The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘How are you?’ she wanted to know.

  Judging the time was not right for another pig metaphor, Barbarotti said he was OK, considering.

  ‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to come this evening after all,’ she said.

  ‘Are Ville and the kids on their way home?’

  ‘No. Jonnerblad insists we work overtime. Until nine, probably later.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t find your lobster, anyway. Does this mean you’re getting somewhere, then?’

  ‘Can I ring you back in half an hour, I’ve got somebody to interview in five seconds’ time.’

  Barbarotti told her that was fine, went to get his half-finished crossword and drank the rest of his coffee. He was aware of still not really feeling at ease in his own head, and by the end of ten minutes, he hadn’t solved a single clue.

  He also felt a slight sense of irritation creeping over him. Why was he staring at a crossword like some prematurely retired archivist? Why wasn’t he at police HQ interviewing suspects, too? How much longer were they going to exclude him from the investigation?

  He was aware that he probably already had the answer to this last question, Dr Olltman having signed him off sick for a fortnight. Had they cooked it up between them, she and Jonnerblad? No, he didn’t really think a crude conspiracy like that seemed very likely. But who knew how things would look in two weeks’ time? What with one thing and another.

  Best take one day at a time, one minute even; that’s how life ticks by, after all, in seconds and minutes, even if it isn’t something one thinks of very often. Because we don’t usually have time for fundamental reflections like that. But the swallow drawing a line in the sky is actually doing it right now, not yesterday or tomorrow.

  Though just now . . . just now, the swallow had disappeared, he noted a little ruefully . . . and what mattered was Eva Backman getting to the end of her interview, picking up the phone and making sure he was kept in the loop.

  Everything else was unnecessary waiting, and everything has its time.

  ‘What did Jonnerblad say about the letter?’

  ‘You mean the fact that it’d been opened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not much. I explained the situation.’

  ‘Explained the situation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She left it at that and after brief consideration, he did too. There were presumably more pressing matters to discuss.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you going to update me or not?’

  For a split second, he got the feeling that she was about to say no. That she was about to obey some kind of order and say she was sorry, but . . . but Barbarotti’s temporary suspension and sick leave meant he wasn’t allowed access to any case information.

  But Eva Backman was not that kind of officer. ‘Yes, things are moving,’ she said. ‘We’ve come up with a find or two.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as some snaps of the Malmgrens. They’re pretty interesting, actually.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, to be exact, there are seven photos that seem relevant – they were in one of their albums. You want to hear?’

  ‘You damn well bet I do.’

  ‘OK then. Our current thinking is that they were taken in summer 2002, but we’re not entirely sure. Typical holiday snaps, you could say, about twenty of them, all from the same holiday, but it’s these seven that are of interest.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because the others are just scenery. Henrik Malmgren standing against a backdrop of blue sea, on his own, Katarina Malmgren sitting on a big boulder, on her own . . . you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘I don’t want to know why the rest aren’t of any interest. I want to know why those seven are.’

  ‘You sound almost your old self,’ observed Eva Backman. ‘Well, these seven shots include other people. And unless we’re barking up completely the wrong tree, we think we’ve been able to identify two of them. Are you following?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti nodded, which of course Eva Backman could scarcely have seen over the phone.

  ‘We’re talking about Anna Eriksson and Erik Bergman.’

  ‘What? Anna and . . . ? I mean, both of them?’

  ‘Yessir. Anna Eriksson and Erik Bergman. And the Malmgrens. We have all four victims in the same photograph. What do you reckon to that?’

  ‘Well I’ll be—’

  ‘No swearing. Your prognostication was spot on – we found the link today. These four people clearly spent time together when they were on holiday some years ago . . . and probably only then, because neither Mr Bergman nor Ms Eriksson are in any of the other albums.’

  ‘I see. And what did you say about the year in question?’

  ‘We’re guessing 2002, seeing as it says ‘2002 – 02’ on the spine of the album. And going by seasons and so on. If they stuck their snaps in chronologically, this must have been summer 2002. We think, in fact we’re pretty sure, that the pictures were taken in France.’

  ‘France? Wasn’t that Sorrysen’s theory?’

  Eva Backman paused for a drink of something. ‘Yes, it was. Gerald’s got a feather in his cap today. And that other photo he deduced that from, the one we thought might have been Erik Bergman and Anna Eriksson on a bench, seems to have come from the same roll of film. Perhaps the Malmgrens sent it to her.’

  She went quiet and he could hear her leafing through some papers.

  ‘Four victims on a holiday trip,’ he said. ‘Well I’ll be damned. OK then, how are you taking this forward?’

  ‘It’s a bit complicated,’ Backman explained. ‘It isn’t just that quartet on the seven photos. There are a few other people, too.’

  ‘Other people?’

  ‘Yes. And we can’t really tell if they’re members of the gang, so to speak. But we’re starting to have some idea . . . the pictures were taken on three separate occasions. At a restaurant, a boules pitch in a park – that’s another reason we’ve fixed on France – and a cliff overlooking the sea. Could be a lake, but it must be a pretty big one if so, and it doesn’t seem particularly likely, bearing in mind that the sea is in quite a few of the other shots—’

  ‘These other people,’ Barbarotti interrupted, ‘what can you tell me about them?’

  ‘I’m coming to that,’ said Inspector Backman. ‘That’s the really interesting bit. Could any of them be the murderer? Is there anybody amongst them . . . ?’

  ‘ . . . called Gunnar?’ supplied Barbarotti.

  ‘It’s hard to tell from a photograph whether somebody’s called Gunnar,’ Backman pointed out patiently. ‘But we think we’ve found a way into the problem. There’s one man who crops up in four of the shots, and in one of them he’s got his arm round Anna Eriksson. So it could be that . . .’

  ‘Anna Eriksson,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Good, I’m with you. So you’re busy re-interviewing everyone who knew her?’

  ‘We’ve just made a start,’ said Eva Backman. ‘The unfortunate truth is that people don’t turn up at the police station simply because you think of them. But Astor Nilsson and I have just been talking to a girl, Linda Johansson, I don’t know if you remember her . . . anyway, she claims Anna Eriksson was with some guy for a while, a few years back, and that he could be the one in the photos.’

  ‘Uh huh? And?’

  ‘She thinks his name is Gunnar, but she can’t recall the surname.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti digested this information.

  ‘Not Barbarotti, at any rate?’

  ‘No, this one looks a good ten years younger than you. A bit like Zlatan, actually.’

  ‘Definitely not me then,’ said Inspector Barbarotti. ‘But it’s pretty bloody vital for us to find him.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Well, that’s all I’ve got for you for the moment. And I need to get back to work. Sure you got on OK at Olltman’s?’

  ‘It all went fine,’ Barbarotti assured her again. ‘She said it was
important to my recovery for you to keep me informed like this.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘That was how I interpreted what she said, at any rate,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Back to the grindstone you go, and ring me as soon as you get stuck.’

  ‘Kiss me,’ said Eva Backman.

  ‘There’s somebody else,’ said Barbarotti.

  It took an hour and three quarters to prepare the langoustines and scallops according to Dobrowolski’s instructions – and barely ten minutes to consume them.

  When one was eating alone, anyway. The wine, on the other hand, lasted rather longer; once he had put everything into the dishwasher he took the bottle and the glass onto the balcony; the weather had been grey all day, with intermittent showers, but now, with the time approaching nine, the western sky suddenly laid on a magnificent sunset. He decided to refrain from ringing Backman again to ask how things were going, although his fingers itched to do it. So he solemnly and unhurriedly drank up the whole bottle of wine instead. He found himself wishing he hadn’t given up smoking twelve years before; a cigarette or two would have fitted the bill perfectly, with his balcony bathed in apocalyptic light under purple-coloured clouds, illuminated from beneath by a sun no longer visible above the horizon. You almost expected a ladder to be lowered from Heaven, thought Barbarotti – and a host of chubby cherubs arrayed in gold to appear with harps and assorted other blissful attributes. What was that over-the-top painting tradition . . . the Düsseldorf School, wasn’t it?

  Rather pleased with this excursion into art history, he turned his thoughts to darker topics.

  Very much darker – black expressionism, you might say. Four people had been killed. Four people who had met on a holiday in France in . . . what had Backman said . . . 2002?

  And this, this holiday, was supposedly the background to them being robbed of their lives, five years later? Murdered one after another by a perpetrator who also amused himself by sending letters to a detective inspector in Kymlinge to announce the names of those he was going to kill?

  Why?

  He sipped his wine. This particular why had not diminished in size in the light of the link that had now emerged, Barbarotti felt. Not in the slightest.

  But there were now various new questions to ask, questions of a different nature.

  How had they met, for example? These four and their murderer. Had they all left Sweden together? Or only happened across each other once they were down in France?

  Could it have been some kind of package holiday?

  He pondered. The package holiday idea did not seem farfetched, and in that case there must be quite a few other people in possession of information about this quartet doomed to die five years later.

  Say it had been a coach trip; Barbarotti on his part would never have chosen that method for seeing the world, but he knew some people favoured it. Not just for going to the theatre in Stockholm or on a glassworks tour of Småland. You could go to Rome and Lisbon. Lake Garda and Amsterdam and Lord knows where else.

  Fifty people in a coach. Ten or fifteen days in mainland Europe. Something happens and somebody decides to take the law into their own hands.

  Five years later. Why on earth? thought Gunnar Barbarotti, swallowing a mouthful of wine. And incidentally, why keep referring to a quartet when it now seemed to be a quintet? There was no doubt that this Gunnar – who had mercifully turned out not to be himself – was an obvious candidate for the death list. Which could mean there were six people caught up in this whole tangle. Five victims and a perpetrator.

  Or even more? Perhaps not – the letter writer had maintained Gunnar would be the last to die, so hopefully he would stop at five. Bad enough, definitely bad enough.

  But what about Hans Andersson? Extremely unclear, thought Barbarotti. For there to be someone else involved, someone the murderer initially intended to kill but then decided to let go . . . well, that would be a very odd strategy indeed. If this Hans Andersson really were part of the French gang, wouldn’t that mean – if nothing else – he would be able to identify the murderer? Always assuming he existed at all.

  Wouldn’t it? thought Barbarotti, and at that moment a vast cloud of jackdaws came sweeping in over the balcony and made him lose his thread. Should have a pen and paper, he thought. Should try to be a bit more systematic.

  Should put my poor head to something else entirely, he thought once the jackdaws had swept off out of sight. I am no longer part of this investigation.

  He drank yet more wine and checked the time. Twenty past nine. Maybe Backman would have finished for the day by now? Maybe he could give her a ring after all?

  But he decided not to. He went inside instead and found the evaluation sheet Olltman had given him. Came back out to the summer evening and the last glass of wine.

  One question, he thought, one question they had to find an answer to, and soon.

  Who this Gunnar was. Because there were most certainly indicators that things didn’t look very good for him.

  Then he leant back in his chair and looked at the first page of the form.

  Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychiatry Section, Karolinska Medical University, it said at the top.

  I’ve become a case study for medical science, thought Gunnar Barbarotti, getting out his pen. Mum would have been proud of me.

  But as he sat there trying to diagnose his supposed soul – broken down into such concepts as zest for life, feelings of anxiety, mood, ability to concentrate and emotional commitment – the apocalyptic sky darkened to a shade that reminded him of coagulated blood, a cold gust of wind blew in over the balcony rail and that morning’s moment with the murderer’s letter at the kitchen table came creeping back into his mind.

  Thanks for your involvement?

  Gunnar?

  He suddenly realized he had gone cold all over.

  25

  On his way out to Axel Wallman’s on Thursday morning, he stopped for provisions at the ICA Basunen supermarket in Kymlingevik and caught sight of the headlines:

  NEXT VICTIM’S NAME IS GUNNAR POLICE POWERLESS TO ACT

  said one.

  GUNNAR YOU’RE A DEAD MAN

  declared the other.

  Well look at that, thought Barbarotti. He’s roped them both in this time. Wants to be in the limelight for his finale, evidently.

  He realized he had forgotten to ask Inspector Backman how the interview with Göran Persson had gone. Whether the latter had doggedly persevered in his refusal to reveal his source, or whether it was simply that he didn’t know. It seemed reasonable to assume that the latter was the case. The infantilization wing of the press had a lot to answer for, but supporting murderers was presumably a bit much even for them.

  Though of course it would still be useful to know how the perpetrator was contacting them. Was he doing it by letter, as he was with the police, or did he use some other method for the fourth estate, as the mass media was called in democracies with slightly wider scope than Sweden’s.

  Barbarotti made a mental note to raise the matter with Backman when she gave him her next briefing. If things turned out as he hoped, she would come out to Wallman’s cottage that evening – he hadn’t spoken to her, only texted and received a sort of promise in reply, but of course you could never be sure. The unihockey gang might arrive home or Jonnerblad might insist on another evening shift; both of these seemed on the cards. But anyway, he could ring her tomorrow and ask.

  He didn’t buy any of them, not Aftonbladet, nor GT nor Expressen. The hell I will, he thought. Not another krona into keeping that scandal factory going.

  Then he bought food and beer, enough for Inspector Backman as well, if she plucked up the courage. While he was in the store, two separate reporters called to propose an extended interview so he could give his view of things – one of them made noises about financial remuneration – but he declined as the usual matter of course. He realized he would be rising in the charts again as a result of Dead Man Gunnar.
/>   In the twenty minutes it took him to drive out to Wallman’s, the phone rang another three times, but he didn’t bother to answer it. Merely checked it wasn’t Inspector Backman or Marianne trying to contact him, and it wasn’t.

  Axel Wallman hadn’t altered appreciably over the last four days. Under his dungarees he now sported an orange T-shirt, but that was about all.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘I rang, didn’t I?’ said Barbarotti. ‘You said you’d be happy to see me.’

  ‘I remember that,’ said Axel Wallman.

  ‘Well of course you do, it was only two hours ago.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. I said I’d be happy to see you, but that presumably doesn’t rule out my asking you what you’re doing here? Correct me if I’m wrong, Saarikoski?’

  The dog thumped its tail twice. ‘He says I’m right,’ interpreted Wallman. ‘So, what brings you here? We can have a beer while we get to the bottom of this.’

  They opened a beer each and sat down on the plastic chairs. Barbarotti remembered that one of Dr Olltman’s questions had been whether he consumed much alcohol, and he raised the can to his lips with a slight feeling of guilt. It was only quarter past eleven in the morning, distinctly on the early side for a drink.

  But things were as they were. ‘It’s been rather heavy going,’ he said, ‘these past few days.’

  ‘Serves you right,’ said Wallman. ‘And your murderer’s still on the loose, I gather?’

  Barbarotti nodded.

  ‘Oughtn’t you to be out looking for him instead of lazing around here, drinking beer?’

  ‘I’m suspended,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘That’s a concept I’m familiar with,’ said Wallman. ‘Back when I was still working, I was often suspended. It’s nothing to mope over.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And I’m not moping. But I don’t feel that great. I’ve been to see a psychiatrist. You’re familiar with those too, I expect?’

  ‘Seen quite a few,’ confirmed Axel Wallman. ‘The trouble with them is they’re incurable, the whole lot. I made one perfect diagnosis after another, but it made no damn difference. And they didn’t pay my bills, either.’