by Arne Dahl
“Lagnmyr is out to get you,” said Hultin expressionlessly. “It’s a good opportunity to beat it.”
“I’m going to the United States?” Hjelm said, confused. “And what the hell is Lagnmyr?”
“Svante Ernstsson bore as much of the brunt as he could,” Hultin continued, unperturbed, “but Lagnmyr saw right through him. I don’t think he even knew about the stakeout spot before you ruined it, but he doesn’t like you, that much is for certain. So go to the United States. Tell Larner about your KGB theory. I’m sure that’ll go over well.”
“But I can’t go to the United States,” Hjelm continued, still confused. “It’s all happening here.”
“We’ll see what happens with Mörner.” Hultin tried to smooth things out. “Pack a bag anyway. The provisional division of labor this evening is as follows: Paul and Kerstin go to the United States, Jorge takes on Gallano, Gunnar works on LinkCoop, Viggo takes John Doe, and Arto takes Lindberger and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Does that sound reasonable?”
No one spoke. It was getting late, after all.
“One more thing,” said Hultin quietly. “We can’t keep this from the media any longer. It’s begun—they’re going to whip up the mood and hunt for headlines. Swedes are going to install hundreds of thousands of extra locks on their doors; they’ll procure thousands of weapons, legally and illegally; and security firms will do great business. So far American serial killers have been an exotic but distant threat, but all at once we’re coming a great deal closer to the American social climate. The last breath of relative innocence is going to disappear in a tornado of general mistrust. Everyone will be looking over his shoulder.”
Hultin leaned forward across his desk.
“The devil is here, ladies and gentlemen, and even if we catch him, no exorcism will be able to drive out what he brought with him.”
19
His only protection against the rain a borrowed police umbrella, smartly stamped with abundant police logos, Paul Hjelm wandered through the Norsborg night. The rain seemed here to stay. The pitch-black sky foreboded of the biblical flood, as he thought more and more often.
What was happening to Sweden, that little country in the sticks, up by the Arctic Circle, whose populist movements had once conceived of the first democracy that truly extended down into the ranks of the people, but that had never brought it to fruition? The country had finagled its way out of the horrors of World War II, kept all its skeletons in the closet, and ended up with a fabulous competitive advantage compared with all other European countries. For that reason, it could play the self-righteous world conscience until other countries, or at least those unhampered by intrinsic sluggishness, caught up; and then Sweden would see the end of not only the world’s highest standard of living but also of its status as the world’s conscience. Swedes’ strange, naïve, deterministic conviction that everything would work out for the better meant that during the 1980s they, more than any other people, surrendered themselves to international capital, and they let it run more freely there than anywhere else.
The inevitable downfall brought a decisive collapse of all political control over the fickle whims of computerized capital. Everyone had to pay to clean up the mess—except business. As the country neared bankruptcy, its large-scale companies were maximizing their profits. The burden of payment was placed on households, on the health care system, on education, on culture—on anything that was fairly long term. The slightest suggestion that business ought also to pay for a tiny, tiny bit of the mess it had made was met by unanimous threats of leaving the country.
All at once the whole population was forced to think of money. The soul of the Swedish people was filled to bursting, from all directions, with financial thoughts, until only small, small holes were left unfilled—and there, of course, nothing long-term could find room. There was room only for lotteries, betting, and shitty entertainment on television; love was replaced by idealized soap operas and cable TV porn; the desire for some sort of spirituality was satisfied by prepackaged New Age solutions; all music that reached the public was tailor made for sales; the media stole the language and made themselves the norm; advertisements stole emotions and shifted them away from their proper objects; drug abuse increased considerably.
The 1990s were the decade when capitalism test-drove a future in which the hordes of lifelong unemployed had to be kept in check so they didn’t revolt. Numbing entertainment, drugs that didn’t require a lot of follow-up care, ethnic conflicts to give rage an outlet, gene manipulation to minimize the future need for health care, and a constant focus on the monthly act of balancing one’s own private finances—would it take anything more to ruin the human soul that had developed over the millennia? Was there still dangerous ground somewhere, where a free, creative, and critical thought could be suppressed and redirected before it had time to flower?
The Power Murders had been a reaction, but a directed reaction. Blindly striking, conscience-free violence hadn’t yet shown up in this country, that extremely frustrated and ice-cold, sympathy-constipated reaction against everything and everyone. But now it had begun. Everything would change—and that was logical. One can’t be choosy about what is imported from the rulers of the universe. If one chooses to import an entire culture, then the dark sides will come along too, sooner or later.
Through the impenetrable deluge of water, Paul Hjelm glimpsed the illuminated contours of a city-planning project that was meant to destroy the last remnants of human dignity. He stopped, closed his umbrella with the illusory insignia of the police, and let the torrents wash over him. Who was he to cast the first stone?
He squeezed his eyes shut. What was left of the simple private ethics that functioned when one wasn’t seen, when people did good without needing to show it? Of do unto others as you wish them to do unto you? Was it all in ruins?
He had planned to end the day by checking out a service car, but now that he was suddenly on his way to contemporary culture’s place of birth, he wouldn’t need one. So he had taken the subway home again. And now, having wandered through Norsborg, he set himself in motion. He ran. He ran through the volumes of water with his umbrella folded under his arm. He needed to run until exhaustion filled his entire soul and pushed everything else away. He did so by the time he reached the door of his row house. There he stumbled into the hall, panting alarmingly. It was dark, past eleven o’clock. He could see a faint light coming from the living room: it wasn’t the television light for once—more like a small, flickering flame. He stopped in the hall until his breathing returned to normal. He pulled off his leather jacket and hung it up in the overcrowded hall. Then he turned the corner.
Danne was sitting in the living room waiting. No MTV, no comic book, no video game. Just Danne and a little flame.
Paul rubbed his soaking-wet eye sockets hard before he could attempt to meet his son’s eyes. It still wasn’t possible. They were boring deep into the table next to the little tea light that glimmered in an icy grotto of glass.
He walked over and sat down on the sofa next to his son.
A few minutes passed in silence. Neither of them knew how to begin, so no one began.
Finally Danne whispered, as though his voice had been cried away, “He just dragged me along. I didn’t know where we were going.”
“Is that a fact?” Paul Hjelm said.
Danne nodded. It was quiet for another moment.
Then the father placed an arm around his son’s shoulders. He didn’t recoil.
Becoming an adult just means being able to hide your uncertainty better.
“I’ve seen it too often,” Paul said quietly. “Do it just a few times, and you ruin your life. You can’t let that happen.”
“It won’t.”
First had come the sight of the sky, the sun, the moon, the forest, the sea. The first human gaze saw all of this. Then came fire, which first scared people to death but was soon tamed and became man’s companion. The little flame in front of them be
came a campfire. The clan gathered around it. It was a matter of survival of their blood. They remained in front of the ancient sight, and it brought out the memory of blood.
Bad blood always comes back around.
They stood up. Their eyes met.
“Thanks,” said Paul, without knowing why.
They blew out the flame and walked upstairs together. As Paul opened the door to his bedroom, Danne said, “You were awfully … tough today.”
“I was scared out of my mind.”
He felt paradoxically proud as he fumbled his way through the pitch-black bedroom. He didn’t shower or brush his teeth; he crept right into the bed next to Cilla. He needed her warmth.
“What was happening with Danne?” she mumbled.
“Nothing,” he said. And meant it.
“You’re cold as ice,” she said, without pulling away.
“Warm me up.”
She lay still and warmed him. He thought of his upcoming trip to America and all its potential complications. All he really wanted was for things to be as simple as this: children to delight in and a woman to warm himself with.
“I’m going to the United States tomorrow,” he said, testing her a little.
“Yes,” she said, sleeping.
He smiled. His umbrella was closed, and he was dry. For the time being.
20
Arto Söderstedt didn’t usually miss the sun. He was a lover of nuance, and as a newcomer to Stockholm, his manner of enjoying the city fell in a gray zone between a tourist’s superficial fascination and a native’s experienced gaze. The sun promoted both types of relationships, but the more profound pleasure of the newcomer required a certain degree of cloudiness, enough that the colors could come into their own without being flattened by the distorting light of the sun. That his theory might have something to do with his own sensitivity to the sun was not something he’d reflected on.
But now he’d had enough of clouds. He was standing in one of his favorite places in the city and could barely see his hand in front of his face, and he definitely couldn’t see either Operan or the Arvfurstens Palace, home to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That was where he was strutting off to now, under his silly Bamse umbrella, which he had grabbed at home by accident; he could visualize his next-youngest daughter’s face staring up into a heavenly arch of police logos. As he climbed the venerable steps, he had to admit that he truly missed the sun.
He wasn’t the envious type, but he felt a bit aggrieved that he hadn’t been considered for the trip to the United States; he was the serial killer expert, after all. Instead he was now treading the monotonous paths of fieldwork all the way to the reception desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The receptionist informed him in a reserved tone that Justine Lindberger was off sick, that Eric Lindberger was deceased, and that a day of mourning had been announced for the entire ministry. Söderstedt found it unnecessary to tell her that this information was superfluous, not only because he was working on the case but also because his eyes were open. After all, the story had appeared in every single morning paper and news broadcast. Not even a sleepwalker could have missed the fact that the dreadful Kentucky Killer had come to Sweden, nor that the police had known about it for almost two weeks without saying a word or giving citizens a chance to protect themselves. Söderstedt had counted eight pundits who demanded that all responsible officials’ heads roll.
“Did the Lindbergers work in the same department?”
The receptionist, a distrustful woman in her fifties, was sitting behind glass and looking like a work by a modern Velázquez, a thoroughly true-to-life but still incredibly mean depiction of a dying class. Söderstedt realized that, after all was said and done, he preferred this languishing, contrary sort of receptionist to today’s streamlined version.
The woman was paging with obvious reluctance through a folder. After a great deal of toil, during which she almost groaned audibly, she answered, “Yes.”
An exquisite answer, Söderstedt thought. “Who is their closest supervisor?”
More groaning, toiling, and effort. Then: “Anders Wahlberg.”
“Is he here?”
“Now?”
No, the first Tuesday after the Ascension Day before last, Söderstedt thought, but said with an ingratiating smile, “Yes.”
Then she began again the customary procedure of extreme effort; in this case it consisted of pushing two keys on the computer. After this almost superhuman amount of work, the woman was unable to answer with more than an absolutely breathless “Yes.”
“Do you suppose I might be able to speak with him?”
The look she gave him was the sort that had once met plantation owners with ox whips. The black slave was once again forced to demean herself. She pressed no fewer than three buttons on an internal telephone and, with the last remnants of her anguished voice, said, “The police.”
“Oh?” an indifferent male voice rasped out of the telephone.
“Is it okay?”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
As a result of this inspiring dialogue, Söderstedt wandered through one chandelier-lit corridor after another. He got lost twelve times. Finally he found the venerable door behind which the department’s deputy director-general, Anders Wahlberg, kept himself. He knocked.
“Come in” came a thunderous voice.
Arto Söderstedt opened the door into an elegant atrium with a mute secretary and then entered an even more elegant office with a view of the Stockholm Sound. Anders Wahlberg was in his early fifties and wore his corpulence with the same tangible pride as he did his mint-green tie; it looked like Arto’s youngest daughter’s bib after a full-blown food fight.
“Arto Söderstedt,” said Arto Söderstedt. “National Criminal Police.”
“Wahlberg,” said Wahlberg. “I understand it’s about Lindberger. What a story. Eric couldn’t have had a single enemy in the whole wide world.”
Söderstedt sat on a chair across from Wahlberg’s candelabra-adorned mahogany desk. “What did Lindberger work on?”
“Both of the spouses concentrate on the Arab world. They have primarily devoted themselves to business with Saudi Arabia and have worked with the embassy there. They’re young and promising. Future top diplomats, both of them. We thought. Is it really an American serial killer?”
“It seems so,” Söderstedt said curtly. “How old are they? Or were?”
“Justine is twenty-eight; Eric was thirty-three. Dying at thirty-three …”
“That was the average age of death in the Middle Ages.”
“Certainly,” said Wahlberg, surprised.
“Did they always work together?”
“Essentially. They had slightly different concentrations with their business contacts. In general, their tasks were the same: to facilitate trade between Sweden and, first and foremost, Saudi Arabia. They had close cooperation with industry representatives from both countries.”
“Different concentrations?”
“Eric worked primarily with the big Swedish export firms. Justine worked with the somewhat smaller ones. Simply put.”
“Did they always travel together?”
“Not always, no. They made lots of trips back and forth and weren’t always synchronized.”
“And no enemies at all?”
“No, absolutely not. Not a single problem. Irreproachable and solid work, in general. Cash cows, you could have said, if it didn’t sound so vulgar. Justine was to have traveled down there one of these days, but I’m assuming she won’t be able to now. The plan was for Eric to be based at home for a few more months. Now it will be home base forever and ever amen.”
“Do you know what Justine’s trip ‘one of these days’ was about?”
“Not in detail. She was going to brief me today, actually. Some kind of problem with new legislation about small business trade. A meeting with Saudi government representatives.”
“And wi
th the best will in the world, you can’t imagine that Eric’s death was because of anything other than randomness or fate?”
Anders Wahlberg shook his head and looked down at his desk. He seemed on the verge of tears.
“We were friends,” he said. “He was like a son to me. We had booked time to play golf this weekend. It’s inconceivable, horrible. Was he—tortured?”
“I’m afraid he was,” said Söderstedt, realizing that his sympathetic tone sounded false, so he changed to a harsher one. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you how important it is that we catch this murderer. Is there anything else you can remember, professionally or privately, that might be of significance? The tiniest little thing could be important.”
Wahlberg shoved his sorrow behind the mask of a true diplomat and appeared to think it over.
“I can’t think of anything. Between you and me, they were probably the only truly happy couple I know. There was a natural affinity between them. I don’t have any children of my own, and I’ll miss Eric as I’d miss a son. I’ll miss his laugh, his natural integrity, his humble composure. Shit.”
“Can you think of any reason for him to have been at Frihamnen at two-thirty in the morning?”
“No. It sounds crazy. He hardly ever even went out for a beer after work on Fridays. He always went straight home to Justine.”
“I need to take a peek at his office. And if you could make sure that all his data files are copied and sent to me, I would be extra grateful.”
Anders Wahlberg nodded mutely and stood. He took Söderstedt out into the corridor and stopped in front of Lindberger’s door. Then he disappeared back into his den of sorrow.
Söderstedt took a few steps. The door to the right of Eric Lindberger’s was Justine’s. The spouses lived and worked literally side by side. He went into Eric’s office.
It was smaller than Wahlberg’s, it lacked the secretary’s atrium, and the view wasn’t of the Sound but of Fredsgatan. There was a connecting door into his wife’s office; he checked and found it unlocked.
