To the Top of the Mountain

by Arne Dahl

  ‘I’d been planning to tell a story,’ he mumbled. ‘About the metamorphosis of metamorphoses.’

  They looked at him. This unlikely policeman went from clarity to clarity. They waited tensely for the next step.

  ‘It’s Monday today,’ said Arto Söderstedt with great precision. ‘Monday morning, the twelfth of July. Two hours after our Skövde incident, at one on Saturday, a short message appeared on Gula Tidningen’s THIS WEEK’S “I LOVE YOU” page. Since then, no other messages have appeared. We’ve got to assume that our young couple have now been reunited. The message went like this: “Philemon. Starting point. Baucis.”’

  They stared at him.

  ‘Now, if the police had been mythologically ignorant,’ he continued, ‘then this cryptic little message would have passed us by. That’s not the case, though. Philemon and Baucis are another classical pair of sweethearts from antiquity, though in some ways the opposite of Orpheus and Eurydice. Instead of being stormy and dramatic, their relationship was settled and peaceful. If we weave the two stories together, it’s roughly as follows. The god of marriage, Hymenaeus, is called to Thrace, where Orpheus is going to marry his Eurydice. But Hymenaeus comes in vain, because Eurydice is dead: “ran joyful, sporting o’er the flow’ry plain, a venom’d viper bit her as she pass’d; instant she fell, and sudden breath’d her last”. Orpheus, the divine singer, makes his way to the kingdom of the dead and appeals to Hades: “all our possessions are but loans from you, and soon, or late, you must be paid your due”. Even Sisyphus stops his eternal rolling of the stone up the mountain. The entire kingdom of the dead allows itself to be seduced, and Eurydice is carried up from the shadows. As long as Orpheus doesn’t turn round and look at his bride before they’ve left the underworld, then he’ll have brought her back to the world of the living. But he couldn’t resist; in his care for her, he glances back over his shoulder anyway. Obviously it’s impossible for us to know what kind of hell our young pair has been through, but just as Eurydice is on her way back into the kingdom of the dead, just as Orpheus is on his way to return to be torn apart, alone, by the Thracean women, just then – they transform the transformation. The metamorphosis undergoes a metamorphosis. Instead of being Orpheus and Eurydice in Thrace, they become the industrious pair of Philemon and Baucis in Phrygia. A couple of gods in human form go there, to test the population. Everywhere they ask, they’re refused a room. Everywhere apart from with Philemon and Baucis. The penniless pair offer the gods everything they have, and they’re given their reward. The gods reveal themselves:

  ‘The neighbourhood, said he,

  Shall justly perish for impiety:

  You stand alone exempted; but obey

  With speed, and follow where we lead the way:

  Leave these accurs’d; and to the mountain’s height

  Ascend; nor once look backward in your flight.

  Philemon and Baucis’ old hut is transformed into a golden temple, and the couple become its keepers. Asked by the gods, they have just one single wish: to be able to die together. And eventually, both are transformed, simultaneously, into trees. “At once th’ incroaching rinds their closing lips invade,” or “ora frutex” in Latin.’

  Söderstedt broke off, looking out over the dumbfounded congregation.

  ‘I hope you appreciate the subtle transition. Just as Eurydice is on her way back down into the kingdom of the dead, she’s saved and becomes the poor but industrious Baucis instead, the woman who, together with her husband, follows the gods up to the top of the mountain, and eventually dies at the same moment as him. ‘Cura deum di sint, et qui coluere colantur.’ Maybe you could call it maturity.’

  ‘Dare I ask what it is you’re citing from?’ asked Paul Hjelm.

  ‘Of course,’ said Arto Söderstedt. ‘It’s Ovid’s Metamorphoses.’

  40

  GUNNAR NYBERG HAD successfully managed to give himself tennis elbow when he broke his way in through the hotel window in Skövde, and pointed his gun at the robbers. He had probably been grasping it too tightly – several strange dents in the butt of the gun suggested as much.

  Or maybe he had just developed mouse elbow.

  Mouse elbow, or repetitive strain injury, affected computer nerds. A new national disease was on the approach. No more occupational lung disease, no more crippled backs, but RSI? Of course. Societal progress can be read on different scales.

  He looked around his office. It felt so empty. No Kerstin Holm to sing duets with. Nothing at all. How long had it actually been since he had visited his grandson Benny in Östhammar? He was afraid the boy would forget his grandad.

  On the other hand, his son, Tommy, hadn’t forgotten him in twenty long years. They had become reacquainted in a surprisingly unforced way. Life returned. The blood, the viscous liquid, started flowing its marathon distances around Sweden’s Biggest Policeman once more.

  Now it was thickening again. He remembered how he had felt, sinking to his knees in the mud next to Kerstin Holm’s bleeding head. How fleeting life was. It felt as though life itself had broken free from him and sailed away through the rain-filled sky. It was a moment he would never forget.

  He was close to Kerstin Holm. They shared a love of choir singing which sometimes grew to abnormal proportions. People who sing together, who stretch the voice to its limits and create the greatest harmonies possible – could you come any closer to God?

  During his twenty-year vacuum, there had been only one other woman who had been as close to him, and who, as he sat there stretching his enormous mouse elbows, came into his office. He thought for a moment about mystical correspondences.

  Sara Svenhagen wasn’t herself. She looked haggard, worn out, as though she hadn’t slept for days. Her white T-shirt had several large coffee stains on it, and her shorts were absurdly crinkled.

  ‘Gunnar,’ she said, stroking her newly cropped golden hair, ‘I need your help.’

  He stood up, walked over to her and put a protective, fatherly arm around her shoulders. It felt both right and wrong. On a purely professional level, she was his parent; it was her who had carefully guided him into the hell of child pornography. Her and Ludvig Johnsson.

  He led her over to Kerstin Holm’s chair and helped her down into it. He sat on the edge of the desk. He didn’t care that it buckled alarmingly.

  ‘What about Jorge?’ he asked. ‘What can I do that he can’t?’

  She looked at him with what was, at least, mock surprise.

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘I guessed,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, feeling like a crook. ‘Was I wrong?’

  ‘No,’ said Sara. ‘No, not at all. I love him. He loves me. We’ve come to life, both of us. But we’ve also built walls around our cases, without really knowing why. Presumably it’s some kind of absurd protective instinct. Spare him. Spare her. No, Gunnar, the only real connection between these two cases is you. And also, it affects you personally.’

  A sense of foreboding ran through Nyberg.

  ‘Personally?’ he asked. ‘Privately?’

  ‘You could say so,’ said Sara, looking into his eyes.

  ‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘Shoot.’

  ‘I could spare you all this crap,’ she said. ‘I could just leave and let you avoid the whole problem.’

  ‘Shoot,’ he repeated.

  Sara Svenhagen looked up at the ceiling. She didn’t quite know where to begin. She decided to make a long story short.

  ‘The pseudonym of a paedophile, “brambo”, has been deliberately left out of our reports. It happened almost six months ago. When I looked into it, I discovered that all these incomplete reports had been filed by the same policeman.’

  Nyberg felt the same sense of foreboding as before. It ran through his veins instead of his blood, which had now coagulated completely.

  ‘It was Ragnar Hellberg,’ she said.

  ‘What?!’ he exclaimed. ‘Party-Ragge?’

  ‘I should’ve realised that it was absurd . . . Anyway, I kept
on trying to identify this “brambo”. It paid off eventually. It’s a drug dealer called Rajko Nedic.’

  Gunnar Nyberg was motionless. Threads were worming around inside him, searching for one another. They were very close to forming a weave.

  ‘I understand,’ he eventually lied.

  ‘OK. Ragnar put me to work at home. It felt like he was trying to hide something. And suddenly, it seemed clear. He was letting me work unofficially so he could keep anything I might find away from the public eye. And that thing, it was that he was pressing Nedic for money. It couldn’t have been anything else.’

  ‘The little beard,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, thinking of the Kvarnen bar on Tjärhovsgatan, at 21.42 on 23 June.

  She looked at him sceptically, continuing. ‘That was it. I had to confront him. We met on Saturday. Unofficially. And he came out with a story that I’ve been fighting with for almost two days now. I haven’t had a wink of sleep. He was insisting that he’d found out his name had been used on reports he hadn’t written. That someone else had used Ragnar Hellberg’s name – to frame him. This other person was one of two people. I’ve gone through it myself now. He’s right so far. There are only two people in the group who could’ve done it. One of them was me. That’s partly why he set me to work at home – to check whether it was me or not. If it had been me, I would hardly have contacted him about “brambo’s” existence. So it was the other candidate, instead.’

  Gunnar Nyberg could already feel himself weeping inside.

  ‘Ludvig,’ was all he said.

  ‘It’s been a long weekend,’ said Sara Svenhagen. ‘Should I trust the idiotic party policeman or my own mentor, the colleague who was closest to me in the entire world? I’ve been turning myself inside out.’

  ‘And come to what . . .?’

  ‘That I trust Party-Ragge. For the simple reason that he wouldn’t have ever come up with the idea, much less pull it off. There’s no doubt any more. Ludvig Johnsson has been blackmailing Rajko Nedic for money, and cast the shadow of blame onto the man who stole the paedophile group from him almost in passing. Its figurehead.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Ludvig?’

  ‘He’s on holiday. When he’s on holiday, he makes himself uncontactable. No one knows where he is.’

  ‘What do you want to do? What does Hellberg want to do?’

  ‘Say what you want about Hellberg, but he’s no bureaucrat. He’s ready to wait and see what happens. He knows I’m talking to you. So, what do you want to do?’

  Gunnar Nyberg looked into her eyes.

  ‘Leave Ludvig to me,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘I suspected you’d say that. I’ll see whether I can confront Nedic somehow.’

  ‘Be careful, in that case. He’s extremely dangerous.’

  ‘I know. I’ll try to find a way.’

  ‘What’ve you got from the Web?’

  ‘“Brambo’s” pictures. I’ve got them here. Do you want to see?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, holding out his mouse-arm to take the pictures. Colour printouts from the Internet. A whole cavalcade of degradation. He had got it into his head that it belonged to the past. He took his time; his thoughts were out of gear. Behind each picture, he saw Ludvig Johnsson’s face.

  ‘He can’t have been planning to let Nedic go,’ he said. ‘He must’ve been planning some kind of double-dealing. Get the money from Nedic, leave the country and put him away. I can’t imagine anything else.’

  Sara nodded. ‘I know how passionate he was about this. His own kids died, now he could save others. It was personal. Too personal, maybe. His passion burnt him out. But there’s no way in hell he’d let a paedophile go for money.’

  Nyberg nodded and handed back the pictures. ‘There’s a little girl there . . .’ he said, pointing at them.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, casting a glance at the pile of pictures. ‘The poor thing appears more often than others. I’m going to try to track her down. And that gold cushioned room.’

  ‘Do it,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘We thought Nedic’s operation was watertight, but we’ve found several leaks. There’s a chance. If anyone in the organisation knows he’s a paedophile, then it’s not impossible that he or she doesn’t like it. Try to find someone you can put pressure on.’

  Sara Svenhagen stood up. They were still holding hands.

  ‘And you’ll take care of Ludvig?’ she asked. ‘Do it right, Gunnar. Promise me that.’

  He nodded, clasping her hand. ‘I promise, Sara,’ he said.

  The journey to Grillby was no normal journey. It was an agonising journey. But also one of metamorphosis. Gunnar Nyberg was, to put it simply, doing a runner. Cutting the ties. Leaving the A-Unit. Maybe he would be dismissed, maybe even prosecuted, but he wasn’t thinking about that. He was thinking: Now Ludvig can bloody well tidy up after himself.

  Beside him on the passenger seat of the Renault were two laptops with mobile phone connections, two mobile phones and an adapter for the car’s cigarette lighter. There was work to be done.

  He stopped to buy food, beer and coffee at a petrol station. No Danish pastries, though.

  He even checked to see whether he was being followed. He didn’t quite trust Ragnar Hellberg.

  The oilseed-rape fields were golden yellow, and when Gunnar Nyberg pulled up alongside the little cottage just outside Grillby, Ludvig Johnsson’s car was there – but not the man himself. He was probably out running. Nyberg tried the door. It was open. He stepped into the little cottage clutching the bag of food in his right hand, opened the gas-powered fridge and shoved the whole lot in. Then he opened a beer and sat down on the veranda. The sun shone kindly down on him.

  Sure enough, Ludvig Johnsson came jogging back after an hour. He smiled faintly when he saw Nyberg on the veranda. Nyberg saw his smile. He saw what it held. The realisation.

  It had all gone to hell.

  ‘There’s a barrel of rainwater round the back of the cottage,’ he said. ‘You pour the water over yourself.’

  ‘That can wait,’ said Nyberg.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ludvig Johnsson, sitting down on the steps. ‘It can wait. You got a beer for me?’

  ‘I’m not planning on letting you go into the cottage alone,’ said Nyberg. ‘I’m not planning on leaving you alone, either. Not for a second.’

  Ludvig Johnsson looked up at the sky. His gaze seemed to disappear into the blueness.

  ‘Who else knows?’ he asked.

  ‘It was Sara who found you. The “policeman”. Through “brambo”, if that means anything to you.’

  ‘Sara,’ said Johnsson, smiling. ‘I should’ve guessed. And Hellberg?’

  ‘Hellberg knows, too. But he’s sitting on it for now. Waiting for me. So don’t even think about killing me.’

  ‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Ludvig Johnsson. ‘What is it you think of me?!’

  ‘What I think is that your little operation has cost eight people their lives so far. Three ex-Yugoslav war criminals, a man called Lordan Vukotic, as well as Eskil Carlstedt, Sven Joakim Bergwall, Roger Sjöqvist and Dan Andersson. I could’ve lived with all of that. But the other day, two of my colleagues and closest friends were shot: Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm. You met them recently. Kerstin was talking about the marathon with you at that party for the World Police and Fire Games, if you remember.’

  Ludvig Johnsson met his eye. His gaze was completely broken. There was nothing left behind there.

  ‘How are they?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re alive. But only by a couple of centimetres.’

  ‘All I wanted was to go to a place where the winters are shorter . . .’

  They sat a while in the shade. The sun’s rays bore down stronger on the nearby field. It glowed yellow. The colour of betrayal.

  ‘I wasn’t planning on letting him go,’ said Ludvig Johnsson. ‘I wanted to get away. Then I was going to make sure that the material was sent to the police. I just wanted a little bonus.’

  ‘An exp
ensive bonus.’

  ‘You know I put the entire paedophile unit together myself. It was me who made sure people started taking child pornography seriously in this tolerant country. Freedom of speech till the end. My own sons died. I saw all of these children suffering, I saw how the Internet meant an explosion of all kinds of sexual assault on children. Each child I saved became my own, somehow. I trained Sara up, we were one hell of a team. Then Party-Ragge appeared and took all the credit. I didn’t really care, that’s how the world works, but I also didn’t have anything against using him as my scapegoat.’

  ‘So you stuck a little beard on yourself when you met Nedic’s gang in Kvarnen.’

  Johnsson chuckled. ‘Yeah. That was a bit stupid, but I needed a way out. He got to be the scapegoat. Those guys were tough negotiators; we sat in Kvarnen for a long time, going back and forth, just about the meeting place, and the thing being handed over wasn’t even money or the material from the investigation. It was just two safe-deposit-box keys and a communication device. Eventually, we were going to let one another know which bank it was in. A pretty complicated way of doing things, but I let him pull the strings. All I did was get hold of the most modern police radio. Yeah, we were sitting arguing in Kvarnen, we’d just managed to agree on Sickla as the meeting place, at two the following morning, when that idiot smashed the beer glass over someone’s head. I sent the Yugoslavs away pretty quickly and thanked God for that stupid little beard; I waited until they were out of sight and then the doormen turned up. I flashed them my ID to get out.’

  ‘You’d been bugged. Didn’t you check the place out? A whole group of Nazis were listening to you from the corner.’

  Ludvig Johnsson nodded. ‘Was that how it happened? Yeah, it was lazy not to look around properly, but I was damn scared. That simple. Those guys weren’t to be messed with. Three real monsters from Bosnia. They could’ve just decided to torture me to get me to reveal my insurance.’

  ‘Insurance?’

  ‘The standard. A copy of the entire investigation with an old childhood friend. In the event of my death, it would’ve been sent to the police and Rajko Nedic would be outed as a paedophile.’