To the Top of the Mountain

34

THE WEAK LINK between Sara Svenhagen and Jorge Chavez was called Gunnar Nyberg. A few weeks ago, he and Sara had been working as a pair. Now, the other half of the pair was Jorge.

Though ‘pair’ was maybe a bit much. They didn’t take it in turns running up dingy stairwells, service weapons raised; they didn’t cover one another as they crept down some dark alley; they didn’t play good cop, bad cop in any dark interrogation rooms. No, they sat at their computers. Through no fault of his own, the once boorish bodybuilder policeman had been thrown from one computer nerd to the next and, as a result, had actually become quite good at working online.

Though enough was enough.

Moving back to the A-Unit had somehow breathed life into old habits. Or maybe they were bad habits. He went out into the underworld, into the old Gunnar Nyberg territory. Suddenly he’d had enough of virtual cyber-Nazism, and put a surprising number of rank-and-file officers to work, hunting the only line of business which never took a break.

First of all, there was a gang of robbers. It was primarily made up of relatively young right-wing extremists, but also of more out-and-out professional criminals like Danne Blood Pudding. Nyberg organised an extensive interrogation of professional criminals, bank robbers and skinheads. He followed up leads, above all on Danne Blood Pudding and Roger Sjöqvist.

So far, it hadn’t led to anything.

Then there was a drugs ring. Rajko Nedic really did seem untouchable, but in the long run there must be something to go on. Anything at all.

And that was what he was currently busy with. The old intimidation techniques were like reflex. He heaved his irritatingly constant 146 kilos towards the thin figure of a man named Robban, a known big-time pusher in Hjulsta. Robban was in his flat, gaping with surprise at the broken front door which was hanging in scraps – not splinters, not pieces of wood, but scraps. Robban thought: How the hell did he manage to break the door into scraps? But that wasn’t what he said. Instead, voice shaking, he said: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Think again,’ said Gunnar Nyberg.

‘Shit, man,’ Robban half sniffed. ‘You know as well as I do that it’s an idiot-proof system. You don’t know anyone else! There’s a delivery, you pick it up. You deliver the money, they look happy. When they don’t look happy, you’re dead.’

Nyberg heaved himself a little closer. His grizzly bear’s face was only a few centimetres from Robban’s, which was more rabbit-like than anything else. The grizzly’s breath didn’t smell of raw meat and fresh blood – it smelt of coffee.

‘Yugoslavs?’ the coffee-scented predator barked.

‘Could be,’ Robban panted. ‘I dunno. They look southern, they do. Ruthless guys. Always speaking gibberish together.’

‘What d’you mean by that?’

A sudden burst of kamikaze bravado: ‘Go fuck yourself, you bastard.’

The grizzly bear grabbed the rabbit’s neck, pressing hard. The rabbit shook violently – a trembling piece of second-rate fur.

‘I learned this through close contact,’ Gunnar Nyberg informed him pedagogically. ‘It really works.’

‘Wait. Christ! Wait,’ Robban trembled.

Nyberg loosened his grip, feeling ill at ease. He had said he would never again use violence in his work. It had just happened. As though his grizzly role demanded it.

Robban stared admiringly at him.

‘Wow, man!’ he shouted, massaging his neck. ‘What a grip!’

‘Get to the point now,’ Nyberg muttered, ashamed.

‘OK. I’ve heard about a drug dealer who’s made a thing of it. All his men speak gibberish between themselves. It’s a way of disguising the entire thing.’

A way of disguising the entire thing, Gunnar Nyberg thought to himself before asking, as he should: ‘Which dealer?’

‘Rajko Nedic.’

‘And you think it’s Nedic making deliveries to you?’

‘No idea,’ said Robban, lighting a cigarette and trying to look calm. ‘And above all, I didn’t say that.’

Nyberg returned to his worn-out old Renault, sitting for a moment with his hands on the wheel and looking out over Hjulsta’s utterly homogeneous seventies architecture. The July sun reflected listlessly in the identical, greyish-brown rows of windows.

Well, Gunnar Nyberg thought to himself. It was the warmest day of the year, he was dripping with sweat, and his thoughts were heroically trying to crawl up out of a day which had turned into quicksand. Once again, he thought: Well…

And: Well…

His thoughts broke free in a short, sharp burst.

If Rajko Nedic’s men always spoke Serbo-Croat between themselves, how could those Swedish Nazis in Kumla have worked out that a handover was going to take place?

Niklas Lindberg surely couldn’t have tortured Lordan Vukotic twice. Someone would have noticed. And yet Lindberg knew two things: that a big handover was going to take place, and that there would be a meeting in Kvarnen. How had he known?

Nedic’s empire was built on perfect discipline. No one ever blabbed. That was the mainstay of the entire operation. That was how he managed to act as a law-abiding restaurateur with such precision. Quite simply, his word was the law.

Did that mean he had suddenly discovered a crack in Nedic’s walls?

One of his men in Kumla had squealed – even before Vukotic had done it. A leak in the watertight system.

Gunnar Nyberg saw the chance to sow some weeds in the carefully pruned garden. Wasn’t there a chance that the whole organisation might start to bleed information if news of a leak reached Nedic?

Nyberg sat in his car. His hands had turned white at the wheel. Drops of sweat ran between his fingers, loosening them.

Three men in Kumla. What were they called? Zoran Koco, Petar Klovic, Risto Petrovic. He would talk to them. Right away.

He was already halfway there. Hjulsta. He tore off in his rusty old Renault, along the E18 towards Örebro. Between Bålsta and Enköping, he passed a place called Grillby. The name set a little bell ringing in his head. Grillby? He had been to Grillby. When? How? Though he didn’t know why he was thinking about it now. Probably some kind of failure to adjust to a slower speed.

After Örebro, he sped across the Närke plain towards Kumla. It didn’t take much more than an hour. He made his way to the prison governor and immediately found the trio’s collected works in front of him in an interrogation room.

Interpol’s material was extensive but, ultimately, not especially comprehensive. There were lots of blanks, especially in relation to the Yugoslav war. Zoran Koco was a Bosnian Muslim from Sarajevo and had apparently been one of the leading black-market sharks during the Bosnian war. Petar Klovic was a Bosnian Serb and had been a guard in one of the concentration camps for Muslims. No crimes – if you ignored their crimes against humanity. Risto Petrovic was a Croat, the former commander of a paramilitary group which had also been involved in the ethnic cleansing. Though of Serbs in Croatia.

An utterly unholy alliance.

When it came to Niklas Lindberg, the blank was his year in the Foreign Legion. May ’94 to May ’95. Koco and Klovic were already in Sweden by then, but not Petrovic. On the contrary, there was a very significant gap in the material from that time. In July 1995, Petrovic had come to Sweden and joined Rajko Nedic’s gang, something which was, of course, unconfirmed. By September, he had already been nicked for peddling drugs, and had been inside, awaiting deportation, ever since.

Nyberg contacted CID’s Interpol group. They, in turn, contacted the Foreign Legion and, within an hour, had produced a number of possible names from ’94 to ’95.

During that hour, Gunnar Nyberg had tried to make sense of it all.

A Croatian who had taken part in ethnic cleansing. There was a musty stench of Ustaša, the fascist organisation which had exterminated Serbs during the Second World War, about the whole thing. It wasn’t unlikely that Risto Petrovic had arrived in Sweden by way of the Foreign Legion, under a false name, in order to avoid arrest. There, he had met a kindred spirit, the ex-commando major Niklas Lindberg. Petrovic had then ingratiated himself with the Serbian-Swede Rajko Nedic, who wasn’t especially interested in ethnic purity, in order to supply Lindberg with information on the imminent transaction between Nedic and a Swedish ‘policeman’, for example. But was Lindberg really powerful enough to have planted a spy in Nedic’s organisation? Or were there larger organisations of right-wing extremists at work in the background? Directing both Petrovic and Lindberg? And if so, did that mean there was an even greater motive behind the Sickla Slaughter?

Gunnar Nyberg sat in the little interrogation room in Kumla, and felt like the walls were closing in. What kind of strange connection had he come across, thanks to a rabbit-like drug pusher called Robban?

The fax machine rattled into life. Three extracts from the Foreign Legion register for 1994 to 1995. Three Yugoslav names, and three mediocre but clearly discernible photographs.

Gunnar Nyberg rang Jan-Olov Hultin. He explained the situation, and was given various orders. All sounded good.

Risto Petrovic was brought into the interrogation room. A certain contentedness spread through Nyberg’s enormous body as he immediately recognised the man’s face from one of the pictures.

Petrovic sat staring at him. He was large, compact, with the kind of solid, bulging muscles that only prisoners have. A body which doesn’t do much moving but, instead, spends hours pumping iron. His gaze was ruthless, on the verge of inhuman. Exactly as Nyberg had hoped.

When he opened his mouth, he was fully aware that, by doing so, he was sentencing Risto Petrovic to death.

‘Jovan Sotra?’ he read from one of the three faxes.

Petrovic froze. Suddenly, the consequences were clear to him. As soon as Koko or Klovic or any of the others close to Nedic found out about the link, he would be a dead man. Power was coursing through Gunnar Nyberg at that very moment. Pure power. He understood right away what it means to have a man’s life in your hands. It was unbearable.

Perhaps he should have stayed at his computer. In the safety of cyberspace.

‘I don’t know what you’re taking about,’ Petrovic eventually said in English, though his eyes told a different story.

Nyberg switched to a rusty-sounding English.

‘Shortly after the end of the war in Croatia, you went from being commander of a paramilitary group to a private in the French Foreign Legion. During that time, you met a Swede, a former officer called Niklas Lindberg. When you later met again here in Kumla, you gave him information about a large transaction that would be taking place between your employer, Rajko Nedic, and another party. Lindberg used that information to kill Nedic’s closest man, Lordan Vukotic, as well as to rob and kill three other Nedic men in the so-called Sickla Slaughter, where whatever was being handed over was stolen.’

Petrovic stared at Nyberg. His eyes were searching for a way out. He didn’t know whether he could find one in the large, bear-like policeman. Maybe. He repeated, mostly because it was expected of him: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

It sounded so hollow that Nyberg simply ignored him.

‘However,’ he said, nodding, ‘there is a way out.’

They looked at one another for a moment. The paramilitary commander and Sweden’s Biggest Policeman. The Foreign Legionnaire and Mr Sweden. It felt masculine to the point of absurdity.

‘We’re waiting for a policeman called Lars Viksjö. He’ll take you to a safe place. You’ll be a Crown witness, get a new identity, and be placed wherever in the world you want to go. In exchange, we want to know the following. One: the connection between you and Lindberg. Two: everything imaginable, and unimaginable, about Rajko Nedic’s organisation. Three: what kind of handover it was. Four: who was going to receive it. Five: what Lindberg was going to use it for. Six: where Lindberg and his men are now.’

Risto Petrovic closed his eyes. He was completely still. When he opened them again, the decision had been made. It was obvious.

‘I don’t know where Niklas Lindberg is,’ he said.

Then he said nothing more.

After fifteen minutes of absolute silence, Lars Viksjö arrived, taking Petrovic with him. Once again, the former war criminal had changed lives.

It would be interesting to see how Rajko Nedic reacted.

Gunnar Nyberg allowed himself a moment of quiet contemplation. No, he admitted to himself, not contemplation; that was saying too much. Rather, it was a moment of pure self-righteousness. He felt very pleased with himself.

He rang Hultin and updated him.

Hultin said: ‘Bloody good job, Gunnar.’

Nyberg said: ‘Not at all.’

He climbed back into his rusty old Renault and pottered homewards. Just after Enköping, he came to the little village called Grillby. He was forced to stop. What was it with this Grillby? Why was it demanding his attention in his moment of triumph?

Grillby. A little cottage. An aunt’s cottage. Youthful feeling of freedom. Police College exams. Twenty years ago. Five men and a van full of six-packs.

What was it he had said? ‘I’m going out to the cottage to recharge the batteries.’

Why not try? Gunnar Nyberg followed a twenty-year-old internal map. Grillby mustn’t have changed much, because he found it without a problem. He came to a narrow gravel road which led out of the little community into the forest. He drove a couple of kilometres along an increasingly vanishing road. The sun turned the old Renault into a baking oven, and Gunnar Nyberg into a slow-cooked meatloaf. He was doubting his memory more and more, along with his sense of direction, when a glade finally opened up in the sparse forest, and the little cottage came into view. It was the same, exactly the same. It stood by the edge of the trees and looked like it had been abandoned. A little red labourer’s cottage from the turn of the century. Many beers had been transformed into urine here.

Ludvig Johnsson was leaning against the veranda, stretching. He looked up with an utterly surprised, almost terrified gaze. He obviously wasn’t used to visitors.

Nyberg waved to him. His face lit up, and he jogged over to the Renault, peering in through the wound-down oven window. He recoiled.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You’ve been sitting in there a while.’

‘It’s quite warm,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, squeezing out of the entirely-too-small car. He stretched, and held out his hands towards the cottage.

‘So it’s still standing,’ he observed.

Ludvig Johnsson nodded, returning to the veranda and continuing to stretch.

‘It’s still standing,’ he said. ‘No electricity, no running water, no phone. I come back when I want to get away from the world. It’s happening more and more.’

Nyberg nodded. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘I go to my son and grandson’s in Östhammar, though it hasn’t happened so often this year.’

Johnsson stopped stretching and looked at him.

‘That’s not so relevant for me,’ was all he said.

Nyberg bit his tongue. Much too late.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

Ludvig Johnsson walked over to Nyberg and put an arm around him. It turned into a hug. They stood in the blazing hot sunshine by the little cottage outside of Grillby, Uppland county, hugging. The power of the past.

‘It’s OK,’ Ludvig Johnsson eventually said. ‘It was a long time ago.’

They sat in the shade on the veranda. Johnsson fetched two beers. They disappeared quickly. Two more appeared.

‘Gas fridge,’ said Johnsson.

‘That’s enough,’ said Nyberg. ‘I’ve got to drive home later. We’ve had a breakthrough in the investigation.’

‘From paedophiles to Nazis,’ Johnsson nodded. ‘Anything you want to talk about?’

‘I think so. Later. Is this still your aunt’s place?’

Ludvig Johnsson laughed and scratched his bald head.

‘She had senile dementia even then, when we were here celebrating the end of exams. She still does. She’s in the same home and looks the same, though she’s closer to a hundred. Like the dementia preserved her.’

He grimaced and continued.

‘Then, when I got a family, I almost forgot about it. Hanna and I travelled a lot. With the boys once they’d arrived, too. They were nine and seven when they died, and they’d been to fourteen countries. They bragged about it at school. Fourteen countries! Then one day they were just gone. All three. Hanna, Micke, Stefan. Just like that, gone. I don’t know if it’s possible to understand it.’

It was completely silent. Gunnar Nyberg imagined he could hear the sun shining. A tiny, tiny whirring in the background. He had nothing to say. There was nothing to say. He had managed to put the broken pieces of his past back together. Ludvig Johnsson hadn’t even had the chance. The irrevocability of death.

‘Mmm,’ Johnsson said after a moment. ‘Then I remembered the cottage. I can just be myself here. I need it. Recharge my batteries before taking the paedophile world head on. No one knows that this place is here. Well, they didn’t until now.’

‘I won’t tell,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, thinking he had made a mistake. He had barged onto holy land. He had populated a world which should never have been populated. Without consideration, he had forced open a door to an intimate world with such force that it was hanging in scraps. He felt awful.

Ludvig Johnsson leaned forward over the table, placing his hand over Nyberg’s, and looking into his eyes with a clear, searching look.

‘It’s OK, Gunnar,’ he said quietly. ‘Maybe it’s what I needed. I can’t be a hermit any more.’

They looked at one another. In some way, they were still living together in their shared flat, twenty years ago. Neither of them had ever really left it. The way you never really leave a place. Everything always remains. Those had been important years in their lives. The worldly Ludvig and the sulky Gunnar. There they were again.

And so it happened that Gunnar Nyberg made a mistake. He talked about the case. He needed a sounding board more than ever, and his sounding board needed to be one, too. That was clear. For a moment, Gunnar Nyberg imagined that they were about to solve the case together. Like they had done in Police College.

He began with the breakthrough, with the leak around Rajko Nedic: Risto Petrovic. Then he went back to the very beginning, to the events in Kvarnen and the Kumla Bunker, before moving on to the ex-Yugoslav mercenaries and Niklas Lindberg and the Foreign Legion and possible right-wing extremist umbrella organisations, and then he was done. It was a long and complicated story. One which, thus far, had no ending.

‘I’ll be damned,’ said Ludvig Johnsson.

That was all.

When Gunnar Nyberg left Grillby, it felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. An old friendship had been revived, properly revived, and he felt like he had found a sounding board for life. It felt good. As though yet another stray piece from the past had fallen into place.

He pulled out onto the E18 and returned to Stockholm.