by Arne Dahl
Never more.
It all happens in slow motion. The man by the driver’s seat also conjures up a weapon, shooting in their direction. Misses. The sound of sub-machine guns rings out.
The broad man reacts instinctively. He doesn’t have time to reach for his gun. Instead he runs, both hands grasping the briefcase. He is aiming for the nearest shed. It’s just three metres away. Two. He feels the pain in his back. One metre. None. He is behind the shed. When he falls, he feels that the pain is gone. He doesn’t feel anything at all. The last thing he sees is the briefcase, lying on the asphalt in front of him. It’s covered in blood.
Then he sees nothing more.
And so, the summer evening is shattered. As though it exploded, as though the whole summer had been blown up into a thousand pieces.
Not much more fire is exchanged. Four sub-machine guns against two pistols. The golden one thinks to himself that the routine of war doesn’t count for so much after all. Both of the men by the car are soon lying on the ground, motionless.
A moaning cuts through the night. When he turns round, he sees another of the masked men on the floor, shot. He watches him tear off the black balaclava, howling. His face is purple. His clothes are slowly turning red around his left shoulder. The golden one bends down over him and makes a gesture to the short one.
The short one heads off in the direction the broad man ran. Turns the corner by the shed. Stops dead. Sees him lying in a pool of his own blood. Sees the pool of blood in front of him. Sees a rectangular island outlined against the blood.
The shape of a briefcase.
And beyond this, bloody footprints growing fainter until they’re swallowed up by the night.
The short man swears. He follows the tracks until they disappear, gazing out into the night. Nothing anywhere. Just the pale, summer darkness. He charges around for a while, his gun raised. It’s pointless. The briefcase is gone.
By the car, the injured man is shouting. His sweater is almost completely red. The golden one looks down at him, closes his eyes, and then presses a thick strip of tape over his mouth. The injured man’s eyes widen fiercely. It looks as though they’re about to burst out of their sockets.
The short man is next to the golden one. He has taken his black balaclava off. His face is pale. He shakes his head.
‘It’s gone,’ he says.
‘What the fuck are you saying?’
‘Esse’s dead and the briefcase is gone. Someone’s made off with it.’
‘Who?! Fucking hell! Spread out, get looking!’
There are only three of them now. Three people can’t spread out especially well. Far in the distance, they hear the sound of a car starting. They realise that it’s too late.
The golden one stops. Stands completely still. It couldn’t go wrong.
It had gone wrong in several places, how the hell was that possible?
The short man passes him. He moves determinedly towards the still-smoking car. When he passes the golden one, he says: ‘Maybe we’ve still got a chance.’
He bends down to Nedic’s man, lying on the passenger side of the car. The man is coughing up blood, strange phrases in a strange language coming from his mouth.
‘Frequency?’ the short one asks in English, pressing the barrel of his gun to the man’s forehead.
The man laughs. He laughs blood. The last thing he says is: ‘Fuck you, asshole!’
He gets a bullet in the face.
The short one looks up at the golden one’s smoking gun. He goes pale, stares at him, shocked. He stands up. Regains his wits. Stands there thinking.
‘The paper,’ he eventually says.
The golden one nods. He had forgotten about the piece of paper in the briefcase. Yet another mistake.
The golden one unfolds the paper. On it is a series of numbers.
The short one nods energetically.
‘See,’ he says, ‘we’re not completely screwed.’
The golden one looks around. Nods briefly. He and the short one load the injured man into the van.
The golden one thinks about a conversation he had recently – in prison, with a murderer studying art. About the fabulous difference between theory and practice. He feels like a failure. Stands there for a few minutes for no particular reason. Then, he lifts his golden balaclava from his face and jumps into the van.
In the beginning there were six. Now, three and a half.
Though the others are nobodies, the golden one thinks, pulling himself together.
That’s what counts, after all.
A rusty old Datsun is already on the motorway. It is filled with a flickering mixture of fear and elation. He is driving terribly. It’s lucky there are no other cars around. It’s early in the morning on Midsummer’s Eve, probably the quietest day of the year. Usually.
This year it wasn’t so quiet.
He is pale, she is dark, and he turns towards her. He can see that her wonderful legs are shaking. He lays a hand on her knee. Now his hand is shaking, too.
‘Shit,’ she’s saying. ‘Shit, shit, shit. Did you see? Shit, did you see?’
He nods, and his eyes move down her legs to the floor. To the bag resting by her feet. Two balaclavas and two pistols are sticking out of it.
Unused.
‘We didn’t do anything,’ he says. ‘They did it themselves.’
‘Shit,’ she says.
They’re silent for a moment. Recovering. His gaze wanders, moving from the bag back up to her knees and further. To her lap.
To a briefcase, dripping with blood.
He can’t hold it in any more. He lets go of the wheel. The car sails left and then right across the lane.
‘Jesus Christ, we did it!’ he shouts, putting his arm around her and giving her a kiss.
‘Shit!’ she shouts, raising her arms to the roof of the car.
12
THE PORN POLICE were wandering around in the clear morning light. The asphalt was covered with a layer of scented dew. It isn’t often that dew has a scent, but on that morning, Midsummer’s Eve, you could really smell the dew. Even the porn police had noticed it, though they had other things on their minds.
Their night’s work made their uniforms feel like week-old underwear. All that effort instead of just sitting in the staffroom, watching high-quality videos.
The porn police enjoyed watching high-quality videos in the staffroom. So much so that someone on the outside had found out, and this person had told the tabloids. The result? The porn police were given their far from honourable nickname.
Maybe the night’s events would wash it away. That’s what they were hoping, in any case, as they wandered around in the clear morning light, growing used to the unusual sight which greeted them.
This should be able to wash away even the most stubborn of stains.
It was no later than five, but they had already managed to turn away five or six carloads of their friends from the tabloids. Not without a certain sense of Schadenfreude.
They went over to the blue-and-white plastic tape which was surrounding a square of the Sickla industrial estate. Another vehicle was approaching, one with TV 4’s colourful logo printed on the side. Behind that, an old red BMW sports car came chugging along.
The porn police went over to the TV 4 vehicle and gestured very clearly that they should leave. The TV 4 people didn’t give up easily; there was moment of fuss which ended with someone in the van blurting out their tired but well-known nickname, and the porn police started kicking the van. Eventually, it moved off and parked, slightly ruffled, next to the others in the designated space ten or so metres away. Still irate, the porn police moved on to the BMW behind them. When a short, dark figure stepped out of the car and, without a word, lifted the blue-and-white plastic tape, something inside the porn police snapped. They rushed over and grabbed the dark man in an iron grip.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing, you little Mediterranean shrimp?!’
‘You see a nice
car, you can be sure there’s a spic in it! Clear off! As fast as you bloody can!’
They could already see that the man’s mouth was starting to form the ominous words.
‘The porn police, I assume,’ he said.
‘Little prick!’ the porn police snapped, twisting their grip.
‘What are you doing?!’ shouted a man dressed entirely in denim, running over from inside the roped-off area. ‘This is Detective Superintendent Chavez from CID. Let him go immediately.’
The porn police let go and dropped back without a word.
‘It’s not that nice a car,’ said Jorge Chavez, rubbing his upper arms. ‘Ancient. 1978 model. And I’m not Detective Superintendent.’
Yet, he thought. But then, apparently there aren’t any porn police.
The denim-clad man held out his hand and said: ‘Sorry about that. They’ve had a rough night. I’m Bengt Åkesson, local CID night staff.’
Chavez managed to extend his aching right arm to return the greeting.
‘Haven’t we met before?’ he asked.
‘We met very briefly on the Power Killer case. I found a Russian called Alexander Brjusov when we busted an illegal poker club.’
‘Right,’ Chavez nodded. Åkesson.
He didn’t normally forget people.
On the other hand, he hadn’t had much to do with people lately. More with his books. After the strange resolution of the Kentucky Killer case, he had studied and studied and was now, theoretically, the most qualified policeman in Sweden. Even in terms of practical experience, there was a lot in his favour, despite all that had happened. All he was missing for a superintendent’s job was years. Years en masse.
He was still little more than thirty years old.
‘Well, Åkesson,’ he said, ‘the only thing I know is that I got a confusing phone call in the middle of the night, from Waldemar Mörner, a division head I know from the National Police Board, saying that I had to lead the investigation into, and I quote, “an unbelievably grim mass murder”. Can you give me any more info?’
‘We could always take a trip around the sights,’ said Åkesson, as they started walking. ‘A few hours ago, at 03.08 to be precise, we received a call from an old lady who was out walking her dog in the middle of the night. She had a mobile phone with her and she said she was standing in the middle of a slaughter site, that there were bodies everywhere. When we got here, it was already light, and this is what we saw. Five dead. All shot apart from one, who’s been blown up. He’s in the car here.’
Chavez glanced into a burnt-out Mercedes, and regretted that he had wolfed down a quick sandwich on the way over. It felt as though it was just making a brief visit to his stomach. He spent a few seconds trying to prevent its reappearance, and then his professional side took over.
Sure enough, the man in the back seat had been blown up. Chavez didn’t want to expand on that observation, the medical examiners could do that. The remains of a chain lay by the man’s wrist.
Chavez was content with what he had seen. He looked up and glanced around the surrounding area. Sickla industrial estate. A worn asphalt road. A black Mercedes parked between two industrial sheds. Signs: ‘Rickard’s Auto Repairs’ on one of them, and ‘Sickla Boats and Building’ on the other.
He looked further, along the left-hand side of the Mercedes. A man was lying face down in a pool of blood next to the driver’s seat. Further away, there was a smaller pool of blood, this one lacking a body. He walked around the car. Here, on the other hand, there were two bodies. The one next to the passenger seat was riddled with bullet holes. The one slightly further away was wearing a black balaclava. Where his eye should have been, a fleshy mass protruded from the socket.
Jesus Christ, Jorge Chavez thought, allowing himself a few more seconds to keep the sandwich in place.
‘You said there were five?’ he said to Åkesson.
Åkesson rubbed his hand slowly and firmly across his forehead. For the first time, Chavez noticed how pale he was.
‘The last one’s over here,’ he said, pointing. ‘Round the back of Rickard’s Repairs.’
‘A bit of alliteration never goes amiss,’ said Chavez, following him. Åkesson didn’t comment.
They went round the corner of the shed in front of the Mercedes. Lying on the ground was a well-built man wearing a balaclava. He had been shot in the back. In front of him, a still-wet pool of blood had spread out. It was like an irregular frame around a perfect, dry rectangle. Beyond that, ten or so bloody footprints, growing increasingly faint the further they went.
‘Hmm,’ Chavez said, like Sherlock Holmes. All that was missing was him reaching for a magnifying glass from the inner pocket of his worn old jacket.
Chavez and Åkesson exchanged a long look.
‘OK then. Have you drawn any conclusions?’ asked the former.
‘Yeah,’ said the latter. ‘They’re pretty clear. Make your own, then we’ll compare them. Intuitive versus reflective.’
Chavez gave Åkesson an appreciative glance, and said: ‘Two gangs. Those with balaclavas attack those without. The latter arrive in the Merc. They brought something attached to a chain, probably a briefcase. They’re on the way to a meeting place, to exchange it for something unknown. Somehow, the robbers blow up the car and take the briefcase. Him with the chain, he’s already dead. They cut the chain. The other two get out of the car. From their positions around it, we can assume they were frisked.
‘Then it gets tricky. Something happens. The one whose face is oozing out of his balaclava is shot by one of the two next to the car, then they’re shot. This lone pool of blood suggests that another of the robbers was shot, but only injured, since he’s not here. The fact they’ve left the bodies behind means they don’t care whether they’re identified, and that worries me. It’s hardly over. Then what? What’s the robber behind Rickard’s Auto Repairs doing so far from the others? Shot in the back. OK, so he’s running off, but gets shot from behind. The shot probably went right through him, through his heart. The blood gushes out forwards, down his chest. OK. Should we assume that this blood pattern in front of him means he had the briefcase? He’s running off to get the briefcase to safety when the fight breaks out and then, when it’s over, the robbers grab the briefcase from the pool of blood, take a couple of careless steps in the blood and clear off.’
Åkesson looked at Chavez, raising his eyebrows in surprise, and said: ‘Completely agree, I’m afraid. I don’t have anything to add. Other than that we’ve found the tracks of a van that was parked by the nearest shed, Sickla Boats and Building. And,’ he added, giving Chavez a furtive glance, ‘that the men from the Mercedes look obviously foreign.’
‘What about the robbers, then?’ asked Chavez, unflustered. ‘Have you dared look under the balaclavas?’
Åkesson grimaced. ‘It wasn’t pretty,’ he said. ‘But yeah, they seem more Swedish . . .’
Chavez looked at him. He seemed to have something else on the tip of his tongue.
‘And . . .?’ he asked.
‘I’m not exactly happy with those “careless steps in the blood”,’ Åkesson said eventually. ‘They don’t seem the type to take careless steps in blood.’
Chavez nodded for a good while. The weak link in the chain of his story, immediately laid bare. He tried to convince himself: ‘We can imagine they were in shock, I suppose. There’d been a slaughter. Five bodies. One injured. Three of them friends.’
He looked out over the ugly scene. The woman with the dog and the mobile phone had said that she was ringing from the scene of a slaughter. She wasn’t wrong, but something was. Here and there, the occasional policeman was walking around, looking at the crime scene. Otherwise, it was empty.
‘Where the hell are forensics?’ he exclaimed.
‘On the way from Närke,’ said Åkesson, shrugging.
‘Where?’
‘From Närke. It’s a province.’
‘Thanks,’ said Chavez.
‘No doubt
they’ve been flat out with the Kumla explosion. The whole force is there. And your friends.’
‘My friends?’
‘Söderstedt and Norlander. We’ve been colleagues at local CID for a while.’
Chavez allowed himself a smile. He was standing at the scene of a slaughter, smiling.
‘Those white, middle-aged men,’ he said.
Though he was thinking about something else.
Hmm, he thought.
The Kumla explosion, he thought.
13
IN FRONT OF us is a house that very few policemen have ever seen. It stands alone by a lake with the unusual name of Ravalen. This lake is in Sollentuna municipality, just over ten kilometres north of Stockholm.
The fact of the matter is, only one policeman has ever seen this modest villa at the edge of the dense forest. And he’s no longer a policeman.
He is the owner of the villa. He can say that in all honesty now. The last payment was made to the bank on the same day he retired, something that seemed like more than just a coincidence.
And isn’t it him we see there now? Isn’t he the sixty-two-year-old man we can see on that hilly little patch of land that’s really nothing more than a parenthesis between the lake and the forest? Isn’t it him dressed in the Hawaiian shirt and shorts which are a touch too small, pushing a lawnmower up and down the slope like Sisyphus?
Cutting grass is an endless job.
It has a tendency just to grow back again, after all.
As a policeman, this man had a defect. Former policeman, that is. Not a policeman, a former policeman. This defect consisted of not being able to tell grass from weeds. Obviously he could have taught himself that this little green tangle is grass and that little green tangle is a weed, but he had never, ever understood the more fundamental difference between grass and weeds.
Policemen should definitely be able to tell grass from weeds.
Not by looking in a manual which says that certain types of plants are grasses and others are weeds, but by instinctively being able to say what distinguishes grass from weeds.