Misterioso

by Arne Dahl

  “On that particular day, that trio of murdered men tried to rape your sister when she was acting as a caddy for them.”

  Bergström’s hands stopped grabbing. “If I’d known,” he enunciated very clearly, “I would have killed them. But they wouldn’t have been allowed to live this long, I can promise you that.”

  “But you didn’t know?”

  “No,” he said and sat down. Then he got up again, standing in the midst of the evening light flooding in from Gamla Brogatan. “Now I understand,” he said, lighting up for one last time. “Now I understand.”

  “What do you understand?”

  “It’s Lotta! Lotta herself has taken her revenge! For a couple of days she stretched out her hand from the realm of the dead. Then she went back to that better world.”

  Extremely agitated, Bergström went over to the bookcase and pulled out a worn, old book, holding it up and shaking it.

  “Do you know about the Erinyes?” he asked without waiting for an answer. “They’re the most gruesome creatures in Greek mythology but also the most awe-inspiring. The ultimate hand of justice. They hunt their prey day and night until the grave opens up. Let me read you a short passage: ‘The Erinyes are nothing more than the murdered victim’s spirit, which, if no other avenger exists, take vengeance into their own hands, mercilessly and relentlessly, as the spirits of the dead are contained in their wrath.’ ”

  He gave Hjelm an urgent stare. Hjelm didn’t say a word.

  “Don’t you understand?” shouted Bergström. “There are no avengers, so she had to do it herself. She waited for an avenger, but none came. Everything fits! Those three men who hurt her were the ones she killed in quick succession all these years later. It’s amazing! Your killer is a murder victim’s spirit! An avenging goddess!”

  Hjelm sat there for a moment, fascinated by Bergström’s onslaught. Without a doubt, the parallels were striking. The avenger who left no traces. The divine, posthumous avenger from the realm of the dead.

  But the thought of a highly tangible bullet from Kazakhstan in a wall in Djursholm brought him back to the world of crass reality: “The Erinyes may have had a physical intermediary who pulled the trigger. Do you know if she might have talked about the incident at the golf course to anyone else?”

  “There wasn’t anyone else! Don’t you understand? It was just the two of us, just Lotta and Gusten. Gusten and Lotta.”

  “Papa? Mama? Anyone at the hospital?

  “My father? Oh sure, that’s really likely!” laughed Gusten. He had now crossed a line. “Mother? That woman who could see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil? All three monkeys in one. Absolutely! Someone at Beckis? Where everybody sits in a separate corner, rubbing their private parts all day long? Highly likely! There you have your cold-blooded murderer! The Beckomberga man! The expert killer from the loony bin!”

  Hjelm could tell it was time to leave.

  Under other circumstances Hjelm would have gone over to the computer, turned up the light, and laughed crudely at the computerized figures, who by now were undoubtedly in the midst of fucking. But he didn’t.

  In some ambiguous way, that was a victory.

  Hjelm spent the next few days pursuing the golf lead. He drove out to Beckomberga Hospital and talked to the staff, to find out who Lotta’s friends were. She’d never had any. The only staff member who was still there from the early nineties, a stony-faced male nurse, remembered Lotta as an extreme loner. Morbidly withdrawn, a total introvert. The only person that Lotta Bergström could have conceivably told about the incident was her brother, and apparently she hadn’t done that. Or else Gusten Bergström was the best actor that Hjelm had ever seen.

  He also directed his inquiries at Lena Hansson’s family and circle of friends. With equally disappointing results. She had truly allowed Daggfeldt and his pals to buy her silence. The only possibility that seemed to be left after a number of days of fruitless searching was that Lena Hansson had hired a professional killer. He let that lead drop.

  At the same time he received a summons to appear in court for the trial of Dritëro Frakulla. It was not something he was looking forward to. A couple of weeks after Frakulla seized the hostages at the immigration office in Hallunda, the refugee policies had suddenly changed, and several hundred Kosovar Albanians who had been threatened with deportation were allowed to stay in Sweden, including Frakulla’s family. But after his desperate attempt to save them, he would be forced to leave the country as soon as he had served his prison sentence. The irony of fate seemed to Hjelm an understatement.

  He sat in the chair in the courtroom of City Hall, giving his testimony. He tried to be as clear and objective as he could, almost managing to ignore the press, who harassed him before, during, and after the trial. But he couldn’t escape Dritëro Frakulla’s surly gaze directed at him from the defendant’s bench. Frakulla still had his arm in a sling, and he never took his eyes off Hjelm. It was not an accusatory look but rather an open, candidly shattered gaze. Even so, Hjelm couldn’t rid himself of the impression that he was being accused; perhaps that emotion was to be found only within himself. He thought that Frakulla was not accusing him of having shot him but of not having killed him. If he had been killed, his family would have been able to stay; now they would loyally follow him back to the Serbs in a few years’ time. Frakulla’s lawyer was a jaded old man who asked all the right questions. Why hadn’t Hjelm waited for the special unit? Why hadn’t the Department of Internal Affairs investigated the case? Apparently Bruun and Hultin and Mörner had managed to erase all trace of the interrogation conducted by Grundström and Mårtensson. And yet the attorney’s attacks were nothing compared to Frakulla’s unyielding eyes.

  When Hjelm stepped down from the witness stand and walked through the courtroom between the rows of spectators, he met the gaze of a little boy. His expression was identical to his father’s.

  It took a while before Paul Hjelm could think again about the investigation.

  A couple of days later Viggo Norlander suddenly appeared at Supreme Central Command during a morning meeting. He was actually still on sick leave, but he came in, hobbling on crutches and looking quite subdued. Something had been extinguished in his already extinguished expression. Gauze bandages were wrapped around his hands. They all greeted him warmly, and Kerstin Holm jumped up to get the bouquet of flowers that they had bought. They’d taken up a collection and were planning to deliver it to him that evening. Norlander looked genuinely touched and sat down in his usual seat at the table.

  It had been left vacant. No one had replaced him.

  While he was convalescing in the hospital in Tallinn and then in Huddinge, he had been convinced that Hultin had kicked him off the investigation and that Internal Affairs might even be after him. When he sank down onto the chair, he understood that he was… forgiven. He couldn’t come up with any other word. He wept openly.

  Norlander looked like a broken man. They wondered if he should have come back to work, but when he looked up at them with his red-rimmed eyes, they saw happiness beneath the tears, sheer happiness.

  The more they got to know each other, the harder it became to understand each other. As always.

  As they were leaving Supreme Central Command, Hjelm saw out of the corner of his eye Söderstedt go over to Norlander, put his arm around his shoulders, and say something. Norlander laughed out loud.

  Not much had been said during the meeting, no new progress had been made. They were now working from the theory that the killing spree was over, and that the deficit for the Swedish business world was going to stop at three and only three entries: Kuno Daggfeldt, Bernhard Strand-Julén, and Nils-Emil Carlberger.

  They were wrong.

  19

  The acrid smoke has settled; the pungent smell has disappeared. The man has finally been put to rest. It took a bit longer this time.

  It has been a long day.

  Now it’s night.

  It’s night in the living room.

>   As the first notes from the piano slide out into the room, he is leaning back against the sofa, looking at the man. The piano notes walk up and down, back and forth; the saxophone comes in and walks at the piano’s side. The same steps, the same little promenade.

  When the sax takes off and the piano starts scattering the seemingly indolent chords in the background, it’s as if the man rises up off the floor. A couple of little drum fills. And when the sax continues to chirp with a few dissonant notes, it’s as if he’s bending over a void. The saxophone jabs, chops, works its way up in higher and higher spirals. The blood is running out of the man’s head. It’s as if he’s slamming his fist right into the abdomen of the void in front of him. When the piano falls silent, the other, harder blow slams against the void’s stomach.

  It’s a pantomime, a peculiar dance of death.

  Yeah. Whoo-ee. The first kick. At the knee.

  The saxophone climbs even farther, faster and faster. Ai. The second kick. To the groin.

  It’s so choreographed. Each blow, each kick at the void’s invisible body, has been predetermined, occurs in exactly the right place.

  He has envisioned it so many times before.

  And right there, when the applause comes in, that’s when the big punch is delivered. The audience is murmuring; the piano takes over. The blow falls at that very instant. The void’s teeth are rolling under the tongue, and that’s when it happens. At that precise moment.

  The piano begins by taking a tentative step. Then it cuts loose. Ever freer wanderings, ever more beautiful. He is certain of the beauty now. It’s as if the man aims a kick at the prostrate void. It’s as if he kicks once, twice, three times, then four. The piano sings, lingering.

  The void no longer exists.

  The bass disappears. The piano is strolling again. Just like in the beginning.

  It’s as if the man is aiming a fifth kick-when the front door opens out in the hallway.

  “Papa?” shouts a girl’s voice.

  The man collapses flat. Returns to a prostrate position.

  He’s already out of the room, out of the house, out of the yard.

  He’s so far away that he doesn’t hear the heartrending scream.

  That’s why he ran.

  20

  Gunnar Nyberg was jolted out of the double bed, which was still there, a symbol of hope in his three-room Nacka apartment. Viggo Norlander was wrenched from the more basic cot in his three-room place on Banérgatan. Kerstin Holm was pulled from the mattress on the floor in the little apartment belonging to her ex-husband’s ex-wife in Brandbergen. Jorge Chavez was yanked up from the little drop-leaf table in the kitchen alcove of his rented room at the intersection of Bergsgatan and Scheelegatan, where he had fallen asleep, holding a full wineglass in his hand and resting his face on the remains of his meal. Arto Söderstedt got up from his chair in his apartment on Agnegatan and took off his reading glasses. And Paul Hjelm was hauled out of the unpleasantly empty double bed in his row house in Norsborg.

  Jan-Olov Hultin had already been rousted out of bed. He was waiting for them in a kitchen in Rösunda, Saltsjöbaden.

  Chavez was the last to arrive, looking unashamedly fresh, a night flower in the pitch-black May darkness.

  “What the hell? Did you take a shower?” asked Hjelm, holding a big coffee mug.

  “Don’t ask,” said Chavez curtly. “Okay, who is he?”

  “Have you had a look inside?”

  “It looks the same as usual. Have the techs started working?”

  “I called all of you here before I contacted the techs,” said Hultin. “Among other things because I want you to see everything untouched. There were two shots to the head, right?”

  A couple of the team members nodded. “The bullets are still in the wall,” said Söderstedt.

  Hultin nodded. “All right. We finally have something to go on. A different sort of society big shot. His name is Enar Brandberg. He became a member of parliament in the last election. Before that he was general director of a small government agency.”

  “The General Direction Fund,” said Söderstedt. “It’s not really a government agency, but almost. Then he became a member of parliament, representing the Folkeparti.”

  Hultin gave him a sidelong glance. “His daughter, Helena Brandberg, eighteen years old, arrived home a few minutes past one A.M., so about forty-five minutes ago. She heard jazz playing in the living room and thought it strange, since her father never listened to any kind of music. She went into the living room and saw the curtains fluttering in front of an open window. Outside a dark, unidentifiable shadow was running full tilt across the lawn and out to the street. In sheer bewilderment, she went over to the stereo and turned it off. Only then did she catch sight of her father lying on the floor. She screamed so loudly that the neighbors were over here in a matter of minutes. A family named Hörnlund. They have a daughter the same age as Helena Brandberg, and the two girls are best friends. Helena was clearly in a state of shock, and it was difficult to get any sort of eyewitness account from her. I mostly had to rely on the secondhand report from the Hörnlund family. Helena’s mother died of cancer this past year. The Hörnlund family accompanied the girl to the hospital. I’ve been out in the yard to take a look around; there seems to be a number of footprints in the grass.”

  “So that’s the end of leaving no evidence behind,” said Chavez.

  “The Erinyes assume bodily form,” said Hjelm.

  Everyone stared at him for a moment. Söderstedt raised his left eyebrow and was just about to say something but changed his mind.

  “Okay,” said Hultin, summing up. “This time we have both bullets still in the wall and a good number of footprints. But above all we have the cassette tape.”

  “Cassette tape?” said Holm.

  “The music. Jazz. In the tape player in the living room there’s a tape that in all likelihood belongs to the murderer. It’s not Brandberg’s at any rate. Neither he nor his daughter listened to jazz, and the tape was playing when Helena came home while the killer was still in the room. Apparently the music is part of our man’s set routine. After the murder he sits down on the sofa to listen to some jazz. Since Helena stopped the tape, we know which tune was playing. Since a couple of unit members here are interested in music, I thought we could try to figure out right now what he was listening to. That was one of the reasons that I waited to contact the crime techs. We probably have about twenty minutes before we’re locked out of the living room.”

  “I don’t know much about jazz,” said Gunnar Nyberg.

  They went into the room, stepping over the body on the floor. Wearing a latex glove, Hultin rewound the tape to the beginning of the tune.

  After the first three or four piano notes, before the melody had even begun to stroll over the keys, two people said in unison, “ ‘Misterioso.’ ” Kerstin Holm and Jorge Chavez looked at each other in surprise.

  Hultin stopped the tape. “One at a time.” How unlikely was it that two of the seven members of the A-Unit were jazz fanatics?

  “It’s a standard,” Chavez said, after Holm nodded to him. “The Thelonious Monk Quartet. Monk on piano, Johnny Griffin on tenor sax, Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass. And what’s the name of the guy on drums again?”

  “Roy Haynes,” said Kerstin.

  “Exactly,” said Jorge. “It’s the title track on the album Misterioso. If I remember right, it’s the sixth and last track on the original. Ten or eleven minutes long. Amazing sax playing by Griffin, and Monk is in top form. Of course Monk wrote the piece, as usual. What else can I tell you?”

  Kerstin Holm picked up where he left off. “All the tracks on the album were recorded on a magical summer evening in 1958 at the classic jazz club, the Five Spot Café, in New York. On the CD, a couple of other tracks were added from an earlier recording made during the same summer. One of them is also a standard, ‘ ’Round Midnight.’ We can tell whether it’s the CD or the original album that our man put on tape. If it
’s from the CD, ‘ ’Round Midnight’ will come right after ‘Misterioso.’ Otherwise, there won’t be any other tunes.”

  She fast-forwarded to the final piano and sax promenade in “Misterioso.” After the applause and the whistling, a new tune started up, significantly more chaotic, free, and ecstatic, as if born of that very moment of inspiration. Not like a tune at all, thought Hjelm, feeling ignorant. The sax and the piano inciting each other to something that was either a great achievement or sheer chaos. He couldn’t decide which.

  “No, no, no,” said Chavez. “That wasn’t ‘ ’Round Midnight.’ ”

  “I’ve never heard that piece before,” said Holm. “How odd.”

  “What does it mean?” said Hultin.

  “He could have taped something entirely different right afterward,” said Chavez dubiously.

  “Although that’s certainly Monk playing,” said Holm. “Those blue notes with even bluer notes on top. That’s him. His hands are lying practically flat on the keys.”

  “It sounds like a direct continuation,” said Hjelm, expecting to hear sighs and groans from the experts. “I didn’t hear a real space in between.”

  “Actually, there wasn’t,” Chavez surprisingly agreed. “Either our man is a damned good mixer-”

  “Or else,” Holm finished, “this is a one-of-a-kind recording.”

  “How the hell do the two of you know so much about all this?” asked Hjelm.

  “Haven’t you ever heard what jazz musicians say?” asked Kerstin Holm. “ ‘Those who talk don’t know, those who know don’t talk.’ ”

  “I know somebody, a fellow Chilean.” Chavez mentioned his country of origin for the first time. “He’s a real experto on unusual jazz recordings. He has a little record shop in Rinkeby. We can go over there in the morning.”

  Hultin had already worked out a plan, as usual. “Okay, since this is our best lead so far, I want all three of you on it. Holm, Chavez, and Hjelm. But after you’ve heard what your Chilean friend has to say, Jorge, I want you back on the board of directors angle. That still could provide the best leads. But this murder may put an end to the business angle,” he said to Söderstedt, who didn’t look the least disappointed. “We may send Pettersson and Florén back to the finance division. We’ll see. Arto, I want you to find out, of course, whether there are any business connections between these four men, but I think that this time we’re dealing with a different type of victim. We’re going to keep working in the same way. Nyberg will drag his notorious nets through the sea of snitches again and generally keep bottom-fishing. Norlander, if you’re ready to get back to work, I want you to stay on the mafia lead, as if nothing had happened.”