Jonna would never know. The girl in the picture was dead. All that was left of her was the photographs and the memories of those who loved her.
CHAPTER 34
THE FIRST THING that Walter did once he was discharged by the cantankerous Dr Täljkvist was to visit Jörgen Blad, who had been admitted to Danderyd Hospital. The journalist had miraculously escaped death.
For almost two days, he had been tied to a tree and badly frozen in the Färingö forest outside Stockholm. He had been falling in and out of consciousness. Jörgen’s prayers had finally been answered by an orienteering enthusiast, who had got lost and almost stumbled over the lifeless journalist while looking for the final checkpoint. He had been three kilometres off course, which had saved Jörgen’s life.
Jörgen made his statement to Walter about the kidnapping the day after he had been admitted into the hospital. He described how he had been forced to tell everything he knew about Leo Brageler to the inquisitive kidnapper to avoid execution by a bullet in the head. He explained why he suspected that his kidnapper was a policeman and that he had wanted the evidence on Folke Uddestad, but instead got all the information that Jörgen had on Drug-X. The kidnapper was satisfied with that and, to thank Jörgen, he had tied him to a tree and left him to die.
They now knew that Tor “Headcase” Hedman was involved, as it was he who had jumped Jörgen in the car. But Walter did not have a clue as to who the so-called “policeman” could be. He knew that there were members of the police who crossed the line into criminal activity. But Walter had already ruled out Uddestad himself having kidnapped Jörgen. A county police commissioner did not get involved in that type of activity, even though he had some doubts after seeing the video in which Jörgen Blad had been drilling Uddestad in all the different ways that type of sexuality had to offer.
Walter also knew that Hedman’s handpicked partner, Jerry Salminen, was dead. The investigation into the police murder at Gnesta had confirmed that one of the charcoaled corpses’ adornments had belonged to the Finnish citizen Jerry Ola Salminen. The other corpse was Omar Khayyam, owner of the warehouse facility.
If they could only get their hands on Headcase, then they would solve the “policeman” riddle, which was considered to be quite a high priority. There were too many civil servants losing their morals. The only problem was that Hedman had evaporated into thin air. Not a trace of him could be found. It was as if he had never existed.
“WELCOME BACK, WALTER,” Chief Inspector David Lilja greeted him and stretched out his hand. “How’s the brain?”
Walter studied Lilja’s outstretched hand. Not so long ago, he had wanted to see Walter in front of an investigative tribunal, and now he was greeting him like a conquering hero. His hypocrisy was setting a new record.
Finally, Walter took Lilja’s hand and squeezed it until the knuckles turned white. “Thank you,” he answered and put on a smile as false as Lilja’s warm concern. “My brain is just fine and has been given a complete overhaul. I have a new way of looking at things now.”
“Really?” Lilja said, raising an eyebrow. “What could that be?”
“That I like my job,” Walter replied.
“Someone with influence obviously has taken you under their wing,” Lilja said and stroked his right hand gingerly. “Even the police union has opposed the charges against you. It has been rather stormy around here lately.”
“I can imagine,” Walter said.
CHIEF PROSECUTOR ÅSA Julén closed the door to her office and politely showed Walter and Jonna to the visitors’ chairs.
“One always has to seek the middle ground,” she began and did not sound too disillusioned about it. “SÄPO and SKL will investigate the origin of Drug-X and we will proceed with the search for Leo Brageler. As soon as we are done with Brageler, SÄPO will take him. I have made a promise to the Agency Director himself.”
“SÄPO?” Walter said, with a little scepticism. “I wonder how well they’ll succeed this time.”
“In any case, that’s how it is going to be,” Julén brusquely declared. “We have other problems.”
“Such as?” Jonna asked.
“It’s not certain that I can get a conviction for manslaughter since he’s only indirectly involved in the murders. In fact, I don’t believe he can even be convicted for the charge of grievous bodily harm. It’s a matter of principle. This is a legal no man’s land. How am I to prove that he has drugged someone with a compound that doesn’t exist and that supposedly makes the drugged person commit evil acts? Even if I could prove that case, it’s not Brageler who is committing the murders himself. At the most, he is a tenuous accomplice, in the eyes of the law.”
“So you’re saying that the only ones being prosecuted are the ones who are not responsible for the murders?” Jonna said. “That’s Sjöstrand, Ekwall, Lindkvist and Lantz?”
Julén nodded.
“But the one responsible for the murders is, in fact, Leo Brageler,” Jonna said, answering her own question.
“Yes,” Julén sighed. “No one can guarantee the legal outcome of this case. Neither Sjöstrand, Ekwall, Lindkvist nor Lantz have suffered any injury from the drug. They’re physically healthy, even if their mental state is in poor shape as a result of their actions. Possibly, we can establish the existence of what SKL and their forensic scientists say is the scar tissue caused by the drug. In other words, a physical injury. But how much damage that injury causes the victim, we just don’t know. It could go as far as having to drop all charges against Brageler. We have no evidence that it was he who poisoned the food. Just some witness statements from the youngsters who socialized with Malin Sjöstrand that describe Brageler’s appearance.”
“But that’s outrageous!” Jonna cried. “The CCTV from the ferry, then? You can see Brageler go on board and then leave the ship.”
She failed to mention that the reason she had studied the CCTV evidence so carefully was a certain Alexander Westfeldt who moonlighted as a security guard. According to the personnel manager, he was studying to be an archaeologist. Jonna was planning an interview with him later, for background information on Brageler’s visit.
“It’s possible that Sjöstrand, Ekwall, Lindkvist and Lantz can file civil lawsuits against Brageler and get a few hundred thousand each in damages, but that’s by no means a certain outcome.”
Silence fell in the office of Åsa Julén.
“Remember that we were able to prevent two incidents at least,” Walter said, breaking the silence. “If Jonna had not lifted Sahlin and the lorry driver off the love boat, more than just one muscle-bound cell guard would have been slapped about. Several people would probably have lost their lives.”
“Yes. Brageler was almost successful with the fifth attempt,” Jonna said. “Sahlin went berserk and attacked one of the cell guards exactly one day after she was put into protective custody. A dispute over a toothbrush triggered an uncontrollable rage. One of the guards thought she had rabies. The same thing happened to the lorry driver.”
Walter smiled and agreed. “She knocked out no fewer than two of the guard’s teeth. That’s not bad for a woman of one and a half metres in height with a match weight of forty-eight kilos.”
“Brageler’s intention was that she would come home and become psychotic. Apparently, it’s possible to delay the effect of the drug,” Jonna said.
“But why Sahlin and not Bror Lantz?” Julén asked. “He failed twice. Lantz was a failure. The taxi incident was not according to his plan, was it?”
“No, it was definitely not what he planned,” Walter said. “The train was a few hours late, and the rage attack should have happened once he arrived at home. The wife was probably the intended victim.”
“So why didn’t he finish off Lantz first?”
“No one knows that for certain yet,” Walter said. “It might have been coincidence or some other factor. It must have been difficult to observe these people and their daily routines. A full-time job that would have required infi
nite patience.”
“And we’re sure about Brageler’s motive?” Julén asked.
Jonna nodded. “As you can see from the photos in one of Brageler’s rooms, he was completely obsessed with his family and their deaths. He must have had an implacable hate for society and the court that acquitted Sonny Magnusson.”
Julén nodded, meditating. “But who is Brageler, really? That he worked with …” She put her reading glasses on and read something from a notepad, “Biodynamics & Genetic Research, that we know. But why didn’t he just kill the members of the jury from the District Court as revenge? Why all the bother of drugging them?”
Julén paused.
“Try to get under his skin,” she continued. “I want to know more about the man named Leo Brageler. Not that it helps me directly in the investigation. At best, there may be some character traits that could be used against him in a trial. I just want to know with whom we are dealing. Furthermore, you people at RSU are supposed to be good at that sort of thing, profiling people, I mean.”
Jonna put a pile of papers on Julén’s desk. “It’s already been done,” she said, a touch of triumph in her voice. “No less than five RSU analysts and profilers have worked on Brageler for the past week. I think we know him just as well as he knows himself.”
“I thought as much,” Julén chuckled and started to leaf through the pile of documents.
“And?”
Jonna did not need to read from the file. She knew every word in the pile that Julén was casually browsing through. After living with Brageler and his family twenty-four hours of every day for the past week, she was as familiar with his life as she was the gears of her Porsche. She had spent her time, sleeping and waking, thinking of Brageler, eating dinner with him, and almost becoming obsessed with his life and his family. Dreaming of his daughter with ice-cream in her hand and the sun shining in those lively eyes.
“Leo Brageler was considered to be a very gifted child,” Jonna began. “He jumped a few classes in secondary school and had, by the age of sixteen, almost attained medical-school proficiency. He was never interested in the medical profession, however, and focused exclusively on research, where the challenges were greater. At the age of twenty, he had written a number of papers on DNA and stem-cell research. He was published in some journals, but was notoriously uninterested about showing himself in public. He was, plain and simply, shy. When he was twenty-two, he was employed by BGR, which was then a small, unknown research laboratory with about thirty employees. After only two years, he was responsible for the company’s research department, which had grown after a number of acquisitions.”
Julén listened, doodling in a notepad.
“At the age of thirty-five, he married lab assistant Anna Davidsson. One year later, they had Cecilia. After that, Brageler became very extroverted and socialized a lot, which is unusual for people with extremely high intellects.”
“That’s not information that I and the Chief Prosecutor are interested in,” Walter interrupted.
Julén looked up from her notepad and the doodle that had become a sunflower. After a few seconds, she returned to her sunflower and waved at Jonna to continue.
“Brageler worshipped his daughter and became increasingly overprotective. Finally, she couldn’t do anything without his permission. He would sometimes ring the nursery staff five or six times a day to check that they were taking care of Cecilia. At one point, Anna apparently was going to leave him. According to friends, she could not stand his need to control his daughter’s life. He loved her so intensely that it became a problem for both her and his daughter.”
“I knew it,” Walter laughed.
“Knew what?” Jonna asked.
“That he had a behavioural problem. As you yourself said, superintelligent people have at least one psychosocial problem.”
“I’ve never said that,” Jonna objected.
“There are those who with normal, or even lower than average, intelligence who have the same problem,” Julén said. “There’s nothing unusual about that. My mother was very overprotective with me when I was a child. And she never stopped being overprotective. It just manifested itself in different ways as I got older.”
Walter sank back in his chair and folded his arms.
“In any case,” Jonna continued, “it seems that it was his driving force and his hate grew out of it.”
“From his love of the daughter?”
“The overprotection,” Walter corrected her.
“Exactly,” Jonna replied. “His control mania developed into a new obsession: his anger towards those who, in his eyes, had taken his daughter from him. The death of his daughter also took away his control – not just over his daughter, but control over himself. His obsession moved into a new, more intense phase after Cecilia’s death.”
“He shifted into anger mode,” Walter said, standing up. “I would have done the same. But instead of messing around with drugs, I would have beaten the shit out of the jury in a more honourable way.” The room went quiet. Images of Martine suddenly burned into Walter’s retinas. He had to sit down.
“That’s also puzzling,” Jonna said. “The way that he seeks revenge is also unusual. He wants to achieve satisfaction by making others suffer the same way that he does.”
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Walter said, leaning against Julén’s desk.
“You could say that,” Jonna said. “Old Testament justice. To simply kill them would be too merciful.”
“Is he religious?” Julén wondered, looking up from her notepad. “All we need is some crazy sect attacking us too.”
“No,” Jonna replied. “There’s nothing to suggest that. On the contrary, he left the Swedish Church when he was eighteen.”
“As I did,” Walter added. “You save a few hundred every month and avoid the good fathers, who can’t help you book your ticket to heaven anyway.”
“Are you sure of that?” Julén asked.
“If you can prove the contrary, I’ll go back to church,” Walter countered.
Julén shook her head. “On the subject of church,” she said, “what’s the significance of the plaster angels that he leaves behind? What do they symbolize? What was the point?”
Jonna shrugged. “I really don’t know. Perhaps he wanted to announce that Death would soon come to visit or something like that.”
“Sounds a bit theatrical,” Walter said.
Åsa Julén put her pen down. The sunflower was perfected. “A warrant for Brageler has been sent to Interpol and it will be hard to make a solid case before we find him. I must also verify my reasoning concerning the legal aspects of the case with the Justice Department. As I said earlier, all efforts are focused on this case right now. But there’s one issue I need to take up with you before we go our separate ways.”
“Dinner for three?” Walter suggested, but was met with the evil eye from the other side of the desk.
“Before we’re finished with each other,” Julén said, emphasizing the words, which made it sound ominous, “I want to know what underworld connections Folke Uddestad has. Your so-called agreement with the journalist Jörgen Blad was to bring some light on that question in exchange for information on the investigation.”
“That was fantasy from beginning to end,” Walter stated. “There’s nothing to suggest that Uddestad was involved with criminals. Other than hiring the thugs who almost wasted the journalist and leaking information so that he wouldn’t publish the photos. Which, of course, is a crime.”
“I don’t think the Swedish police force can afford any more scandals right now. If you see what I mean,” Julén said, leaning forwards.
“No, I don’t see,” Walter pretended. “Please explain it to me.”
“The video and photographs will be confiscated as ‘forgeries’ used to libel of a high-ranking official in a sensitive position. There will be no repercussions for Uddestad and no information will circulate outside of this room. Is that clear enough?”
>
Walter laughed. “Nothing surprises me anymore. As they say in the States, ‘same shits, different taste’,” he said, walking towards the door. He couldn’t actually afford to object more than that. He himself had just been saved by the same type of backroom negotiations.
Jonna smiled at Walter’s attempt at English humour.
agency director anders holmberg was more than satisfied. He had succeeded in getting Åsa Julén to be sensible and to return the investigation of Drug-X to SÄPO. However, the honour of arresting Leo Brageler would fall to the local police. The only thing that disturbed Holmberg was that it was the County CID who had found the crucial piece of the puzzle.
In time, the media would calm down, and the outcome had been mostly positive, if not for the suspect who had died in police custody. To his chagrin, that story would be buzzing around the media like the proverbial fly in the soup. Forensics had found a well-known American interrogation barbiturate in the body of the deceased, which, under no circumstances, was to become public knowledge.
Martin Borg had blamed his colleague Ove Jernberg, who supposedly had obtained the drug from the owner of the Gnesta property. Holmberg had also been pressured from higher-ups to exonerate Borg for the SÄPO mishaps. Thomas Kokk was surprised over certain individuals’ interest in Borg’s well-being. Holmberg had been forced to make some changes to both the official and unofficial versions in order to accommodate the individuals pressuring him. It would be Jernberg who took all the blame.
Kokk looked at Holmberg on the other side of the desk. The last week had been the toughest test that he had faced during his entire career as a policeman. To blame someone who could not defend himself, someone who had been killed in the line of duty, must be one of his most dishonourable acts. He was just as surprised over the degree of favouritism within the authority. That it existed, he knew; he was a beneficiary from it. The esprit de corps within the police force was strong and those who had different opinions were quickly frozen out. But the fact that Borg suddenly had so many supporters high up took him by surprise. He had an uncomfortable feeling that he was being denied some crucial information.
Anger Mode Page 41
