He also moved his own coffee cup, after taking a drink first. And when there wasn’t enough room for the magnets and the markers, the butter ended up on the only empty chair.
“I had a coffee with a forensic technician this afternoon. Someone I trade a favor with now and then. And he has . . . well, how should I put this, offered assistance to our new headquarters on a freelance basis.”
Grens’s jacket was hanging over the back of the empty chair. From the inside pocket he pulled out a bundle of papers. He attached the first one with a magnet to the center of the whiteboard and wrote fingerprints beneath it.
“This is from the forensic engineer’s computer. An image of a fingertip. The red circles denote characteristics that can be used for identification. We need eight or ten or preferably twelve to use as comparison with the other fingerprints in our database. He found four here. That was all. You see? Four red circles on these threatening letters that were sent to you, and only two on the hand grenade you gave me—the one put into your mailbox.”
Piet Hoffmann wasn’t surprised. Organizations big enough to be making millions on trading in illegal weapons, in some cases even hundreds of millions, didn’t go around dropping off threats or hand grenades without wearing gloves.
“Then there’s this.”
A new sheet of paper was stuck onto the board to the right of the other one, and Grens wrote weapon below it. Long lines of text in such a tiny font size that Hoffmann couldn’t even read them from his place at the table.
“Krantz was pretty surprised when I unloaded that gigantic weapon out of a hockey stick bag and onto the table in his lab. He’d never seen one before—and he’s analyzed basically everything. But his technical investigation yielded nothing—no traces on either the weapon or ammunition.”
Beneath the third paper, he wrote typewriter.
“Krantz analyzed the text on both the envelopes and the letters, which yielded a one hundred percent match with the same typewriter. A very old Facit T2. Some keys show a pattern of wear that’s basically as unique as a set of fingerprints, so if we run across a typewriter we’ll be able to say if the threats were written on it.”
When Piet Hoffmann leaned forward to see the enlarged illustrations, he realized that the letters H and R were the ones who formed the unique pattern.
Hugo and Rasmus. What an unfathomable coincidence.
The detective put the next three pieces of paper in a row farther down on the whiteboard. the delivery firm—who rang the bell on Hoffmann’s door and left a package with a phone inside—had, according to all of their records and files and even handwritten notes, never made a single delivery to that address. the telephone calls from a distorted voice phone—that despite Grens’s hiring a hacker younger than half his age who usually succeeded where others failed in cracking the networks of encrypted phones—couldn’t be traced to a who or where. The cadets’ search for unidentified bodies didn’t yield any matches in Sweden or the rest of the Nordic countries, but it had, in collaboration with Interpol, shown that a total of eighteen unidentified young women’s bodies had been logged by the Albanian police over the last five years, which still could be followed up on.
“Did you say the . . . the Albanian police?”
“Yes.”
“Why would . . .”
“Another investigation I’m working on. Which I plan to keep to myself a little longer. But it may be that there are links to the organization who is threatening you.”
“What the hell, Grens—why won’t you tell me! You know as well as I do . . .”
“You’re not a police officer. Yet. But you could become one. Then I’ll tell you more. And maybe you’ll even travel down there. To Albania.”
Piet Hoffmann looked at the detective superintendent whom he had gotten to know over the last few years, whom he’d even temporarily moved in with. He could read the older man pretty well. And this, he was sure as he studied Grens’s face, was no attempt at a joke.
“Albania.”
“Yes.”
“And, ‘You’re not a police officer—yet.’”
“Exactly, Hoffmann. You’ll head there tomorrow—if everything goes as I hope this evening. As an official employee of the Stockholm City Police. An extremely temporary position, of course, but no one needs to know that. You were the one who said it. I infiltrate for you, you infiltrate for me.”
“And I’m headed to Albania because . . . ?”
“Because of this.”
The last paper in Grens’s stack. But instead of hanging it on the whiteboard, he handed it to Hoffmann.
“You wanted me to position a phone call. Use my contacts and locate the receiver. And much like forensic technician Krantz, I’m a wise enough man to know when not to ask questions. Such as whose phone had called that number. I imagine I wouldn’t like the answer, right? It might even require a police investigation of its own?”
Piet Hoffmann didn’t say a word. Grens was right—that the phone belonged quite recently to some now very badly injured security guards on Birger Jarls Street was exactly the kind of thing the detective wouldn’t want to hear in the midst of his informal investigation at his informal police station. Instead, Hoffmann started to peruse the paper he’d been handed. Information about the phone call he’d forced them to make by leaving the camouflaged hand grenade on their sink basin. He was here! Hoffmann! Which would lead him to the person behind this threatening organization. That’s exactly what he . . . Hang up, for fuck’s sake! He wanted you to call me! A conversation that Grens, with the help of his contact at the telecom company, was able to trace to a city in northern Albania called Shkodër. There was even an address—Rruga Komanit, and a picture of a building—a white house, luxurious in comparison to its neighbors, on a small street with a forest of antennas on its roof.
“In the room that looks like a tower, there, to the right on the second floor, that’s where a man picked up that call.”
“We know with that much precision?”
“We do.”
“And this city, Grens, which I can’t even pronounce—Shkodër, was it?—apparently has some fucking connection to this other investigation you don’t want to tell me about?”
Ewert Grens smiled, not much but enough to look pleased.
“Not yet, Hoffmann. I don’t want to tell you about it yet. An official investigation based in the real police station, which you don’t have anything to do with. But yes—it seems like my instincts as a cop were right, there is no such thing as a coincidence. Because the paper you’re holding in your hand shows, even proves, that both investigations are really just one.”
Just like some cop movie.
Piet Hoffmann stared at the whiteboard on Ewert Grens’s kitchen table. Part of a police investigation that would keep expanding. The six documents hung up a bit randomly—the detective superintendent was probably not usually the one in charge of this task—would be highlighted and annotated and more documents would be hung up. Hoffmann was just about to put up the seventh—the phone company’s information about the last number dialed by a not-yet-seriously injured security guard and the person who picked up more than a thousand kilometers to the south—when their temporary and comfortable silence was broken. By a doorbell. Three identical notes.
“Are you expecting a visitor, Grens?”
From the front hall. That’s where the sound came from. Again.
“I never have visitors. Nobody rings that doorbell. That’s how I like it. And now, while I already have one visitor, someone comes to my door for the second night in a row. I’m becoming very popular.”
The detective headed in the direction of the fading bells.
But he didn’t open the door.
“Yeah?”
Instead he was content to shout through it.
“What’s this about?”
“It’s me—Maria
na.”
Grens recoiled, unintentionally.
“You’ve never been here before.”
“Well then, I guess it was about time. Are you going to open the door or should I stay out here shouting at your neighbors?”
He unlocked it, and Mariana Hermansson attempted to step inside. But stopped. Her boss stood in the way.
“You never said what this was about.”
“What are you up to, Ewert?”
“I . . .”
“After ten years I finally knock on your front door and you won’t let me in?”
“I . . . Of course you can . . . What do you want?”
She pushed him a little. Enough to squeeze by him.
“Ewert—are you hiding something from me?”
He’d asked Sven to look into her and even follow her. Unsure who she really was, now that everyone around him was a suspect, and any one of them could be the person who switched sides.
“Hiding? No . . . or yes. But . . .”
He made a quick decision. Took her by the arm. Led her through the hall, into the kitchen. Toward a man she had never seen.
“Yes. I’m hiding something. Him. Because I have to.”
Hermansson stared at the man she estimated to be around forty-five, though it was difficult to say since this pen pusher had really let himself go physically, so he could be younger.
“We’re working on an investigation, as you can see. It intersects with the investigation you and I and Sven started yesterday. Which hopefully you’re here to talk about.”
She stared at the whiteboard, which looked like the beginning of a regular fact gathering in an informal preliminary investigation, then at the pen pusher, then at Grens.
“Ewert—what is this?”
“I’ll explain, if you tell me why you’re here.”
“A private investigation? And a man you need to hide?”
“I understand that it’s . . .”
“What kind of fucking collaboration!”
“I’ll explain. If you tell me why you’re here. First.”
She declined the chair he’d pulled out from the kitchen table.
“While your . . . acquaintance is listening?”
“While my acquaintance is listening.”
She looked at the stranger sitting at the kitchen table, trying to decide if her boss had lost his mind or just his judgment, then she turned to Grens.
“This Dusko Zaravic.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t buy your theory. That he’s involved in something that has to do with that whiteboard or our real investigation, which is being handled at the police station. Because, Ewert, if three of your buddies have just been executed, and you were either their killer or the next in line, would you spend your night dancing at some gangster wedding without taking any safety precautions?”
Another glance at the stranger. He didn’t seem to react to what she said. She wondered what that meant.
“We’ve got him surrounded. Twelve men. But I have a problem. I can’t just invite myself in and ask for a dance at a gangster wedding. So we have to have our ducks in a row for this arrest.”
“You do. You have my order.”
“Yes, yours. But not Wilson’s. Our chief. Do you know why? Because I—the officer carrying this out—can’t argue for it if I don’t know your reasons.”
“You should arrest him because I tell you so. That’s enough. I answer to Wilson. And I want to know—how Zaravic is acting? Is he completely without protection?”
“Yes. He is. But . . .”
“Well—grab him! Or . . .”
Then it came back. That feeling he’d decided to ignore when he chose to expose her to a disguised Hoffmann and the whiteboard of his secret investigation. The feeling that one of the people he trusted most might have another agenda of their own.
“. . . do you not want to arrest him?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you have some other problem with arresting him, Hermansson, that you can’t talk about?”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said? My problem is you’re hiding things from me and I don’t know why!”
An answer he didn’t like because it was no answer.
“Well then.”
Not to his actual question.
“I’ll have to do it myself.”
“You can’t do that Ewert, not this time—Wilson already said no, and he’s the one you have to convince. But if you can’t even convince me there’s a reason for suspicion, then . . .”
“Good. Then here’s what we’ll do. All three of us are headed to the police station. Now.”
Mariana Hermansson nodded at the stranger at the table.
“To Kronoberg? With your acquaintance who’s taking part in your kitchen investigation?”
“In the car ride, my acquaintance—who you don’t recognize, even though you’ve met him before, several times over various investigations—and I will explain to you what’s going on. And when we get to the station, my acquaintance, now your acquaintance, will take off and you and I’ll head into the police station. And if Wilson, who still can’t know who our acquaintance is, continues to say no, then maybe I’ll have to ask him the same question I just asked you: Is there another reason that he can’t or won’t talk about?”
The stairs at the police station separated them. Piet Hoffmann disappeared into the subway station, while Ewert Grens and Mariana Hermansson opened the front doors with their key cards and proceeded into the corridor. Grens had a hard time deciding what part of their conversation had upset Hermansson the most—her shock when she realized it was Hoffmann sitting in the back seat, the fact that she hadn’t been able to see through it, or that a criminal organization had broken that last taboo and was threatening the lives of children for their own gain. Or maybe simply the feeling of having been deceived by her own boss, and finally—when he no longer had any choice—being pulled into it so reluctantly. Probably all three at the same time. And things didn’t get any better in the elevator ride up when he asked her what she’d found out about Wilson, since she hadn’t reported anything to him despite his request. She stayed silent and tried to hide her anger, then snorted and explained that she still refused to spy on their boss. She had been focusing instead on trying to apprehend a criminal because that’s what was in her job description.
Erik Wilson was waiting behind his desk when they stepped into his well-appointed office, and it didn’t take much power of observation to see that two of his best detectives weren’t very happy with each other right now. So rather than wasting any more energy on meaningless discussions, he asked them to sit down and told them his decision.
“I’m with Mariana. No arrest.”
“Excuse me—did I hear you wrong?”
“You heard correctly, Ewert.”
“I don’t think I did—you need to speak a little more clearly.”
“We have no formal reason to arrest Zaravic. Is that clear enough?”
Grens, who was just about to sit down, changed his mind and wandered over to the other corner of the room, where he leaned against the safe.
“Jesus Christ, Wilson—do we really have to play this game again when we know how it ends?”
He turned to the locked door, tapped it with his index finger. It was almost possible to hear the locking mechanisms tightening a little more.
“Because didn’t you and I already come to an agreement that it would be so terribly sad and terribly unnecessary if I started running my mouth about safe combinations that mysteriously vanished? About information regarding criminal infiltrators that we really aren’t supposed to be working with at all? If . . .”
“Seriously, Ewert? How many times do you intend to use that trick?”
“As many times as necessary. And—if we can agree on t
hat—then I want you to A) give me permission to make the arrest tonight with Hermansson’s help, and B) provide me with a properly signed search warrant.”
“Then I say A) an arrest—for what? And B) a search warrant . . . for what?”
“I have no grounds. That’s something for you higher-ups to figure out with a prosecutor.”
“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that.”
“Maybe not—but then again, we also don’t work with criminal infiltrators and nobody broke into your safe and stole anything, so . . .”
Erik Wilson threw his arms wide. Giving up. For now. The signal for Grens to whisper, “Well, then soon I’ll have my seventy-two hours,” as he followed Mariana Hermansson out. Then, while she was on her way to Bredäng and a gangster wedding, he went back to his boss’s office alone.
“So let’s discuss the next investigation.”
Ewert Grens closed the door to the corridor. This was between the two of them.
“What investigation?”
“The investigation into the investigators. Who broke into your safe. Who is leaking information and endangering our infiltrators.”
His boss had been packing up his briefcase when Grens came through the door. There was no sigh, that wasn’t his style.
“You like doing things under the radar, Ewert. And so do I.”
“Such as?”
“I brought in the professionals. They combed both the office we’re sitting in and the restricted archive in the basement.”
Wilson nodded toward the closed door.
“There’s no evidence on my safe. No fingerprints, no other traces. Nothing to say there even was a burglary.”
“Well, there was one.”
“That’s the odd thing. You need an electronic key to get in—first a small green dongle you wave in front of the code reader, which identifies you as a particular individual, and then you input your personal combination. At that moment, you’ve been registered. Centrally. In a computer that controls everything. A monitoring system that keeps track of who opens what and for how long. Every log for the last six months in this office and the archive has been reviewed. No unauthorized persons. And I’m the only one who has opened my safe, and only the archivist has accessed his archive.”
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