To the Top of the Mountain

17

CERTAIN TRACES HAD been left behind. A folder of invoices, order confirmations and booking forms lying here and there, looking lost. Posters, or rather the torn corners of posters, still pinned to the walls; almost all of the escapist kind. Images of paradise islands, fantastic scenes of virgin Swedish countryside, unobtainable archipelago idylls, endless Turkish beaches with bars at every turn.

The administrative staff had been told to give their room back to the A-Unit in a hurry, and each member of the team sat in their old room without really recognising it. Paul Hjelm came to a rash and not entirely objective conclusion: administrative work required a large dose of escapism.

Police work did too, though for completely different reasons. He didn’t know if the things he dedicated his free time to could really be called escapism. He read, listened to jazz music and ‘played piano’; he always made sure that the quotation marks were in place around the last of them. But he had kept an old promise and bought himself a piano. He would check that his house – and ideally the entire neighbourhood – was completely empty before he started tinkling the ivories. But then he enjoyed taking liberties, experimenting with reckless harmonies, testing the limits, mimicking, taking out simple accompaniments and even humming, like Glenn Gould. Because Paul Hjelm never sang. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t bring himself to sing. That was his limit.

When it came to reading, there were no quotation marks. He dared to assert that he did that straight out. He read. And he really tried to avoid shying away from anything, he tried not to stop where he instinctively felt he wanted to stop, but to venture into unknown territory. Maybe reading was actually some kind of midlife crisis. He didn’t want to bloody die without having explored as many of life’s opportunities as possible.

Recently, it had been Rilke. Poetry was still a challenge. He worked his way through the Duino Elegies, ten fantastic long poems, and he felt that there was something there, something absolutely fundamental, important, central, a point of contact with something he wouldn’t manage to come in contact with by himself – still, he never really made it all the way there.

‘For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear.’

He had put the Duino Elegies to one side and promised himself he would go back to it. Instead, he picked up Rilke’s only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and found himself spellbound. He couldn’t find another word for it. Spellbound. He couldn’t put it down. This fantastic depiction of childhood had found a home in his borrowed office at the local police, it was there when he answered ‘Gunnar Löv’s telephone’ and received that strange pause in response, it was there when he waded through pools of blood in the city, trying to make sense of why the hell they’d had to pull out that knife and press it in between those ribs. It was only in the moment when the first contours began to emerge from behind the Kvarnen Killing that it felt like he had really finished reading the book. He imagined he could see something peculiar behind it that he wouldn’t normally have noticed. He allowed himself to thank the literature for that discovery. Even though it sounded a bit idealised.

His relationship with his family was far from idealised, however. Danne had stopped being pubescent and moody. Instead, Tova was pubescent and crazy. Completely out of her mind. He didn’t have the energy to even think about it. But Cilla was taking it quite hard, since she had always had a good relationship with her daughter. Now, suddenly, she was the most old-fashioned, awful individual who had ever lived, and it was the first time that Cilla had really felt her age. Which wasn’t especially advanced, but now suddenly increased by roughly a year a day. She had now reached ninety-three, and was not especially inclined to marital interaction.

Behind Jorge Chavez’s head was Delphi. An idealised ancient Greek landscape with shining gold drawing pins. Chavez’s head was in the computer, however. Practically connected.

‘It suits you,’ said Paul Hjelm.

‘What?’ asked Chavez, typing away.

‘Delphi suits you.’

Chavez stopped typing and glanced over his shoulder. He grimaced and began typing again.

‘How are you?’ Hjelm asked abruptly.

Chavez sighed and looked up. ‘Are we working or hanging out?’ he replied brutally.

‘Hanging out,’ Hjelm said, unflustered. ‘At least for a few minutes. Do you want a coffee?’

‘No, I don’t want a crap coffee with flakes of limescale in it.’

‘Racist,’ said Paul Hjelm, filling up two mugs from the old coffee machine on their shared desk. ‘You’ve got to integrate. Otherwise, you’ll never fit into Swedish society. You’ll never be let into any pubs.’

‘That’s a little paradox about Swedish society,’ said Chavez, taking a mug. ‘Only the people who never go to pubs are let in.’

They raised their mugs to one another. It had been a while.

‘Oh yeah, that’s pretty good,’ Chavez continued, pulling a face; you really could feel the flakes of limescale floating around in your mouth. ‘I’ve been on so damn many courses that I can’t really distinguish them.’

‘Home-language lessons?’ Hjelm said obstinately, smiling charmingly.

‘Soon, when I become superintendent,’ said Chavez with the same charming smile, ‘that kind of thing’ll be wiped out from the police force. And you’ll be first of all.’

Oh yes, they were back again. Everything was just the same.

‘No women?’ asked Hjelm.

‘What’s the name of that director, the one who did Änglagård?’

‘Colin Nutley. Immigrant. Are you a couple?’

‘Colin Nutley. When he came to Sweden, two things struck him. The women were completely fantastic.’

‘And the other?’

‘But the men… That’s it, word for word: “But the men…” I think it’s a great way to put it.’

‘And that’s the answer to my question?’ asked Hjelm quietly.

‘Yup. Yes: women. Several women. But none in particular.’

‘Isn’t it about time to settle down a bit?’

‘Like Viggo?’ exclaimed Chavez. ‘Did you hear about the thing with the baby? What a bloody story.’

‘The more shots, the better your chances of hitting. Even if there are a few accidental shots…’

‘He seems to be living with that woman. One day she just turned up at his door and said: this is your daughter. And now they’re both living with him. A normal, happy family.’

‘He avoided all the pregnancy madness,’ Hjelm said jealously. ‘Lucky guy.’

‘I know you don’t believe it, but I do actually go home with women. It’s that simple. Only, the one is conspicuously absent. So I’m replacing quality with quantity. You know your Marx, right?’

‘Nope,’ said Hjelm, pointing to Chavez’s computer. ‘Have you found anything?’

‘Only thoughts. And you?’

‘If that man in Kvarnen, the one who was overheard speaking English with the three dead Yugoslavs, if they were even Yugoslav, really is a policeman, then he’s the key. He’s the one who set the entire thing moving. It could be one of three things: bribe money, blackmail money or a purchase sum. The first would mean it was about a one-off payment, clearly a very big one. Not something regular. But it could also be some kind of initial payment, that’s not so unlikely. The second is possible, but what could this policeman have on Rajko Nedic that no one else has? The third seems most likely. Maybe they’re buying information, but it’s most likely that they’re buying drugs from him, simple as that. But if that’s the case, we need to find a policeman with access to drugs. A confiscation, maybe? One that hasn’t been accounted for? I think we should take a look at the drugs units across the country.

‘In that case, shouldn’t Internal be brought in?’ asked Chavez.

‘There’s no guarantee that he’s actually a policeman. The man who showed a police ID in Kvarnen might not even have been the person talking to the Slavs. But no one else seems to be missing. Kerstin and I’ll have to get in touch with everyone from Kvarnen again to try to get better descriptions of both the policeman and the robber gang.’

‘2C, 2E, 2F.’

Hjelm grimaced slightly, and said: ‘If you insist on using those names, yeah. 2A: Eskil Carlstedt, dead. 2B: Sven Joakim Bergwall, dead. 2D: Niklas Lindberg, annoyingly full of life. If we test 2C’s blood type maybe we can get closer, not least if we do it through Kumla since he may well have been in the Nazi gang there. AB negative isn’t so common, after all. Söderstedt and Norlander are still working on the Kumla case. They’re going to interview the rest of the Slavs there, and the rest of the Nazis. Doesn’t that sound enviable?’

‘Not even slightly,’ said Chavez, pulling at a cuticle with an indifferent expression. ‘They’ll be banging their heads against the cell walls.’

‘They can scrape one another off them, then. Well, all right. Now, Eskil Carlstedt. I’ve checked his background and been through his flat. Since he knew the flat would be searched, he’s cleaned it meticulously. Not a trace. The neighbours heard the vacuum cleaner early in the morning on the twenty-fourth. Before he came here and allowed himself to be interviewed by a couple of idiots. The hard drive on his computer’s been wiped. The technicians are working on it, maybe they can get something back. Something else for Svenhagen to get his teeth into. Have you seen his daughter, by the way? Might be something for you, Jorge. Gunnar’s working with her. An unbelievable woman. Hair’s too short, maybe.’

‘I don’t believe in inbreeding,’ Chavez said darkly.

‘It doesn’t matter what you believe. It’s about passion that throws all common sense and principles out the window.’

‘Shut up and go on.’

‘I can’t do both,’ said Hjelm. ‘You’ll have to choose one.’

‘Go on,’ Chavez said even more darkly.

‘Carlstedt’s past is about as empty as his hard drive. Kerstin’s talking to his workmates at Kindwall’s in Hammarby harbour. He sold Fords. Used-car salesman. Especially used now.’

Chavez laughed, and said, in a silly voice: ‘“Would you buy a used car from this man?” I’m wondering most about Nedic myself. How the hell is it possible that he can live and work as an honest businessman when every single policeman in this country knows that he’s one of the leading drug dealers? Most of these dealers are underground, after all, but he’s playing a strangely precise double game. It seems to be built on an extreme, almost mafia-like loyalty. No one snitches on Rajko Nedic. That’s just how it is.’

‘What kind of legitimate business?’

‘Mmm,’ said Chavez knowingly. ‘A restaurant chain, for a change. Three restaurants. Great places to eat, apparently. One almost ended up in the Michelin guide. They’ve tried to go the Al Capone route, the back way, and do him for tax avoidance, but it doesn’t work. He runs that part of his business impeccably. The most law-abiding man in the restaurant world, according to the finance division.’

‘Could that be what this is about?’ said Hjelm, rubbing what he thought was the beginning of a bald patch.

‘You mean that some policeman has found a back route and is trying to get a little extra in their pocket? Yeah, sure. Except there doesn’t seem to be a back route. You said it yourself: what could one single policeman have found out that none of his colleagues have?’

‘What’s to say it’s a single policeman?’

‘The fact that a whole gang of criminal policemen sounds unlikely,’ said Chavez. ‘That’s it. It just doesn’t fit. Though it could be the porn police. That doesn’t sound unlikely. The whole Mediterranean shrimp thing was really ingenious. It’s an obvious lead.’

‘How’re the arms?’ Hjelm smiled evilly.

‘Both shoulders are out of joint, tibia’s cracked, spleen ruptured. They’re going to blow me up tomorrow morning. You can have the honour of scraping me from the walls of the station yourself.’

‘What a privilege. But does it really have to be one single policeman?’

‘Does it have to be a policeman?’ asked Chavez, standing up, stretching and walking over to the window which faced out onto the inner courtyard of the police station. ‘Maybe we’re focusing a bit too much on that. We shouldn’t let it blind us.’

‘No,’ Hjelm nodded, ‘no, of course not. But more? The weapons?’

‘Gang One had Russian Izh-70-300s. Do you want to hear the story about that pistol?’

‘No.’

‘After the Second World War,’ Chavez began, like a storyteller in front of a log fire, ‘the Red Army’s classic Tokarev pistols were changed. An engineer called Nikolai Makarov designed a pistol that was eventually accepted by Stalin. Still, production couldn’t start until after his death. In 1954, Izhevskij Mekhanikeskij Zavod started production of the apparently extraordinary Makarov pistol, which is still made today. After the Wall came down, the markets suddenly opened for the state-owned Izhevskij factory, and Russian pistols were hard currency. A new series, based on the Makarov, saw the light of day. The Izh-70 series. The Izh-70 and the Izh-70-100 use traditional Makarov ammunition, 9x18mm, with a magazine that holds eight and twelve bullets respectively. The Izh-70-200 and the Izh-70-300 are designed to use the more international Browning bullets, 9x17mm, eight and twelve respectively. In addition, there’s also the brand-new Izh-70-400, which has been specially made for the enormous American firearms market’s popular Parabellum ammunition.’

‘Unbelievably fascinating,’ Hjelm muttered. ‘Connection?’

‘Sure enough, it’s said to have turned up in the various Balkan wars. But, like I said, it’s… popular.’

‘The sub-machine guns then? Let me guess.’

‘No.’

‘Military arsenal?’

‘Yup,’ said Chavez, sitting down with a thud. ‘They’ve been traced back to a big arsenal in Boden where a great big break-in took place a year or two ago. Twenty-three standard-model sub-machine guns were stolen, as well as boxes and boxes of ammo. A feast for the eyes.’

‘Boden,’ Hjelm nodded. ‘I assume that Niklas Lindberg served there at some point during his military career.’

‘Both he and Bergwall did, actually. Bergwall did his service there. Lindberg was a cadet. If that’s what it’s called.’

‘No idea. More, more, more.’

‘Well,’ Chavez sighed deeply, ‘I’m going to work on the Nazi organisations. With Gunnar Nyberg as a backup, if it all works for him. Someone somewhere must know about this organisation, and someone somewhere must know what’s going to happen next. I don’t think this is the end. They’ve got the briefcase, they’ve got the money – or drugs, if that’s what this is about – but they’re going to do something particular with them, I’d bet my bloody life on it. So it’ll be like this: me and Gunnar working the Nazi racket, Arto and Viggo on Kumla, you and Kerstin the “policeman”. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go straight for Nedic, it’s never worked. Plus, it’s not him behind the Sickla Slaughter. It’s Niklas Lindberg and his gang. We’ve got to get them.’

‘Great,’ exclaimed Hjelm. ‘That’s that, then, Detective Superintendent. There’s just one thing missing. A pensioner by the name of Jan-Olov Hultin.’

‘Yeah, yeah. He can have some kind of therapeutic job. Basket weaving, maybe.’