The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘Several times,’ repeated Asunander. ‘We’ve dropped it into the conversation every day.’

  ‘Get to the point,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘To mislead,’ said the chief inspector, spitting the olive stones into his hand. ‘He does it to mislead us. To distract our attention and make us look the wrong way. I’m right, aren’t I? That’s what we’ve been saying?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I’ve certainly had that feeling all along.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Asunander. ‘The problem is that we’ve found it hard to keep focused on that. As soon as he made another move, we started analysing right, left and centre, and taking measures.’

  Barbarotti pondered this.

  ‘Instead of seeing that it’s all entirely pointless,’ went on Asunander. ‘There’s no logic, there’s no reason for these letters. Nor for the fact that they were addressed to you. He never intended murdering any Hans Andersson. He never let a girl slip out of a boat and there’s no grandmother buried anywhere round Mousterlin.’

  ‘What?’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘The whole thing’s a fabrication.’

  He took up his pipe again but didn’t light it. Barbarotti shook his head and tried to understand what Asunander was actually driving at.

  ‘But he murdered the others . . .’

  ‘Oh yes. And he has an actual motive for that. At least for a couple of them.’

  ‘A couple of them? You . . . you’ve lost me now,’ said Barbarotti, taking a gulp of whisky. As he put down his glass, he noticed that his hand was shaking.

  ‘But you agree with my reasoning so far?’ asked Asunander, peering at him with an intent and appraising look that Barbarotti had never seen from him before.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Good,’ said Asunander. ‘Let’s have a bit more whisky then, and I’ll tell you how I reckon it all fits together.’

  By the time he left Chief Inspector Asunander’s flat on the high street it was quarter past eleven and rain had begun to fall. Cold and penetrating autumn rain, what was more, but he was oblivious to it. The theory Asunander had advanced – which they had then chewed over very thoroughly for two hours while they polished off the bottle of whisky, a ten-year-old Glenmorangie Highland Single Malt – absorbed his thoughts and consciousness so completely that he probably wouldn’t have noticed two metres of snow or the town hall going up in flames.

  It’s not possible, he thought. Bloody hell, it’s just not possible.

  And yet he knew that it was. That this was exactly how it all fitted together, and that the only thing left to do was to tie up the ends so the murderer couldn’t fall out of the sack.

  Strange are the ways of the Lord, thought Inspector Barbarotti, pushing open the front door of 12 Baldersgatan. Truly. Was it three points they’d agreed on?

  SEVEN

  29–31 AUGUST 2007

  40

  Barbarotti and Backman conducted the interview. Jonnerblad, Tallin and Sorrysen sat on the other side of the two-way mirror and observed.

  The interview was recorded, too. On audiotape and on DVD, to make completely sure. Asunander had insisted on that, too, and he himself chose to sit in a different room and watch proceedings on a TV monitor.

  The woman’s name was Ulrika Hearst. She was thirty-seven, her maiden name was Lindquist, and her husband was English. They had found her the previous day.

  ‘Hoss and Boss?’ queried Barbarotti.

  ‘That was what they called themselves,’ said Ulrika Hearst. ‘Even when they were small. It might have been somebody else who came up with the names, I don’t know.’

  ‘And you’ve known them all your life?’

  ‘Yes. We’re cousins. Our mothers are sisters. They lived in Varberg, and we lived in Kungsbacka. We saw quite a lot of each other. I’m an only child, and Hoss and Boss are my only cousins.’

  She tucked a strand of her blonde hair behind one ear. Her blue eyes shifted back and forth between the two DIs, as if she were trying to decide which of them she was really meant to be addressing.

  ‘It’s Hoss we’re particularly interested in,’ Backman said, taking her turn to speak.

  ‘So I understand,’ said Ulrika Hearst.

  ‘Can you tell us a bit about him?’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘He was . . . difficult,’ she said. ‘They both were.’

  ‘Difficult?’

  ‘I don’t really know how to describe them,’ said Ulrika Hearst. ‘I didn’t have all that many friends when I was a child. Solitary at school and that sort of thing. Hoss and Boss were sort of part of my world and you just accept things as normal there, don’t you? When you’re a child, at any rate. That’s what growing up involves. Seeing your childhood delusions and myths for what they are.’

  Backman nodded. ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ she said. ‘So when was it you became aware of how difficult they were?’

  ‘We moved to Stockholm when I was sixteen,’ Ulrika Hearst told them. ‘I started at a good upper secondary and found some new friends. My cousins were at more of a distance, and that was when I started to realize they were a bit odd.’

  ‘In what way were they odd?’ asked Barbarotti.

  ‘They were always such know-alls, for one thing,’ said Ulrika Hearst, almost breaking into a smile but instantly suppressing it. ‘I think they competed with each other to be the one who knew everything, but whenever I came to visit they would, like, gang up against me instead. I was their dumb cousin who didn’t understand a thing . . . I was ten months younger, as well, with a December birthday, whereas theirs is in February. Sometimes they would compete to see who could fool me the best.’

  ‘Competed to see who could fool you?’ said Backman. ‘That doesn’t sound very pleasant.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Ulrika Hearst. ‘Once, I must have been about eight, Hoss claimed he’d dropped a wallet full of money down a well, but neither he nor Boss could climb down and get it because they suffered from some strange ear condition that meant they couldn’t go into confined spaces. But if I did it, they’d give me half the money. There were metal rungs set into the side of the well, but of course there was no wallet and as soon as I reached the bottom, they put the cover on. They made me sit down there in the dark for over an hour. I remember wetting myself, but I never dared tell my mum why.

  ‘What little bastards,’ said Backman.

  ‘So they’re identical twins?’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Ulrika Hearst. ‘They’ve always been impossible to tell apart, unless you know that Hoss has a little birthmark under his left ear. He’s a centimetre taller and twenty minutes older, too, but apart from that they’re identical.’

  ‘And no other siblings?’ asked Backman.

  ‘No, it was just them. And they were as thick as thieves. I know that Maud and Yngve, their parents, did what they could to discourage it. They tried separating them in various ways, but it was no good. They always insisted on sharing a bedroom, for instance, even though they lived in a big house. And at school, putting the twins in different classes just made them refuse to work at all. They never had any other friends, either, only each other.’

  ‘How did things go later on?’ asked Barbarotti. ‘When they got older?’

  Ulrika Hearst slowly shook her head and a strange look came into her eyes. She tidied away another stray strand of hair and took a drink of water.

  ‘I’m not really sure,’ she said. ‘But there was definitely something wrong. They finished school together in 1989. Same class, same grades, and I went to their graduation party. It was a strange affair. Ten or twelve people. I’d had my own party up in Stockholm two weeks earlier and there were at least fifty of us. That was the first time it really came home to me how weird they were. They both got top grades in their exams, they’d both applied to study medicine in Gothenburg and of course they got in right away. Then their parents bought them a small flat in Asche
bergsgatan, thought it was a relief to get rid of them I expect, and the boys had never shown any attachment to them, either. So they moved in there and started their medical degrees.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Barbarotti. ‘This is the autumn of 1989, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ulrika Hearst. ‘The first three or four terms it all ran like clockwork, I think. They passed their exams and vivas and all that stuff. I went to see them a couple of times when I was in Gothenburg on other business. They really were wrapped up in themselves and their studies, with skeletons and anatomical charts all over the place. They treated me with slightly more respect once we were adults, didn’t spin me lies and send me down wells and so on, but I was still always happy to leave their flat. I remember I . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ said Barbarotti.

  She gave a laugh. ‘Err, yes, I’d stop outside and just stand there taking deep breaths on the pavement outside the flats. Drinking in the normal world out there, it was . . . well, it was a purely physical sensation. I was studying economics in Uppsala, and there was lots of talk about who was duller, economists or medics, and I remember thinking that if they ever met my cousins in Gothenburg they’d have no trouble making their minds up.’

  Eva Backman allowed herself a fleeting smile. ‘But then something happened, did it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ulrika Hearst braced her back and was suddenly serious. ‘Boss met a girl. That was in May ’91. I went to see my mother in Nacka for her birthday, and she broke the news to me. It would have been entirely normal in any other family, of course, but for us it was pretty much a sensation. And it was even more sensational when it emerged in the course of the summer that they were getting married and moving to Australia. She was an exchange student from somewhere outside Brisbane.’

  ‘And that was what happened?’ asked Backman.

  ‘Yes it was. Boss and Bessie, that was her name, got married and moved to Australia around Christmas 1991, and they’ve been living in a suburb of Sydney ever since.’

  ‘Have you been to visit?’

  ‘I have, actually. I spent a month in Australia with my boyfriend in . . . well it must be twelve years ago now, so we went to see them while we were there. They had a baby daughter and everything seemed rosy. Boss had softened up a bit, not that he was as laid-back as your average Australian, of course, but by his standards. It was a big change.’

  ‘But you only saw them the once?’

  ‘Yes. And we weren’t there particularly long. We only spent one night with them, so I can’t really say. But Gustaf, my boyfriend at the time, thought they were nice, I remember.’

  Barbarotti nodded. ‘And what about Hoss? How did he react to his brother going off like that?’

  Ulrika Hearst took a sip of water before replying. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips.

  ‘Well that’s just it,’ she said. ‘It’s like, we don’t know. I mean, Hoss has never confided how he’s feeling to anybody. My mother didn’t know a thing. His parents just reported that Boss had got married and moved to Sydney; when I met up with Hoss in June 1992, we went for a coffee in Haga, and he said everything was fine. But that autumn he gave up his medical course and started studying philosophy instead. He never told anybody why. I was more or less out of touch with him for a couple of years. I lived in England for a while, but when I got back to Sweden, in 1997, he’d got married and had nearly finished his PhD. I gather he rose to the top as a logician in record time. He got his doctorate in 1999 and was given an academic post at the university the same year.’

  ‘Did you meet his wife?’

  ‘Yes. A couple of times. The first was just after New Year, 2000. She was pregnant and they’d just bought a house in Mölndal. She worked at Sahlgrenska hospital, I assume they met there when he was a medical student. She lost the baby a few months later and . . . well, they never had any children.’

  ‘What sort of impression did you get of their relationship?’ asked Eva Backman.

  She hesitated, but only for a moment.

  ‘I could see he was the dominant one,’ she said. ‘She seemed terribly shy to me, and later on I found out she grew up in a strictly religious home, and Hoss pretty much uprooted her from there.’

  ‘Uprooted her?’ said Backman. ‘Ah, I think I see.’

  ‘I met her again a few years later,’ said Ulrika Hearst. ‘Just her, we bumped into each other in Stockholm completely by chance, and I hardly recognized her. She’d . . . grown, somehow. Become her own woman, you could say, if it weren’t such an overused phrase.’

  ‘There are reasons why some phrases get overused,’ said Eva Backman.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘When?’ said Barbarotti. ‘When was it you met her in Stockholm?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that,’ said Ulrika Hearst, ‘and I reckon it must have been January or February 2006.’

  ‘About eighteen months ago, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Hoss? Have you seen anything of him in the past few years?’

  ‘I only met him once,’ declared Ulrika Hearst with an apologetic shrug of the shoulders. ‘The Gothenburg Book Fair last year. Well, met isn’t really the right word . . . I saw him on a seminar panel. I don’t remember the subject, but I saw his name and went along because I was a bit curious. He didn’t make much of an impression. We didn’t say hello; I saw him notice me in the audience but when it was over he slipped out the other way.’

  ‘Do you know anything more about their relationship?’ asked Eva Backman.

  ‘Not really,’ said Ulrika Hearst. ‘But I remember my mother saying a couple of years ago that she wouldn’t want to be in her shoes.’

  ‘In Hoss’s wife’s shoes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did she say why?’

  Ulrika Hearst gave a sort of smile. ‘My mother liked analysing relationships,’ she said. ‘She divorced my father when I was fifteen, and after that it was one of the most important interests of her life, I think I can safely say.’

  ‘When did your mother pass away?’

  ‘Last year. Cancer, it was all over in a few months.’

  ‘But she worked as a family therapist?’

  ‘Yes. She used to say she’d married her profession in place of my father, and this time round it really was true love.’

  Eva Backman nodded. ‘So when she said she wouldn’t want to be in Katarina Malmgren’s shoes, she knew what she was talking about?’

  ‘I should think so,’ said Ulrika Hearst.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to ask,’ said Astor Nilsson, ‘but I’d be bloody grateful to know how all this fits together. And how we arrived at it.’

  Astor Nilsson hadn’t been present at the interview with Ulrika Hearst. He’d been busy interviewing a couple of other people at the University of Gothenburg.

  But now he had arrived at Kymlinge police HQ. It was three in the afternoon and all those involved were gathered in Jonnerblad and Tallin’s office.

  ‘Yes, things did speed up rather, towards the end,’ conceded Jonnerblad. ‘But there doesn’t appear to be any doubt. Henrik Malmgren is our man. We also have to take our hats off to Chief Inspector Asunander, because without his perceptive analysis we’d still have been getting nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Asunander.

  ‘Can we start with the method?’ asked Astor Nilsson. ‘How the hell did he do all this? If we forget the writing part for a minute and just look at the MO itself, I mean?’

  ‘Let’s save the motive for a while, too, come to that,’ said Tallin.

  ‘OK,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Now that we know, it isn’t that complicated, in actual fact.’

  ‘Oh really?’ muttered Astor Nilsson.

  ‘Yes really,’ said Backman, opening her notepad. ‘He comes up here from Gothenburg and kills Erik Bergman and Anna Eriksson. That’s on 31 July. He must have been a bit familiar with Bergman’s jogging habits, but that sort of knowledge is easy enough to acquire. He lurks in the
bushes and jumps him when he comes tootling past, it’s as simple as that. Sticks the knife in a few times and leaves him there.’

  ‘A few hours later he goes to Anna Eriksson’s, after arranging to call round,’ Barbarotti took over. ‘We can assume he did that, at any rate. They’d met down in Brittany, after all, and maybe he says he’s got something for her.’

  ‘How can you know this?’ asked Sorrysen.

  ‘I’m only guessing,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But anyway, she lets him in and he kills her, possibly even with an adjustable spanner like the one he writes about, but we can only speculate. He wraps her in plastic to keep in the smell, because he wants it to be a few days before she’s found, and then leaves.’

  ‘OK, got it,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘Jesus Christ. And then?’

  ‘Then he sends off some letters and lies low for a few days . . . contacts the press, comes up with the Hans Andersson red herring and a few other things, partly to confuse us, but maybe also so the remaining two victims won’t twig there’s a link to the holiday in France. They actually did meet and socialize a bit down there five years ago, but remember the Mousterlin document is fiction from start to finish. Especially where the girl and old lady are concerned.’

  ‘Especially that part, yes,’ said Eva Backman.

  ‘But how the hell could he—?’ Astor Nilsson managed to exclaim before Asunander broke in.

  ‘We’ll take that later. Go on, Barbarotti.’

  ‘So, about a week later he goes up to Hallsberg. He takes a gun with him this time, because he hasn’t quite got the measure of Gunnar Öhrnberg. It’s Öhrnberg and Henrik’s wife who are the important victims; he kills Anna Eriksson and Erik Bergman to make events fit the Mousterlin notes. To make us swallow the whole story, in other words.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Astor Nilsson. ‘So he’s going to kill Gunnar Öhrnberg because . . . ?’

  ‘Because he’s having an affair with Katarina, yes,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And to think I actually got a bit of a lead when I talked to that diving mate of his. He told me Öhrnberg was paying a secret visit to a married woman in west Sweden. But how the heck could I know it was Katarina Malmgren?’