by Arne Dahl
For a moment, she imagined that it really was Hell. The proper, biblical Hell. The one which had always run like an undercurrent through normal human activity, finding ways to drag susceptible people down in keeping with the times. What was it that made people susceptible?
She was starting to contract the global conspiracy fever which infected all hackers from time to time. Most believed the theory that the American government was covering up UFOs in a secret vault somewhere, and was also responsible for producing Aids in laboratories and testing it in Africa. Others still believed in communism and the domino effect. She had got it into her head – and then she had started to keep an eye open – that these theories themselves were part of the conspiracy. The great conspiracy obviously didn’t consist of an elite group running the world from their headquarters somewhere, like in a cheap crime novel – it was about an invisible ideology. It didn’t need any physical border guards; it was about internalising them, making sure that the ideology was active in people’s minds. The twentieth century had been the age of democracy, but it was also the century in which it had been most fiercely challenged, above all from within. How could you – where the ‘you’ was essentially the market, the biggest and ultimately only ideology of the age, a completely uniform and utterly inflexible system of thought which built upon nothing other than maximising profits – how could you get people to believe that they had power while, at the same time, taking it away from them? By preventing them from thinking, of course.
All marketing is about getting people to stop thinking and to focus on different kinds of carefully crafted ideals instead. About selling an image. And what else? A massive accumulation of things like intellect-dulling entertainment television, causing every single teenager to want to be a presenter; celebrity obsession, porn, sports hysteria, thinking in terms of ethnicity, forcing people to spend their time making absurd choices about refuse-collection companies or electricity suppliers; the limitation of all economic thought to the personal sphere, which had increasingly started to become blurred with the stock exchanges, and biological determination, which Sara Svenhagen understood as being the crown on the idea which had to be spread whatever the cost: that we have absolutely no control over our own lives. Our brains were finally spongy enough, our self-confidence so lacking, for the death blow to be dealt: the thought that, actually, it doesn’t matter what we do or are subject to – our entire lives are controlled purely by our genes. That was the death blow, and it was now being suggested from all sides, in all manner of ways, all at once. Whatever you do, don’t believe that you can do anything about your lot: it has already been determined by an infinite number of generations before you.
If you’ve got an older relative who is a paedophile, then you know that you’ll become one yourself. There is no real reason to resist temptation. It would only be in vain.
She began to get agitated. It was time to return to reality.
There was an enormous collection of paedophile sites on Witréus’s computer, most of them known to her, some of them unknown, some well hidden behind faked headings like ‘Calendar of activities at Gothenburg University’ or ‘Spitfire aeroplanes: a historical outlook’. It could be anything at all, anywhere at all, any time at all. These hidden pages opened on Witréus’s computer, revealing, once again, a parallel universe. Everywhere, she came across address lists of varying types.
Above all, she was confronted by a series of pseudonyms she hadn’t come across before. They were mentioned in various strange presentations and, as a rule, appeared alongside email addresses of a certain type: ‘[email protected]’. From these previously unknown websites, she compiled a list of pseudonyms: ‘crushy_tomboy’, ‘limmeystone’, ‘rippo_man’, ‘sweetfacepowder’, ‘lungan’ and ‘brambo’. From these she went further, searching for IP addresses. It wasn’t easy. These figures hadn’t made the same mistake as John Andreas Witréus. The IP addresses belonged to official institutions from around the world, the pseudonyms to Swedish numbers.
She logged into the central police computer and searched the paedophile unit’s material for those six pseudonyms. Three of them had already been found and arrested. Remaining were: ‘rippo_man’, ‘sweetfacepowder’ and ‘brambo’. In the more extensive material from the international Operation Cathedral, she eventually found both ‘rippo_man’ and ‘sweetfacepowder’. Both had been traced back to Sweden, and they had managed to find the computers from which these pseudonyms were used.
Then things got really complicated.
Following an extremely thorough search of the material, she realised the following: that some policeman had already been to all these home pages. The name ‘rippo_man’ only appeared alongside ‘brambo’.
But now ‘brambo’ was gone.
This ‘brambo’ was nowhere to be found in the files.
Yet the policeman who entered ‘rippo_man’ into the reports must have known about ‘brambo’. Adding ‘rippo_man’ to the report without also adding ‘brambo’ was gross misconduct.
She saw that ‘rippo_man’ had already been arrested for distribution of child pornography and for sexually assaulting children. He was a twenty-four-year-old medical student from Linköping who had, in April, earned himself a four-year prison sentence in Hall.
But why the hell, why the bloody hell was this pseudonym ‘brambo’ missing from the investigation?
The more she searched, the clearer the pattern became.
The investigating officer had deliberately left ‘brambo’ out of the reports. And the investigating officer was from her own group. From CID’s own division for paedophile cases.
A deep, heartfelt unease coursed through her.
She clicked the up arrow and watched the text fly by. She was heading for the top of the document.
To the investigating officer’s name.
The doorbell rang.
She knew who it was. She had been waiting for him all day. She loved him.
But she couldn’t talk about this. Not right now.
The text scrolled past. The bell kept ringing.
She had to find the name. Now.
Come on, please; come on!
She shouted, desperate: ‘Hang on a sec, I’m coming!’
The bell kept ringing.
The text stopped. She saw the name.
It was as she had thought.
Detective Superintendent Ragnar Hellberg.
She closed the document and ran towards the door.
Jorge Chavez would never forget the hug she gave him when the door finally opened.
29
ON FRIDAY 2 July, Hammarby’s losing streak ended. 3–0 at home to Norrköping. Hans Berggren’s goal-scoring dry spell was over. Kennedy Bakircioglü scored his very first league goal.
Perhaps as a result of what happened earlier that day.
Just before ten in the morning, two shabby-looking young men wandered into the police station on Agnegatan. They asked to see Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm. Since they had gone to the county police station, there was a certain hesitation at reception. The detectives’ names were unfamiliar. During their long wait, the older and taller of the two men stood with his arm around the younger and shorter one.
Eventually, the receptionist managed to track down Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm. She phoned them, and asked the two men to take a seat on a nearby sofa. Neither man sat down. It was something they were physically incapable of doing.
Hjelm and Holm arrived together. They immediately recognised the older and taller of the men. It was Jonas Andersson from Enskede, committee member of the Bajen Fans club. After a while, they also recognised the younger and shorter of the two. From a black-and-white photograph, attached to a whiteboard with ladybird-shaped magnets. The unkempt blond hair and the drooping moustache slightly past the edges of his mouth were, by this point, well known.
What they hadn’t expected was the Kvarnen Killer’s eyes, puffy and red from crying.
‘He was sitting outside the clubhous
e this morning,’ said Jonas Andersson from Enskede. ‘He said he didn’t want to do any more damage to Hammarby.’
They nodded at him.
‘Thanks, Jonas,’ said Kerstin Holm.
Jonas Andersson smiled faintly and trudged off.
‘What’s your name?’ Paul Hjelm asked the Kvarnen Killer.
‘Conny Nilsson,’ the Kvarnen Killer said faintly. His vocal cords seemed to have tied a knot in themselves.
‘Why are you coming forward now?’
‘I saw my picture in the paper. Not the drawing, the photograph. It was enough. It hasn’t been fun.’
‘I understand,’ said Paul Hjelm, sitting down on the visitors’ sofa. He patted it. Conny Nilsson sat down next to him. He was small, compact. And completely broken.
‘Where have you been hiding?’ Kerstin Holm asked, sitting down on the other side of the Kvarnen Killer.
Without a word, they both mentally decided never to use that name again.
‘At home,’ said Conny Nilsson. ‘I live with my parents in Haninge.’
‘How have you been able to stay hidden? Are your mates that loyal?’
‘My mates . . . I don’t know them, they don’t know me. I just followed a group after the game. They didn’t seem to know I was there. They were so bloody angry. A draw against Kalmar at home. They started mouthing off against some Smålanders in Kvarnen. The atmosphere was really heated. The Smålanders were lying, saying they didn’t support Kalmar. One of them pushed me. I don’t know what happened, it’s completely black. I guess I must’ve wanted to show I was there, that I wasn’t some worthless little shit you could just push around. I’d already passed the metro when I realised there was a bit of bloody glass in my hand. I chucked it away and ran. I took a bus from down by Stadsgården. That’s it. I’ve been ill for a week.’
‘Off sick?’
‘I don’t work. I don’t have any job to be off sick from. My mum’s the only one who realised I was sick. I heard her talking about that Kvarnen Killer one night. She was wondering what kind of sick world she lived in.’
‘Now she knows.’
‘She’ll know soon,’ Conny Nilsson nodded. ‘Jesus Christ.’
They didn’t have much else to say.
They left him to the local police.
They felt ill at ease.
30
ARTO SÖDERSTEDT DROPPED his children off at nursery. In the summer, he enjoyed dropping the children off. He liked to watch their attitude change, how they transformed from daddy’s girl into just one of the group. A real little metamorphosis.
Though in the winter, he didn’t see it. There wasn’t enough energy then.
As he hugged his little Lina goodbye, it struck him that time was running out. He had five children and had been dropping them off and picking them up for almost fifteen years without ever thinking that, one day, it would be over. After next year, he would no longer be dropping children off at nursery. He would never drop the children off at nursery again.
Grandkids, maybe. Though hopefully not too soon.
Lina, the little blonde, disappeared, skipping off towards the other children. When he saw her hug a little boy called Rutger, she was no longer daddy’s little girl.
He stood for a moment, watching her. His youngest.
When he stepped out into the hesitant summer morning, he imagined that it would be a good scene for a crime novel. He was a detective, dropping his kids off at nursery. People would recognise themselves in it. Though, obviously, he would be a woman . . .
No, Arto Söderstedt decided. This wasn’t a crime novel. This was reality.
He wandered along Bondegatan, the sun making a half-hearted attempt to peep through the thick patches of cloud. The street was strangely mottled, an ongoing battle between sun and shade. He came out onto Götgatan, right opposite the tower block which housed the tax authorities. It shimmered in the same strange, mottled, constantly shifting light. Anja would already be inside, checking over tax returns. At the breakfast table, she would give daily reports on the most astounding attempts at tax evasion. So he didn’t need to feel too bad about letting the children spend their summer in day care, the youth centre and summer camps. The married couple shared the tax burden fraternally – or was it sororally?
Down on Götgatan, the newly assigned service Audi was waiting. Without a parking ticket. He had started to learn the complicated parking rules. The accelerator pedal felt well oiled and the clutch elastic. He sat for a moment, pretending to drive. He secretly hoped that no one had seen him cross the line as the Safari Rally’s most brilliant winner of all time.
He turned the ignition and drove towards Kungsholmen. He knew what he would be doing first today. True, he and Viggo would be going to search through Roger Sjöqvist’s and Dan Andersson’s flats in the southern suburbs, but that wasn’t the first thing he was planning on doing.
The first thing Arto Söderstedt would be doing was buying a car. On the Internet.
It was a decision that had matured, if not slowly, then . . . quickly, in any case. A decision which had matured quickly. He had gained the support of the family using hardly democratic means. Anja, who had been nagging for a car for two years, looked at him sceptically, trying to work out his hidden motives. He revealed nothing, just sat there, poker-faced, spouting altruistic motives like fake playing cards: they could go on trips to Skåne, take day trips to the Kolmården Animal Park, drive around the Bay of Bothnia to Vasa and see whether they had any friends left in Finland.
After all, he couldn’t reveal what the real reason was – that it was fun to drive.
What the enormous family needed was a so-called family car. As he turned off into the garage beneath the police station, he pondered over the term ‘family car’. They were minibuses, but you couldn’t call them that. It sounded unsophisticated. The European Commission for Traffic Safety had recently presented the results of a large safety test on family cars. It was especially welcome in Sweden because the last year had seen a couple of catastrophes where family cars had burst into flames following collisions. Fortunately, the tests revealed that there were safe models.
He came to his office, nodding absent-mindedly in greeting at Viggo Norlander who, once again, looked like something the cat had dragged in. Today, he looked like a ruffled and tattered old great tit. Söderstedt sat down at his computer and launched the browser.
‘We’ve got to go,’ said Norlander sullenly. ‘To Handen first, and then—’
‘The foot,’ said Arto Söderstedt, entering his password.
‘Shut up,’ said Viggo Norlander.
‘So you had Charlotte again last night? Did it go well?’
‘Christ, it’s hard work.’
‘Are you getting cold feet?’
‘No. No, I love it. Really. But it’s hard work. I’m convinced she’s dead three times a night. Sudden infant death syndrome.’
‘What about Astrid?’
‘Thursday night. Astrid meets her friends then.’
‘Sewing circle,’ said Arto Söderstedt while he waited for his password to be approved.
‘What?’
‘They listen deeply to one another. No, it used to be called a sewing circle. Nowadays it’s called a girls’ evening or a girls’ night in. If you’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed, you could call it a hen house, too. Though you should keep that to yourself. How’s it going with her?’
‘Well, vitality’s the word. Astrid’s born again. She got her baby in the end. She’s bubbling. You say that, right? “Bubbling”?’
‘You can say that. If that’s what you mean.’
‘It’s what I mean. What the hell are you up to? I’ve been waiting quarter of an hour. We’ve got to go.’
‘What do you mean by “bubbling”? It’s only three weeks since she gave birth. No complications?’
‘She tore a bit. Not that it’s slowing her down.’
‘Sexually?’
‘That’s our business, isn�
�t it?’
‘Exactly,’ said Arto Söderstedt, typing the address for Gula Tidningen’s home page. ‘Your business is the kind of thing you share with your friends.’
‘Shut up,’ said Viggo Norlander.
Söderstedt turned towards him.
‘Come on, Viggo. You’re in your first monogamous relationship in God knows how many decades, and I want to know how it’s going. It’s called a social network. I’m your social network.’
Viggo Norlander’s facial expression changed dramatically. His gloomy, lopsided, inward-backward-sloping mug was replaced by a dreamy smile.
‘Got it,’ said Söderstedt, smiling. ‘That was quick work. Go down to the car, then, I’m coming. This will only take five minutes.’
Norlander disappeared. That’s a robust great tit, Söderstedt thought to himself, glancing over the headlines in front of him on the screen.
Gula Tidningen had, for the past few decades, been Stockholm’s main paper for free advertisements. Maybe also for the stolen goods trade. You could buy anything you wanted second-hand. No questions asked. Cars, for example. Family cars, for example. The paper also had a website. The system wasn’t fully developed yet, but it was more than enough.
He found seven items of interest, above all a Renault Espace and a Toyota Picnic. Terrifying prices, of course, but it was just a case of facing the music. He sent off seven messages showing his interest. That was enough. He returned to the home page.
The headline, THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’, woke his easily aroused interest. Arto Söderstedt loved reading personal ads, declarations of love and intimate messages. He couldn’t really explain why – maybe it was just a perversion of his; maybe these small, concentrated phrases held the longing of our times. In tightly constrained form. A person’s entire complicated emotional life reduced to no more than a few lines, and that meant that the results were normally highly interesting. He thought for a moment about Norlander, seething as he waited down in the garage. But only for a moment. With a voyeur’s overexcited feeling of shame, he glanced through the entries under THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’. Some of them really fuelled the imagination.
