Europa Blues

9

THEY SEEMED LIKE nothing more than arbitrary clusters of letters. Letters thrown together at random. And the three offerings he had weren’t especially alike.

Epivu, Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin thought. Was that just another arbitrary cluster of letters?

He was sitting in his plain, anonymous office as the rain lashed down outside, peering at three pieces of paper in the uninspiring, flickering glow of a dying strip lamp. It was half past seven, it was Friday evening, and as far as he could tell, he was all alone in the A-Unit’s corridor in the police station on Polhemsgatan.

It had to be a Slavic language. Despite the differences between the three versions hastily scribbled down and despite the peculiar spelling, Hultin thought that the words looked Russian. Nyberg and Norlander had thought so too. Which other Slavic languages were there, other than Russian? Czech, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian. Was Serbo-Croatian still a language? Or was there Serbian and Croatian now? He wasn’t sure.

They would have to call in a language expert. Present them with the unenviable task of working it out.

Still, it had been unexpectedly quick thinking from Gunnar Nyberg. He had gone from strength to strength as a detective, ever since Hultin had first brought the A-Unit together to solve the case of the Power Killer God knows how many years ago. From sluggish grizzly bear on a manhunt in the underworld, to modern, clear-thinking, newly slender online policeman.

Hultin picked up another piece of paper. Notes from the interview with Adib Tamir. He skim-read. Lone, good-looking woman of medium height; long black hair; red leather jacket; tight black trousers; black trainers. There had been a few other minor characters with them. Nameless wannabes. They had run off. First, she took down the knife-wielding Hamid with a kick. A kick to the face. Then she threw Adib, also armed with a knife, headfirst into a bench. He went out like a light and when he woke up, there were people screaming all around him. He saw Hamid’s legs and his guts spilling onto the platform a few metres away and passed out again. When he woke again, the platform had been empty, save for a group of pigs. That was all. He had no idea who the small fry were. Hangers-on. There were always some. Hamid and Adib were the pros. Sure, he could try to help out with a sketch, but he had hardly seen her. She’d had her back to him until she turned round and broke the unbreakable in just a few seconds.

Closing words: ‘She must’ve been a secret agent or something.’

Well, Adib, Hultin thought. Who knows? She had managed to grab an armed Hamid by the legs, push him like a wheelbarrow across the platform and hold half his body out over the tracks, just as the train was approaching. Then she had disappeared without a trace. Red leather jacket and all.

Though her mobile phone had still been in Hamid’s hand. A real KGB agent would never have made a mistake like that.

Weren’t the events of the past few days starting to draw closer to one another? Wasn’t some kind of link starting to emerge?

Adib Tamir had been made to look at photographs of the eight women who had disappeared from the refugee centre, just in case: Galina Stenina, Valentina Dontsjenko, Lina Kostenko, Stefka Dafovska, Mariya Bagrjana, Natalja Vaganova, Tatjana Skoblikova and Svetlana Petruseva. He had shaken his head.

‘No,’ he had said. ‘No, not at all.’

‘Not at all’? What did that mean? Hultin spread out the eight passport photos on the desk in front of him and examined each of them in turn. Ah, he admitted. He understood exactly what Adib’s ‘not at all’ had meant. These women looked browbeaten. Their eyes were dull. There was no life in them. Not one of them was a day over twenty-five, but each of them looked much older. Life had been hard on them and it showed. Like all the other Eastern European working girls flooding into Sweden and elsewhere in Western Europe, they had probably been prostitutes since their teens. An awful tidal wave of debasement was washing over the Continent and the Western world was playing an active part in the business.

For a brief moment, Jan-Olov Hultin felt ill. Because of his fellow men. Because of where he had been born. Because of his sheltered, easy life.

He got back to work. According to the technicians, it would be possible to trace the mobile phone contract. They had the SIM card. It wasn’t Swedish, but that shouldn’t be any real hindrance. Moving forward, they should be able to get hold of a comprehensive list of all calls, both received and made.

He was looking forward to that.

Until then, he would just keep working on the puzzle. They had the pieces, but the question was whether they belonged together.

A lot had happened in just over twenty-four hours. But that said, many crimes were committed across the country in any period of just over twenty-four hours. It was by no means certain that the three incidents had even the slightest connection to one another.

Strictly speaking, they weren’t even certain that a single crime had been committed. The women might simply have disappeared from their motel in Slagsta; he would probably have done the same if he was being held in custody there. The man from Skansen might just have been running from his own drug-fuelled demons; even the newly discovered hole in the fence might be entirely unrelated. And the metro incident might have been nothing more than self-defence.

And even if they were crimes, the incidents didn’t necessarily have anything at all to do with one another.

But, as we know, belief can move mountains.

And so Jan-Olov Hultin kept working on the puzzle.

First and foremost: why did it fit together? The A-Unit’s collective experience and wisdom said – as good as unanimously – that that was the case.

It was true that Kerstin was teasing Paul a little via Jorge, but that was part of some private game Hultin didn’t want to know about. He lacked the necessary curiosity. He could feel wonder, a thirst for knowledge – but not curiosity. As long as their private lives didn’t encroach onto their work, he would leave them be. After all, he had a newly married couple in the team now, and that worked much better than people generally made out. Hultin wasn’t really one for implementing directives or strict regulations; Mörner could worry about that. None of them cared, in any case.

He started over: why did it fit together? Because the entire thing stank of international criminality – Hamid and Adib were the closest to something Swedish they had. Because it had all taken place in such quick succession – a day and a half. Because nothing about it was normal – wolverine murder, missing prostitutes, violent women.

On Wednesday 3 May, at quarter past ten in the evening, a man who, in all probability, was a relatively high-level international criminal, had been chased through the wolf enclosure in Skansen; the value of his gold chain had been estimated at around three hundred thousand kronor.

The fact that his pursuers had clipped the fence to give themselves a considerably shorter route alongside the wolf pen suggested meticulous planning: they had driven him into the wolves; they were counting on him climbing the fence and getting out on the other side of the enclosure. They had found a way to be waiting for him up there. So in other words, they were probably aiming for the wolverines. From what Hultin could tell, the whole thing had been carefully planned – and the victim had acted just as they had hoped. The question was whether they were also counting on the wolverines getting such a kick from his drug-addled blood. If that was the case, it was utterly sophisticated.

They seemed to know their Ellroy.

On Thursday 4 May, at sometime after half two in the morning, eight Eastern European prostitutes had disappeared from the annexe of a refugee centre. In other words, a few hours later the very same night. Was there any possible link there? Sara Svenhagen might have been closest after all – even though a certain detective superintendent had attacked her ‘vague hunch’. If there was a connection – and this still felt like the weakest link – then it would probably be related to one of two things.

One: that the Skansen man was their protection, and with him gone they were kidnapped or, in worst case, murdered. Two: that the Skansen man was a threat, one which had been neutralised, meaning the women could finally have their freedom. Either way, it seemed likely he was their pimp, whether a good one or a bad one. Though good pimps weren’t especially common…

Hultin leafed through the printouts from the interviews at Slagsta. Like any good post-industrial employer, he counted them. Two from Norlander, four from Nyberg, seven from Svenhagen – and twelve from Holm. OK, Norlander and Nyberg had left the place a few hours earlier than the others, but the difference between twelve and two was still striking. Plus, he also had a number of reports from the women from the previous day. In total, thirty or so stacks of paper.

Thankfully, Kerstin Holm had summed it all up in a separate report ahead of the weekend. If he ever – against all odds – finally retired, she was looking more and more like his natural successor. She should probably have been made Superintendent long ago. Though on the other hand, so should Hjelm, Söderstedt, Chavez and Nyberg. Well, everyone but Norlander, he thought slightly evilly.

Two measly interviews.

He summed up Kerstin’s summary. Unfortunately, no one from Slagsta could remember having seen anyone wearing a thick gold chain around his neck, nor a pale pink suit. Despite that, it was becoming increasingly clear that something had happened just over a week ago. Several of the extremely reluctant johns had noticed a change in the eight women’s moods. They had seemed deeply uneasy but hadn’t wanted to answer any questions. ‘She fucked like a bloody machine,’ as a habitual sex-addict security guard from the neighbouring area had said of Mariya Bagrjana.

Nice turn of phrase.

A couple of neighbours had recalled hearing a loud engine in the early hours of Thursday morning. ‘Sounded like the bin lorry,’ an old woman with the unusual name Elin Belin had said, ‘but why would the bin lorry come round at half three in the morning?’ The other neighbour, an unemployed butcher who, by his own admission, ‘hadn’t slept more than six hours the last six months’, had been insistent that it was closer to four when he heard ‘something like a bus – but on the wrong route, because we don’t have a single useful night bus up here, and you, you’re from the authorities, maybe you can pass my complaint on to the management’. That had come from Viggo Norlander’s meagre share of the interviews, which was strange, because who could mistake Viggo Norlander for someone from the authorities?

The most important information had come from the manager, Jörgen Nilsson. After some pressure – Kerstin had clearly come down quite hard on him – he had admitted that he knew of a pimp. Back in November, Nilsson had been contacted by a man who wanted to make sure he wasn’t getting involved in the business; he was told that if he kept his mouth shut, he could have free access to rooms 224-227. From what they could tell, it seemed like Nilsson had made use of that free access an indecent amount. ‘A regular’, as an agitated Somalian dentist in room 220 had sat up from his prayer mat to say. Holm had eventually managed to drag Nilsson off to the police artist to produce a good old composite sketch. They would be running it through all the registers they could think of tomorrow. Judging by appearances, however, this ghost pimp wasn’t a match for their wolverine man.

The noise of a phone not only startled him out of his wits, it reminded him that his reasoning was wrong. The information from Nilsson wasn’t, despite everything, the most important.

‘I thought you’d still be there,’ a gruff voice barked down the line.

‘You too, I see, Brunte,’ Hultin said as his racing heart slowly calmed.

‘My name isn’t Brunte,’ Chief Forensic Technician Brynolf Svenhagen said with great emphasis. ‘My ill-bred son-in-law has been spreading that kind of dung around, I suppose?’

‘It’s normally horses that spread dung,’ Hultin said.

There was a moment’s silence at the other end of the line. Svenhagen was clearly searching for a crushing reply. Since crushing replies weren’t exactly the stern scientist’s strong point, he remained silent instead.

A telling silence, Hultin thought.

Eventually, and hardly sounding ready for battle, the chief forensic technician said: ‘Do you want this information or not? I’ve been working like mad to get it ready for you. It is Friday evening, you know.’

‘I’d really like it,’ said Hultin, pouring oil on the troubled waters. He even added a thanks.

It was enough to placate Svenhagen. He shot from the hip. ‘I’ve got a full list of calls made to and from rooms 224, 225, 226 and 227 of the Norrboda Motell in Slagsta. Is that of any interest to you?’

Despite the fact that it was of great interest, Hultin was more angry than overjoyed. He had, quite simply, forgotten about the telephones in the four rooms. Was he starting to lose the plot? Were those gaps in time more alarming than he had convinced himself they were? Was it a blood clot, inching relentlessly closer to a much-too-narrow vessel in his brain?

‘Are you still there, Jan-Olov?’ Brynolf Svenhagen asked uncertainly.

‘Yes,’ Hultin said, cheering himself up. ‘Fantastic, Brynolf. Can you fax them over?’

‘They’re already in the machine,’ Svenhagen replied self-righteously.

While he waited for the fax machine to rumble into life, Hultin glanced at his watch. It was thirteen minutes past eight – soon it would be exactly twelve hours since the hole had loosened up the space-time continuum. ‘Eight, sixteen and ten seconds. Peep.’

Maybe he was already in the middle of the gap in time…

The fax started rattling and brought the good superintendent back to reality. Though he wasn’t quite happy with that term.

Reality…

Hultin sat there watching the growing pile of paper, wondering whether it really was reality he found himself in. He stayed there a while, staring at the sheets jolting forward out of the machine. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt. The pile was getting big. Time vanished in hypnotic monotony. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt. Krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt.

A pair of eyes were staring at him through the darkness. He gave an unusually violent start and glanced down at his wrist. It was thirty-three minutes past eight – just like that morning, when it was actually only sixteen minutes past. My God, he thought. It’s really happening.

Paul Hjelm was standing there in his much-too-thin linen jacket, holding an umbrella adorned with the police logo and with headphones in his ears. His hand, raised in greeting, sank uncertainly down through space-time.

‘Is everything OK?’ he bellowed.

‘Don’t shout,’ Jan-Olov Hultin said, staring at his watch. The second hand was ticking away – but wasn’t it going abnormally fast? What was Paul doing here? Was it suddenly morning? Was it time for the morning meeting in the Tactical Command Centre? Had he been transported forward half a day by a black hole in time?

‘Sorry,’ Hjelm said, pulling the headphones from his ears. ‘Kind of Blue. Miles Davis.’

‘You can listen to music in your free time,’ Hultin said, still confused.

Paul Hjelm looked at him searchingly.

‘You don’t seem well, Jan-Olov,’ he eventually said.

‘What are you doing here at this… time of day?’

‘I was just going home. I’ve been through all the material and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t fit together. What are you doing?’

Hultin was completely still. He ran his hand along the edge of the desk. Yes, he thought, this is reality. This is something I can feel. Space isn’t time. I’m here, in time, in a different way to the way that I’m here, in this room. I’m here and I am now. To hell with the rest. He turned towards the fax machine. One last krrr-krrr-krrr-prritt and the pile was complete. He grabbed it, straightened the sheets against the desk and said, firmly: ‘Gravitational time dilation. You should try it sometime. Gives you perspective on existence.’

Hjelm’s jaw dropped. It was all very entertaining.

‘Where’s the phone from the metro station case?’ Hultin asked sharply.

‘In my room,’ Hjelm answered quietly.

‘What’s it doing there? Why don’t the technicians have it?’

‘I borrowed it when they went home for the weekend. I wanted to have a closer look at it.’

‘Great,’ said Hultin. ‘Go and get it.’

‘No fingerprints other than Hamid al-Jabiri’s, apparently. How can you not leave fingerprints on your own mobile phone?’

‘Go and get it,’ Hultin repeated.

Once Hjelm had disappeared, he glanced quickly through the enormous pile of paper the fax machine had spurted out. He immediately found what he knew he would find.

Hjelm came back with the phone.

‘Put it on the desk,’ Hultin said with his own phone in his hand. He dialled a number.

The mobile phone on the desk started ringing.

It didn’t feel like a surprise.

‘Now,’ said Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin, ‘this is a case.’