by Arne Dahl
Hjelm went in, bought a couple of well-made sandwiches from Annika’s Café & Restaurant and, waving, started off in the direction of the police station.
Though his mind was in another place.
Elsewhere.
The Kvarnen bar at 21.42 the previous evening, to be precise.
He stopped on Kungsholmsgatan. The enormous police station complex towered above him. Turning to the right would take him up to CID on Polhemsgatan. Turning left would mean wandering through the leafy park, past the elegant entrance to local CID’s building on Agnegatan, and out onto Bergsgatan where the City Police District had their considerably more humble entrance.
The right belonged to the golden past.
The left the more dull present.
Without really knowing why, he stood there hesitating at the crossroads like Hercules in Stiernholm’s epic poem.
Only then was he forced to express what had been floating around, unexpressed, for several hours in the interrogation room that Thursday morning before Midsummer’s Eve. He had read it time and time again in Kerstin Holm’s eyes as, time and time again, they had looked searchingly at one other to make sure that their instincts weren’t wrong.
Yes – this was a perfectly normal, boring, everyday crime in inner-city Stockholm. But was that all?
Was it just their intense hopes for a proper crime which meant that they saw something else looming behind this messy killing?
Paul Hjelm stood at the crossroads for a moment. He felt Nyberg’s searching look on his back. Then he accepted the state of affairs and turned off to the left. Returned to the local police, to the violent crimes division of City Police District, and to the dull, raw, violent crimes.
But something within him suspected that a metamorphosis was approaching.
6
HER STOMACH WASN’T rumbling, it was roaring. Like when a lone Indian is sneaking through the jungle, his heart in his mouth, and suddenly hears the sound he knows he’ll hear only once in his life.
Late in his life.
The roaring of a tiger.
On this occasion, though, the tiger was a far from terrifying female policewoman in her mid-thirties, and the Indian a young man from Kalmar, aged barely twenty, his eyes red and swollen from crying. And it was hardly late in his life.
It had been late in his best friend’s life, though. The evening before. 23 June, 21.42, in the Kvarnen bar on Tjärhovsgatan in Södermalm.
Kerstin Holm was longing for Paul Hjelm. But even more – she had to admit it – for the sandwiches he would be bringing with him.
Her stomach growled again, even more murderously.
Not that Johan Larsson from Kalmar noticed. He was crying uncontrollably. He was completely lost, understood nothing. Nothing at all. Four high-spirited young men from Kalmar had followed their football team, Kalmar FF, the unexpectedly successful newcomers in the league, on an exciting little adventure to Stockholm. At 19.00 on Wednesday 23 June, they had been in the Södermalm Stadium, cheering the team on to a far from poor 2–2 result. Reasonably happy with their evening, they had made their way to Kvarnen, a pub they had heard about near Medborgarplatsen. It would be lively there, or so they had heard. But what they didn’t know was that it would be packed with disappointed Hammarby fans, whose collective frustration over finishing last in the league was coming to a head. No one had believed them when, like St Peter, they denied, three times, any dealings with their champions. Instead, one of them had died. His blood had flowed out into Johan Larsson’s hands, gushed out through the seams of his red-and-white football shirt, and life would never be the same again.
Maybe he would forget the sea of blood, maybe he would even forget Anders Lundström, his childhood friend. But he would never forget the blind hate, the inordinate rage. Those eyes that just wanted to kill. Those would be there until the very last moment of Johan Larsson’s humble time on earth. That much he understood.
But nothing else.
Kerstin Holm did what she could. She tried to be motherly; she said to herself: I could be his mother, but it didn’t really work. She wasn’t exactly sure what being motherly involved.
She didn’t have any children, didn’t know if she wanted to have children. A year ago, she had known that she didn’t want to have any, but now she wasn’t even sure of that. Time had begun to run out for her. Her relationships hadn’t really lived up to what had been promised. As a child, she had been sexually abused by a relative. Her engagement to a colleague in Gothenburg had been one long, drawn-out rape. Her strange, short, intense relationship with Paul Hjelm over two years ago was mainly a gilded memory from which the gold leaf had begun to flake away, and the most important relationship of her life, an equally intense love affair with a terminally ill sixty-year-old priest, had ended the way she knew it would.
He died.
She was with him when he died, and he had left memories behind that she didn’t really know what to do with. They had an aura of holiness which she just didn’t feel worthy of.
Paul Hjelm came into the room, brandishing a plastic bag. She gave a sigh of relief, and her stomach growled violently, as though it knew about the contents of the bag. He heard it, waved the bag once more, and got an immediate response from the tiger in her abdomen. He raised his eyebrows, surprised.
‘The mysteries of biology,’ he said, sitting down and skimming through her notes. ‘Gang of seven people,’ she had written. ‘Blind hate. Three main figures, the perpetrator really a minor character. The one who helped (Jonas A): fucking furious. At us, because we’d gone there. At perp, because he’d ruined things. Anders pushed him over so we could follow Hjalle and Steffe out. Completely unexpected. Unbelievably hostile looks, like there was nothing human in those eyes. The whole gang disappeared. In a flash.’
She hadn’t written anything else.
Hjelm looked up at Johan Larsson from Kalmar. He was hunched over, sobbing.
So-called meaningless violence.
For a brief moment, he felt sick to his stomach.
He looked at the new drawing, lying alongside the other two. Three police sketches of the perpetrator, completely independent of one another. So similar, and yet so different. Per Karlsson’s, Eskil Carlstedt’s and Johan Larsson’s.
Dishevelled, mid-length, sand-coloured hair; a little moustache that went just past the corners of his mouth; blue eyes. On these points, the pictures were in agreement. But on the shape of the face, the nose and the eyes, here they differed on these most basic of points. It wasn’t possible to come up with a single coherent picture from the three sketches. The question was whether they could even be used in the media.
Hjelm held up Eskil Carlstedt’s drawing for Johan Larsson.
‘Is this what he looked like?’
Larsson looked up, all red and puffy. Snot was running freely from his nose. Hjelm passed him a tissue without lowering the picture. Eventually, Johan Larsson managed to focus on it. He nodded. His head sank back down to his arms. Hjelm picked up Per Karlsson’s sketch.
‘So like this, then?’
The young Smålander looked up again.
‘Exactly like that,’ he said.
Hjelm sighed and put the drawing down.
‘How drunk were you?’
‘Pretty,’ was all Johan Larsson said.
‘And you didn’t see anything else noteworthy in the pub?’
Kerstin studied Paul once again. He studied her back. When they returned their attentions to the young man, they saw that he had been studying them. It was getting a bit tedious.
‘I only saw one thing worth mentioning,’ he said clearly.
They let him go.
Glancing at one another, they opened the plastic bags containing the sandwiches.
‘The IT types,’ snorted Hjelm, muffled by mozzarella and Parma ham.
‘I did them while you were gone, it was quick. They didn’t see anything. And they were stockbrokers, not IT types. They were sitting nearest the door and saw abs
olutely bloody nothing. Apart from one thing: the hen party. I got the impression they were after some kind of complicated gang bang with the bride-to-be and her blind-drunk friends.’
‘And this hen party had absolutely nothing to add, I can tell you that. As far as I could see, a complicated gang bang wouldn’t have been completely out of the question for them. So that means that the whole row over by the window, a table of stockbrokers and two tables of hens, are useless witnesses?’
‘The best the stockbrokers had to offer was: “A whole load of people rushed past right when the girls started yelling.” Both groups were just a bit too horny and drunk, simple as that. Just like that “pair of pairs” who’d gone to Kvarnen for a partner swap. They’d never met before, just exchanged erotic emails where they indulged in shared fantasies about partner swapping and group sex. Their plans probably wouldn’t have come to much, considering how drunk they were. Too horny and too drunk, all of them – even though it was only twenty to ten. Hen party, stockbrokers and the pair of pairs.’
‘Then let’s go for the people who should have been least horny and drunk.’
‘But also the busiest.’
‘The staff. The waitresses or those thugs on the door?’
‘The doormen, you mean. Which deserve to wait the longest?’
‘Let’s get the waitresses in.’
They pressed a button on the intercom. A short conversation with the receptionist, and in trudged a group of slightly haggard-looking beauties. Five of them. They sat down and started to complain in unison. It sounded like the monkey house at the zoo.
‘Naturally, we’re very sorry that you’ve had to wait,’ said Hjelm courteously, not quite blinded by all their feminine splendour. ‘There are a lot of people to interview, and none of you are missing work, since it’s only ten past two and Kvarnen hasn’t reopened yet.’
‘Are we allowed to open, then?’ said the oldest-looking one. ‘Isn’t it a crime scene?’
‘We’ve secured everything that needs securing, so it’s just a matter of going on as normal. Business as usual. It’ll probably be full – lots of free publicity in the press. The same way that Tony Olsson can write a book and get any publisher he likes to print it.’
‘Tony Olsson?’ the waitresses said in unison.
‘The police killer who came home from Costa Rica a few days ago,’ Hjelm explained. ‘And announced that he was innocent.’
‘What’s he got to do with us?’ exclaimed one of the women.
‘Nothing,’ Hjelm sighed. ‘Which of you was behind the bar when it happened?’
‘Me,’ said a small, dark woman in her thirties. ‘Karin Lindbeck,’ she added automatically.
‘How much did you see of what happened?’
‘Not much. I was at the other end of the bar taking payment for a big order. It was crowded so it took a while.’
‘Care to tell us, just to be on the safe side?’ Kerstin Holm put in.
‘All right,’ said Karin Lindbeck, with a gesture of acknowledgement.
‘So, did you feel the atmosphere was threatening?’ asked Hjelm.
‘You could say so . . . There was something in the air.’
‘And you’d served the perpetrator earlier?’
‘Probably. But he was standing towards the back of that macho gang, and a bit shorter than the others, I think. A background figure. Not especially memorable.’
‘One of these three?’ asked Hjelm, spreading the three drawings on the table.
The bartender Karin Lindbeck looked through them. With a quick, practised eye. Used to keeping track of faces.
‘Hardly,’ was all she said.
‘No likeness at all?’
‘Only the hair and the moustache.’
‘Can you produce anything better?’
‘I think so.’
‘And you’ve never seen him before?’
‘I might’ve seen some of that gang before, but not him. Not that I remember.’
‘You can help us with a couple of drawings later, Karin. Do you remember anything else?’
‘The Smålanders. A shy group who realised pretty quickly that they’d ended up in the worst place they could’ve. Too late. The one that died seemed nice, he was the one who ordered.’
‘OK, thanks. So the rest of you were waitresses? You’re divided up, aren’t you? By tables?’
‘Yeah,’ the oldest waitress replied, a fake blonde of around forty-five. ‘I had the window. The hen party and the brokers. They were flirting with each other non-stop. And drinking a lot. I was working flat out to get them served. Also, I was having a break when it happened. He was already dead when I came out.’
‘More?’
‘I was in the corner,’ said another. ‘Saw nothing, heard nothing.’
‘Very concise, but maybe not complete.’
‘I was further in. Not much happened there. Business as usual.’
‘More.’
‘I had the middle row,’ explained the young Asian woman. ‘A group of students were sitting nearest to the door, they were talking about a social anthropology exam, I think. Then there was the guy pretending to read, sitting alone, and a group of southern Europeans who had a Swede with them. They were speaking English.’
‘You didn’t happen to hear what they were talking about?’
‘I try not to eavesdrop.’
‘Like on the social anthropology students?’
She looked slightly embarrassed.
‘Come on,’ said Hjelm. ‘You heard something.’
‘They were negotiating about something. They weren’t friends. The opposite, I think. Distrust. They were trying to agree on something.’
‘On what? Try to remember.’
‘Weren’t we meant to be talking about the murder? I didn’t see that at all. I had my back to it.’
‘Just answer the question.’
‘No, I don’t know. A meeting place, maybe. I don’t know.’
‘But they left right away when the fight started? The whole gang? Did they go without paying?’
‘If you’re just drinking, you pay straight away. There wasn’t any bill to pay, everything had already been paid. But yeah, they disappeared pretty quickly.’
Hjelm thought. Something fuzzy was shifting in his mind.
‘No bill? No, it’s bloody obvious. No bill to pay.’
The waitresses regarded his curious little outburst suspiciously.
‘Who had the table by the door? Along the wall by the door, I mean.’
‘Me,’ said the youngest of the waitresses, a short-haired, sturdily built girl.
‘Who was sitting there, and what happened?’
‘Five really serious, quiet types.’
‘Salesmen?’
‘Not exactly, no, I don’t think so. I guess you could say that you’d expect them to be the rowdy kind but they weren’t at all. The opposite, they hardly said a word to one another. Just sat there, staring on the sly.’
‘Five macho gay men, staring at a kid who’s sitting there reading,’ Hjelm said clearly.
‘It wasn’t him they were staring at, it was further away.’
‘Were they listening to music?’
‘Hardly. One of them had a little earphone, but it looked more like . . . a hearing aid.’
‘And they didn’t pass that earphone around?’
‘No, it was just one of them that had it. He was sitting with his back to the room.’
‘And they didn’t drink much?’
‘A beer each at most.’
‘And none of them stayed behind to pay the bill?’
‘No, no, same thing. There wasn’t a bill. But one of them did stay behind. Shaved head and moustache.’
‘And the other four hadn’t left before the killing?’
‘No, but they left before anybody else. As soon as the glass broke. One of them pointed at the one who stayed behind and said something. Then he sat down again and waited.’
‘So they de
liberately left Eskil Carlstedt behind?’
‘If that’s what he’s called, yeah. It looked that way. I was standing in the middle of the Hammarby gang next to them, trying to take an order. It was slow. I was standing with my back to . . . the killing . . .’
Hjelm tried to catch Holm’s eye. She was drawing heavy lines in her notebook. Eventually, she looked up. She looked composed.
‘Shall we step out a moment?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Holm. ‘But I just have one question for you,’ she added, pointing to one of the waitresses. Hjelm saw the underlined word: ‘pretending’. Holm continued. ‘Why did you say that the kid was pretending to read?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘He didn’t turn a single page in that book.’
‘What was he doing, then?’
‘Don’t know. Thinking. Or listening.’
They went out into the corridor.
‘We’re sending a patrol to Eskil Carlstedt right now,’ said Hjelm. ‘He lives here on Kungsholmen.’
‘We should’ve picked up on the music, the demo tape, the reaction when we asked,’ said Holm. ‘Christ.’
‘And the bloody rest,’ said Hjelm.
Holm went away to send a patrol car after Carlstedt. Hjelm returned to the waitresses.
‘Well, ladies,’ he said, stretching. ‘We need the most exact descriptions you can possibly give us of the southern Europeans, the Swede, and the four who disappeared from beside the door.’
The oldest of the waitresses stood up abruptly.
‘What the hell is it you’re working on?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t have the faintest idea,’ said Paul Hjelm truthfully.
Three burly, traditional-looking doormen were sitting in a row, almost like the three wise monkeys who want to see, hear and say nothing.
Though only almost.
They actually talked quite a lot, even if it was exclusively about how heroically they had blocked the door despite everyone trying to get out. They described it as though they had been courageous UN troops, preventing genocide with nothing but their bare hands.
‘Considering at least twenty people got out, maybe your reaction wasn’t exactly lightning-fast,’ said Hjelm quietly.