The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  Gunnar Barbarotti tossed the piece of paper onto the desk. ‘How should I know?’ he said irritably. ‘And what makes us so sure Kymlinge is the place in question?’

  ‘I never claimed we were sure,’ said Eva Backman, crossing her arms on her chest. ‘The statistical data for this comprises just the one victim so far, which isn’t a lot to go on, of course . . . though perhaps I don’t need to tell you that? How was the sister?’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Barbarotti. ‘She knows less about her brother than I do about the mating rituals of the pine weevil.’

  ‘The pine weevil?’

  ‘That was just an example.’

  ‘Wherever do you get this stuff from?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti shrugged. ‘It’s the creative process,’ he said. ‘Any old thing can crop up. So tell me, what does Asunander think about all these Annas? Are we going to keep the whole lot under surveillance?’

  ‘It’s not been decided yet,’ declared Bergman. ‘He’s in conference with Sylvenius and Gothenburg. I bet they’ll send a couple of men over anyway. As well as that profiler I mentioned.’

  Inspector Barbarotti checked the time. ‘I’ve got to talk to Grimle in five minutes. Can we spend a bit of time on this after that, go through it all in peace and quiet?’

  ‘We can always try,’ said Eva Backman. ‘As long as the parents don’t take too long. They’re already in my office, waiting.’

  She got up and seemed to hesitate for a second. Then she left the room.

  He talked to Andreas Grimle for half an hour. Once he had finished, he played back the tape straight away to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

  He didn’t seem to have done. He agreed with Backman that Grimle seemed a pretty likeable young man. And normal. Perhaps the company needed someone like that, too, thought Barbarotti. If Erik Bergman really was the kind of bastard his sister had claimed.

  Grimle gave a rather more positive picture of his dead partner. He did admit they had hardly ever socialized with one another in their spare time; Erik was a bachelor, after all, whereas Andreas Grimle had a wife, a dog and two children under five. ‘We are at different stages of our lives. Sorry, were.’

  The last time he saw Erik alive was the day before he died. They had both been busy at the office in Järnvägsgatan until five o’clock. That was pretty standard. Grimle hadn’t noticed anything particular about Erik Bergman, who had not said or done anything to indicate he suspected anybody was out to get him.

  Inspector Barbarotti wanted to know what would happen to the company now.

  Andreas Grimle said he didn’t know. A couple of tax lawyers from Öhrlings PwC had been brought in and were looking into the matter, it might be rather problematic, and there would probably be a court case, Grimle against Erik’s parents. But he hoped it would be possible to carry on the business. They’d been moderately successful these last three years.

  Shocked?

  Of course Grimle was shocked. If there was anything, anything at all, he could do to help the police catch this lunatic, he was prepared to do it.

  He had also wondered whether it was sheer chance that it happened to be Erik. The murderer was just standing there, ready to stick his knife into the first person who happened to come by?

  Inspector Barbarotti had nodded vaguely and said it was a possibility. The investigation was still in its preliminary stages, and it was too soon to form an opinion on the motive behind the crime.

  Did Grimle know whether Erik Bergman had any enemies?

  No.

  Any competitors? Could the murder be linked to their business dealings in any way?

  Not a chance, as far as Andreas Grimle was aware. Of course he had competitors, but there was fair play in their line of work. His partner had fallen foul of some drugged-up lunatic, that was the only conceivable explanation.

  Why, Barbarotti had wondered. If Grimle saw Bergman only through the prism of their IT company, how could he be aware of any demons that might lurk in his associate’s private life? Oughtn’t he to realize his perspective was somewhat limited?

  But there was already a twelve-page printout recording yesterday’s interview with Grimle, so Barbarotti decided that would do for now.

  ‘Do you recall Erik ever saying anything about anonymous letters?’ he asked when they had already shaken hands and Andreas Grimle was about to leave the room.

  ‘Anonymous letters?’ asked Grimle, the astonishment written all over his open, honest face. ‘No, why on earth should he have done? Why do you ask?’

  Inspector Barbarotti did not answer that. He merely urged Grimle to contact the police immediately if he thought of anything he felt to be of even the slightest significance for the investigation.

  Grimle promised, said goodbye and wished the police luck in tracking down the killer.

  The profiler from Gothenburg showed up as Barbarotti was about to ring Backman and suggest a working lunch at the King’s Grill.

  So it turned into a working lunch with the profiler instead. His name was Curt Lillieskog, and Barbarotti felt they had met on some previous occasion – so did Lillieskog, but neither of them could get to the bottom of when and where it might have been.

  Lillieskog was sixty-odd, lean and wiry – and with a lively enthusiasm for his job that made him seem like a teenager. Or gave the impression that he himself had invented the concept of the criminal profile and was now on tour with a mission to sell the idea to others. He enjoys murderers, thought Barbarotti. And he’s not ashamed of it.

  ‘Letter writers like this are extremely unusual,’ Lillieskog told him as a preamble. ‘Or at any rate, those who carry through their intentions. Nice place this, do you often come here for lunch?’

  Barbarotti had to admit that he and a colleague or two patronized the King’s Grill whenever the police canteen started to pall – and that the traditional home cooking seldom disappointed. They ordered that day’s special – breadcrumbed veal patties with mashed potato and lingonberry sauce – and took a seat by the window to set to work on their profiling.

  ‘I think we’re dealing with an individual who wants to be acknowledged at any price,’ said Lillieskog.

  I’ve heard exactly the same sort of thing a hundred times before, thought Barbarotti. But it could still be right, all the same. ‘Expand on that,’ he said.

  ‘Gladly,’ said Lillieskog. ‘It doesn’t tell us all that much about our man per se, because it basically holds true for all perpetrators of violence. The vast majority have some underlying and unanswered need for acknowledgement. They have this perception of not having been seen, which often dates back to childhood and is then intensified by various other failings and failures later in life. Put at its simplest, this is what you might call the lynchpin of criminality.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘So why write letters?’

  ‘I see two possible alternatives,’ said Lillieskog, cutting his veal patty in two with his fork. ‘Either it’s a signal that he wants to be caught. That deep down he isn’t happy about what he’s doing, and wants to help the police in their efforts to stop him.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Barbarotti. ‘You’re assuming he intends to kill a number of people. You think he’s serious about this Anna Eriksson, for example?’

  ‘I think it’s quite likely,’ said Lillieskog. ‘He might well have a list of people he’s out to get. Three or seven or ten of them, people he has some kind of grievance against. But it could equally well be that he’s picking them at random from the phone book. Have you established any link between Erik Bergman and Anna Eriksson yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But we’ve got people working on it. There’s no Anna Eriksson in Bergman’s immediate circle of acquaintances, I think we can confidently say. Now we’re working on friends of friends, as it were, which is a bit more difficult, seeing as . . .’

  ‘Seeing as you don’t want to make the letters public,’ supplied Lillieskog, with a look that to Barbarotti seeme
d almost like excitement. ‘That’s the right call, I’m sure.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Barbarotti. ‘You said one alternative was that the victims are chosen more or less at random, and that the murderer is writing letters to me because what he really wants is to be caught. But why write to me in particular? And what’s the other alternative? You said you could see two.’

  Lillieskog quickly chewed and swallowed, aided by a gulp of lingonberry juice. ‘Why he chose you in particular is a hard question to answer. Perhaps he’s come into contact with you before . . . a criminal you put away, for example, you’ll all need to keep an eye out for that possibility . . . but it might be that he just knows your name. Maybe you were in the papers or on television . . . are you in the phone book?’

  Gunnar Barbarotti nodded.

  ‘That could be enough. And it’s not necessarily something you are aware of, in fact I think it’s likely you aren’t. But your other question – what’s alternative number two? – well the answer to that, of course, is that we could be dealing with a much more ingenious individual.’

  Ingenious individual, thought Gunnar Barbarotti. Sounded as though he was talking about Karlsson on the Roof or some other children’s book hero. ‘You mean . . . ?’ he said.

  ‘I mean that there could be a much more rational reason why he – let’s agree for the sake of argument that it’s a he – why he’s writing these letters. That it’s a way of hampering the police in their efforts to catch him.’

  He stopped talking and looked at Barbarotti with something suspiciously akin to delight. Barbarotti put down his knife and fork and wiped his mouth with his serviette as he tried to grasp what Lillieskog was talking about.

  ‘Hampering the police?’ he said. ‘You’ve lost me now. In what way could our efforts be hampered by his . . . ?’

  Lillieskog held up an admonishing finger. ‘It’s hard to say. And perhaps it isn’t succeeding, anyway. All I’m saying is that his intention is to mess with you lot. The letters might be obscuring something else. You and your colleagues have to invest a lot of energy in working out why the heck he’s writing to tip you off . . . and that energy might be needed elsewhere.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti pondered this. He thought it sounded both plausible and utterly absurd.

  ‘It might also be the case that the person he really wanted to murder was this Bergman,’ continued Lillieskog enthusiastically. ‘And that he wants to divert your attention, so to speak. In all sorts of directions. And if so, we have to admit that he’s made a pretty good job of it so far, hrrm.’

  ‘If this is the alternative we’re faced with,’ said Barbarotti after a few moments’ silence, ‘it presupposes some planning on the part of the perpetrator. Am I right?’

  Lillieskog leant across the table and lowered his voice. ‘It presupposes extraordinary planning on the part of the perpetrator,’ he clarified. ‘And I probably don’t need to add that, in that case, we’ve got something immensely complicated to wrestle with here. Immensely complicated.’

  ‘How was he, then?’ Eva Backman wanted to know, half an hour later. ‘The profiler.’

  ‘A bit barmy,’ replied Barbarotti. ‘But the worst of it is, I think he had a valid point or two.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘That he had a valid point or two, of course. He said a few things that could possibly be right.’

  ‘Thanks, I get it. Things like what?’

  ‘Like the fact that we might be dealing with a bloke who’s got his wits about him. Who . . . well, who’s carefully thought through what he’s going to do.’

  ‘What he’s going to do?’ cried Eva Backman. ‘He’s already knifed a guy to death and written two letters. You make it sound as though this is just the beginning. What grounds do you have for claiming anything like that?’

  ‘Not many,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘I hope I’m wrong. What do you think?’

  Eva Backman shook her head and swore. ‘Fuck it, I haven’t got time to think one thing or the other when I’m so tied up with interviews and other work the whole time.’

  ‘Ouch,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘I spent all morning talking to his parents and now I’ve got four of Mr Bergman’s bachelor cronies to tackle. If Asunander and dear old Sylvenius decide on surveillance of all the Annas, we can presumably forget all about family life for the next few days.’

  ‘I have no family life,’ Barbarotti pointed out. ‘But forget that. Aren’t some of the Annas more interesting than others?’

  Eva Backman shrugged. ‘Two of them are under twelve. Let’s hope to goodness they’re not the most interesting. But that still leaves seventeen . . . if we restrict ourselves to Kymlinge, that is.’

  ‘And if we venture beyond Kymlinge?’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ said Eva Backman.

  Bloody hell, thought Gunnar Barbarotti, and retreated to his office. I feel ill, this is so sick.

  He had five seconds’ peace in his chair. Then Chief Inspector Asunander rang to call him in for a conference.

  7

  ‘Astor Nilsson from the Gothenburg police,’ indicated Chief Inspector Asunander. ‘You and Backman lead on this for now, with Nilsson’s help. Clear?’

  ‘Clear,’ said Barbarotti.

  Asunander was having the usual problem with his false teeth. They slid sideways out of place whenever he spoke, which made him always express himself as concisely as possible. The false teeth themselves were the result of a well-aimed blow with a baseball bat, administered by a drugged-up hooligan a decade earlier. Since that event, the chief inspector preferred to do his job from behind his desk. He never took part in operations, rarely conducted interviews and had a small subsidiary income from devising crosswords for three or four magazines. But he was head of the CID in the Kymlinge police force and he had at least two years to go to retirement.

  Barbarotti said hello to Astor Nilsson, a powerfully built man of fifty-five or so with a handshake like a mangle. They were evidently only being allocated one Gothenburg top dog. They each took one of Asunander’s visitor chairs. Asunander sat behind his desk and switched off four phones.

  ‘Forensics found zero,’ he said. ‘No leads. Complex.’

  ‘Witnesses?’ asked Barbarotti. ‘Anyone see Bergman setting out from home or meet him on the running track?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ said Astor Nilsson, relieving Asunander of the effort of speaking. ‘But we may still get something. We’ve sent people to talk to the neighbours and so on. Oh, and there was a woman who saw him jog past her kitchen window. Just after 6 a.m. She’s ninety-two and always wakes early . . . but then we already knew he was out jogging.’

  ‘Only this time he didn’t get the whole way round,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Astor Nilsson.

  ‘I don’t interfere in operations,’ declared Asunander, glaring irritably at Barbarotti. Evidently he had not been called in to discuss the general progress of their detective work. He exchanged a glance with his Gothenburg colleague and nodded.

  ‘Anna Eriksson,’ said Asunander. ‘Got to decide.’

  Astor Nilsson cleared his throat and took over again. He had clearly been briefed on the issues that were the order of the day, and had already been seated in the room when Barbarotti came in. Perhaps he had been there since this morning.

  ‘We have nineteen prospective victims,’ he began. ‘We’ve rung round to them all, first their home number, then their mobile. We got answers from sixteen and—’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Who’s been doing this? What sort of answers did they get?’

  ‘None,’ said Asunander, looking angry.

  ‘Two detectives did the lot,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Borgsen and Killander . . . is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Asunander.

  ‘Borgsen and Killander made the calls, right, but hung up as soon as they got each Anna on the line. Without saying a word, that is. Five answered on their home numbers,
the rest on their mobiles . . . they were presumably at work or out enjoying the nice weather.’

  He gestured towards the window, where not so much as a single sunbeam penetrated the carefully lowered blinds. ‘Some of them could be a long way from here, of course. It was only a preliminary ring round.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ interrupted Barbarotti. ‘What’s our strategy, then? Are we going to warn these women, or . . . ?’

  ‘Decide!’ said Asunander.

  ‘That’s what we’ve got to decide,’ interpreted Astor Nilsson.

  Poor devil, thought Gunnar Barbarotti. Has he been chewing this over with Asunander all morning? ‘Yes, I know that,’ he said. ‘We can hardly start protecting them without telling them first. But you two think that we . . . that we perhaps shouldn’t say anything at all?’

  There was an ominous clicking from Asunander’s teeth, but no words came forth.

  ‘What’s your view?’ Astor Nilsson asked.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Shall we take a vote on it? My view is that we should inform them of the situation right away, naturally.’

  ‘Why?’ roared Asunander.

  Astor Nilsson gave something that was presumably a sigh of relief. Oh ho, thought Gunnar Barbarotti. I took the right side there, clearly.

  ‘Because,’ said Inspector Barbarotti slowly, as he tried to dredge up a sensibly formulated justification. ‘Well, there are various reasons, of course . . . the protection aspect is the most obvious, I suppose. It would be good if we could stop him killing anyone else, basically. I seem to remember that’s one of the fundamental tasks of the police force . . . protecting citizens. But correct me if I’m wrong.’

  ‘Crrms,’ said Asunander, snapping a pencil in two.

  ‘There are other aspects as well,’ Barbarotti went on. ‘If, say, there’s a link between Erik Bergman and Anna Eriksson, maybe Anna Eriksson can provide some details.’

  ‘Exactly,’ exclaimed Astor Nilsson.

  Asunander growled and muttered something that presumably meant resources, and then got to his feet.