by Arne Dahl
The desk contained a moderate jumble of work papers, nothing more. A wedding picture showed a very young, dark Justine and a slightly older but just as dark Eric. They were smiling the same broad smile, and it didn’t seem nearly as pasted-on as the genre invites; it was professionally practiced but natural nonetheless. The happy couple gave the impression of belonging to a higher class of citizen by virtue of birth and force of habit, with full knowledge of all its etiquette. Neither of them appeared to have fought particularly hard for their career; on the contrary, both seemed born to be diplomats.
But perhaps he was reading too much into a standard photograph.
As for the rest of the room, Söderstedt found some notes written on everything from official Ministry of Foreign Affairs stationery to yellow Post-its, as well as a rather thick planner; he hunted for the correct term, fax something, Filofax—was that it? In any case, he collected everything, put it into his briefcase, and took it with him as he opened the connecting door and slipped into Justine’s office. It was all but identical to her husband’s.
He inspected her desk, too. It was decorated with the same wedding photo, or rather another from the same series. Their smiles were a bit less pronounced, and there was something less self-sufficient in it; a vague sense of unease hovered over them, a disturbance. The minor difference between the photos spoke to Söderstedt’s extremely well-developed sense of nuance.
Just as in her husband’s office, in Justine’s there were many notes scribbled on various pieces of paper, on the desk and in the drawers, which he rooted through even though the act could hardly be characterized as legitimate. He copied the occasionally cryptic notes and fished an identical Filofax out of a desk drawer. He peered around the room and spotted what he was looking for, a small copy machine, and he nervously copied a month forward and a month backward in the planner; that ought to be enough.
He packed the copied notes and the photocopies into his briefcase, next to what he had already confiscated, and put Justine Lindberger’s Filofax back where he’d found it. Then he returned to Eric’s office, stepped out into the corridor, and went down the stairs. He nodded cheerfully at the receptionist, who looked as if she’d been eating dog poop, opened his glorious Bamse umbrella, and rushed out into the pouring rain.
He’d had to park his service Audi on the other side of Gustav Adolfs Torg, over by Operan, and now he ran straight across the square with his briefcase glued to his body to keep it dry; the Bamse umbrella hardly protected more than his head.
He jumped into the Audi and opened the briefcase. He skimmed through the pale copies of Justine Lindberger’s planner so that he would have a few trump cards in his hand when he met the recent widow; he hoped he wouldn’t have to use them.
Then he turned the car out along the Stockholm Sound, drove past Operakällaren, crossed Blasieholmen and Nybrokajen, drove up Sibyllegatan, and took a right onto Riddargatan at the Army Museum; the stupid hot-air balloon that had been filled with tourists and raised up and down all summer was still there, but it looked deserted in the rain.
Partway up the hill he stopped, did a seriously illegal parking job outside the unloading dock of a boutique, and rushed into a doorway where, sheltered from the rain, he pressed the intercom button next to the names ERIC AND JUSTINE LINDBERGER.
After four rings he heard a faint “Yes?”
“Justine Lindberger?”
“Not the press again, I hope?”
“The police. Detective Inspector Arto Söderstedt.”
“Come in.”
The lock buzzed and he went in, climbed six elevator-free flights of stairs, and found Justine Lindberger standing in the door. Viggo Norlander hadn’t been exaggerating when he described her delicate beauty in fairly unpoetic terms.
“Söderstedt,” he panted, waving his police ID. “I hope I’m not disturbing you too much.”
“Come in,” she said again. Her voice was weak from crying.
The apartment looked about as he had expected: elegant through and through, high-class but not flashy—rather, austere and subtle. He fumbled internally for adjectives.
In the living room Justine Lindberger offered him a spot on the leather sofa, which seemed unused. Of course, it was comfortable to the point of immediately inducing sleepiness. Across a low, lemon-shaped glass table, she sat down on the edge of a stylish Windsor chair. A glass door led to a balcony that looked out on Nybroviken and Skeppsholmen.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said quietly. “Have the media been difficult?”
“Yes, I’ve been feeling horribly pressed.”
It never bodes well to start off with a misunderstanding, so he refrained from quibbling over the meaning of the word press. In addition, he had to decide quickly whether to use the informal version of the pronoun you or the more formal one—Swedish has both. He decided on informal: “Can you think of any reason at all for your husband’s murder?”
“No.” She shook her head and scrupulously avoided meeting his eyes, as she had since he arrived. “If it’s a serial killer, I guess it was just by chance. The most awful kind imaginable.”
“There’s no other possibility? It’s not something connected with your contacts in the Arab world?”
“Our contacts have been utterly peaceful.”
“You were supposed to go to Saudi Arabia on Friday. What was that all about?”
She finally met his gaze. Her dark brown eyes were brimming with sorrow, but for a split second he seemed to see a deeper sorrow there, a guilt even deeper than the survivor always feels toward the dead partner; all the unfinished things that would forever remain unfinished, everything a person ought to have said but had always put off. It was something more than that, he was certain of it, but her eyes moved away before he had time to define it.
“It was about details of some new Saudi import laws—the consequences for small Swedish businesses. What could that have to do with this?”
“Most likely nothing. I just have to get a clear picture of the situation. For example, is there anyone who would profit if you were excluded from the meeting?”
She nodded heavily, then met his gaze again; there might have been a tiny new spark in her eyes. “Do you mean that it might not have anything to do with—what was he called—the Kentucky Killer?” She spat out the word.
“I’m trying to find possibilities other than pure chance,” Söderstedt replied mildly.
“My job is to facilitate the business activity of Swedish companies in Saudi Arabia, at the expense of domestic and other foreign companies. For the time being, I’m the only person who is completely familiar with the situation, and my absence could potentially mean a certain competitive advantage for companies from other countries.”
“Which sectors are affected by these new Saudi laws?”
“Primarily the machine industry. But the changes in question are far too small to motivate anyone to commit any sort of crime, least of all murder.”
Söderstedt nodded. “How would you describe your relationship with Eric?”
“It was very good,” she said immediately. “Very, very good. In all ways.”
“Isn’t it difficult to work alongside your husband?”
“On the contrary. We share an interest. Shared. Past tense!” she shouted, then suddenly stood and ran to the bathroom. He heard the faucet running as ferociously as on an upper-class Japanese toilet.
Söderstedt got up and started walking around the apartment. It gradually dawned on him that it was much larger than his first impression had led him to believe. He walked and walked, but it never ended, and then he was suddenly back where he’d started. Three doors led out into the stairwell; the Lindberg home encompassed the entire floor, which had originally been divided into three apartments. He counted at least ten rooms. Three bathrooms. Two kitchens. Why two kitchens?
Employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he knew, had a good basic salary and their daily allowance nearly doubled it, but an apartment l
ike this must have cost tens of millions of kronor. Likely a substantial amount of family capital had been invested from both sides.
He sat down, and when she came back, he looked as though he hadn’t moved. Her face was reddish, as if it had just been scrubbed. Otherwise everything was the same.
“Please forgive me.” She returned to the edge of the white Windsor chair.
“No problem,” he said grandly. “You don’t have any children?”
She shook her head. “I’m only twenty-eight. We still had plenty of time.”
“This is a pretty big apartment for two people.”
She met his gaze, immediately on the defensive. “Shall we stick to the point?” she asked cuttingly.
“I apologize, but we do need a clear picture of the circumstances of the inheritance. What are they? Do you inherit everything?”
“Yes. Yes, I inherit everything. Do you think I tortured my own husband? Do you think I let him suffer for an hour of hell while I stuck horrific pincers into his neck?”
Now, now, he thought. Smooth things over now.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I apologize.”
It wasn’t really enough. She had risen to her feet again and was half-shouting, the panic in her voice rising. “Small people like you can’t have the slightest idea of how much I loved him. And now he’s dead—gone—gone forever. Some fucking lunatic has tortured my beloved and thrown him into the sea. Can you even imagine what ran through his head during that last horrible hour? I know that the last thing he thought of was me; I have to find solace in the fact that it gave him comfort. It must have. It was my fault that he died! I should have died, not him! He died in my place!”
Halfway through the torrent of words, Söderstedt was at the telephone. He was about to call for an ambulance when Justine Lindberger suddenly went quiet and sat down. To be sure, her hands were still twisting around in her lap, but she was calm enough to announce, “I took a few tranquilizers in the bathroom. They’re starting to work now. Continue.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Continue.”
Söderstedt returned a bit clumsily to the sofa. Now he too was sitting on the edge of the furniture. “What did you mean by saying you should have died instead?”
“He was a happier person than I am.”
“That’s all?”
“It’s not just that. It would have been enormously fortunate for the world if I had died instead.”
Söderstedt thought of the minute difference in the wedding pictures on the couple’s respective office desks and was secretly happy for hitting the nail on the head. “Can you expand on that a little?”
“Everything was so easy for Eric—he floated along without a care in the world. I don’t do that. Not at all. I don’t want to say more than that.”
Söderstedt decided not to push her, out of concern for her condition. Instead he asked, “Can you think of any reason he would have been at Frihamnen at two-thirty in the morning?”
“None at all. I don’t believe he went there on his own. He must have been taken there.”
He changed track, partly because he was flustered: “What is the situation like in Saudi Arabia now?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, surprised.
“In regard to fundamentalism, for example.”
She eyed him somewhat suspiciously but answered professionally: “It’s there. But for the time being, it doesn’t cause any hurdles for business. The government keeps it in check, often with rather tough measures.”
“What about the women? Aren’t there a few compulsory veils?”
“Don’t forget that fundamentalism is a popular movement, and what seems compulsory to Western eyes may not always be so. We’re a little too quick to believe that our norms are the only correct ones. There are actually still considerably more people who wipe their asses with their left hand than there are people who shake hands with their right.”
“Of course,” said Söderstedt, bracing himself. “But isn’t it the case that the Gulf War had a much different effect than intended? The Americans concentrated their efforts against Saddam Hussein, who is more of a secularized dictator; they uninhibitedly murdered civilians, women and children; they kept Saddam in power; they united the Muslims; and they threw so many resources at Saudi Arabia, for the sake of oil, that a large portion of that money benefited Saudi fundamentalism. Saudi fundamentalism is, after all, the richest and best-organized system in the Arab world, the spider in the worldwide net, and it’s been supported to a great extent by American funds. Isn’t that ironic?”
Justine Lindberger stared in amazement at the strange, chalk-white, slender Finland-Swedish policeman who was candidly airing his political theories. At last she said in a measured tone, “Maybe you ought to become a politician.”
“No, thanks,” said Arto Söderstedt.
21
The biblical flood refused to end. The rain’s eternally drumming gloom drowned out every spark of clarity, and dampness found its way into every corner and rotting, moldy hole. It seeped rapidly into the core, into the very source, a shaking, roaring inferno, the birthplace of the biblical flood; a deeper darkness, thoroughly incomprehensible. And then the plane came out the other side, to clarity, serenity, light; to the broad view that made the earlier darkness seem so small, distant, and understandable.
Paul Hjelm wished life were like a plane taking off in an autumn storm.
Or at least that this case were like that.
The sun was as blinding as darkness for the snow-blind. It lit up the tops of the pitch-black masses of clouds and made them shine with a Renaissance-bronze color, like Rembrandt’s backgrounds.
He couldn’t tear himself away from the play of colors; colors had been missing for so long. In real time, the autumn storm had been going on for only a few days, but real time had nothing to do with it—the rain had erased all his memories of summer in one fell swoop. His memory had stopped with the Kentucky Killer’s arrival in Sweden, which swept everything that had come before into darkness.
He hoped that the successive encounters with the sun that would come during the flight would mean a clear sort of nontime; the plane would land at approximately the same time it had taken off. If it didn’t crash.
He was scarcely afraid of flying, yet those seconds when the acceleration ceases and the wheels leave the ground always caused him a deep thrill, as he unconditionally put his life in the hands of a stranger.
Only after fifteen minutes of losing himself in pure fascination did he even think of turning to Kerstin Holm. When he did, she was still there. He recognized the expression he had never seen on himself, but which, after the fact, he realized he must have had. When the drinks cart went by, they exchanged something like a normal glance, but they were still far from words.
Here the serial killer had sat, maybe in this very seat, staring out not into the blinding sun but into the equally blinding darkness. What had he thought about? What had he felt, experienced? He had just murdered a person—what had flowed through his darkened soul?
And why had he come to Sweden? In the answer to that question, after all, lay the solution to this strange and elusive case. He tried to recap it roughly. In the late 1970s, a man starts to murder people in the American Midwest, in a manner reminiscent of a torture method used by a special task force in Vietnam called Commando Cool. The victims, eighteen of them in four years and primarily in Kentucky, have mostly remained unidentified. Most of the ones who are identified are academics, both foreign and American. The FBI focuses on the special task force’s squad leader, Wayne Jennings; possibly they also try to find Commando Cool’s unknown commander, who goes by the name Balls. Jennings dies in a car accident after sixteen murders have been committed. Two more murders follow; after that there’s a timeout for more than a decade.
Then the murders start again. All signs point to the same perpetrator. This time he is active in the northeastern United States, especially in New York. And this t
ime the victims are all identified, and they come from very different backgrounds. The pattern seems more random this time. After the sixth murder in the second round, the twenty-fourth overall, the murder of the Swede Lars-Erik Hassel, the killer suddenly leaves the country and arrives in Stockholm on a fake passport. There he goes to drug dealer Andreas Gallano’s secret cabin, about forty miles north of Stockholm, which, according to the latest information, is free of fingerprints and fibers, meticulously cleaned. About a week later, he sets off from the cabin in Gallano’s Saab, leaving behind Gallano, who has been murdered in the serial killer’s distinctive method. Probably the killer leaves the cabin at night. He goes to Frihamnen, where he murders two more people: Erik Lindberger of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a still-unidentified twenty-five-year-old. Lindberger has been tortured to death in the same way, but the unknown man, the John Doe, is shot to death. This is the only known occasion when the murderer deviates from his usual method and uses a firearm. Presumably he changes now-patriotic cars, from the Saab to a ten-year-old dark blue Volvo station wagon with a license number that starts with B. There’s been no sign of him since.
How the hell did it all fit together?
“How the hell does all this fit together?” said Kerstin Holm, her first words since the plane had taken off from Arlanda and set course for New York. She and Hjelm were apparently on the same wavelength.
“I don’t know,” said Paul Hjelm.
Then it was quiet.
The sun shone blindly, as though it belonged to no particular season, outside the trembling Plexiglas airplane windows; it could just as easily have been a winter sun as a summer one—but it was an autumn sun. They found themselves in a detached moment. It was a journey through time, the only possible kind. Time passed and no time passed. It was a place for contemplation.
He would have liked to have a whiskey and soda and listen to music and read a book. All of that would have to wait.
