Europa Blues

by Arne Dahl

  Nice turn of phrase.

  A couple of neighbours had recalled hearing a loud engine in the early hours of Thursday morning. ‘Sounded like the bin lorry,’ an old woman with the unusual name Elin Belin had said, ‘but why would the bin lorry come round at half three in the morning?’ The other neighbour, an unemployed butcher who, by his own admission, ‘hadn’t slept more than six hours the last six months’, had been insistent that it was closer to four when he heard ‘something like a bus – but on the wrong route, because we don’t have a single useful night bus up here, and you, you’re from the authorities, maybe you can pass my complaint on to the management’. That had come from Viggo Norlander’s meagre share of the interviews, which was strange, because who could mistake Viggo Norlander for someone from the authorities?

  The most important information had come from the manager, Jörgen Nilsson. After some pressure – Kerstin had clearly come down quite hard on him – he had admitted that he knew of a pimp. Back in November, Nilsson had been contacted by a man who wanted to make sure he wasn’t getting involved in the business; he was told that if he kept his mouth shut, he could have free access to rooms 224–227. From what they could tell, it seemed like Nilsson had made use of that free access an indecent amount. ‘A regular’, as an agitated Somalian dentist in room 220 had sat up from his prayer mat to say. Holm had eventually managed to drag Nilsson off to the police artist to produce a good old composite sketch. They would be running it through all the registers they could think of tomorrow. Judging by appearances, however, this ghost pimp wasn’t a match for their wolverine man.

  The noise of a phone not only startled him out of his wits, it reminded him that his reasoning was wrong. The information from Nilsson wasn’t, despite everything, the most important.

  ‘I thought you’d still be there,’ a gruff voice barked down the line.

  ‘You too, I see, Brunte,’ Hultin said as his racing heart slowly calmed.

  ‘My name isn’t Brunte,’ Chief Forensic Technician Brynolf Svenhagen said with great emphasis. ‘My ill-bred son-in-law has been spreading that kind of dung around, I suppose?’

  ‘It’s normally horses that spread dung,’ Hultin said.

  There was a moment’s silence at the other end of the line. Svenhagen was clearly searching for a crushing reply. Since crushing replies weren’t exactly the stern scientist’s strong point, he remained silent instead.

  A telling silence, Hultin thought.

  Eventually, and hardly sounding ready for battle, the chief forensic technician said: ‘Do you want this information or not? I’ve been working like mad to get it ready for you. It is Friday evening, you know.’

  ‘I’d really like it,’ said Hultin, pouring oil on the troubled waters. He even added a thanks.

  It was enough to placate Svenhagen. He shot from the hip. ‘I’ve got a full list of calls made to and from rooms 224, 225, 226 and 227 of the Norrboda Motell in Slagsta. Is that of any interest to you?’

  Despite the fact that it was of great interest, Hultin was more angry than overjoyed. He had, quite simply, forgotten about the telephones in the four rooms. Was he starting to lose the plot? Were those gaps in time more alarming than he had convinced himself they were? Was it a blood clot, inching relentlessly closer to a much-too-narrow vessel in his brain?

  ‘Are you still there, Jan-Olov?’ Brynolf Svenhagen asked uncertainly.

  ‘Yes,’ Hultin said, cheering himself up. ‘Fantastic, Brynolf. Can you fax them over?’

  ‘They’re already in the machine,’ Svenhagen replied self-righteously.

  While he waited for the fax machine to rumble into life, Hultin glanced at his watch. It was thirteen minutes past eight – soon it would be exactly twelve hours since the hole had loosened up the space–time continuum. ‘Eight, sixteen and ten seconds. Peep.’

  Maybe he was already in the middle of the gap in time …

  The fax started rattling and brought the good superintendent back to reality. Though he wasn’t quite happy with that term.

  Reality …

  Hultin sat there watching the growing pile of paper, wondering whether it really was reality he found himself in. He stayed there a while, staring at the sheets jolting forward out of the machine. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt. The pile was getting big. Time vanished in hypnotic monotony. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt.

  A pair of eyes were staring at him through the darkness. He gave an unusually violent start and glanced down at his wrist. It was thirty-three minutes past eight – just like that morning, when it was actually only sixteen minutes past. My God, he thought. It’s really happening.

  Paul Hjelm was standing there in his much-too-thin linen jacket, holding an umbrella adorned with the police logo and with headphones in his ears. His hand, raised in greeting, sank uncertainly down through space–time.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ he bellowed.

  ‘Don’t shout,’ Jan-Olov Hultin said, staring at his watch. The second hand was ticking away – but wasn’t it going abnormally fast? What was Paul doing here? Was it suddenly morning? Was it time for the morning meeting in the Tactical Command Centre? Had he been transported forward half a day by a black hole in time?

  ‘Sorry,’ Hjelm said, pulling the headphones from his ears. ‘Kind of Blue. Miles Davis.’

  ‘You can listen to music in your free time,’ Hultin said, still confused.

  Paul Hjelm looked at him searchingly.

  ‘You don’t seem well, Jan-Olov,’ he eventually said.

  ‘What are you doing here at this … time of day?’

  ‘I was just going home. I’ve been through all the material and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t fit together. What are you doing?’

  Hultin was completely still. He ran his hand along the edge of the desk. Yes, he thought, this is reality. This is something I can feel. Space isn’t time. I’m here, in time, in a different way to the way that I’m here, in this room. I’m here and I am now. To hell with the rest. He turned towards the fax machine. One last krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt and the pile was complete. He grabbed it, straightened the sheets against the desk and said, firmly: ‘Gravitational time dilation. You should try it sometime. Gives you perspective on existence.’

  Hjelm’s jaw dropped. It was all very entertaining.

  ‘Where’s the phone from the metro station case?’ Hultin asked sharply.

  ‘In my room,’ Hjelm answered quietly.

  ‘What’s it doing there? Why don’t the technicians have it?’

  ‘I borrowed it when they went home for the weekend. I wanted to have a closer look at it.’

  ‘Great,’ said Hultin. ‘Go and get it.’

  ‘No fingerprints other than Hamid al-Jabiri’s, apparently. How can you not leave fingerprints on your own mobile phone?’

  ‘Go and get it,’ Hultin repeated.

  Once Hjelm had disappeared, he glanced quickly through the enormous pile of paper the fax machine had spurted out. He immediately found what he knew he would find.

  Hjelm came back with the phone.

  ‘Put it on the desk,’ Hultin said with his own phone in his hand. He dialled a number.

  The mobile phone on the desk started ringing.

  It didn’t feel like a surprise.

  ‘Now,’ said Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin, ‘this is a case.’

  10

  IT WAS THE weekend. The Special Unit for Violent Crimes of an International Nature was off work. The whole gang. Fortunately, the rain had moved away from the Stockholm area, meaning that all the usual weekend activities were possible.

  Jan-Olov Hultin entered the woods outside his cabin on the shore of Lake Ravalen, walking straight through the garden’s awful collection of weeds, more wood-like than the woods themselves, and peered up at the returning migratory birds through his binoculars. It was as though space–time had split into segments.

  Gunnar Nyberg was up with his son Tommy in Östhamm
ar. He had taken his running shoes with him and managed one jog, despite his grandson Benny relentlessly clinging on to his grandfather. He had hung from his neck for five kilometres, really adding to his workout.

  Viggo Norlander was in bed with his partner Astrid almost all of Saturday. Their daughter, little Charlotte, was there too, unceasingly trying to walk by shuffling along the side of the bed. Not for a moment did she stop to think about her elderly parents’ peculiar activities in bed above her.

  Kerstin Holm was taking part in a big concert with an orchestra in Jakobs Kyrka, where she sang alto in the church choir. During the Kyrie’s dense golden minutes in Mozart’s Requiem she felt her paper-thin skull vibrating, putting her in direct contact with the cosmos. Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison. That was the whole text. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

  The married couple, Jorge Chavez and Sara Svenhagen, took a long walk around the Vasastan area of town, ending up in Vasaparken where they sat down on a park bench and began, initially at least, to soberly discuss the pros and cons of starting a family. It ended with them screaming abuse at one another. When an old woman with a cock-eyed wig called the police right in front of them, they went home to their newly bought apartment in Birkastan and made love uninhibitedly and wordlessly.

  Despite all that, it wasn’t any old weekend. None of them, not even Viggo Norlander, managed to go an hour without thinking about an utterly peculiar case.

  That applied not least to Paul Hjelm. He and his family were out at the summer house in Dalarö. It had been a few years since they first came across the ramshackle old house with a fantastic little beach and its own tumbledown jetty tucked away behind it. The owner was an extremely lively but wheelchair-bound lady who happened to have been Sweden’s first female boxer. Hjelm had never quite been able to work out whether she deliberately ignored the all-embracing rules of the market or whether the market simply hadn’t found its way out there yet. If that was the case, the cabin was the last blank spot on the map. Maja – that was the former boxer’s name – could have easily asked for three or four million, just for the plot. Instead, she rented it to the Hjelm family for seven thousand a year, choosing to stay in her little two-room flat in the centre of Handen. Once a year, she came to visit, spending the night in her old bedroom. As a rule, she usually went out to Dalarö the first weekend in May, before it got – to quote Maja – ‘much too sweaty in the knickers’.

  Now she was sitting on the porch, taking deep breaths of the chilly sea air and saying: ‘It really wasn’t easy being a lesbian back then.’

  Since every visit involved a new surprise, Paul and Cilla simply glanced at her and waited for her to continue. She did.

  ‘Yep,’ she said, throwing her strong, crooked arms around the married couple. ‘This is a proper little hotbed of scandal you’re renting here, my children. My, my, my, the orgies we had. Not a bloke as far as the eye could see. Just a horde of skinny-dipping nymphets. The neighbours’ wives were hysterical, though the men didn’t protest too strongly, I can tell you that.’

  ‘A few of the neighbours’ wives are still alive, I think,’ Paul Hjelm said.

  Maja gave a roar of laughter and punched him on the arm. He instinctively knew it would leave a bruise.

  ‘I always forget you’re a detective,’ she laughed. ‘You don’t look like a detective, Paulus.’

  ‘I think he does,’ Cilla said in an icy tone.

  ‘Now now,’ Maja barked, ‘you can save your marital bickering for later. You’ve got guests. I’d love another Dry Martini, by the way. A bit drier this time, if you can.’

  ‘We’ll have to distil our own then,’ Paul Hjelm said, glaring furtively at Cilla.

  He stood up and poured yet another neat Beefeater for Maja, who was roaring with laughter.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said, slightly more composed now that the drink had been served. ‘Those women seduced the gentlefolk, settled down on their golden estates – and ended up with a group of water nymphs as neighbours. Slightly unexpected when you’ve married into society and have been expecting a traditional family life. As long as any of them are still living, I’m not going to sell. And don’t worry, my children, those old dears are hardy.’

  Cilla stood up and started fiddling about with something which absolutely didn’t need fiddling about with. Her back to the table, she said: ‘I’ll tell you why he looks like a detective. It’s because he’s always thinking about a case. He’s never really present.’

  ‘Sorry for existing,’ Paul said maturely.

  ‘A case?’ Maja exclaimed blissfully. ‘So exciting! Tell us more, Paulus.’

  ‘Paulus,’ squawked a faltering voice from inside the cottage.

  ‘Are the kids here?’ Maja asked in surprise. ‘I thought you said you’d left them in town.’

  ‘Left them in town,’ the half-stifled voice harped.

  Paul Hjelm sighed. ‘I live with a parrot,’ he said, casting a glance at Cilla.

  She was still standing with her back to him and mumbled: ‘It must just have woken up.’

  ‘A real parrot?’ Maja said with distaste. ‘So disgusting.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Paul said weakly.

  ‘I don’t like animals,’ the old woman continued, slurping her gin like a real sea dog. ‘Something from my childhood. People who’re afraid of animals do exist. Not afraid of snakes or spiders or cows, I mean a general fear of animals – people who panic at the slightest contact with the animal kingdom. It’s quite hard work.’

  ‘You don’t seem like someone who panics unnecessarily,’ Cilla said, still facing away from them.

  ‘Panic might be a bit much,’ Maja admitted. ‘But it does exist. The genuine fear of animals. I’ve seen it close up. I brought a little city girl I was in love with out here, must’ve been the late fifties, and when I grabbed a frog from the stream she panicked and screamed and swallowed her tongue. I pulled it back out with the wobbler. A few years later when I saw her again, she said she could still taste raw fish in the back of her throat.’

  Paul chuckled, poured a big Beefeater for himself and said: ‘If I wasn’t prevented from talking about the case, I could’ve told you something about a fear of animals.’

  ‘Fear of animals,’ the parrot croaked from inside the cottage. Paul and Maja laughed. Even Cilla couldn’t stop herself. She laughed, sat down at the table with a thud, poured an enormous drink, took a gulp big enough to have been two large schnapps and said: ‘OK, for God’s sake. I’m revoking your vow of professional secrecy. You might as well just get it out of your system.’

  And so Paul Hjelm talked. As darkness fell over Gränöfjärden, transforming the overcast day into a shimmering golden dusk, he told them about drug-addled wolverines and Eastern European whores, about the strange fate of a mobile phone thief and invisible pursuers in Skansen, about a macho woman in a red leather jacket and a particularly inappropriate manager of a refugee centre. Maja listened raptly, almost falling from her wheelchair on several occasions. Every now and then she added comments that were sometimes wanton, sometimes wise. The most stimulating thing was that even Cilla seemed to be listening, not just because she was slightly drunk and tired, not just because she had promised, but because she was genuinely interested in what he was saying.

  When he finished, the sun was still hovering just above the surface of the water. Paul took Cilla’s hand and Maja said: ‘Go down to the jetty a while, you two, drink in the atmosphere. I’m going to turn in.’

  ‘Can you manage it yourself?’ Cilla asked.

  Maja placed a hand on top of theirs.

  ‘I’ll lie on the floor and wait, if the worst comes to the worst. I’ve done it before.’

  They went down to the water. The jetty, which had suddenly gained a sinful past, stretched out into a glittering, orange-coloured glow, like the old black wreck of a ship in a romantic painting. Since there wasn’t a breath of air in the bay, as far out as the horizon,
and since a Dry Martini or two had lined their throats, the May evening didn’t feel particularly cold.

  When they reached the jetty, Cilla slowly took off her clothes, piece by piece, calmly and naturally, until she was standing naked in the deep orange light. Paul’s thoughts started dancing. He looked at her slim, blonde body, surrounded by light; the body which had, by and large, shaped his entire sexuality. There stood the mother of his two children, each of whom was now old enough to have children of their own. And she looked young. Eternally young.

  She slowly and sensually ran her hands through her messy blonde hair. It was a spring gift, that much he understood. He moved over to her and embraced her. She loosened his clothing, something she hadn’t done for a long time. Eventually, he was as naked as she was and they stood there, entwined, on the ramshackle old jetty, the light gradually fading around them. He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him, allowing him to enter her. Darkness fell. She pulled back, hovering above him, and then took him in again, as deep as she could, and then he pulled out and lay down on his back on top of the clothes they had strewn on the jetty. She slowly lowered herself onto him, surrounding him, and something bigger than the two of them united them.

  She rode him in time with the rhythmic noise of the small waves hitting the shore, waves caused only by the movement of the jetty on the mirror-calm water. The earth seemed to rise up, seemed desperate to move closer, seemed to push up towards them, and the dark sky sank down and down until it was perforated by bright spot after bright spot, and the light from another, underlying, better world drove wedges into the blackness, coming closer and closer and rising and falling, and with sound and movement and patterns spreading over the surface of the water, the moon casting a thin layer of light into the darkness, a jetty of light which carried them over to the better world; they entered into it and it smiled at them; all was light and glimmering and ultimately a powerful beam which spoke of something else, something better, existing here and now, and all sounds were just rhythms, streaming through the holes and openings in the heavens’ dark blanket of light which spurted and came and emptied and exploded in sound which was light and light which was sound, and then it was all over.