The Blinded Man aka Misterioso

26

The underside of the crackle-glazed altocumulus cloud cover gleamed dark orange in the early summer evening. An infinite number of small, just barely separated wisps plunged Lilla Värtan and all of Lidingö into a strange, fractured, bewitching twilight. It was as if the sky were pressing down with superhuman force.

Gunnar Nyberg, sitting in a police car up on Lidingö Bridge, thought he’d never seen such a glow before. It had a fateful music about it.

Maybe it’s my time to die, he thought, then shook off the idea.

He was on his way to the villa of Lovisedal board chairman Jacob Lidner in Mölna, located on the southern spit of Lidingö. Arto Söderstedt had the night watch; he would be gazing out across the water as he sat in that living room that radiated resistance to the police presence. Nyberg sympathized with the living room.

He had nothing to do and had decided on his own initiative to spend the night keeping Söderstedt company. There were worse things he could be doing. Besides, he was feeling an acute need for human companionship. Loneliness had suddenly overwhelmed him and sucked the breath from his throat, propelling him inexorably out into this appallingly lovely early summer evening. The beauty on the Lidingö Bridge took his breath away again.

After the bridge Gunnar Nyberg turned right and took Södra Kungsvägen all the way out to Mölna. When he caught sight of Lidner’s palatial villa, he stopped the car, parking it a safe distance away on the little entrance drive. Dusk had fallen. The peculiar cloud formations now glowed only faintly; then during the minute it took him to walk to the house, they disappeared entirely.

He reached the hedge surrounding the garden. The gate appeared in the middle of all the vegetation. It was ajar. He opened it all the way and stepped into the yard.

Out of the corner of his eye, off to the left, he saw a faint movement, and long before the pain hit him, he heard the dull pop of a gun with a silencer.

He threw his huge body full length onto the gravel path and pulled out his service weapon. Yet another shot whined right over his head.

Something was ignited in Gunnar Nyberg’s eyes.

He got up and with a wild bellow ran like a crazed buffalo, firing one shot after another at the spot where he’d seen the movement a couple of seconds earlier.

A car started up a little farther down the road. He heard it approaching. He tossed aside his empty gun and, still bellowing, crashed like a bulldozer right through the thick hedge and came out onto the road just as the car came up.

Gunnar Nyberg tackled it like a professional hockey player.

He hurled his furious giant’s body against the left side of the accelerating vehicle. It flung him off, and he landed with his face pressed to the asphalt.

The pain came. His field of vision was shrinking drastically, but he saw the car drive into a lamppost a dozen yards away.

Arto Söderstedt, with gun raised, rushed over to the car, yanked the driver out, and pulled him over to the other side of the road. The last thing Nyberg saw before everything vanished in a sea of fire was Alexander Bryusov’s bloody face being dragged across the asphalt.

Maybe it’s my time to die, thought Gunnar Nyberg, and he was gone.