Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  Pashie burst out in something that was a mixture of crying and laughter. She wasn’t sure herself which predominated.

  “Thanks, Sarah. I think maybe you’re the right friend for this conversation after all.”

  “You have everything a man could wish for. Certain women, too, I would add.”

  “Stop.”

  “Do you know what I think? I think people can have a wonderful life together without children.”

  Sarah jumped down from the desk and hugged her. “Everything’s probably not as bad as it might feel right now. If it’s children you want, there are many solutions. I have two children, and I’ve never let a man touch me.”

  Pashie got out a laugh in the midst of her crying. “For God’s sake, stop.”

  “Were you at the doctor’s office yesterday?”

  Pashie nodded.

  “Well, what’s he saying now?”

  “We’ve gotten a new doctor. It’s a bit of a mess. But we’re at the end of an evaluation phase. We don’t really know yet. Given the way it felt yesterday, I’m not sure I want to know.”

  “Both of you are competitive people. If I know you, you’re going to find a solution to this problem. Whatever that solution turns out to be.”

  31

  Max walked up to the row of mailboxes and opened Maj-Lis’s. It was full of daily newspapers that were squeezed in. He pulled them out and looked at the dates. The most recent one was yesterday’s. Presumably the mailman hadn’t yet been by with this morning’s. The newspapers suggested that Maj-Lis hadn’t been there since Thursday. Since Tore had seen her being led away from the family’s grave. By a man who looked like Max.

  He walked down toward the beach.

  Damn it. Think, now. What happened here?

  There’s something that’s not right.

  The skiff.

  The pier had never before looked so abandoned. He walked over to it. The worn gray ropes were still attached to their iron rings; the ends lay in the water.

  Max bent down and pulled a rope out of the water. It was intact; there was no sign that the wind had pulled it apart or that it had been cut. The skiff wasn’t worth stealing. Maj-Lis or someone else must have untied the skiff and left the ropes in the water. Who would do that? Someone who was in a hurry? Someone who wasn’t planning to come back? He dropped the rope and scooped up water with his hand and wet his face and hair.

  He looked toward the bay, toward Arholma, the island where he’d grown up. He’d spent a few weeks there with Pashie. When everything that had happened in Saint Petersburg had finally been over. It had been a good time. A time of sorrow but a time of healing. In the beginning, the quiet life on the island had helped them heal and reconcile themselves to what had happened as best they could. But eventually, the narrowness of life on the island had gotten to them: the rumors, the suspiciousness, and the maladjusted welfare cheats—things and people that reminded him of everything he’d wanted to leave behind.

  Nevertheless, there was something out here, an attraction, a love that never disappeared. The love of the stones and the forests, of the water and the light, of memories only his family had shared. Memories that now lived in him.

  Would Maj-Lis have been able to row across the bay? She was as tough and strong as an old mare, she used to say, but he doubted she would have been able to make it all the way across. Particularly not if it had been raining and the weather had been bad.

  Next to the neighboring pier was an aluminum boat with an old two-stroke outboard engine. Max knew how to start such an engine, with or without a key. He got into the boat and backed out into the bay.

  He didn’t know where he was going. But he knew he had to find her.

  32

  The sun was getting high in the sky. Max had gone back and forth along Arholma’s west coast looking for the skiff. He’d made a stop at the old pier, near Båkberget, where Maj-Lis had tied up when she was going to teach. He didn’t see the skiff anywhere, and he saw hardly any people on the island.

  He drove the boat up to the North Point, checking the general store and the dance hall on the way, and stopped at the armed forces’ old concrete pier in Skvallerhamn.

  As he continued his westward journey toward the islands of Ovanskär and Demban, he hoped he would catch sight of one of the older Arholma residents who still put nets out into the bay. Maj-Lis had friends among the islanders, and perhaps they knew something. Perhaps there was a logical explanation. Perhaps there was something wrong with the skiff; perhaps it had been beached.

  The little aluminum boat rocked worryingly when the big waves from the Åland Islands rolled in toward Arholma. He felt as though he were sitting in a sardine can. He couldn’t go farther out, so he swung in between Ovanskär and Arholma and steered toward Österhamn. Around him, a few sailboats waited for better winds so they could cross the sea to the Åland Islands. It was getting close to twelve. He still had plenty of time before it would get dark, but what about gas? He looked in the tank. It was getting low, but there should be enough to get him the rest of the way and back across the bay.

  He steered between the small islands on the mainland-facing side of Arholma. Drove slowly but didn’t see the skiff anywhere. There was only one place left to look. A place where the wind often drove boats that had lost control. When the merciless north wind pushed everything toward the open water off Arholma. Havssvalget, the Throat of the Sea.

  Max steered the aluminum boat south. He passed the islands of Viberön and Krokholmen and was approaching Havssvalget and the island of Idö when he caught sight of what he’d feared he’d see.

  On a little beach between two promontories lay what appeared to be a wooden rowboat, knocking against the base of a cliff.

  Max slowed down, pulled the outboard up out of the water, and drifted slowly up alongside the wrecked rowboat. He took hold of it and tied it onto his boat. There was no doubt that it was the one he had been looking for. The oars were gone, as was the anchor. Only the bailing scoop still lay in the boat, rocking in the water-filled stern.

  Then he saw the anchor line. It was tied to the thwart.

  He climbed into the skiff, tugged on the anchor line. The water here was deep, even though the beach was only a few meters away. He looked down into the water but couldn’t see the bottom. The anchor appeared to be thoroughly stuck. He pulled harder and finally felt the anchor coming free.

  But what came into view under the surface was no anchor.

  The line was wrapped around the feet of a human being.

  Maj-Lis.

  As he took hold of her naked body, tears burned in his eyes. Her gray hair lay slick against her waterlogged face. Her eyes stared emptily.

  His stomach turned when he saw a wave-shaped cut inscribed into her forehead.

  There were two more markings on her ribcage. Her body had been in the water for a long time, but there could be no doubt about what her murderer had carved into her skin.

  A one and a zero.

  33

  “The bodies are numbered, aren’t they, Sofia?”

  Max was sitting on the kitchen bench in Maj-Lis’s little house with the telephone in his hand.

  “On the news they called the Skeppsmyra murder a ritual murder and said something was carved into the victim’s body. It was a number that was carved into the victim’s forehead, wasn’t it? And there was a number on Torbjörn Lindström, too, wasn’t there? That was why you came to the second murder site, in Berga?”

  “I would very much like to know why you’re asking me that,” said Sofia.

  “Because we have another one.”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “An elderly woman,” Max continued. “With the number ten carved onto her ribcage.”

  “Where exactly are you?” asked Sofia. “Give me the address.”

  “I can send you the coordinates. She was sunk in the sea off Idö.”

  “And where are you?”

  “In her home.”

/>   “You knew her?” said Sofia.

  She waited for an answer from Max. After a moment, having received none, she continued.

  “Stay where you are. And don’t touch anything. We’re coming out there immediately.”

  He hung up. Looked up at the corner cupboard, where the absence of the photos was striking. Had she put the photographs away, or had someone taken them? He went into her bedroom; he knew there was a loose board under the bed. He had once seen Maj-Lis hiding the photographs there. He knelt and reached under the bed, managed to pull the board free.

  There were no photographs, but when he felt around in the space he found something else. Something he hadn’t seen before.

  He held it up.

  It was a silver armband. A little slip of paper was sitting in one of the links. He pulled the slip of paper out and stuck it in his pocket, focusing on the shining object.

  In the middle of the armband was a silver plate with a symbol recognized around the world.

  Max ran his thumb across the inscription on the plate.

  Two lightning bolts.

  An abbreviation for Schutzstaffel, “protection corps.” He said the German word aloud.

  Not only Germans but also men from many different corners of Europe had served in the corps.

  The German designation for the organization’s armed wing was particularly well known.

  Waffen-SS.

  34

  Max was sitting out on the pier. He slipped his little notebook into the pocket of his sports coat. He had written down an account of what had happened since he had arrived on Björkö, noting exact times and geographic positions and briefly summarizing what he knew about Maj-Lis.

  Two murders so close to each other, so close in time, out here on Björkö. Why would anyone want to murder Maj-Lis Toom? He ran his hand over the pier’s broad planks, felt the splinters tickle his palm. The kind of splinters that had gotten stuck in his feet when he was little, when his skin was softer. His gaze was fixed on the old gray-white ropes tied to the iron rings of the pier. The rowboat was still out in the bay, rocking against the cliff, anchored to the bottom by Maj-Lis’s body. Max imagined the police boat from Singö on its way to Arholma and Havssvalget. He imagined the police pulling her body up to the surface and laying it in a black plastic sack. He imagined the body being sent to a coroner’s office to be autopsied. The cause of death was fairly obvious. Someone had let loose a storm of rage on her. Stabbed her. Perhaps the forensic experts would focus on finding something that connected her death to the other two cases? The head of the Migration Agency, who was found dead at the auction. State Secretary Torbjörn Lindström. Could there be more?

  But what could Maj-Lis Toom possibly have in common with those men?

  As he sat there on the pier, letting his mind drift, the old sorrowful song came to him, the one Pashie had said had the world’s most beautiful melody. It was Maj-Lis who had sung it to him.

  “Aija zuzu.”

  A feeling of weightlessness rose into his chest. Maj-Lis Toom was one of the few points of light from his childhood. She had died before he’d a chance to thank her for all she’d done for him.

  Whoever had sunk Maj-Lis to the bottom of the sea would have to answer for it.

  He had to find whoever had hurt her so badly.

  A Volvo braked to a stop outside the little yellow house, and Sofia Karlsson got out. She looked around quickly at what had been transformed from a Roslagen idyll into the scene of a murder investigation.

  Sofia was wearing the jeans and jacket she’d had on the last time Max had seen her, but she had switched to a new T-shirt bearing the word Miami against a yellow palm tree. And she had replaced her Stan Smith shoes with heavy hiking boots.

  Max walked over to meet her. She nodded with an expression that conveyed both seriousness and empathy.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Max shrugged.

  “What did you see out there?”

  Max told her that a man apparently had led Maj-Lis through the forest and that discovering this had made him suspicious. He told her how he had looked for her and finally found the boat out by the cliffs. How the perpetrator had stabbed her in the heart and carved a wave-shaped symbol on her forehead and a number on her torso.

  “Number ten. What does that mean?”

  “We don’t know.” Sofia turned toward the house. “What did you find in there?”

  Max felt the weight of the silver bracelet in his pocket. Closed his hand around it.

  “I found this in her bedroom.”

  Sofia furrowed her brow as she took the bracelet from him. She held it between her index finger and her thumb, then plucked a paper bag from her jacket pocket and dropped the bracelet into it.

  “What made you come here?” she asked.

  “What you said before I left, about the strange coincidence. That I showed up at Berga and that the first murder happened here. I tried to call Maj-Lis so I could ask her whether she’d seen anything. Something she wouldn’t have told the police but would tell me. When she didn’t answer, I decided to drive out here.”

  “What did she mean to you?”

  “A lot.”

  “We’re going to need to write down your testimony and everything you know about her.”

  “I’ve already done it.”

  Max handed over the two pages from his notebook, and Sofia looked them over quickly.

  “There’s a neo-Nazi organization out here that’s become more active recently for some reason,” she said. “We’re going to go visit them when we’re done here.”

  “Maj-Lis Toom had nothing to do with Nazis,” said Max.

  “Is that right? This bracelet suggests otherwise. We know nothing about her. We’re going to need more information about her life than what it says here.”

  Sofia held up the handwritten pages.

  Max nodded. “I have to go to work now.”

  He started walking toward his car.

  “There’s speculation that the other two victims were connected to Russia,” said Sofia. “And that there could be an increased number of agents in this country.”

  Max turned around. Sofia was still standing in the same place.

  “What was that?”

  “Work with me on this investigation. I can attach you as an external consultant. I have a green light from the head of the National Bureau of Investigation to do that. The government and the state secretary from the Ministry of Justice are breathing down our necks.”

  Max shook his head. “I’ve promised never to get involved in something like this again.”

  “Not that much water has passed under the bridge,” said Sofia. “I’m giving you a chance to do the right thing.”

  She’d been subtle about it, but Max realized she had just threatened him. Someone on the police force might suddenly claim that justice had not yet been served in the investigation of the crime committed four years ago. It might be smartest not to act on his own this time.

  “Okay,” said Max. “I’ll dig deeper into Maj-Lis’s history. I’ll get in touch when I have something for you.”

  35

  Charlie had gotten the table he always asked for, with the best view of Stockholms Ström and the Stockholm Palace. Operakällaren’s leather-bound menu was heavy in his hands. His memories were even heavier.

  She had shown up there yesterday; she, of all people?

  As soon as he’d seen her, he’d realized that as far as he was concerned, the meeting was over. The situation was acute. It was too bad it always took one such a long time to decide to do the right thing.

  I should have called her a long time ago.

  There was really nothing wrong with her. There hadn’t been back then, either. On the contrary. If anything, she’d been too good. That had frightened him. And it frightened him now. The good times had been like addictive highs, the bad like visits to hell. For a while Charlie had thought she was the one, the one for whom he’d waited, the one
for whom he’d longed. He knew she’d had a great love in her life, a man who had disappeared in a way that had hurt her. Charlie had always wondered if it was the memory of the other man that had made it difficult for her to become attached to him. Perhaps she had just needed more time? Had it been wise of him to break it off all those years ago, or had he just chickened out?

  He saw her coming the moment she entered the restaurant. As always, she was impeccably attired, a woman who knew how to dress in accordance with current fashion and appropriately for her age. Not many succeeded in doing that. She didn’t try to pretend the years hadn’t passed, as other women her age did—men, too, for that matter. Using tricks like dyeing, lifting up, smoothing out, or pulling in would never occur to her. She was too proud and self-assured for that. It made her more beautiful than the ones who tried. She was also entirely different from the gray-haired ladies in boys’ haircuts who showed up at his lectures and created a sea of cotton in front of him. Where she came from, there was a viable beauty ideal for elderly women. An ideal she’d never let go of.

  She was more beautiful than she’d been fifteen years ago. He himself felt heavier and more tired than ever.

  “Hello, Charlie,” Anastasia Friedenberga said when she reached the table.

  Charlie stood up and took her hand, kissed her cheeks.

  “You certainly chose the table carefully,” she said after she’d sat down. “From here I can see the place where we were last together.”

  Charlie turned around. How could he have been so thoughtless? Grand Hôtel. They could even see the window where they’d stood and looked out at the palace and the churches of Gamla Stan, his arms around her waist.