The Blinded Man aka Misterioso

31

Gunnar Nyberg was being fed through a tube. It protruded from the bandages that covered him almost entirely from the crown of his head to his neck, and large portions of soup were running through it. His eyes were the only things visible, and they were beaming with joy.

“As I’ve just told Nyberg,” the doctor explained to the three visitors, “we’ve determined that, in spite of everything, his throat should heal completely. The bullet missed the carotid artery by half an inch; it missed the larynx by about the same distance, but it passed through the upper part of the esophagus, just below the pharynx. He’ll soon be able to sing again, but it will take a while before he can eat normally. In addition, his left zygomatic bone and left maxillary bone were shattered. He suffered a significant concussion and a number of bruises and burns on his face, and on the area from his shoulders up. He has four broken ribs, a fractured right arm, and a wide assortment of minor cuts and burns over most of his body. But,” said the doctor, “he seems to be in good spirits.” And then he left them alone.

Nyberg had obtained a little blackboard on which he could write messages in his wobbly left-handed script. “Igor?” he wrote.

Hjelm nodded. “Alexander Bryusov. That idiotic tackle you made on his car uncovered the whole connection between Viktor X and Lovisedal, a very real connection. Bryusov is apparently going to be the star witness.”

Nyberg wrote, “Not our man, right?”

Hjelm had to ask Chavez and Holm for help in deciphering his scrawl.

“No,” said Chavez. “Bryusov isn’t our man. Our man is an ordinary Swedish bank teller by the name of Göran Andersson.”

The twitching under the wads of bandages could almost be interpreted as a laugh.

“We’re conducting a nationwide manhunt for him now,” said Hjelm. “But you may be back at work before he’s arrested.”

Nyberg shook his bandages emphatically. The tubes that connected him to the surrounding machinery swayed alarmingly. One apparatus began beeping, as if in fear. He wrote, “Damn it all, no, you’ll get him in a couple of days.” Then he erased the words and wrote a new message: “Missa.”

“Missa what?” said Hjelm.

“Is there something we’ve missed?” asked Chavez.

“Ah.” Kerstin Holm, who had been standing at Nyberg’s feet, walked over and sat down on the chair next to his bed. She took his hand, the only patch of skin visible in all that whiteness. She hummed a pure and clear note for ten seconds, then she began to sing. It was the lead alto part in Palestrina’s Missa papae Marcelli.

Nyberg closed his eyes. Hjelm and Chavez just stood there, motionless.

When they returned to police headquarters, Hjelm found a fax lying on his desk. Since Hultin was waiting for them in Supreme Central Command, he cast only a quick glance at it as he headed out of the room. Not until he was out in the hallway did his brain register the name of the sender: Detective Superintendent Erik Bruun of the Huddinge police force. Hjelm went back to his desk.

“I thought it best that you hear this from me rather than in the media,” Bruun had written. “Last night Dritëro Frakulla committed suicide in his cell at Hall Prison. At least now his family will be allowed to stay. Don’t let this affect your work. You were just doing your job. Warm wishes, Bruun.”

Last night, thought Hjelm, holding the fax in his hand. What a strange night. Gunnar Nyberg was shot in Lidingö, Ulf Axelsson was murdered in Göteborg, Dritëro Frakulla killed himself in Norrköping, and Göran Andersson was identified in Algotsmåla. And all of these events were vaguely connected.

What a small country Sweden is, he thought, realizing that he ought to be thinking about something else.

He was still holding the fax when he entered the room of Supreme Central Command. The other members of the A-Unit were already there. It was the first time he’d seen Hultin since they’d returned from Växjö.

“An outstanding job in Växjö.” Hultin gave him a searching look.

Excellent job, thought Hjelm, and for a moment he felt as if he was sinking into a pile of shit and had to stand on top of Dritëro Frakulla’s body in order to keep his nose above the surface. He shook off the image, let go of the sweaty fax, and sat down.

“Thank you,” he said.

“So outstanding that I’m even going to ignore the time between when you found out the perp’s name and when you called in your report.”

Hultin’s praise was seldom one-sided.

“Okay,” he continued calmly. “The surveillance effort has been moved from the Lovisedal board members in 1991 to the Sydbanken board in 1990. Daggfeldt, Strand-Julén, Carlberger, Brandberg, and Axelsson are all dead. Unfortunately, the board included an additional twelve individuals. Eight in Stockholm, two in Malmö, one in Örebro, and one in Halmstad. The sole member from Göteborg has already been taken out. Of the twelve remaining members, we’ve located nine and set up surveillance for them. But one is out of the country, and two we still haven’t found. Both happen to be Stockholmers: a Lars-Erik Hedman and an Alf Ruben Winge. Finding them is our highest priority. An all-points bulletin was put out this morning for Göran Andersson’s green Saab 900. It turns out that for almost a month it’s been in the possession of the Nynäshamn police, without license plates and with the VIN number filed off. The techs are going over it right now, but as is to be expected, the preliminary report says they haven’t found any evidence. As for Andersson himself, we’ve put out a nationwide alert, and the most recent photo of him has been sent to all police districts and border stations. The question now under discussion at the highest level is whether to release his picture to the press and enlist the aid of that Big Detective, the public.”

“I think it would be a mistake,” said Söderstedt. “As long as he doesn’t know that we know about him, he’s going to feel relatively secure about what he does.”

“Of course that’s true,” said Hultin. “It’s just a matter of getting Mörner and the rest of the boys to understand that.”

“Do your best,” said Söderstedt. “You do have a number of secret weapons.”

Hultin gave him a stern look. “Our priorities are as follows,” he went on. “One, locate Hedman and Winge. Two, check up on all potential Stockholm contacts that Andersson may have had, in order to find out where he’s been living since February; we have that dart shop in Gamla Stan, but there must be more contacts, the dart association, or whatever else. Three, put some pressure on Lena Lundberg via that incident man in Växjö, Officer Wrede. See what else she knows. Four, show Andersson’s photograph around in the underworld.”

Hultin paused to consult his papers.

“This is how we’re going to proceed. In Nyberg’s absence, Chavez will go with the Stockholm criminal division to canvass the underworld; Holm will return to Växjö and accompany Wrede to check up on circles of friends and contacts that Andersson may have had in Stockholm; Norlander will check out the dart shop and the dart association, and afterward, along with various foot soldiers, he’ll check out hotels and apartment rental agencies for customers from around the fifteenth of February; and Hjelm and Söderstedt will locate Hedman and Winge. Keep in mind that you have access to the whole damned police force. And as usual, avoid all contact with the press and with Säpo. It’s now twelve noon on the twenty-ninth of May. It’s two months since Göran Andersson began his serial killings. Let’s see to it that the number of victims stops at five, and that the case doesn’t go on for another two months.”

Kerstin Holm went back to Växjö to “accompany” Jonas Wrede, as Hultin had expressed it. He looked a bit jittery when she stepped into his office; he’d thought that he’d no longer have to be reminded of his sins of omission in the Treplyov case. But now he would have to spend yet another day in its shadow. Holm quickly discovered that Göran Andersson’s circle of friends was largely limited to the dart club. Apparently he’d been the club’s star, but even there no one made any real claim to have been his friend. And nobody knew anything about his possible contacts in Stockholm. She and Wrede went to see Lena Lundberg, but she didn’t have the heart to “put some pressure” on the woman. It was obvious to them that she knew nothing.

Jorge Chavez’s excursions through Stockholm’s underworld were not a success. No one recognized Göran Andersson’s photo; he really didn’t expect them to. Chavez thought he’d been given the shittiest assignment of all.

Viggo Norlander felt the same way. In the dart shop they had to look up Andersson in the computer files. The clerk behind the counter remembered the darts with the extralong points but nothing else. Andersson had always ordered his darts by mail. At the dart association, no one knew anything at all about him, although they did find his name on a couple of local lists of results from Småland, always at the very top. Surprisingly, he never seemed to have competed outside Småland, even though several times he’d defeated national competitors.

Norlander finished out the day, with the assistance of a whole team from the NCP and the Stockholm police force, by going around to all the city’s hotels and consulting the rental ads in the morning newspapers, as well as the free classified paper, for February 15 onward. He got no bites at the hotels, but over the phone several people at rental agencies seemed to recognize the vague description of Göran Andersson. But when Norlander presented them with his actual photo, they all said they’d been mistaken. Norlander and his men stubbornly continued their search.

On direct orders from Hultin, the foot soldiers of the Stockholm police also went to the workplaces and residences of the Stockholm victims to show the photograph to colleagues, family members, and neighbors. The Göteborg police did the same among the circles frequented by Ulf Axelsson. No one had seen Göran Andersson anywhere.

Söderstedt and Hjelm struggled to locate the other two members of the Sydbanken board of directors anno 1990.

Arto Söderstedt visited Alf Ruben Winge’s company, UrboInvest, as well as his home in Östermalm. Nobody seemed especially concerned about his absence; apparently he would occasionally disappear from the surface of the earth for a few days at a time and then show up again as if nothing had happened. He had the pecuniary wherewithal to afford this type of luxury, as an astute employee expressed it. Söderstedt made a trip out to the archipelago, to Winge’s impressive summer place on the island of Värmdö, but found the house closed up. And that was about as far as he got.

It had fallen to Paul Hjelm to track down the other missing former board member, Lars-Erik Hedman. Fallen, in a different sense of the word, was also what had happened to Hedman. He’d been the TCO union representative on the Sydbanken board from 1986 until 1990. At the time he was also a leading negotiator within TCO, with aspirations to become the union’s president; he was married, with two children, and he owned an exquisite apartment in Vasastan. Now he lived alone in a two-room place in Bandhagen. He’d been thrown out of TCO and stripped of all board assignments. During a couple of years in the late eighties, he’d managed to combine a serious drinking problem with his work, convincing everyone to keep a lid on it. But after a number of bizarre performances in semipublic situations, the union had lost patience, and Hedman was out in the cold.

Via the social welfare office in Bandhagen, Hjelm traced Hedman to a park bench outside the state liquor store and roughly dragged him home to the man’s filthy apartment. There he ushered in the police officers who had been given the dubious pleasure of protecting Lars-Erik Hedman’s health-by definition, an impossible job.

Hjelm returned to police headquarters, certain that another fallow period in the case lay ahead. He hated the thought. Another dreary month. With the whole summer vacation frozen. And with an elusive Göran Andersson roaming the streets holding an aimed but invisible dart in his hand.

Hjelm was sitting in his office, staring blindly through the police building window at the other police building outside, when the phone rang.

“Hjelm,” he said into the phone.

“Finally,” said a quiet voice with an accent that made Hjelm instinctively switch on the phone tape recorder. The man was speaking a Småland dialect. “It was hard to find you. A difficult switchboard staff. Paul Hjelm, the hero from Botkyrka. You’ve been given nearly as many labels as I have this spring.”

“Göran Andersson,” said Hjelm.

“Before you even think about trying to trace this call, I’ll tell you the best way to avoid being tracked. Steal a cell phone.”

“Forgive me for saying this,” Hjelm said a bit recklessly, “but it goes against the picture we’ve formed of you that you’d call up to brag. It doesn’t fit the psychological profile.”

“If you find somebody who does, let me know,” said Göran Andersson faintly. “No, I’m not calling to brag. I’m calling to tell you to stay away from my fiancée. Otherwise I’ll have to break even more with the psychological profile and take you out too.”

“You’d never be able to take me out,” Hjelm declared, contrary to all recommended psychological advice.

“Why not?” said Andersson, sounding genuinely interested.

“Helena Brandberg, Enar Brandberg’s daughter. You could easily have shot her too and taken along the cassette, but instead you chose to flee and leave the tape in our hands.”

“Was it the tape that identified me?” Göran Andersson said in surprise. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

“No, it wasn’t,” said Hjelm. “How did you think we’d found you?”

“Because of the bank robber in the vault, of course. I was just waiting for that whole episode to come out and for you to start hunting me. But when nothing happened, I decided to proceed. Later he showed up in that police sketch in the newspapers, as if he were still alive. What was that all about?”

Why not tell him the truth? thought Hjelm.

“Säpo buried the investigation out of concern for national security.”

Göran Andersson laughed loudly. Hjelm was on the verge of doing the same. “I guess their original intent kind of backfired,” Andersson said after a moment.

“Why don’t you put a stop to all this and turn yourself in?” said Hjelm quietly. “You’ve very clearly demonstrated your displeasure with the actions of the banks in the late eighties and early nineties. So why not stop? By now you know that we’re watching every damned member of the board.”

“Not exactly… Besides, it’s not a question of demonstrating anything; there have been so many coincidences that it’s no longer a matter of chance. It’s fate. There’s a very fine line separating chance and fate, but once you’ve crossed that line, it’s irrevocable.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you read the newspapers?” Göran Andersson said in surprise.

“Not very often,” Hjelm admitted.

“I’m a folk hero, for God’s sake! Haven’t you read the letters to the editor? Getting a hangover without having had even a glimpse of the party is no fun. That’s the mental state of Sweden today. Everybody who has the opportunity and authority to speak is telling us that we’ve participated in some sort of party, and now we have to pay the price. What party? So that’s what I’m doing; this is the party, the people’s retroactive party! Read the letters, listen to what people are talking about in the city! That’s what I’m doing, and maybe you should too. But no, you’re stuck in an enclosed space, and you think this case is playing out inside there. All the conversations going on in the city are about this. It’s easy to see who’s scared and who’s cheering.”

“Don’t try to tell me that this is some kind of political mission!”

“I’ve only been to one party during those giddy days,” said Andersson a bit calmer. “At the restaurant Hackat & Malet in Växjö on the twenty-third of March 1991. That’s when I found out what the buying frenzy had done.”

“You’re no people’s revolutionary,” Hjelm insisted. “This is all something you’ve invented after the fact.”

“Of course,” said Andersson soberly. “Personally, I’ve always voted conservative.”

This is a very strange conversation, thought Hjelm. This was not the obsessed serial killer who sat and waited for hours in an empty living room, fired two shots through his victim’s head, and afterward listened to jazz. The mystery shattered into a thousand pieces, the myth crumbled away. Misterioso, he managed to think. Maybe the murders had somehow made him sane. On the other hand, maybe this was just the daytime version of Göran Andersson that he was having such a relatively normal conversation with; maybe the nighttime version looked entirely different.

People, thought Hjelm, and then he said, “Just one question, purely from a factual point of view. How did you get into the houses?”

“If you follow somebody long enough, sooner or later you’ll have access to their keys,” said Andersson indifferently. “Then all you have to do is make a quick impression on a lump of clay and grind your own key. It’s no harder than grinding a dart point. And then you check out their habits and anticipate them.”

“Have you been following your next victim long enough?”

There was silence for a moment. Hjelm was afraid the man had hung up.

“Long enough,” said Andersson at last and went on: “But we digress. I just called to tell you to stay away from my fiancée. Otherwise I’ll be forced to kill you too.”

A question had been churning in Hjelm’s mind the whole time. Would it be wise to ask? How would Göran Andersson react? He was even less sure after this weird conversation. Weird by virtue of its apparent normality.

Finally Hjelm decided to ask, possibly against his better judgment. “If you’ve been in contact with Lena, then you must know that she’s carrying your child. How does that child’s future look now?”

Utter silence on the line.

After ten seconds he heard a faint click, and the conversation was over. Hjelm put down the phone, switched off the recorder, plucked out the tape, and went to see Hultin.

“I’ve just talked to him,” said Hjelm.

Hultin looked up from his papers and stared at him through the half-moon lenses of his glasses. “Talked to whom?”

“Göran Andersson.” Hjelm waved the tape.

Hultin pointed at his tape player without changing expression.

They listened to the whole conversation. Once in a while Hjelm thought he might have been unnecessarily passive, and sometimes he’d been downright obtuse, but in general it was a lengthy and astonishing conversation between a serial killer and a police officer.

“I can understand your caution,” said Hultin when the tape was over. “Although maybe you could have fought a little harder to get some leads. But in my opinion there are three clues here: One: Even if we take that final silence to mean that he didn’t know about his fiancée’s pregnancy, he has apparently been in contact with her. She simply hadn’t mentioned that particular detail to him. And with regard to the fact that he made contact with you so soon after you’d been there, it’s likely that they’ve been in contact with each other before; it seems unlikely that their first contact after three and a half months would occur on the very day after you identified him. Holm is going to have put the squeeze on Lena Lundberg down there in Algotsmåla. She knows more than she’s telling us. Two: Andersson responds ‘Not exactly…’ when you say that we’re keeping watch on all of the board members. That may mean that Alf Ruben Winge is the target; he’s the only one that we haven’t yet located. We need to put every effort into finding him. Three: When you ask Andersson whether he’d followed his next victim long enough, he replies ‘Long enough.’ That could mean that he’s ready to proceed tonight. Even though he was active in Göteborg as recently as last night. Okay, that’s not much, but it gives us enough to go on. To summarize: we can probably find out from Lena Lundberg where Andersson has been staying in Stockholm; the next victim is most likely Alf Ruben Winge; and the murder is probably planned for tonight. I’ll call Holm. You call Söderstedt about Winge. Use my cell.”

Hjelm stood motionless for a moment; Hultin really was all fired up. He’d already picked up the receiver and called Kerstin in Växjö. He was almost finished talking by the time Hjelm grabbed Hultin’s cell from the desk and punched in Söderstedt’s number.

“Arto. Winge is going to be the next one, maybe tonight. What have you found out? And where are you, by the way?”

“Here,” Söderstedt said dramatically, throwing open the door. He switched off the cell in his hand. “I was in my office. What have you come up with?”

“Holm is going over to see Lena Lundberg,” Hultin said, seeming not to have noticed Söderstedt’s grand entrance right away. Then he turned to Söderstedt. “Who have you talked to about Winge?”

Söderstedt was quick to reply: “His wife, Camilla, on Narvavägen; two secretaries, or rather office workers, at his company UrboInvest on Sturegatan, Lisa Hägerblad and Wilma Hammar; two of his colleagues at the firm, Johannes Lund and Vilgot Öfverman; plus a neighbor at the closed-up summer house on Värmdö, a Colonel Michel Sköld.”

“How hard did you pressure them?”

“Not particularly hard.”

“Is there any indication at all that anyone knew more than they were telling you? Think carefully.”

“A certain bitterness from his wife… Possibly a general sense of official secrecy at his company.”

“Okay. Do either of you know whether Chavez or Norlander has come back?”

“Both are still out,” said Söderstedt.

“Then we’ll handle this ourselves.” Hultin stood up and put on his jacket. It’s now… five-thirty. Someone may still be at the UrboInvest office; we’ll call on our way over. If no one is there, then we’ll have to look for them elsewhere. And we’ll report all results, positive as well as negative, to each other via cell phone. Avoid using the police radio. I’ll try to get hold of Viggo and Jorge and wait for Kerstin’s call from Algotsmåla. Everything clear?”

“No backup?” Söderstedt asked out in the hall.

“In due time,” said Hultin.

On the steps of police headquarters they ran into Niklas Grundström from Internal Affairs, who glanced at Hjelm. Hjelm automatically paused.

“Riding high on the hog now, Hjelm?” Grundström said quietly.

“Or possibly wallowing in the mud with them,” Hjelm said just as quietly.

“Go on up to see Döös and Grahn,” Hultin said to Grundström. “You’ll find a couple of men who are really in need of your services.”

Grundström watched them run down the stairs, each headed for his own vehicle. Then he went inside and fired the two Säpo agents.

They drove toward Östermalm, racing single file through the rush-hour traffic.

“Vilgot Öfverman is still at the UrboInvest office,” Hjelm reported on his cell. “He’s expecting us. The rest have gone home. I got an address for the office worker, Wilma Hammar, on Artillerigatan. The other two live outside the city. Shall I go see her?”

“Yes,” said Hultin.

The three cars stayed in formation all the way to Humlegården. Just before the intersection of Sturegatan and Karlavägen, Hultin said, “Kerstin reports that she’s over at Lena Lundberg’s home now. She’ll get back to us soon. No contact with Jorge. Viggo is in Ösmo, of all places, checking out an apartment. He’ll join us as soon as he can.”

Söderstedt and Hjelm turned right onto Karlavägen while Hultin continued for some distance along Sturegatan. After a few blocks, Hjelm turned onto Artillerigatan while Söderstedt headed toward Karlaplan and Narvavägen.

Hjelm rang the buzzer labeled “Hammar” and was admitted by a polite male voice. The door on the fourth floor was opened by the owner of that voice, if a voice can really be said to have an owner. A pipe-smoking, solid-looking man, in what is usually called late middle age.

“Criminal Police,” said Hjelm, waving his ID. The man looked utterly confused. “I’m looking for Wilma Hammar. It’s urgent.”

“Come in,” said the man, then shouted, “Wilma! The police!”

Wilma Hammar appeared from the kitchen regions, drying her hands on a dish towel. She was short and stocky and about fifty.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” said Hjelm hastily. “I think you know what this is about. We believe your boss, Alf Ruben Winge, is in mortal danger, and we had the impression from our earlier visit that we hadn’t heard the whole truth about his absence.”

Wilma Hammar shook her head, looking staunchly loyal at whatever the cost. “He disappears for a couple of days every month or so, as I told the other officer. I’m not privy to what he does.”

“Periodic binges, if you ask me,” said her husband, sucking on his pipe.

“Rolf!” said Wilma.

“Do you know about the Power Murders-” Hjelm began just as his cell phone rang.

“Okay,” said Söderstedt on the line. “His wife openly confessed this time-she’s quite drunk. He’s got a mistress. I repeat, he’s got a mistress. His wife doesn’t know who she is, but she’s expressed an interest in biting off the woman’s nipples if we find her.”

“Thanks,” Hjelm said, ending the conversation.

“Do you mean that… Alf Ruben is going to be…” Wilma Hammar looked scared.

“The next victim. Yes,” Hjelm finished her sentence for her. “Don’t try to protect him out of some misplaced sense of loyalty. It might cost him his life. We know he has a mistress. Do you know who she is?”

Wilma Hammar pressed her hand to her forehead.

“I’m afraid that every second counts right now,” said Hjelm to prevent her from putting up any smoke screens.

“All right,” she said. “But I don’t know who she is. I’ve answered the phone a couple of times when she called. She has a Finnish accent. That’s all I know. But Lisa would certainly know.”

“His secretary?”

She nodded. “Lisa Hägerblad.”

“And she lives in… where was it? Råsunda? Do you have her address and phone number?”

Wilma Hammar looked them up in her phone book, then wrote them down on a little yellow Post-it Note that Hjelm stuck on his cell.

“Thanks,” he said and left. On his way down the stairs he punched in the number on the note. It rang ten times before he gave up.

Then Hultin called. “I’m sitting here with the senior employee at UrboInvest, Vilgot Öfverman. After a little persuasion he’s managed to come up with a first name and a description of the mistress. That’s all he knows, I can guarantee it. She’s short, has ash-blond hair cut in a pageboy style, and her name is Anja.”

“I can add that she’s most likely Finnish or a Finland-Swede,” said Hjelm. He heard a beep.

“I’ve got another call,” said Hultin. “Is there anything urgent?”

“The secretary in Råsunda. So far no answer.”

Hultin disappeared for a moment. Hjelm sat in his car, waiting in torment. Söderstedt came driving up in his Volvo and parked in front of him. Their cells rang. Both answered.

“Okay,” said Hultin. “This is a conference call. I’ve got Kerstin on the line, as we used to say in the old days.”

“Hello,” said Kerstin from Algotsmåla. “I’ve just had an intense conversation with Lena Lundberg. It’s true that she’s been in touch with Andersson every now and then over the past three months. She really fooled me. Andersson has told her only that he’s involved in something really important. As we suspected, she hasn’t dared tell him about her pregnancy.”

“Get to the point,” Hultin said sternly.

“I’m going to have to be a bit long-winded to explain. Lena’s brother lives in Stockholm, and the last time he was here to visit, which was only a week before the bank incident, he mentioned for some reason that one of his colleagues has a sister who’s working in the United States but can afford to allow her Swedish apartment to sit vacant. That was what Lena remembered, but she couldn’t recall the name of the woman working in the States, even though her brother did mention the name when he was visiting. But the apartment is apparently somewhere in Fittja, and when she called her brother, she got the name: Anna Williamsson. The rest is up to you.”

“Good job,” said Hultin.

“How is Lena?” asked Hjelm.

“She’s just beginning to realize the connection. She’s not doing very well.”

“See you later,” he said.

“Don’t go and get yourself shot,” she said, and was gone.

“Are the two of you ready?” asked Hultin. “Hang up, and I’ll find out the address.”

They waited, enveloped in the metal casing of their cars.

Hjelm’s phone rang. But not Söderstedt’s, as he noticed through the car window, so it probably wasn’t Hultin.

“Finally,” Chavez said into his ear. “My phone was stolen, believe it or not. I’ve just gotten it back from a junkie. What’s going on?”

“We’re hot on his trail,” said Hjelm. “Where are you?”

“Sergels Torg. I’ve had a hell of a day. I didn’t think Stockholm’s underworld was so… big.”

“Hang up and I’ll call you back in a few seconds. Hultin is checking an address. Göran Andersson’s.”

“No shit,” Chavez said, and hung up.

Hjelm’s cell rang again. Söderstedt picked up his phone at the same time.

“Hello,” said Hultin. “Anna Williamsson’s apartment is at Fittjavägen eleven, fifth floor.”

Hjelm laughed loudly.

“What?” said Hultin, sounding annoyed.

“The hand of coincidence,” said Hjelm, starting up his car. “It’s right next door to my old police station.”

They drove tandem over to Sergels Torg, where they picked up Chavez. He jumped into Hjelm’s Mazda and was given a quick rundown.

“How did Andersson sound?” Jorge asked as they came out onto Essingeleden.

“Unpleasantly sane,” said Hjelm. “As if he couldn’t possibly be the killer.”

Hjelm was trying to make sense of the chronology of events. If the lead turned out to a good one, then Göran Andersson had been living next door to the police station in Fittja while he was planning his crimes. He had gone in and out of the neighboring door, and it was even possible that they’d bumped into each other several times in February and March. Hjelm wondered if he could have seen into the apartment from his old office. Then Andersson had gone off to Danderyd to commit the first murder on the night before Hjelm, in turn, had gone into the immigration office to free the hostages. And while Hjelm was being grilled by Grundström and Mårtensson, Andersson had committed his second murder, on Strandvägen.

What was it he’d said? “There have been so many coincidences that it’s no longer a matter of chance. It’s fate. There’s a very fine line separating chance and fate, but once you’ve crossed that line, it’s irrevocable.”

Paul Hjelm thought he was close to crossing that line.

Even though they parked in the lot belonging to the Huddinge police force, it didn’t occur to any of them to request backup from the station. They entered the building next door, went up four flights of stairs, and assembled outside the door labeled Williamsson. It was utterly quiet in the building.

Hultin rang the bell. No one opened the door. Not a sound came from inside. Hultin rang again. They waited a couple of minutes. Then Hjelm kicked in the door.

They rushed in with their weapons raised. The little two-room apartment was empty. In the bedroom they found a neatly made bed with a bunch of stuffed animals on the pillow. Posters typical of a girl’s room hung on the walls. Chavez bent down and peered under the bed. He pulled out a rolled-up mattress, like a jelly roll, with a blanket as the filling. Under the bed he also found a suitcase made in Russia. It was stuffed with bundles of five-hundred-krona bills.

The living room looked just as unoccupied as the bedroom. The only thing out of place was that one of the shimmering pink posters was bulging out from the wall. It was hard to imagine that someone had been living here for over three months without disturbing anything. A clean saucepan stood on the stove. The inside was damp. A box was attached underneath the kitchen table. Hultin pulled it out.

The first thing that came into view was an assortment of keys, although all of them were blank, without notches or grooves, ready for grinding. Inside the box was another box, printed with Russian letters. Hultin put on a pair of latex gloves and opened it. There were the nine-millimeter cartridges from Kazakhstan, lined up in rows; not even half of them were missing.

Under the box of ammunition was a typed list of seventeen names. Hultin carefully picked it up and snorted an affirmative snort. Kuno Daggfeldt, check, Bernhard Strand-Julén, check, Nils-Emil Carlberger, check, Enar Brandberg, check, Ulf Axelsson, check.

The last check mark was next to the name of Alf Ruben Winge.

Hjelm went into the living room. He lifted off the poster that was hanging slightly crooked. Underneath was a dartboard. But there were no darts.

They searched the wardrobes and chests of drawers. There was no other sign that Göran Andersson had spent nearly three months living there. One rolled-up mattress, one Russian suitcase containing five-hundred-krona bills, one damp saucepan, an assortment of blank keys, a box of bullets from Kazakhstan, a dartboard, and a list of victims to be liquidated. Otherwise he hardly seemed to have been there at all.

Hjelm contacted his former colleagues at the police station next door and gave orders to cordon the place off, set up a nighttime stakeout, and have forensics do a sweep of the apartment. When they emerged into the early summer sunlight, a couple of cold gusts of wind reminded them that it was actually evening-in fact, it was almost eight o’clock. And they were going to have to start over.

Hjelm and Chavez called the secretary, Lisa Hägerblad, and this time she answered. She sounded resistant when Hjelm asked about Winge’s absence. He didn’t have time to tell her how important this was because she hung up. They sighed deeply and headed out to Råsunda to talk to her in person.

Hultin and Söderstedt drove to Stora Essingen, where Winge’s younger colleague, Johannes Lund, lived in a villa with a view of Lake Mälaren. When they called him, all they got was his voicemail. They didn’t leave a message after the beep.

Since Stora Essingen was located significantly closer than Råsunda, Hultin and Söderstedt arrived at their destination first. A man wearing overalls was walking up and down the steep front lawn, zealously fertilizing the grass with a rolling apparatus that looked like a lawnmower not very suited to the job. Visible in the opening of his overalls was a white shirt collar and the knot of a black tie. A cell phone was sticking out of his pocket.

“Well, now,” the man said when he caught sight of Söderstedt. He stopped fertilizing and leaned on the spreader. “You weren’t satisfied with what we told you?”

“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Hultin asked harshly.

“The land line is only for ordinary calls; they go straight to voicemail.” He patted his cell phone. “This is where I get the important calls.” He perceived their momentary silence as stupidity and clarified: “The B-group of calls are recorded, and then my wife goes through them. The A-group come to me directly.”

And so does the A-Unit, thought Söderstedt. “Look up at the sky.”

Johannes Lund looked up at the sky.

“It’s now eight-thirty, and the sun is still up. In a couple of hours the sun will be gone. Then Alf Ruben Winge will also be gone. Do you understand? In a few hours your boss is going to be murdered by a serial killer who has already murdered five very prominent citizens much like yourself.”

Johannes Lund looked at them in surprise. “The Power Murders?” he said. “Oh shit. He’s always struck me as a very unimportant person. This is going to give him a certain… status.”

“Tell us everything you know about these periods of absence,” said Hultin.

“As I said before, I don’t know anything.” Lund cast a pensive glance up at the Essingen sky. “He’s very suspicious of me. He knows that I do my job a damned sight better than he does and that I bring in much more money for him than he does himself. He needs me, but he hates me. That’s it in a nutshell-hates me but needs me. Whatever. He’d never think of sharing any personal confidences with me.”

“Does he have any close friends he would confide in?” asked Hultin.

Johannes Lund laughed. “Good God! We’re businessmen!”

“Have you ever met a short blond Finn with a pageboy hairstyle who goes by the name of Anja?” asked Söderstedt.

“Never.” Lund looked him straight in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

Hultin’s cell phone rang. It was Chavez. “We’re at Lisa Hägerblad’s place on Råsundavägen. Do you have anything to tell us before we go in?”

“A complete washout here,” said Hultin. “Unfortunately.”

“Okay.” Chavez ended the call and put his cell in his jacket pocket.

They rang the doorbell. A lovely blonde in early middle age-you might say, if it didn’t sound so awful, Hjelm thought fleetingly-opened the door, looking worried.

“The police, right?” said Lisa Hägerblad. “I thought I already told you-”

“We don’t have much time.” Hjelm pushed his way inside. He wasn’t sure whether he actually apologized for skipping the normal courtesies.

Lisa Hägerblad’s apartment was huge-three big rooms with high ceilings. The furniture had been the highest fashion in the late eighties: black and white, steel tubing, sharp angles, asymmetries, a slightly nouveau riche chill. It was as if time had stood still in the apartment since the go-go years.

“You are Alf Ruben Winge’s personal secretary,” said Chavez. “It’s clear as hell that you know much more than you’ve told us. We can fully understand that you couldn’t reveal anything in front of the others at the office. But now Director Winge’s life is on the line; the threat is very real and very specific. He’s going to be murdered within the next couple of hours.”

“Oi!” The secretary was evidently using her word for the ultimate shock. “But the white-haired cop didn’t say anything about that.”

“The white-haired cop didn’t know about it at the time,” said Chavez. “But the black-haired one does now. The situation has gotten darker,” he couldn’t help adding.

“Come on now,” said Hjelm. “She speaks with a Finnish accent, her name is Anja, she has a blond pageboy, and Alf Ruben Winge disappears with her to a little love nest with sheets that get more and more stained a couple of days each month. Who is she?”

“I don’t really know,” said Lisa Hägerblad. “Everything you said is true. I often speak to her on the phone, but then I transfer her right over to Alf Ruben. I’ve never even arranged a meeting between them, and I’m the one who usually takes care of things like that. But have you talked to Johannes?”

“Johannes Lund in Essingen? He doesn’t know anything,” said Chavez.

Lisa Hägerblad gave a short laugh. “Sure,” she said. “But since I prefer Alf Ruben to be my boss and not Johannes, I might as well tell you this: Alf Ruben Winge and Johannes Lund are like father and son. Alf Ruben has already chosen Johannes to be his successor and left him the company in his will. If Alf Ruben dies, Johannes will take over, and then we’ll all probably be replaced by younger employees.”

“Do you know whether Lund has ever met Anja?”

“I’m positive that he has. They often have business dinners with their respective companions-meaning, not their respective legal companions.”

Chavez immediately called Hultin.

“Yes?” said Hultin.

“Where are you?” asked Chavez.

“We’re going back to talk to his wife on Narvavägen to find out who his friends are. Right now we’re in”-there was a crackling sound on the line-“the tunnel under Fredhäll. Can you hear me?”

“Faintly. Turn around as quickly as you can and drive back to see Lund. He’s going to inherit UrboInvest. I repeat: Johannes Lund will inherit UrboInvest if Alf Ruben Winge dies. He has every reason not to say a word about Anja. In all likelihood he knows who she is.”

“Okay,” Hultin’s voice crackled. “I’ve got the basics. We’re heading back to Stora Essingen.”

Hultin hung up just as the car exited from the tunnel. He hailed Söderstedt, who was a couple of cars behind him, and they both turned around, reentered the tunnel, and drove across the bridge. A couple of daredevils were swimming down by the rocks of Fredhäll, where the setting sun was beginning to color the waves red.

The beauty of Lake Mälaren made no impression on them. Even though they’d exited the tunnel a minute ago, it was as if the tunnel were still stretched out in front of them. At the end was the glimmer of a dark light by the name of Göran Andersson, but at the moment it was obscured by another dark light by the name of Johannes Lund. Söderstedt sat behind the wheel of his car, doing his best to keep up with the wildly speeding Hultin. He wondered, possibly with a certain anticipatory glee, whether Hultin was again going to make use of his rock-hard skull.

Lund was down by the water, smoking. The blue overalls were draped over the edge of the hammock. The hammock was swaying lightly, and the cloud of smoke, which kept gathering and then dispersing past the back of his robust neck, looked extremely pleased.

Hultin grabbed hold of the hammock as it swung toward him and gave it a yank. Johannes Lund toppled onto the lawn and got green stains on the elbows of his white shirt. When he saw the police officers, he didn’t say a word, just quietly got to his feet. His expression was different now. He was ready to defend his inheritance, tooth and nail.

“Quick now,” said Hultin, his voice expressionless. “Anja.”

“As I said before, I don’t know anything-”

“If Winge dies, you’ll be charged with being an accessory to murder. This is your absolute last chance to talk. If you don’t, I’m going to arrest you and take you down to headquarters.”

“There’s not a chance you can indict me,” said Lund calmly. He looked at his green elbows as he continued to puff on his cigarillo. “I have no idea who this Anja is. And if at some time I actually happened to meet her, nobody ever formally introduced her to me.”

“Are you sure you want to do this the hard way?” asked Hultin quietly.

“Why not?” said Lund cockily. “Go ahead and take me down to headquarters. I’ll be released within an hour. And by then the esteemed Alf Ruben Winge will be dead. It has nothing to do with me.”

“You misunderstood me,” said Hultin as he butted open the man’s right eyebrow. “Going down to headquarters was the easy way. The hard way starts now.”

Johannes Lund stared in surprise at the blood on the hand he’d just rubbed across his forehead.

“Good Lord,” he said. “My wife and kids can see us from the window.”

“And a fucking great show they’re going to witness if you don’t spit out Anja’s name right this minute.”

“I thought police brutality was just something you read about in the papers,” said Lund, and got another taste of it.

Now he lay curled up on the ground, gasping for breath. Hultin leaned down, speaking calmly:

“There’s a little too much at stake right now to be using the kid gloves. Within the next few hours we have the best possible chance of catching Sweden’s worst serial killer in decades. After that he’s going to slip out of our net. Today we happen to know who he’s planning to kill. We’re never going to know that again. And as you can tell, I’m not going to let your career plans save the killer. I realize that you see him as a tool that has suddenly appeared to allow you to take power at UrboInvest. I can even understand it. But if you don’t spit out everything you know about Anja, you’re going to end up seriously injured. It’s as simple as that.”

“She has some kind of Finnish last name,” gasped Lund. “Parkkila, Parikka, Parliika. Something like that. She lives in Söder. That’s all I know.”

“Is her home their love nest?”

“I have no idea. I swear it!”

“No group sex orgies that you and some of your pals have taken part in?” Hultin said diabolically.

“For God’s sake!” moaned Lund.

“Is she a prostitute? A call girl?”

“No. I don’t think so. She doesn’t seem like it. A completely different type. Very shy.”

“Thanks for your cooperation.” Hultin straightened up. “If it turns out that you’ve been lying or withholding information, we’ll be back to develop the essentials of this conversation a bit further. Is there anything you want to add or change?”

“I hope Cop Hell is big enough for the both of you.”

“I’m sure it’s already very crowded,” said Hultin, and left him. “Parkkila, Parikka, Parliika,” he said to Söderstedt as they walked back to their cars. “Which is the most likely?”

“Parkkila and Parikka are both Finnish names,” said Söderstedt. “Probably not Parliika.”

“Check up on Anja Parkkila and Anja Parikka in Södermalm,” said Hultin. “And then all the other Parkkilas and Parikkas in the entire Stockholm area.”

Söderstedt called directory assistance. There was an Anja Parikka on Bondegatan in Söder; no Anja Parkkila. There were six other Parikkas within a reasonable radius: three with the area code 08, two with 018, one with 0175. Söderstedt scribbled feverishly in his notebook.

“What sort of area code is 0175?” he asked.

“Hallstavik-Rimbo,” the operator said and gave him the address. That was the last of them.

“Thanks.” Söderstedt hung up and punched in the number for Anja Parikka on Bondegatan. No answer.

“Anja Parikka,” Söderstedt said to Hultin, who was waiting outside his car. “Bondagatan fifty-three. No answer.”

“I’m going over there.” Hultin jumped into his car. “How many others?” he shouted through the open window as he backed up from Johannes Lund’s property.

“Six Parikkas. Three in the Stockholm area, two in Uppsala, one in Hallstavik-Rimbo.”

“Find out if the Stockholmers are relatives. Get Chavez and Hjelm to check out the rest. They’re already on the north side.” Hultin drove off.

Söderstedt called Chavez. “Her name is Anja Parikka, one a, one r, one i, two ks. Lives in Söder. Probably moved here from Finland. Hultin is on his way over to her place. Where are you?”

“Stuck outside the soccer stadium. Gnaget has just beaten Blåvit, strangely enough. Hundreds of hooligans are streaming past our car.”

Söderstedt gave them the 018 number and the 0175 number. “Find out if they’re relatives of this Anja. In the worst case, you’ll have to go out there.”

“What’s this 0175 number?”

“Rimbo,” said Söderstedt. “I have the addresses. Call me back if they give you any trouble about telling you where they live.”

Söderstedt hung up and started checking out the three 08 numbers. Two in Skärholmen-fortunately, it was quite close; but one was in Hässelby.

The two in Skärholmen turned out to be brothers who had recently moved from Tampere, and they knew nothing about any Anja Parikka.

“Except for my father’s aunt who lives in Österbotten,” said one of the brothers, speaking Finnish. “She’s ninety-three and deaf and blind, but still damned spry. Maybe she’s the one you’re looking for.”

Söderstedt cut him off and called the number in Hässelby. Irene Parikka in Hässelby Villastad was Anja’s older sister.

“How old is she?” Söderstedt asked.

“Twenty,” said Irene Parikka. “She’s studying economics at the university. Jesus, has something happened to her?”

Don’t ask me, thought Söderstedt stupidly. “Not yet, but there’s a chance that something might. It’s extremely important that we locate her. Do you know about an older lover that she might have?”

“There’s a fifteen-year age difference between us. We don’t have much contact with each other. I don’t know anything about her love life, except that it’s been rather chaotic at times.”

“And you don’t know about any place where she might meet with a lover?”

“Lover, lover! What the hell does that word really mean?”

“That’s what this is about. So calm down and think.”

“The only place I know about is her one-room apartment in Söder.”

“Are there any other siblings, or are your parents still alive and living here in Sweden?”

“My older brother died right before Anja was born. Mama and Papa are still alive, although they’re getting a bit senile. They live in Rimbo.”

Söderstedt gave her his cell number and thanked her, as he saw the time slipping through his fingers. Rimbo was over thirty miles from Stockholm. He called Chavez. “How’s it going?”

“We’ve drawn a blank with regard to Uppsala. No answer at the first number; at the second we had a long and confused conversation with an elderly man named Arnor Parikka. An Icelandic emigrant to Finland who took a Finnish surname and then immigrated to Sweden. He kept claiming to be the father of Anja. But after a puzzling conversation it turned out that he’d been castrated by the Russians during the Finnish winter war. I was just going to call the number in Rimbo.”

“Do that. They’re Anja’s parents. You’ll probably have to drive out there.”

“Shit,” swore Chavez. “Tempus fugit.”

“And so should we,” replied Söderstedt.

He sat in his car in Stora Essingen, watching the final fading of the light-and with it any new ideas. He had nothing left to do. He sat there, utterly passive, with his hands on the steering wheel, feeling locked into a deep freeze. Time had flown, and he had absolutely no control over it.

It was past nine p.m. on the twenty-ninth of May, and in all likelihood Göran Andersson was already waiting somewhere for Alf Ruben Winge.

Söderstedt’s cell phone rang. He heard a clacking and crackling on the line, then Hultin. “Anja’s apartment on Bondegatan is empty. I picked the lock. Not a trace. The neighbors don’t know anything. Viggo is here. We’ve found an address book. No mention of Winge in it, but plenty of names and addresses-seems like mostly friends at the university. We’re starting to call them now. Do you know what’s happening with Hjelm and Chavez?”

“No” was all Söderstedt managed to say. A terrible sense of impotence ran through him.

His cell rang again. He made himself answer it and he heard Chavez’s voice, which sounded strangely like his own: “Couldn’t get through to her parents in Rimbo.”

That was all. Göran Andersson was in the process of slipping through their net. The pace had been ratcheted up to maximum speed-and then stalled. The frustration was beyond comprehension.

When his cell rang again, Söderstedt forced himself to answer.

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice a bit shyly. “It’s Irene again. Irene Parikka. Anja’s sister.”

“Yes?” Arto Söderstedt held his breath.

“I think I’ve thought of something,” Irene Parikka said hesitantly. “Maybe it’s nothing.”

Söderstedt waited.

“Mama and Papa have a little cottage in their allotment garden, and I think Anja sometimes uses it. Up on Tantolunden.”

“Do you have a specific address?” He started the car and wound his way toward Essingeleden.

“No, I’m sorry,” said Irene Parikka. “I think the area is called Södra Tantolunden. That’s all I know.”

Söderstedt thanked her sincerely-at least to him it sounded sincere-and called Hultin.

“I think we’ve got him,” he said calmly. “A cottage in an allotment garden in Tanto. The area’s called Södra Tantolunden. Belongs to the Parikka parents.”

Silence.

“Head for City Hall,” said Hultin at last.

Without having any idea why, Söderstedt drove toward City Hall. Stockholm was almost deserted. When he reached the end of Hantverkargatan, Hultin was back on the line.

“Listen up, everybody!” he practically shouted. “We’ve zeroed in on a cottage in Tanto. Rendezvous at the end of Lignagatan. We’re going to handle this ourselves. Everyone head over there immediately. Except for Arto. I’ll call you in a second.”

Hjelm stomped on the gas, and Chavez felt his torso thrust into the backseat.

They were the first to arrive. The place was desolate. Tanto was a rural black hole in the middle of the big city. Here and there a little light flickered in a few cottages up on the slope of the hill.

Somewhere up there was Göran Andersson.

They sat in the car in silence. Not a word, not a movement. Hjelm smoked a cigarette. Chavez didn’t seem to notice.

A taxi glided up alongside the Mazda. For one brief, awful moment Paul Hjelm thought it was Andersson, come to “take him out,” as he’d said on the phone. But out of the cab stepped Kerstin Holm. She jumped into the backseat.

“Straight from the airport,” she said quietly. “Do you mind if I ask for an update?”

“Anja Parikka’s parents have an allotment garden up there.” Hjelm felt Kerstin’s hand touch his shoulder. Briefly, very briefly, he placed his hand on hers. Then they separated.

A Volvo Turbo came racing onto the truncated piece of road that was Lignagatan. Hultin and Norlander jumped out and got into the Mazda. It was starting to get crowded.

“Arto will be here soon with a map.” Hultin gave Kerstin a nod. “And you’re back. Good. I got hold of a guy in charge of the property records at City Hall. Arto is meeting with him in the basement archives over there.”

“We’re not bringing in any marksmen or anything like that?” Hjelm said hopefully.

“No,” said Hultin. And that no said a lot.

It took awhile before Söderstedt’s vehicle came bumping along Lignagatan. He got out, brandishing a map. They all got out, and Hultin took the map and studied it.

“All right, people!” Hultin shouted. They gathered around. “Here we have the cottage.” He pointed. “Okay, can everybody see? It’s on the other side of a small path at the very top of the hill. We can make our way up to this other cottage by the same path, if we’re damned careful. It’s the cottage right across, and also the one closest to our target cottage. The door is here, facing away from the Parikka cottage. That’s our position one. One of you will go up there first and find out whether there’s any movement inside the target cottage.

“There are a couple of other cottages nearby that look like possible sites for keeping watch, both on the other side of the target cottage; you’ll need to make a roundabout approach on the top side, here. One of the cottages is catercorner, on the opposite side; this one here, position two. And the other is right below, on the slope leading down to Hornstull Beach; here, position three.

“With these three positions we’ll have the target cottage surrounded so that no one can go in or out undetected. Position one covers the entire front side of the target, facing the path. Position two covers the area above, as well as a good part of the back. Position three covers the area below and also part of the back. We’ll put in our first man at position one. Then another will join him, since that’s going to be our primary observation post. One officer at position two, and one at position three. Is that clear? We’ll establish a rendezvous point at the very bottom of the hill and take care of liaison from there. That’s where Norlander and I will be positioned, in charge of the operation.”

It was hard to tell whether Norlander was relieved or disappointed. Hultin ensured his goodwill by saying, “Viggo’s role is the most important of all. He’s your closest immediate covering fire. Now, who’s best at picking a lock quietly and quickly?”

The members of the A-Unit looked at one another. “I can do it,” said Chavez.

“Okay,” said Hultin. “You’ll be the first man up there. Hjelm will follow you. When we reach the rendezvous point at the bottom of the hill, you’ll head straight up the slope. It’ll be a bit like mountain climbing at first; then it levels out. The first cottage you’ll reach is visible from the rendezvous point. This one here.” Hultin pointed at the map and drew orange lines that glowed faintly in the night. “Go past that cottage and three more; you can see them here. The path turns right, above position one; you should be able to see it after you’ve passed the fourth cottage. When you see the path, the position-one cottage will be right in front of you. All this applies to you too, Paul.”

“Question,” said Hjelm. “Do we know that the three positions are all unoccupied?”

Hultin looked at him. “No, but in all probability they are. Most people come out here only in the daytime to work in their gardens. But there is a chance that the positions could be occupied. If so, we’ll have to make other plans.”

“Plus your route will take us across a whole bunch of allotment gardens. What if someone is home in one of the cottages and starts yelling because we’re trampling their prize-winning tulips?”

“Cautious and silent pattern of movement applies, of course,” said Hultin, still looking at him. Could Hultin have overlooked all this? Hjelm wondered. “Stay as far away from the cottages as possible. There’s no question of launching an evacuation. Andersson would be sure to notice.

“All right, position two-Kerstin. Position three-Arto. You’ll take off at the same time as Hjelm, after Jorge gives the all-clear from up at the first position, but you’ll head left from the rendezvous point before making your way up the slope. You’ll run into a small road, here, and follow it around. When the road intersects with the path, here, start counting: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine cottages. At the ninth, Kerstin will go straight ahead for three more cottages. The third one is position two. The door faces the top of the hill and should be completely hidden from the target cottage.

“Arto will continue along the road, past four more cottages, until the road starts climbing steeply. At the fourth cottage, after Kerstin has turned off, you’ll head in too. Again it’s the third cottage straight ahead. The location of the door is a little trickier and might be visible from the target cottage. Caution will be needed to force the lock in the dark without being heard or seen.”

Hultin paused, then nodded, and they all rushed down the grassy slope and into Tantolunden, which was remarkably pitch-black, an area of silent darkness in the middle of the noisy city’s shimmer of lights.

“This will be the rendezvous point,” whispered Hultin, as he folded up the map and handed out small flashlights and walkie-talkies that he fished out of a shoulder bag. “Use the earpieces. And keep your cells turned on, as backup, but for God’s sake don’t call each other unless it’s a real emergency. The ringtone will be heard. And the flashlights are also only for emergencies. Do Jorge, Kerstin, and Arto have adequate tools for picking the locks? If not, I’ve got some in our little emergency kit here.”

Each of them accepted their lock-pick tools.

“Okay, get going,” said Hultin.

Jorge began making his way up the slope and soon disappeared from sight. They waited five long minutes.

Then they all heard Chavez’s voice in their earpieces: “Okay,” he whispered, out of breath. “Position one has been taken. It’s empty, thank God. Paul, the second cottage that you’ll pass is occupied. A man is sitting on the terrace and looking out toward Årstaviken. You can pass him by going around behind. The other places are empty. As for the target cottage, here’s what I can see: dark shades pulled down in the windows. But there’s definitely movement inside. It looks as if a light is on. Göran Andersson is here. I repeat, our man is here. Let’s get going.”

“I’m sending in the rest of the troops now,” said Hultin. “Don’t do anything before everybody’s in place. Over and out, for now.” Hultin’s sign-off was surprisingly unorthodox.

Holm and Söderstedt headed off to the left, while Hjelm followed in Chavez’s footsteps. The man in the second cottage was no longer sitting on the terrace. He was poking about among his rosebushes in the middle of the night. Hjelm crouched down behind a shrub and waited for three minutes that seemed like hours. The man was a black silhouette against the darkness. He moved slowly, as if slightly drunk, among his precious roses. In his earpiece Hjelm heard Kerstin reach her position, then Arto. Their cottages were also empty. He heard them waiting tensely, but there was nothing he could do. Finally the man seemed to have had enough of his nightly wandering and went back to the terrace. He belched loudly as Hjelm slipped past behind him and joined Chavez, who peered at him, wide-eyed, through the dark.

“What the hell happened?” he said.

“Your guy decided to fuss with his roses for a while. I was crouched down a couple of yards away. Is anything going on?” he asked, and then reported on his walkie-talkie that he was in position.

“No,” said Chavez.

Hultin’s voice came over on the walkie-talkie: “Good. Can anyone see an opening anywhere in the blinds?”

“Position one,” said Chavez. “No opening from here.”

“Position two,” said Holm. “None here either. View of the target not as good as I’d hoped. Can only make out the top half of one window with a shade pulled down.”

“Position three,” said Söderstedt. “I can see a slight gap with some light showing through on one side of the shade, but that’s all. No movement visible in the gap. I’ll let you know if I see anything.”

Hjelm turned to Chavez, who was nothing but a silhouette. “How the hell can you tell that he’s here?” he whispered.

“I could swear that I saw some sort of movement inside,” Chavez whispered in reply. “And Arto can see a light. Oh yes, goddamn it. He’s here all right.”

Seen from their angle, the little cottage on the other side of the path was dark. There was nothing to indicate anyone’s presence.

The night was black and raw, the moon only a thin sliver that gave off almost no light. A few stars glimmered faintly in the background. It was like being way out in the country. Göran Andersson’s home territory, thought Hjelm.

They were shivering in their darkened cottages.

They waited. Hultin was thinking on his feet down at the base of the hill. There was no real plan; that much was clear. The plan was taking shape as it went along.

“Should we make contact?” ventured Hjelm.

There was silence for a moment.

“It’s most likely a hostage situation,” Hultin said pensively. “He’s probably sitting inside, holding Alf Ruben Winge and Anja Parikka. Making contact too abruptly could spell their death.”

“Why would he suddenly take hostages?”

“Because of what you mentioned in your conversation with him. Presumably Winge arrived with Anja. Andersson let Helena Brandberg live, even though it cost him the cassette tape. He doesn’t want to kill Anja. He has his list, and he’s going to follow it to the letter. Right now he’s sitting in there with one person who’s on the list and one person who’s definitely not, and he’s not really sure what to do about it.”

Silence again. A cold wind swept past the little cottage, blowing a few clumps of grass into the air, which tumbled about as if in slow motion.

“There’s another option,” Hjelm said into the walkie-talkie.

“What’s that?” said Hultin.

“He could be waiting.”

“For what?”

“For me,” said Paul Hjelm.

Absolute silence now. The small bursts of noise from the nighttime traffic off in the distance slipped into the silence, becoming part of it. An owl hooted quietly. That too was part of the silence.

Chavez stirred. He’d pulled out his gun.

Time stood still.

Then a crackling in their earpieces.

“I saw it,” said Arto Söderstedt. “I saw a gun in the gap next to the window shade. It moved past for a second. He’s walking around inside.”

Time contracted. Long, muffled waves for each second that ticked by in their brains.

Hultin’s silence.

The decision.

Still no sound from the little target cottage. But something had changed inside, not visible but palpable.

Moving through the cottage was a presence, possibly several.

Then Hjelm’s cell phone rang.

A ringtone that was normally quite faint magnified itself in the silence to a mad peal of bells.

He answered as fast as he could.

“There, I heard the ringtone,” Göran Andersson said on the line. “Very clearly. So you’re in the cottage across the way. I’ve been waiting for you.”

For a good long moment Hjelm couldn’t utter a sound. Then he merely said, in an unrecognizable voice, “Are they alive?”

“In the case of one of them, it’s a matter of definition,” said Göran Andersson. “The girl is scared but alive. The other one already looked dead by the time he got here.”

Again silence. Chavez held his walkie-talkie close to the cell phone. The conversation was being transmitted to the other cottages.

“What are you going to do?” said Hjelm.

“What am I going to do?” Andersson said sarcastically. “What are you going to do?”

Hjelm took a deep breath. “I’m coming in.”

Now it was Andersson’s turn to be silent.

“All right,” he said then. “But no gun stuck in the back of your waistband this time. And no walkie-talkie.” Andersson hung up.

“Jan-Olov?” Hjelm said into Chavez’s walkie-talkie.

“You don’t have to do this,” said Hultin.

“I know.” Hjelm handed his service revolver to Chavez, then put his jacket, walkie-talkie, and cell phone on the floor.

Jorge looked at him through the darkness, placed his hand on Hjelm’s arm, and whispered, “Make some sort of noise for a few seconds when you go in, so I can get over to the left window. I’ll keep watch outside.”

Hjelm nodded, and they stepped out into the night. Jorge stopped behind the cottage, while he continued on around the corner.

Wearing only a T-shirt and trousers, with his hands raised, he crossed the little path between the cottages. Those few yards seemed endless. He thought he would freeze in the cold.

For a moment he thought he was running up the stairs to the immigration office in Hallunda.

The door opened slightly. No one was visible. Only the glare of a light.

He stepped onto the small terrace and slipped through the doorway. Seeing a little metal wind chime hanging from the doorpost, he purposely bumped his head against it. While it jangled, out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Chavez crossing the path.

The light from the small ceiling lamp was actually quite weak, but it blinded him because his eyes had become accustomed to the dark. It took a moment before he could distinguish anything else.

On the floor in the far right corner were two figures, tied up, with tape over their mouths. Anja Parikka’s pale blue eyes were staring at him above the tape; Alf Ruben Winge’s eyes were closed. She was sitting up; he was lying down, curled in a fetal position. Their bodies were not touching.

Along the wall on the left stood a small, unmade bed.

The love nest, thought Hjelm without thinking.

On a chair just to the left of the door sat Göran Andersson. He looked exactly like the photographs and was smiling a bit shyly at Hjelm. In his hand he held Valery Treplyov’s gun with the silencer attached. It was aimed straight at Hjelm’s chest, six feet away.

“Close the door,” said Göran Andersson. “And go over there and sit down on the bed.” Hjelm did as he was told.

“All right then,” said Andersson, keeping the gun aimed at him. “And the sharpshooters are swarming all over the Tanto cottages, am I right?”

Hjelm didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.

“Do you remember what I said I’d do if you kept pestering Lena?” Andersson said with a crooked smile. “I just talked to her. From here. She’s not doing very well.”

“That’s hardly our fault, is it?” Hjelm said tentatively.

“My question was whether you remember what I said I’d do,” said Andersson, his tone a bit harsher.

“I remember.”

“And yet you still came in here?”

“You’re not a murderer.”

Göran Andersson laughed loudly, but it sounded strained. “A rather strange thing for a man to say with a gun pointed at him that’s already killed five people.”

“Come on,” said Hjelm. “I know you want to put a stop to this whole thing.”

“Is that right?” Andersson said calmly.

“I’m not really sure when that change happened. It’s possible to pinpoint it to several different moments. Do you know?”

“No.”

“The first two murders were perfect crimes. You left not a single scrap of evidence. Carried them out with real thoroughness. Then all of a sudden, in Carlberger’s living room, as you stood there wrapped in that marvelous music and pulling the slugs out of the wall with your tweezers, something happened. You left a bullet behind. Was that when you started to think about things?”

“Go on.” Göran Andersson’s face was impassive.

“Then you took a long break, which made us draw a lot of erroneous conclusions. You could have stopped there and returned home to your pregnant wife.”

“Is that actually what you think?”

“Not really,” said Hjelm. “No one who shoots another human being will ever be the same. Believe me, I know. But it’s still possible to go on living. Put down your gun, and you’ll get to see your child grow up.”

“Cut that out, and go on.”

“Okay. It took some time for you to plan the first three murders in such an elegant fashion. The victims had to come home late and alone, and within a reasonably tight time frame. It took two days in both cases. Then you had to plan the rest. Although I wonder whether you really needed a month and a half for the planning, from the early morning hours of April the third until the early morning hours of May the eighteenth. What were you doing all that time? Hesitating? Pondering?”

“Mostly I was listening. As I told you on the phone. I traveled around on public transportation back and forth, taking subways and buses and commuter trains. Everywhere people were talking, I sat and listened; listened to their theories and ideas and thoughts and feelings. Maybe you’re right that I hesitated. But everyone’s reactions made me go on.”

“One little question,” said Hjelm. “Why the two shots to the head? Why such… symmetry?”

“You’ve been to Fittja,” Andersson said wearily. “Didn’t you count the bullets? Seventeen board members, thirty-four bullets. Everything fit together. Can you even understand how well everything fit? That ox in the bank gave me my weapon, the tape that was playing while I was getting beat up, and two bullets per board member. It was all so precise. And two shots to the head are the surest way to kill a victim if you only have two bullets at your disposal. It was as simple as that.”

“But then there was the cassette you left behind. Surely you could have grabbed it and taken it along, even without killing the daughter. But you left it. Why? It was your great source of inspiration. And then what happened? Was it unbearable without the music? Did it force you to look deep into your heart?

“And then the conversation with me, which you very deliberately sprinkled with the clues. And finally this. You knew all about Winge’s habits, you knew that he’d be coming out here with Anja. And you knew that you wouldn’t be able to kill Anja. You sat here as usual, waiting for your victim to arrive. Maybe they’d gone out for a walk, left their love nest and gone to a restaurant, and then you slipped inside. But this isn’t the usual living room. You knew very well that Winge wouldn’t be coming here alone. You set yourself up for this situation. It’s your own, possibly subconscious, but very intentional creation. You wanted to bring me in here. Why me? And why did you want this particular situation?”

Göran Andersson stared at him. Only now did Hjelm notice how tremendously tired the man looked. Tired of everything.

“There are so many reasons,” Andersson said. “All the strange connections that have landed me here. Coincidences piling up that I thought were fate. Maybe that’s what I still think. But without the music, the mystery disappeared. And you, you in particular, Paul Hjelm, were the final nail in the coffin. The empty apartment that I heard about turned out to be right next door to the police station in Fittja. Okay, that was to be expected; it was part of the overriding pattern. The fact that the hostage drama took place out there, at the very same time as my first murder, and that it stole all the media attention from me… that was also only natural. Everything was conspiring.

“But later, when it turned out that you had been out to my house in Algotsmåla and talked to Lena, that you were the one who was hunting me, then I realized that our fates were interlinked, yours and mine. I know that you were about to lose your job because of that hostage drama. I know that you, just like me a few months earlier, stood in your row house in Norsborg and looked at yourself in the mirror but saw no reflection. I know that you felt the ground being ripped out from under your feet. I know that you were dangling in midair and wishing death on the police top brass because they didn’t back you up but just hovered somewhere high over your head. Maybe you even thought about killing the whole lot of them.

“Don’t you understand how alike we are? We’re just two ordinary Swedes that time has left behind. Nothing we believed in exists anymore. Everything has changed, and we haven’t been able to keep up, Paul. We signed up for a static world, the most Swedish of all characteristics. With our mother’s milk we imbibed the idea that everything would always remain the same. We’re the paper that people reuse because they think it’s blank. And maybe it is. Completely blank.”

Göran Andersson stood up and went on.

“The next time you look at yourself in the mirror, it’ll be me that you see, Paul. In you I will live on.”

Paul Hjelm sat mutely on the bed. There was nothing to say. There was nothing he could possibly say.

“If you’ll excuse me,” said Göran Andersson, “I’ve got a dart game to finish.”

He took out of his pocket a measuring tape and a dart. He placed the dart on the table in front of him, and with the gun still aimed at Hjelm, he eased over to the two figures in the corner. From Alf Ruben Winge’s passive, corpulent body he measured a specific length, and then drew a mark on the floor a short distance from the chair. Then he sat down again, put the measuring tape on the table, and picked up the dart, weighing it in his hand.

“You know how to play five-oh-one,” he said. “You count backward from five-oh-one down to zero. When I hit that bull’s-eye in the bank in town, I only had the checkout left. I still do. And I’ve never left a game unfinished. Do you know what the checkout is?”

Hjelm didn’t answer. He just stared.

Andersson held up the dart. “You have to hit the right number inside the double ring in order to get down to zero. That’s what I’m going to do now. But the game doesn’t usually go on for four months.”

He stood up and went over to the mark on the floor.

“Ninety-three and three-quarters inches. The same distance that I measured in the living rooms.”

He raised the dart toward Hjelm. Hjelm merely watched. Anja Parikka stared wildly. Even Winge had opened his eyes. They were fixed on the dart.

“The same dart that I pulled out of the bull’s-eye back home in Algotsmåla on February fifteenth,” he said. “It’s time for the checkout.”

He raised the dart, aimed, and hurled at the spare tire that was Alf Ruben Winge’s stomach. The dart stuck in his paunch. Winge’s eyes opened wide. Not a sound slipped out from under the tape.

“The double ring,” said Göran Andersson. “Checkout. The game is over. It was certainly a long one.”

He went over to Hjelm and crouched down a short distance from the bed. The gun was still aimed at Hjelm.

“When I play,” said Göran Andersson lightly, “I’m a very focused person. When the game is over, I’m very ordinary. The tension is released. I can go back to daily life with renewed energy.”

Hjelm still couldn’t get a sound across his lips.

“And daily life,” said Göran Andersson, “daily life involves dying. I’d like you to grab my body when I fall.”

He stuck the silencer into his mouth. Hjelm couldn’t move. The hostage hero turned to stone, he managed to think.

“Checkout,” Göran Andersson said thickly.

The shot was fired.

But the report was louder than it should have been.

Andersson fell forward. Hjelm caught his body. He thought the blood running over him was his own.

He looked up at the window above Anja and Winge. Shattered glass was everywhere. The shade had been pulverized. Jorge Chavez stuck his black head into the room.

“The shoulder,” he said.

“Ow!” said Göran Andersson.