The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  But the right words eluded him, and he eventually fell asleep with a feeling of being very far away.

  From Marianne, from his children, from a murderer who was trying to talk to him, for reasons he couldn’t fathom – and many miles away from himself.

  17

  That black Monday started with a couple of heavy downpours and a brisk wind from the south west. Gunnar Barbarotti left Axel Wallman’s cottage just after eight with a feeling of autumn in his breast, and he had not driven more than a couple of kilometres when the windscreen wiper blade on the driver’s side came loose. It went whirling off like an abortive afterthought and within seconds was swallowed up by the long grass edging the ditch at the side of the road. He stopped at the Statoil petrol station in Kerranshede and bought a new one, which with some difficulty he eventually managed to fit. While he was at it he bought a coffee and a copy of Expressen, despite his vow to Göran Persson; then he sat in the car, rain pelting down on all sides, and read through what the star reporter had to say about the murders of Erik Bergman and Anna Eriksson.

  And about the letters.

  And about police shortcomings.

  And yes, four pages – two double-page spreads – had been given over to ‘The murder mystery of the decade’ and ‘The letter murderer of Kymlinge’, and to be on the safe side, the word ‘EXTRA’ was printed in white on black at the top of every page, so no reader could be misled into underestimating the importance of the story.

  There were plenty of pictures: a small one of lead investigator Jonnerblad; another, double the size, of Inspector Barbarotti – looking rather like a patient waiting to be called in to the doctor to have his constipation diagnosed; an aerial photo of Kymlinge with the two crime scenes helpfully marked with white crosses; and a couple of faked pictures of the letters – all three of them. The murderer’s texts were reproduced in full, but the captions were at least honest enough to admit that these were not photographs of the originals, the police having refused to release them because it might detrimentally affect the investigation. Expressen was, as always, an organ working in the service of truth and enlightenment. In addition, the top of page eight featured a picture of two middle-aged women with shopping bags. They had nothing to do with the murders; on the contrary, claimed the short text alongside, they represented the ordinary, decent citizen, and in answer to the reporter’s direct question about whether they were scared, both of them agreed that they most certainly were. They scarcely dared to go out. Their answer to the follow-up question about the extent of their confidence in the police was something along the lines of it being time for the powers of law and order to show what they could do.

  In the longest piece of text, the murderer was described as an unusually cunning psychopath, and there were quotations from Jonnerblad, prosecutor Sylvenius and Barbarotti, too. Barbarotti did not recognize a single word of what he had supposedly said, and he found it hard to believe that Jonnerblad had honestly – on his honour as a police officer – promised to catch the perpetrator within a few days, a week at the most.

  But the worst thing – the very worst thing of all – was the headline plastered above his own face in that constipated waiting room:

  IMPLICATED?

  Implicated? Thought Gunnar Barbarotti. What the hell is he insinuating? If I write a letter to the Pope’s mother it hardly means she’s implicated in anything, does it?

  He gulped down his coffee and threw down the newspaper with an indignant backhand. A moment later, Asunander rang. He sounded like a stone crusher with a hangover.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Barbarotti assured him. ‘Be there in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Krrn . . . sss,’ said the Chief Inspector, and for the rest of the drive to Kymlinge, Gunnar Barbarotti was left wondering what he had been trying to say.

  ‘Who,’ said Chief Inspector Asunander, ‘in the hottest circle of Hell . . . has been selling info to a bloody . . . hack?’

  This was a sensationally long and coherent sentence by Asunander’s standards, and it was followed by an equally eloquent silence round the table. Barbarotti was aware that the same thought must be going through the mind of every one of the dozen assembled there. Even the detective sergeants most directly involved in the case had been summoned to the meeting.

  One of us? Could it be one of us?

  Or perhaps the thought was in fact only going through eleven of those minds? Because if it really was one of the twelve who had taken the chance of earning a bit of cash by leaking to the press, well, wouldn’t an entirely different thought occur to that person in these hostile, icy seconds? Can they tell from the way I look? For example – or maybe Ha ha, you lot haven’t got a hope of exposing me, you petrified mud stirrers!

  Though Barbarotti was sure the latter was the kind of thing that would only pop into his own poor head. I’m still out of kilter today, he thought hastily, just as Jonnerblad punctured the silence.

  ‘Apart from those of us around the table, there are about ten possible names we could choose from,’ he said.

  Asunander growled something unintelligible.

  ‘That’s the current situation,’ Jonnerblad went on. ‘And unfortunately that’s the way things are these days. That applies to the whole country, not just Kymlinge. The police force leaks like a sieve and I’d like to issue a warning to everybody here – and by all means pass it on. If this happens again, if information carries on getting out to the press, information we haven’t agreed in advance to release, then I shall bring in a man from Stockholm to carry out an internal investigation. He’s called Superintendent Wickman, and people have been known to hang themselves after having to talk to him for a few days.’

  He paused. As if by agreement, Tallin took over. ‘We’re going to hold a press conference at two o’clock this afternoon,’ he declared. ‘Other than what is said there, in future only Superintendent Jonnerblad and I will talk to the press. You’re all likely to get calls from journalists. Refer them to Jonnerblad and me. Cite technical investigative reasons.’

  ‘Anybody here not understood that?’ asked Jonnerblad.

  Since the question was somewhat ambiguously phrased, heads were shaken and nodded with equal vigour, roughly the same proportion of each, and Gunnar Barbarotti suddenly recalled how it used to feel when he played in a boys’ football team and they got a dressing-down from the captain at half-time after falling comfortably 0–4 behind. Boys will always be boys, he thought, with a glance at Eva Backman, the only woman in the room. Can’t be fun having to spend one’s time with this bunch of neo-pubertal males, day in and day out, he thought. Not much fun at all.

  And back home she had four more men, of course, his train of thought continued. A unihockey-playing husband and three teenage unihockey-playing sons. When they weren’t away on holiday, that was. Which must at any event mean that she . . .

  ‘Barbarotti,’ said Jonnerblad, breaking into this gender analysis, ‘It’s your role in particular that’s going to be a bit problematic in view of today’s Expressen.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ queried Barbarotti.

  ‘They’re not going to leave you alone, that’s what I mean.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I’ll switch off my phone and go to a hotel.’

  ‘Not a good idea,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Remember you’ve got to go home and check the post every day.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s time to make a deal with the Post Office,’ suggested Tallin.

  ‘Post Office?’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Does it still exist? I thought—’

  But Tallin didn’t care what Astor Nilsson thought about the Post Office. ‘If the murderer carries on writing letters,’ he clarified, ‘we might be able to get our hands on the correspondence twelve hours earlier. Though of course that would mean we create even more potential for leaks . . .’

  ‘We can reckon on a few hoax letter writers too,’ Eve Backman put in. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Probably,’ muttered Jonnerblad, and it was at t
hat moment Inspector Barbarotti realized who Expressen’s source must be. He waited for a few other comments to go to and fro across the table while he weighed up his idea, and of course it was possible to raise any number of well-founded objections, but in some potent whorl of his unstructured brain, he knew he was right. That simply had to be it.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘It’s just struck me who must have given that information to the paper.’

  ‘What?’ said Jonnerblad.

  ‘The hell do you mean?’ said Asunander.

  ‘It’s simple,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And casts no aspersions on anybody here. It’s the murderer himself, of course.’

  ‘What?’ repeated Superintendent Jonnerblad.

  ‘How can you . . . ?’ said Eva Backman.

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Chief Inspector Tallin.

  ‘It’s the murderer himself who contacted the press,’ Gunnar Barbarotti said slowly, with the curious inner satisfaction that a blind chicken must feel when she finally locates a grain of corn.

  For ten seconds, nobody said a word. Chief Inspector Tallin raised his right hand and lowered it again. Jonnerblad clicked his biro and Asunander his false teeth.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ came a cautious protest from a ruddy-faced trainee by the name of Olsén.

  ‘Oh yes it is,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Barbarotti’s right, of course he damn well is! It’s obvious, don’t you get it?’

  After fifteen minutes’ fairly febrile discussion, it seemed that a narrow majority of those present actually did.

  Get it, that was.

  They agreed that it could very well be just as Inspector Barbarotti suggested.

  That it was the murderer himself who had contacted Expressen.

  Who had blown apart the secrecy which until now had shrouded the letters and their messages about who was next in line to lose their lives. That for some reason it was not in his interests for the police to sit on the information. That he wanted the media on board as well, not just the occupants of Kymlinge police HQ.

  ‘Oh my God, that’s it,’ said Inspector Backman. ‘Congratulations, Gunnar.’

  ‘You bet. He wants maximum attention on all this,’ Astor Nilsson summed up. ‘The police, the press, the whole shebang.’

  Eva Backman nodded. Barbarotti nodded. Chief Inspector Tallin nodded cautiously, after a glance at Jonnerblad. It was an astonishing conclusion in many respects, but none the less logical for that.

  If one sided with the small majority who believed it, at any rate.

  The sense of it in actual fact being this self-willed, cold-blooded perpetrator who was choreographing the whole investigation began to seem inescapable.

  Barbarotti spent the rest of the morning on the phone in his office. He set up meetings with people who were linked to Erik Bergman and Anna Eriksson in one way or another, but had not yet been formally interviewed, and when it got to 12.15 he went home – following his orders – to check that day’s post.

  More than half the mat in the hall was covered in mail, but he still saw it straight away.

  A long thin envelope in a light shade of blue, just like the last time. His name and address handwritten in slightly clumsy, angular capitals, in the same way as on the three previous occasions. The postal district, Kymlinge, underlined once.

  A stamp from the same boat-themed set as before.

  Gunnar Barbarotti considered for a moment, then put on a pair of thin gloves, slit open the envelope with a kitchen knife, unfolded the sheet of paper and read the message:

  CALL OFF PROTECTION OF HANS ANDERSSON. HE CAN GO ON LIVING. THINK I’LL KILL HENRIK AND KATARINA MALMGREN INSTEAD. DON’T SUPPOSE A MAN LIKE YOU IS GOING TO STOP ME?

  He read it through twice, trying to fight down a feeling of unreality. A sense of none of this being real, of the whole thing amounting to some piece of absurd criminal theatre, throbbed in his temples with dreamlike intensity.

  Henrik and Katarina Malmgren?

  Two names? Was he going to kill two people this time? Barbarotti put the letter back in the envelope. Wondered why he had opened it; he had promised Jonnerblad that he would immediately hand over all future communication intact, in a sealed bag.

  He had broken this promise after no more than a couple of seconds’ hesitation. It was . . . it must be something to do with that boys’ football team. That feeling of being left in the hands of some great and only modestly gifted team leader. Gunnar Barbarotti was not that keen on people telling him what to do, and this had always been the case. So that was presumably the simple explanation for him still being a DI rather than a chief inspector . . . if the truth were told. That, plus his lack of real ambition of course; but either way, there was going to be one hell of a stink, just because he’d opened the letter and read its contents before handing it over to His Lordship.

  So what, thought Barbarotti, hunting out a plastic bag and dropping the light blue envelope into it. I’ll be changing jobs and moving to Helsingborg anyway, and what’s more, I open my post myself. That’s a basic human right.

  He took off the gloves and secured the bag with a rubber band. Then he rang Jonnerblad’s mobile number.

  ‘I’m just having my lunch,’ Jonnerblad informed him. ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘Not the way I see it,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’ve just received another letter. He claims not to give a damn about Hans Andersson. It’s Henrik and Katarina Malmgren he’s after now.’

  ‘You opened it?’ said Jonnerblad.

  ‘Correct,’ said Barbarotti. ‘It was addressed to me.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Jonnerblad, then chewed and swallowed.

  Gunnar Barbarotti waited. Carrot, he reckoned. Whole or sliced, not grated.

  ‘Two people, then?’

  ‘Exactly right,’ confirmed Barbarotti. ‘And they’re both called Malmgren.’

  ‘Well get yourself over here, for Christ’s sake,’ said Jonnerblad. ‘My office in ten minutes.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Inspector Barbarotti.

  But Jonnerblad did not end the call. ‘Actually,’ he added, ‘to be on the safe side, don’t say anything about this letter just yet . . . to anybody else, I mean. Let me and Tallin look at it first.’

  ‘I thought we concluded it was the murderer who tipped off Expressen?’

  ‘It very likely was,’ said Jonnerblad. ‘But just initially? Stupid to take risks, and there’s the press conference at two, you know. I presume you agree we shouldn’t make this one public, at any rate?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti thought about it.

  ‘It could well be that Persson’s already been informed,’ he said.

  ‘Well there’s a thought,’ sighed Superintendent Jonnerblad. ‘But I shall be interviewing Persson in any case, right after the conference. OK, see you in a few minutes then?’

  ‘I’m already on my way,’ Inspector Barbarotti assured him.

  18

  In the event, a quintet of them gathered in the briefing room to absorb the murderer’s latest chess move. Besides Barbarotti, Tallin and Jonnerblad, Astor Nilsson and Eva Backman were also in attendance, and Gunnar Barbarotti assumed the lead investigator had had time to rethink in the few minutes that had passed since their phone conversation.

  Rethink and realize that in present circumstances, thinking power was probably more important than secrecy. They scrutinized the text of the letter in dogged silence; Astor Nilsson was the first to make a comment.

  ‘Fiendish,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Tallin.

  ‘I mean diabolically deliberate,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘He’s forcing us to dance to his tune like . . . well, like fleas in a goddamned flea circus.’

  ‘Expand on that,’ said Jonnerblad, as he started rubbing at a stain on his shirtfront that had evidently found its way there over lunch.

  ‘Happy to,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Firstly, what do we do about Hans Andersson? What if we stop the s
urveillance and then he murders one of the Hans Anderssons anyway? What if he spills the beans to Expressen? Where does that leave us?’

  ‘In a corner,’ said Eva Backman.

  ‘Exactly. The murderer told the cops to skip the surveillance and those stupid idiots believed him! I don’t think it takes much imagination to—’

  ‘Thanks, that’ll do,’ said Jonnerblad. ‘We’ll keep up the surveillance, at least to start with. Naturally. But our top priority at the moment has to be identifying . . . what were their names? Henrik and Katarina Malmgren?’

  ‘Correct,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘So there are two of them and they presumably belong together in some way. Could be a married couple or a brother and sister, and with that kind of link it ought not to be too hard to find them. Hopefully there’ll only be the one pair by that name, eh?’

  ‘If we’re lucky,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Malmgren must be a bit less common than Andersson, at any rate.’

  Jonnerblad checked the time. ‘The press conference starts in five minutes,’ he said. ‘Tallin and I will take care of that, and you can watch on internal TV if you like. But by the time we’re through, an hour from now, I want those Malmgrens identified. Is that clear?’

  ‘Clear as a bell,’ said Eva Backman. ‘I’ll go down and see Sorrysen, and we’ll get this fixed. No problem.’

  ‘Sorrysen?’ queried Tallin. ‘I thought his name was Borgsen?’

  ‘What’s in a name?’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘All right,’ said Jonnerblad, rising to his feet. ‘We’ll reconvene here at quarter past three. Make sure you tell the other group members too. All those who’re available, that is. Questions?’