Johan J?nson makes a loop of the twenty seconds in front of the glass door, when Rex sees something and starts to smile before becoming scared.
‘What do you see?’ Joona whispers.
They zoom out and try to follow his gaze. He seems to be staring directly into the living room.
Without breaking the loop, they switch to camera six and see Rex from behind and slightly off to one side. His face is reflected in the glass, as if he’s looking at his own reflection.
‘Is he in there?’ Joona whispers.
The shift in Rex’s face, from bemusement to fear, is visible in the reflected image. Through the glass the living-room furniture looks like indistinct shadows.
‘Is there someone standing in there?’ Johan says, leaning forward.
‘Try camera five.’
The fifth camera is positioned outside the dining room, in the part of the house that’s at an angle to the rest of the building. It covers part of the living room from the outside, as well as the entire window, and looks towards the corner where camera six is mounted.
Johan zooms in.
The twenty-second-long clip repeats over and over in its loop, but everything inside the darkened dining room is completely still: the chandelier above the table, its reflection on the tabletop, the chairs neatly tucked underneath, a pair of men’s socks on the floor.
‘There’s no one there – what the hell is he looking at?’
‘Zoom in under the sofa,’ Joona says.
Johan pulls back, then moves down to the base of the lamp, and follows the cable under the sofa.
There’s something lying there. Johan gulps and makes the picture brighter, but loses the contrast. The milky darkness is almost as impenetrable as the black was. The picture slowly pans right, revealing a collection of pale tassels by the leg of the sofa.
‘It’s just a rolled-up rug,’ Joona says.
‘I almost got scared there,’ Johan smiles.
‘There’s only one possibility left,’ Joona says. ‘If the killer isn’t inside the room, then Rex is seeing him reflected in the window.’
‘He’s seriously drunk, though, so it could be nothing,’ Johan says tentatively.
‘Go back to camera six.’
Once again the screen shows Rex from behind, in front of the glass door to the living room. Time after time, the expression on his face changes from surprise to fear.
‘What’s scaring him?’
‘He can’t see anything but himself.’
‘No, that’s the Venus effect,’ Joona replies, leaning closer to the screen.