The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Yes, how?’ said Tallin. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He undoubtedly takes his time killing Gunnar Öhrnberg, and maybe it even happens the way he describes it in his notes. Or anyway, I get the impression he enjoys this killing. But that’s something for the forensic psychiatrists to get their teeth into.’

  He took a gulp of water. Backman turned to another page in her notepad and took over.

  ‘Having positioned his third victim in the famous wheat field, he drives home to Gothenburg and he and his wife pack the car ready for their week’s holiday in Denmark. They catch the overnight ferry on Sunday evening, as planned, they take a stroll on deck, he strangles her and chucks her overboard. He goes ashore as a foot passenger in Fredrikshavn, makes his way to Copenhagen and boards a plane at Kastrup. Twenty-four hours later he’s in Cairo, posting off his Mousterlin notes.’

  Five seconds’ silence followed.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ said Astor Nilsson at last. ‘Totally unbelievable.’

  ‘Excuse me asking,’ said Sorrysen, ‘but what about passports and that sort of thing?’

  ‘We’ve checked that out,’ said Backman. ‘There’s a passenger Malmgren from Copenhagen to Athens on 14 August. Bertil Malmgren. I think we can assume his brother sent his passport from Australia. Bearing in mind what Ulrika Hearst told us. Don’t you think?’

  ‘That would seem to be the case,’ said Jonnerblad.

  ‘All right,’ sighed Astor Nilsson. ‘Smart. Yes, I accept that all this works, purely technically. But for the whole thing to be triggered by his wife finding another man . . . well, it feels rather petty, if you’ll pardon me saying so.’

  ‘He must have relished the planning part,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Devising a plan and then putting it into operation. I was with a bloke like that once, when I was young. We went on a road trip, driving all round Europe, and the map was much more important than Europe.’

  Silence descended again, and then Asunander cleared his throat. ‘We have to remember one thing,’ he said. ‘Namely the fact that motives are rarely in proportion to crimes.’

  ‘Expand on that,’ requested Jonnerblad.

  ‘Except in the perpetrator’s head, that is,’ clarified Asunander. ‘From outside, the reasons are nearly always small and insignificant, and they’re nearly always the same. Jealousy, revenge, greed. Though they can express themselves in very different ways.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ said Tallin. ‘How did you hit on the solution, in fact?’

  Asunander sat with his head bowed, apparently contemplating his clasped hands for a while before he answered.

  ‘Reduction,’ he said. ‘It was the only thing left. The only remaining possibility.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to reduce,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘All along. The only problem is that there’s never anything left. Not a blessed thing.’

  ‘There is one other detail,’ said Asunander after a short pause.

  ‘A detail?’ said Tallin.

  ‘Yes. In his notes.’

  ‘What sort of detail?’ said Jonnerblad. ‘I’ve read them . . . read them I don’t know how many times. At least four.’

  ‘I think I’ll keep it to myself,’ said Asunander.

  ‘What the . . . ?’ began Astor Nilsson, but Asunander stopped him by raising a warning finger.

  ‘That’s my business,’ he said. Then he folded his arms across his chest and let his eyes scan the entire company, emitting a sort of faint vibration that made Barbarotti think of a purring cat. He’s bonkers, he thought. He’s bloody bonkers.

  But he solved the case. One detail? What goddamned detail could that be?

  ‘And you ran some kind of . . . check?’ asked Tallin cautiously.

  Asunander nodded. ‘Nothing special. But I’ve got an old friend who knows his way round the banking world. Malmgren sold all his shares at the end of May. Almost a million and a half, and no new purchases after that. Well, I expect he needed a bit of seed capital down there. Backman’s quite right, there was planning behind all this. A lot of planning.’

  ‘He could have made things easier for himself,’ Astor Nilsson pointed out.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Asunander. ‘His aim was to kill his wife and her lover, but I think there were other aims as well.’

  ‘Such as what, precisely?’ said Sorgsen.

  ‘Something happened down there in Brittany,’ said Eva Backman, once Asunander had given her a nod of approval. ‘Anna Eriksson and Erik Bergman were involved somehow, but we don’t know how. I suppose we’ll have to see whether he tells us.’

  ‘The Sixth Man?’ asked Astor Nilsson.

  ‘We don’t know who he is. Some guy who stayed with Erik Bergman for a week or so, but he may not play any part in this story at all.’

  ‘He’s in the photos, though.’

  ‘And where did we find the photos?’ said Eva Backman. ‘Have you forgotten? In the Malmgrens’ album.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Them too?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Them too.’

  Two hours later, he was out by the bike rack with Backman. There was a threat of rain in the air, and he noticed to his surprise how chilly he was, and hoped the heavens would resist the urge to open.

  ‘It was no exaggeration of yours, back there,’ he said.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘That something happened down in Brittany. In Henrik Malmgren’s eyes, at least, it must have been something really crucial, mustn’t it?’

  Backman paused to think. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but at least there were no girl and grandmother to lose their lives. So what do you reckon happened?’

  ‘Have you read the notes from Mousterlin since you found out Henrik Malmgren wrote them?’

  ‘No,’ said Eva Backman. ‘I haven’t had time. And I’ve no idea what detail it was that made Asunander hum like that.’

  ‘Nor me,’ conceded Barbarotti. ‘But I reread the whole thing last night. There are loads of peculiar keys in that text, once you know that it’s Henrik Malmgren wielding the pen. And that he’s intending to kill the lot of them . . . err, it kind of turns it into a completely different story.’

  ‘A completely different story?’ said Backman. ‘Well it would, wouldn’t it? Do you know what I can’t wait for?’

  ‘Your holiday?’

  ‘That, of course. But above all I can’t wait to sit down and interrogate him. Can you?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti pondered. ‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘But they haven’t got their hands on him down there yet. I’m not so sure you’re going to have the pleasure of looking him in the eye.’

  ‘Killjoy,’ said Backman. ‘They’ve had barely eight hours, and I do believe it’s only morning in Sydney, you know.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Barbarotti, looking at his ancient but fully functioning watch. ‘But if there’s a time you should be able to find people in it’s at night, surely? No, I reckon he’s going to slip away, and you’ll only have the pleasure of talking to Boss.’

  ‘Hoss and Boss,’ snorted Backman. ‘Some men get off to an unfortunate start. And then it just keeps going. So you think there’s some element of truth in the Mousterlin document, then? Apart from Asunander’s detail, that is.’

  ‘Read it for yourself and you’ll see,’ said Barbarotti.

  Backman gave a shrug and stuffed her briefcase into her bike basket. ‘If I do get to talk to him, I shall ask him about his need for control,’ she said. ‘That’s the loosest screw.’

  ‘You reckon?’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Oh yes. First he’s abandoned by his brother, who’s probably the only person in the world who means anything to him. That must have felt little short of an amputation. He somehow contrives to find a woman, all the same, but she gradually grows past him and wants to get out. That’s presumably what dawns on him that summer. And once it’s actually happening, he sets this whole black circus in motion in order to be avenged, disappear and start a new life in Australia. It must have g
iven him one hell of a kick and the awful thing is that there’s actually some sort of logic to it.’

  ‘Logic, ah yes,’ said Barbarotti, suddenly remembering what Marianne had said. He took his bike out of the rack. ‘Well after all, he is a senior lecturer in philosophy, mother of all the sciences. Makes you feel a bit sorry for the sciences.’

  Backman smiled. ‘But you know what?’ she said. ‘What’s almost the weirdest thing about this whole weird business?’

  ‘No,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘That you’ve started drinking whisky with Asunander.’

  ‘I think it was only a one-off,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Backman. ‘Because I’d like you to ask him a question next time the two of you are sitting there over your grogs.’

  ‘What question?’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Why he’s making do with false teeth at all. I’ve been wondering for ten years but I’ve never dared to ask. All the pensioners are getting dental implants these days. False teeth are so Stone Age.’

  Barbarotti considered this.

  ‘I don’t know him all that well yet,’ he said, ‘so it’ll have to wait, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Coward,’ said Eva Backman. ‘OK then, see you tomorrow. And I’ll read the document tonight, one more time. Are we going the same way?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I’m taking a detour via the school first.’

  ‘The school?’ said Backman. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I’ll tell you another time,’ said Barbarotti.

  41

  ‘Can you speak up?’ said Barbarotti. ‘I can’t hear you very well.’

  It was Thursday morning, and ten past nine. He wasn’t entirely sure what time it was in Australia.

  ‘Sure, mate!’ yelled DI Crumley, suddenly sounding as close as if he were squatting on Barbarotti’s shoulder. ‘We got ’im! We got ’em both, in fact!’

  ‘You’ve got them both?’ asked Barbarotti in his best school English. He felt DI Crumley’s school English left a certain amount to be desired. ‘Is that what you’re saying? That you’ve got both Malmgren brothers safely in custody?’

  ‘You bet!’ shouted Crumley. ‘Hoss and Boss Malmgren. He was staying at his brother’s, like you thought. Do you lot want both of them or just the one? We find it a bit hard to tell them apart, to be honest.’

  ‘I think we need both,’ said Barbarotti. ‘You can stop shouting now, the line’s much better. Well, there won’t be any problem about bringing our perpetrator over, but I’ll go right now and look into how we have to handle . . .’

  ‘Boss Malmgren’s coming voluntarily,’ interrupted Crumley. ‘He’s told us that seventy times since we brought them in. He wants to come to Sweden and be at his brother’s side. Come what may.’

  ‘But he’s got a family, hasn’t he?’ asked Barbarotti. ‘Boss Malmgren?’

  ‘Not any longer. He got divorced three years ago. They seem to have missed each other quite a lot, the two brothers. They’re behaving a bit like chimps they forgot to separate when they were babies, if you know what I mean.’

  Barbarotti wasn’t quite sure he did, but he got the gist.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘OK, we’ll make arrangements to bring them both over. I’ll get all the paperwork ready and send it down. Make sure they don’t escape or kill themselves in the meantime, that’s all. Hoss has actually got four people’s lives on his conscience.’

  ‘He doesn’t look as if he’s got a conscience,’ said DI Crumley. ‘But maybe that’s the problem?’

  ‘I imagine it is,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Have you asked that question I wanted you to ask?’

  ‘The Sixth Man? Yes mate,’ said Crumley, and cleared his throat loudly. ‘I asked him in total ignorance of what I was asking for, but I’m used to that. He didn’t say anything for ages, as if he couldn’t make his mind up whether to answer or not. Then he kind of nodded to himself and said his name was Stephen.’

  ‘Stephen?’

  ‘Yep. And that he was a hitchhiker on holiday in Europe. He came from Johannesburg, South Africa. Does that make sense?’

  Barbarotti thought about it. He assumed Swedish criminal cases didn’t command much space in the South African newspapers, and said it did. Make sense.

  ‘Anything else?’ Crumley asked him.

  ‘I’ll email it down to you,’ said Barbarotti, and they said their goodbyes.

  ‘So you got hold of her friend, too?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘She was pretty keen to talk to the police, actually.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  ‘Because she got such a shock when she heard they’d been murdered. But she’d no reason for thinking it had anything to do with what Katarina had confided about this lover of hers.’

  ‘And what precisely had she confided?’

  ‘That his name was Gunnar and that she loved him. That was about it, I think. Plus she wanted to leave Henrik but didn’t know how to pluck up the courage.’

  ‘Was she scared of him?’

  ‘I should have thought so,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Jessica, this friend, claimed she’d been trying to psych her up for over a year so she’d be brave enough to take the first step.’

  ‘So it wasn’t common knowledge, then? That Katarina Malmgren had a lover?’

  Astor Nilsson shook his head. ‘No, I pressed her quite hard on that, and she was pretty sure she was the only one who knew. Katarina Malmgren didn’t have a large circle of acquaintances. Not the flock of friends some women seem to surround themselves with. He kept her under the microscope, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘I see,’ said Barbarotti.

  I wouldn’t mind working with Astor Nilsson again, he thought suddenly. You could have a constructive conversation with Astor. Things always progressed, somehow; with certain other people it was just the opposite, unfortunately. You had to put yourself in isolation for an hour after you’d talked to them, simply to get your brain going again.

  Though for all he knew, there might be people who wanted to go and hide after an encounter with Inspector Barbarotti, as well. He couldn’t claim to be any better.

  ‘Katarina Malmgren and this Jessica were work colleagues, weren’t they?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘And something really did happen that summer in Brittany. Katarina told her it was there that she and Gunnar first saw each other. Not that they got it together or anything, but that summer was when she realized, or so she claimed.’

  ‘Realized what?’

  Astor Nilsson shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know. But it’s not that hard to speculate. What a stunted life she was living, perhaps. And who she was married to. There in Brittany she got some inkling of how it could be, or that was how she described it to her friend, anyway. There were five of them in that group of Swedes, four having a good time, and then Henrik Malmgren.’

  ‘But she didn’t know her husband had found her out? Recently, I mean.’

  ‘Jessica didn’t think so. And Henrik certainly hadn’t said anything. But he’s a peculiar guy, she confirmed that much. She only met him the once, but things Katarina told her sounded scary. He wanted to control her utterly, but at the same time she was growing away from him with every passing day. That was how she put it. Growing away from him. It’s insane the way people live their lives, when you take a little look behind the facade.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti sat there with his chin in his hand and reflected. ‘When was the last time she saw Katarina Malmgren?’

  ‘A week or so before they were due to go to Denmark. Katarina had spent a night with Gunnar, while he was at his diving camp I suppose, and . . . well, Jessica sensed Katarina had made up her mind.’

  ‘To explain the situation to her husband? To tell him she was leaving?’

  ‘Yes. She didn’t say it in so many words, but her friend got that impression.’

  ‘And by then he’d already started murdering the others?’
/>   ‘Yep. But she suspected nothing. She had her plan, her husband had his.’

  ‘Christ almighty. It sounds almost choreographed.’

  ‘Quite a sense of timing, at any rate. She went on a week’s holiday in Jutland intending to tell him she wanted a divorce. He went intending to kill her and dump her overboard. You could say he was a few steps ahead. And Jessica Lund’s convinced Katarina was oblivious to it all. She knew he was crazy, of course, but not that crazy.’

  ‘No,’ said Barbarotti. ‘How could she have done?’

  ‘I expect she’d got a bit too used to it,’ said Astor Nilsson, looking grim. ‘It’s hard to see the insanity when you live with it. I had a period like that in my life, in fact. But one of Malmgren’s colleagues told me something interesting. He would willingly shorten his life by thirty years in exchange for fame and distinction.’

  ‘Henrik Malmgren?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a bloody desperate kind of bargain.’

  ‘Seems that way to us,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘But there are people like that, of course. You’ll get the Nobel Prize if you agree to die at fifty-two. No prize and you’ll get to eighty-two . . . though I don’t know that he was right, that colleague. The lives that Malmgren cut short weren’t his own, after all.’

  ‘He’ll be here by the middle of next week,’ Barbarotti began to wind up the conversation. ‘We’ll have to see what we’ve got to say about him after we’ve been face to face with him for a while.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Well I’m making fucking sure I’m part of it, come what may. Pitiful, isn’t it, being so eager to scrutinize monsters like him? Or to get to see them, at any rate.’

  ‘It’s an urge you share with the rest of humanity,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘And it doesn’t make it any better, the fact that everybody else is as perverted as I am. Though Henrik Malmgren’s sort are pretty rare, luckily.’

  ‘What do you suppose his brother’s like?’ asked Barbarotti.

  ‘His wife seems to have left him with his life intact, so I’m sure he’s a great guy,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Yeesh, I don’t want to talk about this any more.’