To the Top of the Mountain

30

ARTO SÖDERSTEDT DROPPED his children off at nursery. In the summer, he enjoyed dropping the children off. He liked to watch their attitude change, how they transformed from daddy’s girl into just one of the group. A real little metamorphosis.

Though in the winter, he didn’t see it. There wasn’t enough energy then.

As he hugged his little Lina goodbye, it struck him that time was running out. He had five children and had been dropping them off and picking them up for almost fifteen years without ever thinking that, one day, it would be over. After next year, he would no longer be dropping children off at nursery. He would never drop the children off at nursery again.

Grandkids, maybe. Though hopefully not too soon.

Lina, the little blonde, disappeared, skipping off towards the other children. When he saw her hug a little boy called Rutger, she was no longer daddy’s little girl.

He stood for a moment, watching her. His youngest.

When he stepped out into the hesitant summer morning, he imagined that it would be a good scene for a crime novel. He was a detective, dropping his kids off at nursery. People would recognise themselves in it. Though, obviously, he would be a woman…

No, Arto Söderstedt decided. This wasn’t a crime novel. This was reality.

He wandered along Bondegatan, the sun making a half-hearted attempt to peep through the thick patches of cloud. The street was strangely mottled, an ongoing battle between sun and shade. He came out onto Götgatan, right opposite the tower block which housed the tax authorities. It shimmered in the same strange, mottled, constantly shifting light. Anja would already be inside, checking over tax returns. At the breakfast table, she would give daily reports on the most astounding attempts at tax evasion. So he didn’t need to feel too bad about letting the children spend their summer in day care, the youth centre and summer camps. The married couple shared the tax burden fraternally – or was it sororally?

Down on Götgatan, the newly assigned service Audi was waiting. Without a parking ticket. He had started to learn the complicated parking rules. The accelerator pedal felt well oiled and the clutch elastic. He sat for a moment, pretending to drive. He secretly hoped that no one had seen him cross the line as the Safari Rally’s most brilliant winner of all time.

He turned the ignition and drove towards Kungsholmen. He knew what he would be doing first today. True, he and Viggo would be going to search through Roger Sjöqvist’s and Dan Andersson’s flats in the southern suburbs, but that wasn’t the first thing he was planning on doing.

The first thing Arto Söderstedt would be doing was buying a car. On the Internet.

It was a decision that had matured, if not slowly, then… quickly, in any case. A decision which had matured quickly. He had gained the support of the family using hardly democratic means. Anja, who had been nagging for a car for two years, looked at him sceptically, trying to work out his hidden motives. He revealed nothing, just sat there, poker-faced, spouting altruistic motives like fake playing cards: they could go on trips to Skåne, take day trips to the Kolmården Animal Park, drive around the Bay of Bothnia to Vasa and see whether they had any friends left in Finland.

After all, he couldn’t reveal what the real reason was – that it was fun to drive.

What the enormous family needed was a so-called family car. As he turned off into the garage beneath the police station, he pondered over the term ‘family car’. They were minibuses, but you couldn’t call them that. It sounded unsophisticated. The European Commission for Traffic Safety had recently presented the results of a large safety test on family cars. It was especially welcome in Sweden because the last year had seen a couple of catastrophes where family cars had burst into flames following collisions. Fortunately, the tests revealed that there were safe models.

He came to his office, nodding absent-mindedly in greeting at Viggo Norlander who, once again, looked like something the cat had dragged in. Today, he looked like a ruffled and tattered old great tit. Söderstedt sat down at his computer and launched the browser.

‘We’ve got to go,’ said Norlander sullenly. ‘To Handen first, and then-’

‘The foot,’ said Arto Söderstedt, entering his password.

‘Shut up,’ said Viggo Norlander.

‘So you had Charlotte again last night? Did it go well?’

‘Christ, it’s hard work.’

‘Are you getting cold feet?’

‘No. No, I love it. Really. But it’s hard work. I’m convinced she’s dead three times a night. Sudden infant death syndrome.’

‘What about Astrid?’

‘Thursday night. Astrid meets her friends then.’

‘Sewing circle,’ said Arto Söderstedt while he waited for his password to be approved.

‘What?’

‘They listen deeply to one another. No, it used to be called a sewing circle. Nowadays it’s called a girls’ evening or a girls’ night in. If you’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed, you could call it a hen house, too. Though you should keep that to yourself. How’s it going with her?’

‘Well, vitality’s the word. Astrid’s born again. She got her baby in the end. She’s bubbling. You say that, right? “Bubbling”?’

‘You can say that. If that’s what you mean.’

‘It’s what I mean. What the hell are you up to? I’ve been waiting quarter of an hour. We’ve got to go.’

‘What do you mean by “bubbling”? It’s only three weeks since she gave birth. No complications?’

‘She tore a bit. Not that it’s slowing her down.’

‘Sexually?’

‘That’s our business, isn’t it?’

‘Exactly,’ said Arto Söderstedt, typing the address for Gula Tidningen’s home page. ‘Your business is the kind of thing you share with your friends.’

‘Shut up,’ said Viggo Norlander.

Söderstedt turned towards him.

‘Come on, Viggo. You’re in your first monogamous relationship in God knows how many decades, and I want to know how it’s going. It’s called a social network. I’m your social network.’

Viggo Norlander’s facial expression changed dramatically. His gloomy, lopsided, inward-backward-sloping mug was replaced by a dreamy smile.

‘Got it,’ said Söderstedt, smiling. ‘That was quick work. Go down to the car, then, I’m coming. This will only take five minutes.’

Norlander disappeared. That’s a robust great tit, Söderstedt thought to himself, glancing over the headlines in front of him on the screen.

Gula Tidningen had, for the past few decades, been Stockholm’s main paper for free advertisements. Maybe also for the stolen goods trade. You could buy anything you wanted second-hand. No questions asked. Cars, for example. Family cars, for example. The paper also had a website. The system wasn’t fully developed yet, but it was more than enough.

He found seven items of interest, above all a Renault Espace and a Toyota Picnic. Terrifying prices, of course, but it was just a case of facing the music. He sent off seven messages showing his interest. That was enough. He returned to the home page.

The headline, THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’, woke his easily aroused interest. Arto Söderstedt loved reading personal ads, declarations of love and intimate messages. He couldn’t really explain why – maybe it was just a perversion of his; maybe these small, concentrated phrases held the longing of our times. In tightly constrained form. A person’s entire complicated emotional life reduced to no more than a few lines, and that meant that the results were normally highly interesting. He thought for a moment about Norlander, seething as he waited down in the garage. But only for a moment. With a voyeur’s overexcited feeling of shame, he glanced through the entries under THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’. Some of them really fuelled the imagination.

‘Stallion Harald. I’m passionate about your rut. Your filly, Edna.’

‘BK is CF. 3 12 13 18 24 28 30. DL.’

‘Stefan. Come back. All is forgiven. Even the freezer incident. I L Y, Rickard.’

‘3+3=5. Still waiting. D & the gang.’

‘Eurydice. “No crime is worse than bitter betrayal, the Florento sisters said.” 82 12G 14. Orpheus.’

‘Saturday 3rd. You know where. Licking Jack.’

‘Hard-ons are fun. Secret(ion) Services.’

He lost interest, closed the window and ran down to the garage. Viggo Norlander was fuming. He was standing by his rusty old service Volvo, stomping.

‘Bastard,’ said Norlander.

‘Söderstedt,’ said Söderstedt.

They drove to Handen, twenty or so kilometres south of Stockholm. Norlander drove like a ruffled and tattered old great tit the cat had dragged in. Dan Andersson’s flat was in the centre of Handen, a flat which wasn’t a bomb site but a surprisingly well-cleaned one-bed. Precision-cleaned. Forensics probably wouldn’t find even a fingerprint. It was exactly like Eskil Carlstedt’s flat in Stockholm. They went through the few books and files. Everything was in impeccable order. Even the tassels on the rug had been combed out. A scent of soap still lingered beneath the deep-rooted stench of smoke in Danne Blood Pudding’s flat. On a shelf there was a photograph. Dan Andersson in Mallorca, smiling broadly and with an enormous beer in his hand. His face actually was slightly purple in colour. There wasn’t much else to see. Here, too, all traces of right-wing extremism were conspicuous in their absence. Here, too, they were standing in a flat which had been expecting a visit from the police, and had been made as bland as possible.

Arto Söderstedt did his duty but little else. Somewhere under the dull, routine work, something was niggling. He wondered what it was.

A grain of sand, waiting to become a pearl?

They drove north to Hökarängen. Roger Sjöqvist’s last-known haunt. Sjöqvist had fled on his first unsupervised period of release from Tidaholm prison, having served nine leave-free years. Back then, he had given this address as his residence. It turned out to be his parents’ flat, though he hadn’t been there in ten years. Both Söderstedt and Norlander were convinced by the wretched Sjöqvist parents. The father – if it was in fact his father – stank so strongly of alcohol that the smallest of sparks would have sent the entire high-rise up in flames. They left the danger zone rapidly.

‘Well, that was worthwhile,’ Norlander said in the car on the way back to Stockholm. ‘What a difference we’re making. How meaningful it all feels!’

‘Shut up,’ said Söderstedt.

Norlander looked at him in surprise.

Arto Söderstedt was thinking. The niggle was growing more and more intolerable. The grain of sand was demanding to become a pearl.

He had seen, heard or thought something. At some point during the morning, something had crept past and should have caught his attention. But it had slipped away, and now it was rubbing, like a grain of sand in a mussel. Or rather like a fly which has worked its way behind someone’s eyeball, and can’t be reached. Without resorting to surgical methods.

Söderstedt’s surgical methods were of the orthodox, clinical kind. He went through the entire day, from the moment he woke up. When he opened his eyes, Anja was gone. She had already dragged herself to work to scrape excess fat from tax returns. Next, he went to the toilet. No memorable thoughts. Irritated by his constipation. Breakfast. Lively. Four kids. Minor fight between the eight-year-old and the ten-year-old. Catfight, he recalled thinking. The fifth kid at summer camp north of Uppsala. Dropping off three of the kids, the thirteen-year-old staying at home: the first two at the youth centre, the smallest at nursery. Pondering over dropping the kids off at nursery in summer and winter. The lightning-quick realisation that soon he would never have to drop them off again. Watching the shadow play on Bondegatan and on the tower block. Strange fantasies about being in a crime novel. Pondering the parking regulations in inner Stockholm. His clear victory in the Safari Rally. Thoughts of buying a car. The term ‘family car’. European crash tests. Viggo. Discussion on sudden infant death syndrome, sewing circles, hen houses, the word ‘bubbling’. Viggo’s dreamy expression. Gula Tidningen. Expensive family cars. Seven messages of interest sent by email. Then the shamefulness. The feeling returned. Why the shamefulness? The headline THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’. Exactly, ‘Secret(ion) Services’. It was here. Somewhere here. A message.

What had it said? Your filly, Edna. The freezer incident. Licking Jack. Still waiting. Nope, they didn’t set any bells ringing.

‘No crime is worse than bitter betrayal, the Florento sisters said.’ That must have been it. The Florento sisters? A small bell rang. A crime of some kind which had recently been discovered… Weren’t the Florento sisters criminals? They were in the US, weren’t they? A couple of prostitutes who had stolen a load of money from some mega-pimp? Though surely that couldn’t have been so important?

Why were criminals being quoted in THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’, in a message posted on Gula Tidningen’s home page?

Yeah, yeah, so what? It was their combination with something else in the same message that was crucial. What had it said? Orpheus and Eurydice? Yes, that was it, but it wasn’t all. Weren’t there some numbers? Some combinations?

How had it gone in THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’?

‘BK, CF, DL. 3 12 13 18 24 28 30.’ No, those sounded like lottery numbers. There were seven numbers when you played Lotto, weren’t there? Initials and a row of numbers.

‘3+3=5.’ No that was ‘still waiting’. One of the six was missing. Two groups of three. Maybe two love triangles joining together. Two smaller group-sex gangs joining forces. But one didn’t want to. You could call that group pressure.

More. ‘Saturday 3rd.’ Nope, meeting. ‘You know where. Licking Jack.’ Classic adultery. Meeting between woman and tongue.

He normally remembered things. Memory like an elephant. Orpheus and the Florento sisters and – a combination of numbers.

‘Eurydice. “No crime is worse than bitter betrayal, the Florento sisters said.” 82 12G 14. Orpheus.’

‘82 12G 14.’ Exactly. That was it. That was what had been nagging him, and continued to do so. Why? How could he be supposed to know what that combination meant? It was just numbers and a letter. Impenetrable. Give up, as Kerstin Holm would say.

He couldn’t give up. It was nagging him. ‘82 12G 14.’

‘82 12G 14.’ ‘82 12G 14.’

A car emerged in his mind. This car. Viggo Norlander’s half-stolen service Volvo. Why? When? Hard to steer. Yeah? Why hard to steer?

Because he had to hold a book open using the wheel.

Kumla. A little church town south-west of Lake Tåkern in Östergötland.

E18. Missed turn-off on the way out of Stockholm.

Arto Söderstedt grabbed the atlas from the compartment in the car door. Motormännens vägatlas över Sverige. He ripped the loose red plastic cover open and leafed frantically in the index. Kumla. ‘44 8E 2.’

Shit. It was right and not right.

‘82 12G 14.’

‘44 8E 2.’

At the start of the index, there were instructions on how to read the combinations. First page. 82 and 44. Then a square on that page: 12G and 8E. After this, the quarter of that square: 1 was bottom left, 2 bottom right; 3 was top left, 4 top right. It was that part which didn’t make any sense. The last number in the combination could only be 1, 2, 3 or 4. Not 14.

Arto Söderstedt didn’t really understand what he was doing. Was this just a mental workout? Brain-training? So that it didn’t go rusty when he was seventy-five?

Conclusion. Criminals are quoted in THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’. Why? Combined with something which seemed to be a geographic location, but wasn’t quite. Was it a red herring after all? Did ‘82 12G 14’ have nothing to do with the atlas, despite the similarities?

‘How common is this?’ Söderstedt asked, holding up the red plastic book.

Norlander stared at him so long that he became a real road hazard.

‘You’ve gone mad,’ he said eventually. ‘You’ve finally lost the plot. It was just a question of time until the little bells started ringing.’

‘Just answer me.’

Norlander caught sight of the oncoming lorry just in time to swerve out of the way.

‘It’s the standard road atlas in Sweden,’ he said after a while. Their pulses were racing.

Söderstedt nodded. OK, if you were looking for a geographical location in Sweden, then it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to assume that you would use this particular atlas. He continued from that hypothesis. The last number, 1, 2, 3 or 4, referred to the division of each square into four identical squares. It had said 14 in Gula Tidningen. If you imagined a more precise division of each of these new squares into four further squares, in this case ‘12G 1’, you would end up in square 4 in square 1. 14.

From the square labelled ‘82 12G 14’, he created the square ‘82 12G 1’, and from this square, he made another four, choosing square number 4 from them, ‘82 12G 14’. He turned to page 82, square 12G, and then square 1, to the bottom left, and inside that square, square 4, in the top right. He ended up in Avesta, a town on the border between the counties of Västmanland and Dalarna. That didn’t seem unlikely. Right in the middle of a town.

Orpheus was sending Eurydice a message to tell her that he was in Avesta, and also took the opportunity to quote those criminal Florento sisters from America.

So what? The A-Unit was in the middle of one of the most important murder investigations of late – why should that little message be of interest to him? He couldn’t describe it as anything other than a hunch. That indescribable feeling of being onto something completely unknown.

Criminals, location, mythology… There was something there.

But, of course, it couldn’t intrude on the rest of the investigation. That much was clear.

When they returned to the office, Söderstedt went straight to the computer. He had received four messages on the family cars: sold, sold, sold and sold. Not much variation.

There was, however, variation on Gula Tidningen’s home page. Under the title THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’. It now read:

‘Orpheus. “But the sisters vanished into thin air.” 41 7C 31. Eurydice.’

Söderstedt had smuggled the atlas with him into the office. He looked up ‘41 7C 31’.

It was the other side of the country, Alingsås.

He had found something, but he had no idea what.

All he had was his hunch.