Europa Blues

8

THE LITTLE DEARS were drinking water. Like cute little bear cubs, they crouched awkwardly down and lapped at it, their tiny pink tongues like kittens’. They were the kind of animal children wanted to take home and cuddle.

Though that would have been an unwise move on the part of the parents.

The little dears were wolverines.

Paul Hjelm watched them wander off, slightly pudgy and happily swishing their squirrel-like tails. He really was struggling to picture these good-natured little things chewing on a human skull.

‘Come on,’ Jorge Chavez said impatiently. ‘Don’t let them hypnotise you. Think of Ellroy.’

Hjelm leaned back against the wooden railing, took a deep breath and asked, loudly and clearly: ‘Who the hell is Ellroy?’

But by then Chavez had already left Skansen’s wolverine enclosure and moved on to the wolves on the other side of the road. When Hjelm caught up with him, Chavez said: ‘The wolf pen is pretty big. It stretches all the way from the lynxes. Ends right here. So what happened?’

It had stopped raining but the ground was still dangerously sodden. They turned at the edge of the wolf enclosure and every step they took was treacherous; a slippery downhill slope stretching all the way to the outer fence. A gangly man dressed in overalls and protective goggles was squatting by something which looked like a gate. He was busy welding. Bluish flames curled up around him like a stray firework.

They waited for him to finish. The firework fizzled out. He pushed his goggles – more like a face mask with built-in glasses – up onto his head. They cleared their throats and he turned round.

‘Hi,’ said Hjelm. ‘We’re from the police.’

The man in overalls nodded quickly and looked like he was about to get back to work. Chavez grabbed his shoulder.

‘One minute,’ he said. ‘What happened here?’

The man took off his mask, stood up and stared down at Chavez.

‘I think it costs a fortune to get into Skansen these days too,’ the man said. ‘And then the kids want to go into that bloody aquarium as well, to see that man with the beard from TV. That’s five hundred gone, just like that. And then you’ve got to eat and ride those stupid cars and buy tickets to win all that Pokémon crap Nintendo makes millions and millions from, and then you’re suddenly nearing a thousand. So then you wish you’d just gone to the theme park next door instead, but if you’d done that it would’ve been a few thousand more gone up in smoke. Though at least you would’ve been able to go on that free-fall ride.’

Both policemen turned round in confusion to check whether the man was talking to someone behind them. There was no one there.

‘Sorry,’ Hjelm said. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘Someone cut the wire to get in,’ the man said, nodding towards the mesh fence. ‘And I can understand why.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘They found it yesterday, apparently. I don’t work here.’

‘It looks like you work-’

The tall man in overalls sighed deeply.

‘I’m from the fence company. We’re repairing it temporarily. It’s Friday – we can’t deliver the new fence before the start of next week.’

‘So this happened – when? Wednesday night?’

‘Must’ve been. And two days later, we’ve got a couple of plain-clothes policemen on the scene to catch the trespassers. Nice to see such good priorities in these austere times. Don’t you think they might’ve disappeared by now?’

‘Yes,’ said Paul Hjelm. ‘Most definitely.’

A policeman in uniform came running out of Odenplan metro station and threw up at Viggo Norlander’s feet.

So, Norlander thought, examining his new Italian shoes and sighing inwardly. It’s one of those.

Once he had checked that his shoes had made it through unscathed and accepted the guilty police assistant’s apologies, he turned to Gunnar Nyberg, who met his gaze with a look that said: Yep, one of those.

One of those cases.

They had been interviewing asylum seekers in the Norrboda Motell in Slagsta when Hultin had called to say: ‘I think we’ve got something you should go and take a look at.’

And so they had driven back into town.

As they ducked beneath the blue-and-white plastic tape and went below ground, closely followed by the sniffing, ashen-faced police assistant, Viggo Norlander was thinking about sick. The past year had practically been drenched in the stuff. Just think, he thought, of the difference between adult and child vomit. And how different they were from baby sick in particular – that thin, white, almost pleasant-smelling liquid which washes over new parents like nectar. But then suddenly, it changed. Suddenly it started smelling like… vomit.

It was a defining moment in any parent’s life.

It had happened recently in the Norlander household. Viggo, the out-and-out bachelor who had unexpectedly become a father at the age of fifty, had suddenly noticed one day that little Charlotte’s sick smelled awful. It had been a terrible discovery. She would start walking soon, too. And with that, he felt ancient. He was struck by the realisation that he could have been Charlotte’s great-grandfather.

Her great-grandfather.

For the first time, he started to wonder what it would be like for Charlotte, having such old parents. The thought threw him into a crisis. One which lasted a few minutes. For Viggo Norlander, that was an unusually long time.

The platform was completely deserted, an eerie sight. The station area had been cleared, with replacement buses taking the passengers between Rådmansgatan and S:t Eriksplan. But within half an hour, the train system needed to be up and running again. That was when rush hour began in central Stockholm. And when that happened, no number of replacement buses would suffice.

Viggo Norlander and Gunnar Nyberg had, in other words, just thirty minutes to try to establish a chain of events.

Hultin had phoned them immediately.

‘Why?’ Nyberg had asked.

There had been a moment’s silence. Nyberg had recalled what Hultin had said that morning, during their meeting: ‘I’m starting to get very tired of all these vague hunches.’ Hultin was well aware of that fact.

‘I know,’ he had said quietly. ‘It’s vague. But it’s not exactly something common, so I think you should head over there right now.’

‘Can we drive fast?’ Nyberg had asked hopefully. As part of his new way of life, he had swapped his battered old Renault for a brand-new model. He had first owned a Renault 4 during his teens, a lethal box made from paper-thin metal, and since then, he had never given up on the French car make. It was a lifelong love.

‘Yes,’ Hultin had replied compliantly. ‘You should drive fast.’

And so they had. Slagsta to Odenplan in fifteen minutes. On roads with a serious risk of aquaplaning.

They sped smoothly underground on the escalator. In contrast to most of the other metro stations in Stockholm, the platform at Odenplan was spacious and airy. The ceilings were high and the platform open, with no walls separating the tracks in one direction from those in the other. A young man was sitting in the middle of the platform with a bandage around his head. Two paramedics with a stretcher were standing close by, plus three uniform policemen. There was a plastic sheet next to the escalator on the left-hand platform. Another policeman was standing beside it. Down on the tracks to the left, there were a few more plastic sheets. A forensic technician was moving around, photographing the scene.

When they reached the bottom of the escalator, the police assistant whose vomit had only narrowly missed Norlander’s new shoes said: ‘I hope you’re ready for this.’

His voice could hardly have been described as convincing.

‘No,’ said Viggo Norlander, crouching down and lifting the plastic sheet. Nyberg was watching him from the other side of the sheet and couldn’t see what was beneath it. Norlander was completely still. His face unchanged, he lowered the sheet, got slowly to his feet and vomited on his new Italian shoes.

One of those cases, Gunnar Nyberg thought, handing a tissue to his colleague.

He steeled himself, squatted down and lifted the plastic. Beneath it was the lower half of a body. Satisfied with that observation, he stood back up.

‘Did you find anything in the pockets?’ he asked the policeman who had been standing guard next to it.

The policeman nodded and held out a sealed plastic pouch. In it, Nyberg could see a key ring, a wallet and six mobile phones.

‘Well then,’ he said, taking the bag.

‘Hamid al-Jabiri,’ the new policeman said. ‘Twenty-four years old. From Fittja. Two years for assault and aggravated larceny.’

‘Imagine that,’ Nyberg said, moving along the platform. Norlander was sitting on a bench, wiping his shoes. He let him sit. Then he took a deep breath and said to the policeman who had been standing guard over the body: ‘Should we have a look at the rest, then? What’s your name, by the way?’

‘Andersson,’ he replied, before pointing down at the tracks. ‘There are three more bits.’

Nyberg jumped down onto the tracks, closely followed by Andersson, who continued: ‘The one closest to you’s the worst. It’s one big mush. The upper body and head. The head’s really not pretty.’

Nyberg lifted the plastic sheet and saw that Andersson wasn’t lying. There wasn’t much they could do there and so they moved on to the next sheet.

‘These last two are the arms,’ Andersson explained. ‘Both of them must’ve been ripped clean off. They’re in slightly better shape.’

Norlander turned up, his face deathly white. Nyberg found himself thinking of Söderstedt, and welcomed him down.

‘Back in the saddle,’ Norlander said, heaving heroically.

The two remaining plastic sheets were right next to one another, ten or so metres from the body. The first hand, the right, was holding a knife.

‘Well, what do you know,’ said Nyberg.

The other was clutching a mobile phone.

‘One last grab,’ said Nyberg. ‘I hope it was worth it.’

Andersson placed the plastic sheet back over the arms and leapt energetically up onto the platform. He seemed remarkably unfazed by the awful sight. Nyberg and Norlander dragged themselves up onto the platform like fifty-year-olds. Nyberg was annoyed he didn’t find it easier. After all that damned healthy food.

‘Should we talk to his pal now, then?’ Nyberg panted.

‘Adib Tamir,’ Andersson nodded. ‘Exact same story: assault and larceny. Twenty-three years old. He’s got concussion.’

They were on their way over to the other side of the platform when a phone started ringing. Both Nyberg and Norlander checked their phones. It wasn’t them. Nyberg glanced down into the plastic bag containing the six mobiles. He held it to his ear. It wasn’t any of them, either. He glanced at Andersson, who shrugged.

‘For God’s sake!’ Gunnar Nyberg exclaimed, charging back towards the tracks. Norlander and Andersson followed him.

They jumped down onto the tracks. Nyberg tore the plastic sheet from the left arm.

The mobile phone in the hand was ringing.

Nyberg bent down and tried to loosen the fingers. They were gripping the phone like a vice. Eventually, he managed to prise it loose. He beckoned for Norlander and Andersson to come over. They leaned in, their heads grouped like a team ahead of a handball match.

Nyberg pressed the green button. The three men were silent.

From the phone, an incomprehensible tirade began. A woman, speaking a foreign language. There was a moment’s silence, then something which sounded like it was probably a profanity, then silence again.

The three policemen exchanged a surprised look. Eventually, Nyberg piped up and said: ‘Remember what you just heard. We’ll try to write it down, each of us.’

‘Why?’ Andersson asked, confused.

‘Because that was a message to the murderer,’ Gunnar Nyberg said quietly.