by Arne Dahl
“Wait a minute. You don’t have any proof. You’ll have to release me.”
“How do you know we don’t have any proof?”
Stake didn’t reply.
Hjelm calmly went on, “Early this morning we picked up a young guy by the name of Jörgen Lindén as he boarded the first train to Göteborg. He was carrying a big suitcase, as if he was about to flee from somebody, and I don’t think it was the police. He’s now sitting in jail. Not ten minutes ago he was ready to testify. Detective Inspector Chavez here conducted the interview brilliantly, but not entirely without… shall we say, some persuasion.”
Chavez went over to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup to hide his astonishment. He took a few seconds to compose himself, then returned with an expression of persuasion etched on his face.
Good job, thought Hjelm. Good lies should always be as detailed as possible. Then they will convince anybody.
Johan Stake seemed convinced. He didn’t say a word as he sat thinking. Apparently the scenario wasn’t the least bit improbable.
“But there’s another option,” Hjelm repeated.
Stake remained silent. He was no longer calling for a lawyer.
Hjelm completed his attack. “Step one on the road to immediate release: tell us about Bernhard Strand-Julén.”
Johan Stake cleared his throat and squirmed a bit on his chair. “Can you guarantee that you’ll let me go?”
“We’re the only ones who know that you’re here. No formal charges have been filed. You’re free as soon as you spit out what we want to know. We have much bigger fish to fry than you and your bordellos. We’ll let both you and Jörgen go if you cooperate. That’s step one.”
“Strand-Julén… I got boys for him. A crew for his boat, as he insisted on calling them. Healthy, blond boys about sixteen or so, athletic types. Two or three at a time. Always new ones. During the summer season almost every weekend. Never during the winter. That’s when he went into hibernation.”
“Step two. Were your services ever used by Kuno Daggfeldt or Nils-Emil Carlberger?”
“Carlberger,” said Stake, looking as though he’d been expecting the question. “He got my number from Strand-Julén. That was six months ago. He sounded damned nervous when he requested a boy. I had the impression it was his first time. An attempt to widen his horizons maybe, a little Socratic boy-love. What do I know?”
“Do you know how it went?”
“I talked to the kid afterward. He got a little… central stimulation.” He laughed loudly. “Carlberger was like a little boy, totally inexperienced, either a hundred percent hetero or else a hundred percent impotent. But he paid well.”
“And that was all? What about Daggfeldt?”
“No.”
“Can you tell us anything else about Strand-Julén or Carlberger? Think carefully.”
Stake thought for a moment. “No, I’m sorry. That’s all.” They let him go.
“You could have warned me,” said Chavez, sipping his coffee. “If I had, would you have agreed to go along with it?”
“No.”
They allowed themselves a good laugh at their peculiarities, both their own and each other’s. Then Hjelm crossed off Johan Stake from the investigation.
Two hours later Stake called to compliment him. It was very strange, but he’d just spoken to Jörgen Lindén, who hadn’t understood a word of what he was talking about. Stake praised Hjelm for the impressive lie and then hung up. Hjelm stood for a long time, staring at his phone.
By now Paul Hjelm was almost certain that the murders had stopped with victim number three. One morning it was raining for the first time in what seemed like a premature summer. So it was time to drive out to the Kevinge Golf Course. It was deserted. The whole clubhouse was deserted too.
Except, that is, for Lena Hansson, who was in her place at the reception desk. At first she didn’t recognize him, but when she did, her expression changed, which was precisely what he was hoping for. He instantly mobilized his heavy artillery. “Why did you lie about the fact that you were a caddy for the three corpses on September 7, 1990?”
She stared at him with a frankly naked expression; it was obvious that she’d been expecting him. For a month. “They weren’t corpses back then,” she said hesitantly. “On the contrary. You might call it an… over-the-top life they were living.
“But not without an oversexed component, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Shall we sit down for a moment? The customers are conspicuous in their absence.”
“And what a glorious absence it is.” She sounded older than her years. She went into the closed club restaurant and sat down at a table. Hjelm followed.
Lena Hansson fiddled with the wax of a burned-out candle in a small holder. Hjelm said:
“There were three of you working as caddies, am I right?”
“Yes. That’s what they requested. A guy named Carl-Gustaf something-or-other. Some kind of aristocratic last name. I don’t really remember, but I can look it up. And my friend Lotta. Lotta Bergström. She was really upset. It was because of her that I didn’t say anything.”
“What do you mean?”
Hjelm permitted himself a cigarette. He blamed the elegant setting, but more likely the “no smoking” sign had enticed him.
“Lotta was… going through a hard time. A horrible childhood. An even more horrible adolescence. I got the job for her. We were both seventeen, in the same class in school. I felt guilty. She… well, she killed herself in ’92. I don’t really know if it had anything to do with this. Probably not. But I still feel like it was my fault.”
“What they did?”
“Yes. That Carl-Gustaf-he didn’t believe it could happen. He was from some really old upper-crust family. You know the kind, people who still care about good breeding and etiquette, and not just as a role that you play when you go to fancy dinners and things like that. For them, it’s all part of their daily lives, both private and professional. Good breeding and etiquette and an ancient moral code seem to be injected into their genes. They’re often quite pleasant to be around. Carl-Gustaf was too. He laughed politely and shyly during the first four holes, then he shut up, letting that Strand-Julén badger him for four more holes. At the ninth green he set the golf bag down so that Strand-Julén’s putt struck the bag. Then he simply left. I’ve never seen him again. If he’d been a real gentleman, he would have taken us with him.”
Carl-Gustaf, wrote Hjelm in his mental notebook. “But Lotta and you stayed?” he said.
“Seventeen, properly brought up, insecure. Of course we stayed. After Carl-Gustaf left, they began tossing around nouveau riche jokes about the arch-conservative nobility. It was a form of jealousy.”
“Could you be a little more precise? What exactly did they do?”
“They’d had a lot to drink here in the restaurant before the game. They seemed-I don’t know, speedy, almost, as if they’d snorted some coke in the men’s room or something like that.”
“Or in the cab on the way over,” said Hjelm, unprofessionally.
“At any rate, they started telling dirty jokes and making insinuating remarks, on a polite level that allowed at least Carl-Gustaf to join in the laughter. Lotta and I were mostly just embarrassed. There was hardly anybody else on the golf course, so they could carry on as much as they liked. After a while Strand-Julén focused his remarks on Carl-Gustaf, which let us off the hook for a time. The remarks were mostly about the size of Carl-Gustaf’s noble organ. Then he made his heroic departure, and the two of us ended up in the line of fire. Really. I’ve never in my life been so badly treated, and I’ll never let it happen again. I promised myself that.”
“So what did you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you shoot them?”
She laughed loudly, her voice shrill and unnatural. “Oh sure,” she said at last, as she wiped away the tears. “I can’t say that I was sorry when I heard that they’d been sh
ot. All three of them, one after the other. It was wonderful, to be quite honest. Magical, like in a fairy tale. The unknown avenger. But good God, I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”
“But somebody you know might have.”
She was silent for a moment, mulling it over. “I don’t think so,” she said quite calmly. “Maybe somebody Lotta knew. That would be more likely. I was just furious, fucking furious, and that sort of anger doesn’t go away. But I wasn’t seriously affected. She was. She was already in a fragile state, and things just got worse.”
“Okay, so what happened?”
“They started pawing and groping us on the tenth and eleventh fairways. It got much worse when we were over by the woods. They were really worked up-they must have still been high on drugs-and that’s when they started going at us. They tore off Lotta’s sweater, and one of them pushed her down on the ground and lay on top of her. Daggfeldt, I think. Carlberger sat nearby and watched. Strand-Julén grabbed hold of me.
“I managed to pull loose and got hold of a golf club, which I slammed against the back of Daggfeldt’s neck. He rolled off Lotta, and I went over and tried to comfort her. Daggfeldt lay there, writhing. I think he was bleeding from the back of his head. The other two just stood there, thinking. Doing some problem solving. They’d sobered up awfully quick. Started apologizing and saying how sorry they were and offering us money to keep our mouths shut. And we let them buy our silence. It was expensive as hell. Several thousand kronor. Besides, we wanted to keep our jobs. Well, Lotta got fired shortly afterward. She made another suicide attempt a couple of weeks after that. She’d already tried twice before. The seventh time she finally succeeded, a couple of years later. I don’t know whether she really meant to die. And I have no idea how big a role all this played in what she did. But I’ve given it a lot of thought. Those fucking pigs! I’m glad they’re dead.”
“And they continued to play golf here? Afterward? All three of them?”
“Yes. Apparently they would have missed out on important contacts they made here otherwise. But they never played together again.”
“The last time we talked, you said about Daggfeldt and Strand-Julén, who by then were dead, and I quote: ‘They would always say hello when they came in and stop to chat.’ But that didn’t really happen, did it?”
“No, I lied. I don’t think any of them ever even glanced at me again. They looked a bit worried when I moved inside to work in the reception area. But I think they were convinced that they’d bought my silence.”
“And had they? Have you ever told this story to anyone else? To your lover, for example? What’s his name? The golf association secretary. Axel Wifstrand?”
“Widstrand. No, especially not him. He would take it… in the wrong way.”
“React violently?”
“Just the opposite, I think. He would think I was lying. No, I haven’t told anyone. They bought my silence. But I don’t know whether they bought Lotta’s.”
“Did she have a boyfriend? A brother? A father?”
“If I understood correctly, her father, Bengt-Egil, was at the root of all her problems. She would never have told him about it, and he would never have tried to avenge her honor. And she never had a boyfriend-that was another source of anxiety. But she was close to her brother, Gusten. In fact, Gusten and Lotta were inseparable.”
“Do you think he knew?”
“We lost contact when she got really sick, so I don’t know. But if Gusten is behind this, then I’m grateful to him. I’ll visit him in prison.”
Hjelm paused to think. Gusten Bergström.
“Shall we find out what Carl-Gustaf’s last name was? After that I won’t bother you anymore. At least I don’t think I will.”
Lena Hansson got up and stretched. He saw a pride that he hadn’t noticed before. Once a possible witness, now a whole and complete human being.
“Keep the anger alive,” he found himself saying to her.
She gave him a sarcastic look.
Count Carl-Gustaf af Silfverbladh had moved in 1992 to his family’s estate in Dorset, England. Having sown his wild oats, he sought to obtain a proper education at Oxford, as his father and grandfather had done. He hadn’t returned to Sweden, and in all likelihood never would.
Hjelm wondered how the English would pronounce the man’s last name.
Gusten Bergström was twenty-eight, a few years older than his sister Lotta would have been had she lived. His apartment was on Gamla Brogatan in central Stockholm. He worked as a computer operator for Swedish Rail in the long-distance office at Central Station.
He doesn’t have far to go every morning, thought Hjelm as he rang the doorbell of Bergström’s apartment, which was a couple of floors above the old Sko-Unos shop.
A shadow appeared in the door’s peephole. Not a great idea to have a peephole near the window, he thought.
“Police!” he bellowed, pounding on the door.
The man who opened it was as thin as a stick, with a haircut that looked like a toupee but probably wasn’t. He wore glasses with thick lenses. He looked like a combination of a teenage hacker and a middle-aged accountant.
Hjelm looked at Gusten Bergström with dismay. This was no murderer. He’d bet his life on that.
“I’m from the Criminal Police,” said Hjelm, showing his ID.
Gusten Bergström let him in without saying a word. The apartment was spartan, to say the least. The walls were bare, and at one end of the room a computer was on. Before Bergström could go over and turn down the light, Hjelm caught a glimpse of a naked woman on the color screen, incredibly true to life. It made him feel old.
“Have a seat,” said Bergström politely.
Hjelm sat down on a quasi-antique sofa and Bergström on a matching armchair, if it could be called that.
“I’d like to talk to you about your sister,” said Hjelm cautiously.
Bergström got up at once and went over to the bookcase near the computer. From one of the shelves he took down a photo in a gold frame and showed it to Hjelm. A girl in her mid-teens was smiling at him. It was astonishing how much she looked like her brother.
“This is Lotta before things went bad for her,” said Bergström sadly. “On her seventeenth birthday.”
“Very pretty,” said Hjelm, feeling ghastly. The photograph was taken about the time of the golf course incident.
“What’s this about?” said Bergström, pushing up his glasses.
“When she was seventeen, she worked as a caddy at the Kevinge Golf Course. Do you remember that?”
Bergström gave a slight nod.
“Did she ever tell you anything about her job?” asked Hjelm.
“No,” he said with a sigh. There seemed to be something shattered about him.
“Nothing at all?”
For the first time Bergström looked Hjelm in the eye. Each of them was looking for something in the other.
“What’s this about?” Bergström repeated. “My sister has been dead for a couple of years now. Why are you coming here and talking about her as if she were alive? I’ve just gotten used to the idea that she’s gone.”
“She was fired from her job at the golf course in the fall of 1990. Do you recall that?”
“Yes, I remember. The season was over, and the golf course was about to close for the winter. She was still in school, so it was no big deal to lose a seasonal job.”
“But you don’t recall anything she told you about her time at the golf course?”
“She got the job through a friend; I don’t remember her name. I didn’t feel very comfortable in Danderyd, to be honest. I didn’t know anyone there. She didn’t really either. It wasn’t a happy time, not at all.”
“Shortly afterward, she tried to take her own life for the third time. Is that right?”
“How sensitive of you,” Bergström said glumly. “Yes, she did. A razor blade, for the first and last time. When she actually succeeded, it was by taking Alvedon. Did you know that all it take
s to kill the liver and kidneys is one blister pack of Alvedon and some liquor? Lotta knew that. Nobody knew what she had planned. There were no warning shots or cries for help or any bullshit like that. She really did try to kill herself seven times. It was like a… miscarriage. As if she weren’t meant to be born. As if there were something seriously wrong with her view of life.”
“Do you know why?”
“I don’t know anything, and I don’t understand anything,” Bergström said tonelessly. “I’ll never understand anything.”
“Do you know about the murders of the three businessmen here in Stockholm?”
Bergström was off somewhere else. It took a moment for him to return. “How could anybody not know about that?”
“Did you murder them?”
Gusten Bergström looked at him in surprise. Then a strange spark appeared in his eyes, as if a gust of life had suddenly been blown into his withered lungs. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, Hjelm thought blasphemously.
“Yes,” said Bergström proudly. “I murdered them.”
Hjelm studied the luminous figure. Something seemed about to happen in Gusten Bergström’s dreary life. His face would appear on newspaper placards. He would be in the spotlight for the first and last time in his life.
“Come off it,” said Paul Hjelm, and the spark was extinguished.
Gusten Bergström seemed to crumple, sitting on the armchair’s hard upholstery, as if he were its long-absent stuffing.
Hjelm poured a little oil on the waters of disappointment. “Why did you kill Kuno Daggfeldt, Bernhard Strand-Julén, and Nils-Emil Carlberger?”
“Why?” said Bergström, shrugging his hunched shoulders. “Well, because-because they were rich.”
“You don’t have the faintest idea what those three men did to your sister at the Kevinge Golf Course on September 7, 1990, a month before she made her third suicide attempt and was locked up in Beckomberga Hospital. Do you?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Gusten Bergström got up abruptly and tried to find something to hold on to. There was nothing. His fingers clutched wildly at the air.
