by Arne Dahl
Only then did he see Jorge, Paul and Kerstin out in the rain on the terrace. Blood was running from the arm of Paul’s linen jacket. Kerstin’s head was wrapped in Jorge’s jacket. Jorge was bellowing.
Hultin went over to him and gave him a slap. He fell silent.
‘How’s she doing?’ asked Hultin.
‘She’s been shot in the head, for fuck’s sake,’ said Chavez, subdued. ‘How do you think she’s doing?’
Hultin took out his mobile phone and called an ambulance. Norlander came out with Bullet Kullberg in handcuffs, knocking him over and pushing his face down into the mud with his foot.
‘Stop it,’ said Hultin neutrally.
Nyberg came round the corner just as Söderstedt came out. He sank to his knees next to Kerstin.
‘Jesus Christ, Kerstin,’ he said quietly. ‘What have you done?’
‘Much too little,’ she said, straining to smile.
Söderstedt jammed his pistol into his holster and sighed. ‘Imagine what would’ve happened if Niklas Lindberg had been here too . . .’
‘Where the hell’s Eurydice?’ asked Paul Hjelm before fainting.
Jan-Olov Hultin was thinking about grass and weeds.
Then he threw up.
38
IN STOCKHOLM, MEANWHILE, it was a sunny Saturday, 10 July. In fact, it was the highest high summer imaginable. The city was almost panting under the blanket of heat enveloping it. People were sprawled on every available patch of grass as though expelled from the city itself – the city’s sweat. The clouds had disappeared in an attempt not to wither away, and the sun seemed to have taken a few steps closer to earth, as though to get a better view. It couldn’t believe its eyes, drawing ever closer.
Sara Svenhagen was sitting, along with a busload of Germans, in Sundberg’s Konditori on Järntorget in the city’s old quarter. Since the busload of Germans could barely fit into the cafe, it was a bit of a tight squeeze.
She wanted it to be that way.
As tight as possible.
She was waiting, and while she waited, she went over the past few days. Keeping track of the latest chapter of her life. Could she have done anything differently? She turned the events over and over in her mind, but found no obvious mistakes. Her steps had been clear and distinct and they had irrefutably led her here. To this point.
‘Brambo’ had led her here.
An online pseudonym. The word appearing before the @ symbol in an email address. She summed up.
Via the passive paedophile of Söder Torn, on John Andreas Witréus’s computer, she had found a number of child pornography websites previously unknown to her. They had been well hidden behind harmless title pages, thereby making themselves impossible to find using search engines. On these pages, she had found a whole range of pseudonyms, several of which were Swedish or could at least be traced back to Swedish IP addresses, which wasn’t exactly the same thing.
These pseudonyms had done their best to remain untraceable but could, when all went well, be identified after closer inspection. It became apparent that all these pseudonyms appeared in the extensive investigation material, a small part of which had been written by CID’s child pornography unit, of which she herself was a member. All the pseudonyms apart from one: ‘brambo’. Wherever this ‘brambo’ appeared online, another pseudonym, ‘rippo_man’, was also present. This ‘rippo_man’ turned out to have been convicted of sexual assault on children, among other things, thanks to the Swedish policeman who had put him away. This Swedish policeman should also have sent ‘brambo’ to prison, or at least tried to trace him, since ‘rippo_man’ and ‘brambo’ always appeared together on the hidden pages she had found. Yet that wasn’t the case. ‘Brambo’ had been deliberately deleted from the report. And in each instance, one man had been behind the investigation. Sara Svenhagen’s own boss, Detective Superintendent Ragnar Hellberg.
She had two choices: either go straight for Hellberg, or try to find out more about ‘brambo’, if for no other reason than to have more of a leg to stand on in any direct confrontation with Hellberg. She had chosen the latter. It hadn’t been easy.
‘Brambo’ was an incredibly well-disguised figure. It was obvious that he had no intention of having his hidden desires revealed. He made use of a couple of extremely advanced, illegal computer programs which could be downloaded online, and which completely concealed the source. If you connected these programs, something which required professional knowledge, you could be entirely anonymous online. All the experts she spoke to were in agreement about that.
Then it struck her that Hellberg might simply have committed a minor breach of duty: he had deleted ‘brambo’ because the person behind it was untouchable.
But she didn’t stop there. She knew that the real Internet experts were hardly those employed by the police. Or by anyone else, for that matter. The real experts were the hackers. Often teenagers. Completely up to date. And so she had made her way into a number of online forums. With deliberate naive femininity, she threw her questions to the most advanced chats she could find. Chats where Chen, 18, was discussing the Pentagon’s new security system and the slow finance routines on the New York stock exchange with Bob, 16. She presented herself gallantly as a sexy nobody with problems, and received pubescent, testosterone-fuelled, virginal responses. Sure, those programs were old, several-month-old upgrades; they were crackable, but only by guys, people with dicks. You just do this. And suddenly she was through. As she saw the IP number appear on the screen, she thought about the perils and possibilities of the information society.
‘Brambo’s’ IP number could, after lots of toing and froing, be traced to a restaurant. To the Thanatos restaurant on Östermalm, right here in Stockholm.
Thanatos, she thought, as she searched the registry of businesses for an owner and manager. Wasn’t that the ancient Greeks’ kingdom of the dead? The deepest depths of Hades?
The deepest caverns of Hell.
Strange name for a restaurant.
Wasn’t it Freud, too? Eros and Thanatos? Our two strongest urges. The sex drive and the death drive?
The Thanatos restaurant was owned by Rajko Nedic.
Rajko Nedic, she thought to herself. Wasn’t he the drug dealer who always managed to get away? He had never figured in any child-porn context, had he?
She checked the times. ‘Brambo’ had been online at all manner of times. It was difficult to imagine anyone in the restaurant busying themselves with child porn down in the kitchen while the lunch rush was on. She checked with the network, Telia. The IP number had been subtly and secretly diverted. She would have to use all the police tricks she could think of to crack their wall of confidentiality.
Yes, the number was diverted. Home to Rajko Nedic in Danderyd.
Suddenly, it all started to make sense. Rajko Nedic wasn’t in the child-porn business. It was much simpler than that.
Rajko Nedic was a paedophile.
She started to collect all the images linked to ‘brambo’ that she could find online. It was a cavalcade of the usual kind. So normal, and so unbearable. Always the faces. It was always the children’s faces that grabbed hold of her and which she couldn’t let go, which held onto her, accusing her; accusing her for having escaped, for being able to have lived her childhood in peace, for not helping them right then and there, for being removed from the actual event. A terrible, silent, dampened scream of horror which rose towards the horizon and swept over the world, taking her with it and leaving her with nightmares about an awful double penetration in the middle of giving birth. Those eyes. Always so dark – ruined, but always crystal clear. Their acute prematurity. Their stolen childhoods. The inconceivably grotesque act.
Sara Svenhagen tried to calm herself down. She recognised the situation so well. She tried to become a policewoman again: objective, critical, chasing clues. It was always the same procedure, the same narrowing of the field of vision. It worked in the end.
Though through a haze of tears.
&
nbsp; For the most part, it was a question of one child in the pictures, a dark little girl at different ages, but there were others, too. It was always the same room, the same background. The walls were clearly soundproofed – it looked like golden foam cushions had been stapled to the walls. Otherwise, there were no distinctive features. The perpetrator’s face could never be seen, and of his body, only his penis was visible. There was nothing special about it – aside from what it was doing.
In all probability, it belonged to Rajko Nedic.
OK, she thought, stretching. She looked around the flat. Traces of Jorge were everywhere. The sight of his boxer shorts on the bedside lamp filled her with warmth. It rose from her toes up to her hairline.
OK. Ragnar Hellberg had never seemed particularly comfortable online; his speciality was making jokes for the press. Still, he had obviously cracked the utterly complex code that she herself had cracked – with the help of the master hackers. He had realised what he had stumbled across: a way to trap the man who had never let himself be caught. A back route into the untouchable Nedic’s organisation. Why hadn’t he used that back route, then? Why had he made sure that not even the faintest trace of it was left in the investigation instead?
Because he had gone after Rajko Nedic in private?
Because Detective Superintendent Ragnar Hellberg had been blackmailing Rajko Nedic for money?
Taking a sober view of it, there were two alternatives: either Hellberg had simply felt a certain shame over not being able to crack the ‘brambo’ pseudonym and erased it from the reports, or else he had used his knowledge of Rajko Nedic for blackmail purposes.
Sara Svenhagen was about to find out which of the two was correct, because through the hordes of German tourists, Detective Superintendent Ragnar Hellberg, also known as Party-Ragge, was pushing his way towards her. He stroked his little black beard as though deep in thought, and sank into the chair opposite her. He gestured, and asked: ‘Why here?’
‘I want it this way,’ was all she replied.
Ragnar Hellberg nodded. As though he understood.
‘Let’s hear it, then,’ he said.
‘Rajko Nedic,’ she said.
He looked at her. His gaze was sharper than she had ever seen it. Otherwise, there was no reaction.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘The “brambo” pseudonym is the drug dealer and restaurant owner Rajko Nedic. And you deliberately left “brambo” out of the investigation.’
He smiled. Ragnar Hellberg actually smiled. He laid his hand on top of hers and looked into her eyes.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘For what?’ she asked, pulling her hand from beneath his.
‘For it not being you,’ he said.
She could feel herself staring at him in disgust.
‘What’s going on here?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I had to test you. First of all, I wanted to make sure that all new material was kept from the group; that was why you had to work in private, Sara. Then I realised that it could be the litmus test. In all probability, you’d come across those hidden websites, and maybe even decipher them. Though that was more of a side issue. Most important was whether you’d accuse me or not.’
She could feel that her gaze had become murderous. He continued.
‘A couple of weeks ago, I was looking – for an entirely different reason – through my old investigations linked to Operation Cathedral. I found considerably more files with my name on them than I’d written. Someone had been producing material in my name. I managed to separate the unfamiliar files from my own and go through them. I looked through all of the web pages where the pseudonyms appeared. And I found – just like you – the unmentioned “brambo”. But I had no chance of cracking his identity.’
‘And you want me to believe all of this?’ she exclaimed loudly. A large number of Germans looked sceptically at her.
Ragnar Hellberg continued unperturbed. ‘What I did manage was to narrow down the possible culprits. It was between two people. One of two of my subordinates had been submitting incomplete investigatory material in my name. Someone who wanted to frame me, I thought. I realise it was more of a side matter now. The main reason was blackmail. All the material on Rajko Nedic the paedophile is now with this subordinate, and if anyone decided to investigate it, they’d end up with . . . me. And you, Sara, you were one of the two possibilities.’
‘How long have you been preparing this?’ she asked. She didn’t know if she had actually asked him. She didn’t know what to believe. But she had realised where it was heading.
She felt herself growing pale.
‘I can’t prove anything,’ said Hellberg. ‘He’s made sure of that. It’s his word against mine, and I know that my word’s worth very little in the group. Figurehead, Party-Ragge. Who am I against Ludvig Johnsson? The man who lost his family in a car accident and then built up the entire unit. And who then had his leadership stolen by . . . me. The lightweight party policeman.’
‘So it was between me and Ludvig?’ Sara asked. She felt that she should have said something else. Here sat the man she saw on TV more often than in the police station, accusing her mentor, the only policeman she really admired. Ludvig Johnsson. Along with Gunnar Nyberg, he was the only man she really dared to call a colleague.
‘Yes,’ said Hellberg. ‘It was you or Ludvig. Look at it like this: would I really have managed to identify this well-disguised “brambo”? Would I really have been able to blackmail someone as notoriously dangerous as Rajko Nedic? Would I have dared go anywhere near his mob of torturers and war criminals? Party-Ragge? Think about it.’
Sara Svenhagen closed her eyes.
She was convinced.
And overwhelmed with sorrow.
Ludvig Johnsson. Her surrogate father.
She gave her coffee cup a shove, causing it to splash onto the Germans.
Ragnar Hellberg sat still, flecks of coffee on his suit.
She gave him a resounding slap.
39
‘KERSTIN’S DOING WELL.’
There was a moment of silence in the Supreme Command Centre. Then the rejoicing began. Briefly, intensely, a lid which lifted for a short moment. Then it closed again.
Paul Hjelm continued. ‘They just let me leave the hospital. I crept up to see her on my way out. The bullet caught her just above the ear, taking a bit of bone from behind her temple with it. It hit a blood vessel, so it looked a lot worse than it was. She’s got concussion, but sends her regards.’
‘How are you, though?’ Hultin asked from the desk at the front.
They exchanged a glance. The first since they were in Skövde. A glance between two men who had killed. Both realised at that moment what a strange threshold they had crossed. Neither of them had given much thought to it during the last twenty-four hours. Now it hit them with full force.
Both of us have killed another human being.
There was nothing to say.
‘Fine, thanks,’ said Hjelm. ‘The bullet went through my arm and hit the vest. One slightly fractured rib, but my arm’s fine. Just flesh wounds, but it hurts like hell.’
Hultin nodded and asked straight out: ‘Have all of you spoken to Internal?’
They nodded. All had spoken to Internal Affairs. Hjelm had already been confronted by an old tormentor named Niklas Grundström while he was in hospital in Skövde. It had been surprisingly painless.
No one had mentioned Hultin’s gun handling. It was as though it had never happened. He himself seemed to be remarkably unaffected.
‘Well, listen,’ he said, stretching. ‘There are both pluses and minuses in all of this. The biggest plus is that we saved Eurydice. The biggest minus that she escaped. That Niklas Lindberg had just left his friends was hardly our fault. Maybe we could’ve been fifteen minutes earlier, but it was out of our hands. A quick-thinking member of the group’ – Hultin cast a grateful glance in Söderstedt’s direction – ‘made sure the ambulance was div
erted to minimise attention. Still, that wasn’t enough to get Lindberg to return. He must’ve smelt a rat and vanished into thin air.
‘The shooting of Roger Sjöqvist and of Dan Andersson must be seen as just. Obviously, it was a blunder that Sjöqvist had the chance to shoot Paul, and that Andersson managed to shoot Kerstin, but there was absolutely no misconduct. It all went so quickly. What we do have is Eurydice’s shoes, size 7 brown sandals, the briefcase and a safe-deposit-box key, and then Agne “Bullet” Kullberg. Besides that, we’ve got the right-wing extremist Risto Petrovic in safe keeping. Thorough interviews with both these two should give us some kind of idea about what Niklas Lindberg has got planned. Both are keeping surprisingly quiet at the minute. What we don’t have is Niklas Lindberg, the van and the loot from the robberies out west which, all told, should add up to about a million. If Lindberg is planning something, then he’s not likely to have shelved it. Unfortunately this wasn’t the end.’
‘The safe-deposit-box key is the Swedish standard,’ said Chavez. ‘It could be from any bank anywhere. If we’re going to reconstruct the entire thing, then we’ve got to assume that the mistrust we’ve already talked about, between Nedic and the “policeman”, was so great that Nedic didn’t even dare to hand over the money. Instead, he gave him a key and a top-of-the-range police radio. Presumably the “policeman” was going to be told which bank was holding the money as soon as something had happened. Exactly which that was is, for the moment, unknown. Anyway, it meant that the civil engineer, Bullet Kullberg, could make an electronic tracking device to find the briefcase stolen by Orpheus and Eurydice. They don’t have the key any more, so their role in the drama must be over. They’ll have to make do with still being alive and having one another. We can also add that, amazingly, we’ve managed to keep the entire thing out of the press.’ Chavez added with a sidelong glance: ‘Also largely thanks to Arto’s quick thinking, which was what led us there, after all.’
Söderstedt looked completely dumbfounded by this unexpected praise. He leafed through his papers, confused.