by Arne Dahl
Misterioso
Arne Dahl
The first novel in the gripping Intercrime trilogy.
Following a complicated but successful dismantling of a hostage situation, Detective Paul Hjelm is facing the prospect of a potentially career-ending investigation by Internal Affairs. Instead, he finds himself dropped into a new elite team of officers selected from across the country, whose mission is to find an elusive killer who has been targeting Sweden's business leaders. The killer's modus operandi: two distinctive shots straight through the head, bullets carefully pulled from the wall – a nighttime ritual enacted with Thelonius Monk's jazz classic Misterioso playing in the background.
As Hjelm, his young partner Jorge Chavez, and the rest of the team follow one lead after another in a frantic search for the killer – navigating the murky world of the Russian Mafia and the secret societies of Sweden's wealthiest citizens – they must also face one of Sweden's most persistent ills: a deep-rooted xenophobia that affects both police and perpetrator.
Written with great energy, penetrating candor, and dark wit, and populated with characters whose motivations are as nuanced as they are unexpected, Misterioso is an utterly absorbing novel – an arresting introduction to this acclaimed author.
Arne Dahl
Misterioso
The first book in the Intercrime series, 2011
Translation copyright © 2011 by Tiina Nunnally
Copyright © 1999 by Arne Dahl.
1
Something was forcing its way through the winter.
He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something. Maybe a warming breeze, a flicker of light smack in the middle of the mass of gray clouds, or possibly just the fact that he heard a splash rather than a crunch when he stepped in the puddle that all winter long had encircled his personal parking space-the one that still bore his name.
He paused for a moment and squinted up at the morning cloud cover. It looked the same as usual, hovering there like a virtual ceiling of security above the bank, bidding him welcome.
The same silence as always.
A short distance away was the little town, undisturbed, sending up only one sign of life: fine tendrils of smoke from chimneys. He heard the repetitive cheeping of the marsh tit and saw it peek from its nest just under the eaves. Then he locked the car and strode the few yards to the small, modest door of the employees’ entrance. He took out his even more modest key ring and one by one opened the three deadbolts.
Inside the bank office it smelled like an ordinary Monday, a bit stuffy from the weekend, but Lisbet would soon air it out when she arrived second, as usual, bringing her flood of cheerful chatter.
He himself was always the first to arrive; that was the routine.
Everything was exactly the same as always.
That was what he told himself several times: Everything is exactly the same as always.
He may have said it once too often.
He stood at his teller’s window and pulled out the drawer. He took out an oblong gilded case and cautiously weighed one of the long, bristled darts in his hand. His special weapon.
Not many people, even among the initiated, really knew how a dart was supposed to look. His darts were long-specially designed to four and three-quarters inches, almost two and three quarters of which were a long point that always surprised his opponents, and very short, bristly flights.
He picked up the three darts and slipped around the dividing wall into the office interior. There was the board. Without looking down, he took up position with the tips of his toes on the little black throw line exactly seven feet nine and one-quarter inches from the dartboard and rhythmically flung the three darts. All three stuck in the large bed of the 1. He was just warming up.
Everything landed where it should.
Everything was as it should be.
He clasped his hands and stretched them outward until they made a light cracking sound, then let his fingers flutter freely in the air for several seconds. Again he took the key ring out of his jacket pocket, swung back around the dividing wall to the public area of the bank, went over to the vault, and unlocked it. The vault door opened slowly, ponderously, with a muted groan.
It sounded the way it always did.
He carried a box containing thick bundles of banknotes to his teller’s station and spread them out over the work surface. He studied them for a moment, just as he always did.
Soon Lisbet would come drifting in through the employees’ entrance and start babbling on about her family; then Albert would arrive, clearing his throat in a slightly superior way and nodding stiffly; and last would be Mia, dark, silent, and reserved, peering out from under her bangs. Soon the smell of Lisbet’s coffee would waft away any remaining stuffiness and fill the office with an air of quiet humanity.
Then the scattered knots of customers would appear: the farmers fumbling with ancient bankbooks, housewives meticulously recording their meager withdrawals, pensioners struggling to avoid resorting to cat food.
This was where he had been happy for so long. But the town was getting smaller and smaller, the customers fewer and fewer.
Everything is exactly the same as always, he thought.
He went back around the dividing wall to play a quick round of 501. From 501 down to zero. A couple of triple-20s and some single bulls sped up the countdown. Exactly as always. The darts landed where they were supposed to. The slightly unusual wavering flight, which was the trademark of his darts, made them hit the mark every time. He had 87 points to go when the alarm clock rang.
Nine-thirty.
Still engrossed in the strategy for the last round, he went over to the front door and unlocked it.
Everything was exactly the same as always.
Let’s make it simple, he thought, a simple 15 and a simple 20 and then the one double bull of the morning for 50 points, as the perfect combination: 85. Then only the checkout left, the double ring of the 1. Eighty-seven. No problem. The hard part was putting the third dart in the little black center of the bull’s-eye. A good start to the day.
A good start to a completely ordinary day.
He hit 15 in the outer bed and 20 in the inner, just to make things interesting. The dart teetered at the wire next to the irksome 1, but it held. The wire trembled a bit from the contact. Then the bull’s-eye was left, right in the center. He focused his attention, raised the dart, lined up the ring with the long point, and drew the dart back four inches, exactly at eye level.
The door slammed.
That couldn’t be. It wasn’t right. It was too early. Damn.
He lowered the dart and walked out to the bank office.
An enormous, ox-like man was pointing a big, long pistol at him.
He stood there petrified. Everything fell apart. This was wrong, this was so wrong. Not now. Not now, please. The floor seemed to fall away from under him.
The man came up to the teller’s window and held out an empty suitcase.
He put down the dart, opened the hatch; stunned, he took the bag.
“Fill it up,” the ox-like man said in heavily accented English.
Quietly and methodically he placed one bundle of banknotes after another into the suitcase. Next to the bag lay the dart with the long point. Thoughts were surging through his mind, helter skelter. Only the bull’s-eye left, he thought. He thought about Lisbet and about nine-thirty, and about a bank door he had unlocked out of old habit. He thought about checking out in the double ring.
The ox-like man lowered the pistol for a moment and looked around nervously.
He thought about his ability to perform his best under extreme pressure.
“Hurry up!” snarled the ox, casting nervous glances out the window. His eyes were very black inside reddish rings.
Bull’s-eye, he thought and grabbed the dart.
Then all that remained was the checkout.
2
What struck Paul Hjelm first was how long it had been since he’d sat in a patrol car with flashing blue lights and a wailing siren. Now he was squeezed into the backseat between two uniformed cops and a plainclothes detective who looked exactly like him. He leaned forward and placed his hand on the driver’s shoulder just as the car burned rubber, pulling out abruptly onto Botkyrkaleden.
“I think it’d be best to turn off the siren,” Hjelm said.
The driver reached out his hand to push the button, but that didn’t bring silence; the squealing tires and the furiously accelerating engine kept the noise level high.
Hjelm studied his plainclothes colleague. Svante Ernstsson was clinging to the little strap that hung from the roof. Are there really straps hanging from the roof in modern police vehicles? thought Hjelm, thinking that was probably not what he should be thinking about right now.
Then he thought about the fact that he often thought things that he shouldn’t be thinking.
Which just made him think about them all the more.
It was only a month since Ernstsson had climbed unharmed out of a demolished police cruiser on Tegelängsvägen after an absurd high-speed chase down in the Fittja industrial area. Now Ernstsson laughed faintly as the car flew across the busy freeway at Fittjamotet, careened to the left through the long curve toward Slagsta, and passed the intersection. Tegelängsvägen stretched off to the right; Ernstsson kept his slightly rigid gaze fixed on the left. After that he relaxed just a bit.
Hjelm thought he was seeing exactly what his partner saw and feeling exactly what he felt. After almost seven years of working closely together in one of the country’s toughest police districts, they knew each other inside and out. And yet he realized that what they actually knew about each other was minuscule. Was that really all he had learned?
Hjelm felt completely empty. That was why he had stepped into his colleague’s fleeting terror-to escape from himself for a moment.
The day had started in the worst imaginable way. The bedroom was utterly suffocating; the early spring sun had played over the blinds for a while, trapping the stuffiness. With a stiff, persistent morning erection, he had crept closer to Cilla, who as unobtrusively as possible had wriggled in the opposite direction. He didn’t notice, refused to notice, crept closer with his stubborn, stifled urgency. And she slipped away, inch by inch, until she suddenly got too close to the edge of the bed and fell to the floor.
He bolted upright, sitting up in bed wide awake, his erection abruptly lost. She quietly got up off the floor, shaking her head, wordless with fury. She stuck her hand into her panties and fished out a pad soaked with blood, holding it out toward him. He gave a slight grimace that was both apologetic and filled with disgust. Then they noticed that Danne was standing in the doorway, a look of obvious horror on his pimply fourteen-year-old face. He ran off. They heard a key turn, and Public Enemy started rapping full blast.
They exchanged looks. Suddenly they were reunited by a bewildered sense of guilt. Cilla dashed out of the room, but knocking on Danne’s door was pointless.
Then they were sitting at the breakfast table.
Tova and Danne had left for school. Danne hadn’t eaten any breakfast, hadn’t uttered a word, hadn’t exchanged a glance with any of them. With her back to Paul, Cilla said, looking at the sparrows on the bird feeder outside the window of their row house in Norsborg, “You’ve witnessed two births. Why the hell are you still disgusted by a woman’s bodily functions?”
He felt completely empty. The car passed the Slagsta allotment gardens on the right and the Brunna School on the left. It made a sharp left turn down toward Hallunda Square; for a moment he had Ernstsson in his lap. They exchanged tired glances and watched as the truncated but crowded stretches of Linvägen, Kornvägen, Hampvägen, and Havrevägen flew past outside the window. The street names-flax, grain, hemp, oats-were like a textbook on agronomy. Everywhere loomed the antithesis of the agrarian society, the brutally unimaginative facades of the identical tall apartment buildings from the sixties and seventies. A breeding ground, thought Hjelm without understanding what he meant. The extinct voices of a peasant society echoed through him like ghosts.
Over by the square three police cars were parked with their doors wide open. Behind a couple of the doors crouched uniformed officers with their weapons drawn. They were pointed in all different directions. The rest of the cops were running around, shooing away curious bystanders, baby buggies, and dog owners.
Hjelm and Ernstsson pulled up alongside the others. The officers were helping with what would later be called “the evacuation of the area.” Hjelm was still sitting halfway inside the vehicle while Ernstsson got out and went over to the next car. Squeezing out of it came the disheveled figure of Johan Bringman, who stretched his creaky back.
“The immigration office,” he managed to say in the middle of his stretching. “Three hostages.”
“Okay, what do we know?” asked Ernstsson, peering down from his towering height at Bringman’s hunched form and unbuttoning his leather jacket in the late winter sun.
“Shotgun, third floor. The majority of the building has been cleared. We’re waiting for the hostage negotiators.”
“From headquarters at Kungsholmen?” said Hjelm from inside the car. “That’ll take awhile. Have you seen the traffic on the E4?”
“Where’s Bruun?” said Ernstsson.
Bringman shook his head. “No idea. Maybe he’s waiting for the top brass to arrive. In any case, it was a clerk from the office who managed to get out. Come on out, Johanna. Over here. This is Johanna Nilsson. She works inside the building.”
A blond woman in her forties got out of the police car and went to stand next to Ernstsson. She held one hand on her forehead and the other to her lips, chewing on one fingernail, then another.
Ernstsson attempted to comfort her by placing his hand on her shoulder and said in his most reassuring voice, “Try and take it easy. We’re going to resolve this situation. Do you know who he is?”
“His name is Dritëro Frakulla,” said Johanna. Her voice broke but her words were firm. “A Kosovar Albanian. His family has been here a long time, and now they’ve been sucked into the general wave of deportation. They thought everything was fine and were just waiting for their citizenship. Then all of a sudden they were informed of the opposite. I assume that’s when things went wrong. The rug was pulled out from under them. I’ve seen it so many times before.”
“Do you know him?”
“Know him? For God’s sake, he’s my friend! It was my case. I know his children, his wife, even his freaking cats. I’m probably the one he’s after. He’s a timid man-he’d never hurt a fly. But I lied to him.” She raised her voice. “Without knowing it, I was lying to him the whole goddamned time! The rules kept changing and changing and changing. How the hell are we supposed to do our job when everything we say gets turned into lies?”
Hjelm got wearily to his feet. He took off his heavy denim jacket with the sheepskin collar, unfastened his shoulder holster, and tossed it inside the car. He stuck his service revolver into his waistband behind his back and put his jacket on again.
He felt empty.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Svante Ernstsson and Johan Bringman in unison.
“I’m going in.”
“The hostage team will be here any minute, for fuck’s sake!” Ernstsson shouted at Hjelm as he crossed Tomtbergavägen. He ran after him and grabbed his arm. “Wait, Paul. Don’t do anything stupid. It’s not necessary. Leave it to the experts.”
He met Hjelm’s gaze, saw the blank look of resolve, and let go of his arm.
We know each other too well, he thought, and nodded.
Hjelm slowly made his way up the stairs to the immigration office. He saw nothing, heard nothing. The air was stifling in the dreary, deserted building.
Everything was concrete. Concrete with thick, plastic-like paint that seemed gray-tinged no matter what color it was. The walls were covered with chips of flecking paint like halfhearted decorations. A strange heat, shimmering as if in the desert, sucked up the stench of urine, sweat, and alcohol. This is how Sweden smells, Hjelm thought as he reached the third floor.
It was the mid-1990s.
He made his way cautiously down the empty, dismal government corridor until he was standing outside the closed door. He took a deep breath and shouted, “Frakulla!”
It was very, very quiet. Not wanting to give himself time to think, he went on.
“My name is Paul Hjelm, and I’m a police officer. I’m alone and unarmed. I just want to talk to you.”
A faint rustling sound could be heard behind the door. Then a husky, barely audible voice said, “Come in.”
Hjelm took another deep breath and opened the door.
Sitting on the floor of the office were two women and a man with their hands on their heads. Standing very close to them, against the windowless wall, was a short, dark man in a brown suit, complete with vest, tie, and shotgun. The latter was pointed straight at Hjelm’s nose.
He closed the door behind him and raised his hands in the air.
“I know what’s happened to you, Frakulla,” he said calmly. “We need to resolve this situation so nobody gets hurt. If you surrender now, you can still appeal the decision; otherwise it’s going to be prison and then deportation for you. Look, I’m unarmed.” He carefully shrugged out of his jean jacket and dropped it to the floor.
Dritëro Frakulla was blinking rapidly. He aimed the gun alternately at Hjelm and at the three civil servants on the floor.
Don’t ask me to turn around, thought Hjelm. Keep talking, keep talking. Focus on showing him sympathy. Use words that’ll make him think. Distract his attention.
“Think about your family,” he managed. “What will your children do without you to support them? What about your wife-does she work? What kind of job will she be able to get, Frakulla? What sort of qualifications does she have?”
