The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

been nobody. Nobody out of the ordinary for a small town. Just people starting their days – commutes into Stockholm, school runs – everyday things. No vehicles parked up, the occupants waiting, scouting the streets for him. Which told King that the buildings across from the post office would be the only place from which they would mount surveillance. They would have eyes on for sure. A riflescope maybe, but only as a countermeasure. No, the game was about to commence, and King knew he was not yet walking into an ambush. The answer lay inside the post office, inside the safety deposit box numbered 4478. Soon enough he would know how much he would be played. And whether getting the woman he loved back safely was even a remote possibility.

3

The post office looked like it would have been more fitting in a remote Swedish village. King had noted an old fashioned sweet shop across the road. Perhaps both establishments belonged to a time when Sodertalje was smaller, a quaint township rather than a satellite of Stockholm’s city limits. A place where commuters could afford more than they would in the city. Now that Sodertalje hosted a major industrial complex and commercial town along with housing developments of exponential growth, this part of town would surely change before long.

King stepped inside, closed the door and looked back across the street. He noticed a net curtain move. Encouraging. Only a rank amateur would do that. He waited a moment to see if there was another movement, but really, he knew there wouldn’t be. He would be visible to them, but he would have shown them that he knew he was being watched, and that he had seen them. He stared intently, hoping he would be clear in the lens of a camera or even the sight of a rifle. He hoped they would see his eyes, cold, grey and cruel. They rarely sparkled anymore. They had simply seen too much; the worst that humankind could deliver. He continued to stare, wanted to show he was unafraid.

And he was.

He had crossed the line between self-preservation and recklessness. He would die one day, so it might as well be doing something worthwhile, something personal to him. He had laid on his bed last night, thought of the missions he had played a part in over the years, the risks he had taken. It had all paled into insignificance.

“Kan jag hjälpa dig?”

King broke away, looked at the young woman behind the counter. She was blonde, tall and beautiful. Scandinavian through and through. She wore her hair in plaits with a tight beanie covering the top of her head. “Sorry…” he said.

“Can I help you?” she repeated in English.

King was relieved. He had only visited Sweden once before, briefly. “I have a safety deposit box,” he paused. “Number four-twenty-seven.”

She smiled. “This way,” she said, and she walked out from behind the counter and opened a door to her left. She held it open for him and nodded for him to go through. “There’s a privacy curtain if you wish, but as you can see, it’s quiet today.”

King nodded and walked through. He quickly scanned the room, noted the smoke detector in the centre of the ceiling, two PIR sensors at each end. There would be a camera in one of them for sure. Why else did a room which would be locked when the building was closed need passive infrared sensors?

The woman closed the door behind him and King walked to the end and looked at the numbers. Box 427 was near the far end and King could see that there were no more than fifty boxes in total. He studied the numbering and realised that the first number dictated the row. Row four, box twenty-seven.

King turned his back to the PIR units and the smoke detector the best he could. He studied the door to the box, noted the dial and series of numbers. He knew the combination by heart. Had done since he had read the letter two days earlier.

4478.

He twisted the dial all the way round to 44, back to 78. There was no other way to do it because a single digit four could not be dialled in twice without a reset. The door to the box clicked open and King tentatively opened the door. He looked for signs of a trap – wires, tripping devices leading to an IED – but decided it would be fruitless. If they wanted him dead, they would have had many opportunities by now. They called the shots, held all the cards.

There were two envelopes. King removed them and walked over to the curtained cubicle. He could already tell there was a mobile phone in one of the envelopes – a slimline smartphone. Undoubtedly a burner – a non-contract, prepaid phone with an untraceable number. He glanced upwards and saw another smoke alarm directly above his head. Undoubtedly a hidden camera. He couldn’t reach it to knock it down, so he angled himself the best he could to keep the contents of the envelopes shielded from view. He figured it was good enough and flipped the envelopes over. He discarded the first when he saw the single word scrawled on the front of the second envelope. His heart raced and he took a deep breath to calm himself, quell the adrenalin which now coursed through his veins. One name. Eight letters.

Caroline.

He tore open the envelope and turned over the single photograph. He couldn’t remember having ever felt so nervous. Unsure whether to recoil in disgust and horror or take the photograph as a blessed relief.

Caroline had been beaten. Her blonde hair was matted to her face and her left eye was swollen and blackened. Her lips were swollen too. It was a terrible sight to behold, but the clincher, the relief was in