The Blinded Man aka Misterioso

30

Jan-Olov Hultin strode with great determination through the corridors at police headquarters. He had two purposes in mind and no intention of mincing words. The two members of the A-Unit who were present, Söderstedt and Norlander, followed in his wake. Like the good, the bad, and the ugly, they headed for the dried-out river bed of Bergsgatan with their hands resting on the butts of their revolvers while the rattlesnakes rattled in the background. It was impossible to tell which of them was the good, which was the bad, and which was the ugly.

In a remote interrogation room sat Jacob Lidner, chairman of the board for the Lovisedal conglomerate. He sprang to his feet as soon as the heroic trio entered the room.

“What the hell is the meaning of this, detective inspector? Why have you brought me here against my will, interrupting my breakfast, and throwing me into a damn prison cell? Do you know who I am?”

“Sit down and shut up,” Hultin said, his tone expressionless as he took a seat.

Jacob Lidner gasped. “How dare you-” he managed to sputter.

“Sit down!” shouted Hultin. This was his territory.

Lidner sank down onto the chair. Hultin continued:

“When you stated that Lovisedal had resisted all pressure from the Russian mafia, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”

“No, it wasn’t. We haven’t accepted any form of protection.” Lidner held his head held high.

Hultin took a deep breath and controlled himself. “What the hell was Alexander Bryusov, a member of the Russian mafia, doing outside your villa last night?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Lidner insisted.

“He shot one of my men!”

“I’m truly sorry about that, but it has nothing to do with me. I’m grateful for the police protection. It was probably me he was after. Now you have your mafia murderer.”

Hultin stared at Jacob Lidner, displaying a deep and sincere hatred. Söderstedt and Norlander exchanged surprised glances. Lidner, although a bit subdued, maintained his well-practiced defensive posture.

“Let me tell you how this whole thing went down,” said Hultin between clenched teeth. “You accepted our theory that the Lovisedal board might be in the danger zone, even though you knew that the Russian mafia was not to blame, for the simple reason that you’re already closely connected to those crooks. But you didn’t trust my men’s ability to provide sufficient surveillance, so you brought in some extra life insurance, in the form of a mafia member to keep watch in the garden. Bryusov was also in your debt because you paid the superstar attorney Reynold Rangsmyhr to defend him and then saw to it that Bryusov was able to disappear while still inside the courthouse. You posted him in the garden, with orders to shoot anything that was the least bit suspicious and then erase all traces. He knew that Söderstedt here was inside your house, so when another man, a giant of a guy not unlike Bryusov’s former colleague Valery Treplyov, came into the yard, he opened fire, in accordance with his orders. Fortunately, if I can say such a thing, it was Gunnar Nyberg that he shot, and one shot wasn’t enough to bring him down. The bullet passed right through his neck, but that didn’t prevent Nyberg from stopping Bryusov. Do you understand what I’m saying? Your fucking illegal and amateurish attempt at surveillance almost cost one of my highly professional men his life!”

Lidner looked at him for a moment. Then he laughed right in Hultin’s face.

He shouldn’t have done that.

From their front-row seats, Norlander and Söderstedt witnessed something that would make Hjelm and Chavez jealous for the rest of their lives.

A genuine Hultin eyebrow-splitting headbutt.

He took aim at Jacob Lidner’s bushy white eyebrows and slammed into him. The man’s left eyebrow instantly split open.

Lidner stared in surprise at the blood dripping onto the table in front of him. “Good God” was all he could say.

“Don’t you realize that Alexander Bryusov has talked?” bellowed Hultin. “Do you think I’m standing here bullshitting you for social reasons? So I can expand my ‘network’? The good Igor has told us everything about the close contacts that you and the Lovisedal conglomerate have established with the branch of the Russian-Estonian mafia headed by Viktor X. He’s expecting to be the star witness, and he certainly will be. Your fucking tricks almost cost me one of Sweden’s best police officers!”

Lidner was pressing his hand to the gush of blood from his eyebrow. He was now a different man.

“There weren’t supposed to be two police officers,” he said quietly. “There was always only one.”

Hultin stood up. “You’ll be remanded into custody immediately, of course,” he said as he opened the door. “You’ll be charged with the attempted murder of a police officer, but the later indictment will include much more. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you to get yourself a lawyer.”

Out in the corridor Jan-Olov Hultin rubbed his hands together. Then the trio briskly continued to the most isolated section of police headquarters. Hultin had a card and a code that gave him access to these dimly lit passageways. He yanked open an office door.

There sat two solidly built gentlemen in their forties, wearing identical leather jackets. They looked up from their computers, and in only a second both men pulled out huge pistols and aimed them at Hultin, Söderstedt, and Norlander.

“What a pleasant scene,” said Hultin calmly.

“This is a restricted area, Hultin. You have no right to be here,” said Gillis Döös harshly. “Get out before we call the guard.”

“None of us is going anywhere until we find out what the hell happened with the investigation that Mr. Max Grahn buried. The one where Valery Treplyov was found murdered and lying inside a locked bank vault in Algotsmåla, Småland.”

Döös and Grahn looked at each other.

“That’s confidential,” said Döös, sounding slightly different.

“Since when do you have the right to pretend to be part of the NCP? And what the hell ever happened to the exchange of information? Do you realize how much you’ve delayed this case with your damned secrecy and your grotesque meddling? Do you realize how many of your precious businessmen have died unnecessarily? Murdered as a direct result of your actions?”

Max Grahn cleared his throat. Perhaps he turned a little pale.

“We had our sights on Igor and Igor long before they became relevant to this case. When that zealous inspector from Växjö called, we went down there at once; we realized that it was Treplyov that they’d found inside the vault. Igor and Igor were well established in that part of Småland. We knew that a major Soviet infiltration was taking place in Sweden, and that it was big as hell.”

“And you let us struggle our way through the whole damn Russian mafia lead without giving us a single piece of information?”

“We’ve been working two lines the whole time,” said Döös, “the Russian mafia lead and the Somali lead. Both of these investigations are top secret, matters of national security.”

“What the hell is the Somali lead?” shouted Hultin.

“Sonya Shermarke, for God’s sake!” exclaimed Döös. “The cleaning woman that you’ve totally ignored. The one who ‘found,’ as she said, Director Carlberger’s body. It turns out that she, along with a whole group of potential Somali terrorists, have been living in Sweden illegally. She pretended to be a cleaning woman and finagled her way into the homes of many influential families in Djursholm. We’ve been interrogating her and her cohorts for over a month now. And soon we’ll have them.”

“Oh, now I remember,” said Hultin acidly. “That’s right! Seven Somali children, their five Somali parents, and a pastor from Spånga. What an elite band! Sentenced to be deported, terrified, and crammed into a little two-room apartment in Tensta, hidden by the local Swedish church. What a great coup. Seven children. Have you been interrogating them too for a month in your basement dungeon?”

“Do you know what a modern-day terrorist can use children for?” Döös said in all seriousness.

“For the sake of my incipient ulcer, let’s drop the subject.” Hultin looked conciliatory. “What have you managed to make of the blinded Treplyov in Algotsmåla?”

“Clearly a settling of accounts in the underworld,” said Grahn. “Somebody wanted to take over Igor and Igor’s territories. Mafia factions from the Soviet Union today are conducting a more or less open war for power in the Swedish underworld.”

“And the connection to the Power Murders?” said Hultin mildly.

“We’re investigating the links between the Somalis and the Russians. We think it’s a joint conspiracy based on old Communist values.”

Hultin stretched his back, still with a good-natured expression on his face. Söderstedt and Norlander feared the side effects of a well-aimed headbutt inside such a small space. Instead Hultin delivered a metaphorical headbutt.

“For over a month you’ve known that Igor and Igor were an important focus of our investigation,” he said gently. “If nothing else, you must have seen the announcement of the manhunt published in the newspapers. You have willfully and intentionally misled what the head of the NCP, as recently as yesterday on TV, has called the most important investigation in Sweden since the Palme case; in addition, you used the NCP for a highly irregular, highly illegal cover-up. All of these acts are not only a dereliction of duty, they are felonies. I’m going straight to the head of the NCP to inform him of your illegal activities, and I anticipate that both of you will be off the force by this afternoon, latest. You can start packing right now.”

“Are you threatening us?” Döös stood up.

“I prefer to think of it as a promise.” Hultin smiled politely.