To the Top of the Mountain

40

GUNNAR NYBERG HAD successfully managed to give himself tennis elbow when he broke his way in through the hotel window in Skövde, and pointed his gun at the robbers. He had probably been grasping it too tightly – several strange dents in the butt of the gun suggested as much.

Or maybe he had just developed mouse elbow.

Mouse elbow, or repetitive strain injury, affected computer nerds. A new national disease was on the approach. No more occupational lung disease, no more crippled backs, but RSI? Of course. Societal progress can be read on different scales.

He looked around his office. It felt so empty. No Kerstin Holm to sing duets with. Nothing at all. How long had it actually been since he had visited his grandson Benny in Östhammar? He was afraid the boy would forget his grandad.

On the other hand, his son, Tommy, hadn’t forgotten him in twenty long years. They had become reacquainted in a surprisingly unforced way. Life returned. The blood, the viscous liquid, started flowing its marathon distances around Sweden’s Biggest Policeman once more.

Now it was thickening again. He remembered how he had felt, sinking to his knees in the mud next to Kerstin Holm’s bleeding head. How fleeting life was. It felt as though life itself had broken free from him and sailed away through the rain-filled sky. It was a moment he would never forget.

He was close to Kerstin Holm. They shared a love of choir singing which sometimes grew to abnormal proportions. People who sing together, who stretch the voice to its limits and create the greatest harmonies possible – could you come any closer to God?

During his twenty-year vacuum, there had been only one other woman who had been as close to him, and who, as he sat there stretching his enormous mouse elbows, came into his office. He thought for a moment about mystical correspondences.

Sara Svenhagen wasn’t herself. She looked haggard, worn out, as though she hadn’t slept for days. Her white T-shirt had several large coffee stains on it, and her shorts were absurdly crinkled.

‘Gunnar,’ she said, stroking her newly cropped golden hair, ‘I need your help.’

He stood up, walked over to her and put a protective, fatherly arm around her shoulders. It felt both right and wrong. On a purely professional level, she was his parent; it was her who had carefully guided him into the hell of child pornography. Her and Ludvig Johnsson.

He led her over to Kerstin Holm’s chair and helped her down into it. He sat on the edge of the desk. He didn’t care that it buckled alarmingly.

‘What about Jorge?’ he asked. ‘What can I do that he can’t?’

She looked at him with what was, at least, mock surprise.

‘You know about that?’

‘I guessed,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, feeling like a crook. ‘Was I wrong?’

‘No,’ said Sara. ‘No, not at all. I love him. He loves me. We’ve come to life, both of us. But we’ve also built walls around our cases, without really knowing why. Presumably it’s some kind of absurd protective instinct. Spare him. Spare her. No, Gunnar, the only real connection between these two cases is you. And also, it affects you personally.’

A sense of foreboding ran through Nyberg.

‘Personally?’ he asked. ‘Privately?’

‘You could say so,’ said Sara, looking into his eyes.

‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘Shoot.’

‘I could spare you all this crap,’ she said. ‘I could just leave and let you avoid the whole problem.’

‘Shoot,’ he repeated.

Sara Svenhagen looked up at the ceiling. She didn’t quite know where to begin. She decided to make a long story short.

‘The pseudonym of a paedophile, “brambo”, has been deliberately left out of our reports. It happened almost six months ago. When I looked into it, I discovered that all these incomplete reports had been filed by the same policeman.’

Nyberg felt the same sense of foreboding as before. It ran through his veins instead of his blood, which had now coagulated completely.

‘It was Ragnar Hellberg,’ she said.

‘What?!’ he exclaimed. ‘Party-Ragge?’

‘I should’ve realised that it was absurd… Anyway, I kept on trying to identify this “brambo”. It paid off eventually. It’s a drug dealer called Rajko Nedic.’

Gunnar Nyberg was motionless. Threads were worming around inside him, searching for one another. They were very close to forming a weave.

‘I understand,’ he eventually lied.

‘OK. Ragnar put me to work at home. It felt like he was trying to hide something. And suddenly, it seemed clear. He was letting me work unofficially so he could keep anything I might find away from the public eye. And that thing, it was that he was pressing Nedic for money. It couldn’t have been anything else.’

‘The little beard,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, thinking of the Kvarnen bar on Tjärhovsgatan, at 21.42 on 23 June.

She looked at him sceptically, continuing. ‘That was it. I had to confront him. We met on Saturday. Unofficially. And he came out with a story that I’ve been fighting with for almost two days now. I haven’t had a wink of sleep. He was insisting that he’d found out his name had been used on reports he hadn’t written. That someone else had used Ragnar Hellberg’s name – to frame him. This other person was one of two people. I’ve gone through it myself now. He’s right so far. There are only two people in the group who could’ve done it. One of them was me. That’s partly why he set me to work at home – to check whether it was me or not. If it had been me, I would hardly have contacted him about “brambo’s” existence. So it was the other candidate, instead.’

Gunnar Nyberg could already feel himself weeping inside.

‘Ludvig,’ was all he said.

‘It’s been a long weekend,’ said Sara Svenhagen. ‘Should I trust the idiotic party policeman or my own mentor, the colleague who was closest to me in the entire world? I’ve been turning myself inside out.’

‘And come to what…?’

‘That I trust Party-Ragge. For the simple reason that he wouldn’t have ever come up with the idea, much less pull it off. There’s no doubt any more. Ludvig Johnsson has been blackmailing Rajko Nedic for money, and cast the shadow of blame onto the man who stole the paedophile group from him almost in passing. Its figurehead.’

‘Have you spoken to Ludvig?’

‘He’s on holiday. When he’s on holiday, he makes himself uncontactable. No one knows where he is.’

‘What do you want to do? What does Hellberg want to do?’

‘Say what you want about Hellberg, but he’s no bureaucrat. He’s ready to wait and see what happens. He knows I’m talking to you. So, what do you want to do?’

Gunnar Nyberg looked into her eyes.

‘Leave Ludvig to me,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘I suspected you’d say that. I’ll see whether I can confront Nedic somehow.’

‘Be careful, in that case. He’s extremely dangerous.’

‘I know. I’ll try to find a way.’

‘What’ve you got from the Web?’

‘“Brambo’s” pictures. I’ve got them here. Do you want to see?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, holding out his mouse-arm to take the pictures. Colour printouts from the Internet. A whole cavalcade of degradation. He had got it into his head that it belonged to the past. He took his time; his thoughts were out of gear. Behind each picture, he saw Ludvig Johnsson’s face.

‘He can’t have been planning to let Nedic go,’ he said. ‘He must’ve been planning some kind of double-dealing. Get the money from Nedic, leave the country and put him away. I can’t imagine anything else.’

Sara nodded. ‘I know how passionate he was about this. His own kids died, now he could save others. It was personal. Too personal, maybe. His passion burnt him out. But there’s no way in hell he’d let a paedophile go for money.’

Nyberg nodded and handed back the pictures. ‘There’s a little girl there…’ he said, pointing at them.

‘Yeah,’ she said, casting a glance at the pile of pictures. ‘The poor thing appears more often than others. I’m going to try to track her down. And that gold cushioned room.’

‘Do it,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘We thought Nedic’s operation was watertight, but we’ve found several leaks. There’s a chance. If anyone in the organisation knows he’s a paedophile, then it’s not impossible that he or she doesn’t like it. Try to find someone you can put pressure on.’

Sara Svenhagen stood up. They were still holding hands.

‘And you’ll take care of Ludvig?’ she asked. ‘Do it right, Gunnar. Promise me that.’

He nodded, clasping her hand. ‘I promise, Sara,’ he said.

The journey to Grillby was no normal journey. It was an agonising journey. But also one of metamorphosis. Gunnar Nyberg was, to put it simply, doing a runner. Cutting the ties. Leaving the A-Unit. Maybe he would be dismissed, maybe even prosecuted, but he wasn’t thinking about that. He was thinking: Now Ludvig can bloody well tidy up after himself.

Beside him on the passenger seat of the Renault were two laptops with mobile phone connections, two mobile phones and an adapter for the car’s cigarette lighter. There was work to be done.

He stopped to buy food, beer and coffee at a petrol station. No Danish pastries, though.

He even checked to see whether he was being followed. He didn’t quite trust Ragnar Hellberg.

The oilseed-rape fields were golden yellow, and when Gunnar Nyberg pulled up alongside the little cottage just outside Grillby, Ludvig Johnsson’s car was there – but not the man himself. He was probably out running. Nyberg tried the door. It was open. He stepped into the little cottage clutching the bag of food in his right hand, opened the gas-powered fridge and shoved the whole lot in. Then he opened a beer and sat down on the veranda. The sun shone kindly down on him.

Sure enough, Ludvig Johnsson came jogging back after an hour. He smiled faintly when he saw Nyberg on the veranda. Nyberg saw his smile. He saw what it held. The realisation.

It had all gone to hell.

‘There’s a barrel of rainwater round the back of the cottage,’ he said. ‘You pour the water over yourself.’

‘That can wait,’ said Nyberg.

‘Yeah,’ said Ludvig Johnsson, sitting down on the steps. ‘It can wait. You got a beer for me?’

‘I’m not planning on letting you go into the cottage alone,’ said Nyberg. ‘I’m not planning on leaving you alone, either. Not for a second.’

Ludvig Johnsson looked up at the sky. His gaze seemed to disappear into the blueness.

‘Who else knows?’ he asked.

‘It was Sara who found you. The “policeman”. Through “brambo”, if that means anything to you.’

‘Sara,’ said Johnsson, smiling. ‘I should’ve guessed. And Hellberg?’

‘Hellberg knows, too. But he’s sitting on it for now. Waiting for me. So don’t even think about killing me.’

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Ludvig Johnsson. ‘What is it you think of me?!’

‘What I think is that your little operation has cost eight people their lives so far. Three ex-Yugoslav war criminals, a man called Lordan Vukotic, as well as Eskil Carlstedt, Sven Joakim Bergwall, Roger Sjöqvist and Dan Andersson. I could’ve lived with all of that. But the other day, two of my colleagues and closest friends were shot: Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm. You met them recently. Kerstin was talking about the marathon with you at that party for the World Police and Fire Games, if you remember.’

Ludvig Johnsson met his eye. His gaze was completely broken. There was nothing left behind there.

‘How are they?’ he asked.

‘They’re alive. But only by a couple of centimetres.’

‘All I wanted was to go to a place where the winters are shorter…’

They sat a while in the shade. The sun’s rays bore down stronger on the nearby field. It glowed yellow. The colour of betrayal.

‘I wasn’t planning on letting him go,’ said Ludvig Johnsson. ‘I wanted to get away. Then I was going to make sure that the material was sent to the police. I just wanted a little bonus.’

‘An expensive bonus.’

‘You know I put the entire paedophile unit together myself. It was me who made sure people started taking child pornography seriously in this tolerant country. Freedom of speech till the end. My own sons died. I saw all of these children suffering, I saw how the Internet meant an explosion of all kinds of sexual assault on children. Each child I saved became my own, somehow. I trained Sara up, we were one hell of a team. Then Party-Ragge appeared and took all the credit. I didn’t really care, that’s how the world works, but I also didn’t have anything against using him as my scapegoat.’

‘So you stuck a little beard on yourself when you met Nedic’s gang in Kvarnen.’

Johnsson chuckled. ‘Yeah. That was a bit stupid, but I needed a way out. He got to be the scapegoat. Those guys were tough negotiators; we sat in Kvarnen for a long time, going back and forth, just about the meeting place, and the thing being handed over wasn’t even money or the material from the investigation. It was just two safe-deposit-box keys and a communication device. Eventually, we were going to let one another know which bank it was in. A pretty complicated way of doing things, but I let him pull the strings. All I did was get hold of the most modern police radio. Yeah, we were sitting arguing in Kvarnen, we’d just managed to agree on Sickla as the meeting place, at two the following morning, when that idiot smashed the beer glass over someone’s head. I sent the Yugoslavs away pretty quickly and thanked God for that stupid little beard; I waited until they were out of sight and then the doormen turned up. I flashed them my ID to get out.’

‘You’d been bugged. Didn’t you check the place out? A whole group of Nazis were listening to you from the corner.’

Ludvig Johnsson nodded. ‘Was that how it happened? Yeah, it was lazy not to look around properly, but I was damn scared. That simple. Those guys weren’t to be messed with. Three real monsters from Bosnia. They could’ve just decided to torture me to get me to reveal my insurance.’

‘Insurance?’

‘The standard. A copy of the entire investigation with an old childhood friend. In the event of my death, it would’ve been sent to the police and Rajko Nedic would be outed as a paedophile.’

‘You were photographed coming out, the whole group, by a paedophile up in Söder Torn. A bit ironic, don’t you think?’

‘So you’ve had me for a long time, then?’

‘The picture was useless, unfortunately. You could see a bit of the beard, that was all.’

Ludvig Johnsson laughed. ‘See,’ he said. ‘A blessing in disguise.’

‘Tell me everything now.’

‘OK. It was February, something like that. I found a whole load of hidden websites online and tracked down a whole group of pseudonyms. I put all of them away – all apart from one. The idea was born right away when I realised that “brambo” was Nedic. Taking money from that bastard didn’t feel so dangerous. My life was a complete mess. All I did was run. I was running for my life. Like the original marathon. I hated winter more and more. It was in winter that my family had been wiped out. Damn winter roads. I wanted to get away. Die in the warmth somewhere. I had the strange idea of just going to some Polynesian island and drinking myself to death. Me, someone who doesn’t even like the strong stuff much. Anyway, I sent all the material to a friend in Säffle and got in touch with Nedic. He was completely dumbfounded. Had thought he was completely secure online. I put a sum that sounded good out there, ten million, and he went with it. I was speechless. He went with it. Ten mill. You have to wonder how much a man like that has… We agreed that I had to meet his men to decide on a handover. I suggested Kvarnen – as public as possible. Somehow, it must’ve got out.’

‘Nedic’s closest man was called Lordan Vukotic. He knew the Kvarnen meeting was going to take place. He’d trained as a corporate laywer in the Kumla Bunker and was probably going to be the one looking after the empire’s finances. Evidently, he told his friends inside about it, and one of them – a Croat called Risto Petrovic – told one of his old friends from the Foreign Legion, a right-wing extremist and former officer called Niklas Lindberg. He seems to have been the leader of some kind of “Nazi clique” in Kumla. Sven Joakim Bergwall and Dan Andersson were involved in it, too. Andersson was released in February, so he was out when the information about the handover of ten million came up in…’

‘It must’ve been May,’ said Johnsson.

‘In May, the ideological motor Bergwall was released. By that point, Andersson might’ve already started to get a gang together to steal that ten million. Lindberg was inside until the twenty-fourth of June, the day after your meeting in Kvarnen. He knew that Bergwall and the men were going to listen to your meeting, but at roughly the same time he decided to torture Vukotic to find out what he knew about the meeting place. The next day, he was released. The men picked him up from Kumla in a van. Once he was safely outside the walls, he detonated a bomb, blowing the injured Vukotic to pieces. A farewell gesture to Kumla, a greeting for Nedic, and a way of erasing his tracks – all in one go.

‘Then this gang of six right-wing extremists set off for the Sickla industrial estate. Lindberg blew up the car containing the three monsters from Bosnia. One of them died immediately. They took the briefcase containing the safe-deposit-box key and the radio, got a shock when there was no money in the briefcase, and that gave the battle-tested Bosnian monsters their chance: they whipped out their pistols using the mechanisms in their jacket sleeves and shot and killed two of them, Carlstedt and Bergwall, injuring another, Andersson. They died themselves, of course. But at the same time, the briefcase disappeared.

‘A completely separate gang, calling itself Orpheus and Eurydice, some kind of Nedic defectors, also knew about your little delivery. In the middle of the firefight, they managed to steal the briefcase. They’re not too thrilled about finding a key and a radio instead of money, either. They split up and set off into the countryside, looking for the bank. They must have some kind of idea about where it should be. That means they must be relatively close to Nedic. From the Nazi gang, Lindberg, Sjöqvist, Kullberg and an injured Andersson are left. Kullberg’s a civil engineer, and made some kind of device for locating the police radio. They set off after Orpheus, Eurydice and the briefcase. Eurydice had the briefcase. After a couple of weeks of hunting, they found her. In Skövde. We were there. We killed Sjöqvist and Andersson and captured Kullberg. Lindberg managed to get away. Eurydice, too. Hjelm and Holm were shot.’

Ludvig Johnsson stared at his formerly apathetic colleague, half amazed.

‘Christ,’ he said. ‘You’ve been working hard. Who are this Orpheus and Eurydice?’

‘That we don’t know, and it’s no longer of interest. We’ve got the key. Do you have any idea where the bank might be?’

‘No, but it should be near town. Stockholm. My box, with the material from the investigation, is in town. The branch of Handelsbank on Odenplan. Why are you telling me all of this? The criminal? The “policeman”?’

‘So that you can tidy up after yourself. I’ve got computer equipment and mobile phones and connection devices in the car, enough for two men in a cottage without electricity or a telephone. I’ve filled your fridge with food. So now we’re damn well going to stay here until we’ve cracked this!’

‘But what’s left?’ Johnsson exclaimed.

‘To hell with Nedic for the moment,’ Gunnar Nyberg said clearly. ‘I think Sara will deal with that. To hell with Orpheus and Eurydice, too. They’re out of the game. What’s left – properly left – is Niklas Lindberg. He wants your ten million for something particular. He sets off advanced, extremely powerful microscopic bombs with pleasure, and he managed to steal almost a million kronor while he was hunting for Eurydice. He’s hardly going to get hold of that ten million unless he goes directly for Nedic, but maybe that near-million he already has is enough.’

‘What do you think?’ asked Johnsson.

‘I think the first bombs were a test. He blew up Vukotic for fun, more or less, and the car in Sickla could’ve been stopped without using explosives. He’s test-bombing. Like in Polynesia, that crazy bastard. They’re samples he’s setting off. That ten million is going towards a serious amount of the liquid explosive that apartheid South Africa’s security services developed. It’s connected to the same international, right-wing movement that Lindberg came into contact with in the Foreign Legion and which caused Nedic’s colleague, the Croatian fascist Petrovic, to squeal to Lindberg. The explosive could’ve been smuggled into Kumla, and now it’s going to be used for something bigger. You and I are going to find out what Niklas Lindberg is up to, and stop it. That’s what we’re going to do. You owe it to me, to Sara and the world, you stupid bastard.’

Ludvig Johnsson looked at Gunnar Nyberg. What he saw was something remarkable. A kind of focused energy. An absolute determinedness that he never would have predicted. Though, on the other hand, he had never been part of the A-Unit.

‘But what about you? Have you left the A-Unit?’

‘If we can solve this, maybe we can save both our skins,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, heading towards his rusty old Renault.