Misterioso

12

It was 9:03 A.M. on April 3. The same date on which Gustav IV Adolf was crowned the king of Sweden in the year 1800 in Norrköping, somebody thought, thus deviating from the group’s otherwise synchronized thoughts.

Although at that particular moment everyone’s thoughts were quite disparate, not to mention listless.

Jan-Olov Hultin, on the other hand, looked very composed. No evidence of the previous night’s misfortune. With great care he set his reading glasses on his nose and leafed through a stack of documents that were far from kind.

Hjelm looked around in the grandiose kitchen. The other members of the A-Unit were displaying various effects from the day before. Gunnar Nyberg sneezed loudly; he was thinking about singing in the choir with inflamed vocal cords. Viggo Norlander merely looked annoyed. Kerstin Holm was having what used to be called a catnap, but had become commonly known as a micro-nap after various politicians had been discovered asleep in the parliament chambers. She was dozing with her elbow propped on the table supporting her head. Arto Söderstedt was without a doubt on some other planet. He was standing at the kitchen window, looking out and pondering mysterious coincidences.

The day on which the first murder occurred was the anniversary of Emmanuel Swedenborg’s death in London in 1772.

Söderstedt let his thoughts evaporate and flutter upward into the ether of the clear April sky.

The only people at work inside the villa were a medical examiner, a couple of crime techs, and Jorge Chavez, who was studying every last inch of the house. Every once in while the techs would chase him out of the living room, but he kept returning, again and again, to the scene of the crime, like some stupid criminal.

The officers who had arrived first had now gone back to the police station on Golfvägen. A couple of NCP plainclothes assistants were keeping watch at the police cordon outside. Strangely enough, the media hadn’t yet gotten wind of what had happened. Aside from the technical team at work in the living room, the A-Unit was able to sit in the villa undisturbed.

That is, until two well-built gentlemen in their forties wearing identical leather jackets came stomping into the kitchen.

“Don’t say a word,” said the blonder of the men to Hultin. “We just want to see the crime scene for ourselves.”

“You’ll have my report as soon as it’s done, as usual,” Hultin told him. Much against their will, he introduced them to the rest of the group.

“Gillis Döös and Max Grahn from Säpo.”

“The Security Police,” said the man who apparently did all the talking. Evidently he was Döös. “We won’t disturb you.”

They went into the living room and carried on a low-voice conversation with the M.E. and the tech in charge. Then they walked through the house, peering in all the nooks and crannies. All of a sudden they were gone-their car gave an audible screech as it pulled away.

“We may have more to do with them from now on,” said Hultin, keeping his tone neutral. Nobody cared to think about what that might entail.

Chavez came into the kitchen and sat down next to Hultin. “It’s exactly the same,” he said.

“Not really,” said Hultin. “We need to hear more from the techs. Apparently one bullet was left behind.”

They were sitting in the kitchen of a huge mansion in the suburb of Djursholm, just a couple of blocks from the house owned by Eric Blomgren, the retired judge, with whom the other retired judge, Rickard Franzén, had spent an uneventful evening over a chessboard while drinking cognac. It was at the latter address that Chavez and Norlander had sat in their police vehicle, keeping watch all evening. Presumably that fact bothered both of them.

The villa belonged to a man by the name of Nils-Emil Carlberger. His body was discovered in the living room just after eight-thirty in the morning, when his house cleaner arrived. She called the police and then vanished. Nobody knew who she was or where she was now. In all likelihood she was a refugee who was supposed to be deported and thus had gone underground, making a living by cleaning houses for minuscule wages. The Carlberger family consisted of a wife and two grown sons. They would be notified shortly. The wife, Nancy, was staying at the family summer house outside Halmstad, getting it ready for the season. The sons lived in Landvetter and Lund, respectively. Neither of them was active in the business empire owned by Nils-Emil Carlberger. One was an air traffic controller and the other a doctoral candidate in sociology. Nancy had been a secretary in one of the firms belonging to the Carlberger conglomerate before she gave it up to become a housewife. She was not the mother of his two sons.

That was about all they knew so far.

The elderly M.E. came into the kitchen, vigorously scratching the back of his neck.

“As far as I’m concerned, everything seems identical,” he said. “Two shots through the brain. Death seems to have been instantaneous. I’ll get back to you, of course, with more details after the autopsy, but I don’t think you should hope for any big revelations from my side.”

“We’re not expecting anything like that, Sigvard,” said Hultin quietly. “Is Svenhagen almost done?”

The M.E., Sigvard Qvarfordt, shrugged.

They went back to waiting. The venetian blinds were losing their battle against the sun, which seemed filled with the promise of spring, and the kitchen table was streaked with thin bars of sunlight.

Hjelm opened the kitchen door onto the terrace. Chavez followed as he stepped outside.

“See that chimney over there? The tallest one?” said Chavez, squinting and pointing across the two neighboring yards. “That’s Blomgren’s house. That’s where we sat yesterday, freezing in Norlander’s Volvo. He was here, creeping around right next door. Maybe he saw us and laughed to himself.”

Hjelm shrugged.

“Maybe we should have felt his presence,” muttered Chavez, drinking in the sunshine. “Como en casa,” he said with pleasure.

“Like home?” said Hjelm. “Where’s that?”

“Rågsved,” said Chavez, and went back inside. “Nací aquí,” he said over his shoulder. “I was born here.”

In the kitchen Brynolf Svenhagen, who was in charge of the crime scene techs, was looking through his notebook but spoke in standard phrases guaranteed not to be included in his notes.

“Naturally we’ll be going over the whole house with a fine-toothed comb today. But it looks like no evidence has been left behind, as usual. Except for the bullet. He removed one bullet but not the second. That gives us something to go on. We’ll analyze it as soon as possible. What I can tell you right now is that I don’t recognize it. It’s not one of the six or seven most common types.”

He went back to the living room, where both his subordinates were still crawling around on the floor and over the sofa. Hjelm saw the black-covered stretcher slip past, out in the hall, under the supervision of M.E. Qvarfordt.

A sleepy mood rather than an air of resignation had descended over the kitchen. It had been a long shot, and things hadn’t worked out. That happens. Although it was too bad that Rickard Franzén Jr. had suffered a cut to the face when Nyberg shoved him down onto the rya rug. Commissioner Waldemar Mörner had already set up an account in the budget for the anticipated legal claim for bodily harm.

“So we’re just going to have to start over,” said Hultin matter-of-factly. “CEO Carlberger actually fits the pattern better than the incorruptible judge. It should be crystal clear by now that this whole thing somehow has to do with business. Hjelm, you’ll check up on whether this castrates the Mimir lead, and if so, follow up on the significantly less castrated Dionysus angle instead. And don’t forget about the golf course guest books. The workload is going to increase dramatically for those of you working on the business aspect. We’ll probably have to bring in a few more people, Nyberg. Holm, you’ll keep working on the personal angle. Norlander will continue with the international. According to what the good Svenhagen said, the bullet could be foreign. That remains to be seen.

“And then there’s the inexplicable fact that the bullet was left in the wall. Was he interrupted? Did he intentionally leave a clue behind? If so, did he do it to play with us, to lead us astray, or because for some reason he actually wants to get caught? Or did he make his first mistake? There’s undoubtedly a reason. The bullet will soon be on its way to the lab. I want all of you to think about that. To summarize quickly: Norlander, the international aspect; Holm, the personal; Chavez, Söderstedt, Nyberg, the business angle; Hjelm, the sexual. As soon as I hear the slightest peep from Mr. Crime Tech Boss, Brynolf Svenhagen, I’ll call you in for a proper rundown. Questions?”

No questions.

At any rate, none that Hultin could answer.

They left the magnificent villa in the care of the crime techs.

Hultin heard the first peep from Mr. Crime Tech Boss Brynolf Svenhagen at 11:22 A.M. on April 3. By 11:51 the team had gathered in Supreme Central Command-Chavez’s name for it had been officially adopted, as Waldemar Mörner had given it his “full approval.” They had all been in their offices when Hultin called on the intercom at 11:23. All except one.

At that moment Hjelm was sitting in a basement on Stall-gränd in Gamla Stan, where no cell phone signals could reach. Guardian Clöfwenhielm typed in the name “Carlberger, Nils-Emil” on his little cheese-bell computer but got no hit. Nils-Emil Carlberger was not and never had been a member of the Order of Skidbladnir or the Order of Mimir or any order whatsoever.

At 11:35 Clöfwenhielm drew aside the heavy drapery covering the entrance to the order’s inner sanctum. At 11:41 Paul Hjelm came out and made a sacred vow never to reveal what he had seen inside. He would keep his word. At 11:42 he emerged into the narrow alleyway and took a call from Hultin on his cell, notifying him of the meeting. At 11:51 he entered the room now known as the Supreme Central Command, with its capital letters. At 13:09 he laughed loudly at this label, when Chavez, also laughing, told him about it.

But before then, the following took place.

Jan-Olov Hultin informed them that news of the murder of Nils-Emil Carlberger, the head of the Carlberger conglomerate, had not yet reached the media. Apparently, and to Hultin’s great relief, as he said without changing expression, the media leak was not due to anyone within the A-Unit.

“As I suspected,” said Hultin modestly, “there’s something very special about the bullet that was left in the wall. Svenhagen has conducted some sort of incomprehensible but irrefutable chemical analysis of the shattered bits of lead and found a most particular chemical component. It’s a damned inferior bullet, and those types of inferior bullets stem from a small, second-rate weapons factory in a town called Pavlodar in present-day Kazakhstan. Vladimir Smirnov’s country, you know.

“Svenhagen has personally been in contact with Interpol’s forensic data center this morning, and here’s what he found out. The weapons factory ran into trouble when the Soviet Union collapsed and then the market economy came in and imposed its ‘infallible natural selection,’ to quote Svenhagen. There was simply no market for the factory’s shoddy ammunition. But apparently there was a huge bankruptcy inventory. No one knows what happened to it. But Interpol’s response is unequivocal: the mafia.”

Hultin paused. Possibly he was waiting to see the effect of his words. But no one reacted. Possibly he was just catching his breath. After a moment he went on.

“The Russian mafia is, as we know, a very heterogeneous organization. In reality we know far too little about it. It’s almost frightening how little, considering that it has made its way across the Baltic and dominates large parts of the underworld in Helsinki. There are indications that Stockholm is its next big market. In the largest faction are a bunch of crackpots who have seized upon the more extreme aspects of the market economy. Survival of the fittest.

“But the more sophisticated factions are branching out to the top national echelons in Russia and the Baltic countries. They also have close contact with top mafia bosses in Italy and the United States. The presence of this ammunition in the home of the third victim of a serial killer who has attacked Sweden’s top capitalists within a few days of one another presents us with a frightening prospect. But presumably we’re not the first to reach this conclusion. We’ve already seen the odd demonstration put on by Säpo at the Djursholm villa-as if they suddenly wanted to step out of the shadows and show their presence. Apparently they’re working at top speed in the military security division, in even deeper cellar vaults on Lidingövägen and elsewhere.”

Hultin sighed, gulped down some water, and went on in the same droning tone of voice: “If we now combine this ammunition with the execution method, we have real reason for concern. As you heard yesterday, Norlander has ferreted out three international organizations that consistently execute their victims with a shot to the head. One of them, as you heard, is a small Russian-Estonian criminal band, led by an anonymous commander, known only as Viktor X. It’s not clear what their connections are to the mafia. We need to look into it further. That’s going to shake up our work assignments a bit. Right before the meeting I ran into Mörner in the hall. He told me that due to the, quote, ‘appalling link to the Soviet state mafia,’ he has appointed two more officers to the unit. Both are from the Finance Police. They’ll be helping out with the financial aspects, because that’s where we need to be looking.

“We also need to expand that part of the investigation-and this is important-to include any business connections to the Russian mafia. Eventually I’m hoping to release those of you working on the business angle to work on something else, to do a little moonlighting, as Hjelm is doing. We should by no means fixate on this Russian lead. And Nyberg, before you get too involved in the financial side of things, I’m going to send you over to Norlander to chart the Viktor X gang. So we’re going to be working on two flanks: one from the ex-Soviet viewpoint, and the other from the Swedish. At some point these two flanks will meet up to assume positions for the final battle.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Mörner,” said Hjelm.

“No doubt,” said Hultin.

There was a knock on the door, and two faces peeked in: a tall man so fair that his skin was almost transparent and who couldn’t be over thirty; and an equally young, dark-haired woman who was a good deal shorter than average. They were definitely an odd couple.

“Good. Come in,” said Hultin. “Have a seat. We’re just about to discuss Carlberger’s life and lifestyle. So these are the new members of the A-Unit: Billy Pettersson and Tanja Florén. We’ve managed to clear out room 305 for them. All right, does anyone have any information on Carlberger outside his business dealings? Anything that we don’t already know? Kerstin?”

Holm shook her head. “His wife and sons will be arriving soon,” she said. “I’m going to interview them.”

“What about leisure activities? Hjelm?”

“Just like Daggfeldt and Strand-Julén, Carlberger played golf and owned a boat, although his was a motorboat, apparently a real luxury cabin cruiser docked at the marina in Lidingö. Don’t ask me why. But the golf connection is rock solid: just like the other two, he was a member of the Stockholm Golf Association and played mainly at Kevinge. He wasn’t a member of the Order of Mimir, or any other order, as far as I know.”

“So we can probably set that lead aside for a while,” said Hultin, making a checkered pattern on the whiteboard. The previous day’s little fiasco was noticeably absent from everything he said, and there was an implicit command in his silence. He turned to the new members. “Arto Söderstedt is handling the corporate aspect. Söderstedt?”

Arto Söderstedt cleared his throat and straightened up a bit, as if preparing to give a lecture or a sermon. For a moment Hjelm thought the thin, pale figure was someone quite different from a low-level police officer. The wrong man in the wrong place. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. The clichés raced through his mind as Söderstedt took the floor.

“So what we’re dealing with are three individuals each in charge of a group of enterprises that border on but don’t quite constitute a genuine financial empire,” he said. “Our victims are-were-rich and powerful but weren’t part of the general flood of celebrities. The structure of their conglomerates is similar. At the center are a couple of wholly owned financial companies, and on the periphery a cluster of various co-owned firms that are also financial companies.

“Keep in mind that all three of our corpses are capitalists of the new breed that were first given a great deal of leeway in the eighties, meaning that they were men of nonproductive business ventures. Money-movers whose wealth benefits no one but themselves, either in the form of job creation or tax receipts. What only a few years earlier was the domain of bandits-laundering money, moving it around, and lending it at exorbitant rates-has now become a legitimate business endeavor. With the deregulation during the eighties, it actually became possible to shovel money out of the country.

“All that prosperity was nothing but an empty balloon that imploded during a seriously confused decade. Government authorities misinterpreted the plus columns, reading the figures through the old, discarded lenses of industrialism, and cheered. The financial sharks cheered too, but for completely different reasons. They sucked the juice out of the national economy, as it uttered masochistic moans of joy.”

Söderstedt fell silent. The members of the A-Unit looked at him in bewilderment. What an odd explanation of Carlberger’s business ventures.

“Let’s try to keep the political opinions to a minimum,” said Hultin, his tone neutral.

Söderstedt looked around the room, as if suddenly remembering where he was. Hjelm could almost see smoke rising out of his shirt collar. He pulled himself together and went on in his resonant Finnish accent.

“There are two things I’m trying to get at here. First, the general coupling of this social climate with what I said earlier about the serial murder boom in the United States, the hero worship of outsiders who have cast aside the system of norms that is increasingly showing its cracks and revealing the chasm behind it for one simple reason: money. We’re sitting on a powder keg.

“Second, the specific link to our case. What if we’re dealing with an individual who has quite simply seen through, or thinks he has seen through, the whole damn game. Or to put it another way: an individual who assumes he has seen the real face of the invisible power and doesn’t give a damn about ripping it away and putting it on display. An individual who is both intelligent and insane, the worst possible combination. He has seen the connections, the more or less mysterious correspondences, and begins his exposé of these connections, most likely by accident, on the anniversary of Swedenborg’s death.”

“For the sake of clarity,” Hultin said, “do you think these murders are politically motivated? Leftist terrorism?”

“Not terrorism. No, I wouldn’t think so. But in a sense they are political. Someone who has been affected in some way, someone who has thought deeply and drawn certain conclusions, who is quite correct in terms of analysis but completely wrong in terms of action. Let’s think about this. We’ve just come through the worst possible financial crisis. Many people were affected by it, but perhaps everything is becoming clear only now.”

No one said anything for a long time. Without a doubt Söderstedt’s torrent of words contained certain valid points. Both newcomers, Billy Pettersson and Tanja Florén, were trying not to yawn, wondering where on earth they’d landed. In a lecture hall at the university? In a discussion group for conspiracy theorists? Or in the presence of a police officer whose obstinate intelligence had always prevented him from advancing within the force?

“Three representatives of the new capitalism,” Hjelm summed up. “Various possibilities. Indications pointing to Eastern Europe. Problems with the mafia establishing itself in the Baltics? Use of business contacts from the Baltics? Although one of the three doesn’t have much to do with Eastern Europe. A purely political motive? Some sort of revenge? Personal or professional? What else?”

Silence. Clearly there was nothing else. Was there anything they had overlooked? The fraternal order, a fine old classic straight out of an Agatha Christie novel, had gone up in smoke-that type of puzzle intrigue belonged irrevocably to the past-and instead they had landed squarely in the present day: postindustrial capitalism, Eastern European mafia, and the collapse of Sweden’s financial regulatory system in the 1990s.

Paul Hjelm preferred the fraternal order.

“All right, shall we discuss Carlberger’s conglomerate?” said Hultin, pouring oil on the waters of the A-Unit.

Söderstedt instantly switched from the verbose and voluble to the terse and concise. Hjelm had the feeling that the abrupt change was something deeply anchored in Söderstedt’s character. In the latter approach there was an answer, a solution, and he wanted to present it as clearly and distinctly as possible. In the former approach, there was no answer, no solution; there the “truth” trickled through the cracks between the words, in the ghastly connections. That was how society was, this postindustrial society at least, in the eyes of the eloquent Finnish buffoon.

“The Carlberger conglomerate,” he said. “At the center is the Spiran financial firm. Surrounding Spiran are ever weaker, concentric circles formed by increasingly inaccessible subsidiaries, and subsidiaries of subsidiaries. In less than an hour I discovered one connection, and with professional help”-Söderstedt gestured toward Pettersson and Florén-“I’m sure more will come to light. My connection has to do with Strand-Julén, who was part owner in one of the affiliates of a Carlberger subsidiary, Alruna Holding AB.”

He fell silent.

Nobody could tell whether he was finished. But he was looking slightly burned out, so Hultin said, “Okay, we thank Söderstedt for an unusually inspired report. Chavez?”

Chavez chuckled. “I’ll be brief. Carlberger was a member of three boards of directors concurrently with Daggfeldt and Strand-Julén. Our three victims were members of the same board at Ericsson in 1986-87; Sydbanken in 1989-91; and MEMAB in 1990. That’s the connection between our three stiffs as regards boards.”

“What’s MEMAB?” asked Holm.

“No idea,” said Chavez.

“I can tell you,” said Tanja Florén, speaking in a deep alto voice. “What’s your guess?”

“A financial company,” said a very weary Finn.

“That’s right,” said Florén.