Europa Blues
Page 26
‘Do you think you could continue, Paul?’ Hultin asked with ominous gentleness.
Hjelm tried to pull himself together.
‘You’ve all heard about Henry Blom, aka Olli Peltonen. As you know, Gunnar and I have been working with Frihamnen for a while now. That was where Peltonen’s illegal taxi picked up our noseless friend sometime after seven in the evening on the fourth of September 1981. It hasn’t been easy, finding the old port archives, but I think we’ve finally managed. Seems like quite a lot of ferries arrived there that day. If we assume that Peltonen is right, and he drove him just after seven that evening, it narrows our scope a bit. That’s also assuming our man without a nose – Shtayf from Södra Begravningsplatsen from now on – didn’t just wait around, enjoying the sun down by the dock all day; it seems more likely that he headed straight for his final destination. In that case, three ferries seem interesting. Gunnar?’
Gunnar Nyberg had been keeping a relatively low profile since his confrontation with the skinheads in Åkersberga. That had very little to do with the skinheads themselves, however, and more to do with a certain professor of Slavic languages. He had, quite simply, been wondering what these strange sensations rushing through his enormous body were. Was he really in love? It had been such a long time, and if he was really honest, he wasn’t even sure he had ever been properly in love before. He had, of course, felt love for his children, but before that? Had he ever been in love with poor Gunilla? He’d been horny, yes. But in love? No. Maybe, just maybe, he was now in love with Professor Ludmila Lundkvist.
They had gone to a little Russian pub down on Drottninggatan. For the first time in his life, Gunnar had eaten borscht and bear meat. A drop or two of vodka might also have passed his lips. Then they had gone back to her flat on Luntmakargatan; it had been so utterly obvious that they would. The night had been wonderful. Looking back, he couldn’t remember whether they had even ‘had sex’, as people so nicely put it nowadays. It was all just a feeling, sweeping sensations coursing through him. Then they had met again, at his house in Nacka. They had definitely ‘had sex’ that second time, and it had been magnificent. She had also gone with him to his church to listen to the choir practice. The session had ended with the choir master saying that Gunnar’s bass had sounded unusually pure and clear that day. After that, they had gone home and made love. Unusually purely and clearly.
So no, they hadn’t actually ‘had sex’. They had made love.
Now, though, Gunnar Nyberg said, with uncharacteristic distinctness: ‘The three relevant ferries in Frihamnen that evening were: the French M/S Marie Curie, which arrived from Le Havre with a mixed cargo at 16.15; the Soviet M/S Cosmopolit, which arrived from Odessa with a mixed cargo at 18.25; and the German M/S Mercedes, which arrived from Kiel carrying a load of cars at 19.35. What we’re doing now, trying to track these ferries down after twenty years and a redrawn map of Europe, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be an easy task. Maybe we can say that, at this point, both time and space are pointing to Cosmopolit.’
‘From Odessa in the Soviet Union,’ said Paul Hjelm.
‘Now Ukraine,’ added Nyberg.
They were silent for a moment. A system of coordinates very similar to a plus sign loomed large in a number of minds. A quadrant which had been standing alone for so long was slowly finding its way in towards the other three.
‘Time for a hypothesis,’ said Paul Hjelm. ‘If the noseless Shtayf came from Ukraine and went to Leonard Sheinkman’s house, then that’s the link we’ve been looking for. Obviously it’s still very vague, but if it’s true then we’ve got a possible connection between our Ukrainian Erinyes and our professor emeritus. It’s no less interesting given that Shtayf was killed on the same day he visited Sheinkman, and then found by the little lake to the immediate north-west of Tyresö. Nor that Sheinkman went on a pilgrimage to Shtayf’s grave and met his death right above it nineteen years later.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Hultin said. ‘What the hell is all of this? What’s the missing link?’
‘We might be going wrong somewhere,’ said Hjelm. ‘I’ve got a vague feeling there’s something wrong somewhere.’
‘But vague feelings aren’t what we do our job with.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Do you have anything else?’
‘No,’ said Hjelm. ‘Gunnar and I are still working on the ferries. Hunting down the old Soviet cargo ship, the Cosmopolit, is our next job. I’m going to be looking at Leonard Sheinkman’s diary more closely, too.’
‘Haven’t you done that already? Is it still “too hard”?’
‘Yes,’ said Hjelm.
Hultin sighed deeply and turned to Kerstin Holm:
‘Kerstin?’
She glanced down into her confusion of papers and replied: ‘Like I said, I’m still working on these murders around Europe. I’m carefully reading the investigations in each of the different languages. We haven’t been sent any more, so that’s one thing at least. But pestering Robbins in Manchester, Mészöly in Budapest, Sremac in Maribor, Roelants in Antwerp, von Weizsäcker in Wiesbaden and Gronchi in Venice has led to certain results.
‘Maribor’s the smallest of these towns. It was also the hanging immediately before Stockholm, in March. The Slovenian police have been making the greatest effort to be helpful European colleagues, and like I said, Maribor is a pretty small town. It seems as though a number of prostitutes did actually disappear from Maribor in March. There are certain hints from Commissioner Gronchi in Venice too, but they’re more vague. Venice was the one before Maribor, in February.
‘Wiesbaden isn’t huge either, and Detective Inspector von Weizsäcker is quite certain: no prostitutes went missing there. That was in December. Maybe we can interpret this as a sign that our Erinyes started growing their ranks just this year? They’ve reached the point now where their strength can spread. And if that’s the case, then we’ve just seen the beginning of it. Plus, I’ve finally managed to get a reply from Detective Superintendent Benziger in Weimar, in Germany. Detective Superintendent—’
‘Do they really have titles like that?’ asked Viggo Norlander. ‘The same plain old titles that we have here?’
‘Of course not,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘They’re just rough translations. You’ve got to have really detailed knowledge to be able to understand the titles and promotion systems and hierarchies of these national police forces. It’s hard enough here, with us. I barely know which title I have myself – and I’d have no idea how to translate it. Can I go on?’
‘Let me think,’ Norlander replied jokingly. ‘Yes, yeah, that’s fine.’
‘Thank you. Detective Superintendent Radcliffe in Dublin suggested I get in touch with this Benziger. He replied a couple of hours ago. He said: “Dear Fräulein Holm. I sincerely apologise for not having been able to reply sooner. I’ve been on an assignment off grid. Jimmy was absolutely right to send you my way. James Radcliffe, that is. At an international conference recently, I told him that we had come across a modus operandi which reminds me of your case. I know very little about it, however, since it wasn’t linked to any police operation. I refer you in this matter to Professor Ernst Herschel from the history department at the University of Jena. With kind regards, Detective Superintendent Josef Benziger, Weimar.”’
‘So have you been in touch with this Herschel?’ Hultin asked.
‘No,’ said Holm. ‘I phoned but there was no answer. I’ve sent an email.’
‘Thanks. Anything else?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘In that case, we can finish off with a little film, can’t we?’
‘Yup,’ Viggo Norlander said cheerfully. ‘Your wife and I, Jorge, have been on the move. A kind of honeymoon. We even shared a room in Karlskrona.’
‘No we didn’t,’ Sara Svenhagen retorted tranquilly.
‘No, maybe not,’ Norlander continued without letting it affect him. ‘But I’ve been filming her in all manner of positions.’
‘What party?’
‘Whoops,’ said Jorge, putting his hand to his mouth. ‘Maybe we forgot to invite you.’
‘Our house-warming,’ said Sara. ‘I take it you’re all coming. Tomorrow evening at seven. Don’t eat beforehand. Birkagatan. Though you’ve all got to make a solemn promise: not to say a single word about this case.’
‘Why didn’t anyone say anything to me?’ Viggo complained. ‘And after all the travelling we’ve done, Sara.’
‘You’re not invited, Viggo,’ said Jorge. ‘Simple as that. We invited everyone but you.’
‘Stop it,’ said Sara. ‘You know full well you’re invited, Viggo. Astrid already said yes. Charlotte’s coming too. And we’ve had replies from everyone else, I think. Jan-Olov, what about you? Will your wife be coming too?’
‘Yes,’ said Jan-Olov Hultin, suddenly revealing that he had a private life. ‘Her name is Stina,’ he added.
‘And then Gunnar, I wasn’t sure about how many …’
‘Two,’ he replied, his voice clear and pure.
‘So everyone’s coming?’ said Jorge. ‘I’ll be damned. I’ll have to go and buy some more Duca.’
‘What kind of South American crap is that?’ Viggo persisted.
‘It’s a full-bodied Italian red. Duca d’Aragona, 1993. And it’s not crap. But they’ve almost always run out. I’ll probably have to go down to Nacka Forum to get some more. But I’ll gladly do that for all of you.’
Jorge Chavez was, in other words, a marvel of patience. Hjelm glanced sceptically at him. It was a front, it had to be a front. It couldn’t be possible for a person to change so dramatically.
‘Not everyone is coming,’ he said tryingly. ‘Arto’s not.’
‘Don’t be so sure of that,’ Jorge answered cryptically.
‘Should we make sure our friend gets hold of his wine in time, then?’ asked Hultin. ‘Press play, Viggo.’
The remote control in Viggo Norlander’s hand zapped life into the VCR machine over by the whiteboard. As the camera panned slowly over a drab-looking harbour, Sara said: ‘While you’re watching the whole of the Karlskrona harbour area go past, I might as well start by saying that Viggo and I have sat through the whole of the Environmental Protection Agency’s epic about the Polish poacher, Wojciech Bienek. His customers turned out to be German, Japanese and American. We paid particular attention to the film shot inside the ship. None of our Slagsta girls appeared there.’
Once the camera had finished its panning shot across the harbour, there was a long, shaky sequence of paving stones rushing by. Every now and then, they caught sight of a brand-new Italian shoe, a right foot, which had obvious specks of dirt on it. In the background, a mumbling could be heard: ‘For God’s sake, where’d the vegetable go?’
Viggo Norlander cleared his throat loudly.
‘That should’ve been cut, Sara,’ he said severely.
‘I thought it was worth keeping,’ she replied peacefully.
‘I think so too,’ Hultin said neutrally.
Just then, the vegetable appeared on-screen. Sara Svenhagen’s chlorine-green hair appeared opposite a weather-beaten man in a uniform, sitting in a tiny little cabin with greasy sea charts on the walls. He looked down at a piece of paper and said: ‘Nope, I’ve got nothing on that bus or its passengers other than that they booked three cabins.’
‘Sounds like there’s some information after all,’ the vegetable said encouragingly. ‘How many people was the booking for?’
The weather-beaten man read from the paper, not without some effort.
‘Eleven adults,’ he said eventually.
‘Adults?’ asked Sara Svenhagen.
‘Not children,’ he explained.
Then he froze, a strange grimace on his face.
‘Thanks, Viggo,’ Sara said, turning to the Tactical Command Centre. ‘Eleven adults means three more than our eight from Slagsta. We’d already accounted for two more: the driver plus the woman with the mobile phone, who we’ll come back to. Now it seems like there was one more. The Erinyes seem to be growing relentlessly. Keep going, Viggo. You’re all going to have to pay attention now, it’s just a short clip. Very MTV.’
Norlander pressed a button on the remote. The weather-beaten man disappeared along with his grimace. The picture cut to one of a young Slavic-looking woman dressed in white, standing in front of a variety of kitchen implements hanging from a wall.
‘Just women, yes,’ she said in near-perfect Swedish. ‘Three cabins. Three in one, four in the other two. Four-bed cabins. Talk to Wislawa, I think she’s the one who had those cabins.’
The picture changed again to another dark-haired girl, this time younger and clad in a bikini, sitting in the sun on the deck. The camera shook slightly, but the notorious cameraman managed to resist the temptation to pan down her body.
‘Where are you from, Wislawa?’ Sara’s voice asked, out of shot.
‘I’m Polish,’ the girl in the bikini replied in good Swedish.
‘Did you hear whether they were talking among themselves?’
‘Yeah. Different languages. A bit of Russian, a bit of Bulgarian.’
‘Ukrainian?’
‘I can’t tell the difference between Russian and Ukrainian. Bulgarian sounds different, but I can’t understand it. I know a bit of Russian.’
‘Did you hear what they were saying to one another?’
‘No, they never spoke when I was nearby. I just heard their voices from out in the corridor. Never any distinct words. I was just cleaning though, Jadwiga was the one who actually served them.’
New clip: another young girl, blonde, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. She was just about to disembark with a man in sunglasses when she was stopped on the gangway. The picture shook violently and the sound of heavy breathing could be heard over the entire conversation which followed.
‘Are you Jadwiga?’
‘Yes,’ the girl said, flinching. ‘Stop filming me. What’re you doing, you filthy old perv?’
‘We’re with the Swedish police,’ Sara said, holding up her ID.
‘Him too?’ asked Jadwiga, gesturing with her head.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Sara Svenhagen said neutrally.
‘Do you have to pant like that?’ Jadwiga said in a complaining tone.
‘I’m an old man,’ said the panting voice.
‘Do you recognise these women?’ Sara asked.
Jadwiga looked at the photographs.
‘Yeah, sure,’ she said. ‘Most of them were here, maybe all of them. Stayed in three cabins. I think they stayed in them the whole journey. Never left. I served them dinner in the evening and breakfast in the morning.’
‘She’s the most important,’ said Sara, pointing to one of the pictures. ‘Can you tell us anything about her?’
Jadwiga scratched her head and said: ‘She was Russian, I think. Some kind of Russian dialect. My Russian’s not so good.’
‘So you didn’t hear what they were saying?’
‘A bit, maybe. When I was little, we had to study Russian in school. But then just when I’d done a few years and was starting to understand the basics, we switched to English.’
‘Your Swedish is really good,’ said Sara.
‘Thanks.’
‘Bastards!’ came a cry, followed by a bang. The picture swung upwards to show the sky, as seen through the ship’s railings.
New clip. Jadwiga again, a mug in front of her and people sitting drinking coffee behind her.
‘Let’s try again,’ said Sara’s voice. ‘Are you sure it didn’t break, Viggo?’
‘Viggo?’ Jadwiga said with amusement in her voice.
‘Yup,’ said Norlander’s no-longer-panting voice. ‘I slipped.’
‘Right then, Jadwiga. Where were we?’
‘Her,’ she said, pointing to the sheet of photograph
s. ‘She was talking to the two others in her cabin in some weird Russian dialect. I heard a bit while I was serving them breakfast. When I served dinner the night before, they’d been completely silent.’
‘So she was in the cabin of three passengers?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jadwiga.
‘Would you be able to describe the other two?’
‘I think so. In their thirties, maybe. South Slavic appearance, I guess. If we say I’ve got a northern one.’
‘And those two, they weren’t any of these women in the photographs?’
‘No, they were in the other cabins. Four in each. They were much more rowdy. Addicts, I think.’
‘And the three in the third cabin, you wouldn’t say they were addicts?’
‘No, I thought they were social workers or something. Taking a group of old addicts somewhere. A detox trip.’
‘Would you be able to recognise the two women from the third cabin? Or help us with a sketch of them?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What did they say then?’
‘What?’
‘What did you hear while you were serving them breakfast?’
‘Let me see if I can remember. Something about the weather first, that it was good it had been such a calm night. Then something about the girls having done really well. One of them said she was proud of them. Then there was something about having to contact someone once they were through. Then they asked me if we had any rye bread. And then someone asked when they’d been checked last. One of them said she’d done it ten minutes ago. And then they asked me if I’d been into the cabins next door. I said yes. They asked if they’d been nice to me. I said yes. One of them asked for another cup of coffee. I gave it to her. Then I left.’
‘Jesus,’ said Sara’s voice. ‘You’ve got a good memory.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So they had to contact someone once they were through? Was that right?’
‘You’ve got a good memory too.’
‘Who? Did they say a name?’
‘Yeah, they said a name. But I can’t remember it.’
New clip. Jadwiga sitting at a computer. A fat man in a police uniform was next to her, jabbing at the keys and clicking away with the mouse. Half of Sara was visible next to them.