Gieger

by Gustaf Skördeman

  ‘You were propositioned?’

  Dörner nodded.

  ‘So Stellan had hired a young girl?’

  ‘A guy.’

  ‘OK. And then he blackmailed you?’

  ‘Not him. It was someone else who sought me out and explained what would happen to the tape if I didn’t start passing information to them. Back then homosexuality was a touchy subject. Precisely because you could be extorted. And I still walked straight into the trap . . .’

  ‘What about Stellan?’

  ‘Well, what do you think? He arranged the whole thing. Invited me to the party, rustled up the boy and got him to take me to a room where he’d . . . rigged a camera.’

  ‘So you passed them the information?’

  ‘No. I refused.’

  ‘And did they send the tapes to anyone?’

  ‘To my bosses. The young man was from the Stasi, so I lost my job. Ohne Abfindung. No severance package, since I hadn’t told them about my sexual orientation. The thing that had got me into this . . . exposed position.’

  ‘What did you do then? Did you find another job?’

  ‘Taxi driver.’

  ‘Were you angry at Stellan Broman?’

  ‘Am. I’m still angry at him. Even now he’s dead. Once they’ve buried him, I’m going to go and spit on his grave. He was a bastard. Do you know the worst thing about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For a brief moment, that young man made me think I was loved.’

  21

  ‘There’s no need to worry,’ said Sara. ‘I’m not in the middle of a breakdown.’

  ‘You kicked him. While he was lying on the ground.’

  ‘He used a knife on me.’

  ‘But you’re a police officer.’

  ‘And police officers stick together, right?’

  David sat there with his eyes staring straight ahead. They were carrying out surveillance on a brothel in a residential flat in a shabby, sad-looking high-rise that the inhabitants referred to as ‘the Projects’, having been inspired by American cinema.

  The buildings were pale blue, dilapidated monsters – depressing in a way that made you think the architect’s vision had from the very beginning included drug dealing and suicide. The kinds of things you never saw in the idyllic plans that were put on display in the public library in order to convince sceptical locals.

  ‘And I’m not pissed off that you talked to Lindblad,’ Sara said. ‘But you know how manipulative she is.’

  ‘I didn’t talk to her. She weaselled it out of me.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  David continued to stare straight ahead.

  ‘But you can be pissed off if you want to be,’ he added. ‘I’m used to it.’

  Sara glanced at her colleague. He seemed to be fully preoccupied with playing the martyr, she thought to herself. And then she remembered that she’d heard something about David testifying against a colleague when he was a beat cop. A colleague who’d shot a man running away from him in the back. And who’d then been fired.

  ‘What’s most important to you?’ asked Sara. ‘Putting away dirtbags or putting away your colleagues?’

  David turned to Sara.

  ‘I’m never going to lie to protect a colleague who carries out an assault. And after all the hassle I got in Malmö, I’ve decided to always speak my mind.’

  ‘That’s fantastic, David. Believe me. Just imagine if you could be that direct and honest with your family, too.’

  ‘Stop it!’

  Sara shrugged.

  ‘OK. But it affects me, too. You’re worried about how I’m doing and I’m worried about how you’re doing. You realise that it does more harm to suppress your emotions than it does to let them out like I do.’

  ‘Stop assaulting people in custody and I promise to tell my family.’

  ‘Perfect. Just think what a beautiful world we’ll live in then.’

  At that moment, Sara caught sight of an old acquaintance.

  ‘Fuck me, it’s the Baron.’

  David followed Sara’s gaze and spotted the same thing she had.

  Thorvald Tegnér, former justice of the Supreme Court, was still a diligent client of the city’s prostitutes at the ripe old age of eighty-nine. He had a taste for young girls. He was a regular who never tried to apologise, never pleaded with the police who arrested him, nor became angry or tried to escape. He always confessed on the spot, accepted his order to pay a fine and coughed up. And then he would turn up again a few weeks later at another brothel, or in the apartment of another escort. If they caught him in the act, then he simply withdrew and would stand there completely unembarrassed, talking to the police while stark naked. Sara wasn’t looking forward to Martin getting old. Droopy balls and sparse white pubic hair was not a pretty sight. But perhaps she would like it then.

  The Baron was no nobleman – he’d been given the nickname as a result of his haughty manner. On this particular day, the Baron had an H&M shopping bag in his hand, which was unusually relatable for a fastidious snob like him.

  ‘Let’s arrest him. Who cares if he just carries on? He can’t be allowed to think we’ve given up.’

  ‘OK,’ David said. ‘Ten minutes until take-off.’

  After they’d been waiting for a little while, Sara’s mobile rang.

  ‘Yes?’ The ringtone had divulged that it was Anna.

  ‘Update.’ Her friend didn’t offer any greeting either. ‘No trace of the burglars at the Bromans’ house. No blood, no fingerprints, no hairs. The masts being used by their mobiles also suggest it’s not them.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘How much have you actually got on this Cold War trail?’

  That explained it. Sara had been wondering why Anna had called to report to her, given that she wasn’t part of the investigation, but now she got it. Anna had realised she’d been wrong and wanted to try out Sara’s theory. She felt flattered, at any rate.

  ‘Lots. I can show you. But not now. See you in a couple of hours?’

  ‘OK. Call me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They hung up, as it was still known – despite the fact that no one actually hung a receiver back on to a telephone any longer. These days, you tapped the call away.

  ‘What do you think? Time to go in?’

  David checked his watch.

  ‘Roger that.’

  David pulled out one of the team’s unregistered mobiles and called the number they’d found online.

  ‘Natasha,’ said a young girl with an Eastern European accent.

  ‘Hi,’ said David. ‘How much? I’m outside. I’ve only got ten minutes.’

  ‘Twelve hundred for half an hour.’

  ‘OK. Which floor?’

  ‘Four. Hallman on the door. Code is 2121.’

  They got out of the car, ambled over to the main door and entered the code. They took the lift up to the fourth floor. It was customary for a pimp to sublet a flat from a subletter, or even from the subletter of a subletter, for a rent of up to five times the original price, without the actual tenant having a clue about what was going on. Then the pimp would pack as many girls as he could into the flat and turn it into a brothel.

  Nowadays, there weren’t any big guns or muscle guarding the girls. The human trafficking gangs controlled them by threatening their families. They would say they’d either kill their mothers or kidnap their sisters, and do the same to them as the girls were experiencing. And the girls usually gave in at that point. That was part of the reason they so rarely wanted to cooperate with the police – out of fear that something might happen to their families back in their home countries. And the Swedish police couldn’t protect them there.

  Sara hated that she didn’t have a ready answer when the girls explained why they didn’t want to report their pimps or testify against their customers.

  She lingered a few metres away from David as he rang the doorbell since there was a peephole in the door. But when t
he door opened, she quickly stepped forward at the same moment as David grabbed the door handle, stuck a foot inside the door and flashed his police badge.

  ‘Police,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We’re coming in.’

  And then he signalled to the girl to be quiet.

  The girl who’d opened the door was clearly on drugs, and looked frightened. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old. Perhaps she was a recent arrival and thought the police in Sweden were like the ones in her home country. That she was at risk not only of being raped, but having her income stolen.

  ‘Where is he?’ Sara whispered. She repeated herself in English when she got no reply.

  The girl pointed towards a closed door along the hall. Sara positioned herself and then David opened the door. Inside was an empty room with the blinds pulled down and nothing apart from two mattresses on the floor. In front of them was a girl who was far too young, kneeling while she gave the wrinkly old Tegnér a blow job. He had a firm grip on her hair and had his other hand just a couple of centimetres above her head, as if he was ready to slap her at any moment. The girl was no more than fifteen or sixteen. Her hair was tied up in pigtails and she was wearing pink tights and a pink T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Daddy’s girl’. Lying on the floor beside her was a big teddy bear, the H&M carrier bag and a receipt.

  ‘Police,’ said Sara to the young girl, who interrupted her blow job and looked at Sara and David with a vacant stare. She looked uncertain for a couple of seconds, but then she turned her head away again and carried on sucking. She received an encouraging pat on the head from the Baron, who looked Sara in the eye with a smile.

  She went up to them and pulled the girl away. There was a plopping sound as his penis slipped out of her mouth. Then Sara pushed the girl over to David and turned to look at Tegnér.

  ‘How many times does that make it? A hundred?’

  ‘Isn’t she pretty?’

  ‘If she’s under fifteen, then you’re in real trouble.’

  ‘She’s eighteen. I’ve got it in writing.’

  ‘Surely you can see she’s not.’

  ‘At my age, you can’t tell the difference between fourteen and eighteen. You must realise that.’

  And then he smiled.

  He was in all likelihood right. He would probably get away with that excuse. Especially if the judge was someone like him – older white heterosexual male with an inflated ego. They always showed each other a great deal of understanding for their excuses and apologies.

  Tegnér could probably provide a text message in which the girl stated she was over eighteen, and at his age it could be difficult to tell the difference between a fourteen- and an eighteen-year-old. Theoretically.

  This was what bothered Sara most of all. That the ones who committed these outrages just carried on. No matter how often Sara and her colleagues caught them out.

  They just turned up again. Cheerily smirking.

  David called their contact at social services to get the girl taken care of. Sara knew they aimed high and did a good job, just as long as the girls were willing to accept help. David helped the girl to her feet.

  ‘Wait,’ said Tegnér. ‘Don’t take her away. I need to finish first.’

  Sara turned towards him and saw him looking at the girl and smiling while slowly pulling his foreskin back and forwards over his glans.

  It took a second for her to realise what he was doing – it was so awful she couldn’t interpret it at first. Then, purely on reflex, she struck him down. She hit Tegnér right on the chin, and she heard the crash when her fist made contact.

  22

  Her knuckles were tender, and David refused to speak to her on the way back into the city, so Sara had plenty of time to think about what had just happened. Twice in such quick succession. But she couldn’t honestly bring herself to say she had any regrets. Both Vestlund and the Baron had got what they deserved. No one else was going to fight the victims’ cause, so how on earth was it wrong that she had? She fully understood the argument that police officers couldn’t exercise their own personal justice, and assume responsibility for the punishment of criminals, but when nothing else stopped them, how could it be wrong to at least try doing something?

  Was David going to tell Lindblad about this? Maybe. And what would happen then? It was hard to say. But were the work-related consequences for her personally the important thing here? Wasn’t the issue that society was in the state it was in? That, if anything, it was moving backwards from the progress that had been made by past generations?

  As her anger at the Baron slowly dissipated, the murder of Stellan surfaced in her thoughts once again.

  Mad stalker, burglar disturbed mid-crime, or former East German who’d had their life ruined? Or was there someone completely different behind it?

  Regardless of who the murderer was, the motive was in all likelihood connected to Stellan’s apparent espionage. That was the only part of his life that provided an explanation for such a violent act. TV fans and housebreakers didn’t shoot eighty-year-old legends in the head. It had to be the espionage angle.

  Sara’s mind was made up about it.

  The excerpts from the records that she’d seen with Hedin’s help had been annotated with the names of three informants for the Eastern Bloc who’d never been punished: hiding behind the code names Geiger, Koch and Kellner were Stellan, plus one Stiller and one Schulze. Since David was driving, Sara could search online on her mobile. There were around twenty people in the right age group. Who were the right ones? And did they know who Ober was? The ringleader Hedin had lacked a name for . . . If the spy ring had been activated, wouldn’t it be Ober who’d performed the activation? Was it one of the other three who’d killed Stellan? Was it to protect some secret from the past? Had Stellan threatened to reveal something? How would she find the other three?

  It would take too long to search for the answers by herself – especially if she had to do it alongside her day job. She glanced at David, who was still sulking, and then she called Hedin.

  ‘Which Stiller and Schulze are they?’ Sara said as soon as Hedin picked up.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kellner and Koch. You’d noted that their real names were Schulze and Stiller, but there are dozens of them who are the right age. Which ones are the ones we’re looking for?’

  ‘You know I can’t say that.’

  ‘Give me two first names, then – any that you like.’

  There was no reply from Hedin, but she seemed at any rate to be thinking it over given that she hadn’t refused point-blank.

  ‘If I find the right people, it’s possible I might find out something about them that could be of interest to your research. I promise to share it with you if I do.’

  A longer silence. Now Sara could tell that she’d got Hedin hooked.

  ‘Just give me two names. Any names. It’s not a crime.’

  ‘Hans,’ said Hedin. ‘And Jürgen.’

  ‘Give me the name of a town, too. Any town you like.’

  ‘Stockholm. The Stora Skuggan neighbourhood. And Tranås.’

  ‘Do you know what they do now?’

  ‘The one in Tranås is a priest. The other one is retired – he was an economist for the county council, I think.’

  Sara hung up without thanking Hedin and called Anna. She’d shown some interest in the DDR trail. David glanced at Sara. He must be wondering what she was up to, but if he didn’t want to talk to her then she could do whatever she liked.

  ‘Yes?’

  Anna answered the phone as curtly as ever.

  ‘I know the names of two of the IMs. The person who shot Broman might be after them, too. Or perhaps it was one of them who did it. Otherwise they might know something important about the murder.’

  ‘OK, what are their names?’

  ‘The first one’s called Hans Schulze. He lives here in Stockholm – in Stora Skuggan. The second one—’

  ‘Hans Schulze?’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes,’ said Sara, who could tell from Anna’s voice that the name rang a bell.

  ‘Hang on a sec.’ There was the sound of keys being tapped. ‘Yes, I thought I recognised the name. I’ve been going through lots of reports to see whether it sparks any ideas – there was a patrol called out to one Hans Schulze yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, exactly. Yesterday evening. Someone reported a noisy disturbance – said it sounded like shots being fired. So a patrol went out there, but it was just some old woman whose TV was on too loud.’

  ‘Did they speak to anyone?’

  ‘Wait a sec . . . Only to Schulze’s sister, who refused to open the door. She was scared. So they left again before she panicked.’

  ‘Anna – get there as fast as you can. See you there.’

  Sara hung up and looked at David.

  ‘I’ll drop you off,’ he said without looking at her.

  He still sounded angry, but there was apparently still a certain degree of loyalty between them.

  *

  When no one opened the door, they summoned a locksmith. Sara wanted to try climbing in through a window, but Anna stopped her. Either something had happened, or it hadn’t. It made no odds if they had to wait a little longer.

  Sara reluctantly agreed. It went without saying that the locksmith took an hour to arrive and didn’t have the professional pride to apologise.

  The postman arrived while the man was working on the door, and she had to flash her police ID to calm him down. Then he wanted to take photos and post them on Instagram, but Sara quickly managed to change his mind about that.

  Once they got inside the flat, they found what they assumed to be Schulze, dead in an armchair.

  Shot.

  Whether it was a generational thing or a personality thing was unclear, but Schulze had no PIN on his mobile so Sara could check his call history right away. There had been one single call the day before, and before that a couple of calls a week. He wasn’t a chatty phone calls type of guy. Sara asked Anna to check out the numbers and got a tired look in reply.