The Blinded Man

by Arne Dahl

  Hjelm stood motionless for a moment; Hultin really was all fired up. He’d already picked up the receiver and called Kerstin in Växjö. He had almost finished talking by the time Hjelm grabbed Hultin’s mobile from the desk and punched in Söderstedt’s number.

  ‘Arto. Winge is going to be the next one, maybe tonight. What have you found out? And where are you, by the way?’

  ‘Here,’ Söderstedt said dramatically, throwing open the door. He switched off the mobile in his hand. ‘I was in my office. What have you come up with?’

  ‘Holm is going over to see Lena Lundberg,’ Hultin said, seeming not to have noticed Söderstedt’s grand entrance right away. Then he turned to Söderstedt. ‘Who have you talked to about Winge?’

  Söderstedt was quick to reply: ‘His wife, Camilla, on Narvavägen; two secretaries, or rather office workers, at his company UrboInvest on Sturegatan, Lisa Hägerblad and Wilma Hammar; two of his colleagues at the firm, Johannes Lund and Vilgot Öfverman; plus a neighbour at the closed-up summer house on Värmdö, a Colonel Michel Sköld.’

  ‘How hard did you pressure them?’

  ‘Not particularly hard.’

  ‘Is there any indication at all that anyone knew more than they were telling you? Think carefully.’

  ‘A certain bitterness from his wife … Possibly a general sense of official secrecy at his company.’

  ‘Okay. Do either of you know whether Chavez or Norlander has come back?’

  ‘Both are still out,’ said Söderstedt.

  ‘Then we’ll handle this ourselves.’ Hultin stood up and put on his jacket. It’s now … five-thirty. Someone may still be at the UrboInvest office; we’ll call on our way over. If no one is there, then we’ll have to look for them elsewhere. And we’ll report all results, positive as well as negative, to each other via mobile phone. Avoid using the police radio. I’ll try to get hold of Viggo and Jorge and wait for Kerstin’s call from Algotsmåla. Everything clear?’

  ‘No backup?’ Söderstedt asked out in the hall.

  ‘In due time,’ said Hultin.

  On the steps of police headquarters they ran into Niklas Grundström from Internal Affairs, who glanced at Hjelm. Hjelm automatically paused.

  ‘Riding high on the hog now, Hjelm?’ Grundström said quietly.

  ‘Or possibly wallowing in the mud with them,’ Hjelm said just as quietly.

  ‘Go on up to see Döös and Grahn,’ Hultin said to Grundström. ‘You’ll find a couple of men who are really in need of your services.’

  Grundström watched them run down the stairs, each headed for his own vehicle. Then he went inside and fired the two Säpo agents.

  They drove towards Östermalm, racing single file through the rush-hour traffic.

  ‘Vilgot Öfverman is still at the UrboInvest office,’ Hjelm reported on his mobile. ‘He’s expecting us. The rest have gone home. I got an address for the office worker, Wilma Hammar, on Artillerigatan. The other two live outside the city. Shall I go and see her?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hultin.

  The three cars stayed in formation all the way to Humlegården. Just before the intersection of Sturegatan and Karlavägen, Hultin said, ‘Kerstin reports that she’s over at Lena Lundberg’s home now. She’ll get back to us soon. No contact with Jorge. Viggo is in Ösmo, of all places, checking out an apartment. He’ll join us as soon as he can.’

  Söderstedt and Hjelm turned right onto Karlavägen while Hultin continued for some distance along Sturegatan. After a few blocks Hjelm turned onto Artillerigatan, while Söderstedt headed towards Karlaplan and Narvavägen.

  Hjelm rang the buzzer labelled ‘Hammar’ and was admitted by a polite male voice. The door on the fourth floor was opened by the owner of that voice, if a voice can really be said to have an owner. A pipe-smoking, solid-looking man, in what is usually called late middle age.

  ‘Criminal Police,’ said Hjelm, waving his ID. The man looked utterly confused. ‘I’m looking for Wilma Hammar. It’s urgent.’

  ‘Come in,’ said the man, then shouted, ‘Wilma! The police!’

  Wilma Hammar appeared from the kitchen regions, drying her hands on a tea towel. She was short and stocky and about fifty.

  ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you,’ said Hjelm hastily. ‘I think you know what this is about. We believe your boss, Alf Ruben Winge, is in mortal danger, and we had the impression from our earlier visit that we hadn’t heard the whole truth about his absence.’

  Wilma Hammar shook her head, looking staunchly loyal at whatever the cost. ‘He disappears for a couple of days every month or so, as I told the other officer. I’m not privy to what he does.’

  ‘Periodic binges, if you ask me,’ said her husband, sucking on his pipe.

  ‘Rolf!’ said Wilma.

  ‘Do you know about the Power Murders—’ Hjelm began just as his mobile phone rang.

  ‘Okay,’ said Söderstedt on the line. ‘His wife openly confessed this time – she’s quite drunk. He’s got a mistress. I repeat, he’s got a mistress. His wife doesn’t know who she is, but she’s expressed an interest in biting off the woman’s nipples if we find her.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Hjelm said, ending the conversation.

  ‘Do you mean that … Alf Ruben is going to be …’ Wilma Hammar looked scared.

  ‘The next victim. Yes,’ Hjelm finished her sentence for her. ‘Don’t try to protect him out of some misplaced sense of loyalty. It might cost him his life. We know he has a mistress. Do you know who she is?’

  Wilma Hammar pressed her hand to her forehead.

  ‘I’m afraid that every second counts right now,’ said Hjelm to prevent her from putting up any smokescreens.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know who she is. I’ve answered the phone a couple of times when she called. She has a Finnish accent. That’s all I know. But Lisa would certainly know.’

  ‘His secretary?’

  She nodded. ‘Lisa Hägerblad.’

  ‘And she lives in … where was it? Råsunda? Do you have her address and phone number?’

  Wilma Hammar looked them up in her phone book, then wrote them down on a little yellow Post-it Note that Hjelm stuck on his mobile.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said and left. On his way down the stairs he punched in the number on the note. It rang ten times before he gave up.

  Then Hultin called. ‘I’m sitting here with the senior employee at UrboInvest, Vilgot Öfverman. After a little persuasion he’s managed to come up with a first name and a description of the mistress. That’s all he knows, I can guarantee it. She’s short, has ash-blonde hair cut in a pageboy style and her name is Anja.’

  ‘I can add that she’s most likely Finnish or a Finland-Swede,’ said Hjelm. He heard a beep.

  ‘I’ve got another call,’ said Hultin. ‘Is there anything urgent?’

  ‘The secretary in Råsunda. So far no answer.’

  Hultin disappeared for a moment. Hjelm sat in his car, waiting in torment. Söderstedt came driving up in his Volvo and parked in front of him. Their mobiles rang. Both answered.

  ‘Okay,’ said Hultin. ‘This is a conference call. I’ve got Kerstin on the line, as we used to say in the old days.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Kerstin from Algotsmåla. ‘I’ve just had an intense conversation with Lena Lundberg. It’s true that she’s been in touch with Andersson every now and then over the past three months. She really fooled me. Andersson has told her only that he’s involved in something really important. As we suspected, she hasn’t dared tell him about her pregnancy.’

  ‘Get to the point,’ Hultin said sternly.

  ‘I’m going to have to be a bit long-winded to explain. Lena’s brother lives in Stockholm, and the last time he was here to visit, which was only a week before the bank incident, he mentioned for some reason that one of his colleagues has a sister who’s working in the United States, but can afford to allow her Swedish apartment to sit vacant. That was what Lena remembered, but she couldn’t recall the name of t
he woman working in the States, even though her brother did mention the name when he was visiting. But the apartment is apparently somewhere in Fittja, and when she called her brother, she got the name: Anna Williamsson. The rest is up to you.’

  ‘Good job,’ said Hultin.

  ‘How is Lena?’ asked Hjelm.

  ‘She’s just beginning to realise the connection. She’s not doing very well.’

  ‘See you later,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t go and get yourself shot,’ she said, and was gone.

  ‘Are the two of you ready?’ asked Hultin. ‘Hang up, and I’ll find out the address.’

  They waited, enveloped in the metal casing of their cars.

  Hjelm’s phone rang. But not Söderstedt’s, as he noticed through the car window, so it probably wasn’t Hultin.

  ‘Finally,’ Chavez said into his ear. ‘My phone was stolen, believe it or not. I’ve just got it back from a junkie. What’s going on?’

  ‘We’re hot on his trail,’ said Hjelm. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Sergels Torg. I’ve had a hell of a day. I didn’t think Stockholm’s underworld was so … big.’

  ‘Hang up and I’ll call you back in a few seconds. Hultin is checking an address. Göran Andersson’s.’

  ‘No shit,’ Chavez said, and hung up.

  Hjelm’s mobile rang again. Söderstedt picked up his phone at the same time.

  ‘Hello,’ said Hultin. ‘Anna Williamsson’s apartment is at Fittjavägen eleven, fourth floor.’

  Hjelm laughed loudly.

  ‘What?’ said Hultin, sounding annoyed.

  ‘The hand of coincidence,’ said Hjelm, starting up his car. ‘It’s right next door to my old police station.’

  They drove in tandem over to Sergels Torg, where they picked up Chavez. He jumped into Hjelm’s Mazda and was given a quick rundown.

  ‘How did Andersson sound?’ Jorge asked as they came out onto Essingeleden.

  ‘Unpleasantly sane,’ said Hjelm. ‘As if he couldn’t possibly be the killer.’

  Hjelm was trying to make sense of the chronology of events. If the lead turned out to be a good one, then Göran Andersson had been living next door to the police station in Fittja while he was planning his crimes. He had gone in and out of the neighbouring door, and it was even possible that they’d bumped into each other several times in February and March. Hjelm wondered if he could have seen into the apartment from his old office. Then Andersson had gone off to Danderyd to commit the first murder on the night before Hjelm, in turn, had gone into the immigration office to free the hostages. And while Hjelm was being grilled by Grundström and Mårtensson, Andersson had committed his second murder, on Strandvägen.

  What was it he’d said? ‘There have been so many coincidences that it’s no longer a matter of chance. It’s fate. There’s a very fine line separating chance and fate, but once you’ve crossed that line, it’s irrevocable.’

  Paul Hjelm thought he was close to crossing that line.

  Even though they parked in the lot belonging to the Huddinge police force, it didn’t occur to any of them to request backup from the station. They entered the building next door, went up four flights of stairs, and assembled outside the door labelled Williamsson. It was utterly quiet in the building.

  Hultin rang the bell. No one opened the door. Not a sound came from inside. Hultin rang again. They waited a couple of minutes. Then Hjelm kicked in the door.

  They rushed in with their weapons raised. The little two-room apartment was empty. In the bedroom they found a neatly made bed with a bunch of stuffed animals on the pillow. Posters typical of a girl’s room hung on the walls. Chavez bent down and peered under the bed. He pulled out a rolled-up mattress, like a Swiss roll, with a blanket as the filling. Under the bed he also found a suitcase made in Russia. It was stuffed with bundles of 500-krona bills.

  The living room looked just as unoccupied as the bedroom. The only thing out of place was that one of the shimmering pink posters was bulging out from the wall. It was hard to imagine that someone had been living here for over three months without disturbing anything. A clean saucepan stood on the stove. The inside was damp. A box was attached underneath the kitchen table. Hultin pulled it out.

  The first thing that came into view was an assortment of keys, although all of them were blank, without notches or grooves, ready for grinding. Inside the box was another box, printed with Russian letters. Hultin put on a pair of latex gloves and opened it. There were the nine-millimetre cartridges from Kazakhstan, lined up in rows; not even half of them were missing.

  Under the box of ammunition was a typed list of seventeen names. Hultin carefully picked it up and snorted an affirmative snort. Kuno Daggfeldt, tick, Bernhard Strand-Julén, tick, Nils-Emil Carlberger, tick, Enar Brandberg, tick, Ulf Axelsson, tick.

  The last tick mark was next to the name of Alf Ruben Winge.

  Hjelm went into the living room. He lifted off the poster that was hanging slightly crooked. Underneath was a dartboard. But there were no darts.

  They searched the wardrobes and chests of drawers. There was no other sign that Göran Andersson had spent nearly three months living there. One rolled-up mattress, one Russian suitcase containing 500-krona bills, one damp saucepan, an assortment of blank keys, a box of bullets from Kazakhstan, a dartboard and a list of victims to be liquidated. Otherwise he hardly seemed to have been there at all.

  Hjelm contacted his former colleagues at the police station next door and gave orders to cordon the place off, set up a night-time stake-out and have forensics do a sweep of the apartment. When they emerged into the early summer sunlight, a couple of cold gusts of wind reminded them that it was actually evening – in fact, it was almost eight o’clock. And they were going to have to start all over again.

  Hjelm and Chavez called the secretary, Lisa Hägerblad, and this time she answered. She sounded resistant when Hjelm asked about Winge’s absence. He didn’t have time to tell her how important this was because she hung up. They sighed deeply and headed out to Råsunda to talk to her in person.

  Hultin and Söderstedt drove to Stora Essingen, where Winge’s younger colleague, Johannes Lund, lived in a villa with a view of Lake Mälaren. When they called him, all they got was his voicemail. They didn’t leave a message after the beep.

  Since Stora Essingen was located significantly closer than Råsunda, Hultin and Söderstedt arrived at their destination first. A man wearing overalls was walking up and down the steep front lawn, zealously fertilising the grass with a rolling apparatus that looked like a lawn-mower not very suited to the job. Visible in the opening of his overalls was a white shirt collar and the knot of a black tie. A mobile phone was sticking out of his pocket.

  ‘Well, now,’ the man said when he caught sight of Söderstedt. He stopped fertilising and leaned on the spreader. ‘You weren’t satisfied with what we told you?’

  ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’ Hultin asked harshly.

  ‘The landline is only for ordinary calls; they go straight to voicemail.’ He patted his mobile phone. ‘This is where I get the important calls.’ He perceived their momentary silence as stupidity and clarified: ‘The B-group of calls are recorded, and then my wife goes through them. The A-group come to me directly.’

  And so does the A-Unit, thought Söderstedt. ‘Look up at the sky.’

  Johannes Lund looked up at the sky.

  ‘It’s now eight-thirty, and the sun is still up. In a couple of hours the sun will be gone. Then Alf Ruben Winge will also be gone. Do you understand? In a few hours your boss is going to be murdered by a serial killer who has already murdered five very prominent citizens much like yourself.’

  Johannes Lund looked at them in surprise. ‘The Power Murders?’ he said. ‘Oh shit. He’s always struck me as a very unimportant person. This is going to give him a certain … status.’

  ‘Tell us everything you know about these periods of absence,’ said Hultin.

  ‘As I said before,
I don’t know anything.’ Lund cast a pensive glance up at the Essingen sky. ‘He’s very suspicious of me. He knows that I do my job a damned sight better than he does and that I bring in much more money for him than he does himself. He needs me, but he hates me. That’s it in a nutshell – hates me, but needs me. Whatever. He’d never think of sharing any personal confidences with me.’

  ‘Does he have any close friends he would confide in?’ asked Hultin.

  Johannes Lund laughed. ‘Good God! We’re businessmen!’

  ‘Have you ever met a short blonde Finn with a pageboy hairstyle who goes by the name of Anja?’ asked Söderstedt.

  ‘Never.’ Lund looked him straight in the eye. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Hultin’s mobile phone rang. It was Chavez. ‘We’re at Lisa Hägerblad’s place on Råsundavägen. Do you have anything to tell us before we go in?’