The Blinded Man aka Misterioso

18

The sunny spring morning did not reach its fingers into Supreme Central Command. Only the hands of the A-Unit reached that far, and for the moment they seemed to be tied.

Somebody farted.

No one claimed responsibility.

Everyone glanced around suspiciously as the smell dissipated.

Hultin made his usual entrance through his mysterious boss-only door and slapped his cell phone down on the table. “In case Norlander decides to report in from Tallinn,” he said to head off any questions.

Somebody burped.

There was a rather lax mood in the room. Hultin noticed it. “Okay. The investigation has stalled. But we’re used to that happening, right? You’re experienced and handpicked officers. Keep your spirits up.”

The previous day had felt like a hangover. All activity had seemed muted, and everyone had moved as if in slow motion-except for Norlander, apparently, who had gone to the opposite extreme.

“Señor Chavez?” Hultin began his systematic run-through.

Chavez sat up straight. “I’m still working on the MEMAB lead. If you can call it a lead. But I’m convinced that it is.”

The cell phone rang. Hultin held up his hand and answered it. “Viggo? Is that you?”

A faint murmur spread through the room.

“How does it feel to sing in the Maria Magdalena Church?” Holm asked Nyberg.

“Magnificent acoustics,” said Nyberg. “Missa papae Marcelli.”

“How divine,” Holm said dreamily.

“What the hell is that on your cheek?” Chavez demanded of Hjelm.

“A blemish.” Hjelm had been practicing saying that word.

“Yes,” Hultin said in English into the cell phone, waving his free hand at the team members. Silence descended over Supreme Central Command. Hultin turned around and stared at the wall as he again said, “Yes.” Then he didn’t say a word for several minutes. Everyone could tell by looking at his back, perhaps from the way it was hunched up and leaning forward, that something had happened. No one spoke. Finally Hultin said, “Yes,” for a third time and put down the cell phone. At that moment the small fax machine whirred and churned out a piece of paper. Hultin held on to it as the machine released it. He read the message then closed his eyes for a moment. Something dramatic had happened.

“Viggo Norlander has been crucified,” he said, his voice failing for a second. “The Russian-Estonian mafia nailed him to the floor in an abandoned building in one of Tallinn’s roughest neighborhoods.”

Everybody exchanged wide-eyed glances. They were still missing the most important piece of information. Then it came.

“He’s alive,” said Hultin. “That was Superintendent Kalju Laikmaa from the Tallinn police. Norlander apparently set off on a fucking one-man vendetta against the mafia. And he ended up nailed to the floor. Laikmaa had put a tail on him, since he suspected something like this would happen. When his men, the so-called Commando K unit, entered the building, Viggo had been lying there like that for about an hour, with nails through both hands and both feet. Fortunately he was unconscious.

“The nail driven through one of his hands held this message, written in Swedish. I’ll read it to you: ‘To Detective Inspector Viggo Norlander’s boss, Stockholm. We are the group that you know as Viktor X’s group. We have nothing to do with any murders of businessmen in Stockholm. We prefer to keep more serious crimes of violence within our own borders, as you can see. We’re returning your Lone Avenger to you without even a broken bone. We’ll only put the nails through his flesh.’ It’s signed Viktor X, and then there’s a P.S.: ‘If this is the way you choose to proceed, then we can understand why the case hasn’t been solved. But good luck. It’s in our interest that you solve it quickly.’ ”

“What in hell was he thinking?” exclaimed Chavez.

Hultin shook his head. “Clearly he’d picked up a couple of leads. He’s still in serious condition, but he sent word via Laikmaa that a big Swedish media company, known internationally as GrimeBear Publishing, Inc., has been under heavy pressure from the protection racket of Viktor X and others, and that a couple of the racket’s booze smugglers, by the name of Igor and Igor, are operating in Sweden. Let’s try to get hold of these gentlemen, and check up on what this GrimeBear is all about.”

Hjelm looked at Nyberg. Nyberg looked at Hjelm. Igor and Igor. They’d already come across those two somewhere.

Hultin finished his summing-up. “Norlander also said that he’s done playing Rambo.”

Again the team members exchanged glances.

“I didn’t know he’d started,” said Holm.

Hjelm drove with Nyberg over to Södermalm, to a small basement pub on Södermannsgatan, and went to the apartment directly above. They’d been there before. They rang the bell twelve times before a man, bleary-eyed with sleep, stuck out his head. Within a tenth of a second he was wide awake at the sight of Gunnar Nyberg.

“Don’t kill me,” the man said submissively.

Hjelm thought about Nyberg’s menacing an-assault-is-imminent technique and the deepest bass voice in Missa papae Marcelli in the Maria Magdalena Church.

“Don’t try to suck up to me, Bert,” said Nyberg. “We need a little more information about Igor and Igor. What exactly did you buy from them?”

“I told you last time,” the voice said faintly from the door opening.

“Tell us again.”

“Estonian vodka, 120 proof, from Liviko. Four shipments at various times last winter.”

“When and how much?”

“The first time was in… November, I think. The last time in early February. I haven’t heard from them since then.”

“Should you have?”

“They came in November, December, January, February. Not in March. Each time I bought a few cases. I knew I could sell it. Besides, you can water it down quite a lot without anyone noticing. It’s become something of a favorite with the regular customers-a bit unusual for a vodka, being Estonian and all. But I’ve run out now, and I haven’t heard from them again. Unfortunately. It was really cheap.”

“You’re going to have to come down to the station with us and help put together some pictures of the Igor brothers,” said Nyberg.

The not-very-heroic trio then made their way from Söder to Kungsholmen.

Hultin tapped on the table a few times and held up two classic police sketches. The one on the right showed a thin man with unmistakably Slavic features and an equally unmistakable Russian mustache. The man on the left was clean-shaven, stout, and powerful looking, not unlike Nyberg.

“These are two of Viktor X’s booze smugglers in Sweden,” Hultin began his three o’clock meeting. “They call themselves Igor and Igor. The photographic composites didn’t turn out too well so we had to drag out the old sketch artist from the museum corridors. The drawings were made based on information provided by a Mr. Bert Gunnarsson, a pub owner in Söder, who has purchased smuggled vodka from them on several occasions both this year and last. I’ve also been in contact again with Kalju Laikmaa in Tallinn. He identified them at once. Neither of them is named Igor. The thin guy is Alexander Bryusov and the fat one is Valery Treplyov. Both are small-time Russian gangsters active in Estonia until six months ago, when they apparently came to Sweden in the employ of Viktor X. The fact that they broke off contact with Gunnarsson in March may have significance.”

“Are we going to accept the damn official explanation for Norlander’s stigmata?” said Söderstedt.

“Stigmata?” said Billy Pettersson.

“Wounds that appear in the same places as on the body of the Lord Jesus Christ,” said Kerstin Holm pedantically.

“That explanation can’t steer the investigation,” said Hultin. “We’re going to have to ignore it, even if we believe it. So let’s try and get hold of these two Igor gentlemen. They’re our only solid link to Viktor X.”

Time now took on a new form, calmer and more protracted, more methodical. They published the drawings of Igor and Igor in all the newspapers but with no results. Messieurs Alexander Bryusov and Valery Treplyov remained nothing more than sketches.

There were several current hypotheses: (1) only Daggfeldt was the intended victim, and the other two were red herrings; (2) only Strand-Julén was the intended victim, and the other two were red herrings; (3) only Carlberger was the intended victim, and the other two were red herrings; (4) Daggfeldt and Strand-Julén were the real targets, and Carlberger was the red herring; (5) Strand-Julén and Carlberger were the real targets, and Daggfeldt was the red herring; (6) Daggfeldt and Carlberger were the real targets, and Strand-Julén was the red herring; and (7) all three were the intended victims.

Number 6 applied to the newly acquired GrimeBear lead. The media company known abroad as GrimeBear Publishing, Inc., turned out to be none other than the huge, powerful, and venerable Lovisedal AB, which evidently was now experiencing mafia problems in the former Soviet Union. Daggfeldt and Carlberger had both been members of the Lovisedal board of directors during the same period, from 1991 until 1993. Strand-Julén was not, and hence he could be the red herring. It was conceivable, for instance, that Daggfeldt and Carlberger were killed because Viktor X wanted to make an example of the Lovisedal corporation, due to their antipathy to the protection racket in Russia and the Baltics.

The enormous Lovisedal media factory had expanded beyond Sweden, had started a daily Russian-language business newspaper, and was exploring the Baltics, as so many other Swedish companies were doing. The free market intersected with an even freer market, was subjected to daily threats and disruptions, and then to fight the mafia turned to private Russian security services consisting of people who had been trained during the Soviet era. The Swedish companies were financing a minor civil war between ex-Soviet entrepreneurs. Foreign aid, it might be called.

Chavez followed up on the Lovisedal lead along with the MEMAB lead. This meant that he talked to all the board members from the relevant time periods, then tried to narrow his focus to potential suspects. His efforts didn’t produce much. Hjelm often accompanied him when he had to drive somewhere.

Hjelm had ended up in a real vacuum. His days seemed to center mostly on the red blemish on his left cheek. It was growing, slowly but surely. Cilla, who was a nurse, dismissed it with an ambivalent laugh. It was now about three-eighths of an inch across, and he was seriously beginning to consider the fateful word: cancer. Malignant melanoma. But he rejected any suggestion that he have the blemish checked out.

Kerstin Holm had hardly spoken to Hjelm since their strange conversation in the staff cafeteria. She spent most of her time with her tapes, coordinating them with the interviews of neighbors and employees that she’d assigned to the less-than-pleased Stockholm Criminal Police.

George Hummelstrand, the foremost opponent of the secession from the Order of Mimir, seemed-contrary to Judge Franzén’s observations-to have quite a skeptical attitude toward the Order of Skidbladnir. In fact, he thought the whole thing was ridiculous. His manner of speaking was much like that of his wife Anna-Clara, sprinkling semi-lewd Gallicisms into the conversation and constantly hinting at remarkable erotic relationships with other women. He kept on emphasizing what a “Free and French” relationship he and Anna-Clara enjoyed. At first Holm thought he was trying to seduce her, but she was soon convinced that he must be impotent. It was with relief but also with some fascination that she crossed Mr. and Mrs. Hummelstrand off her agenda.

Söderstedt, Pettersson, and Florén had become more and more immersed in their own world of audit reports and stockbrokers, shell companies, pseudo-businesses, covert dividends, and new stock issues. Even when Söderstedt sat down in the cafeteria and talked about convertible promissory notes so that it sounded like a public lecture, he revealed a weariness that was easy to see. Sometimes the finance group would appear at the meetings with diagrams and charts that got progressively less comprehensible and made Hultin’s increasingly messy scribbles on the whiteboard look like a miracle of precision. Söderstedt felt more and more alienated from the obvious enthusiasm exhibited by the two finance officers as they mapped the business affairs of the three wise men, Daggfeldt, Strand-Julén, and Carlberger. He wanted to be a cop again. Or at least be able to think.

Nyberg was burrowing his way like a mole through the underworld. In spite of his carefully devised methodology, he was unable to come up with any results at all. He was the first to have real doubts about the investigation. Either they were doing something fundamentally wrong, or else they were dealing with another Palme murder. Nobody in the murky world of small-time criminals, which was always filled with rumors and gossip, knew the slightest thing, either about the perpetrator or the crimes that had been committed. Both seemed to be far removed from the underworld, in the classic sense of the word. On the other hand, the underworld, in the classic sense of the word, was becoming passé. The truly violent crimes were being committed by other groups, primarily within the institution of the family, which was at the true core of crime in society; the family was the eternal recipient of all the frustrations of adult life. Burglaries were committed almost exclusively by drug addicts, while robberies were carried out by strange paramilitary organizations, often with a racist bent, in order to finance their own operations. Fraud was now an entire division within the service sector, just like any other division. The old small-time crooks stood on the sidelines, looking on and feeling positively honorable. Desperation and frustration were flourishing like never before in a society in which hordes of young people had been shut out of the job market without ever getting even a whiff of it. Nyberg wanted a vacation.

What Hultin was doing or thinking was just as mysterious as the door through which he entered and exited Supreme Central Command, the door that was always locked if anyone tried to follow him out. When they asked him about it, he merely laughed.

One evening Chavez and Hjelm slipped out to Stadshagen Field with its artificial turf to catch a glimpse of a match between senior players of the Stockholm police soccer team and the Rågsved Alliance team.

When Hultin head-butted Chavez’s father and split open his eyebrow, they left.

Hjelm, who had thrown himself into the 24/7 job to avert the personal crisis he had felt approaching, suddenly had a great deal of free time on his hands. He gazed at his lonely image in the mirror, hating the ever-growing blemish on his cheek.

Who is this man? he stopped himself from thinking, yet the thought stayed with him.

By the end of April he was showering a surprising amount of attention on his family. Danne thought it was disgusting, Tova was mostly startled, and as for Cilla-he had no idea what she thought. The strange experience in the kitchen still hovered between them like an untouchable wound. Was it starting to ooze? Was it becoming inflamed?

In early May the family moved out, at least part time, to the little cabin that they’d been lucky enough to rent on Dalarö, the island that wasn’t really an island at all but rather a whole string of islands. Cilla spent almost every night out there, commuting to Huddinge Hospital. Her much-anticipated vacation would begin in June-she would have the whole summer free. The children were also out there on weekends. Danne had evidently decided to hide away from reality during this last summer of his childhood. Paul managed to get a free weekend at the very beginning of May and spent a couple of unusually pleasant days in the spring sunshine, basking in the bosom of his family, and in Cilla’s embrace. The latter took place on a blanket on a deserted pier in the midst of a fiery red sunset, with an empty wine bottle rolling around next to them. She was silent and sad afterward. Unapproachable. The preposterous beauty of the sunset seemed to have bored its way into her. A deep red layer had spilled across the motionless surface of the sea. The red contours, clearly delineated against the surrounding black, had slowly contracted; an evaporating pool of blood above an abyss. Before long only the abyss remained. Cilla began trembling, a deep, unfathomable shivering. He watched her for a long time through the gathering dusk. He tried to share her experience, tried to see what she saw, feel what she felt. But he couldn’t. The red was gone. Only black remained. He tried to get her to go up to the cabin, but he got no response. He was forced to leave her there on the pier, all alone with an experience of utter solitude. He went inside and climbed into bed but didn’t sleep all night.

Early in the morning he went back down to the pier. She was still sitting there, wrapped in the blanket. He returned to the cabin without making his presence known.

Before the move out to Dalarö nothing much happened, from a professional standpoint. It was the period of working on details and consolidating findings. Besides collaborating with Chavez and Nyberg in both the upper- and the underworld, respectively, he completed two tasks still on his list, the second more important than the first.

First he called an 071 number and encountered the first phone sex in his life. In a simpering voice a woman exhibiting some symptoms of dyslexia read from a script what she would do with his penis. Since the aforementioned organ remained completely limp the whole time, it would have been difficult to implement any of these acrobatic maneuvers. He then called the business registry at the Patent and Registration Office, but the only address for the simpering company JSHB was the post office box listed in the newspaper ad, a box number in Bromma. So he ended up having to drive over to the post office on Brommaplan and simply wait. He positioned himself so that he could see the post office boxes through the window and smoked a couple of cigarettes in the sweltering heat more typical of the height of summer than the month of April. Temperatures that had undoubtedly been stolen from July and August. And he waited. He kept box number 1414 in his sights for almost three hours before a short, fox-like man in his forties stuck his key in the slot and opened the box. By that time Hjelm was feeling worn out and had no energy left to tail Johan Stake to see whether his 071 premises actually housed a bordello. Instead, he went up to the man and said, “Stake?”

The man didn’t hesitate for even a second. He slipped past Hjelm and took off fast. Hjelm stuck out his leg and elegantly tripped him, making his face slam into the glass door. He fell next to a well-groomed little poodle that was tied up outside. The dog began yapping wildly. Hjelm hauled the man to his feet. Stake had a split lip, and blood was gushing out over the shrieking poodle’s mane.

“So unnecessary,” said Hjelm as he snapped handcuffs on the man and dragged him over to the car. He hoped Stake wasn’t thinking of bleeding all over his vehicle, just when he’d gotten it broken in.

Jorge Chavez was present when Hjelm interviewed Johan Stake. They kept things informal by conducting the interview in their office.

“I have a lot of questions about those 071 ads, which in happier times used to cover entire pages of the tabloids,” said Hjelm, seeming to fumble around a bit. “Why do they put the address in the ad? Is that how pimping and bordello operations work nowadays?”

“There are laws about this,” said Johan Stake belligerently as he touched his taped lip. “Don’t you know the laws? What the hell am I doing here, anyway? You have no legal right-”

“Officially you’ve been arrested for resisting an officer.”

“In that case, I have the right to a lawyer. ‘Provision of a public defender precedes interrogation.’ ”

“You seem to be as knowledgeable about the justice system as you are skilled at alliteration. The problem is that a much more serious charge is hovering in the background. Promoting prostitution. Acting as a pimp for underage boys.”

Stake looked shaken. “In that case, I really do want a lawyer.”

“Then the prosecutor will have to indict you and take you to court. But there’s another option.”

“Wait a minute. You don’t have any proof. You’ll have to release me.”

“How do you know we don’t have any proof?”

Stake didn’t reply.

Hjelm calmly went on, “Early this morning we picked up a young guy by the name of Jörgen Lindén as he boarded the first train to Göteborg. He was carrying a big suitcase, as if he was about to flee from somebody, and I don’t think it was the police. He’s now sitting in jail. Not ten minutes ago he was ready to testify. Detective Inspector Chavez here conducted the interview brilliantly, but not entirely without… shall we say, some persuasion.”

Chavez went over to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup to hide his astonishment. He took a few seconds to compose himself, then returned with an expression of persuasion etched on his face.

Good job, thought Hjelm. Good lies should always be as detailed as possible. Then they will convince anybody.

Johan Stake seemed convinced. He didn’t say a word as he sat thinking. Apparently the scenario wasn’t the least bit improbable.

“But there’s another option,” Hjelm repeated.

Stake remained silent. He was no longer calling for a lawyer.

Hjelm completed his attack. “Step one on the road to immediate release: tell us about Bernhard Strand-Julén.”

Johan Stake cleared his throat and squirmed a bit on his chair. “Can you guarantee that you’ll let me go?”

“We’re the only ones who know that you’re here. No formal charges have been filed. You’re free as soon as you spit out what we want to know. We have much bigger fish to fry than you and your bordellos. We’ll let both you and Jörgen go if you cooperate. That’s step one.”

“Strand-Julén… I got boys for him. A crew for his boat, as he insisted on calling them. Healthy, blond boys about sixteen or so, athletic types. Two or three at a time. Always new ones. During the summer season almost every weekend. Never during the winter. That’s when he went into hibernation.”

“Step two. Were your services ever used by Kuno Daggfeldt or Nils-Emil Carlberger?”

“Carlberger,” said Stake, looking as though he’d been expecting the question. “He got my number from Strand-Julén. That was six months ago. He sounded damned nervous when he requested a boy. I had the impression it was his first time. An attempt to widen his horizons maybe, a little Socratic boy-love. What do I know?”

“Do you know how it went?”

“I talked to the kid afterward. He got a little… central stimulation.” He laughed loudly. “Carlberger was like a little boy, totally inexperienced, either a hundred percent hetero or else a hundred percent impotent. But he paid well.”

“And that was all? What about Daggfeldt?”

“No.”

“Can you tell us anything else about Strand-Julén or Carlberger? Think carefully.”

Stake thought for a moment. “No, I’m sorry. That’s all.” They let him go.

“You could have warned me,” said Chavez, sipping his coffee. “If I had, would you have agreed to go along with it?”

“No.”

They allowed themselves a good laugh at their peculiarities, both their own and each other’s. Then Hjelm crossed off Johan Stake from the investigation.

Two hours later Stake called to compliment him. It was very strange, but he’d just spoken to Jörgen Lindén, who hadn’t understood a word of what he was talking about. Stake praised Hjelm for the impressive lie and then hung up. Hjelm stood for a long time, staring at his phone.

By now Paul Hjelm was almost certain that the murders had stopped with victim number three. One morning it was raining for the first time in what seemed like a premature summer. So it was time to drive out to the Kevinge Golf Course. It was deserted. The whole clubhouse was deserted too.

Except, that is, for Lena Hansson, who was in her place at the reception desk. At first she didn’t recognize him, but when she did, her expression changed, which was precisely what he was hoping for. He instantly mobilized his heavy artillery. “Why did you lie about the fact that you were a caddy for the three corpses on September 7, 1990?”

She stared at him with a frankly naked expression; it was obvious that she’d been expecting him. For a month. “They weren’t corpses back then,” she said hesitantly. “On the contrary. You might call it an… over-the-top life they were living.

“But not without an oversexed component, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Shall we sit down for a moment? The customers are conspicuous in their absence.”

“And what a glorious absence it is.” She sounded older than her years. She went into the closed club restaurant and sat down at a table. Hjelm followed.

Lena Hansson fiddled with the wax of a burned-out candle in a small holder. Hjelm said:

“There were three of you working as caddies, am I right?”

“Yes. That’s what they requested. A guy named Carl-Gustaf something-or-other. Some kind of aristocratic last name. I don’t really remember, but I can look it up. And my friend Lotta. Lotta Bergström. She was really upset. It was because of her that I didn’t say anything.”

“What do you mean?”

Hjelm permitted himself a cigarette. He blamed the elegant setting, but more likely the “no smoking” sign had enticed him.

“Lotta was… going through a hard time. A horrible childhood. An even more horrible adolescence. I got the job for her. We were both seventeen, in the same class in school. I felt guilty. She… well, she killed herself in ’92. I don’t really know if it had anything to do with this. Probably not. But I still feel like it was my fault.”

“What they did?”

“Yes. That Carl-Gustaf-he didn’t believe it could happen. He was from some really old upper-crust family. You know the kind, people who still care about good breeding and etiquette, and not just as a role that you play when you go to fancy dinners and things like that. For them, it’s all part of their daily lives, both private and professional. Good breeding and etiquette and an ancient moral code seem to be injected into their genes. They’re often quite pleasant to be around. Carl-Gustaf was too. He laughed politely and shyly during the first four holes, then he shut up, letting that Strand-Julén badger him for four more holes. At the ninth green he set the golf bag down so that Strand-Julén’s putt struck the bag. Then he simply left. I’ve never seen him again. If he’d been a real gentleman, he would have taken us with him.”

Carl-Gustaf, wrote Hjelm in his mental notebook. “But Lotta and you stayed?” he said.

“Seventeen, properly brought up, insecure. Of course we stayed. After Carl-Gustaf left, they began tossing around nouveau riche jokes about the arch-conservative nobility. It was a form of jealousy.”

“Could you be a little more precise? What exactly did they do?”

“They’d had a lot to drink here in the restaurant before the game. They seemed-I don’t know, speedy, almost, as if they’d snorted some coke in the men’s room or something like that.”

“Or in the cab on the way over,” said Hjelm, unprofessionally.

“At any rate, they started telling dirty jokes and making insinuating remarks, on a polite level that allowed at least Carl-Gustaf to join in the laughter. Lotta and I were mostly just embarrassed. There was hardly anybody else on the golf course, so they could carry on as much as they liked. After a while Strand-Julén focused his remarks on Carl-Gustaf, which let us off the hook for a time. The remarks were mostly about the size of Carl-Gustaf’s noble organ. Then he made his heroic departure, and the two of us ended up in the line of fire. Really. I’ve never in my life been so badly treated, and I’ll never let it happen again. I promised myself that.”

“So what did you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you shoot them?”

She laughed loudly, her voice shrill and unnatural. “Oh sure,” she said at last, as she wiped away the tears. “I can’t say that I was sorry when I heard that they’d been shot. All three of them, one after the other. It was wonderful, to be quite honest. Magical, like in a fairy tale. The unknown avenger. But good God, I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”

“But somebody you know might have.”

She was silent for a moment, mulling it over. “I don’t think so,” she said quite calmly. “Maybe somebody Lotta knew. That would be more likely. I was just furious, fucking furious, and that sort of anger doesn’t go away. But I wasn’t seriously affected. She was. She was already in a fragile state, and things just got worse.”

“Okay, so what happened?”

“They started pawing and groping us on the tenth and eleventh fairways. It got much worse when we were over by the woods. They were really worked up-they must have still been high on drugs-and that’s when they started going at us. They tore off Lotta’s sweater, and one of them pushed her down on the ground and lay on top of her. Daggfeldt, I think. Carlberger sat nearby and watched. Strand-Julén grabbed hold of me.

“I managed to pull loose and got hold of a golf club, which I slammed against the back of Daggfeldt’s neck. He rolled off Lotta, and I went over and tried to comfort her. Daggfeldt lay there, writhing. I think he was bleeding from the back of his head. The other two just stood there, thinking. Doing some problem solving. They’d sobered up awfully quick. Started apologizing and saying how sorry they were and offering us money to keep our mouths shut. And we let them buy our silence. It was expensive as hell. Several thousand kronor. Besides, we wanted to keep our jobs. Well, Lotta got fired shortly afterward. She made another suicide attempt a couple of weeks after that. She’d already tried twice before. The seventh time she finally succeeded, a couple of years later. I don’t know whether she really meant to die. And I have no idea how big a role all this played in what she did. But I’ve given it a lot of thought. Those fucking pigs! I’m glad they’re dead.”

“And they continued to play golf here? Afterward? All three of them?”

“Yes. Apparently they would have missed out on important contacts they made here otherwise. But they never played together again.”

“The last time we talked, you said about Daggfeldt and Strand-Julén, who by then were dead, and I quote: ‘They would always say hello when they came in and stop to chat.’ But that didn’t really happen, did it?”

“No, I lied. I don’t think any of them ever even glanced at me again. They looked a bit worried when I moved inside to work in the reception area. But I think they were convinced that they’d bought my silence.”

“And had they? Have you ever told this story to anyone else? To your lover, for example? What’s his name? The golf association secretary. Axel Wifstrand?”

“Widstrand. No, especially not him. He would take it… in the wrong way.”

“React violently?”

“Just the opposite, I think. He would think I was lying. No, I haven’t told anyone. They bought my silence. But I don’t know whether they bought Lotta’s.”

“Did she have a boyfriend? A brother? A father?”

“If I understood correctly, her father, Bengt-Egil, was at the root of all her problems. She would never have told him about it, and he would never have tried to avenge her honor. And she never had a boyfriend-that was another source of anxiety. But she was close to her brother, Gusten. In fact, Gusten and Lotta were inseparable.”

“Do you think he knew?”

“We lost contact when she got really sick, so I don’t know. But if Gusten is behind this, then I’m grateful to him. I’ll visit him in prison.”

Hjelm paused to think. Gusten Bergström.

“Shall we find out what Carl-Gustaf’s last name was? After that I won’t bother you anymore. At least I don’t think I will.”

Lena Hansson got up and stretched. He saw a pride that he hadn’t noticed before. Once a possible witness, now a whole and complete human being.

“Keep the anger alive,” he found himself saying to her.

She gave him a sarcastic look.

Count Carl-Gustaf af Silfverbladh had moved in 1992 to his family’s estate in Dorset, England. Having sown his wild oats, he sought to obtain a proper education at Oxford, as his father and grandfather had done. He hadn’t returned to Sweden, and in all likelihood never would.

Hjelm wondered how the English would pronounce the man’s last name.

Gusten Bergström was twenty-eight, a few years older than his sister Lotta would have been had she lived. His apartment was on Gamla Brogatan in central Stockholm. He worked as a computer operator for Swedish Rail in the long-distance office at Central Station.

He doesn’t have far to go every morning, thought Hjelm as he rang the doorbell of Bergström’s apartment, which was a couple of floors above the old Sko-Unos shop.

A shadow appeared in the door’s peephole. Not a great idea to have a peephole near the window, he thought.

“Police!” he bellowed, pounding on the door.

The man who opened it was as thin as a stick, with a haircut that looked like a toupee but probably wasn’t. He wore glasses with thick lenses. He looked like a combination of a teenage hacker and a middle-aged accountant.

Hjelm looked at Gusten Bergström with dismay. This was no murderer. He’d bet his life on that.

“I’m from the Criminal Police,” said Hjelm, showing his ID.

Gusten Bergström let him in without saying a word. The apartment was spartan, to say the least. The walls were bare, and at one end of the room a computer was on. Before Bergström could go over and turn down the light, Hjelm caught a glimpse of a naked woman on the color screen, incredibly true to life. It made him feel old.

“Have a seat,” said Bergström politely.

Hjelm sat down on a quasi-antique sofa and Bergström on a matching armchair, if it could be called that.

“I’d like to talk to you about your sister,” said Hjelm cautiously.

Bergström got up at once and went over to the bookcase near the computer. From one of the shelves he took down a photo in a gold frame and showed it to Hjelm. A girl in her mid-teens was smiling at him. It was astonishing how much she looked like her brother.

“This is Lotta before things went bad for her,” said Bergström sadly. “On her seventeenth birthday.”

“Very pretty,” said Hjelm, feeling ghastly. The photograph was taken about the time of the golf course incident.

“What’s this about?” said Bergström, pushing up his glasses.

“When she was seventeen, she worked as a caddy at the Kevinge Golf Course. Do you remember that?”

Bergström gave a slight nod.

“Did she ever tell you anything about her job?” asked Hjelm.

“No,” he said with a sigh. There seemed to be something shattered about him.

“Nothing at all?”

For the first time Bergström looked Hjelm in the eye. Each of them was looking for something in the other.

“What’s this about?” Bergström repeated. “My sister has been dead for a couple of years now. Why are you coming here and talking about her as if she were alive? I’ve just gotten used to the idea that she’s gone.”

“She was fired from her job at the golf course in the fall of 1990. Do you recall that?”

“Yes, I remember. The season was over, and the golf course was about to close for the winter. She was still in school, so it was no big deal to lose a seasonal job.”

“But you don’t recall anything she told you about her time at the golf course?”

“She got the job through a friend; I don’t remember her name. I didn’t feel very comfortable in Danderyd, to be honest. I didn’t know anyone there. She didn’t really either. It wasn’t a happy time, not at all.”

“Shortly afterward, she tried to take her own life for the third time. Is that right?”

“How sensitive of you,” Bergström said glumly. “Yes, she did. A razor blade, for the first and last time. When she actually succeeded, it was by taking Alvedon. Did you know that all it takes to kill the liver and kidneys is one blister pack of Alvedon and some liquor? Lotta knew that. Nobody knew what she had planned. There were no warning shots or cries for help or any bullshit like that. She really did try to kill herself seven times. It was like a… miscarriage. As if she weren’t meant to be born. As if there were something seriously wrong with her view of life.”

“Do you know why?”

“I don’t know anything, and I don’t understand anything,” Bergström said tonelessly. “I’ll never understand anything.”

“Do you know about the murders of the three businessmen here in Stockholm?”

Bergström was off somewhere else. It took a moment for him to return. “How could anybody not know about that?”

“Did you murder them?”

Gusten Bergström looked at him in surprise. Then a strange spark appeared in his eyes, as if a gust of life had suddenly been blown into his withered lungs. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, Hjelm thought blasphemously.

“Yes,” said Bergström proudly. “I murdered them.”

Hjelm studied the luminous figure. Something seemed about to happen in Gusten Bergström’s dreary life. His face would appear on newspaper placards. He would be in the spotlight for the first and last time in his life.

“Come off it,” said Paul Hjelm, and the spark was extinguished.

Gusten Bergström seemed to crumple, sitting on the armchair’s hard upholstery, as if he were its long-absent stuffing.

Hjelm poured a little oil on the waters of disappointment. “Why did you kill Kuno Daggfeldt, Bernhard Strand-Julén, and Nils-Emil Carlberger?”

“Why?” said Bergström, shrugging his hunched shoulders. “Well, because-because they were rich.”

“You don’t have the faintest idea what those three men did to your sister at the Kevinge Golf Course on September 7, 1990, a month before she made her third suicide attempt and was locked up in Beckomberga Hospital. Do you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Gusten Bergström got up abruptly and tried to find something to hold on to. There was nothing. His fingers clutched wildly at the air.

“On that particular day, that trio of murdered men tried to rape your sister when she was acting as a caddy for them.”

Bergström’s hands stopped grabbing. “If I’d known,” he enunciated very clearly, “I would have killed them. But they wouldn’t have been allowed to live this long, I can promise you that.”

“But you didn’t know?”

“No,” he said and sat down. Then he got up again, standing in the midst of the evening light flooding in from Gamla Brogatan. “Now I understand,” he said, lighting up for one last time. “Now I understand.”

“What do you understand?”

“It’s Lotta! Lotta herself has taken her revenge! For a couple of days she stretched out her hand from the realm of the dead. Then she went back to that better world.”

Extremely agitated, Bergström went over to the bookcase and pulled out a worn, old book, holding it up and shaking it.

“Do you know about the Erinyes?” he asked without waiting for an answer. “They’re the most gruesome creatures in Greek mythology but also the most awe-inspiring. The ultimate hand of justice. They hunt their prey day and night until the grave opens up. Let me read you a short passage: ‘The Erinyes are nothing more than the murdered victim’s spirit, which, if no other avenger exists, take vengeance into their own hands, mercilessly and relentlessly, as the spirits of the dead are contained in their wrath.’ ”

He gave Hjelm an urgent stare. Hjelm didn’t say a word.

“Don’t you understand?” shouted Bergström. “There are no avengers, so she had to do it herself. She waited for an avenger, but none came. Everything fits! Those three men who hurt her were the ones she killed in quick succession all these years later. It’s amazing! Your killer is a murder victim’s spirit! An avenging goddess!”

Hjelm sat there for a moment, fascinated by Bergström’s onslaught. Without a doubt, the parallels were striking. The avenger who left no traces. The divine, posthumous avenger from the realm of the dead.

But the thought of a highly tangible bullet from Kazakhstan in a wall in Djursholm brought him back to the world of crass reality: “The Erinyes may have had a physical intermediary who pulled the trigger. Do you know if she might have talked about the incident at the golf course to anyone else?”

“There wasn’t anyone else! Don’t you understand? It was just the two of us, just Lotta and Gusten. Gusten and Lotta.”

“Papa? Mama? Anyone at the hospital?

“My father? Oh sure, that’s really likely!” laughed Gusten. He had now crossed a line. “Mother? That woman who could see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil? All three monkeys in one. Absolutely! Someone at Beckis? Where everybody sits in a separate corner, rubbing their private parts all day long? Highly likely! There you have your cold-blooded murderer! The Beckomberga man! The expert killer from the loony bin!”

Hjelm could tell it was time to leave.

Under other circumstances Hjelm would have gone over to the computer, turned up the light, and laughed crudely at the computerized figures, who by now were undoubtedly in the midst of fucking. But he didn’t.

In some ambiguous way, that was a victory.

Hjelm spent the next few days pursuing the golf lead. He drove out to Beckomberga Hospital and talked to the staff, to find out who Lotta’s friends were. She’d never had any. The only staff member who was still there from the early nineties, a stony-faced male nurse, remembered Lotta as an extreme loner. Morbidly withdrawn, a total introvert. The only person that Lotta Bergström could have conceivably told about the incident was her brother, and apparently she hadn’t done that. Or else Gusten Bergström was the best actor that Hjelm had ever seen.

He also directed his inquiries at Lena Hansson’s family and circle of friends. With equally disappointing results. She had truly allowed Daggfeldt and his pals to buy her silence. The only possibility that seemed to be left after a number of days of fruitless searching was that Lena Hansson had hired a professional killer. He let that lead drop.

At the same time he received a summons to appear in court for the trial of Dritëro Frakulla. It was not something he was looking forward to. A couple of weeks after Frakulla seized the hostages at the immigration office in Hallunda, the refugee policies had suddenly changed, and several hundred Kosovar Albanians who had been threatened with deportation were allowed to stay in Sweden, including Frakulla’s family. But after his desperate attempt to save them, he would be forced to leave the country as soon as he had served his prison sentence. The irony of fate seemed to Hjelm an understatement.

He sat in the chair in the courtroom of City Hall, giving his testimony. He tried to be as clear and objective as he could, almost managing to ignore the press, who harassed him before, during, and after the trial. But he couldn’t escape Dritëro Frakulla’s surly gaze directed at him from the defendant’s bench. Frakulla still had his arm in a sling, and he never took his eyes off Hjelm. It was not an accusatory look but rather an open, candidly shattered gaze. Even so, Hjelm couldn’t rid himself of the impression that he was being accused; perhaps that emotion was to be found only within himself. He thought that Frakulla was not accusing him of having shot him but of not having killed him. If he had been killed, his family would have been able to stay; now they would loyally follow him back to the Serbs in a few years’ time. Frakulla’s lawyer was a jaded old man who asked all the right questions. Why hadn’t Hjelm waited for the special unit? Why hadn’t the Department of Internal Affairs investigated the case? Apparently Bruun and Hultin and Mörner had managed to erase all trace of the interrogation conducted by Grundström and Mårtensson. And yet the attorney’s attacks were nothing compared to Frakulla’s unyielding eyes.

When Hjelm stepped down from the witness stand and walked through the courtroom between the rows of spectators, he met the gaze of a little boy. His expression was identical to his father’s.

It took a while before Paul Hjelm could think again about the investigation.

A couple of days later Viggo Norlander suddenly appeared at Supreme Central Command during a morning meeting. He was actually still on sick leave, but he came in, hobbling on crutches and looking quite subdued. Something had been extinguished in his already extinguished expression. Gauze bandages were wrapped around his hands. They all greeted him warmly, and Kerstin Holm jumped up to get the bouquet of flowers that they had bought. They’d taken up a collection and were planning to deliver it to him that evening. Norlander looked genuinely touched and sat down in his usual seat at the table.

It had been left vacant. No one had replaced him.

While he was convalescing in the hospital in Tallinn and then in Huddinge, he had been convinced that Hultin had kicked him off the investigation and that Internal Affairs might even be after him. When he sank down onto the chair, he understood that he was… forgiven. He couldn’t come up with any other word. He wept openly.

Norlander looked like a broken man. They wondered if he should have come back to work, but when he looked up at them with his red-rimmed eyes, they saw happiness beneath the tears, sheer happiness.

The more they got to know each other, the harder it became to understand each other. As always.

As they were leaving Supreme Central Command, Hjelm saw out of the corner of his eye Söderstedt go over to Norlander, put his arm around his shoulders, and say something. Norlander laughed out loud.

Not much had been said during the meeting, no new progress had been made. They were now working from the theory that the killing spree was over, and that the deficit for the Swedish business world was going to stop at three and only three entries: Kuno Daggfeldt, Bernhard Strand-Julén, and Nils-Emil Carlberger.

They were wrong.