by Lars Kepler
The last note of the violin trembles, waiting for the piano, then finishes with a high, shivering sound as the music ends. After the concert, Joona and Disa walk out of the restaurant and onto Mosebacke Square. They pause for a moment, facing each other.
“What’s all this about Paganini?” she asks. She pats Joona’s collar into place. “The last time we were together, you talked about Paganini, too.”
He gently catches her hand.
“I just wanted to see you—”
“Just so we can argue about you not taking your medicine?”
“No,” he says seriously.
“Do you take it, then?”
“I’ll start soon,” he says, a bit impatiently.
She says nothing more, meets his eyes for a second, then sighs and suggests they keep walking.
“At any rate, it was a very pleasant concert,” she says. “Somehow I felt the music fit this soft light here, outside. I’d always thought Paganini was … well, you know, like a tightrope walker. Actually, I did have the chance to hear Yngwie Malmsteen play the Caprice no. 5 once at Gröna Lund.”
“Ah, in the days when you and Benjamin Gantenbein were going out.”
“We’ve just become Facebook friends after all these years.”
They walk to Slussen hand in hand and head down Skeppsbron.
“Do you think you could tell what music a violinist is playing just by the finger positions?”
“Without hearing it, you mean?”
“On a photograph.”
“Maybe. Perhaps you might get pretty close … it depends on how well you know the instrument,” she replies.
“How close? How exact?”
“I’ll ask Kaj if you think it’s important,” she says.
“Who’s Kaj?”
“Kaj Samuelsson. He works in the music history department. He was a good friend of my father’s and I used to practise driving with him.”
“Can you phone him now?”
“Sure,” Disa says, and then raises her eyebrows slightly. “You’re not kidding. You really want me to call him this second.”
“Yes,” Joona says.
Disa drops his hand and pulls out her mobile phone. She scrolls through her contact list and then calls the professor.
“Hi, Disa here,” she says. “Am I interrupting your lunch?”
Joona can hear the sound of a man’s voice coming from the phone. After a little small talk, Disa says, “By the way, I have a good friend here with some questions for you.”
She laughs at something he says and then she asks directly, “Can you tell which note a violinist is playing … no, not that way … just by looking at the fingers?”
Joona observes Disa who listens, frowning. From Gamla Stan, he can hear the distant strains of march music.
“All right,” Disa says. “You know what, Kaj, I think I’ll just hand you over to him directly.”
She hands the phone to Joona without saying a word.
“Joona Linna,” he says.
“Ah, Disa talks about you a great deal,” says Kaj Samuelsson. He sounds relaxed.
“A violin has only four strings,” Joona begins. “Logically, there are only a limited number of notes that can be played.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“The lowest note is the open G,” Joona continues calmly. “And somewhere there must be the highest note that—”
“Yes, good reasoning,” the professor says. “In 1636, the French scientist Mersenne published the Harmonie universelle. In that work, he posits that the best violinists can play one octave higher than the open string. This means the range can be from G to third E, which gives us altogether thirty-four notes in the chromatic scale.”
“Thirty-four notes,” Joona repeats.
“But if we go to musicians in the modern era, the range is greater due to new fingerings,” Samuelsson continues. He sounds amused. “And you can begin to count on reaching third A and have a chromatic scale of thirty-nine notes.”
“Keep going,” Joona continues, watching Disa, who has gone off to look at some odd, jumbled-looking paintings displayed in a gallery window.
“However, when Richard Strauss expanded Berlioz’s Grand Treatise on Instrumentation and Modern Orchestration from 1904, fourth G became accepted as the highest possible note that could be reached by an orchestra violinist, which means forty-nine notes.”
Kaj Samuelsson laughs to himself at Joona’s impressed silence.
“Actually, we have yet to reach the highest possible note,” the professor explains. “And in addition, we now have flageolets and quarter tones.”
Disa and Joona are now strolling past a newly built replica of a Viking ship docked at Slottskajen as he speaks. They’re nearing Kungsträdgården.
“What about a cello?” Joona asks impatiently.
“Fifty-eight,” Samuelsson replies.
Disa is giving Joona a vexed look and points at an outdoor café.
“My real question is, if you were to look at a photograph of four musicians—two violins, one viola, and one cello—and if the image is clear, would you be able to tell, just from the placement of their fingers on the strings, which piece they’re playing?”
Joona hears Kaj Samuelsson mumbling to himself on the other end.
“There are so many alternatives, thousands …”
Disa shrugs and keeps walking without looking at Joona.
“Seven million combinations,” Kaj says at last.
“Seven million,” Joona repeats.
There’s silence on both ends of the phone.
“Yet on my photograph,” Joona goes on, his voice stubborn, “you can clearly see the fingers and the strings so that many alternatives could be eliminated immediately.”
“I’ll gladly take a look at your photo,” the professor replies. “But I would not be able to guess the notes, it’s just not possible and—”
“But—”
“Imagine, Joona Linna,” the professor continues happily. “Imagine you’ve actually figured out the approximate notes … How will you be able to tell from all the thousands of string quartets out there—Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart—which one is the correct composition?”
“I realise it might be impossible,” Joona says.
“Seriously, it is,” Kaj replies.
Joona thanks him for his time and goes to Disa, who is sitting on the rim of a fountain waiting for him. She lays her cheek on his shoulder as he sits down beside her. Just as he’s putting an arm around her, he remembers Robert Riessen’s words about his brother: If not even Axel could figure it out, no one can.
72
the riddle
While Joona is quickly walking up the Bragevägen pavement, he hears children happily yelling on the grounds of the German School.
He rings Axel’s doorbell and hears the melodious chime inside, but no one answers, and after waiting for a while, he decides to walk around the house. Suddenly he hears a screeching noise. He can see people standing in the shadow of a tree, and he pauses at a distance. A girl holding a violin stands on the marble patio. She looks about fifteen years old. Her hair is extremely short, and he can see some drawings she’s inked on her arms. Axel Riessen is with her, nodding and listening carefully as she drags the bow across the strings. Her movements look awkward, as if she’s holding the instrument for the very first time. Perhaps this is Axel’s daughter, or even his grandchild, because he watches her with such a gentle, curious expression.
The bow crosses the strings at the wrong angle and elicits a hissing, whining sound.
“It’s not in tune,” the girl says as an excuse for the terrible noise.
She smiles and, with care, hands the instrument back to Axel.
“Playing the violin means listening,” Axel says in a calm, friendly fashion. “The music is already inside you. You just release it into the world.”
He sets the violin to his own shoulder and begins to play the introductory melody to ‘S
éguedille’ from Bizet’s Carmen, then stops and holds out the violin to demonstrate.
“Now I’m going to tune these strings a little strangely, here … and here,” he says, and he turns the pegs a few times in different directions.
“Why are—”
“Now the violin is completely out of tune,” he continues. “And if I’d only learned how to play mechanically with exact fingering, then I would sound like this.”
He plays ‘Séguedille’ again, and it is so terrible it’s almost unrecognisable.
“How pretty!” she says, joking.
“However, if you listen to the strings …” he says as he taps the E string. “Hear that? It’s much too low, but that makes no difference at all. You compensate by moving your finger further up the fingerboard.”
Joona watches Axel Riessen put the violin back on his shoulder and play the piece again on the falsely tuned violin. He seems to use gymnastic fingering, but the piece is perfectly in tune.
“You’re a magician!” The girl laughs and claps her hands.
“Hello,” Joona says. He walks up and holds out his hand. Axel gathers the violin and bow together in his left hand and then shakes Joona’s hand. The girl shyly does the same.
He looks at Axel with his mis-tuned violin.
“That’s impressive.”
Axel shakes his head.
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t played for thirty-four years.” His voice sounds stiff as he says this.
“Do you believe that?” Joona asks the girl.
She nods and then she says mysteriously, “Don’t you see the glow around him?”
“This is Beverly,” Axel says in a low voice. “Beverly Andersson.”
Beverly gives Axel a big smile, and then she simply walks away between the trees.
Joona nods at Axel. “I need to talk to you.”
“Sorry about earlier, when I took off like that,” Axel says. He begins to retune the violin. “But something came up.”
“Not to worry—I just came back.”
Joona watches Axel who, in turn, watches the girl pick some flowering weeds from the shaded lawn.
“Do we have a vase inside?” she calls out.
“In the kitchen,” Axel replies.
She carries her tiny bouquet of dandelions—white balls of fluff—into the kitchen.
“That’s her favourite flower,” Axel says as he listens closely to the G string. He adjusts the peg slightly and then sets the violin on the mosaic table.
“I’d like you to take a look at this,” Joona says, and he takes out the photograph from the folder.
They sit down at the table. Axel takes a pair of glasses from his front pocket and studies the photograph thoroughly.
“When was this taken?” he asks quickly.
“We don’t know, but it was suggested this was in the spring of 2008,” Joona replies.
“All right.” Axel looks much more relaxed immediately.
“Do you recognise these people?” Joona asks calmly.
“Of course,” Axel says. “Palmcrona, Pontus Salman, Raphael Guidi, and … Agathe al-Haji.”
“I need your help in one specific area. Could you take a good look at the musicians in the background?”
Axel looks up at Joona speculatively and then down again at the photograph.
“The Tokyo String Quartet—they’re very good,” he says in a neutral voice.
“Well, the thing I’m wondering about is … I’ve been thinking about this picture and wondering if it is possible for a knowledgeable person to tell … just by looking at the picture … which piece they’re playing.”
“That’s an interesting question.”
“Would there be, even remotely, a possibility for an educated guess? Kaj Samuelsson didn’t think so, and when your brother took a look, he said it was completely impossible.”
Joona leans forward, his eyes smooth and warm in the shade.
“Your brother was adamant that if you couldn’t solve this riddle, no one could.”
A smile plays at the edges of Axel’s mouth.
“He said that, did he?”
“Yes,” Joona says. “Though I’m not sure what he meant by that.”
“Nor am I.”
“Still, take a close look at this picture. I have a magnifying glass—”
“You want to know when this meeting took place, don’t you,” Axel states in a suddenly grave tone.
Joona nods and takes a magnifying glass out of his briefcase.
“You should be able to see their fingers clearly,” Joona says.
Joona sits back quietly and watches Axel minutely examine the photograph. He thinks if this had been taken in 2008, as they’d been told, his intuition had been wrong. But if these people had met after the arrest order in March 2009, the photograph was proof of criminal activity.
“Yes, I see the positions of their fingers,” Axel says slowly.
“Could you guess which notes they’re playing?” Joona asks expectantly.
Axel sighs, hands the photograph and the magnifying glass back to Joona, and then sings four notes aloud in a soft but clear voice as if it emanated from inside himself. Then he takes up the violin and plays two high, trembling notes.
Joona Linna stands up.
“And this is no joke—”
Axel Riessen looks directly into Joona’s eyes and shakes his head. “No. Martin Beaver is playing a third C, Kikuei is playing a second C, Kazuhide Isomura has a rest, and Clive is playing a four-note pizzicato. That’s what I sang, E, A, A, and C.”
Joona writes this down. He asks, “How exact is your guess?”
“It’s not a guess,” Axel replies.
“Does this combination appear in many pieces? I mean, just by identifying these notes can you deduce the exact piece the Tokyo String Quartet is playing at this moment in this picture?”
“This combination is found in only one place,” Axel replies.
“How do you know that?”
Axel turns away and looks away at a window in the house. Shadows of lacy leaves reflect on the glass.
“I’m sorry, please continue,” Joona says.
“Of course, I have not heard every piece the quartet has played,” Axel says with a shrug.
“But, again, you are sure this exact combination of notes is found in only one specific composition?” Joona asks again.
“I know of only one,” Axel replies calmly. “Measure 156 in the first movement of Béla Bartók’s Second String Quartet.”
Axel picks up the violin and puts it to his shoulder.
“Tranquillo … this movement is so wonderfully peaceful, almost like a lullaby. Listen to the first voice,” he says as he begins to play.
Axel’s fingers move tenderly, the notes quiver, the music sings, light and soft. After four measures, he stops.
“Both violins follow each other. Same note, different octaves,” he explains. “It’s almost too beautiful, but then the cello’s A-minor chord makes the violin’s notes dissonant … even though they’re not experienced as dissonant because they’re harmonics, which …”
He stops talking and puts down the violin.
Joona watches him.
“So you’re absolutely certain these musicians are playing Bartók’s Second String Quartet?” Joona says quietly.
“Yes.”
Joona, suddenly jittery, gets up and walks across the patio to stop by the lilac-bush hedge. This is everything he needs to determine the time of the meeting.
He smiles to himself, and immediately smoothes away the triumph with his hand. He turns back, takes a red apple from the bowl on the table, and meets Axel’s questioning gaze.
“So yes, you’re absolutely sure,” Joona confirms again.
Axel nods and Joona gives him the apple. He turns aside to pull his mobile phone from his jacket to call Anja.
“Anja, this is a rush—”
“We’re going to take a sauna together this weekend,” Anja replies
.
“I need your help.”
“I know.” Anja giggles.
Joona tries to hide the tension in his voice.
“I need you to check the repertoire of the Tokyo String Quartet for the past ten years.”
“I’ve already done that.”
“Specifically what they played at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt during that time?”
“Yes, they went there annually, in fact.”
“Have they ever played the Bartók Second String Quartet?” There’s a pause as she checks her information.
“Yes, Opus 17. They’ve played it once.”
“Opus 17,” Joona repeats and meets Axel’s eyes. Axel nods.
“What?” Anja asks.
“So when did they play that piece?”
“The thirteenth of November 2009.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
The people in the photograph met eight months after the arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Joona thinks. Pontus Salman lied about the date. They met in November 2009. And all of this carnage has come from that—the brutal deaths of so many and perhaps even more in the future.
Joona reaches out and absentmindedly brushes some lilac blossoms, and he can smell the barbecue on an outdoor grill in a yard somewhere. He thinks he must call Saga Bauer about this breakthrough.
“Was that it?” Anja says on the other end.
“Yes.”
“Can you use the little word?”
“Oh, yes … Kiitokseksi saat pusun,” Joona says in Finnish. As thanks, I’ll give you a kiss.
Joona ends the call.
Pontus Salman lied, Joona thinks again. There were no exceptions or loopholes to a complete weapons embargo.
But Agathe al-Haji wanted to buy ammunition. And the others wanted money. None of them could have cared less about human rights or international law.
Pontus Salman thought that one truth—openly pointing himself out in the photo—would obscure the big lie: the date they met.
Joona pictures Pontus Salman in his mind’s eye: an oddly placid man with no emotions in his face.
Arms deals. Arms deals and the money they bring, the whisper in his head tells him. All of this is due to weapons smuggling: the photograph, the blackmail attempt, the dead people.
He pictures Saga Bauer standing up after their conversation with Salman. She’d left the marks of her five fingers on his desk as a silent testimony.
