Black Lies, Red Blood

Thirty-nine

“We’re old sports buddies, after all,” Berglund explained.

He was smiling quietly to himself, as if remembering something. The others-Bea, Ottosson, and Fredriksson-waited.

“Sometimes we run into each other in town. Kurt works downtown, you might say, collects cans and panhandles a little change from people. He’s shrewd in some ways, inventive, but a little out of his mind sometimes. It’s hard to know what he’s thinking. He often starts crying, but then he was a painter.”

“Why do painters in particular cry?” Bea wondered, but Berglund continued as if he hadn’t heard the question.

“This morning when I was out with the pooch, I ran into Kurt outside the old prison. He had been sleeping on a boat down at Flottsund and was on his way to town.”

“Walked from Flottsund? That must be ten kilometers at least.”

Berglund smiled at Fredriksson.

“Kurt has always been in good shape. And he can’t take the bus because then he throws up. Balance, you know. And a bus ride is a lot of cans.”

Beatrice could not keep from smiling at her colleague.

“Today was a good day for Kurt, he remembered things. He was at the party at Ingegerd Melander’s and remembered the quarrel between her and Johnny Andersson. It was about Bo Gränsberg. She accused Johnny of having caused Bosse’s death.”

“Caused, but not murdered?”

“That’s how Kurt understood it,” said Berglund. “What the exact words were he doesn’t know, but it was a big conflict.”

“Was it about something as common as jealousy?” Beatrice threw out.

“I don’t think so,” said Berglund. “Bosse had been out of the picture for a month.”

“Why haven’t the others at the party said anything?” said Beatrice. “They should have heard what the quarrel was about too.”

“They were gone,” said Berglund. “Kurt was the last one still hanging around.”

“So where the hell is Johnny?”

Ottosson’s interjection put the finger on a sore point. Because even though there had been a search warrant out for Johnny for several days and they plowed through his circle of acquaintances for tips, it was as though he had been swallowed up by the earth.

“Dead, maybe?” said Fredriksson.

The discussion went on, they considered various angles, looking for connections between the various investigations. Fredriksson felt like he’d heard it all before and felt more and more tired, excused himself that he had to go see Forss, and lumbered off.

The last he heard was Ottosson, as he asked what business Anders Brant had at Ingegerd Melander’s, and then Beatrice’s reply.

“Urgent needs.”

The meeting with Forss was not a long one. The prosecutor decided not to do anything for the moment about the trouble at the train station. There was no reason to arrest any of those involved. The alleged crimes were too minor.

Fredriksson was both pleased and displeased with the decision. Pleased because he could immediately put this behind him, and displeased because he wanted at least one of the creeps he had encountered in the questioning, the one who probably wrecked the hot dog stand, to have to rattle bars for a while, preferably a long while, and preferably soon.

Instead of returning to the conversation outside of Ottosson’s office, he looked up Myhre. Fredriksson guessed that he was sitting hunched over all the binders and other material they had taken from Jeremias Kumlin’s office.

“Nice of you to visit,” said Myhre without any ceremony, looking sincerely happy that Fredriksson in particular came by.

Myhre was a workhorse. There were those who thought that the success of the financial unit depended on his efforts. He had been recruited from Malmö in connection with the former police commissioner’s decision to make financial crimes a higher priority, and this proved to be one of the few successful personnel efforts on the part of leadership.

In front of him on the desk were papers in such an enormous quantity that even an experienced man like Fredriksson was amazed.

“Is this all Kumlin’s?”

Myhre nodded and threw out his arm toward another table where at least as many papers were piled.

“Oil, gas, and Russia equals money,” he said. “And money equals papers.”

“Money also equals crime,” Fredriksson quipped.

Myhre looked surprised for a moment, as if it struck him for the first time that he was dealing with crime. Most of his colleagues were convinced that Myhre was not driven by any fervent devotion to law or desire to put financial criminals in jail, but that the motivating force for him was numbers, columns, and balance sheets.

“Have you found anything interesting?”

He regretted the question at once, as Myhre would almost certainly go off on a detailed account of Kumlin’s various undertakings, but the financial policeman surprised him by taking out a single sheet from the drift on the table.

“This,” he said.

“And this is?”

“A purchase,” Myhre answered contentedly.

“Of what?”

“Of a certain Sture Millgren,” said Myhre. “Millgren is an expert on energy issues and somehow associated with the Swedish embassy in Moscow.”

“Trade attaché?”

“No, some kind of special service from what I understand. I’ve snooped around a little and Millgren got the position over a year ago, for the sole purpose of issues about oil and gas. He came most recently from Brussels where he worked as an expert on energy issues.”

“And you think Kumlin bought him?”

“Yes and no. Kumlin’s partner, Oleg Fedotov, was probably the one who took care of the actual transaction, but Kumlin was aware of it. And our Mr. Millgren was not cheap.”

“A case of Russian caviar, perhaps?”

Myhre shook his head.

“Considerably more, about a million to be more exact.”

Fredriksson stared at the contentedly grinning Myhre.

“Dollars,” he added.

“That’s over six million kronor!”

Fredriksson sat down.

“Then you can imagine what kind of money this is about in the end,” said Myhre.

“And what would Fedotov and Kumlin get in return?”

“That’s just what I was thinking about, but obviously it has to do with oil and gas.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” said Fredriksson. “This is getting too big.”

“And why does Kumlin die? Did he get cold feet, was he careless with the money, or what?” Myhre speculated.

“We had a similar case many years ago, before you came to town,” said Fredriksson. “Then it was the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Cederén was his name. A pure contract job.”

“So Fedotov sends one of his torpedoes to silence his partner?”

“It may have happened that way,” Fredriksson mumbled, who was taken back in his thoughts to the Cederén family’s horrible fate. “Maybe we can set up protection for Henrietta Kumlin,” he said. “It is conceivable-”

“Then we would have found her in the garage too,” said Myhre. “No, I think it was Jeremias who was the target and no one else.”

“We’ll have to present this to Ottosson and Hällström,” said Fredriksson. “You can compile what you’ve come up with so far. It’s a little delicate of course with a Swedish diplomat involved.”

“He’s not really a diplomat, more a consultant associated with the embassy.”

“Bad enough,” said Fredriksson, getting up.

“There’s more,” Myhre resumed. “Millgren also has his own company, Neoinvest, but it is registered with his wife, Carolina, and his brother Arnold. Although I am quite convinced that it is Sture Millgren who stands for the substance in Neoinvest.”

“Is that allowed?”

“They work with environmental impact analyses, as it’s so nicely called on their website, primarily where exploitation of oil assets is concerned. It may concern the effect on the marine environment of extraction of oil offshore or, like now, the pipeline that the Russians and Germans want to lay through the Baltic Sea. So he and the little woman also have a more commercial connection to the industry.”

“Is that allowed?” Fredriksson repeated. “On the one hand working as a semi-diplomat, and on the other hand making money through your own company?”

Myhre shrugged.

“That’s how it is, a fucking mess. Money talks. They’re the same type of people, the whole lot of them.”

“One more thing,” said Fredriksson. “How are you able to even find this information? So unbelievably stupid to leave a trail behind you.”

“Fedotov seems to be a self-confident type,” said Myhre. “He writes about it in a regular e-mail. On the surface it appears to be an ordinary business transaction, but considering how it works we can assume that this million dollars should be seen as a bribe. Millgren probably doesn’t need to do too much analysis, instead it’s about paving the way. He writes a report, perhaps for the sake of appearances including a few critical viewpoints and side comments, but basically positive to RHSKL GAS, as Fedotov’s and Kumlin’s biggest and oldest company is called. And just like that they can bring home a pile of cash, and now we’re talking lots of zeros. So a million dollars to Millgren is a good investment.”

“But this pipeline is a Russian project, isn’t it?” Fredriksson objected. “How can a Swedish consultant’s statement play any role?”

“I don’t know,” said Myhre. “But there is a connection of some kind, I’m convinced of that. Maybe Millgren’s report is intended to look good internationally. The project has gotten a lot of criticism, and if Putin and the boys in the oil mafia can show an honorable document from an honorable Swedish expert, that looks extremely confidence inspiring. A Russian statement doesn’t impress anyone at the EU, but Millgren is known in Brussels as an irreproachable Swede. Perhaps the Fedotov-Kumlin duo have also hired others? They have contacts with several other European consulting companies, including one in France. Possibly the idea was that they could present a whole bundle of independent reports. A mess, like I said, and somewhere in that pudding is an almond that’s worth millions.”

“But Kumlin seems to be a small-timer,” said Fredriksson, who was thinking about his little office with all the binders. “If this was about billions, he ought to be sitting in a nice office.”

“Appearances deceive,” said Myhre. “He was certainly good for a couple hundred million.”

Fredriksson was amazed.

“So why does Kumlin die?” he asked.

“That’s your thing,” Myhre grinned. “I pull out the numbers, you capture the Russian mafia.”

Fredriksson made a face that showed what he thought about that mission.

“But I don’t believe in chance,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“First Gränsberg, then Kumlin. Those two knew each other from before. Add to that Ingegerd Melander’s fall in the stairway. And then this journalist on top of it, an old buddy too.”

“Maybe Gränsberg was Kumlin’s man,” Myhre threw out. “Kumlin brought in his old bandy teammate for some dirty jobs. Gränsberg needed the money.”

“Where does Brant fit in?”

“Maybe he was on the trail of something and was threatened by Gränsberg, who was sent out by Kumlin. Maybe this talk about Brant writing about the homeless is just bullshit. His real work was about Russian oil.”

“Gränsberg didn’t seem to be that type,” Fredriksson objected.

“Money,” said Myhre.

“Inheritance,” said Fredriksson.

Myhre grinned.

“The merry widow who invents a Russian,” he said.

Fredriksson sighed heavily.

“Jesus H. Christ, such a beautiful day!” he exclaimed.

“I’m comfortable here,” said Myhre with another grin.

Fredriksson shook his head and left his colleague who had the nerve to be happy at work on a beautiful summer Saturday.

He went slowly back to his office while he considered whether he should slip out, but realized that was a little too much. First he had to write down what Gunilla Lange had told him and make sure that Sammy Nilsson and Beatrice Andersson got a copy. It was not sensational information, but along with everything else they had collected perhaps a pattern would emerge.

Could it be Jeremias Kumlin who had been the cause of Gränsberg’s optimism, that the former teammate, now a multimillionaire, would contribute capital to the planned construction company? But who then would have an interest in killing Gränsberg? And why did Kumlin have to die? Had a Russian been dispatched? Was it just mere coincidence that the two murders involved mutual, old connections? Improbable, but still a conceivable possibility. Over the years chance had played numerous tricks on Fredriksson, but he was an experienced investigator and gambler, chronically suspicious of coincidences.

Those were the kinds of questions that Fredriksson devoted his time to as he suffered through the afternoon. He was not noticeably wiser when he left the police building at five o’clock.