Europa Blues

17

ANDERSSON’S FIRST NAME was Hubald.

Hubald Andersson.

Gunnar Nyberg didn’t quite know how to handle the fact that a sporty, tough and quite recently qualified twenty-four-year-old policeman with a look that could kill was called Hubald.

Now wasn’t the time for laughing, in any case.

The dark little woman in her fifties was sitting in her office, looking Russian. ‘I’m Ludmila Lundkvist, senior lecturer in Slavic languages here at Stockholm University. And you’re Detective Inspectors Gunnar Nyberg and Viggo Norlander, and Police Assistant Hubald Andersson. Is that correct?’

‘Viggo?’ Hubald Andersson said spontaneously.

‘Hubald?’ Viggo Norlander replied spontaneously.

At which both started roaring with laughter.

After that, Ludmila Lundkvist talked exclusively to Gunnar Nyberg, who was clearly a big, level-headed, handsome man in the prime of his life.

‘Are you Russian?’ the big, level-headed, handsome man in the prime of his life asked.

‘Yes,’ Ludmila Lundkvist answered with a smile. ‘I’m from Moscow. I fell in love with a Swede researching Old Russian, Hans Lundkvist. We met when he came to a conference in Moscow in the late seventies. I took a long, winding road out of the Soviet Union and followed him back to Sweden, and then we got married. He died of testicular cancer five years ago. We never had any children.’

Gunnar Nyberg probably hadn’t been expecting such a detailed account, and he was still a little too fresh on the dating scene to realise that he was being flirted with.

‘I’m sorry,’ was all he said.

‘And you, are you married?’

‘No,’ Nyberg replied in surprise, before adding: ‘Divorced.’

Ludmila Lundkvist nodded with another smile, and placed three sheets of paper on the table in front of her.

‘I assume it was you who came up with the idea of writing down what you heard on the phone, Gunnar?’ she said.

Nyberg couldn’t deny it.

‘I thought so,’ Ludmila Lundkvist said, giving him a look that the vast majority of the male population over forty would have seen as sexy. Gunnar Nyberg simply felt confused.

‘I want you to listen to two voices,’ she continued. ‘They’re speaking two different languages that can sound quite similar. Here’s the first.’

She pressed play on a cassette player on the desk. A male voice began reeling off smooth-sounding diphthongs. There was a pause.

In that pause, Ludmila Lundkvist said: ‘The second voice will start soon.’

The second voice began. It sounded similar but different at the same time. The diphthongs were smooth here too, but not in quite the same way. When it was over, the professor of Slavic languages continued.

‘Which of those two languages did you hear?’

Hubald Andersson pointed senselessly at the cassette player. Otherwise, the room was completely still.

‘It’s the same voice saying the same thing in two different languages,’ Ludmila Lundkvist explained. ‘Gunnar?’

Nyberg still couldn’t understand why he had been singled out as teacher’s pet, but he felt the pressure. He delved back as deep as he could in his memory and said: ‘The second. Something about the sound pattern of the first one wasn’t quite right. The diphthongs,’ he chanced.

Ludmila Lundkvist’s face lit up.

‘What about you two?’ she asked with a neutral tone.

‘Maybe,’ said Hubald Andersson.

‘Perhaps,’ said Viggo Norlander.

The professor touched her lip and said: ‘My assessment of your rather disparate combination of letters fits with yours, Gunnar. It’s the second one. The first voice was speaking Russian, the second Ukrainian. Most people don’t even realise that Ukrainian is a distinct language, but it’s spoken by fifty million people. It used to be called “Little Russian” and wasn’t recognised as a language in its own right until the start of the twentieth century. There’s an obvious influence from Polish, by the way, and some of the sounds are midway between Polish and Russian. The most tangible difference in the sound pattern, as you quite rightly called it, Gunnar, is that the unstressed “o” remains where Russian reduces it, and the Russian “g” is a softer “h”.’

She glanced at the bewildered policemen and set the tape playing again.

While it was still quiet, she said: ‘What you heard were the classic opening lines to Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat”. Let’s listen to something else – my attempt at a reconstruction of what you scribbled down. It’s me reading it, since it was a woman you heard. Listen carefully and try to work out whether it fits.’

There was more silence. The cassette player was producing nothing but noise. Like a frustrated television reporter, waiting for a segment which never comes, Ludmila Lundkvist said: ‘It’s coming soon.’

And so it did.

Gunnar Nyberg may have been slightly influenced, but he did think that Ludmila’s sensual voice sounded quite like the one he had heard on the phone he had wrenched from Hamid al-Jabiri’s hand down on the tracks in Odenplan metro station. He said so.

‘It’s quite similar. It could easily have been like that.’

‘Yeah,’ said Viggo Norlander.

‘Why not?’ said Hubald Andersson.

Ludmila Lundkvist said: ‘If that’s true, then the voice is saying – in translation: “Everyone through OK. Three seven two to Lublin.” Then there’s that pause. And then she says: “Cunt” and hangs up.’

‘Cunt?’ exclaimed Hubald Andersson.

‘Like I said,’ Ludmila Lundkvist replied grimly.

Gunnar said: ‘No names?’

‘Unfortunately not, no.’

‘But “Lublin” should mean something to you, Ludmila…’

‘You too, Gunnar. You must’ve heard of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the only Yiddish-speaking recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature? In 1960, he wrote a wonderful little story called The Magician of Lublin. Lublin is a city in Poland, on European highway number 372, one hundred or so miles south of Warsaw. And not far from the Ukrainian border. The E372 goes straight into Ukraine.’

‘“Everyone through OK,”’ Gunnar Nyberg said thoughtfully. ‘“Three seven two to Lublin.” So “through” probably means “through customs”.’

‘That seems likely,’ said Ludmila Lundkvist. ‘But all together, it supports my interpretation.’

‘It’s very convincing, in any case,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, standing up and holding out his hand. She took it, clutching it a moment too long. He could feel himself staring foolishly at her.

The three men were standing out in the shabby university corridor. There was nothing to look at, nothing at all. The lift arrived, its doors opened. Suddenly, Viggo Norlander said: ‘You’re not taking this lift, Gunnar.’

‘What?’ said Gunnar Nyberg.

‘You’re going to go back to Professor Lundkvist’s room and ask her out for dinner this evening.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Viggo Norlander held the lift doors open, leaned forward towards Gunnar Nyberg and whispered: ‘You’re probably a much smarter man than I am, Gunnar, but I’m better at this than you. I’ve rarely seen such obvious female desire.’

Gunnar Nyberg stared at the closed lift doors for a long while.

Then he turned, back down the corridor. The sound of his pounding heart filled the corridor like African drums.