Bad Blood

18

Supreme Central Command finally lost its quotation marks. The decisive indication was that the whiteboard had been set up behind Hultin’s desk. It was time for brainstorming. The markers lying there seemed to be simmering with impatience.

The case had let out a giant blob of ketchup. First came nothing, then nothing-and then everything. So far perhaps only a little of America’s favorite condiment garnished the Swedish bread. Perhaps the sandwich would soon be covered in sticky red sludge.

In any case, the Kentucky Killer had begun. Two definite victims had, in the course of a few hours, been added to the probable one. Things had been set in motion, possibly in escalating motion.

It was after nine o’clock at night. Everyone was there. No one even thought of complaining about the unreasonable working hours.

Jan-Olov Hultin was rummaging through his papers, then found what he was looking for, stood, grabbed a marker, and got the meeting going.

“So,” he said evenly, drawing squares and arrows on the whiteboard, “at eight-ten on the third of September, the Kentucky Killer arrived in Stockholm under the name Edwin Reynolds after having murdered the literary critic Lars-Erik Hassel at Newark International Airport outside New York during the night. After his arrival, it seems he promptly went to Riala in Roslagen; the degree of decomposition of drug dealer Andreas Gallano’s body suggests that he was murdered just over a week ago, which matches up quite well with the Kentucky Killer’s arrival in Sweden. Andreas Gallano had escaped from Hall and apparently taken shelter in a cabin that, by way of various fronts, belongs to a tax evader named Robert Arkaius, who had once been Gallano’s mother’s lover. What happened in the cabin we don’t know, other than that the Kentucky Killer put Gallano to death with the method he is in the habit of using. There is reason to believe that he then lived there for over a week with an increasingly stinking corpse in the cellar. That he almost immediately made his way to such a perfect hiding place indicates previous contact with Gallano or his drug syndicate. This must be verified.

“Then what happened? Here it gets complicated. Gallano’s beige Saab is discovered near the site of a double murder. Of course, it may have been there for a long time, for completely unrelated reasons, but for the time being, all signs indicate that, the night before last, on the twelfth of September, the Kentucky Killer took Gallano’s car to Frihamnen. There with his usual pincers he murdered two more people: an as-yet-unidentified man, whom we’ll call John Doe as the Americans do, with four shots to the heart; and a thirty-three-year-old civil servant with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eric Lindberger. Just as Hjelm and Chavez were finding Gallano, Lindberger’s corpse was discovered at a Lidingö boat club by the retired executive Johannes Hertzwall. Eric Lindberger has the same vampire bite on his neck as Gallano and Hassel did. An examination by Strandell has shown that he died at about the same time as John Doe; that is, less than twenty-four hours ago, and the boat club is situated a reasonable distance from Frihamnen. So it is extremely likely that Eric Lindberger is the corpse that was seen being shoved into a decade-old dark blue Volvo station wagon with a license number that starts with B by a man with a balaclava at two-thirty in the morning.”

Hultin paused. His students were like lit lightbulbs, in front of the horribly growing diagram on the whiteboard.

“May I suggest a scenario?” he continued. “The Kentucky Killer goes to Frihamnen to commit a pair of seemingly well-planned murders. He travels there in Gallano’s car, but has another one waiting.

“He commits his crimes in some deserted cellar, wraps the victims in blankets, and starts to load them into the second car. Then he’s surprised by a gang of attorneys who are lost, brandishing bandy sticks and bottles of vodka. That means that he has time to load only one of the bodies-Lindberger. He leaves behind the other, our unidentified twenty-five-year-old John Doe. Convinced that his car has been reported to the police, he thinks he has to get out of there quickly and hurries to Lidingö, where he dumps the victim rather carelessly and scrams.”

“In this scenario,” said Gunnar Nyberg, “you’re assuming that the break-in at LinkCoop’s warehouse doesn’t have anything to do with the murders.”

“I can’t get a failed break-in at a warehouse to fit. Does anyone here have an opinion?… No? No, I think it’s an irrelevant event. One thought, of course, is that the break-in failed because the burglars happened to witness a considerably worse crime and got out of there.”

“Or maybe this,” said Kerstin Holm thoughtfully. “You’re probably right that it was a well-planned crime, but only for Lindberger. Sure enough, the poor guy had a visit from the pincers in the neck. But if the Kentucky Killer shot someone in the heart, too, then that’s the first time he’s broken the pattern. It could be that our John Doe is the burglar, and that he happened to see the murderer as he was dragging his victim, and was discovered and shot. I would bet the Lindberger murder was planned, but the John Doe murder wasn’t.”

Hultin nodded calmly. “Back to basics, then. Why did the Kentucky Killer come to Sweden? He obviously knew Gallano in some way, but was Gallano the reason he emigrated? Once he’d done what he came to do-murder Gallano-wasn’t the rest just a matter of continued bloodthirstiness? That after nine claustrophobic days of increasing corpse stench, his desire became too strong, and it was time to kill again? Or was Gallano more of a means than an end? Was Eric Lindberger the real target? The strange murder location would suggest it-you don’t just go down to the deserted Frihamnen at night to search for victims. No, he knew Lindberger would be there. So Eric Lindberger must also be carefully investigated.”

“Of course, it’s not at all certain that Eric Lindberger was there,” said Kerstin Holm. “He could have been brought there. The killer could have randomly chosen him as a victim in the city, chloroformed him, and brought him to a deserted place with suitable buildings. Or perhaps they planned to meet for one reason or another, and Lindberger came along willingly. Both the victim and the location might very well be random.”

Hultin nodded; he was getting used to his scenarios being torn to shreds. Was he starting to lose his edge? Was it time to hand the controls over to his first officer? And Kerstin Holm (who many years later would actually become his successor) was very much a first officer at present.

“We need to find the site of the murder,” he said. “There must be hundreds of places just in the block near where we found John Doe.”

“Well, LinkCoop is closest,” said Nyberg, remembering his visit to Täby.

Hultin gathered his strength. “The problem is, we know too little about the Kentucky Killer,” he said. “You have the best idea of what’s up, Kerstin. Isn’t there a lot missing?”

“If we’re going to have a chance of finding the Swedish link,” she said, “we’ll probably have to go to the United States and consult the FBI and Ray Larner. That’s my assessment. It’s not at all certain that the Americans would recognize a Swedish link if it jumped up and bit them on the ass. They hardly know where Sweden is. Swiss watches and polar bears in the street…” Holm paused. “He’s slipped through our hands this time, thanks to your lost attorneys. We can investigate Gallano, the drug syndicate, Lindberger, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and LinkCoop all we want, but I think the only reasonable path is the American one. We have to know who he is and what he’s doing in Sweden. Once we understand these things, we can catch him. We can’t otherwise.”

“Now it’s been confirmed that he’s here,” said Hultin. “It wouldn’t have been possible for us to waste the taxpayers’ money on a visit to America before it was certain. Now it is. And now we have quite a bit to work with-and, for that matter, to offer the FBI. Tomorrow I’ll ask Mörner for permission to send a pair of you to the United States. One would be the person who knows the material best. That’s you, Kerstin. And the second would be a more, hmm”-he mumbled, giving Hjelm a sidelong glance-“a more action-oriented person.”

Hjelm gave a start. Against his will he was being yanked away just as things were starting to move. He had just discovered a horribly tortured and rotten corpse in a basement in the wilderness; tonight when he went home, he would have to find out whether his son was a junkie; and now he was being given notice of a trip to the United States. Along with Kerstin, of all people. It was too much.

“Lagnmyr is out to get you,” said Hultin expressionlessly. “It’s a good opportunity to beat it.”

“I’m going to the United States?” Hjelm said, confused. “And what the hell is Lagnmyr?”

“Svante Ernstsson bore as much of the brunt as he could,” Hultin continued, unperturbed, “but Lagnmyr saw right through him. I don’t think he even knew about the stakeout spot before you ruined it, but he doesn’t like you, that much is for certain. So go to the United States. Tell Larner about your KGB theory. I’m sure that’ll go over well.”

“But I can’t go to the United States,” Hjelm continued, still confused. “It’s all happening here.”

“We’ll see what happens with Mörner.” Hultin tried to smooth things out. “Pack a bag anyway. The provisional division of labor this evening is as follows: Paul and Kerstin go to the United States, Jorge takes on Gallano, Gunnar works on LinkCoop, Viggo takes John Doe, and Arto takes Lindberger and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Does that sound reasonable?”

No one spoke. It was getting late, after all.

“One more thing,” said Hultin quietly. “We can’t keep this from the media any longer. It’s begun-they’re going to whip up the mood and hunt for headlines. Swedes are going to install hundreds of thousands of extra locks on their doors; they’ll procure thousands of weapons, legally and illegally; and security firms will do great business. So far American serial killers have been an exotic but distant threat, but all at once we’re coming a great deal closer to the American social climate. The last breath of relative innocence is going to disappear in a tornado of general mistrust. Everyone will be looking over his shoulder.”

Hultin leaned forward across his desk.

“The devil is here, ladies and gentlemen, and even if we catch him, no exorcism will be able to drive out what he brought with him.”