To the Top of the Mountain

by Arne Dahl

  ‘How’re the arms?’ Hjelm smiled evilly.

  ‘Both shoulders are out of joint, tibia’s cracked, spleen ruptured. They’re going to blow me up tomorrow morning. You can have the honour of scraping me from the walls of the station yourself.’

  ‘What a privilege. But does it really have to be one single policeman?’

  ‘Does it have to be a policeman?’ asked Chavez, standing up, stretching and walking over to the window which faced out onto the inner courtyard of the police station. ‘Maybe we’re focusing a bit too much on that. We shouldn’t let it blind us.’

  ‘No,’ Hjelm nodded, ‘no, of course not. But more? The weapons?’

  ‘Gang One had Russian Izh-70-300s. Do you want to hear the story about that pistol?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘After the Second World War,’ Chavez began, like a storyteller in front of a log fire, ‘the Red Army’s classic Tokarev pistols were changed. An engineer called Nikolai Makarov designed a pistol that was eventually accepted by Stalin. Still, production couldn’t start until after his death. In 1954, Izhevskij Mekhanikeskij Zavod started production of the apparently extraordinary Makarov pistol, which is still made today. After the Wall came down, the markets suddenly opened for the state-owned Izhevskij factory, and Russian pistols were hard currency. A new series, based on the Makarov, saw the light of day. The Izh-70 series. The Izh-70 and the Izh-70-100 use traditional Makarov ammunition, 9x18mm, with a magazine that holds eight and twelve bullets respectively. The Izh-70-200 and the Izh-70-300 are designed to use the more international Browning bullets, 9x17mm, eight and twelve respectively. In addition, there’s also the brand-new Izh-70-400, which has been specially made for the enormous American firearms market’s popular Parabellum ammunition.’

  ‘Unbelievably fascinating,’ Hjelm muttered. ‘Connection?’

  ‘Sure enough, it’s said to have turned up in the various Balkan wars. But, like I said, it’s . . . popular.’

  ‘The sub-machine guns then? Let me guess.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Military arsenal?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Chavez, sitting down with a thud. ‘They’ve been traced back to a big arsenal in Boden where a great big break-in took place a year or two ago. Twenty-three standard-model sub-machine guns were stolen, as well as boxes and boxes of ammo. A feast for the eyes.’

  ‘Boden,’ Hjelm nodded. ‘I assume that Niklas Lindberg served there at some point during his military career.’

  ‘Both he and Bergwall did, actually. Bergwall did his service there. Lindberg was a cadet. If that’s what it’s called.’

  ‘No idea. More, more, more.’

  ‘Well,’ Chavez sighed deeply, ‘I’m going to work on the Nazi organisations. With Gunnar Nyberg as a backup, if it all works for him. Someone somewhere must know about this organisation, and someone somewhere must know what’s going to happen next. I don’t think this is the end. They’ve got the briefcase, they’ve got the money – or drugs, if that’s what this is about – but they’re going to do something particular with them, I’d bet my bloody life on it. So it’ll be like this: me and Gunnar working the Nazi racket, Arto and Viggo on Kumla, you and Kerstin the “policeman”. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go straight for Nedic, it’s never worked. Plus, it’s not him behind the Sickla Slaughter. It’s Niklas Lindberg and his gang. We’ve got to get them.’

  ‘Great,’ exclaimed Hjelm. ‘That’s that, then, Detective Superintendent. There’s just one thing missing. A pensioner by the name of Jan-Olov Hultin.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. He can have some kind of therapeutic job. Basket weaving, maybe.’

  18

  JAN-OLOV HULTIN DIDN’T weave any baskets. He went straight for Nedic.

  Why not? he thought as he parked the service Volvo he had just signed out on Granitvägen and strolled the last few metres through the most luxurious parts of a deserted, Midsummer Danderyd. The weather couldn’t make its mind up. At that moment, the threatening rain clouds had decided to take a break, drifted apart and exposed a confused sun which didn’t seem to know what it should do with its rays of light. They fell capriciously over the waters of the Edsviken inlet, glimmering sporadically, now here, now there, and this strange, unsteady sparkle had a hypnotic effect on the former pensioner. For a moment, he imagined that he was back on the other side of Edsviken, and that it was his lake, Ravalen, that was shimmering. He had once again failed to tell grass from weeds, made the customary arc around the innocent little plant with the lawnmower, and continued up the slope. No luxurious Saab had pulled up on the gravel driveway. No man, looking like a gravely criminal estate agent, had come to meet him. Life was as normal. A constant Sisyphean task.

  The moment passed.

  It wasn’t everyone who could call themselves a ‘former pensioner’. It struck him that it was probably one of the country’s most unusual titles. He would have to live up to it.

  Why not? he thought, but not quite as recklessly as it might have seemed. The A-Unit had expressly left the question of Rajko Nedic open. Should they allow Nedic to remain ignorant of their knowledge of his involvement in the Sickla Slaughter? How would that make things better? Wouldn’t it be preferable to make sure that he toed the line and didn’t cause another, even worse slaughter? Wouldn’t it be better to show that they knew, so that he didn’t think he could do whatever he wanted?

  Rajko Nedic wasn’t the kind of man to do anything if he thought it would get him into trouble; he would hardly carry out an enormous massacre leaving a whole load of tracks behind him, he would rather cajole the bag back to him using threats and professional investigation. Still, Hultin felt – and again, it was a kind of instinctive feeling rather than any kind of logic or reason which guided this – that it was good to put some pressure on Nedic, to establish personal contact, to show a presence and his own, personal interest in the course of events.

  Plus, he was the one who decided.

  With that incontestable argument on the tip of his tongue, he trudged up to an enormous, locked metal gate set into a long brick wall. A surveillance camera zoomed in on him, and before he had even started to look for a doorbell, a voice said: ‘Name and business.’

  Jan-Olov Hultin cleared his throat and said, authoritatively: ‘Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin from CID. I’d like to speak with Rajko Nedic.’

  There was a moment of silence. Then the gate slid open and he walked into a gardener’s paradise. A man dressed in dungarees and a filthy cap was fiddling with some flowers on a magnificent, exceptionally pretty bush. All around him, the garden was in full bloom. Hultin who, as we know, couldn’t tell grass from weeds, felt an instinctive jealousy. He walked over to the man in the dungarees and hat and said: ‘I’m looking for Rajko Nedic.’

  ‘An unusual plant,’ said the man without looking up, still fussing with the pretty purple flowers. ‘But in this garden, you’ll find everything.’

  He took off his gardening gloves and held out his hand. ‘Rajko Nedic.’

  ‘Jan-Olov Hultin,’ said Jan-Olov Hultin, shaking the man’s hand, surprised. He really did look more like a gardener than a leading drug dealer. Though what do leading drug dealers look like? Maybe like a slightly furrowed but healthy-looking man without a single grey hair, dressed in dungarees and a cap.

  ‘I think it must be my poor childhood in a barren country that’s caused this abundance of flowers,’ he said, without a trace of a foreign accent. ‘I come from a little mountain village in eastern Serbia. Maybe you know that already.’

  ‘I wish I had such a green touch in my garden,’ said Hultin, looking out over the display of colour.

  ‘I must admit, it’s not just a matter of a touch,’ said Nedic, smelling the flower in his hand. ‘Unfortunately it’s also a matter of money. Some of these plants are rarities, but not this one. My favourite flower. It’s in almost every Swedish garden, flowering nicely. Completely normal columbines. My goodness. The first time I saw it, I thought I was seeing proof o
f God. Look at the shape of the flowers. These four fantastic cupped petals arching around a common point. As though they’d found the centre of the universe.’

  Hultin looked at the columbine. It really was exceptional.

  ‘A masterpiece,’ he said honestly.

  ‘Yes, it really is. Well, Detective Superintendent, what can I do for you? Yet another baseless accusation? I’ve made a real effort to explain that I’m just a normal restaurant owner. A restaurateur.’

  ‘I’m not here to accuse you,’ said Hultin, lifting his gaze from the columbine. ‘More to express my condolences. Four such devoted colleagues.’

  Rajko Nedic’s gaze didn’t falter. He remained the good-natured gardener showing off the results of his green-fingered patience.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘Vukotic in Kumla and the three war criminals on the Sickla industrial estate. Really tragic.’

  ‘You’ve lost me now, Detective. I really don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard about the Kumla explosion and the Sickla Slaughter?’

  ‘Unfortunately I don’t have time to follow the gambols of the press too closely. I work rather hard.’

  A mobile phone rang somewhere within his dungarees. Nedic fished it out and answered: ‘Hello . . . Ja, ja, guten Tag. Leider können wir uns jetzt nicht sprechen . . . Ich rufe zurück in etwa zehn Minuten . . . Ja. Tschüß.’

  ‘Zehn Minuten?’ asked Jan-Olov Hultin.

  ‘An estimation,’ said Rajko Nedic, shrugging. ‘It might be sooner if you would get to the point, Detective.’

  ‘German contacts?’

  ‘Suppliers. Most of my time is spent in negotiation with suppliers.’

  ‘Suppliers?’

  ‘Of Mosel wine in this case, yes. Direct import. It’s lawful nowadays, as you know.’

  ‘Then I’ll use my allotted ten minutes economically. This time we know more than normal, and it’s not the usual drugs or finance police who are involved, but it’ll be me and my group that you’ll be dealing with, Mr Nedic. It’s a good group. Specialists. We know that the contents of a briefcase were stolen from you down in Sickla, and that you lost four of your key staff. Maybe you’ll start to feel the loss, even if you can bring in as many replacement war criminals as you like, whenever you like, from the former Yugoslavia. We also know who robbed you, if it’s of interest. You were delivering money or drugs in that briefcase, to a party who never received it. That party will be annoyed by this time. Maybe that’s a risk factor. We know that you’ll do all you can to get the briefcase back, and we’ll be here the entire time. Is there a case of blackmail that you’d like to report?’

  Rajko Nedic regarded the elderly man with owl-like glasses perched on his enormous nose.

  ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Jan-Olov Hultin, turning on his heels. ‘But remember that this isn’t the normal situation. From now on, everything will be more difficult.’

  He began walking towards the gate. After a few metres, he turned round.

  ‘One more question,’ he said. ‘What’s the difference between grass and weeds?’

  Rajko Nedic chuckled faintly.

  ‘It’s easy, Detective Superintendent,’ he said. ‘Weeds are the things you clear out of the way.’

  19

  AS SARA SVENHAGEN stood outside, looking up, she realised why she hadn’t recognised the address, Fatburstrappan 18.

  It was the address of Söder Torn, the high-rise which loomed over Södermalm.

  In 1980, the redevelopment of the Södra Station area had begun in Stockholm. In practical terms, this had meant that a completely new quarter would be built. An architectural design competition was announced. HSB, the cooperative housing association, suggested that a ‘Södermalm Manhattan’ be built, covering the entire twenty-five hectares with skyscrapers. Their suggestion gained support from a surprising number of camps, but it was the beginning of the eighties, after all. A time of accelerating madness. Naturally, their outlandish suggestion couldn’t go through. Instead, in 1984, an alternative proposal was made by the Town Planning Office, a plan where one tall building remained; a compromise that was meant to ensure both that the quarter’s traditional character was retained – with one high tower, a campanile or a church tower – and that those clamouring for skyscrapers wouldn’t be left empty-handed. Later the same year, yet another competition was announced, focused on the tower that would be built close to Medborgarplatsen. Seventy different entries flowed in, the vast majority suggesting a pseudo-American skyscraper with around fifty floors. One of the judges was hardly neutral. His name was Sune Haglund, the city planning commissioner for the Moderate Party. He argued enthusiastically in favour of an extremely high and bulky office block, ideally with a rotating restaurant at the top. No winner was announced from the competition, but several commended entries were allowed, two years later, to take part in a new competition to design a considerably slimmer high-rise than Haglund had suggested. The Danish architect Henning Larsen won with a plan for a circular tower of forty-three floors. Its nickname was ‘Haglund’s Stick’. This was in 1986. After a couple of years of consideration by the committee, it was decided that forty-three floors was abnormally high, that the tower would rise like a distorted phallus up out of Södermalm, with the large, round testicle of the Globe Arena a sorry addition in the visible distance. And so the tower was lowered to thirty-three floors, which then became twenty-three, which, after the Stockholm Party vetoed it, eventually became eleven. The hand was reduced to nothing but a thumb. In 1990, a hardly impressive office block of eleven floors was officially approved. By then, the Söder Station area was almost complete. The stalls and boutiques of the Södermalmshallarna, the flats in Bofills båge, the areas of Fatburstrappan and Fatbursparken. But this was the start of the nineties, the property crisis a reality. All further building projects were put on hold. Until 1992. Then the authorities decided that it was no longer offices that were needed, but residences. So, from the office block of eleven floors, Henning Larsen created a residential building of twenty-three floors; sixty-six metres high, home to around one hundred flats. In the spring of 1995, these new plans were approved. Building work could begin.

  After all of the toing and froing, protests and attempts at compromise, ‘Haglund’s Stick’ came to be known as ‘Haglund’s Semi’, though in order to remove Sune Haglund’s name from the tower once it was complete, it was officially named Söder Torn. That name hadn’t quite caught on.

  People lived there in any case. The flats were abnormally expensive, but people lived there.

  A man named John Andreas Witréus lived there, for example. He was a paedophile.

  Sara Svenhagen stood between two uniformed police officers, looking up at the strange enormous metal ring which floated like a halo above Söder Torn. At that moment, she thought to herself that Haglund’s Stick really was beautiful. Perhaps her view was slightly coloured, but it really wasn’t so bad.

  On the other hand, the combination of phallus, halo, semi and paedophile seemed to be telling her something that, for the moment, she couldn’t piece together. She had other things on her mind.

  She looked out over Medborgarplatsen. It was strangely empty. Usually Stockholm’s busiest square, it was largely deserted. It was overcast and dreary. And completely deserted.

  A caretaker let the trio into Söder Torn. The elegant stairwell smelt new and faintly perfumed. They thanked him and stepped into the lift. The taller of the policemen was carrying a short, black cement battering ram with handles. He held it ostentatiously in one hand. Sara thought that maybe she should give him an impressed look. Just to make sure of his goodwill.

  It didn’t quite work.

  The lift took them to the sixteenth floor. They wandered through a corridor, exquisitely adorned with flowers, and came to a door marked ‘Witréus’. Is that really a name? she wondered to herself, pointing silently at the door. J
ust to be on the safe side, she took her pistol out. The policemen positioned the battering ram just beneath the door handle, and glanced at her. She nodded. They broke the door open and rushed in.

  By the window in the flat, which was shaped like a slice of cake, a grey-haired man in his sixties was sitting, dressed in a thin summer suit with a mauve tie. He lowered a long-lensed camera to stare straight down the muzzle of Sara Svenhagen’s pistol.

  ‘My God,’ he said quietly.

  She could see clearly in his eyes that he knew what their visit was about.

  ‘John Andreas Witréus?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the man whispered.

  ‘Put the camera down and raise your hands above your head.’

  John Andreas Witréus did as he was told.

  ‘Lie flat on the floor,’ she continued, nodding to the assistants who had begun frisking him with a slight touch of brutality.

  She wandered around the flat. It was fantastic. And pedantically clean. There were countless antiques. Old, elegant objects everywhere. The view out over the city was magnificent, in several directions. And in the bedroom, which had the atmosphere of British colonial India, the computer was on.

  When she saw that, she felt a wave of complete, ice-cold calm. She had him. She returned to the living room.

  One of the assistants was, for some reason, sitting on Witréus’s back. She heard it cracking and crunching.

  ‘I think that’s enough now,’ she said, taking the camera. It was a Canon, press photographer standard. Easily twenty thousand kronor’s worth.

  The police assistant climbed off John Andreas Witréus.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said ingratiatingly, turning to the man lying on the floor. ‘What is it you take photos of?’

  ‘I’m very interested in photography,’ said Witréus, trying to sit up. The cracking continued.

  ‘I can see that,’ said Sara Svenhagen. The rest could be saved for the secluded interview room. She turned to the assistants. ‘Take him with you. Put him in an interview room; I’ll be there soon.’