To the Top of the Mountain

22

THEY HAD AGREED to meet in Sundberg’s Konditori down by Järntorget. Though it was Midsummer, it was still open. She assumed it was because of the Germans. Not the Germans who had built Järntorget five hundred or so years ago, but the Germans strolling up and down Västerlånggatan that very day, wondering why everything was closed. Even the restaurants.

But not Sundberg’s Konditori, Sweden’s oldest coffee shop. As a result, the cafe was chock-full of Germans looking for shelter from the rain. It was a gloomy Midsummer’s Day in Stockholm. The magnificent summer weather which had held for almost all of June was clearly a thing of the past. The rain was pelting down over Gamla Stan, washing Germans out from the alleyways. The fortunate ones washed up in Sundberg’s Konditori.

He was sitting, cramped, at the back of the cafe. She thought to herself that he looked like Stalingrad. Surrounded by Germans.

He gave her a slight wave. Normally, when you had arranged to meet Party-Ragge, Detective Superintendent Ragnar Hellberg, he would stand up abruptly, smile broadly, wave enthusiastically and shout loudly. But not this time. Just that restrained little wave.

He was wearing a faded green T-shirt, jeans and tattered sandals; this wasn’t how he normally looked. And his dark, mid-length hair above his little black Lenin beard, she had definitely never seen it look so dishevelled. There were hints of purple beneath his eyes. What had he been doing over Midsummer? Working? On ‘administrative stuff, I suppose you could say’?

Sara Svenhagen thought that he looked younger when he was serious, hardly thirty. That wasn’t the case with men in general. They almost always looked younger when they laughed. Though, on the other hand, they only laughed when they were young. Properly laughed.

A little paradox in the midst of the Midsummer rain.

He was sitting at the very back of the cafe, next to a door she soon realised was the toilet. It slammed shut with high frequency. She shook the water from her clothes and sat down next to him with a little cup of coffee. No Danish pastries. It wasn’t the time.

‘Hi, Sara, everything OK?’

‘Yeah, pretty good. I always feel a bit shaken when I’ve been talking to one of them. They seem to be on a completely different planet. A parallel universe.’

‘How did he seem? What was his name? Wirsén?’

‘Witréus,’ she said. ‘John Andreas Witréus. And he seems… well, out of it. Here but not here. In some parallel existence, almost. You talk to him, but he’s not there. Not really. He wanted me to act as a therapist. Quite damaged, but quite harmless, too. A passive paedophile, I guess. Had quite a bit of porn but mainly took pictures. Loads of seemingly innocent pictures from his window up in Söder Torn. Of kids on Merborgarplatsen and the area around it. Hardly criminal.’

‘Have you had a chance to look at his computer?’

‘Yeah. What he said is probably true. He doesn’t seem to have any address lists himself, and doesn’t seem to have sent any pictures. Just received them. En masse. There must be about five hundred pictures in his inbox alone. No proper sender details, of course, but it should be possible to find that out. Witréus unwittingly ended up on an address list. It might not be a network.’

‘What could it be, then?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not really a computer expert. We’ll have to see what the specialists say.’

‘I’d rather the computer didn’t end up there.’

‘What? Why?’ Sara Svenhagen exclaimed.

Ragnar Hellberg leaned towards her. She guessed that he hadn’t brushed his teeth for some time.

‘I could pull rank on you, Sara. Say “just follow my orders” and nothing more. But I don’t want to. You’ve got to trust me. Let’s keep this between us. No one else.’

She scrutinised him. The young, comet-careerist superintendent. The party policeman. So subdued, so serious, so deflated. She didn’t understand.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I won’t ask.’

‘I know that you know a hell of a lot about computers, Sara. You’d be able to get a lot from it yourself, right?’

‘Probably,’ she replied honestly.

‘And what? What is it if it’s not a network?’

‘It’s a list of addresses. It showed up for a few seconds on that temporary website on Thursday, at 19.36.07. I’ve got that address. But it stopped being of interest as soon as it revealed itself. It’s a free, anonymous American site. Since I’m convinced Witréus is telling the truth, I don’t think it’s a network. The addresses, they don’t know one another, they aren’t sharing pictures in the usual way. The list is a way of expanding the circle without risking anything. Everyone that’s visited a certain site – which is still unknown at this point – is bombarded with emails full of child porn.

‘Without having given their email address?’

‘I think so, yeah. They must’ve found a way to quickly identify a person’s email address. Something that we’d find very useful. Since most of the people who want an anonymous email address use Hotmail, I think it’s the key. You quickly identify the number of the phone line, check it off against the Hotmail users, and find an email address. It probably only takes a few milliseconds. I’m assuming it’s something new.’

‘So this means that there’s no alert risk, at least? If we let Witréus go, or let him talk to a lawyer, he won’t be able to warn the network?’

‘No. Because there is no network to contact. Theoretically, I suppose you could imagine him sending out general warnings via the paedophile sites, but it doesn’t seem likely. He’s staying in the closet. But are we really talking about letting him go?’

‘No,’ said Hellberg, leaning back. ‘No, of course not. We’ve got enough with the child porn. And we’re seizing the computer. Can you take it home and work on it there?’

‘Yeah, if necessary.’

‘I’m afraid I’ll have to be stubborn and say it is necessary. Anything else?’

‘Witréus had a jar full of undeveloped films. And a film in his camera. Is it OK if I take them home and develop them? Can I get the darkroom equipment from the stockroom?’

‘Buy it,’ said Ragnar Hellberg. ‘And give me the receipt.’

‘No tracks?’ said Sara Svenhagen, watching her boss.

‘No tracks,’ he nodded.