The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘You’re responsible,’ he said. ‘Report to me. Now leave.’

  Barbarotti and Astor Nilsson duly left Asunander’s office.

  ‘Christ almighty,’ said Astor Nilsson once they were out in the corridor. ‘I’m already missing home. That was the worst bloody morning I’ve had since my Leonberger had puppies. Is he always like that?’

  ‘You should see him when he’s in a bad mood,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Shall we go to my office and talk it through? If I’ve gathered this correctly, we’re the lead investigators.’

  ‘Good grief,’ said Astor Nilsson, and inserted a wad of snus under his top lip.

  ‘That means we’ll have to release the victim’s name, I assume?’ asked Eva Backman. ‘Erik Bergman, I mean.’

  ‘Are there other victims?’

  ‘Don’t split hairs,’ said Backman.

  ‘For there to be any point to this, we must at the very least let all the Annas know his identity,’ observed Astor Nilsson. ‘Though no doubt word has already got out round the town, that’s generally the way. And we’ll have to ask them if they’re associated with him in any way. Or know who he is, at any rate . . . and then, well, that’ll immediately bring us on to the protection issue, but if I understood correctly, then . . . ?’

  ‘Sorrysen’s already got that in hand,’ confirmed Eva Backman. ‘Just in theory, so far. But of course it’s as Asunander says, a job like this can involve vast amounts of work.’

  ‘There is a way round it,’ said Astor Nilsson.

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Backman.

  ‘Yes, we could always talk to these women without revealing quite everything. It has the advantage of not frightening them out of their wits, too. Just ask them about Erik Bergman, that is . . . without specifying how they fit in. What do you think of that?’

  His gaze went from Backman to Barbarotti and back again. Eva Backman studied her shoes. Barbarotti looked out of the window. Five seconds elapsed.

  ‘OK then,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Why not try that to start with? I suggest in that case that we three handle it all. We’ll make initial contact by phone and arrange to meet each of them as soon as possible – face to face – though some of them will be away on holiday, of course.’

  ‘Sixteen of the nineteen are contactable, we already know that,’ said Eva Backman. ‘So we’ll call them in for a chat, then . . . tomorrow, I assume?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbarotti. ‘That’s what we’ll do. For those in the vicinity, at any rate, but I don’t think we need to call anyone home from Majorca or Thailand.’

  ‘And the only thing we’re going to ask them is whether they know an Erik Bergman,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Over the phone, only that, but if any of them have something interesting to give us, we’ll bring in the Anna in question right away. Then we’ll decide how we’re going to play it tomorrow. Are we agreed on this?’

  Eva Backman nodded. Astor Nilsson nodded.

  ‘Right then,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘Here’s the list. Nineteen ladies answering to the name of Anna Eriksson. I’ll give you six each and take the other seven myself. It’s two o’clock, so shall we say we’ll reconvene here in two hours and report back?’

  ‘I’ll need a room,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Or a phone, at the very least.’

  ‘Come with me,’ said Eva Backman. ‘It won’t be a problem. Half the building is on holiday.’

  Once they had left him, it struck Detective Inspector Barbarotti that it was still not twenty-four hours since he had left Visby. It felt like a month.

  And somewhere out there was a murderer who was several steps ahead.

  It all produced nothing.

  That was the sum total.

  It was 8 p.m. by the time Barbarotti left police headquarters. Of the sixteen Annas they had got hold of – all of whom had received one call from the police already, though they did not know it – none had any connection to the murdered Erik Bergman. Only two knew who he was, one because her husband worked at a company just next door to Bergman’s IT firm in Järnvägsgatan, the other because they had been in the same year at upper-secondary school. Eight of the Annas were at home in Kymlinge and of these, five had heard about the murder. Four of the Annas were elsewhere in Sweden, while four were abroad on holiday.

  And that left the three they had not been able to contact. Gustabo syndrome, thought Barbarotti glumly as he cut across Norra Torg. And I’ve no way of reaching her, either.

  A comprehensive dissatisfaction gnawed away at him. What the hell are we doing, he wondered. We’re faffing about like clowns without an audience. Of course the rule was to approach cases with an open mind, but this felt like chaos. What was it Backman said this morning? We’re playing into the murderer’s hands.

  She had a point there, didn’t she? Because if Lillieskog’s alternative two was the one that applied – the carefully planning perpetrator – then every action they had taken hitherto must have been exactly what he was expecting. What anyone would have expected. Mustn’t it?

  A day and a half had gone by since the murder of Erik Bergman. They hadn’t picked up the slightest clue. For his part, Barbarotti had spent almost the whole day focused on something else – a crime that had not yet taken place. That was how simple it was to deflect police resources in any direction you chose. He remembered an old post office slogan from yesteryear. A letter means so much. Wasn’t there an old pop song of that title too?

  And he remembered a bank robbery he had read about a few years ago. Germany, if he wasn’t mistaken. The perpetrator had sent bomb threats to three different banks in the same town, the police had committed all available resources, and then he had robbed a fourth.

  What if a fresh letter arrived tomorrow with a new name? What would they do then?

  What if one of the Annas they had talked to began to realize what was at stake?

  And the worst scenario of all: what if one of the Annas was actually murdered and word got out that the police had had advance notice of the crime – but failed to take any precautionary measures?

  No, thought Gunnar Barbarotti. When we start on our interviews with them tomorrow we’ve got to show our hand. No matter what it costs.

  Maybe they could ring up the security services and ask them to send thirty-eight extra officers? Wasn’t that how it worked when they were protecting top politicians and suchlike? Two per person under guard? But there was a difference between a minister and an ordinary Anna Eriksson, of course.

  Or why not offer all the Annas the option of being kept under lock and key at the police station? That would definitely be the neatest and cheapest solution.

  But it was as this thought came into his mind that he realized it really was time to go home and get a few hours’ sleep.

  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Never a truer word spoken, he thought.

  8

  But it proved impossible to get even a wink of sleep.

  It was his usual problem. He couldn’t keep his eyes open long enough to read, but as soon as he closed them and tried to sleep, his whole head felt like a hive of bees. When it got to half past twelve, he got up, took a beer from the fridge and sat down at his desk. He stayed there a while in the darkness, looking out of the window towards Kymlinge River. You could see it had been a dry summer. The pale-yellow ovals of the street lights were reflected in the water, but filtered and dulled; the water level was so low that all manner of old junk was sticking up out of the mud. It didn’t look pretty. You’d scarcely even be able to drown anybody in that gunk, thought Inspector Barbarotti, taking a drink of his beer.

  And of course one had to wonder why a thought like that should come into his mind.

  He put on the light and opened a new pad of paper. Might as well try to impose a bit of structure on his thoughts, it was generally one way of quietening down the beehive. He took a pen from the old tea caddy and pondered; then he scribbled down the names of four people:


  Erik Bergman

  Anna Eriksson

  Gunnar Barbarotti

  The Murderer

  Admittedly the fourth wasn’t a real name, he knew that, but that was the point of the exercise. To find new names. He drew a ring round each of the four participants. It didn’t help. He put a cross after The Murderer and stared at it for thirty seconds, but that didn’t help either. He tore out the page, threw it in the bin and started again. He drew a square with one name in each corner instead. He underlined the names and drew in the diagonals. Stared at the result for a while. Tore out the page and tossed that in the bin, too. What crap, he thought.

  He started writing questions instead. After ten minutes, he had thought of twenty. He paused and considered. Decided to see if there were any he could answer, chewed his pen and concentrated.

  After another ten minutes he was still at zero. Damn, thought Gunnar Barbarotti, this is going nowhere. Twenty questions and not a single answer. You really couldn’t say the investigation had progressed particularly far.

  Though to be fair, he had only spent one day on it so far. To find the right answers, you first had to ask the crucial questions, that was an old rule and a good one. He briefly considered having a conversation with Our Lord, but found it hard to come up with the right words. It didn’t feel right, either. The deal they struck five years ago had specified – if his memory served him correctly, there was no written documentation unfortunately – that he was not allowed to ask for immediate help with cases in progress. Our Lord was not all-powerful and, above all, not a policeman, but after a moment’s cogitation Barbarotti found a compromise.

  O Lord, he prayed. Send a shaft of light into the befuddled and darkened brain of this poor cop. I’m stuck and I don’t know what to do. Throw me a crumb in Your great mercy. It’s not really worth points, this one, but never mind. If I can at least feel I’m taking a step in the right direction by the time I go for lunch tomorrow, I’ll award You a bonus point, OK? You’re already eleven points clear, congratulations.

  He listened for an answer but all he could hear was the hacking roar of a motorbike under the chestnuts on the other side of the river. Bloody hooligan, thought Gunnar Barbarotti, he’ll wake half the town, somebody ought to ring the police.

  Then he drained his beer and stared at the questions again. Five minutes, he thought, I’ll give it five more minutes.

  Whether it was attributable to some kind of divine guidance was hard to determine, but he gradually started to detect a point of view crystallizing out of the coal mine inside him – or perhaps it was merely his ability to multitask collapsing completely . . . a black hole, yet another sad demonstration that men’s minds can only focus on one thing at a time.

  But there was something about the Annas . . . and the murderer’s potential link with his victims.

  Because if – thought Inspector Barbarotti at the same moment as he heard the bell of the St Charles church strike one-thirty in the diluted summer darkness – because if one assumed there really was a link between the murderer and his victims and between the victims themselves – and that this wasn’t just some madman picking out names from the phone book – then it must be terribly risky for the murderer to give away the name of his intended second victim like this.

  Since it was possible that the second victim knew the first – or perhaps knew was pushing it a bit far, Inspector Barbarotti corrected himself as he cautiously padded out to the kitchen to get beer number two, wary and supple as a panther so the thread of his thoughts would not break – but that there was a link, at any rate, and furthermore, that victim number two could conceivably enlighten the police on this matter, and . . .

  . . . and ultimately provide some clue about their lowest common denominator, namely the murderer.

  Namely the murderer, he repeated silently in his head.

  And if this murderer really was one of the unpleasant sort who went in for meticulous planning, as profiler Lillieskog had suggested, then wouldn’t it be . . . ?

  . . . Well, wouldn’t it be bloody odd for him to give the police a chance to talk to Anna Eriksson before he killed her? It certainly would!

  It certainly would. Gunnar Barbarotti took a swig of beer and stared out of the window. Was there any flaw in this reasoning? He couldn’t see one. So what were the implications for the investigation?

  It took him a few seconds to find the answer. Yes, it basically meant they weren’t going to get a thing from interviewing the sixteen Annas the next day – no, it wasn’t that many, because several were elsewhere, far from Kymlinge, but even so – because . . . ?

  . . . because there was every likelihood that the right Anna Eriksson was one of the small group they hadn’t been able to contact.

  And if the intention really was for her to die, then presumably she didn’t have long to live.

  Or was even already dead.

  He sat there calmly examining this conclusion while finishing his second beer, and gradually realized it was just the kind of conclusion one all too readily reached at this hour. In the middle of the night, alone at a desk with a beer, a waning moon and a sludgy river.

  But the realization that his reasoning was correct carried at least as much weight. And then that image of the higher power and the pack of cards reappeared in his mind.

  Well what do you know, thought Detective Inspector Barbarotti. A game of patience did go out today, after all. In the end.

  The next morning he came across Eva Backman immediately, as they were parking their bikes.

  ‘Something occurred to me last night,’ he announced with a certain amount of restraint.

  Eva Backman nodded. ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I’ll go first. I think it’s one of the three other Annas we ought to concentrate on.’

  ‘What in hell’s name?’

  ‘Well, let me explain,’ said Backman. ‘If it’s the case that—’

  ‘Stop right there!’ Barbarotti interrupted. ‘That’s exactly the same conclusion I arrived at. No need to explain. We can call off all these interviews. If anybody needs our protection it’s those we didn’t find yesterday.’

  ‘No,’ said Eva Backman. ‘We can’t do that. We simply can’t ring those poor women a third time. Sorrysen and Killander can talk to them – we’ll devise a form with a few questions and it can’t do any harm. But not a word about the letters. They mustn’t suspect what’s at stake.’

  Barbarotti thought about this. ‘All right.’ He said. ‘Perhaps that’s best. But you and I have got to pick the right one amongst the other three.’

  As they were going into the building, she put her hand on his arm for a moment. ‘Gunnar,’ she said. ‘I’ve got such an awful feeling. I sense . . . I sense we’re dealing with someone really repulsive this time.’

  He stopped and looked at her. And two things struck him.

  One was that he had never heard her say anything like that before.

  The other was that she was absolutely right.

  ‘Highly likely,’ he said. ‘But we’re going to solve this, even so.’

  By quarter to nine, the number of elusive Annas had shrunk from three to two. Detective Sergeant Molin knocked cautiously on Barbarotti’s door and informed him that they had made contact with a certain Anna Eriksson, forty-two, who was on holiday in the Lofoten islands with her husband and children. Mobile coverage was evidently a bit patchy up there, but now she was sitting in a cafe in the main town, Svolvær, and the signal had got through. What was it they wanted?

  Molin had not gone into this, saying merely that the police were looking for someone of that name, but as she was clearly not in Kymlinge for the time being, she could not be the person in question.

  Presumably they could assume this, asked Molin. That it was another Anna they were looking for? Barbarotti said he thought so, and thanked his colleague. The DS withdrew to the corridor.

  That left two.

  Anna Eriksson number two was thirty-four and her address was 15 Skolgatan. Accord
ing to their information, she worked at an advertising agency called Sfinx, but it was closed until early August. She was unmarried and since her flat was just a bedsit of forty square metres, one could assume she lived alone.

  ‘15 Skolgatan is only three minutes away,’ observed Eva Backman, who had been brooding in Barbarotti’s room for the past half hour. ‘I’ll pop over and check with the neighbours. Best do it now before they push off to their summer cottages.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti nodded and glanced out of the window.

  She was right. It was a scorcher out there.

  ‘You do that,’ he said. ‘But I assume it’s a bit too soon for a search warrant?’

  ‘Maybe I’ll find her in?’ said Eva Backman optimistically. ‘Maybe it’s just that we’ve got an out-of-date phone number here. I’ll go on to Grimstalundsvägen while I’m about it, OK?’

  ‘You do that,’ repeated Barbarotti and started rolling up his shirtsleeves. ‘And I’ll man the home front in the meantime.’

  On this particular morning, the home front turned out to consist of three hours of briefings and reports. Astor Nilsson and profiler Lillieskog sat in on these; they had clearly both stayed over at Kymlinge Hotel. Chief Inspector Asunander was also present in the briefing room most of the time, though he never said anything. He just stood in a corner, sucked on his teeth and monitored proceedings, or so it seemed, a grim, impenetrable expression on his face.

  More or less the way you would look at your mother-in-law’s funeral, Barbarotti thought at one point.

  First up was Kallwrangel, the pathologist. He had been known as Karlsson until about a year ago, and it was a matter of much speculation at police headquarters how the Swedish Patent and Registration Office could have approved his new name. There had even been a piece submitted to the staff magazine under the pseudonym Ballwinckel.

  But it wasn’t the name issue that was on the agenda this time. Kallwrangel took twenty-five minutes to explain in great detail what everyone largely already knew, namely that thirty-six-year-old Erik Bergman died early on Tuesday morning down by Kymlinge River at a point close to Tillgrens garden centre, as a result of five stab wounds, at least two of which would have been fatal in their own right, and that he had presumably already lost consciousness by the time of the final knife blow. It was not possible to draw any conclusions about the perpetrator on the basis of the wounds on the dead man’s body, but it seemed pretty likely that the person in question possessed some degree of physical strength and equally likely that he (or possibly but less plausibly she) was right-handed. There had been no signs of a struggle, nor had the murderer left anything behind on the body of the victim that could eventually lead to identification via DNA. The time of the attack was estimated at between 6.40 and 6.50 a.m., the body of course having been discovered at 6.55 a.m.