Free The Falling Detective by Christoffer Carlsson

‘No one is going to find out.’
    1601: (Long silence) ‘I know someone who will.’
    Me: ‘Who?’
    Then he gave me the name. I am going to contact him as soon as possible, but I daren’t call or email him. I doubt he would even answer if he knew it was me.
    Two days later, he writes another entry. It might be about the same thing, and the same person, but Heber’s notes are vague:
    9/12
    Spoke to him, tried to persuade him to agree to an interview so that we can talk. He refused. I don’t know what to do.
    10/12
    1599 tells me one thing, 1601 another. I don’t know which one is right. Maybe they both are? There’s no time for further investigations, and I don’t know whether I should go to the police anyway. If I do I’ll be breaking my word to 1599. I can’t. I still haven’t got hold of H.
    11/12
    I managed to get hold of H in the end, at Cairo. I just went and sat myself in a corner with a coffee and waited, hoping that he might turn up. I was in two minds, unsure what I was about to say and how much I was going to tell him. This is too big to carry alone, the consequences are too serious. I don’t which of the scenarios is the right one, and I don’t know how much anyone else knows.
    After about an hour he showed up and I took him to one side and asked if he knew about it. On the subject of — I didn’t tell him who was going to do it (I didn’t dare to, out of ethical considerations), just what the target was. I wanted to see his reaction.
    I could tell that he’d heard about what 1599 told me, but the fact that I knew caught him off guard. That was obvious. He refused to say any more. I asked if he could check the facts, and get back to me. I was worried, and ashamed for having broken 1601’s confidentiality. I had promised not to tell anyone.
    H didn’t answer my question. He left Cairo.
    12/12
    Will meet 1599, to talk. Might tell them what I’ve heard. I don’t know. We’re meeting at our usual spot at 2230. I’m nervous and unsettled, hesitant. Haven’t got much done today.
    I find the list of interviewees and look up 1601. The other column contains abbreviations about the organisations the subjects belong to, yet 1601 has no code. He’s not the only one. I stare at the list, trying to decipher it, to work out whether it is significant. It might be. Who or what is hidden by ‘—’ ? And who is H? A regular at Café Cairo, but not one of his interviewees. In that case, he would have had a number. Could H be an initial?
    There’s a knock at the door, two sharp taps. Birck. He opens the door and strides in without waiting for a response, and I grab a ring-binder from the shelf behind me, place it on top of the notes, and pretend to be looking for something.
    â€˜Busy?’ says Birck.
    â€˜On my way out, actually.’
    â€˜Which is why you’re checking …’ Birck cocks his head to read the folder’s spine. ‘ Recovering Evidence from Micro Computers. Renewed and revised.1980 .’
    â€˜I was feeling nostalgic.’
    â€˜Were you even born then?’
    Birck pulls out a chair and sits down, his broad shoulders slumped underneath his dark jacket.
    â€˜Olausson,’ he says eventually, gazing at something invisible somewhere above my desk. ‘We need to talk about him.’
    â€˜Okay.’
    â€˜After the meeting, I went for a dump and the walls are pretty thin, for better or worse — mostly worse, I suppose. Anyway, I heard someone in the next cubicle, someone who was on the phone but left the taps running at the same time.’
    â€˜Okay.’
    â€˜I couldn’t hear that much of what was being said, but I think I managed to pick up the end: “I just came from a meeting with them, one of them shouldn’t be a problem, Bark, or whatever his name is. It’s the other one I’m not sure about. But I think he’s got an