To the Top of the Mountain

by Arne Dahl

  Somewhere during the course of her calculations, she suddenly started to understand the basic principle of market economics. Everything had a price. Or rather: a price could be put on everything. Absolutely everything. Every relationship, every sign of life. The question of conscience she was struggling with was an economic calculation. It was simple: plus and minus. Minimising the losses. The least possible damage. The smallest number of sexual assaults on minors.

  It felt disgusting.

  Necessary, but disgusting.

  A price could be put on everything. Commercialisation of the intimate sphere. The transformation of humans from physical beings to legal entities to virtual people. All that was left behind was a number, a value, a share price.

  She suddenly knew precisely why she had chopped off her hair.

  And just then, the physical address for the IP address appeared. It was in Stockholm.

  But it felt strange. Fatburstrappan 18. Somewhere in Södermalm.

  And then reality hit her. The moral dilemma was, on closer consideration, fictitious, or at least not hers. She had forgotten one important factor.

  Rank.

  It was almost two on Midsummer’s Eve. Dancing around the maypole would already be well under way in many places. Friday. Followed by Midsummer and then Sunday. Weekend, with a minimal number of staff in the city. The majority were in the countryside. Her superiors would be dancing to Midsummer tunes. Ragnar Hellberg too, in all probability; comedy Superintendent Party-Ragge. But she had an emergency number. A mobile number.

  The question was whether she wanted to contact Hellberg. There was no real hurry. The paedophile living at Fatburstrappan 18 might not commit any serious assaults during the Midsummer weekend. Though ‘might’ wasn’t enough for Sara Svenhagen. He might, on the other hand, celebrate Midsummer by indulging in a real orgy of sexual assault on minors.

  What would Hellberg say? Maybe he would have already downed his first few schnapps and be wearing his party hat at a jaunty angle, rambling away. She couldn’t really say how well she knew Hellberg. He was the police force’s youngest and most up-for-a-laugh detective superintendent, though his was the kind of forced, businesslike fun. Everyone had to take part. That was an order. We’ll wear blue lights on our heads at the Stockholm Marathon, right? All of us? Right? But sure, he was competent enough when it really mattered. Still, she couldn’t really look past the way he had outmanoeuvred Ludvig Johnsson, the man who had already built up the entire paedophile division when the National Police Board brought in the more media-friendly careerist Ragnar Hellberg, and quickly promoted him. And Hellberg really did make a good impression on TV. Party-Ragge, who called reporters by their first names and always had a joke ready.

  But she didn’t really know anything about him. Not whether he had a family, not where he lived, not whether he was hiding out at his place in the country, mobile phone switched off. Would the very fact that she had the cheek to contact him on Midsummer’s Eve close all doors? Would she get a telling-off from a herring-munching, loose-jawed Hellberg, mid-drinking song?

  It was either/or. Either she would get a green light or she would get a red one. At the moment, it was yellow. Changed according to the EU standard.

  She rang. Hellberg answered almost immediately, as though he had been waiting for her call. He didn’t seem to be in the midst of a paradise of schnapps and song; when his voice echoed down the line, she recognised, to her surprise, a hint of public holiday anxiety.

  Was Party-Ragge sitting at home, just as lonely and abandoned as she was? Was his whole bon vivant attitude just a professional front? Inside, she felt quite surprised as she said: ‘I’ve found something.’

  ‘You’re working now?’ Hellberg asked, without the expected jovial tone in his voice which suggested that she should be rolling around in the Midsummer hay instead.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘On what?’ she exclaimed clumsily. Ragnar Hellberg didn’t seem the type to take his work home with him, even on normal weekdays.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, seeming to chuckle. ‘Administrative stuff, I suppose you could say. What’ve you found, Sara?’

  ‘A new network.’

  ‘What? Is it the Nässjö code? It seemed uncrackable.’

  ‘Yeah, the Nässjö code. A blockhead in Stockholm. Fatburstrappan 18. Several others, too. It’s just a question of whether we should pick him up immediately, or wait for the rest and take them all together.’

  ‘Are there international numbers?’

  ‘The majority, yeah. But also in Boden, Lund, Borås. So far. I’ve got lots left.’

  ‘How many other countries?’

  ‘Three so far. The US, Germany, France. It’ll take time to organise an international effort.’

  Yeah,’ said Hellberg, seeming to think it over. ‘And you want to clip its wings immediately, if I’ve understood you right. So that they don’t cast a shadow over the Midsummer blossoms?’

  ‘I guess I do,’ Sara Svenhagen admitted, without really understanding Hellberg’s flower analogy.

  ‘Sigh and groan,’ Hellberg articulated. ‘We can’t pick up Boden, Lund and Borås now. But we’ve got a chance here, I agree with you. OK. Two things. First, you need to find enough to arrest him and keep him. Under no circumstances can he make contact with anyone else who could warn the network. No conversations, no lawyers. Refer to the new rules. But – like I said – you have to find something in his flat.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that I—’

  ‘No, I’m not. Just make sure you find something.’

  ‘And second?’

  ‘This is between you and me. Solely.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘That’s an order. OK?’

  ‘I don’t understand—’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Two rank-and-file officers from the local police to kick the door in. Give them only the minimum information. I’ll fix the authorisation. Go straight to Södra Station and take a couple of assistants with you. Don’t call ahead.’

  ‘I don’t really understand what’s—’

  ‘You understand what you need to understand. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Sara Svenhagen, confused, ending the call.

  She looked at the receiver.

  Was that really a green light she’d been given?

  17

  CERTAIN TRACES HAD been left behind. A folder of invoices, order confirmations and booking forms lying here and there, looking lost. Posters, or rather the torn corners of posters, still pinned to the walls; almost all of the escapist kind. Images of paradise islands, fantastic scenes of virgin Swedish countryside, unobtainable archipelago idylls, endless Turkish beaches with bars at every turn.

  The administrative staff had been told to give their room back to the A-Unit in a hurry, and each member of the team sat in their old room without really recognising it. Paul Hjelm came to a rash and not entirely objective conclusion: administrative work required a large dose of escapism.

  Police work did too, though for completely different reasons. He didn’t know if the things he dedicated his free time to could really be called escapism. He read, listened to jazz music and ‘played piano’; he always made sure that the quotation marks were in place around the last of them. But he had kept an old promise and bought himself a piano. He would check that his house – and ideally the entire neighbourhood – was completely empty before he started tinkling the ivories. But then he enjoyed taking liberties, experimenting with reckless harmonies, testing the limits, mimicking, taking out simple accompaniments and even humming, like Glenn Gould. Because Paul Hjelm never sang. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t bring himself to sing. That was his limit.

  When it came to reading, there were no quotation marks. He dared to assert that he did that straight out. He read. And he really tried to avoid shying away from anything, he tried not to stop where he instinctively felt he wanted to stop, but to venture into unkn
own territory. Maybe reading was actually some kind of midlife crisis. He didn’t want to bloody die without having explored as many of life’s opportunities as possible.

  Recently, it had been Rilke. Poetry was still a challenge. He worked his way through the Duino Elegies, ten fantastic long poems, and he felt that there was something there, something absolutely fundamental, important, central, a point of contact with something he wouldn’t manage to come in contact with by himself – still, he never really made it all the way there.

  ‘For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear.’

  He had put the Duino Elegies to one side and promised himself he would go back to it. Instead, he picked up Rilke’s only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and found himself spellbound. He couldn’t find another word for it. Spellbound. He couldn’t put it down. This fantastic depiction of childhood had found a home in his borrowed office at the local police, it was there when he answered ‘Gunnar Löv’s telephone’ and received that strange pause in response, it was there when he waded through pools of blood in the city, trying to make sense of why the hell they’d had to pull out that knife and press it in between those ribs. It was only in the moment when the first contours began to emerge from behind the Kvarnen Killing that it felt like he had really finished reading the book. He imagined he could see something peculiar behind it that he wouldn’t normally have noticed. He allowed himself to thank the literature for that discovery. Even though it sounded a bit idealised.

  His relationship with his family was far from idealised, however. Danne had stopped being pubescent and moody. Instead, Tova was pubescent and crazy. Completely out of her mind. He didn’t have the energy to even think about it. But Cilla was taking it quite hard, since she had always had a good relationship with her daughter. Now, suddenly, she was the most old-fashioned, awful individual who had ever lived, and it was the first time that Cilla had really felt her age. Which wasn’t especially advanced, but now suddenly increased by roughly a year a day. She had now reached ninety-three, and was not especially inclined to marital interaction.

  Behind Jorge Chavez’s head was Delphi. An idealised ancient Greek landscape with shining gold drawing pins. Chavez’s head was in the computer, however. Practically connected.

  ‘It suits you,’ said Paul Hjelm.

  ‘What?’ asked Chavez, typing away.

  ‘Delphi suits you.’

  Chavez stopped typing and glanced over his shoulder. He grimaced and began typing again.

  ‘How are you?’ Hjelm asked abruptly.

  Chavez sighed and looked up. ‘Are we working or hanging out?’ he replied brutally.

  ‘Hanging out,’ Hjelm said, unflustered. ‘At least for a few minutes. Do you want a coffee?’

  ‘No, I don’t want a crap coffee with flakes of limescale in it.’

  ‘Racist,’ said Paul Hjelm, filling up two mugs from the old coffee machine on their shared desk. ‘You’ve got to integrate. Otherwise, you’ll never fit into Swedish society. You’ll never be let into any pubs.’

  ‘That’s a little paradox about Swedish society,’ said Chavez, taking a mug. ‘Only the people who never go to pubs are let in.’

  They raised their mugs to one another. It had been a while.

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s pretty good,’ Chavez continued, pulling a face; you really could feel the flakes of limescale floating around in your mouth. ‘I’ve been on so damn many courses that I can’t really distinguish them.’

  ‘Home-language lessons?’ Hjelm said obstinately, smiling charmingly.

  ‘Soon, when I become superintendent,’ said Chavez with the same charming smile, ‘that kind of thing’ll be wiped out from the police force. And you’ll be first of all.’

  Oh yes, they were back again. Everything was just the same.

  ‘No women?’ asked Hjelm.

  ‘What’s the name of that director, the one who did Änglagård?’

  ‘Colin Nutley. Immigrant. Are you a couple?’

  ‘Colin Nutley. When he came to Sweden, two things struck him. The women were completely fantastic.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘But the men . . . That’s it, word for word: “But the men . . .” I think it’s a great way to put it.’

  ‘And that’s the answer to my question?’ asked Hjelm quietly.

  ‘Yup. Yes: women. Several women. But none in particular.’

  ‘Isn’t it about time to settle down a bit?’

  ‘Like Viggo?’ exclaimed Chavez. ‘Did you hear about the thing with the baby? What a bloody story.’

  ‘The more shots, the better your chances of hitting. Even if there are a few accidental shots . . .’

  ‘He seems to be living with that woman. One day she just turned up at his door and said: this is your daughter. And now they’re both living with him. A normal, happy family.’

  ‘He avoided all the pregnancy madness,’ Hjelm said jealously. ‘Lucky guy.’

  ‘I know you don’t believe it, but I do actually go home with women. It’s that simple. Only, the one is conspicuously absent. So I’m replacing quality with quantity. You know your Marx, right?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Hjelm, pointing to Chavez’s computer. ‘Have you found anything?’

  ‘Only thoughts. And you?’

  ‘If that man in Kvarnen, the one who was overheard speaking English with the three dead Yugoslavs, if they were even Yugoslav, really is a policeman, then he’s the key. He’s the one who set the entire thing moving. It could be one of three things: bribe money, blackmail money or a purchase sum. The first would mean it was about a one-off payment, clearly a very big one. Not something regular. But it could also be some kind of initial payment, that’s not so unlikely. The second is possible, but what could this policeman have on Rajko Nedic that no one else has? The third seems most likely. Maybe they’re buying information, but it’s most likely that they’re buying drugs from him, simple as that. But if that’s the case, we need to find a policeman with access to drugs. A confiscation, maybe? One that hasn’t been accounted for? I think we should take a look at the drugs units across the country.

  ‘In that case, shouldn’t Internal be brought in?’ asked Chavez.

  ‘There’s no guarantee that he’s actually a policeman. The man who showed a police ID in Kvarnen might not even have been the person talking to the Slavs. But no one else seems to be missing. Kerstin and I’ll have to get in touch with everyone from Kvarnen again to try to get better descriptions of both the policeman and the robber gang.’

  ‘2C, 2E, 2F.’

  Hjelm grimaced slightly, and said: ‘If you insist on using those names, yeah. 2A: Eskil Carlstedt, dead. 2B: Sven Joakim Bergwall, dead. 2D: Niklas Lindberg, annoyingly full of life. If we test 2C’s blood type maybe we can get closer, not least if we do it through Kumla since he may well have been in the Nazi gang there. AB negative isn’t so common, after all. Söderstedt and Norlander are still working on the Kumla case. They’re going to interview the rest of the Slavs there, and the rest of the Nazis. Doesn’t that sound enviable?’

  ‘Not even slightly,’ said Chavez, pulling at a cuticle with an indifferent expression. ‘They’ll be banging their heads against the cell walls.’

  ‘They can scrape one another off them, then. Well, all right. Now, Eskil Carlstedt. I’ve checked his background and been through his flat. Since he knew the flat would be searched, he’s cleaned it meticulously. Not a trace. The neighbours heard the vacuum cleaner early in the morning on the twenty-fourth. Before he came here and allowed himself to be interviewed by a couple of idiots. The hard drive on his computer’s been wiped. The technicians are working on it, maybe they can get something back. Something else for Svenhagen to get his teeth into. Have you seen his daughter, by the way? Might be something for you, Jorge. Gunnar’s working with her. An unbelievable woman. Hair’s too short, maybe.’

  ‘I don’t believe in inbreeding,’ Chavez said darkly.

  ‘It
doesn’t matter what you believe. It’s about passion that throws all common sense and principles out the window.’

  ‘Shut up and go on.’

  ‘I can’t do both,’ said Hjelm. ‘You’ll have to choose one.’

  ‘Go on,’ Chavez said even more darkly.

  ‘Carlstedt’s past is about as empty as his hard drive. Kerstin’s talking to his workmates at Kindwall’s in Hammarby harbour. He sold Fords. Used-car salesman. Especially used now.’

  Chavez laughed, and said, in a silly voice: ‘“Would you buy a used car from this man?” I’m wondering most about Nedic myself. How the hell is it possible that he can live and work as an honest businessman when every single policeman in this country knows that he’s one of the leading drug dealers? Most of these dealers are underground, after all, but he’s playing a strangely precise double game. It seems to be built on an extreme, almost mafia-like loyalty. No one snitches on Rajko Nedic. That’s just how it is.’

  ‘What kind of legitimate business?’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Chavez knowingly. ‘A restaurant chain, for a change. Three restaurants. Great places to eat, apparently. One almost ended up in the Michelin guide. They’ve tried to go the Al Capone route, the back way, and do him for tax avoidance, but it doesn’t work. He runs that part of his business impeccably. The most law-abiding man in the restaurant world, according to the finance division.’

  ‘Could that be what this is about?’ said Hjelm, rubbing what he thought was the beginning of a bald patch.

  ‘You mean that some policeman has found a back route and is trying to get a little extra in their pocket? Yeah, sure. Except there doesn’t seem to be a back route. You said it yourself: what could one single policeman have found out that none of his colleagues have?’

  ‘What’s to say it’s a single policeman?’

  ‘The fact that a whole gang of criminal policemen sounds unlikely,’ said Chavez. ‘That’s it. It just doesn’t fit. Though it could be the porn police. That doesn’t sound unlikely. The whole Mediterranean shrimp thing was really ingenious. It’s an obvious lead.’