by Arne Dahl
An enormous void in their lives which had suddenly been filled in.
He was woken by the sun’s rays. Nature’s own alarm clock. Though, on closer inspection, they weren’t completely natural. They were being directed at him. By a crack in the blinds.
In the slanting light, she was a glorious outline. As though enveloped in a waterfall of light. He reached out for her. She came no closer. She was completely still, surrounded by light. Completely inaccessible.
Ah, he thought. A nightmare.
‘I’ve got something you should see,’ she said.
Ah, he thought. Not a nightmare. An everyday dream. A dream of happiness turned everyday. A bit early, surely.
‘Come on,’ she said.
Apparently not, he thought. Apparently not too early.
He stood up and accepted that he was awake after all. He went over to her, through the waterfall of light. She was wearing a large T-shirt which hung down below her hips. He was naked. He reached for her body.
‘Put something on,’ she said.
He put something on, and followed her into the bathroom.
For a moment, he felt sceptical. Had he misjudged her so badly? What could she be so keen to show him in the bathroom? A positive pregnancy test? A collection of death’s-head moths? Shrunken heads in linseed oil?
No, he was being unfair. What he entered was a darkroom. A faint red light glowed in place of a normal bulb. From the ceiling, strings of black-and-white photographs dangled from clothes pegs. On a board covering one half of the bathtub, three differently coloured trays of various stinking liquids stood. In the other half of the tub stood an enlarger. She closed the door.
Everything looked new. All of the equipment seemed to be brand new. A pile of wildly unsuccessful prints lay on the floor. If he hadn’t been so tired or so happy, the detective in him would probably have set to work. He would have thought: Hmmm, and then: New equipment, unfamiliar with darkroom techniques, keen to share. Which meant: Some kind of secret task.
The slumbering detective inside him was soon put to the test again.
Sara Svenhagen said: ‘A couple of days ago, I caught a paedophile living in Söder Torn.’
Pause. He was expected to say something, to react, if not with a ‘Eureka!’ then at least with a ‘Hmmm’. No, the detective within him was still sleeping soundly. She continued.
‘Söder Torn, Haglund’s Stick.’
Nope. The detective within him was unavailable.
‘Haglund’s Stick towers above Medborgarplatsen.’
‘Go on,’ was all he said.
‘This man spent his entire life taking photographs of kids in Medborgarplatsen and the surrounding area. He did it every day. He had a jam jar full of undeveloped films at home. I’ve developed them.’
‘Why?’
‘Wake up, Jorge. Daily. Medborgarplatsen. It was just a hunch. I’ve developed twelve of the films, and now I’ve found it.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Six thirty. I’ve been working since half four.’
‘Ah, hell. So I’ve been brought here as a policeman?’
‘Shut up. Look here.’
His eyes followed her finger up towards the photographs hanging from the ceiling. Skateboarders in Medborgarplatsen. Crossing between the square’s restaurant tables and park benches. In the bottom corner, a series of small digital numbers. 21.43 23.06.99.
The detective within him woke with a start. For a moment, he looked around in the darkness without understanding where he was. But he said: ‘Ahh.’
‘Exactly,’ said Sara Svenhagen.
‘Do those numbers mean what I think they mean?’
‘It’s a sophisticated camera. It prints them on every image. Twenty-third of June, 9.43 in the evening.’
‘Christ!’
His eyes moved along the series of images hanging from the washing line. One after another. In the second image, the skateboarders were moving towards Björns trädgård. In the third, they were in the middle of Götgatan; above their heads, a forest of moving legs was visible. In the fourth image, the skateboarders had disappeared behind the trees, down towards the ramp in Björns trädgård; the top of Tjärhovsgatan could be seen instead. There was chaos on the pavement. In the centre, a young man was running wildly in the direction of the camera. He was surrounded by others, carrying banners and wearing striped scarves. All looked agitated. Some were shouting. The man in the middle had unkempt blond hair and a moustache which went just past the edges of his mouth. He was holding something in his hand. Chavez pointed at the object. Sara pointed at the next picture. It was an enlargement of his hand.
He was clutching the handle of a beer mug.
‘The Kvarnen Killer,’ Chavez said breathlessly.
He ripped down the photograph, sending the clothes pegs flying. He studied it. Closest to the wall was a group of four men. It was impossible to distinguish their faces. But a familiar face was pushing his way out of the door. He looked better living than he did dead.
It was 1C. The driver of the Mercedes from Sickla.
Two men were waiting for him. They were just as swarthy-looking, and visibly different to the clusters of Hammarby fans.
Chavez ripped down the last photo. The Kvarnen Killer was gone. The three men were gone. Gang One had made off as soon as 1C had come out. Now, the group by the wall was more visible. One of the figures was familiar. Chavez recognised his face from the prison photographs. His name was Sven Joakim Bergwall. 2B. He was dead, too.
Gang One and Gang Two.
Group portraits.
In the pale red glow, Sara Svenhagen took some photographic paper from a packet, placed it into the enlarger and let a faint light fall on it for ten or so seconds before lifting it up with a strange plastic pincer and pushing it down into one of the liquid-filled trays. She turned it over. A picture developed before their eyes.
In it, Gang Two was also gone. One last man was leaving Kvarnen. His entire figure was nearly concealed by the Hammarby fans. Only certain features were visible.
‘“The policeman”,’ Jorge gasped.
‘What?’ asked Sara.
‘You’re a genius, I said. You, Sara Svenhagen, are nothing less than a genius.’
He placed both hands on her cheeks. She was glowing deep red in the darkness. He kissed her, sinking down to the floor. He crept in underneath her T-shirt, his face gliding upwards, over her stomach towards her breasts. He lapped up the taste of her skin.
Sara Svenhagen looked down at her enormous stomach, touching it lightly.
She imagined that it was glowing with its own, internal light.
26
PAUL HJELM WAS sitting on the sofa. It had been a long time since he had last done so. It had been a long time since he had been home at all. He could hardly remember what it was like. A strange calm settled around him, as though a glass bubble had closed in over him.
Not that his surroundings were especially calm. His family was dashing all over the house in Norsborg. He could hear the familiar melody of the evening news drifting over from the neighbours’ house. It was nine in the evening, and they were all going out. For the first time in a long while, he felt a moment of surprise at how big his children had grown. No more hugs. No more intimate family moments. No more reading aloud. Just their long, drawn-out departure.
Danne was seventeen and heading out to play football. ‘At ten in the evening?’ Paul the father had asked. Training times were limited, Danne had replied pedagogically. Nowadays, their conversations went no further than that. Would they have time to make amends later, or was it already too late? Was it all too late? Would he suddenly, one day – like those nice Lindberg parents over in Trollhättan – be informed that his previously well-behaved son had become a violent criminal with Nazi tendencies? How would he react? Would he survive that? He could see unpleasant parallels – the well-behaved Niklas Lindberg had become an officer, his own well-behaved son wanted to be a policeman.
&nbs
p; But at that moment, he was running around like a madman, accusing everyone – the family’s new parrot included – of deliberately and spitefully hiding his shin guards. Eventually, he found them, wrapped up in his own putrid old towel. Slightly embarrassed, he left the house.
Tova was still there. Fifteen years old and crazy. Beyond all reason. Paul had no siblings of his own, and teenage girls were brand-new territory for him. He was amazed by the role that hormones played. Right now, she wanted to go to a club. For the third time that week. He didn’t know how worried he should be. A club sounded better than a rave, in any case, and her mother, Cilla, reassured him that they were organised by teetotal youth groups. As though that would be worth any bonus points with a daughter who seemed to hate her mother more than anything else in the world. It had only recently occurred to him that it might be a matter of love, rather than hate; certain glances exchanged between the two of them suggested that. Like they were playing a game just for him. He didn’t understand it.
‘Twelve!’ Tova shrieked in her most piercing voice. Wasn’t it meant to be sons whose voices broke?
‘Twelve,’ the parrot cawed, its voice definitely breaking. Normally, that would have caused Paul to reach for a slipper to throw at the disgusting creature, but today he was immune. He was sitting in his little glass bubble, watching their performance from another planet. It was splendid.
‘Eleven!’ Cilla shouted, sounding precisely like both daughter and parrot. ‘You know, you could tell her too, Paul, rather than just sitting there like a dolt!’
A dolt? Did those still exist? Paul wondered to himself from inside the bubble. He didn’t lift so much as a finger.
The door opened and Tova slipped out, Cilla running after her, shouting from the doorway: ‘If you come back later than eleven, I’ll kill you!’
Hmm, Paul thought to himself from inside his bubble. Was that good parenting? Was that a model of tolerance and understanding?
‘Dolt!’ Cilla repeated in the direction of the lump of jelly on the sofa, as she pulled on her coat.
‘Dolt,’ croaked the parrot.
‘Aren’t you head of ward?’ asked the dolt. ‘Don’t they have normal working hours?’
‘Do you think I’m cheating on you?’ shrieked Cilla, ‘Is that what you think? Do you think I’m running off to fuck some doctor?’
That was something that hadn’t even crossed his mind. But it would be lodged in there now, that much he knew. There was just one way to get rid of it. Temporarily. He glanced in the direction of the piano, which had been shoved into a corner, detested by all except him. As compensation, he had been forced to accept the parrot, something they had been desperately asking for without success for years.
The worst thing was when it mimicked his mediocre piano playing. A real nightmare.
‘No,’ he said, holding back the rest.
Cilla sighed deeply and made a slight conciliatory gesture.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Tova’s driving me crazy. And work. I have to go in and do the night shift sometimes, you know. Otherwise everything’ll fall apart. We’re on our knees, you know that.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Go on. Have as good a time you can.’
A quick kiss on the cheek. Nothing more.
He sat in the glass bubble for a while longer. Waited until it was safe. Then he smashed it. One hit, and it broke into pieces. He went over to the piano and lifted the lid. Sat down. Let his fingertips touch the keys. Enjoyed it for a moment.
He started playing. A little tune he had learned. ‘Misterioso’. Monk. Strange, beautiful notes. He fell into dangerous improvisation. Eventually, he started to hum along. He didn’t sing, though. He hadn’t come that far yet.
He wondered why. But not now. Now, he was just playing.
Instead, the parrot sang. With an awful breaking voice.
Paul Hjelm laughed and continued to play.
He didn’t sing.
27
IT WAS WEDNESDAY morning. Or, to put it more dramatically: it was the last June morning of the millennium.
Jan-Olov Hultin preferred to call it Wednesday morning. There was hardly any reason to go over the top. Their investigation was going surprisingly slowly. He still felt rusty.
Hultin was sitting at the desk at the front of the room, waiting. While he waited, he went through the latest documents from Brynolf Svenhagen’s overexcited forensic technicians. More about the weapons. An Interpol list of places where the Russian Izh-70-300 pistols had been found; it was endless – Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro were just a few among many.
There was also a list of places that the sub-machine guns from Boden had ended up after they were stolen a few years ago. Sure enough, several had been recovered from right-wing extremist circles around Europe; two had been found with a fascist group in Bulgaria, two more with a Danish motorcycle gang. It didn’t seem unlikely, though it was far from certain, that Sven Joakim Bergwall and Niklas Lindberg had carried out the break-in at the weapons arsenal in Boden themselves. Then there were the explosives. New indications suggested that the highly explosive liquid had been developed by the South African security services during the final years of apartheid, apparently with the intention of using it at one of the ANC’s international mass meetings. But this was all still unconfirmed.
Hultin looked up and sighed. It still wasn’t time. The A-Unit could wait.
He had tried to look at the case from above, to summarise it and tie all of the threads together, but it hadn’t quite worked. Something was missing. Swedish–Yugoslav drug cartel, a lone Swedish ‘policeman’, right-wing extremist techno-robbers, sophisticated explosives from South Africa, dead war criminals from the former Yugoslavia. It stank – he couldn’t stretch his analysis any further than that. The guesswork went much further. Wasn’t there a whiff of continuation in this crime? Was the crime they were investigating really over – or was it ongoing? Were the fascist robbers really just out to steal from the drug dealer? Was that all? Wouldn’t the money, or whatever was in the hypothetical briefcase, ultimately be used for some specific goal? By this point, he was skating on increasingly thin ice.
He read on, turning to a compilation of the kingdom’s ongoing crimes from the National Police Board. A violent spring had turned into an equally violent summer. Further attacks on the police had taken place after the Malexander shootings, most recently in Malmö, where a policeman had been called to an abandoned car following a report of a theft. When he opened the door, the car exploded. He was left blind. It was an attack aimed directly at the police. This was something new, Hultin thought to himself. A new, incomprehensible trend. Why were they focusing on the police? He thought about the World Police and Fire Games for a moment. Twelve thousand competitors from every corner of the earth, coming to a country where policemen were being executed and blown up . . .
What else? A Norwegian with links to international alcohol and cigarette smuggling had recently been found murdered in a van to the south of Stockholm. A string of robberies was taking place on the west coast, from Ängelholm northwards. An investigative journalist specialising in Swedish Nazism had, along with his son, been blown to pieces in his car in Nacka. Everything seemed to be curiously linked to everything else. But only vaguely.
Hultin looked up again. No. Still not time.
He was starting to feel annoyed. The after-effects of the day before were still lingering. Mörner’s speech to the police Olympians, the embrace which had followed – all had left a bitter taste in his mouth. And now this meeting which he hadn’t even called – and then the idiot had the cheek to not even turn up. As though Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin had nothing better to do.
They still hadn’t had any response from the authorities of any ex-Yugoslav states other than Slovenia, where none of Gang One had left any traces. Considering the circumstances in Serbia and Kosovo, they couldn’t expect any answers from there. They could hardly expect anything from Bosnia or Macedonia either, both of
them preoccupied with their own problems. He was still hoping for Croatia to come through.
He was on the verge of cancelling the meeting when the lead character came trudging in, a triumphant smile ready to burst across his face. Jorge Chavez went straight to the whiteboard and attached, on top of all the earlier pictures, three black-and-white enlargements. Each of the photographs required eight of the absurd ladybird magnets to hold it in place.
Eventually, Chavez said, pointing: ‘Especially for you, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present a curious breakthrough in the investigation. Three photographs of Tjärhovsgatan by Björns trädgård at 21.43 on Wednesday the twenty-third of June. A week ago. Pictures without parallel when it comes to the concentration of crooks.’
Hjelm and Holm looked at one another.
‘In other words, the pictures were taken a minute after the Kvarnen Killer smashed a beer glass on the head of a poor Smålander inside the bar, the entrance of which can be seen here in picture one,’ said Chavez, pointing. ‘In the middle, we have the Kvarnen Killer himself. To the right, by the wall, we have Gang Two. Minus Eskil Carlstedt and Niklas Lindberg who were, at that time, inside Kvarnen and Kumla prison, respectively. Up to the left, we have Gang One, complete with 1C here in the doorway. The driver of the Merc.’
It was completely silent in the Supreme Command Centre.
‘Picture two,’ Chavez continued in the same slightly irritating, triumphant tone. ‘Gang One is gone, the Kvarnen Killer is gone. But you can see Gang Two more clearly here. And here, beside 2B, Sven Joakim Bergwall, we’ve probably got our three unnamed robbers. Carlstedt, or 2A, the other one who died at Sickla, is inside Kvarnen, waiting to deal with the police. These three should all still be alive, though one’s injured. So, these are three of the four Sickla killers that we’re looking for. The picture’s good enough to identify them, and I spent yesterday doing just that. It wasn’t easy, but we should have enough to release the identities of all four robbers now, if you want to release them.’
He stopped talking for a moment, glancing around the silent room. Sure enough, he had their undivided attention. Then he began to draw red circles around the four faces, one after one.
