Misterioso

by Arne Dahl

  It said “Lindén” on the mail slot. He rang the bell. Once. Twice. Three times. After the fourth time, a thudding sound was audible from inside, and a blond youth about eighteen opened the door and peered out. A sloppy Champion jogging suit more or less covered his body, and his hair was standing on end.

  “Did I get you out of bed?” said Hjelm, holding up his ID. “You’re Jörgen Lindén, right?”

  The guy nodded, trying in vain to focus on the ID, which kept flapping back and forth before his eyes. “What’s this about?” Lindén’s voice was groggy with sleep.

  “Mass murder,” said Hjelm, pushing past him into the apartment.

  “What the hell did you say?” Lindén followed him, stuffing his shirt into his pants. On the sofa was a rumpled blanket. In the other room the bed was meticulously made up. Two sides of the same coin, thought Hjelm, resorting to cliché, and opened the window to let in some fresh air from the tidy back courtyard with small trees and wooden benches.

  “It’s one o’clock in the afternoon,” he said. “Do you always sleep this long?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘this long.’ I was out late last night.”

  “What sort of work do you do?”

  Lindén scrupulously folded up the blanket and sat down on the sofa. “I’m unemployed.”

  “You seem to be getting by quite nicely on your unemployment checks.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I assume that you haven’t read today’s paper?”

  “No.”

  “Bernhard Strand-Julén was murdered.”

  In spite of his youth, Jörgen Lindén was the most experienced of all of the people Hjelm had interviewed that day in terms of dealing with the police. He managed to maintain an expression of vague, innocent confusion, although perhaps his eyes were a shade brighter. The wheels had started to spin in his brain.

  “Who?”

  “Director Bernhard Strand-Julén. You know.”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  Hjelm took the postcard showing the highly virile Dionysus out of his jeans pocket and held it up. “Quite a hard-on, don’t you think?”

  Lindén looked at the picture without saying a word.

  Hjelm went on, “Is this your advertising trademark, or what? Marketing? Do you hand these cards out in the subway?”

  Lindén still didn’t speak. He was looking out the window. The storm was making the low-lying cumulus clouds practically race past.

  Hjelm stubbornly continued. “So if we flip over the steak, what do we find? Here it says: ‘We’re going now. You can always call.’ And then a phone number that happens to be the same as that one.” Hjelm pointed at the cordless phone next to the window. “But what’s this? There’s more. A little P.S. ‘You’re the biggest Billy-Goat Gruff.’ I think a comparison of this handwriting with that notepad on the phone table will prove very interesting.”

  Hjelm sat down in the armchair facing Lindén.

  “ ‘And then the big Billy-Goat Gruff rushed at the troll, lifted him on his horns, and flung him in a big arc through the air, hurling him so far that the troll was never seen again. Then the goat ran up to the mountain pasture. There was so much good grass, and the goats grew so fat that they didn’t have the energy to go back home. And if they haven’t lost that fat, then no doubt they’re still up there today.’ ”

  Jörgen Lindén still didn’t utter a word.

  Hjelm went on: “The land of childhood. I read that story to my children almost ten years ago, every night. I remember every word of it. What sort of troll was it that flew in a big arc through the air and disappeared for good out there on the Swan boat? The troll of poverty? The troll of abstinence? Are you still up there in the mountain pasture?”

  Lindén closed his eyes but remained silent.

  “My son is only a few years younger than you. At least I hope he is. Answer me right now, or I’m taking you in. What sort of troll was it that the big Billy-Goat Gruff Strand-Julén chased away?”

  “Not the troll of poverty, at any rate,” said Lindén glumly. “He didn’t want a repeat. Never wanted to see us again. The cash lasted me a couple of months, no more than that. And drugs are out of the question. I’m clean.”

  “No rave parties, no Ecstasy? Like last night?”

  “That’s a different story. It’s not addictive.”

  “Of course not.” Hjelm leaned back in his chair. “But if you keep working as a prostitute, pretty soon you’re going to need something that is addictive. Okay, I don’t have time for this right now. Here’s my most important question: Have you ever performed any services for an executive by the name of Kuno Daggfeldt in Danderyd?”

  “I don’t always know their names.”

  “Here’s what he looks like,” said Hjelm, holding out a photograph of an imposing man who was struggling to carry his fifty years with dignity, a battle that a couple of days ago had horribly failed. Nothing exposes vanity more clearly than death, thought Hjelm, convinced that he was quoting somebody.

  “No,” said Lindén. “I don’t recognize him.”

  “And you’re a hundred percent sure about that? Take a good look through your internal files.”

  “I remember them, believe me. I remember them all.”

  “The whole herd of Billy-Goats Gruff? Okay, give me the name of your pimp.”

  “Come on-”

  “Under other circumstances I would probably have picked you up off the street, lifted you up by the scruff of your neck like a little kitten… and tossed you home to your parents-”

  “That would be difficult.”

  “-but right now the situation is different. All I’m after is as much information as you can give me about Daggfeldt and Strand-Julén. So I need the name of your little pimp. And I need it now.”

  “Do you know what he’ll do to me if he finds out that I’ve squealed?”

  “He’ll never find out from me, I can guarantee it.”

  “Johan Stake. I don’t know if that’s his real name, and I don’t have any address. Just a phone number.”

  Lindén wrote the number on a piece of paper and handed it to Hjelm.

  “One last thing: Strand-Julén’s sexual preferences. And be as specific as possible.”

  Lindén gave him a pleading look and then started to cry.

  The language of intimidation, thought Hjelm, not sure what he himself was feeling.

  A hailstorm pounded the windowpanes for ten long seconds. Then it was gone.

  April weather, thought Hjelm and sneezed loudly.

  It was two o’clock by the time he rang the bell of the Nockeby villa. He listened to the first five notes of “Ode to Joy” play three times inside, hating Beethoven’s deafness. Immediately behind the villa, the property dropped down toward Lake Mälaren, at the spot where it was most beautiful. This particular villa was not the most palatial in Nockeby, but it still deserved inclusion in this oasis of a western suburb, upon which the April sun had chosen to cast its fickle light.

  The door was finally opened by an old woman, whom Hjelm assumed was the housekeeper.

  “Criminal Police,” he said, starting to feel sick and tired of the words. “I’m looking for Rickard Franzén.”

  “He’s taking a nap,” said the woman. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s extremely important. If it’s not too much trouble, I really must ask you to wake him.”

  “It’s up to you,” said the woman cryptically.

  “What?”

  “It’s up to you to decide whether it’s too much trouble to ask me to wake him. But maybe you’ve already indirectly answered the indirect question and just as indirectly asked me to wake him up.”

  Hjelm stared at her, his mouth agape.

  She invited him in with a wave of her hand, smiling up her sleeve, as it were. “Don’t mind me. I’ll always be a language teacher, to the end of my days. Sit down and I’ll go get my husband.” She disappeared up the stairs, moving with surpris
ing agility.

  Hjelm remained standing in the enormous vestibule, trying to make sense of what had just ensued. “If it’s not too much trouble, I really must ask you to wake him.” Surely that was an acceptable way to say it?

  There went his language of intimidation.

  After only a couple of minutes, the woman came back down the stairs, followed by an obese elderly man wearing a bathrobe and slippers. The man held out his hand.

  “Rickard Franzén,” he said. “Ninety percent of my afternoon nap involves trying to fall asleep and ten percent trying to accept that I won’t be able to. So I wasn’t asleep. It’s hard to get used to being retired after a whole lifetime of working. And I assume that you’ve already noticed that the same is true of my wife.”

  “Paul Hjelm,” said Hjelm. “From the Criminal Police.”

  “The Stockholm police?”

  “No, NCP.” Hjelm had forgotten that the man used to be a judge.

  “Some sort of new special unit?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. And I also think I know why you’re here. Fast work.”

  “Thanks. So what’s your view on the matter?”

  “I think it’s entirely possible that I’m potentially the third victim. We talked about that this morning, my wife and I. Birgitta thought I should call the police. I was more reluctant. And I won the argument. That’s not always the case, let me tell you.”

  “Do you think that someone in the Order of Mimir is behind these murders?”

  “I wouldn’t venture to speculate about that, but I can understand that, in your eyes, there must be a connection.”

  Franzén’s amenable attitude allowed Hjelm to get right to the point. He opted for blunt language instead of the language of intimidation.

  “We have an important investigative meeting at three. Might I request that you accompany me to police headquarters so that we can ask you a number of questions about the Order of Skidbladnir and also decide on the surveillance measures for tonight?”

  Franzén paused to consider it. Then he said, “Of course. The pattern. You think that the spatial symmetry indicates a temporal similarity as well, and that the third murder is going to take place tonight. Forty-eight hours between each of them. You could be right. Just give me a few minutes.”

  He disappeared into the bathroom. Without a doubt, the Swedish judicial branch had suffered a major loss. In Hjelm’s eyes, Rickard Franzén had clearly been a very good judge.

  Birgitta Franzén came over to Hjelm. “Do you think his life is actually in danger?”

  “I don’t really know, but it’s quite possible. Will you be home tonight?”

  “I rarely go out.”

  “What about your husband?”

  “He’s going to visit an old colleague. They usually get together once a month.”

  Hjelm nodded. “Does it usually go late?”

  She gave a little laugh. “Very” was all she said.

  “And your bedroom is on the next floor up?”

  “Two floors up.”

  “What about the living room? Is it on the ground floor?”

  “You’re practically standing in it. The vestibule narrows to form a corridor over there on the right and then opens onto the living room.”

  Hjelm headed to the right. A short distance away the vestibule formed a sort of funnel shape, then widened to become the living room. It was a very unusual floor plan that a murderer would have to know about in advance in order to act. Against the window on the opposite wall in the living room stood a long, sectional leather sofa.

  Hjelm returned to the vestibule and found Rickard Franzén fully dressed. He looked resolute, practically enthusiastic.

  “Have you taken a look at the proposed murder scene?” he asked with a smile.

  He gave his wife a hug and then led the way out to Hjelm’s car, ready for a temporary but much-longed-for comeback in the machinery of justice.

  The sun was still shining.

  9

  Jan-Olov Hultin again made his entrance through the mysterious door on the far side of the room, which Jorge Chavez somewhat ironically called “Supreme Central Command.” The half-moon reading glasses were already perched on the wide bridge of his nose. Hultin turned to face the assembled members of the A-Unit. Everyone was leafing through their papers and notebooks.

  “So this morning the whole thing was made public,” said Hultin grimly. “In all the newspapers simultaneously, by the way. Somebody was busy making calls. Or else there’s some sort of cooperation among all sectors of the media. We haven’t yet located the leak. Maybe it was simply impossible to keep such a major case secret. At least we had a day’s head start.”

  He went over to the whiteboard, twisted the top off one of the felt markers, and got ready to fire. The pen was now his service weapon.

  “At any rate, it looks as if some feverish activity has been going on inside your A-Unit brains today. Let’s see the results. Norlander?”

  Viggo Norlander bent over his dark blue notebook. “Modus operandi,” he said. “I’ve been in contact with everybody from the FBI to Liechtenstein’s security force and done a whole bunch of cross-checking through the worldwide phone network. Three of the groups that are currently active consistently use shots to the head when it comes to blatant executions: a branch within the American mafia, under the mob boss Carponi, in Chicago, of all classic gangster cities; a semi-extinct separatist group from the Red Army Faction, under the command of Hans Kopff; and a minor Russian-Estonian crime group led by Mr. Viktor X, which you might call a segment of the Russian mafia, whatever that label is now worth. Most cases have been executions of traitors or snitches; no instance has involved two and only two shots. So far I haven’t been able to track down any examples of two shots to the head. I’ll keep looking.”

  “Thanks, Viggo,” said Hultin. He’d already filled a corner of the board with notes. “Nyberg and the enemies they had in common?”

  The imposing Gunnar Nyberg seemed uncomfortable as he gripped a pen in his big right hand.

  “It looks like a dead end,” he said dubiously. “I haven’t found any common enemies. Both men attended the Stockholm School of Economics, but Strand-Julén was seven years older, so they weren’t there at the same time. That’s the place where people tend to make friends and enemies for life. A couple of decades ago Daggfeldt kicked a colleague out of a business that they’d started together under the name of ContoLine. The man’s name is Unkas Storm. I located him, in a highly intoxicated state, at a small scrap-metal company in Bandhagen. He still harbors a deep hatred toward Daggfeldt. He said that he, quote, ‘danced on his coffin,’ unquote, when he heard about the murder. But he doesn’t know Strand-Julén.

  “The latter has an ex-wife by the name of Johanna, whom he left without financial means after their divorce in ’72. Nobody could be as filled with hatred as she is, but it’s a strictly personal hatred. She hopes, quote, ‘to eat his liver before they cremate the swine, and that really should have been done while he could still feel the flames,’ unquote. I spoke with the family members, who showed varying degrees of grief, and came to the conclusion that of the two, Daggfeldt, in spite of everything, will be missed more. Both his son, Marcus, age seventeen, and his daughter, Maxi-”

  “Maxi?” Hjelm interrupted him.

  “Apparently that’s her given name,” said Nyberg, throwing out his hands.

  “Sorry. It’s just that Daggfeldt’s sailboat is called the Maxi, so that’s why I… Go on.”

  “Marcus and Maxi, who’s nineteen, seem to be genuinely mourning their father, even though he made himself practically invisible at home. His wife, Ninni, is taking his death with what we might call great composure. Speaking of the sailboat, she asked whether she would be allowed to sell it immediately. I told her yes. The same is true of Strand-Julén’s widow, Lilian. Great composure, I mean. Evidently she’d already more or less moved out of their apartment on Strandvägen, even though divorce was, quot
e, ‘out of the question,’ unquote. She’d seen what had happened to his first wife, the one named Johanna. She made certain insinuations about Strand-Julén’s sexual preferences. And I quote: ‘Compared with my husband Saint Bernhard, the pedophiles in Thailand are God’s own angels.’ Unquote. That may be something we should follow up.”

  “I’m beginning to see a red thread,” said Hjelm, “regarding their leisure activities. If you’re finished, that is?”

  “I’d like to finish by saying that I haven’t been able to get in touch with Strand-Julén’s children. A daughter, Sylvia, thirty years old, from his first marriage, and Bob, age twenty, from the second. Both are apparently employed abroad.”

  Then it was Hjelm’s turn. “Strand-Julén’s Swan boat was evidently a pleasure craft, in the most literal sense of the word. I’ve talked to one of the members of his ever-changing crew, consisting of blond young boys. I don’t know how nauseated you’d like to feel, but I have a detailed description of what took place on that boat.”

  “A rough summary will do,” said Hultin laconically.

  “And rough it is. He liked to watch and give orders, creating little, quote, ‘tableaux,’ in which the crew members were supposed to freeze in the middle of the act while he walked around to study the scene. One boy, for example, might have another guy’s dick or some similar object stuck up his ass for fifteen minutes without being allowed to move an inch until Strand-Julén gave permission for the activities to resume. He himself never participated, other than as stage director. But there doesn’t seem to be any connection with Daggfeldt. I’ll keep looking. I have a lead on the procurer.”

  “Holm and the circle of friends,” Hultin moved on to the next topic he had assigned. His notes already filled a significant area of the whiteboard. His handwriting was gradually getting smaller.

  Kerstin Holm’s melodic Göteborg accent rippled through the room. “Nyberg and I have been crossing into each other’s territory; it can be difficult to distinguish between friends and enemies. At the risk of falling into cliché, I can say that people in the upper echelons seldom make friends with someone just because they happen to like each other. Of course, it’s an advantage if they do, but that’s mostly of secondary interest, an extra bonus.