by Arne Dahl
Nothing else would have been able to tear them from their duties.
Only this. A higher calling, a higher right.
They would get to know one another inside and out, out and in. Nothing would be kept secret any longer.
Still, that was exactly what happened. Two walls were raised between their tightly entwined bodies. Walls of sworn secrecy, built from both sides. And between them, a strange minefield.
They tried to convince themselves that the walls didn’t affect them, that they didn’t have anything to do with their being together – only with their jobs. But it didn’t quite work. Their jobs were a part of them.
There are, essentially, only two real attitudes to work. Either you can take any job at all, so long as the pay cheque falls into your hands at the end of the month, or you can deliberately look for a job that, in some way, chimes with your character.
Both Sara Svenhagen and Jorge Chavez had done the latter. When they worked on their investigations, when they slowly but surely worked their way towards hidden truths, they were also doing something else. Something more important. They were restoring an order, finding patterns in their environment, exposing hidden structures, slowly approaching the meaning itself. They were devoted. There was no other word for it.
And now they were also devoted to one another. Two devotees in an embrace.
Jorge agonised over how ungrateful he had been. Determined ‘only’ to help find the Kvarnen Killer, Sara had given the A-Unit photographic material which had enabled them to identify the whole of Gang Two and also provided them with pictures of all of Gang One. It was like a token of her affection. Unfortunately, the picture of the ‘policeman’ was as good as non-existent, and it was ultimately this policeman that was the reason behind his ungratefulness. If a policeman really was involved, then the strictest possible secrecy was absolutely essential, and that meant it was impossible to discuss any of the main points of the Sickla Slaughter. He was convinced that an exchange of ideas about Niklas Lindberg and Bullet Kullberg really would help move the case forward; he would have loved to hear Sara’s thoughts on Rajko Nedic and Lordan Vukotic, on Danne Blood Pudding and Roger Sjöqvist, Sven Joakim Bergwall, Eskil Carlstedt and a gang of probable war criminals from the former Yugoslavia. And, above all, on the ‘policeman’. But he couldn’t. A wall was preventing it.
Of course, Sara had wondered what the strange cry of ‘The policeman’ had meant, the thing Jorge had blurted out when the photograph of the hidden man was developed. But it had quickly disappeared behind a dilemma of her own. Her wall. Her boss, Detective Superintendent Ragnar Hellberg, had silenced her investigation, classified it as top secret – and the question was whether that was a case of misconduct. Or even a crime. He had deliberately erased all traces of an email address that had appeared quite frequently on various paedophile websites: ‘brambo’. Judging by all appearances, ‘brambo’ was a paedophile, active online. She had two possible options. Either she could confront Ragnar Hellberg, or she could keep searching for ‘brambo’s’ identity. The only thing she couldn’t do was talk to Jorge. That was her wall and no one else’s.
And so they lay there, as close to one another as they could possibly be. But still oceans apart.
Between them, a strange minefield.
33
SURE ENOUGH, THE Florento sisters were criminals. Arto Söderstedt managed to find them fairly quickly in the news archives. The story had gained lots of column inches, particularly in the tabloids, over the few days around Midsummer – it was uncommon for any story to last longer than that.
The sisters were prostitutes in Atlanta, Georgia. They had been part of an enormous brothel controlled by a mega-pimp called Big Ted Curtis, who treated his whores badly even by pimp standards. Under challenging circumstances, the sisters had set up an Internet connection, gained access to Big Ted’s bank account, emptied it, and then vanished into thin air. Penniless, he had committed suicide, and the whole brothel was set free.
A few weeks ago, the sisters had broken their silence. They communicated with the press via email, telling their story. But still, no one knew where they were.
Söderstedt pondered their story. Each second he neglected to spend on Niklas Lindberg and Rajko Nedic gave him a guilty conscience. Though less and less so. He couldn’t let it go.
Two people, presumably lovers, were calling themselves Orpheus and Eurydice – the ancient musician and his beloved, whom he had sung back from the kingdom of the dead. They were quoting two criminal sisters who had also made their way back from the dead and, on top of that, managed to sink their tormentor and become rich. They were sending messages about their respective positions in different places across Sweden using Gula Tidningen’s THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’ feature. Something outside the bounds of the law was probably going on here.
Söderstedt sat at his desk with the extensive investigatory material on the Sickla Slaughter in one hand, the measly printouts from Gula Tidningen in the other. The strange thing wasn’t just that they seemed to weigh the same amount, but that they were also being pulled together like magnets.
Two positions: Orpheus in Arvika, Eurydice in Alingsås. Two citations, quotation marks and all: ‘No crime is worse than bitter betrayal, said the Florento sisters.’ ‘But the sisters vanished into thin air.’ He had a brainwave, phoned Gula Tidningen and spoke to the webmaster.
Yes, the paper had backups for the last six months’ ads.
Arto Söderstedt clenched his fist for a brief moment. He asked whether he could have the last month’s entries for the THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’ feature sent to him. He could. It took just under an hour.
He searched through the extensive material on his computer. As ‘Orpheus’ after ‘Orpheus’ popped up on his screen, he was struck by how drastically this little computer function had aided their police work. Eventually, he was left with a cluster of similar messages on the screen in front of him. They all looked alike. First, the name of the recipient – Orpheus or Eurydice – then, in quotation marks, a short phrase which was more or less obviously connected to the Florento sisters; then, the position marker from the atlas which, without exception, referred to an urban area; finally, the sender (Orpheus or Eurydice). Always exactly the same form.
The first message was sent on Midsummer’s Eve, 25 June. Söderstedt could feel the two piles of paper being pulled even closer together. The Sickla Slaughter had taken place on the night of the 24th.
He looked more closely at the first message. It had come from Orpheus. The code from the road atlas said Orsa in Dalarna county. There was no quotation, but a reference: ‘Expr., 24.06, p. 12 top’. The reply from Eurydice had come just under two hours later, along with a code that pointed to Falkenberg on the west coast. Here, there was a quotation: ‘The sisters were just spiritual sisters.’
‘Expr.’? And then ‘p. 12 top’? That must have been a reference to the top of page 12 in the previous day’s issue of Expressen. There weren’t any tabloids on Midsummer’s Eve, were there? Maybe Orpheus had got hold of the day before’s number – and found . . .?
Söderstedt rang the police station’s library. A woman answered, and five minutes later, a girl brought him a copy of Expressen from 24 June. Most articles were about the Kvarnen Killing, but at the top of page 12 was one with the headline: ‘THE SISTERS WHO VANISHED INTO THIN AIR.’ It was a follow-up article on the Florento sisters. Partway through, it said: ‘The sisters were just spiritual sisters.’ Towards the end, it read: ‘No crime is worse than bitter betrayal, said the Florento sisters.’
And the article ended with the words: ‘But the sisters vanished into thin air.’
He went through the rest of the messages from THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’. All were quotations from the Expressen article.
Reconstruction, Söderstedt thought to himself, leaning back. Orpheus finds the article about the Florento sisters. In his first message to Eurydice, he refers to it. She replies after two hours, during which time sh
e’s presumably gone out in Falkenberg, where everything’s closed for Midsummer, to get hold of a copy of Expressen. She then replies with a quote from the article: ‘The sisters were just spiritual sisters.’ The pair must have agreed in advance to call one another Orpheus and Eurydice, those who escaped the kingdom of the dead. They find an article on a couple of spiritual sisters who have done the same thing – and who have also got hold of an enormous sum of money. They identify with the sisters, so they send a quotation from the article each time they communicate. They’re moving through Sweden, each in a different location, and they’ve decided in advance to keep in touch using Gula Tidningen’s most harmless, well-hidden page: THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’. That implies that they have access to the Internet. Wherever they are, the pair seem to have immediate Internet access. How? And why the Internet? Why not direct contact? To avoid the chance of being traced? Hmm.
The server, Söderstedt nodded. It must be possible to find out where the messages to Gula Tidningen were coming from.
He contacted the webmaster again. Yeah, Orpheus and Eurydice were using the same server. A free Spanish server called Virtud. He found it online. After some linguistic confusion and general resistance, Virtud’s Spanish webmaster finally accepted that Arto Söderstedt was calling from the Swedish police and, very reluctantly, gave him Orpheus and Eurydice’s details. They were registered as Baruch Spinoza and Elton John. That didn’t mean a great deal. The most important thing was that there were two phone numbers.
Two mobile phone numbers.
In other words, Orpheus and Eurydice were connecting to the Internet using their mobile phones.
He looked up the numbers with the provider, Comviq. Both were registered. At the same address. A restaurant.
The Thanatos restaurant in Östermalm, Stockholm.
He contacted the Patents and Registrations Office. What could they tell him about the Thanatos restaurant?
Eventually, Arto Söderstedt found the name of the owner.
The Thanatos restaurant was owned by a man called Rajko Nedic.
Arto Söderstedt suddenly felt completely, completely calm.
34
THE WEAK LINK between Sara Svenhagen and Jorge Chavez was called Gunnar Nyberg. A few weeks ago, he and Sara had been working as a pair. Now, the other half of the pair was Jorge.
Though ‘pair’ was maybe a bit much. They didn’t take it in turns running up dingy stairwells, service weapons raised; they didn’t cover one another as they crept down some dark alley; they didn’t play good cop, bad cop in any dark interrogation rooms. No, they sat at their computers. Through no fault of his own, the once boorish bodybuilder policeman had been thrown from one computer nerd to the next and, as a result, had actually become quite good at working online.
Though enough was enough.
Moving back to the A-Unit had somehow breathed life into old habits. Or maybe they were bad habits. He went out into the underworld, into the old Gunnar Nyberg territory. Suddenly he’d had enough of virtual cyber-Nazism, and put a surprising number of rank-and-file officers to work, hunting the only line of business which never took a break.
First of all, there was a gang of robbers. It was primarily made up of relatively young right-wing extremists, but also of more out-and-out professional criminals like Danne Blood Pudding. Nyberg organised an extensive interrogation of professional criminals, bank robbers and skinheads. He followed up leads, above all on Danne Blood Pudding and Roger Sjöqvist.
So far, it hadn’t led to anything.
Then there was a drugs ring. Rajko Nedic really did seem untouchable, but in the long run there must be something to go on. Anything at all.
And that was what he was currently busy with. The old intimidation techniques were like reflex. He heaved his irritatingly constant 146 kilos towards the thin figure of a man named Robban, a known big-time pusher in Hjulsta. Robban was in his flat, gaping with surprise at the broken front door which was hanging in scraps – not splinters, not pieces of wood, but scraps. Robban thought: How the hell did he manage to break the door into scraps? But that wasn’t what he said. Instead, voice shaking, he said: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Think again,’ said Gunnar Nyberg.
‘Shit, man,’ Robban half sniffed. ‘You know as well as I do that it’s an idiot-proof system. You don’t know anyone else! There’s a delivery, you pick it up. You deliver the money, they look happy. When they don’t look happy, you’re dead.’
Nyberg heaved himself a little closer. His grizzly bear’s face was only a few centimetres from Robban’s, which was more rabbit-like than anything else. The grizzly’s breath didn’t smell of raw meat and fresh blood – it smelt of coffee.
‘Yugoslavs?’ the coffee-scented predator barked.
‘Could be,’ Robban panted. ‘I dunno. They look southern, they do. Ruthless guys. Always speaking gibberish together.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’
A sudden burst of kamikaze bravado: ‘Go fuck yourself, you bastard.’
The grizzly bear grabbed the rabbit’s neck, pressing hard. The rabbit shook violently – a trembling piece of second-rate fur.
‘I learned this through close contact,’ Gunnar Nyberg informed him pedagogically. ‘It really works.’
‘Wait. Christ! Wait,’ Robban trembled.
Nyberg loosened his grip, feeling ill at ease. He had said he would never again use violence in his work. It had just happened. As though his grizzly role demanded it.
Robban stared admiringly at him.
‘Wow, man!’ he shouted, massaging his neck. ‘What a grip!’
‘Get to the point now,’ Nyberg muttered, ashamed.
‘OK. I’ve heard about a drug dealer who’s made a thing of it. All his men speak gibberish between themselves. It’s a way of disguising the entire thing.’
A way of disguising the entire thing, Gunnar Nyberg thought to himself before asking, as he should: ‘Which dealer?’
‘Rajko Nedic.’
‘And you think it’s Nedic making deliveries to you?’
‘No idea,’ said Robban, lighting a cigarette and trying to look calm. ‘And above all, I didn’t say that.’
Nyberg returned to his worn-out old Renault, sitting for a moment with his hands on the wheel and looking out over Hjulsta’s utterly homogeneous seventies architecture. The July sun reflected listlessly in the identical, greyish-brown rows of windows.
Well, Gunnar Nyberg thought to himself. It was the warmest day of the year, he was dripping with sweat, and his thoughts were heroically trying to crawl up out of a day which had turned into quicksand. Once again, he thought: Well . . .
And: Well . . .
His thoughts broke free in a short, sharp burst.
If Rajko Nedic’s men always spoke Serbo-Croat between themselves, how could those Swedish Nazis in Kumla have worked out that a handover was going to take place?
Niklas Lindberg surely couldn’t have tortured Lordan Vukotic twice. Someone would have noticed. And yet Lindberg knew two things: that a big handover was going to take place, and that there would be a meeting in Kvarnen. How had he known?
Nedic’s empire was built on perfect discipline. No one ever blabbed. That was the mainstay of the entire operation. That was how he managed to act as a law-abiding restaurateur with such precision. Quite simply, his word was the law.
Did that mean he had suddenly discovered a crack in Nedic’s walls?
One of his men in Kumla had squealed – even before Vukotic had done it. A leak in the watertight system.
Gunnar Nyberg saw the chance to sow some weeds in the carefully pruned garden. Wasn’t there a chance that the whole organisation might start to bleed information if news of a leak reached Nedic?
Nyberg sat in his car. His hands had turned white at the wheel. Drops of sweat ran between his fingers, loosening them.
Three men in Kumla. What were they called? Zoran Koco, Petar Klovic, Risto Petrovic. He would talk
to them. Right away.
He was already halfway there. Hjulsta. He tore off in his rusty old Renault, along the E18 towards Örebro. Between Bålsta and Enköping, he passed a place called Grillby. The name set a little bell ringing in his head. Grillby? He had been to Grillby. When? How? Though he didn’t know why he was thinking about it now. Probably some kind of failure to adjust to a slower speed.
After Örebro, he sped across the Närke plain towards Kumla. It didn’t take much more than an hour. He made his way to the prison governor and immediately found the trio’s collected works in front of him in an interrogation room.
Interpol’s material was extensive but, ultimately, not especially comprehensive. There were lots of blanks, especially in relation to the Yugoslav war. Zoran Koco was a Bosnian Muslim from Sarajevo and had apparently been one of the leading black-market sharks during the Bosnian war. Petar Klovic was a Bosnian Serb and had been a guard in one of the concentration camps for Muslims. No crimes – if you ignored their crimes against humanity. Risto Petrovic was a Croat, the former commander of a paramilitary group which had also been involved in the ethnic cleansing. Though of Serbs in Croatia.
An utterly unholy alliance.
When it came to Niklas Lindberg, the blank was his year in the Foreign Legion. May ’94 to May ’95. Koco and Klovic were already in Sweden by then, but not Petrovic. On the contrary, there was a very significant gap in the material from that time. In July 1995, Petrovic had come to Sweden and joined Rajko Nedic’s gang, something which was, of course, unconfirmed. By September, he had already been nicked for peddling drugs, and had been inside, awaiting deportation, ever since.
Nyberg contacted CID’s Interpol group. They, in turn, contacted the Foreign Legion and, within an hour, had produced a number of possible names from ’94 to ’95.
During that hour, Gunnar Nyberg had tried to make sense of it all.