The Blinded Man

by Arne Dahl

  ‘Don’t you understand how alike we are? We’re just two ordinary Swedes that time has left behind. Nothing we believed in exists any more. Everything has changed, and we haven’t been able to keep up, Paul. We signed up for a static world, the most Swedish of all characteristics. With our mother’s milk we imbibed the idea that everything would always remain the same. We’re the paper that people reuse because they think it’s blank. And maybe it is. Completely blank.’

  Göran Andersson stood up and went on.

  ‘The next time you look at yourself in the mirror, it’ll be me that you see, Paul. In you I will live on.’

  Paul Hjelm sat mutely on the bed. There was nothing to say. There was nothing he could possibly say.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ said Göran Andersson, ‘I’ve got a darts game to finish.’

  He took out of his pocket a measuring tape and a dart. He placed the dart on the table in front of him, and with the gun still aimed at Hjelm, he eased over to the two figures in the corner. From Alf Ruben Winge’s passive, corpulent body he measured a specific length, and then drew a mark on the floor a short distance from the chair. Then he sat down again, put the measuring tape on the table and picked up the dart, weighing it in his hand.

  ‘You know how to play five-o-one,’ he said. ‘You count backwards from five-o-one down to zero. When I hit that bull’s-eye in the bank in town, I only had the checkout left. I still do. And I’ve never left a game unfinished. Do you know what the checkout is?’

  Hjelm didn’t answer. He just stared.

  Andersson held up the dart. ‘You have to hit the right number inside the double ring in order to get down to zero. That’s what I’m going to do now. But the game doesn’t usually go on for four months.’

  He stood up and went over to the mark on the floor.

  ‘Ninety-three and three-quarter inches. The same distance that I measured in the living rooms.’

  He raised the dart towards Hjelm. Hjelm merely watched. Anja Parikka stared wildly. Even Winge had opened his eyes. They were fixed on the dart.

  ‘The same dart that I pulled out of the bull’s-eye back home in Algotsmåla on February the fifteenth,’ he said. ‘It’s time for the checkout.’

  He raised the dart, aimed and hurled at the spare tyre that was Alf Ruben Winge’s stomach. The dart stuck in his paunch. Winge’s eyes opened wide. Not a sound slipped out from under the tape.

  ‘The double ring,’ said Göran Andersson. ‘Checkout. The game is over. It was certainly a long one.’

  He went over to Hjelm and crouched down a short distance from the bed. The gun was still aimed at Hjelm.

  ‘When I play,’ said Göran Andersson lightly, ‘I’m a very focused person. When the game is over, I’m very ordinary. The tension is released. I can go back to daily life with renewed energy.’

  Hjelm still couldn’t get a sound across his lips.

  ‘And daily life,’ said Göran Andersson, ‘daily life involves dying. I’d like you to grab my body when I fall.’

  He stuck the silencer into his mouth. Hjelm couldn’t move. The hostage hero turned to stone, he managed to think.

  ‘Checkout,’ Göran Andersson said thickly.

  The shot was fired.

  But the report was louder than it should have been.

  Andersson fell forward. Hjelm caught his body. He thought the blood running over him was his own.

  He looked up at the window above Anja and Winge. Shattered glass was everywhere. The blind had been pulverised. Jorge Chavez stuck his black head into the room.

  ‘The shoulder,’ he said.

  ‘Ow!’ said Göran Andersson.

  32

  EVEN GUNNAR NYBERG was present. He was sitting in his usual place with his head wrapped in bandages and looking like the mummy in the old horror film. He really shouldn’t have been there.

  But there they all sat, ready to say goodbye to each other and return to the police stations in Huddinge, Sundsvall, Göteborg, Västerås, Stockholm and Nacka. It would be June in two days. Their summer was saved.

  The mood was ambivalent. No one said a word.

  Jan-Olov Hultin entered the room through his mysterious special door, this time leaving it open. They saw an ordinary cloakroom inside.

  The mystery was gone, but the mist still remained.

  Hultin plopped a thick file onto the table, sat down and set his reading glasses on his big nose.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘A brief summary of last night is in order. Göran Andersson is being treated in hospital for his relatively minor shoulder wound. Alf Ruben Winge is being treated at the same hospital for an equally minor wound in his large intestine. Anja Parikka, not unexpectedly, was affected the most; she’s in intensive care, suffering from severe shock. We can only hope she’ll recover. What about you? Paul?’

  Everyone exchanged glances, a bit surprised.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Hjelm said wearily. ‘The hostage expert has recovered.’

  ‘Good,’ said Hultin. ‘Tell us what happened, Jorge.’

  ‘It was no big deal,’ said Chavez. ‘I made my way over to the window to the left of the door, as Paul and I had agreed. But I couldn’t see a thing, so after a moment I slowly moved over to the window where Arto said he’d seen a gap. I got there just as Andersson went over to Hjelm. So, following a well-known example, I shot him in the shoulder.’

  ‘Quite against the rules,’ Hultin said. He went over to the whiteboard and drew the last arrows. It was a powerful diagram that he’d managed to create, a complex, asymmetrical pattern. Every name, every place, every event from the long and intensive investigation had been recorded.

  Hultin stood there for a moment, studying his work.

  ‘The beauty of the abstract,’ he said, and came back to the table. ‘And the filthiness of solid police work.’

  He returned to what was solid.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘at least we achieved a final symmetry. Jorge’s shot was fired before the stroke of twelve, so the case lasted for exactly two months.’

  Söderstedt said in surprise, ‘That means the case was solved on the twenty-ninth of May, the anniversary of the Turks’ invasion of Constantinople in 1453, which is the date of the start of the new era.’

  They all looked at him so balefully that he shrugged apologetically.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ Hultin remarked. ‘Well. One final question for those of you who live outside the city: are you ready to go home?’

  No one replied.

  ‘Do that, at any rate, and enjoy the summer. Then you’ll all be coming back here. If you want to. As Mörner and the head of the NCP and no doubt many others who want to bask in your glory will tell you, the A-Unit is going to be made a permanent entity, although of course not under that ridiculous name.’

  The former A-Unit members gaped foolishly at one another.

  ‘The following applies,’ said Hultin. Adjusting the position of his reading glasses, he silently read an official memo and shook his head. ‘I was planning to read Mörner’s memorandum to you, but I see that it’s unreadable. I’ll summarise instead. The A-Unit was, as you know, an experiment conducted by the NCP in order to avoid the idiocies that developed around the Palme murder case, with investigative groups that were too big, in constant flux and full of wasted resources. Instead, a small, compact core group was put together; officers who were prepared to work their arses off were invested with great authority to circumvent the standard procedures with entrepreneurial measures, so to speak, enabling them to focus all their attention on what was essential. The experiment was regarded as, and here I reluctantly quote, “at the present moment and in consideration of the contexts which as such, according to the aforementioned memorandum, expedited the ideal resolution of the present case, apparently satisfactory”. In other words, Mörner is damned pleased. The A-Unit will become a permanent entity within the NCP and will focus exclusively on the hardest cases. At the moment that means it will be dealing with “violent crimes o
f an international character”. What do you say to that?’

  ‘Have you got a nice city-centre apartment for a wild Finn with five kids?’ asked Söderstedt. ‘I’m getting really tired of puttering around in my garden back home.’

  ‘There probably won’t be much time for puttering,’ said Hultin. ‘Am I to interpret that as a Söderstedt yes?’

  ‘Of course I’ll have to check with my family,’ he added.

  ‘Of course,’ said Hultin. ‘All of you will have a couple of free months to check with your families, and so on. We’ll meet again on the fourth of August. Until then, you’re on holiday, even though you’ll have to be available for the prosecutor in the run-up to the Göran Andersson case. The fact that Jorge spared his life is going to cost the government millions.’

  Chavez grimaced.

  Hultin went on, ‘Is there anyone here who wants to say right at the outset that they’d rather not continue with the NCP? You know what the wise man said: “Once you’re in, you’ll never get out. Except in an appropriate coffin.” Stamped NCP.’

  Nobody spoke up. Hjelm smiled.

  ‘So be it.’ Hultin stacked his papers. ‘Have a wonderful summer. Provided that there’s still some left.’

  They stood up hesitantly and trooped out. Hjelm remained at the table, more or less incapable of moving.

  Hultin picked up the cloth to transform his whiteboard masterpiece into a little spot on the fabric. He hesitated for a moment and said without turning round, ‘Maybe you should memorise this outline and use it to replace the map of Sweden in your atlas.’

  Hjelm studied the bewildering mishmash of arrows and squares and printed letters. There they all were. An insane and yet logical map of the mental fragments of a country. An unlikely constellation of connections among the various body parts, in the throes of death. A nervous system drugged out by money. An appalling diagram of spiritual decay and cultural veneer, he thought, laughing to himself.

  Hultin frowned. ‘Time has run away from us, Paul.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Hjelm. ‘But I’m not entirely sure.’

  Neither of them spoke, allowing the pattern to settle like a screen over their retinas. When Hultin finally transformed it into a little blue spot on a cloth, it was still etched into their field of vision.

  ‘Thanks for a great investigation.’ Hjelm stretched out his hand.

  Hultin shook it. ‘You’re a bit rough around the edges, Paul,’ he said sternly. ‘But you might turn out to be a decent officer some day.’ Then he retired to his secret alcove. Hjelm watched him. Just before he shut the door, Hultin said mildly, ‘Incontinence.’

  Hjelm stared after him for a long time, thinking about football. A rock-hard wing back in nappies.

  He went out to the hall, glancing inside each office as he passed, one by one. In each he saw a window streaked with rain. The summer had clearly been prematurely shelved. Maybe it was already over.

  In the first office Söderstedt and Norlander chatted peacefully. The old antipathies, if not completely gone, were at least suppressed.

  ‘I’m taking off now,’ said Hjelm. ‘Have a good summer.’

  ‘Go in peace.’ Viggo Norlander held up the palms of his hands with their stigmata.

  ‘Come on out to Västerås this summer,’ said Arto Söderstedt. ‘We’re in the phone book.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ said Hjelm, with a wave.

  Out of the next room came Gunnar Nyberg in his wheelchair, its arms forced grotesquely apart by the bulk of the giant mummy’s body.

  ‘You’re allowed to laugh,’ Nyberg said in his hissing mummy voice. Hjelm took him at his word. Nyberg continued to hiss as he rolled down the corridor. ‘I’ve got my ride waiting downstairs.’

  ‘Try to restrain yourself from tackling it!’ shouted Hjelm after him.

  Behind his back Nyberg gave him the finger, using his uninjured hand.

  Hjelm went in to see Kerstin. She had just put down the phone. ‘That was Lena Lundberg,’ she said quietly. ‘She wanted to know if she could come up here.’

  ‘What’d you say?’

  ‘That she could.’ Holm shrugged. ‘Maybe one of them will be able to give the other some sort of explanation. I can’t.’

  ‘Is she going to keep the child?’

  ‘It sounds like it … But how would you tell your child that his or her father is a serial killer?’

  ‘Maybe Andersson can do that himself.’

  ‘If he lives that long,’ said Kerstin, absent-mindedly emptying her desk drawers. ‘Don’t forget that he murdered a member of the Russian mafia.’

  ‘Right,’ said Hjelm. ‘I won’t forget that.’

  He watched the aimless movement of her hands. He found it enchanting.

  ‘What do we do now?’ he asked at last.

  She looked at him. He felt her marvellous dark eyes riveted on his. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know, either. I’ve forgotten what daily life tastes like. Everything we’ve done has been in a sort of exalted state. How are things going to be between us when we come out of this little compartment? I don’t know. It’s a different world, and we’re going to be different people. My life is in a rather unresolved state right now.’

  She shifted her gaze away. ‘Is that a no?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s a maybe. Maybe I’m going to need you terribly. It almost feels like that.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go back to Göteborg now, anyway, and take care of a bunch of things. I’ll call you when I get back.’

  ‘Call me before then,’ he said.

  They kissed. They were finding it hard to part.

  ‘It could be,’ Paul said as he left her office, ‘that the pages in my dossier aren’t blank after all. Even though they’re being reused all the time.’

  She shook her head and pointed to his cheek. ‘Today the blemish actually looks like a heart.’

  He went to his own office. He was met by the delicious smell of newly brewed, freshly ground Colombian coffee.

  ‘Have time for one last cup?’ asked Chavez.

  ‘What do you mean, last?’ said Hjelm, sitting down. ‘I’ve bought myself a coffee grinder and a crate of beans.’

  ‘Black-head coffee,’ said Chavez.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Hjelm, ‘I’m getting to be grey-haired myself.’

  They laughed for a while. At everything and at nothing.

  Hjelm still had a few things to take care of before he turned in his police vehicle. He drove out to Skog Cemetery and stood in the rain, peering through a pair of tree trunks at Dritëro Frakulla’s grave. His wife was sobbing loudly and wildly, and Hjelm felt like a villain. The little black-clad children clung to her black skirts. An entire colony of equally black-clad Kosovar Albanians followed Frakulla through the downpour to see him off on his last journey.

  From his pathetic hiding place, Hjelm wondered how many people would come to his funeral. Maybe Cilla would manage to drag herself out of her personal crisis for a few minutes, he thought childishly.

  Göran Andersson was alive; Dritëro Frakulla was dead.

  He pondered the justice of it for a few seconds. Then he drove on to Märsta.

  Roger Palmberg opened the door, using a remote-control mechanism. He was sitting in his wheelchair, looking like a pile of body parts amateurishly stuck together. Somewhere inside was the glimpse of a smile.

  ‘Is it over now?’ the electronic speech apparatus asked.

  ‘It’s over,’ said Hjelm, then told him the whole story, from beginning to end. It took a couple of hours. Palmberg listened attentively, occasionally slipping in a clever follow-up question when he found a gap in the reasoning or a sloppily reported passage. There were many.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said the electronic voice when the whole story had been recounted. ‘It almost sounds as if you’ve found yourself.’

  ‘I’ve looked deep into my heart,’ said Hjelm, and la
ughed.

  Then they listened to Thelonious Monk for an hour, and Palmberg pointed out a number of nuances in ‘Misterioso’.

  Afterwards Hjelm drove back to police headquarters, turned in his vehicle and took the subway home to Norsborg. At the main subway station the headlines flashed at him from every news-stand: POWER MURDERER CAPTURED. IMMIGRATION POLICE HERO CAUGHT UP IN HOSTAGE DRAMA LAST NIGHT.

  He laughed loudly, standing on the platform in the middle of the frenzied rush hour.

  Role switch, he thought, and boarded the train.

  He sat down near a group of people who seemed to be work colleagues; he wanted to hear if they were discussing the murders.

  They mostly talked about their jobs at a small messenger company, about who had done what with the boss, about rises that had been given or not given and about people who had made fools of themselves in various situations. Only once did they mention the solving of the Power Murders case. They were disappointed. They had hoped for an international plot, and it turned out to be nothing more than a bank teller from Småland who had lost his mind. They were convinced that the police had made a mistake. Somewhere out there was the real conspiracy.

  Maybe so, thought Paul Hjelm, and fell asleep.

  33

  IT WAS LATE at night. Hjelm was staring out the window of his terraced house in Norsborg. The rain was still pouring down. Spring seemed to have vanished from the Swedish climate. It wasn’t even June, yet it already felt like autumn.

  Even so, the children were going out to the summer cabin on Dalarö for the weekend. To Cilla. While he had nowhere to go. Loneliness settled over him.

  He was so unaccustomed to just being home. And being there without hearing Cilla’s sounds in the house felt doubly strange. He’d been inside an enclosed space for two months and was finding it hard to come back. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to do so a hundred per cent.