by Arne Dahl
“Everything came together perfectly, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Hultin, and exited the room through his mysterious door on the left.
10
He was lying in a sticky brown mire. He tried to get up but couldn’t, tried to crawl but couldn’t, tried to squirm forward, but couldn’t even do that. The more he moved and fought and struggled, the tighter the mud squeezed around his body, pulling him downward. He opened his mouth and was just about to scream when the brown murk started pouring into his throat. As his nose sank into the mud and his nostrils filled up and only when the horrible last minute of death by drowning remained, did he notice the stench for the first time.
“What shitty-” Nyberg began, and then sneezed.
Hjelm gave a start, an unreasonably strong reaction.
“Try and stay awake, will you?” said Hultin.
“I wasn’t asleep,” Hjelm said groggily.
Nyberg blew his nose and tried again. “What shitty weather,” he said from the hall window. The April storm rattled the pane alarmingly as it swept in from Lake Mälaren. “I’m grateful to have an indoor assignment.”
“It might be possible to accuse us of nepotism,” said Hjelm. “Shivering outside in the car are the Stockholm detective and the Sundsvall blackhead, and out in the bushes the Västerås Finn and the officer from Göteborg are shivering even more. While here we sit, inside this warm house with our southern suburban past, drinking coffee. There must be a connection.”
“Paranoia is the worst side effect of our profession,” said Hultin, downing a cup of Birgitta Franzén’s superb espresso in one gulp. “Damn, that’s strong!”
“It’s espresso,” said Nyberg. “You’re supposed to take little sips.”
“That’s why the cup is so small,” murmured Hjelm, trying to be helpful.
“I’ve got other things on my mind,” said Hultin, raising his walkie-talkie to his ear. They all had them, hanging from a strap across their chests. “Hello-is the first team in place?”
They heard static, then Chavez’s voice.
“We’re parked on Gubbkärrsvägen, right behind the church. Waiting. Is it nice and comfy inside?”
“The taxi was ordered for eighteen forty,” said Hultin curtly. “How’s it going with the bush people? I’m going to take the liberty of pointing out just once the importance of keeping the earpiece in your ear and keeping all sounds and movements to an absolute minimum.”
“Oi,” Söderstedt’s voice crackled. “And here I was hanging by my knees from the pear tree, making jungle noises.”
“That might be a lot smarter than what we’re doing,” said Holm, shivering. “I don’t think I can squat here in these spiny bushes for hours on end. The wind is really fierce right now.”
“If you don’t want to have a third of your force laid up with pneumonia, you might want to think of another plan,” said Söderstedt.
“You’re right-this is no good. The weather gods aren’t on our side. You’ll just have to slip inside once in a while and get warmed up. One at a time, and put on as many warm clothes as you can find here in the house.”
Rickard and Birgitta Franzén came down the stairs. He was wearing an ancient but still elegant pin-striped suit, complete with vest and pocket watch. As he straightened his tie, he leaned to one side to see past Nyberg’s substantial bulk and out the window.
“It’s dismal weather for an outdoors stakeout,” he said as the taxi pulled up. “You’ll have to relieve your colleagues now and then, the three of you. Three big strong fellows in here and a woman outside. Very nice. Now take good care of my wife. She’s the most precious thing I have.”
The old couple gave each other a quick kiss. Then Franzén put on his overcoat and went out into the wind. She stared after him for a long time.
“The cab arrived a little early,” Hultin was saying into his walkie-talkie. “It’s turning around now and heading off. A black Mercedes, license number CDP four four three.”
“Black Mercedes, CDP four four three,” Chavez repeated.
Hultin let go of the walkie-talkie so that it hung from the leather strap in the middle of his chest. He turned to Mrs. Franzén.
“All right, from now on it’s going to be risky for you to be seen downstairs. I hope you’ll be comfortable on the upper floors and won’t come down again unless absolutely necessary.”
Birgitta Franzén stared at Hultin for a moment, as if she were trying to place him in a different context but failed. Then she gave a slight nod and swiftly made her way upstairs.
When she was out of sight, Hultin said, “I’m afraid, gentlemen, that Franzén was right. You’re going to have to relieve the others when they come inside.”
Nyberg sneezed, sighed heavily, and tapped lightly on the storm-lashed windowpane. Then he headed out to the kitchen to keep an eye on the kitchen door and the windows facing the back garden. In spite of the bad weather, he would have a fine view of Lake Mälaren at dusk.
Hjelm went off to Franzén’s study, where he checked the windows, and moved on to the two smaller rooms in that wing of the ground floor. Everything was normal.
Hultin went into the living room and sat down on the leather sofa. He gave Söderstedt and Holm the good news about their anticipated replacements.
It’s the waiting, thought Hjelm as he leafed through one of the law books in Franzén’s study. Everything in the room looked to be still in use. Obviously the man had refused to stop working. Maybe there was nothing besides work for him-nothing but the yawning abyss. Maybe that was why Franzén had wanted at all costs to rejuvenate the Order of Mimir. Hjelm listlessly read an ordinance regarding tools that were permitted and not permitted for picking berries, until it got too dark to read.
He went out to the kitchen to find Nyberg and caught him with a glass of white wine in his hand. “There’s an open bottle in the fridge,” said Nyberg, holding out the glass. “The lady of the house said to help ourselves.”
“Compensation for missing the dress rehearsal?” said Hjelm, opening the fridge. He peered at the label. A Mosel. 1974. That didn’t mean anything to him.
“And now I’ve got to go out into the cold and feel my vocal cords clench up,” muttered Nyberg.
“Life is tough.”
“You can say that again.”
The whole conversation was part of the waiting. Completely meaningless phrases that they never would have said otherwise. They were talking while their thoughts were elsewhere. Everything could happen very fast. At any moment something life-threatening could go down. They had to stay loose but at the same time be alert. A strange, double-edged, and stressful state.
“You married?” asked Hjelm, eating a banana as he looked to see what else was in the refrigerator.
“Very divorced,” said Nyberg. “You?”
“The last time I saw my wife I was still married, at any rate.”
The sun appeared just as it was about to sink beyond the choppy waters of Lake Mälaren. The layers of clouds were moving at varying speeds, one above the other. The April storm was still at work.
Nyberg lit a cigarette and offered one to Hjelm. He took it, and they sat in the dark, smoking.
“I don’t actually smoke,” said Nyberg.
“Neither do I,” said Hjelm.
He put on some coffee, working in the beam of a little pocket flashlight. An ordinary drip coffeemaker stood next to the astoundingly huge espresso machine.
“Such a big machine to produce such a tiny cup,” he muttered to himself in the dark. Nyberg didn’t seem to react.
A crackling sound came from their walkie-talkies. Kerstin Holm whispered, “Solitary man passing. Thirty feet to the gate.”
Hjelm set down the pot filled with water and went out to the hall. He took a drag on his cigarette and felt a slight nicotine kick. Through the window he watched the individual pass the gate and continue up Grönviksvägen. After a moment Hjelm heard Söderstedt’s crackli
ng walkie-talkie voice issuing from his chest: “He’s gone past me now.”
Hjelm poured water into the coffeemaker, put in a filter, measured out some ground coffee, plopped one spoonful after another into the filter, and then pressed the red button. He did everything slowly and methodically, making no unnecessary movements. He smoked calmly and took a swing down the funnel-shaped corridor to the living room. Hultin was sitting in the murderer’s position on the leather sofa against the far wall. A muffled darkness had settled over the room.
“I’ve put on some coffee.”
“Regular brew?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Time rolled by in long, viscous waves. Their eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. Soon they were like nocturnal creatures, their eyes open wide to take in the night.
Hjelm made a round in the other direction. He was getting used to maneuvering by touch instead of sight. He got to know all the nooks and crannies in order to move quickly and easily. In the faint glow of the flashlight, with the beam on low so as not to disturb his night vision, he emptied a couple of wardrobes of heavy sweaters and coats and jackets, gloves and caps and blankets, piling everything onto the kitchen table.
After an hour and a half of wandering around and drinking coffee, with six or seven false alarms, Holm reported from outside: “Requesting a replacement. I’m coming in.”
“I’ll do it,” Hjelm told Nyberg, who nodded.
Hjelm was almost finished dressing when Holm knocked on the back door. She was shivering violently. Nyberg handed her a cup of coffee, and she accepted it greedily, using both hands to raise it to her lips. Once the warmth had spread through her body, she said, “I was seriously about to turn to ice.”
Hjelm draped a blanket around her shoulders, then pressed the earpiece into his ear and the plug into his walkie-talkie. He put on a wool cap and a pair of grotesque mauve gloves and stepped out into the stormy evening.
It was pitch black outside. Keeping low, he ran for Holm’s spiny thicket. He could see exactly where she’d been sitting, huddled next to a rose-hip bush with a perfect view, through a peephole, of the road. The outermost edges of the light cast by a streetlamp several yards away just grazed the section of road visible through the peephole.
There he sat for two hours. While all his senses went numb, ten cars and an equal number of bicyclists and pedestrians went by. He reported three solitary pedestrians, but all of them passed by the gate.
Kerstin Holm came out to meet him, looking significantly more alert. At the same moment he saw Söderstedt’s figure slink across the other side of the yard.
Hjelm and Nyberg arrived back in the kitchen at about the same time. Both were more or less out of commission for several minutes, and Hjelm cursed the idea, whoever had thought of it, that they change shifts simultaneously. The coffeemaker was on. They each managed to fill a cup and guzzle down the hot brew. Warmth returned to their fingers and toes, then spread through the rest of their bodies. Isn’t it usually just the opposite? thought Hjelm, fumbling to remove the hodgepodge of outerwear. He didn’t want to face the murderer looking as if he were part of Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole.
He went into the living room. Hultin was sitting in exactly the same place as before. They looked at each other in the dark without saying a word. If it’s going to happen, it will happen soon, said their expressions. Hjelm went out to the hall and stood next to the window. He stared out at the dark. The wind was no longer blowing so hard, something he hadn’t noticed outside.
He’s walking along the deserted street. The houses are set far apart. His hands are in his pockets. He touches the cassette tape, and the two loose keys in his left pocket clink against each other. In his right pocket is the gun with the silencer attached. He is utterly calm.
“I’ve got something here,” whispers Kerstin Holm into her walkie-talkie. “A lone pedestrian. Male. Passing me in a minute.”
He knows exactly where he is. His steps are firm. Here is where the fence begins. He crosses the road. The wind howls in his face. He adjusts the bag hanging from his shoulder and places his hand on the gate.
Holm again: “It’s him. He’s opening the gate. Now.”
“He’s coming now,” Söderstedt whispers almost at the same time.
He opens the gate slowly, without making a sound. Closes it. Moves away from the garden path and walks carefully in the grass along the edge, heading toward the house. He takes out the keys and goes up the steps.
“He’s got the keys out,” whispers Söderstedt. “He’s putting in the first one. Now.”
He puts the first key in the lock and turns it soundlessly. Then the second, also soundlessly. He presses down the door handle with one hand, holding the gun in the other.
The door slides open.
They take him.
Hjelm seizes the man’s hands and twists them behind his back. Nyberg tosses him onto the floor and presses his face into the carpet. Hjelm holds his arms behind his back. Hultin switches on the light, a lightning bolt frozen in place, and aims his service weapon at him. Hjelm has already snapped on the handcuffs. It’s over.
“What the hell?” says the man in surprise. Then he screams.
Holm and Söderstedt rush in with their guns drawn. Birgitta Franzén appears on the stairs. She stares at them with a wild expression.
“Rickard,” she whispers.
“Rickard?” all five officers say in unison.
“Mama,” the man manages to say before he faints.
He goes in through the door and closes it behind him. It’s completely dark, completely quiet inside the villa. He takes off his shoes, places them in his bag, and heads straight for the living room. He sits down on the leather sofa against the far wall, facing the door, places his gun on the table, and waits.
He sits there motionless.
He’s waiting for the music.
11
The scent, just the scent of ordinary female skin. Tiny, tiny hairs tickling his nose. Nothing else.
He needs absolutely nothing else.
She grumbles when he touches her. He’s still cold.
“There’s a stranger in my bed,” she manages to say, seventy-five percent asleep.
“No, no,” he says, pressing closer. “There’s a stranger in my bed.”
It’s like a formula. They’ve said the same thing hundreds of times.
It is a formula.
“Open, sesame.”
Sesame hesitates. Does she feel like it? Only a couple more hours of sleep left. To do it while half-asleep. As if dreams themselves were forcing their way in, she once said. That was a long time ago.
He instantly gets an erection. Click. And he thought he was too tired. It just said click, he thinks drowsily. The rest of him is asleep. The blood has collected in one place. That part isn’t asleep.
He warms up his hand as best he can by sticking it under his armpit and then tentatively touches her bare hip. She doesn’t push it away. She doesn’t react at all. She’s asleep. He makes one last attempt, slipping his hand under her T-shirt. He cups his hand around one breast. Slowly he starts to circle the nipple. She’ll think either that the tickling is annoying and push him away, or that it feels lovely and let him continue. Or else she’ll just keep on sleeping. Anything is still possible.
The nipple stiffens. She stirs. She lets him continue.
He loosens his underwear and runs his penis lightly along her backbone and down over her buttocks. At the same time he circles his finger over her nipple, squeezing it gently. His penis softly moves down her hip, past the waistband of her panties, and down to her thigh. There it turns and moves upward, then farther down, rubbing softly along her panties, slowly across her anus, and up to her backbone again. Circles.
She turns onto her back and arches up onto the soles of her feet. He tugs off her panties and can smell the scents. He tugs off his underwear, and she grabs hold of him with both hands, guiding him inside.
H
is tongue on her lips. She sticks out her tongue. They touch each other. He sinks slowly inside her, opened wide, and is enveloped in moistness. They lie there for a minute without moving. Fulfilled. Their skin touching everywhere.
Then he pulls out, almost out, and plunges back in, all the way.
It’s not over yet, Hjelm.
He had put down his helmet and was Paul. Simply Paul.
Breakfast. Paul and Cilla and Tova were sitting at the table. He blearily scanned the morning paper. Tova gulped down the last of her orange juice and jumped up to look in the mirror.
“Ohhhh,” she groaned.
She pulled the rubber bands off her pigtails and ruffled her hair, frantically dragging a comb through her tresses.
“That looks great,” Hjelm said. “Come here.”
She dashed over to the table, gave him a quick hug, and ran back to the mirror. She grabbed her shoulder bag just as the doorbell rang. She opened the door, and Milla came in.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” said Hjelm.
“Come on, let’s go!” yelled Tova. “We’re already late!”
The door banged shut.
Danne came downstairs and gave them a sullen look.
“You’re home?” he said to his father, then left. The door rattled for a while after he slammed it behind him.
Cilla sighed deeply and said, with half a piece of liverwurst sandwich in her mouth, “So the whole thing went to hell?”
“Yes.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Oath of confidentiality,” he said, giving her a droll look.
“Oh, right,” she said, her expression exactly the same as his. That happened frequently. He recognized his own facial expressions in hers and could never figure out which of them had influenced the other.
“We were at the wrong place. It was as simple as that.”
“Do you think something happened somewhere else?”
“I’m absolutely convinced it did. You’ll probably be able to read about it in the noon edition of the evening paper. At any second, that phone is going to ring,” he said, pointing at his cell on the table. He finished his coffee, went out to the coat rack in the hall, and took down his denim jacket with the sheepskin collar. He was holding it as he went back to the table and gave her a little kiss. “Are you working tonight or are you off?” he asked.