The Blinded Man

by Arne Dahl

  ‘This morning – was it really this morning? – my daughter said that this … blemish on my cheek looked like the astrological sign for Pluto. What does that mean?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about that,’ she says, coming over to touch his cheek. ‘Maybe your daughter is right. Lately I’ve thought it looked like a hobo sign.’

  ‘Have you really been thinking about my blemish?’ He closes his eyes.

  ‘Pluto.’ She takes her hand away. ‘It can signify a lot of different things. Willpower, for instance. But also a lack of consideration.’

  ‘Hmm. Really?’

  ‘Wait. I’m not done. The sign of Pluto also signifies an individual’s ability to handle change. And catharsis, the final purification.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ Hjelm’s eyes are still closed. ‘But does it really look like the sign for Pluto? What do you think?’

  Again he feels the light caress of her hand. He keeps his eyes shut.

  ‘I think it looks like you have an erection,’ she says lightly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says without feeling sorry. ‘And the blemish?’

  ‘It’s disappeared in the rest of the crimson on your face.’

  He opens his eyes. She’s now sitting on the edge of the bed a couple of yards away, looking at him with an inscrutable expression through the dim light.

  ‘It’s the only way to make it disappear.’ He sits up. ‘I have to ask you about the last time in Växjö. Did anything really happen?’

  She laughs. ‘The masculine need to demystify everything,’ she says. ‘You can’t live with uncertainty, can you?’

  ‘But believe me,’ he says, ‘the mist is still there.’

  ‘I interpreted your wish,’ she says. ‘That question about Anna-Clara Hummelstrand’s Gallic lover … I assumed you’d fantasised about me masturbating, that you had a certain preference for masturbating women.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ He’d hit the mark. ‘But how did you get into my hotel room?’

  ‘You know very well you left the door open.’

  ‘So the whole thing was about fulfilling my wish? But what about you? You didn’t look as if you were suffering.’

  ‘One person’s pleasure is shared by the other. As long as there’s no coercion, no forcing the other person. It’s all a matter of being viewed as a human being.’

  A warmth spreads between them. Kerstin continues, her voice a bit hoarse: ‘Have you interpreted my wish?’

  He closes his eyes to think. Images of her fly past, phrases, words. He is feverishly searching for clues, hints, glances. He merely sees her with her feet propped up on the desk and her hand inside her panties.

  He feels like a little boy. ‘Give me a clue,’ he squeaks.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ she says curtly.

  He takes them off. He stands there naked, confused. He’s holding his hands in front of his genitals.

  ‘Take your hands away and put them on top of your head,’ she says. She’s still lying on the bed, fully dressed, with her hands clasped behind her head.

  He’s standing there in front of her. His penis is sticking straight up, strutting with nowhere to go. Without ever getting there.

  ‘Come here and stand next to the bed, near my feet.’

  He walks over there, with his hands on top of his head. His penis sways back and forth as he moves. His knees are resting against the edge of the bed. His penis is sticking out over the bed. She comes closer. She studies it carefully without touching it.

  ‘The scourge of woman,’ she says without taking her eyes off his cock, ‘and most of us have fallen victim to it in one way or another. Me, I was raped when I was fifteen, and then over and over again by my dear husband, the cop, although he had no idea about it afterwards, of course.’

  Hjelm feels himself going limp, all at once.

  ‘Come here and lie down,’ she says.

  He lies down next to her and closes his eyes. She lightly touches the blemish on his cheek. He lets everything happen.

  ‘Can you forgive me?’ she asks him softly. She sounds like a little girl.

  He nods; his eyes are still closed. He hasn’t stopped feeling like a little boy.

  ‘Look,’ she says in the same bright voice. ‘Now the blemish looks like a tiny cross.’

  He smiles and understands.

  And yet understands nothing.

  But it feels good.

  29

  THEY WERE EATING breakfast in the hotel restaurant when Chavez’s mobile phone rang. Jorge answered it, then didn’t say a word, and his face turned noticeably pale. Hjelm recognised that kind of phone call. He could guess what it was about.

  Another murder.

  Had they committed a serious breach of duty by neglecting to report immediately the name of Göran Andersson and provide his picture?

  If they had reported their suspicions at once, would Hultin have been able to redirect the surveillance from the members of the Lovisedal board to those on the Sydbanken board?

  Hjelm looked at Kerstin and saw that she was thinking the same thing.

  Had their determination to wait until they’d achieved complete clarity and put together a perfect resolution, with all the ends tied up, cost someone his life?

  The thought made his head swim.

  But that wasn’t all.

  ‘Gunnar Nyberg was seriously wounded last night,’ said Chavez in a subdued tone as he ended the call. ‘During the Lovisedal stake-out.’

  The burden grew heavier.

  ‘Goddamn it.’ Kerstin Holm crushed her liverwurst sandwich in her hand.

  ‘How seriously?’ Hjelm was stunned.

  ‘I couldn’t really make that out. Hultin sounded so damned angry. Nyberg’s injuries aren’t life-threatening, in any case. It was apparently at the home of the chairman of the board, Jacob Lidner, in Lidingö. Nyberg was on his way in when he was shot. He got up and went totally berserk, crashed through a big fucking hedge and charged the gunman’s speeding car with his own body.’

  Hjelm couldn’t suppress a slightly hysterical hoot of laughter. ‘Sounds like Nyberg. It sure does.’

  ‘Tackling the car did the trick too. The gunman drove right into a lamp post. Söderstedt pulled the guy out just before the car caught fire.’

  ‘Do modern vehicles really catch fire?’ said Hjelm, puzzled.

  ‘You’ll never guess who the gunman was,’ said Chavez.

  ‘Let’s not play guessing games,’ said Holm.

  ‘The sole surviving Igor. Alexander Bryusov.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ shouted Hjelm. ‘What the hell was he doing there?’

  ‘And there was another murder, wasn’t there?’ Holm said calmly.

  Chavez nodded. ‘In Göteborg. And he was a member of Sydbanken’s board of directors, anno 1990. Ulf Axelsson was his name. A bigwig at Volvo.’

  None of them said a word for a moment. Then Chavez went on. ‘The worst possible scenario is that what happened to both Nyberg and Axelsson can be blamed on the fact that we didn’t put in a call last night.’

  Silence again.

  ‘Although we’ll never know for sure whether it would have helped,’ he added.

  Jonas Wrede looked a bit livelier today. He’d pulled himself together and helped to create a very clear and detailed sketch of the purported colleague from the NCP. The man who’d taken over back in February and buried the investigation surrounding the death of Valery Treplyov in the locked vault.

  The face was staring up at the three officers from Wrede’s desk. They all recognised him at once: fair-haired, powerful, hard-boiled.

  The last time they’d seen him was in Nils-Emil Carlberger’s kitchen in Djursholm.

  It was Max Grahn.

  From Säpo.

  30

  JAN-OLOV HULTIN STRODE with great determination through the corridors at police headquarters. He had two purposes in mind and no intention of mincing words. The two members of the A-Unit who were present, Söders
tedt and Norlander, followed in his wake. Like the good, the bad and the ugly, they headed for the dried-out river bed of Bergsgatan with their hands resting on the butts of their revolvers while the rattlesnakes rattled in the background. It was impossible to tell which of them was the good, which was the bad and which was the ugly.

  In a remote interrogation room sat Jacob Lidner, chairman of the board for the Lovisedal conglomerate. He sprang to his feet as soon as the heroic trio entered the room.

  ‘What the hell is the meaning of this, detective inspector? Why have you brought me here against my will, interrupting my breakfast and throwing me into a damn prison cell? Do you know who I am?’

  ‘Sit down and shut up,’ Hultin said, his tone expressionless as he took a seat.

  Jacob Lidner gasped. ‘How dare you—’ he managed to sputter.

  ‘Sit down!’ shouted Hultin. This was his territory.

  Lidner sank down onto the chair. Hultin continued:

  ‘When you stated that Lovisedal had resisted all pressure from the Russian mafia, that was a lie, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. We haven’t accepted any form of protection.’ Lidner held his head high.

  Hultin took a deep breath and controlled himself. ‘What the hell was Alexander Bryusov, a member of the Russian mafia, doing outside your villa last night?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Lidner insisted.

  ‘He shot one of my men!’

  ‘I’m truly sorry about that, but it has nothing to do with me. I’m grateful for the police protection. It was probably me he was after. Now you have your mafia murderer.’

  Hultin stared at Jacob Lidner, displaying a deep and sincere hatred. Söderstedt and Norlander exchanged surprised glances. Lidner, although a bit subdued, maintained his well-practised defensive posture.

  ‘Let me tell you how this whole thing went down,’ said Hultin between clenched teeth. ‘You accepted our theory that the Lovisedal board might be in the danger zone, even though you knew that the Russian mafia was not to blame, for the simple reason that you’re already closely connected to those crooks. But you didn’t trust my men’s ability to provide sufficient surveillance, so you brought in some extra life insurance, in the form of a mafia member to keep watch in the garden. Bryusov was also in your debt because you paid the superstar lawyer Reynold Rangsmyhr to defend him and then saw to it that Bryusov was able to disappear while still inside the courthouse. You posted him in the garden, with orders to shoot anything that was the least bit suspicious and then erase all traces. He knew that Söderstedt here was inside your house, so when another man, a giant of a guy not unlike Bryusov’s former colleague Valery Treplyov, came into the garden, he opened fire, in accordance with his orders. Fortunately, if I can say such a thing, it was Gunnar Nyberg that he shot, and one shot wasn’t enough to bring him down. The bullet passed right through his neck, but that didn’t prevent Nyberg from stopping Bryusov. Do you understand what I’m saying? Your fucking illegal and amateurish attempt at surveillance almost cost one of my highly professional men his life!’

  Lidner looked at him for a moment. Then he laughed right in Hultin’s face.

  He shouldn’t have done that.

  From their front-row seats, Norlander and Söderstedt witnessed something that would make Hjelm and Chavez jealous for the rest of their lives.

  A genuine Hultin eyebrow-splitting headbutt.

  He took aim at Jacob Lidner’s bushy white eyebrows and slammed into him. The man’s left eyebrow instantly split open.

  Lidner stared in surprise at the blood dripping onto the table in front of him. ‘Good God’ was all he could say.

  ‘Don’t you realise that Alexander Bryusov has talked?’ bellowed Hultin. ‘Do you think I’m standing here bullshitting you for social reasons? So I can expand my “network”? The good Igor has told us everything about the close contacts that you and the Lovisedal conglomerate have established with the branch of the Russian-Estonian mafia headed by Viktor X. He’s expecting to be the star witness, and he certainly will be. Your fucking tricks almost cost me one of Sweden’s best police officers!’

  Lidner was pressing his hand to the gush of blood from his eyebrow. He was now a different man.

  ‘There weren’t supposed to be two police officers,’ he said quietly. ‘There was always only one.’

  Hultin stood up. ‘You’ll be remanded into custody immediately, of course,’ he said as he opened the door. ‘You’ll be charged with the attempted murder of a police officer, but the later indictment will include much more. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you to get yourself a lawyer.’

  Out in the corridor Jan-Olov Hultin rubbed his hands together. Then the trio briskly continued to the most isolated section of police headquarters. Hultin had a card and a code that gave him access to these dimly lit passageways. He yanked open an office door.

  There sat two solidly built gentlemen in their forties, wearing identical leather jackets. They looked up from their computers, and in only a second both men pulled out huge pistols and aimed them at Hultin, Söderstedt and Norlander.

  ‘What a pleasant scene,’ said Hultin calmly.

  ‘This is a restricted area, Hultin. You have no right to be here,’ said Gillis Döös harshly. ‘Get out before we call the guard.’

  ‘None of us is going anywhere until we find out what the hell happened with the investigation that Mr Max Grahn buried. The one where Valery Treplyov was found murdered and lying inside a locked bank vault in Algotsmåla, Småland.’

  Döös and Grahn looked at each other.

  ‘That’s confidential,’ said Döös, sounding slightly different.

  ‘Since when do you have the right to pretend to be part of the NCP? And what the hell ever happened to the exchange of information? Do you realise how much you’ve delayed this case with your damned secrecy and your grotesque meddling? Do you realise how many of your precious businessmen have died unnecessarily? Murdered as a direct result of your actions?’

  Max Grahn cleared his throat. Perhaps he turned a little pale.

  ‘We had our sights on Igor and Igor long before they became relevant to this case. When that zealous inspector from Växjö called, we went down there at once; we realised that it was Treplyov that they’d found inside the vault. Igor and Igor were well established in that part of Småland. We knew that a major Soviet infiltration was taking place in Sweden, and that it was as big as hell.’

  ‘And you let us struggle our way through the whole damn Russian-mafia lead without giving us a single piece of information?’

  ‘We’ve been working two lines the whole time,’ said Döös, ‘the Russian-mafia lead and the Somali lead. Both of these investigations are top secret, matters of national security.’

  ‘What the hell is the Somali lead?’ shouted Hultin.

  ‘Sonya Shermarke, for God’s sake!’ exclaimed Döös. ‘The cleaning woman that you’ve totally ignored. The one who “found”, as she said, Director Carlberger’s body. It turns out that she, along with a whole group of potential Somali terrorists, have been living in Sweden illegally. She pretended to be a cleaning woman and wangled her way into the homes of many influential families in Djursholm. We’ve been interrogating her and her cohorts for over a month now. And soon we’ll have them.’

  ‘Oh, now I remember,’ said Hultin acidly. ‘That’s right! Seven Somali children, their five Somali parents and a pastor from Spånga. What an elite band! Sentenced to be deported, terrified and crammed into a little two-room apartment in Tensta, hidden by the local Swedish church. What a great coup. Seven children. Have you been interrogating them too for a month in your basement dungeon?’

  ‘Do you know what a modern-day terrorist can use children for?’ Döös said in all seriousness.

  ‘For the sake of my incipient ulcer, let’s drop the subject.’ Hultin looked conciliatory. ‘What have you managed to make of the blinded Treplyov in Algotsmåla?’

  ‘Clearly a settlin
g of accounts in the underworld,’ said Grahn. ‘Somebody wanted to take over Igor and Igor’s territories. Mafia factions from the Soviet Union today are conducting a more or less open war for power in the Swedish underworld.’

  ‘And the connection to the Power Murders?’ said Hultin mildly.

  ‘We’re investigating the links between the Somalis and the Russians. We think it’s a joint conspiracy based on old Communist values.’

  Hultin stretched his back, still with a good-natured expression on his face. Söderstedt and Norlander feared the side effects of a well-aimed headbutt inside such a small space. Instead Hultin delivered a metaphorical headbutt.

  ‘For over a month you’ve known that Igor and Igor were an important focus of our investigation,’ he said gently. ‘If nothing else, you must have seen the announcement of the manhunt published in the newspapers. You have wilfully and intentionally misled what the head of the NCP, as recently as yesterday on TV, has called the most important investigation in Sweden since the Palme case; in addition, you used the NCP for a highly irregular, highly illegal cover-up. All of these acts are not only a dereliction of duty, they are crimes. I’m going straight to the head of the NCP to inform him of your illegal activities, and I anticipate that both of you will be off the force by this afternoon, latest. You can start packing right now.’

  ‘Are you threatening us?’ Döös stood up.

  ‘I prefer to think of it as a promise.’ Hultin smiled politely.

  31

  GUNNAR NYBERG WAS being fed through a tube. It protruded from the bandages that covered him almost entirely from the crown of his head to his neck, and large portions of soup were running through it. His eyes were the only things visible, and they were beaming with joy.

  ‘As I’ve just told Nyberg,’ the doctor explained to the three visitors, ‘we’ve determined that, in spite of everything, his throat should heal completely. The bullet missed the carotid artery by half an inch; it missed the larynx by about the same distance, but it passed through the upper part of the oesophagus, just below the pharynx. He’ll soon be able to sing again, but it will take a while before he can eat normally. In addition, his left zygomatic bone and left maxillary bone were shattered. He suffered a significant concussion and a number of bruises and burns on his face, and on the area from his shoulders up. He has four broken ribs, a fractured right arm and a wide assortment of minor cuts and burns over most of his body. But,’ said the doctor, ‘he seems to be in good spirits.’ And then he left them alone.