To the Top of the Mountain

15

THE SUPREME COMMAND Centre. A name with a past.

Everything was the same in the sad old miniature lecture theatre which had, at one time, served as the temporary meeting place for CID’s A-Unit, later known as its ‘Special Unit for Violent Crimes of an International Nature’.

Now risen from the dead.

Maybe just as temporarily.

The dirty, yellow, windowless cement walls; the row of nailed-down seats you had to flip down to sit on, like a line of toilet seats; the table on the platform at the front, like a schoolteacher’s desk, crowned by a what was now a fairly outdated computer; the clock on the wall, just past ten. And then the two doors.

The remains of the old A-Unit entered in dribs and drabs through the first. One after another, with almost tentative steps.

Paul Hjelm was first, like an overly eager student. He watched the others arrive. Trying to compare their outward appearances with those in his head. They never really matched.

They didn’t even match when it came to Kerstin Holm, who was second to arrive. Even though they had worked closely the whole of the previous day, her appearance came as a surprise. He stole glances at her while she slipped over towards him. That wonderful woman. Always dressed in the simplest possible choice of clothes, but they always fitted her perfectly. A pair of loose, straight-legged linen trousers. A summery white blouse. That was all. And above: that dazzling face, ageing better than any burgundy ever had. Every hint of a wrinkle was an improvement.

Though he was a touch biased, of course.

She sat down and turned to him with a smile he was forced to call ‘spirited’, a word he had always been suspicious of, but which had now undergone a metamorphosis.

‘Have you got it?’ she asked.

Hjelm nodded and took a small microphone from the breast pocket of his short-sleeved blue shirt. He waved it in front of her eyes. She nodded. He continued to wave it. She continued to nod. He continued.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she said eventually, laughing indulgently.

The door opened again. A thin, extremely pale man dressed in a striped T-shirt underneath an ill-fitting, light-coloured suit entered the room. He caught sight of them and spread his arms.

‘My favourite people,’ he shouted in his clear Finland-Swedish accent.

They stood up and hugged Arto Söderstedt. He chuckled continuously.

‘Well, we all had our hands full with those nice little cases yesterday, didn’t we?’ he said. ‘The media’s already come up with names. The Kumla Bomber and the Kvarnen Killer. It didn’t take long.’

‘And now they’ve been overshadowed by the Sickla Slaughter,’ said Kerstin Holm, grinning.

The door banged. Viggo Norlander entered, bluish bags under his eyes. They went nicely with the pink stigmata on his hands. He waved at them, taking the seat closest to the door and falling asleep immediately. On the way down, Hjelm thought.

Then Sweden’s Biggest Policeman arrived. Gunnar Nyberg raised a cup of coffee to them.

‘They sent me with my ascetic’s coffee,’ he shouted incomprehensibly, sitting down next to the loudly snoring Norlander. ‘Hi, Kerstin,’ he said with a wave. ‘Welcome back to the right side of the country.’

‘Sweden’s shithole,’ she shouted back.

Nyberg laughed, surprised, and placed the coffee on the little folding table in front of him. It could stand there until it cooled down. He had no intention of touching it.

A toilet flushed. Viggo Norlander woke with a start; it was a familiar sound. They waited while the taps ran. Eventually, the other door opened, and Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin entered the room from his private toilet, incontinence pad in place.

He nodded neutrally at them and sat down at the table at the front, a thick pile of papers in front of him.

Kerstin Holm went forward and placed a large bouquet of red roses in front of him. He stared at them. For a good while. Then he fished out the card from deep within their thorny depths. Silence. Absolute silence. They watched him. His expression was completely neutral, but his eyes were lowered. For a little too long. When he looked up, a couple of tears ran down his enormous nose.

‘Thanks,’ was all he said.

‘Just a little whip-round,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘Welcome back.’

‘Thanks,’ Hultin said again, stiffly. Then he straightened up and turned the situation on its head. ‘But now we’ve got a job to do. Is anyone missing?’

They looked around the ‘Supreme Command Centre’. The joker in the pack was missing.

The very energy source.

Almost on demand, the door opened. Energetically.

As if it’s even possible to open a door energetically, Paul Hjelm thought to himself, watching as Jorge Chavez walked purposefully towards the front the steps. He sat down on the empty row of chairs nearest to Hultin, turned round and waved cheerfully to the others before standing up again and greeting the operative head of the A-Unit more formally.

‘Welcome back, Jan-Olov,’ he said, shaking his boss’s hand. Then he sat down and waited.

Hultin raised his eyebrows briefly, before regaining his wits and getting straight down to business.

‘Fifty minutes ago, Waldemar Mörner pulled up on my driveway in his Saab. I was just about to finish cutting the lawn and take my first dip of the day when he told me what was what. I tried to get up to speed with things in the Saab on the way into town, but I know almost nothing about this damned Sickla Slaughter. But Jorge does, so I’ll hand you over to him right away. There you go.’

Chavez was ready. He climbed up onto the platform and started fastening photographs to the whiteboard using magnets in the shape of sweet little ladybirds.

‘You’ll have to excuse the insects,’ he said. ‘Someone ordered the wrong thing down in the stockroom. Anyway, these are the pictures from the industrial estate in Sickla, down by Södra Hammarby harbour. From every conceivable angle. There’s even a bird’s-eye picture from a helicopter. Here. Five dead in what seems to be a typical underworld showdown. Unusually brutal, I have to say. One of the victims had twenty-four bullets in his body. Here. Another was blown up. His intestines were stuck to the roof of the car. Here.

‘Let’s start from the beginning. This was between two gangs. Gang One: three armed with pistols (1A to 1C on this sketch). Gang Two: six armed with sub-machine guns (2A to 2F). Gang Two attacks Gang One, probably with the aim of stealing a briefcase.

‘This black Mercedes, registered to a car rental place in Örnsköldsvik and hired by a non-existent Anders Bengtsson from Stockholm two weeks ago, pulled up on this side road in the Sickla industrial estate at about two this morning. The three members of Gang One were in the car. A well-placed explosive charge detonated underneath it and killed the man in the back seat. The car kept rolling for a few metres before it stopped. The men in the front seat were injured in the explosion, but not fatally. They were forced out of the car by Gang Two, who’d driven there in a van with new Continental tyres – we don’t know any more about it than that at the moment. In all probability, they were frisked by Gang Two, though obviously not very well, since both men later managed to draw their weapons, killing two and injuring one member of Gang Two.

‘Cartridges, the angle of the shots and the location of the bodies show that six of the nine available weapons were fired. Those not fired were the pistol belonging to the man in the back seat and the sub-machine guns belonging to the dead robbers. None of them had time to shoot before they died; otherwise, they’d definitely have done so. No one present seems to have flinched at the thought of using a weapon.

‘Now look at the sketch. It seems to have played out as follows. One: the car explodes, person 1A is killed. Two: 1B and 1C are forced out of the car and frisked. Three: 1A is relieved, posthumously, of his briefcase, probably by 2A. Four: 1B and 1C take out their weapons. Five: 1B shoots over his shoulder and kills 2B, hitting him right in the eye. Six: 2A runs away towards the nearest shed with the briefcase, maybe because it’s stopping him from using his gun. Seven: 1C shoots 2A in the back and kills him. Eight: 1B shoots and injures 2C. Nine: 1C is shot and killed by five shots from 2D, 2E and 2F. Ten: 1B is shot and injured by six shots from 2C, 2D and 2F. Eleven: 1B is shot and killed at close range by eighteen shots from 2D. Twelve: the briefcase is taken from the pool of blood in front of 2A, and bundled, along with the injured 2C, into the van. Thirteen: the van drives away. 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A and 2B are left behind. The injured one, 2C has AB negative blood. So that means that the people with the briefcase, whoever they are, are the surviving passengers from the van: 2D, 2E and 2F, along with the injured 2C.

‘And now for the interesting part. We’re pretty much in agreement that this is some kind of underworld dispute, right? So our fingerprint recognition software should be going crazy, but that’s not the case. Of the five bodies – we obviously don’t have any other fingerprints – there’s just one who’s got a criminal record. It’s one of the robbers, Gang Two, the one who was shot in the eye. 2B. His name was Sven Joakim Bergwall, and he’s been inside twice – the first time in Tidaholm and the second time in Kumla. A real first-class criminal. Bank robbery, manslaughter, attempted murder, grievous bodily harm and incitement to racial hatred.

‘Incitement to racial hatred?’ asked Hultin, when he finally managed to get a word in edgeways.

‘Organised Nazi,’ said Jorge Chavez, letting his words sink in. ‘Was a member of the White Aryan Resistance, when it existed. Was also a member of the Nordic Reich Party, when it existed. Etc., etc. He was also active on the edges of the Maskeradliga, if you remember it. An armed gang carrying out robberies across the country. Military character. But the other four don’t have records. No one from Gang One. Not 1A, 1B or 1C. Nor, for that matter, 2A.’

‘I’m a bit confused by all these codes,’ Gunnar Nyberg confessed. ‘So 2A was the one who ran away with the briefcase and got shot in the back? The big guy?’

‘Yeah,’ Chavez confirmed. ‘Though you’re more of a big guy, if we’re being accurate. The point of the codes is that we can pinpoint their positions and movements. We’ve got sub-machine-gun bullets with four different firing pin marks. Four sub-machine guns. Plus the two who never fired, but whose guns are still there: 2A, who was shot in the back, and 2B, who was shot in the face.

‘2B was Sven Joakim Bergwall. He was alone on the right-hand side of the car. 2A took the briefcase and then stood in front of the car, from where he ran. 2D and 2E were also standing in front of the car. 2C and 2F were standing to the left, where 2C was shot and injured. 2D and 2F hit both 1B and 1C. What else can we say? Which of them went up to an injured man and put eighteen bullets into him? The group’s crazy man, or the group’s leader? Intuitively, I’d say: yes. The group’s crazy man and its leader. I’d bet the leader is 2D. But we’ve got nothing on him.’

‘What about the explosion?’ said Söderstedt.

‘Well, that’s our lead, other than Sven Joakim Bergwall. A couple of white, middle-aged men had just dragged the whole of the national forensic squad to Närke. Every single forensic technician in service is scraping walls in the Kumla Bunker.’

‘Get to the point,’ said the white, middle-aged Norlander gruffly.

‘It’s the same explosive and the same detonation device,’ said Chavez, letting the information sink in before he continued. ‘Both as yet unidentified, but the same. And it’s obvious that if we put the details of the Kumla explosion together with the details of the Sickla Slaughter, then something not-too-pleasant emerges.’

Söderstedt and Norlander glanced at one another knowingly. Pattern, they thought simultaneously.

When does a pattern start to emerge?

Arto Söderstedt suddenly felt alive. For the first time since he had driven Norlander’s service Volvo to Kumla. It had been driven back by some rank-and-file officers while they took a plane from Örebro in order to make it back in time for 10 a.m.

Suddenly it all made sense.

‘We’d like to deliver a greeting,’ he said. ‘To all of you, but mainly to Paul and Jorge. From a two-year-old called Jorge Paul Andersson, nicknamed Jorjie.’

There was a moment of confusion in the ‘Supreme Command Centre’. Söderstedt smiled covertly. He liked confusing introductions.

‘Göran Andersson’s son,’ he continued, with dramatic precision.

Paul Hjelm and Jorge Chavez exchanged glances for the first time in almost a year. Was the old connection still there? They could read one another like a book, in any case. The serial killer Göran Andersson had named his son after the policemen who had sent him to prison. It felt peculiar.

Arto Söderstedt continued. ‘Andersson’s eardrums burst in the Kumla explosion. At 08.36 yesterday morning, he was studying art history in his cell, the one next to Lordan Vukotic’s. The night before, he’d seen Vukotic stagger back to his cell with – as the post-mortem jigsaw puzzle later showed – a ruptured spleen, broken shin bone and both shoulders pulled out of joint. The next morning, he was blown up. Not into pieces, but into a bloody mess splattered all over the walls, and maybe by the same man who, about eighteen hours later, blew up the Mercedes down in the Sickla industrial estate. Which means that we were both right and wrong. Four policemen – the two of us, one from Närke CID and another from the Security Service – came to some fantastical conclusions yesterday, but we spent the evening on completely the wrong track. We assumed the following: that Vukotic had been tortured and talked; that that was why he didn’t want to let anyone know he’d been tortured, least of all Nedic’s henchmen in Kumla. Maybe he lay there in his cell all night, trying to put his shoulders back into joint. But why, you might ask, when he was just going to be blown up the next day? Why was he blown up the next day? That was the next question.

‘Our conclusion was that the perpetrator realised his exploits would be discovered and so he got rid of all traces of his crime. So we were searching for inmates with a knowledge of explosives. We spent the night interrogating a whole range of people who had some connection to explosives. I’ve only just realised how wrong we were. If the perpetrator really wanted to “cover up his tracks”, as Göran Andersson put it, then we’re assuming that he hadn’t really understood the consequences of torturing Vukotic. But of course he had. He knew that Vukotic was Rajko Nedic’s right-hand man, that he was untouchable. Closest to what might be Sweden’s most dangerous man. Of course he knew what he was doing when he got Vukotic out of the way. The explosion was hardly a display of regret or the result of some kind of fear of being discovered. It was more like a challenge, a statement. One which said: “Pay attention, you fucking foreigner, we’re coming!” But not just that. It also said: “Pigs, I don’t give a damn if you identify me, you can’t catch me!”’

It was silent in the Supreme Command Centre. Once again, in the blink of an eye, it seemed to have lost the quotation marks around its name. Something unpleasantly – but also attractively – big was emerging.

‘So,’ said Arto Söderstedt, ‘now you see what I’m getting at. Two points. First: the Kumla bomber wasn’t a man rotting away in the clink, full of fear. He was someone leaving Kumla – guns blazing. Second: what we’re looking at is a confrontation between neo-Nazi, professional, maybe even paramilitary attackers on the one hand, and one of Sweden’s leading drug dealers, Rajko Nedic, and his group of war criminals from the former Yugoslavia on the other. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? And maybe that explains why no one from Gang One – not 1A, 1B or 1C – left any identifiable fingerprints behind. They’d been imported directly from… well, maybe even from Kosovo. In any case, from the centre of the conflict in the Balkans.’

‘And all three die,’ Jorge Chavez said, breathless. He hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. He looked at Arto Söderstedt, languid, gangly and chalk white in appearance, and throwing out these horrible truths almost in passing.

Söderstedt continued, waving a piece of paper. ‘I’ve got the fax in my hand. It’s from the governor of Kumla. At half eight yesterday morning a prisoner was released from the Kumla Bunker. Six minutes before the explosion. He’d been inside for three years, sentenced to six for grievous bodily harm, but got out halfway through for good behaviour. He’s known on the fringes of racist and Nazi organisations, too. He beat up two Kurdish citizenship campaigners when they were taking part in a demonstration in Solna Centrum three years ago. There were explosives involved too, meant for a Kurdish cultural centre, but nothing could be proved. His name sounds so harmless, Niklas Lindberg. He’s thirty-four and comes from Trollhättan. He trained as an officer in the army, quickly climbed the ranks, went on a few campaigns with the UN in Cyprus – and then joined the French Foreign Legion. Apparently – though this isn’t confirmed – he has good ties with xenophobic organisations around the world. Not least in the US. My guess, if that kind of thing’s allowed, is that Niklas Lindberg is your 2D, Jorge. The leader and the crazy man. The man who fired eighteen shots from close range into an injured person.’

‘Who, in all probability, was a war criminal from the former Yugoslavia,’ Jan-Olov Hultin nodded. ‘It’s beginning to make sense now, even for an old pensioner like me. Jorge, you said that Sven Joakim Bergwall did his last stint in prison in Kumla. Does the time frame overlap with Niklas Lindberg’s?’

‘Lindberg’s name is new to me,’ Chavez confessed immediately, leafing through his papers, ‘but Bergwall was released from Kumla a month ago. So it’s not exactly unlikely that two violence-prone Nazis like these met inside. Bergwall arranged things on the outside, Lindberg the inside. We can look at it like that.’

‘What is it they’re up to?’ Hultin continued. ‘The night before he was released, Niklas Lindberg tortured Lordan Vukotic, but it seems to be better planned than that. The night before. It surely must go further back in time. Six men in a well-planned attack – that surely wasn’t something they decided on eighteen hours before?’

‘I think,’ said Kerstin Holm suddenly, her chorister’s vocal powers composed, ‘that they were double-checking something.’

Again, a certain confusion spread through the concentration of the Supreme Command Centre. And, again, a new voice entered the chorus, altering the tune of the song and disrupting the harmony. All eyes were on her. She held her hand out to Paul Hjelm who, without hesitating, placed the little microphone into it.

She held it up before the A-Unit’s collective eyes.

‘This was taken from the underside of a table in the Kvarnen bar on Tjärhovsgatan yesterday evening. It’s a discreet listening device.’

‘The Kvarnen Killer,’ exclaimed Gunnar Nyberg, who had been sitting in silence for too long and felt excluded.

‘Not at all,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘More like a result of him. During our interrogations with the witnesses from Kvarnen, something completely different emerged. Entire groups of people ran out of the place as soon as the killing had happened; something completely different was taking place in the background of all this everyday violence. Or maybe in the foreground.’

‘Double-check?’ asked Jan-Olov Hultin, in an attempt to bring some clarity to a situation in which it was utterly lacking.

‘Yeah,’ said Kerstin Holm, gathering herself. ‘The actual check, the real check, was taking place in Kvarnen on Wednesday evening. I think that all five bodies were there on Wednesday evening. Though living.’

They stared at her. The room was completely silent.

‘I don’t know when patterns start to emerge,’ she continued, ‘but for me and Paul, they emerged early on. We had nothing at all to go on, really, except what we call a ‘scent’. Something was emerging. We didn’t know what it was, but it was there, in the middle of all the Hammarby fans. To make things a bit clearer: Gang Two were sitting listening to Gang One with this listening device. The penny’s only just dropped.’

‘But Niklas Lindberg didn’t get out until the morning after,’ said Hultin, trying to keep up. He felt rusty – but he could also feel it coming off him in large flakes as he sat at the front of the room. He was home. He was finally home again.

‘That’s true,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘If we follow Söderstedt’s reasoning then these were his men, the ones who picked him up from Kumla afterwards, maybe led by the now-departed Sven Joakim Bergwall. It might also have been Bergwall who was clear-headed enough to leave a man behind on the crime scene, to divert our attention from the gang.’

‘What can you tell us about the unidentified bodies from the Sickla Slaughter, Jorge?’ Paul Hjelm asked.

‘“Knocked about” is probably the best description,’ said Chavez. ‘Bergwall, 2B, was shot in the eye; it wasn’t pretty. Without fingerprints, we wouldn’t have had anything there. Same with the one who was blown up in the back of the car. 1A. Dark hair, that’s the only definitive thing we can say. 1B was completely shot to pieces. Twenty-four shots. Eighteen from close range. There’s no point trying to reconstruct his face. 1C looks best, and sure, he looks like he’s from the Balkans. 2A fell like a log, face down onto the floor. There’s not much left. Not much chance of putting out any reconstructions in the media.’

‘It’s 2A we’re interested in,’ said Hjelm. ‘The big guy who ran off with the briefcase and got shot in the back, the one who doesn’t have a record. Powerful build?’

‘No doubt.’

‘Thin moustache.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Shaved head?’

‘Yeah.’

Paul Hjelm fell silent. He left the rest to Kerstin. She had the notes ready.

‘From what you’ve said, I think he’s a match for a man called Eskil Carlstedt. Salesman from Kungsholmen. We spoke to him yesterday morning and bought his entire story. We let him go without suspecting a thing. So damn careless.’

‘Come on,’ said Hultin, slightly unexpectedly. ‘You had nothing to go on. You were looking for a man who’d crushed someone’s head with a beer glass. You’ve got really bloody far on the little you had. If it’s correct, that is; if it isn’t just a good old Hjelm-Holm flight of fancy.’

‘Five men,’ Holm continued without seeming to have heard him, ‘at a table by the door. “Not skinheads but almost.” “Skinheads who’ve passed the age limit.” They ran off quickly but left Carlstedt behind, since he was the only one without a record. That’s quick thinking. Carlstedt was interviewed briefly in Kvarnen by the night staff, but he identified himself and was told to come to the station the next day for a proper interview. Then he met up with the four who’d run off, and the five of them spent the night working out the best way to divert our attention. Carlstedt has to say that he saw the Kvarnen Killer. Sure enough, it diverts our attention enough to let him go without a fuss, not to his four friends but to the five of them, because the others have just been up to Närke to pick up the boss, Niklas Lindberg. Now the six of them are reunited. It’s time to wait for the following evening. They’ve got the time and place from two sources now. From Lordan Vukotic in prison, and from the group in Kvarnen which, for the most part, is identical to Jorge’s ex-Yugoslav war criminals in Gang One: 1A, 1B and 1C.’

‘Why the hell would they discuss the meeting place in Kvarnen?’ Hultin exclaimed, feeling his neutrality starting to slip. ‘It seems completely crazy.’

‘When it comes to the meeting place, there are two parties involved. They meet in Kvarnen. The briefcase that was going to be handed over at some later point presumably contains money or drugs. The two parties don’t trust one another so they meet somewhere neutral, somewhere public, to decide on the meeting place for the handover. They’re speaking English since, as we mentioned, they’re probably recently arrived war criminals from Yugoslavia. That’s probably also the reason why they chose such a public place to meet. The other party presumably has no desire to meet a group of crazed war criminals in a dark alley somewhere. Back to prison: Vukotic already knows about the provisional meeting place for the next evening, or at least that’s what Niklas Lindberg assumes. He’s taking a huge risk when – the night before he’s released – he tortures Vukotic inside the prison walls. Maybe it’s to double-check what his colleagues are soon going to find out in Kvarnen. Maybe just because it’s fun, torturing a foreigner. It’s a beautiful world.’

‘There’s still one thing missing in our line of thinking,’ said the police aura still floating around Jan-Olov Hultin. ‘Whoever it was that was speaking English with Gang One in Kvarnen. The one who was supposed to receive the briefcase before it was stolen. Where the hell did this briefcase come from, by the way? How do we know there even was a briefcase?’

‘The imprint in 2A’s blood,’ said Chavez. ‘Eskil Carlström’s, if it turns out to be him-’

‘Carlstedt,’ said Hjelm.

‘It fits that it was a bag, a briefcase. That was the most likely.’

‘OK,’ said Hultin. ‘We’ll accept that for now. Back to the other party in the English conversation in Kvarnen.’

‘I’ve been saving that till last,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘It’s not good news. We’re probably looking at a policeman.’

Sighs were heard in the Supreme Command Centre. Not surprised sighs, not agitated, more disillusioned. The previous year, PAN, the National Police Board’s personnel department, had dismissed four policemen for criminal activities. A further four resigned rather than risk dismissal. Twenty-one policemen faced disciplinary action, of which seventeen were given a warning.

Holm continued. ‘A Swedish policeman. He showed his ID to get out of Kvarnen when the doormen blocked the door.’

‘Couldn’t it have been a fake ID?’ Hultin asked.

‘Sure it could. But he was the only Swede in the gang. And the only Swede waved the police ID. Also, he seemed to be pretty familiar with police procedure. He didn’t want to get stuck in Kvarnen when the interrogations around the Kvarnen Killer started up.’

‘Well then, it’s time to ask what all of this is about,’ said Hultin. ‘If we accept all these rash hypotheses that have been flying around your rusty detective superintendent for the past half-hour. What’s it all about? Rajko Nedic has to be at the heart of it. He’s going to deliver something in a briefcase to a man who may be a Swedish policeman. What high-value object fits in a briefcase? Presumably money, since every policeman knows how difficult it is to dispose of drugs without being noticed at some point. It’s obviously not a question of routine payment either, so it must be a handover. That means the “policeman” must be scared, which means it must be a one-off payment. Why? Is a Swedish policeman on his way to breaking through into the drugs branch? That doesn’t sound good. Blackmail? Mmm, why not? But about what? And how did this criminal, probably Nazi-tinged, gang find out that the delivery was going to happen? They’ve known it was going to happen for a while, the six of them were ready as soon as Niklas Lindberg got out of jail, but they don’t know exactly where and when it’s going to happen. That’s what they find out, in two different ways, the night before. But how did they find out to begin with?’

‘It seems likely that it happened earlier, via Vukotic,’ said Söderstedt. ‘Lindberg and Bergwall are in Kumla, listening to a secret conversation. They know that a delivery is going to happen, but where, when, how? Maybe Lindberg found out that the Kvarnen meeting was going to take place while he was still in prison.’

‘Lots of questions,’ said Paul Hjelm.

‘Yes,’ Hultin conceded, looking up. ‘But lots of answers, too. Considerably more than I could’ve hoped for when I glanced through the anaemic information in Waldemar Mörner’s air-conditioned Saab.’

‘So what have we got, then?’ Chavez asked, summing up over by the whiteboard; he seemed slightly overwhelmed. ‘We’ve probably got three of the six men from Gang Two. 2A is Eskil Carlstedt. 2B is the Nazi, Sven Joakim Bergwall. These two are dead. 2D is the leader, Niklas Lindberg. Missing are the injured 2C, as well as 2E and 2F. As far as Gang One is concerned, we’ll send the fingerprints from the bodies of 1A, 1B and 1C to Interpol – maybe to the ex-Yugoslav authorities too, if that’s possible.’

‘And then the explosives,’ said Norlander. ‘What kind of highly volatile, liquid explosive is it? One that’s set off by an electronic detonator? No one seems to have the answer, but it’s probably important.’

‘Probably,’ said Hultin. ‘We’ll keep working on it. Interpol again. Lots needs to be confirmed, too. We should take some fingerprints from Eskil Carlstedt’s flat and compare them with the body of 2A, for example. And then we should think about how to handle Rajko Nedic. He’s made a point of operating in the open, after all. Honest businessman. Restaurant owner.’

‘We should probably talk to him,’ said Hjelm, ‘though the question is, when? When should we reveal what we know? What do we stand to lose or gain by talking to him? Etc., etc.’

Hultin nodded, glancing out over the room.

‘And I suppose you want to know what’s going on, don’t you? Staffwise. You know what they said on TV yesterday. Police staff shortages are acute in the summer. The Justice Minister is openly talking about bad holiday planning. People have already set up vigilante groups in several places, to keep on top of the things we no longer can. Even if we’ve been called in specially, we still have to justify being here, seven police officers of differing rank, working on this. It’s Midsummer’s Eve. It’s getting close to midday. Most policemen are on leave now, and will soon put down the bottle of schnapps to dance, legs unsteady, to Midsummer tunes with their children. But not you. On the contrary, you’ll be costing the National Police Board more money because of all the overtime you’ll be doing. Any problems with that?’

‘I’d like to make a quick trip out to Dalarö, at least,’ said Hjelm.

‘My kids will be waiting for me at Skansen at three,’ said Söderstedt.

‘I’d really like to spend the evening with my newborn daughter,’ said Norlander.

‘My son’s carved a maypole for my grandson in Östhammar,’ said Nyberg.

Chavez and Holm said nothing.

‘Forget it,’ Hultin said brutally. ‘We’re setting up a new operation. There hasn’t been one for almost a year. No one’s complaining about holiday before this is wrapped up. Right now, you’ve got all the freedom you want to return to your previous work, but not in three hours’ time, not tomorrow. You’ve really got to want this. As I understand it, this is also a chance to make the A-Unit permanent. The last chance. Unfortunately, it seems like they need us. That means: if any of you have developed a taste for the normal police life to such an extent that you don’t give a damn about this, you’re welcome to go. But only if you go right this moment. Anyone?’

Gunnar Nyberg looked up. Distracted, he took a sip of his ice-cold black coffee. It made him almost throw up. Drinking coffee had become a reflex.

‘It’s not the normal police life I’ve got a taste for,’ he said, in the midst of a bout of nausea. ‘It’s the more abnormal parts. I’m in the middle of several ongoing paedophile investigations. I can’t just chuck that all to the side.’

‘I know,’ said Hultin. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on your careers. Jorge wants nothing more than to return from theory to practice. Kerstin has just come back from Gothenburg. Together with Paul, she’s completed her part of the Kvarnen Killer case. Arto and Viggo’s explosion in Kumla seems as though it can easily be incorporated into the Sickla case. For you five, it seems as clear as it does for me. It’s you, Gunnar, you’re the weak link. You’re right in the middle of truly important work. What are your thoughts on that?’

Nyberg sighed loudly. ‘You don’t have coffee breaks as often,’ he said. No one understood that this was the highest possible praise. He continued more clearly. ‘It’s definitely tempting to get to work on a proper A-Unit case again. That feeling of free fall. But for me, it would be best if I could… I don’t know, work half-time for a while, so I can work out what to do with the paedophile investigations. So that there aren’t any delays. So that no one suffers for a moment longer than necessary. If you can understand that.’

‘I think we understand,’ said Hultin. ‘And as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine. I haven’t forgotten that it was you who was right about the Kentucky Killer, while the rest of us were wrong. Anyone else?’

No one else.

Hultin nodded and continued. ‘OK then. Before I start to deal out more distinct tasks, we should spend a bit of time, each of us, working out what we should do next. And what we can expect to happen now. We’re assuming that Gang Two now has the briefcase. That could be an end to it. Nedic might have no idea who took the briefcase, but that’s if we ignore the Vukotic explosion. How long will it be before he manages to link it all to Niklas Lindberg? And what’ll happen then? A big showdown? Can we assume that Lindberg’s gang is happy with the briefcase? Or do they want more? Might their Nazi links suggest that? Are they after an ethnic cleansing of the Swedish drugs trade? And why was this briefcase being delivered to a possible Swedish policeman? If there was money in the case, then why is the drug dealer Rajko Nedic, who has never been locked up by the police, giving money to them? Is that why he’s never been caught? Etc., etc.

‘What we need is the following. One: more information on the mysterious explosives; two: the identities of 2C, 2E and 2F; three: the possible policeman; four: to find out why Nedic is paying the Swedish police money (if that is the case). If you come up with anything else, tell me right away. So. Let’s keep working till Midsummer’s Eve turns into night. No flowers beneath your pillows, no home-made schnapps, no Midsummer children being created. Nothing but work, work, work.’