by Arne Dahl
They packed up and disappeared. She stood by the window, waiting until the police car had driven away. To the right, she could see the Södermalmshallarna and their cineplexes, and the edge of the enormous, strangely curved building which went by the name of Bofills båge. Straight ahead, Medborgarplatsen stretched out, full of empty cafes and bars, and then the old civic hall with its public baths and library. To the left, Götgatan and the right-hand corner of the Björns trädgård park.
She turned back to the expensive flat. She was doing her best to make the undeniable elegance of the place tally with the sleazy business of paedophilia.
Still, the officers in Auschwitz had lived in nice places, too.
Almost immediately, she found a whole series of child-porn films in the video cabinet. That dilemma was over and done with, at any rate. There was a great case for an arrest. She continued through the flat. In the bedroom, she found three extensive albums full of images of children.
The smaller of the two bathrooms had been turned into a darkroom. She switched on the red light and stepped into a strange world of pictures. Newly developed photographs were hanging from a clothes line. Veritable piles of photographs were strewn across the room. There must have been five, six thousand. And, for the most part, they all had the same subject.
She had expected a monstrous sight, the kind that changes the very core of a person. Thousands of pictures of children being sexually abused. Söder Torn as a kind of Tower of Babel, the reason God had turned His back on man. The flat as the country’s worst paedophile den. John Andreas Witréus as Dr Mengele.
But that wasn’t the case. Sure, there were pictures of children, but they all seemed to have been taken from the windows of Haglund’s Stick. Spring, summer, autumn and winter. Children skating on Medborgarplatsen’s artificial ice rink. Children running through the rain on their way from the cineplex. Children playing with hula hoops in the summer sunshine. Children skateboarding between dirty piles of snow. Children with little paper flags, on their way from the McDonald’s on the Götgatan – Folkungagatan crossroads. Children, children, children. And most of the photographs were fantastic. Beautiful pictures of children. They gave off a palpable affection for the existential form of children. In its own right. She felt deeply surprised.
They were black-and-white photographs, the date printed at the top. It was like a long documentation of the place, seen through a child’s eyes. She thought of the film Smoke, where Paul Auster lets Harvey Keitel document his own little corner of the world. There was nothing more to it.
John Andreas Witréus had documented his own sick little corner of the world. With a child’s eyes.
She looked up at the photographs hanging from the clothes line. The most recent date was 7 June. In a jam jar on the toilet seat, there were many more undeveloped films. She took the jar with her, together with a random selection of photographs. She made her way into the kitchen and found a carrier bag into which she put everything. She went back to the bedroom and picked up one of the albums, then back to the living room where she also placed the camera and a couple of the videotapes into the bag.
She went over to the computer and checked whether it was password-protected. It was. She switched off the password protection, shut the computer down and packed it up. Every single disk went into the carrier bag.
Then she pulled the broken door closed, taped a sign to it explaining that the flat was a crime scene, and waited for one of the uniformed officers to return.
‘Have you called for a locksmith?’ she asked.
He nodded.
She nodded.
‘Take the computer,’ she said, heading off.
She strolled down through Fatbursparken, past Bofills båge, glancing up at the enormous clock above Södra Station. Then she arrived at the police station at Fatbursgatan 1. Without further ado, she walked through reception and followed the police assistant’s extended forefinger to the interview room. John Andreas Witréus was waiting; he looked like a bank manager on summer holiday. Without a word, she placed the things on the table. The pile of photographs, the jam jar filled with rolls of film, the album of pictures, the videotapes, the camera. She looked at him.
He squirmed. Caught.
Like a child.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said courteously.
‘I don’t actually think that you’re a practising paedophile,’ said Sara Svenhagen. ‘But on the other hand, you know that the laws regarding possession of child pornography have become stricter recently.’
‘I know,’ he said quietly, looking down at the table. ‘Was it the Internet?’
‘We’ll come back to that. You had a really successful firm down in Varberg that produced some kind of filters for Volvos, right? Subcontractor. You started the firm sometime in the sixties, and after you won the Volvo contract, the value went through the roof. When you sold it five years ago, you got countless millions for it. And now the Volvo contract’s been cancelled, and the firm’s collapsed. Nicely done.’
‘Is this about my business?’ John Andreas Witréus asked, completely confused.
‘No,’ said Sara Svenhagen. ‘I’m just summarising. You sold the firm and became financially independent. You blew a couple of million on the flat in Söder Torn, bought yourself a magnificent set of furniture, and then spent your time sitting in your window, peeping and taking photographs of children from the sixteenth floor. Why?’
He was silent, gazing down at his bright white knuckles. He looked up, and said: ‘I like children.’
She held up a videotape. She opened the photo album, and held one of the pages a few centimetres from Witréus’s face.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t bloody like children. You desire children. There’s a hell of a difference. Why do you take these pictures?’
He was staring at his knuckles. After almost thirty seconds, she took the album away and was met by a completely defenceless gaze. A defenceless, questioning gaze. One which actually seemed to be looking for an answer to her question.
‘I think,’ said Sara Svenhagen, ‘that you hate your sexuality, that more than anything else, you’d like to be castrated. You think that you like children, but you really just want to be a child. You want to be a child. You sit up there in Haglund’s Semi and tell yourself that you’re taking photos from a child’s perspective, but really you’ve put a distance of sixteen floors between you. As if to emphasise the distance. Unobtainability itself. By definition, it’s an impossible project. You’re sitting at a safe distance, manically taking pictures. Five, six thousand pictures since you moved in just a year or two ago. You’re looking for the perfect picture of childhood, but you’ve made it impossible yourself. You’ve placed yourself, completely intentionally, at such a distance that it’ll be impossible to take the perfect picture, the one which would make you a child. The whole thing is about your never-ending, unconditional longing to be a child. And so when the desire sets in, you punish yourself by violating the most precious thing: the child inside you. Like all paedophiles, you don’t give a damn about actual children, real children. It’s always all about you. When you’re sitting there, getting off on children who’ve been mistreated, it’s the child inside you that you’re punishing. That’s what’s mocking you, by never being able to show its face in the light of day. The one with a grip around your testicles, about to split you in two.’
John Andreas Witréus stared at Sara Svenhagen. She felt almost sweaty, as though her voicebox had been for a jog.
‘Yeah,’ he whispered. ‘Could be.’
‘But I don’t care about you,’ she said bluntly. ‘I want to know how you ended up in a paedophile network online.’
Witréus blinked. His entire being seemed to be a wall, closing in and closing in until there was nothing left to close in. Until there was nothing but wall. He couldn’t relinquish his very self. He was completely stuck in himself.
‘I don’t actually know,’ he said eventually. ‘I was looking at pictures on some si
te. Then the pictures started flooding into my inbox. I don’t know how. They must’ve got hold of my address on some site.’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘I’m not. I never lie. But I keep myself to myself. For fifty years, I’ve carried my secret with me. I’ve never, ever acted on my desires; it isn’t real, it’s virtual, and I’ve never, ever met any of . . . my kind. That’s the last thing I want. I’d despise them. Pigs. Swine. The ones who travel to Thailand to buy children. Never. I don’t want that, it’s not that I want. I swear I don’t have any idea how I ended up on that list. My inbox is overflowing with pictures and I have no idea how it happened.’
Sara Svenhagen paused to think. If this was true, then it was a new strategy. It would mean interesting new opportunities. Was it possible to capture the email address of every visitor to a website? If so, how the hell did you do it?
She watched John Andreas Witréus closely. He was shaken and moved and thinking about one thing only. The only thing he had thought about his entire life. Himself.
And he was telling the truth.
She was convinced of that now.
But she couldn’t feel sorry for him. She hadn’t come that far.
Or so she told herself.
20
‘SHIT, I HAD it!’
Bullet’s face scrunched up as though he’d had a mouthful of acid. He adjusted the headphones, twisting and tuning a device in front of him. The LEDs on it remained black.
He had found the signal three times now.
And lost it.
The first time, they had stormed out of the cellar and into the metallic-green van. Bullet first, spinning like a ballerina with the antenna in the air, eyes on the device in his hand and headphones around his neck. Then Rogge, carrying Danne Blood Pudding. Then the golden one himself, still sceptical.
‘Still got it!’ Bullet yelled, jumping into the passenger seat. Rogge pushed Danne in through the back doors and ran round to the driver’s seat. They sped off.
‘Try the E4 southbound,’ Bullet continued. ‘That’s where it should be.’
Then it was gone. The signal tone disappeared from the headphones, and the LEDs went dark.
‘Fuck,’ said Bullet. ‘Keep going on the E4 anyway. We’ve got to find it again. We’ve got the best chance there.’
They kept just at the upper edge of the speed limit. 118 kilometres per hour, max. To be stopped for speeding would be a death blow. Since it was Midsummer weekend, it wasn’t impossible that the pigs had put a few extra traffic checks on. Though, on the other hand, it wasn’t exactly likely.
The first dilemma arose in Södertälje. There was no signal, and they were approaching the turn-off for the European highway. The E20 westbound or the E4 south? Bullet gestured with his hands.
‘Gothenburg or Malmö?’ he asked. ‘Right or straight ahead?’
The alternatives coursed through the golden one’s mind while the damn junction rushed ever closer. If the thieves had got hold of the money, the E4 would’ve been the obvious choice. They would have been on their way to Europe. But now they probably had to test the key, so there was no reason to choose Malmö over Gothenburg. Gothenburg was bigger, after all. But then, maybe they’d realised that it was a foreign key and, in that case, wouldn’t heading south, towards Copenhagen, be more likely? What was closest if they kept going straight? Nyköping, Norrköping, Linköping? And to the right? Strängnäs, Mariefred, Eskilstuna, Örebro. Christ, no, not Kumla. That settled it.
‘E4,’ he said, and Rogge had just enough time to turn left and continue southwards.
The second signal came soon after Norrköping. They had just passed the second turn-off onto the European highway and opted against the E22 towards Västervik and Kalmar. A brief signal they couldn’t determine the direction of. Still, they were on the right tracks. Bullet shouted and screamed in frustration.
‘Fucking hell, can’t we step on the gas a bit?’ asked Rogge.
‘No,’ said the golden one.
Nothing happened on Vätternvägen. They passed Gränna and Visingsö. They were close to giving up. Not a squeak. Had they lost the signal for good now? Did Bullet’s bloody handiwork even work? They knew that Jönköping would be the test. A meeting point of roads going in all directions. The 33 towards Nässjö, Vimmerby, Västervik. The 30 towards Växjö, Kalmar and the whole of Blekinge county. The E4, continuing on to Värnamo, Ljungby and Skåne county. The 40 towards Borås and Gothenburg. Was it Gothenburg after all?
‘Nothing?’ asked the golden one.
Bullet shook his head. They were in Huskvarna. The last descent down towards Jönköping.
‘We’ll have to fill up soon, Nicke,’ said Rogge. ‘The warning light’s on.’
‘Bullet, you bastard, can’t you speed that thing up somefuckinghow?’ Danne moaned from behind. ‘Turn it right up?’
‘You don’t know a thing, you bloody idiot,’ Bullet snapped.
‘Shut up,’ the golden one said calmly.
Everyone shut up.
Not Gothenburg. He had decided against that. He stuck to his guns. Not Västervik. Also dropped. Växjö? That way, they would have a whole load of places to choose from: Karlshamn, Ronneby, Karlskrona, maybe Kristianstad. Though that would have been the E22 anyway.
‘Stay on this one,’ he said.
They stayed on the E4. In Skillingaryd, the fuel was dangerously low.
‘Stop here,’ he said before they pulled up into the petrol station staff’s line of sight.
‘We’ve gotta fill up,’ said Rogge.
‘We need money,’ he said, pulling on the gold-coloured hat, taking his pistol off safety and jumping out of the van.
‘Are you going alone?’ said Bullet through the window. ‘Is that a good idea?’
‘It’s not good, it’s the best. Wait here.’
They waited. After five minutes, he came back, a plastic bag in his hand.
‘You can fill up now,’ he said, pulling off the hat. ‘I don’t think you’ll need to pay.’
They filled up. Back out on the E4, Bullet suddenly shouted: ‘I’ve found it again. Christ, it’s here. They must’ve stopped. I’ve got the direction. They’re going south on the E4. Not far ahead.’
‘Step on it?’ said Rogge.
‘Stick to the limit,’ said Niklas Lindberg calmly, shoving the gold hat into the glovebox.
Bullet’s face scrunched up again. He shouted: ‘Fuck, I had it!’
21
THE UNEXPECTED FLAW in their plan dawned on them much too late. Two cars, each on a different course through Sweden. A rusty old Datsun and a dazzlingly white Ford Focus, one of last year’s award-winning models. Not until six hundred kilometres separated them did the fact that it was Midsummer weekend cross their minds. Not a single bank would be open in the whole of Sweden. They were left to their respective ghosts. The ones they had told themselves they would never have to be alone with again.
It would be a Midsummer weekend that neither of them would ever forget. And never again have to repeat.
He was lying in a sad hotel bed just outside of Orsa, listening to the distant Midsummer celebrations from down on the shore of Orsasjön. The sounds were being sent like severely distorted electrical impulses from his eardrums to his brain. They pierced almost mockingly. A sound that cut and ripped. Orsa’s musicians were stabbing at the taut strings of his nerves with their bows. Pressing a pillow to his ears didn’t help, either. The sound was being distorted from within, that much he understood. It echoed like festivities do for someone on the outside. He wondered how long the little boy would have to be tied to the tree while the party continued down by the beach. Midsummer. They were letting him take part. For the first time, he had been invited. He had actually been invited.
He had trembled with happiness as he walked through the stretch of woodland by the waters of Edsviken. This would be the turning point. He took the route past the den. He stopped, standing motionless alongside the pathetic little patchwo
rk of boards that had shielded him from the world whenever everything collapsed in on him. When had it done anything else? He had sat there, whittling boats from bark with an urgency that blocked out everything else. He had filled the den with increasingly elaborate bark boats until there was almost no room left for him. He was like Emil of Lönneberga, carving away in the woodshed. Though utterly devoid of all humour and warmth. And now, he was on his way to a Midsummer party with the rest of his class. He had been invited and finally, finally, finally been accepted.
He stood in front of the den and knew that it had saved his life. He went up to it and pulled it down. It didn’t take much. A couple of kicks and it fell like a house of cards. A steady stream of bark boats came tumbling out. He said goodbye to that part of his life and welcomed another. A better one. Because it was impossible to imagine a worse one. He set off through the wood. He caught sight of the party down by the water. They were drinking. He stood still for a moment at the edge of the wood. Took a few deep breaths, straightened his new summer clothes and trudged over to them. They welcomed him with laughter and shouting. He welled up with happiness. They took hold of his arms, held them behind his back, tied him to a tree and forced him to drink until he was sick. He stood there like a half-dressed maypole, his smart new summer clothes covered with bright green vomit. The maypole was ready.
He turned over in the sad little hotel bed and fished a newspaper, Expressen, from the bedside table. He read the article that had caught his eye once again, drawing rings around the words in ballpoint pen. The headline said: THE SISTERS THAT VANISHED INTO THIN AIR. He picked up his mobile phone.
She was lying in a sad hotel bed in Falkenberg, on the other side of the country, and couldn’t hear a sound. The little west coast town seemed to be completely empty. Not a sound. She stared up at the ceiling and then at the briefcase, lying open on the floor. Imagine if she made contact. But there was no contact to make. There was only her and a bed. For several years, she hadn’t been able to sleep in beds. They had scared the life out of her. Almost literally. She could still hear. Something within her could still hear the footsteps on the stairs. Though the sound was faint now, almost gone, as though the hearing was the last thing to leave her. She didn’t hear the door opening in that unmistakable way that should have been soundless but wasn’t; on the contrary, it echoed through her, and she knew that it would echo through her for the rest of her life. That was why it was going to be so short. A short life. That was why she experienced such immense pleasure from not hearing the door open. She couldn’t feel the sheet being pushed to one side, either. Not that first scream, the quiet, almost silent scream of mad desperation, nor the other, more shrill, more wholehearted, but also more self-reproaching.
