by Mike Ward
Inspector Håkan Arvidsson called the meeting to order. Present was Inspector Linn Brexner who worked closely with Arvidsson and who had been with him the night before when the assassin’s body had been found. Also present was Fredrik Olofsson who was in his early fifties with short gray hair. Olofsson sat very erect and had a formal manner. He was a very good detective and Arvidsson usually worked with him when he could. The fourth member of the team was Oliver Siemsen who was in his early forties. Siemsen dressed very stylishly, had blond hair and was a little under average height. To Siemsen’s left sat Stephanie Lundström. Lundström was in her mid thirties with long blond hair and an easy smile. Outside work she was known to be a serious computer gamer and she had won several competitions.
Arvidsson had called the other three members of the team the night before. He had gotten hold of Olofsson and Siemsen and had requested they come in an hour early to get a good start. He hadn’t been able to get hold of Stephanie Lundström and had left her a message. She had seen Arvidsson and Brexner on the news pictures in the morning, listened to her messages and made it in with minutes to spare. Arvidsson had coffee on his desk. After Stephanie entered he shut the door and poured coffee.
“You have all seen the news pictures.” It was a statement not a question. They all nodded agreement. “The man who was shot was from Germany. His name was Dieter Köhler. We know that because he carried a European Union driving license in his wallet. It is very likely that Köhler was an assassin if that was his real name. He was armed with a Magnum 37 gun with a silencer and had two knives on his person. It was his bad luck that somebody got to him first. Had he shot his target and gotten away we would be looking at quite a different crime.”
“Do we know the target?” asked Stephanie Lundström.
“Yes we do.” Arvidsson opened a folder and pulled out the printout with the photograph of Martin Ingvarsson from Zetterstrand Investment Bank. His name and the address of the bank were printed under the photograph. “Essentially we have two crimes to investigate here. We need to know who shot Dieter Köhler and equally importantly if not more so, we need to know who sent a German assassin to shoot the head of the biggest investment bank in the Nordic Region.”
“Is it possible or more likely probable that Ingvarsson found out that he was going to be hit and decided that he would hit first?” Fredrik Olofsson asked.
“That is probable. The first thing Linn and I will do after this meeting is to go and interview Ingvarsson. We’ll be watching his body language very carefully.”
Linn Brexner interrupted. She looked at Arvidsson. “I didn’t have time to tell you this yet but I already called Germany this morning with the number on Köhler’s driving license. It matches a man who lives in the city of Stuttgart in southern Germany. They gave me the number of the police station down there and I spoke to a detective who will call me back and send me an email detailing what he can find out about Köhler.”
“Good work,” said Arvidsson. “As you know it’s important we make some progress quickly with this case so that we can keep Prosecutor Bergekrans off my back. He will no doubt want to hold a press conference as soon as possible. This is going to be a convoluted and complicated case and I have no doubt that we will start with one hypothesis about what happened and then end up with a different one as the case progresses.”
Arvidsson didn’t always play by the rules. He followed his instincts and sometimes went off at a complete tangent but he had the best record of any inspector in the building. He could be difficult and didn’t always care who he upset but his staff were extremely loyal and he had gone out on a limb to protect more than one of them in the past. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had such a good record on solving cases he would no doubt have been shunted off to a small police station in a quiet part of Sweden. He didn’t like it if a case he was working on appeared to be going nowhere and at times like that the team knew they better put in as many extra hours as were needed. Linn Brexner was more level headed than Arvidsson and they made a good team. She was good at seeing the whole picture and warning him when he was overstepping the mark and it drove her crazy when he ignored her advice and went ahead anyway. However, she wanted to work with no other inspector. Arvidsson was a great believer in letting his team use their own initiative, other inspectors in the building would have had her get permission from them first before calling Germany but Arvidsson trusted her enough to let her go ahead with sometimes some quite major decisions.
Arvidsson was talking again. “I’ve made a list of action items with names against them. We’ll go through them now.” He picked up another folder and gave a handout to each person in the room keeping one for himself. “The first task is to speak to Martin Ingvarsson. Linn and I will do that together, I really want to know whether he lies to us today. I’m keeping an open mind but I will not be surprised if he does. Fredrik, the car license number and the name of the car hire company are on the sheet. We found maps from the hire company in the glove box. Go and talk to them, find out what information they have on him.”
Arvidsson checked that off on his list. He spoke again. “Oliver and Stephanie, you two find out where Köhler was staying. Start with the bigger hotels near the Zetterstrand Investment Bank and work outwards. My guess is that Köhler would have gone for a larger hotel to remain more anonymous. Check if the hotel has a record of who booked the room and if they have a phone number. Köhler may have booked the room himself but it is equally possible that someone booked it for him. When you find out where he was staying get into his room and bring everything back here. Fredrik once you have got the information from the car hire company take some police officers and start knocking on doors near the assassination site to see if anyone saw anything.”
Arvidsson turned to Linn Brexner. “Can you find out when the autopsy is? If it is possible I’d like for us both to attend. If it happens before we’re finished with Ingvarsson then we’ll stop by and get the results.” He turned to the other three. “I need profiles built for Martin Ingvarsson and Dieter Köhler. As soon as Linn receives the email from Germany she will forward it to all of us. And when information starts coming in we need to build a profile for whoever shot Köhler. I think that’s it for now.”
Arvidsson put his checklist down next to the picture of Martin Ingvarsson. He noticed something. “This picture of Martin Ingvarsson, it’s a different size from the rest of the paper. It’s not standard European A4 sized.” He picked up the sheet of paper with Ingvarsson’s picture on it, he was trying to see if anyone had cut it shorter. He held it up to the light and noticed Daniel Ålund from IT walking past. “Get Ålund in here,” he said. “He might know what this means.”
Siemsen left the room and went running after Daniel Ålund. A moment later the two men stepped into the room. Ålund was in his thirties with dark hair and a muscular build. He looked more like a bodybuilder than someone who worked in IT, which in fact he was. He liked computer gaming but he would much rather spend two hours lifting iron than sitting in front of a computer. He spent his whole day in front of computers, at night he wanted something more physical.
Arvidsson showed Ålund the sheet of paper with the photograph of Martin Ingvarsson on it. “This is not A4 sized,” he said.
“Do you have a ruler?” Daniel Ålund asked.
Arvidsson opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a ruler. Ålund measured the sheet of paper. ‘This is twenty one point six centimeters by twenty seven point nine centimeters. That corresponds to eight and a half inches by eleven inches. This was printed in America.”
“Why?” asked Stephanie Lundström.
Ålund misunderstood her. “I don’t know,” he said.
“I wasn’t looking for an answer,” she said. “This case has just gotten bigger.”
“Do you need to know where in America this photograph was printed?” asked Ålund.
“That would be great. Are you going to wave a magic wand and tell us?” Arvidsson said.
“How do you propose to do that?” Arvidsson asked.
Ålund answered the question with a question of his own. He pointed at Arvidsson’s Canon printer. “Does your printer have a built in scanner?” he asked.
“Yes, it does.”
“Does your scanner scan at 600 dpi or better?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Arvidsson said.
“How long have you had your printer?”
“Less than a year.”
“In that case it should be fine. Will you put the photograph on the glass, scan it and then save it as a pdf file please.”
Arvidsson scanned the photograph as requested. The scanner warmed up, hummed and then scanned the image. He saved it as a pdf and then looked at Daniel Ålund. “What now?” he asked.
Ålund took charge, this was his area. “Okay, everybody come round and look at the image please. See that it is on 100% resolution. Look at Martin Ingvarsson’s name typed under the photograph. You will all agree that the name looks as though it is typed in black ink.”
“It looks as though it is typed in black ink because it is typed in black ink,” Siemsen said.
Linn Brexner smiled. “What you are about to tell us is that it only appears that Martin Ingvarsson’s name is typed in black ink.”
“You are absolutely right,” Ålund said. “There is almost certainly an American government security code hidden in the pixels that make up the type. It should give us the IP address of the printer that printed the photograph.”
“Why would they do that?” Brexner asked.
“Because the American government is obsessed with spying on its own citizens. However, in this case this will work to our advantage.”
“How do you know this?” Brexner asked.
“In 2005 a San Francisco based privacy organization called the Electronic Frontier Foundation found secret yellow dots on most printers they tested. They were able to decode the yellow dots on Xerox printers but not on other printers. I believe each printer manufacturer has been given a different code to use. Since then hackers and IT guys in the United States and other areas of the world have been working to decode the dots. A few years ago you had to use a blue light and a strong magnifying glass, now a good scanner will show you the codes.”
“Okay,” said Arvidsson. “Let’s have a look.”
“Change the size of the page on the pdf file to 3,200% and then move to find Ingvarsson’s name.”
Arvidsson increased the size of the display. They were looking at the top left hand corner of the page. Arvidsson scrolled down until they found Ingvarsson’s name. The screen showed different colored pixels hidden among the name with some individual pixels set slightly away from the letters. There were yellow pixels, blue pixels, brown pixels and purple pixels in among the letters.
“Are you sure that is not just the way they print the letters?” Brexner asked.
“Look at the last ‘n’ in Martin and the first ‘n’ in Ingvarsson. The colored pixels are in different places. Look at the two “s” letters together in Ingvarsson. Again the colored pixels are in different places. Look at the pixels above the “s” letters. Again they are in a different pattern. What you are looking at is the American government spy code.”
Arvidsson was big on civil liberties. I hope our government isn’t involved in this and spying on Swedish citizens,” he said. “You know if America had caught the Chinese government doing this they would be screaming about how the Chinese government was taking away the freedoms of the Chinese citizens. I hope to God the European Union does not allow this in Europe. How can the Americans force all those manufacturers to put codes on their printers? I could see them forcing American manufacturers to do it but what about the Japanese printer manufacturers. Where are their balls?”
“It’s interesting you should pick Japan,” Ålund said. “If North Korea wants to fly an aircraft over Japan who do you think they have to ask permission from?”
“The Japanese government or the Japanese Aviation Authority.”
“Wrong, the North Koreans would have to ask the American Military Governor of Japan or whatever his title is for permission. The Japanese don’t even have control of their own airspace. It is controlled by the American Government. That’s why the American government can order the Japanese printer manufacturers around although I suspect all companies importing printers into America have to have those codes.”
“Can you crack this code?” Arvidsson asked.
“I can give it a good try,” Ålund said.
“How will you crack it?” Stephanie Lundström asked.
Arvidsson held up his hand to stop the conversation. He suspected that Ålund would have to contact a hacker. He didn’t want anyone to talk about that in the meeting. Arvidsson wanted that code cracked. If they had it then they would know who sent the assassin. It might not be admissible as evidence because of the method used by Ålund but if they had a name then they could probably find other evidence. Another inspector would have played it safe and played it by the book, not Arvidsson.
“I’ll email you the file Daniel,” he said. “Get on it as fast as you can please. Then report back to me. Okay, we all have something to work on. Let’s get to it.”
