The Cruel Stars of the Night

Twenty-seven

The Brain Squad was assembled. Morenius from the Criminal Information Service was talking to the chief of criminal investigations and the chief of police. Ottosson came walking along carrying two thermoses. The security chief was standing on his own, leaning against the wall with a paper in his hand that he was reading with a perplexed look on his face.

On one side of the table there were Ola Haver, Sammy Nilsson, and Allan Fredriksson. Fredriksson was a deep red color and looked painfully tense. Lindell saw how he was trying to sort a file of loose papers, but apparently he couldn’t get the pages under control.

Gusten Ander, called in as an expert, looked almost frighteningly focused, as if he was working out his next move, as he stood leaning over a slim booklet. Lindell thought it was a chess magazine.

At the short end of the table two colleagues from Investigations were leaning over a map. One had a pencil in his hand and Lindell watched him put an X on the map.

Eskil Ryde from forensics sat waiting next to Lise-Lotte Rask who was in charge of disseminating information and who was talking with a secretary. Two women who Lindell liked to exchange views with and not only about police-related matters.

More colleagues came in, as did Fritzén and another person from the DA’s office.

Everyone filled the room with talk and the sound of scraping chairs being pulled out. Someone poured out coffee. Another downed an energy drink in a can and smothered a burp behind his hand. It was Jern from the Security Police, one of the few coworkers who had shown an interest in Lindell. He was known for spending a great deal of time on his fitness training and he was generally known as Superman.

He didn’t look too bad and seemed unusually sensible for belonging to the felt slipper brigade, but Lindell was not going to let herself be charmed by someone from Sec.

Morenius looked at his watch and it was infectious. Soon more people were doing the same thing, as if to synchronize the time.

Ottosson coughed and spoke up since it was in Violent Crimes that the case was based.

“It’s Wednesday today. Has everyone got their coffee?” was his magnificent opening.

A simultaneous humming rose from the group.

“All right. In that case, our queen is going to dignify us with her presence on Friday. She is going to open a home for something that’s not quite clear to me. But in any case it is a new organization that is going to be set to sea with a great deal of pomp and circumstance. The location is the Academic Hospital. That doesn’t make this any easier.”

“It’s not a home,” Lise-Lotte Rask interrupted, “it’s a new ward for the treatment of children with cancer.”

“You’ve done your homework,” Ottosson said with a half smile, and continued. “We have to make up our minds if this so-called chess trail has any merit. We are probably somewhat doubtful, even if our colleague Ander’s report has been exemplary and stripped of any overly wild speculation.”

Jesus, Lindell thought. She glanced at Sammy Nilsson, who was sitting directly across the table and made an almost imperceptible grimace.

Ottosson drew a breath and consulted his notes.

“Two farmers and one knight in the form of Carl-Henrik Palmblad, who was killed in his stables-all this is the setup for, according to Ander, a famous chess game from the late thirties. You have probably had time to read all this in his report. The interesting part of the game was apparently an extremely unexpected and bold attack on the white queen, if I have understood the matter correctly.”

Gusten Ander shrugged but then nodded.

“Anyhow,” Ottosson continued. “If this is true we have a delicate task, which is to protect Silvia from a lunatic.”

He rounded out his concluding remarks by describing how the investigation had been organized thus far, how the absence of any motive, technical evidence, and witness accounts had brought them to three dead ends, as he put it.

Lindell leaned over the table and gave Fredriksson a quick look. He was still a glowing red color. She got ready to speak but was forestalled by Birger Åhs, the chief of Security.

“We have of course been preparing for the queen’s visit for the past several weeks and have taken the precautions that we feel are necessary. We have procedures for celebrity visits where there can be a threat in the picture.”

“Who is threatening Silvia?” Ottosson asked.

“It will take us too far afield to get into that now,” the security officer said. “But what I can say is that we have nothing on the table. This took us by surprise, I must say. We have had some indications about some youth groups, but…”

“You mean AFA and that gang?” Sammy Nilsson asked.

Åhs flinched as if reacting to a physical irritation.

“Wasn’t Silvia’s dad a Nazi?” Sammy went on.

“Let me take issue with that,” the security chief said, now as red in the face as Fredriksson. “He may have been associated with the party for a shorter time but that was solely for business reasons, ideologically he was a democrat, everyone agrees on this point.”

“Whatever you say,” Sammy said. “But of course he joined the Nazi party in the early thirties, earlier than-”

“Okay,” Ottosson interrupted the exchange. “It’s unlikely that a group of masked youths are behind these serial killings, definitely not if the design follows a chess game.”

In the long and intense discussion that followed Lindell only participated infrequently and the longer the meeting went on the more difficult she found it to say anything about the photograph.

Should they cancel the royal visit? That was the DA’s considered opinion. The chief of police and Ottosson argued against it. Morenius weighed in that he thought the court should be contacted at once and that they would have to make the final decision.

Lindell tried to meet Sammy Nilsson’s gaze. He looked tired but smiled at her. She took it as a sign and decided to wait with the photo, talk to Sammy, and hear him out. There was still time.

“But what if the media gets wind of this?”

Morenius’s tense voice made everyone else stop talking.

“You can imagine the headlines. I think we pass this along to the court,” he continued, “that way we’re in the clear.”

“Yes, perhaps we should inform them,” the police chief said.

“And look absolutely ridiculous,” Ottosson objected with unexpected vehemence.

Ander coughed and waved his hand.

“I know that many of you think this hypothesis is absurd but my intuition tells me it can’t simply be coincidence. Lindell, do you have something else?”

She realized that Ander sensed her doubt and now he wanted to hear her say that they didn’t have a single other lead to pursue. She was again tempted to bring up the photo but resisted. She didn’t want to embarrass Fredriksson in such a public setting.

“That someone out to kill the queen would first perpetrate a whole series of murders I find, mildly put, very unusual,” she said cautiously, “but stranger things have happened.”

Ander accepted this as a half confession and smiled at her.

The final decision was to inform the court but that they would not at the present time take any additional measures. Nothing was allowed to leak to the media. If the papers got wind of a possible threat to the royal family then the resulting situation would be chaotic.