The Cruel Stars of the Night

by Kjell Eriksson

  “Of course it’s murder,” Ryde said. “You can see that yourselves! A horseshoe would not have made this kind of imprint.”

  The pathologist grinned. Up yours, Berglund thought, but kept quiet.

  “Only one blow was needed,” Ryde continued, who had spent a couple of hours together with Charles Morgansson and three other technicians combing the stables.

  Now the body was to be taken away. As usual it was Fridh who was taking care of this. His slow and mild manner made him suited to this task, everyone was in agreement about this, and when he came walking down the corridor the police officers grew quiet and pulled back.

  Fridh nodded, took a first look, and then went to work.

  “This is getting to be a regular occurrence,” he said laconically as he bent down over the dead man. “Who is this one then?”

  “Carl-Henrik Palmblad,” Berglund said. “Born in 1936, dead today.”

  “The Berlin Olympics,” Fridh said.

  Berglund would have wanted to go home but knew it would be a late night. The others looked as if they shared his feelings. Only Lindell seemed to be in a good mood. She had taken the initiative directly and assigned the tasks.

  Now she was outside talking to a couple who lived a few hundred meters away. The man spoke unusually loudly and Berglund couldn’t help hearing how vividly and wordily he talked about the car he had seen parked in the woods.

  “I thought it was mushroom pickers,” he said with a thunderous voice. “There are a lot of people running around these woods.”

  “The car, what color?” Lindell shouted and Berglund realized the man was hard of hearing.

  “Red, I think or . . . maybe . . . a little thing in any case . . .”

  Berglund walked out. The man was still hesitating. Lindell was patiently waiting for a continuation but instead it was the woman who spoke.

  “It was blue,” she said firmly. “One of those that Agnes has.”

  “No, no!” the man yelled. “They have one of those Japanese.”

  Berglund turned away, walked around the corner, and kept going aimlessly. He heard the waffling continue. He knew he would be getting a report on this before long.

  All at once Berglund was gripped by an anger that almost made him return to the woolly-headed witness, take hold of him, and shake him until he could at the very least decide what color the car was. “The color, for the love of God! Is it so damn hard to remember a color!” he wanted to scream so even a person hard of hearing could understand.

  It was a surprising, unfamiliar feeling for Berglund, who was otherwise quite timid in his interactions with others.

  I need a holiday, he thought, and remembered, not without some bitterness, how he had bumped into a smiling Riis in the city the other week. Riis was on sick leave because of vague abdominal pains. A load of shit, Berglund had thought uncharitably when he heard the colleague’s friendly chatter about a boat he had bought for a good price and was renovating. That bastard is healthy as a horse.

  Now the thoughts of Riis returned. A boat. Sure, don’t we all have something we would like to buy cheap and fix up?

  But what would he do with a holiday? What would he do?

  A car came down the small road to the stables. It was Sammy Nilsson. Berglund raised his hand in greeting, walked with rapid steps even farther away from the crime scene, and sat down on a rock at the edge of the forest. He knew that a few minutes alone could cure him—at least temporarily—of the paralysis of hopelessness.

  Twenty-three

  She couldn’t stop shaking. Never had she experienced such inner fire, it was as if her blood were heated to its boiling point and ran through frozen veins to muscle tissue of ice. The pain pulsated through arms and legs, creating an almost freezing chill that resisted all willful movement.

  The blankets and covers didn’t help. Laura tensed her body in an arc in order to force away the evil that had possessed her but her body did not obey, only curling up and transforming her into a shivering bundle.

  In her distress she let everything be, let go, and sank into a river of confused images and memories. The fever chills ebbed away and she could passively float along. Then she was caught up in a whirling anxiety, was washed up on rocks whose sharp edges razed her limbs.

  Under half shut lids she glimpsed a shoreline of moss-covered stones, a clump of reeds here and there, and small, rickety docks, sunk down in the mud, that looked as if they had been abandoned for a long time.

  She passed a deserted country without human life. She was caught in a river that rushed by more strongly. In the distance she heard a waterfall. The water became rapidly more shallow, there were more rocks on the bottom, and she was helplessly bumped between the white cliffs that now replaced the bands of reeds and abundant meadows.

  The current was stronger than before and the thundering noise was overpowering. She came to her senses and just before the falls she was washed onto, or rather thrown onto, a cobblestone beach. She was blinded by a strong light, realized the stones were made of pure gold, and caught sight of a plaque with an ornately inscribed text in Latin. Before she sank into unconsciousness she read the inscription aloud to herself but could not make any sense of the words.

  Laura Hindersten woke up with the taste of blood in her mouth. Her lips were chewed up and her thighs scratched by nails.

  A thick layer of dried sweat covered her thin body and she was cold, but now in a more human way than before. The blankets were on the ground and she reached down and pulled them up again.

  The fever dreams lingered in her consciousness like a veil of mist over a deserted landscape. In her memory she looked for the source of her nightmare, because it was certainly somewhere in the literature. She was, after all, Ulrik Hindersten’s daughter. But she found nothing. This was her own river journey.

  Ulrik would have loved the story and would have encouraged her to write it down, but she only wanted to bury the nightmare in forgetfulness.

  After an hour she got up and, wrapped in a blanket, walked to the bathroom on unsteady legs. She knew what had to be done. The visit of the woman from the police had shaken her more than she first had realized. There was something in Ann Lindell’s gaze that bothered her, as if she had grasped more than she had let show.

  But mostly it was Lindell’s ease that worried Laura, who had found herself during the conversation enjoying her time with the policewoman. She liked her voice, her slightly careful movements, and the little smile that was so well suited to self-irony.

  Laura did not want to be disarmed by conversation. She feared the friendly words that could at any moment be transformed into their opposite.

  She had been deceived so many times, had paid friendship premiums which, when the insurance policy matured, turned out to contain nothing but unpaid deductibles. Now was another time—the time of freedom— and no police officer in the world, however well-meaning she seemed, was going to be allowed to alter Laura’s plans.

  A couple of days, then she would conquer that little restaurant by the sea. A small pub, whose crooked doors never closed properly, with one table that leaned worryingly and where the staff never asked if you wanted the check. An establishment that at the next severe fall storm risked being pulled out to sea and churned into firewood.

  This pub existed. Laura knew it. She had seen it once.

  Twenty-four

  Gusten Ander had no blood ties to the infamous murderer, the one who was the last man to be executed in Sweden. The fact that they shared the same name was something that Ander had had pointed out to him many times, but more so before. Now it was rare that anyone joked about his name. It was because of the worsening school system, he believed, or because oral storytelling traditions had changed. One hundred years ago the hunt for Alfred Ander and the dramatic execution was the climax of a thrilling tale. Now it was everyday fare. Who reacted if someone was executed? That happened on TV every day.

  Therefore he was amazed when his young opponent, after some hesi
tation, posed the question. Gusten Ander smiled enigmatically and continued setting up his pieces.

  “Could be,” he said after a while.

  The young man, Tobias Sandström, who Ander judged to be about nineteen years, gave him a quick glance, dropped the black queen on the floor, and blushed.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “I’m amazed you’ve heard the story.”

  “We read about it at school and of course it’s a pretty exciting thing,” Tobias said and overturned both of Ander’s theories in one blow.

  “White or black, that is the question,” he said and held out both hands.

  Tobias pointed to the right one and got black. Ander made a move immediately and Tobias started by thinking and that made Ander thoughtful in turn. Is it really so much to think about? he thought irritably.

  Then Tobias made his move and Ander countered at once.

  “Are you new to the club?” Ander asked and broke one of his own principles: never to begin a personal conversation during a game.

  Tobias nodded and moved.

  “Recently moved,” he said curtly, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

  Ander smiled quietly to himself and made his move.

  The unexpected attack came at the eleventh move. But perhaps it wasn’t so unexpected, Ander had seen almost everything, but the way in which the young player proceeded bewildered Ander for several moments.

  He countered immediately and was convinced the game would be over in a dozen more moves. He sighed, another strike against his own rules, and waited for the next move, which was what he had foreseen.

  A couple of minutes later he lost his second piece. Sandström attacked with a pawn and left the board free for a bishop that now threatened a white knight.

  Ander bounced off his chair.

  “I have it!” he cried.

  All the players in the room looked up in terror. Afterward Jonasson would tell over and over again for those that could be bothered to listen how the silence after Ander’s outburst had felt intensely frightening.

  “You are trying the variant from Barcelona!” he said loudly.

  Ander looked around the large room. He could not complain about the lack of attention.

  “You remember it, right?”

  Everyone looked blank except Lind, who was a chess historian of a high order.

  Lind left his game, came over, and stopped to study the board.

  “Do you remember the name of that Basque?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Ander said absently.

  “In the middle of a raging civil war. Do you remember what Lundin wrote?” Lind continued, and lost himself in a discussion of the late nineteen thirties. He had written an article about the world championships in Argentina that started on the same day as World War II. As the only member to have played against the legendary Gideon Ståhlberg, and to achieve a draw at that, he felt justified in launching into old anecdotes at any moment.

  “You will have to excuse me,” Ander said and turned to his opponent, “but I give up the game.”

  “Give up?” Lind said, baffled. “But you have it in the bag!”

  “There’s something else that’s more important. Thank you,” he said and stretched out his hand to the astonished Sandström, and immediately departed.

  Doubt came as Ander was turning the key in the ignition. Suddenly the idea seemed completely preposterous. How many were familiar with Antonov’s exhibition match from 1937?

  He himself had read about it during the sixties and been completely fascinated. Not only the frame of civil war and gunfire in the streets between the different factions on the republican side—the process of the tournament itself and especially the match between Antonov and Urberuaga.

  From what he could recall Antonov was as old as the century and had been a grand master for many years. He had played all of the greats. The Basque, who came from Ea, a small coastal village outside Bilbao, had recently turned twenty and was completely unknown in the chess world.

  Ander rolled out from the Fyris School’s parking lot, driving past the half finished new police building, and checked the time. He knew that it was Lindell’s investigation. But could he call her this late?

  He and Lindell had not had much to do with one another. Of course they had met on occasion and had collaborated to some extent on some previous cases, but not more than that. If it had been an older, male colleague he would not have hesitated. As it was it felt strange to call a woman at half past nine in the evening.

  He decided to call Ottosson instead. He knew the old wolf well. They had even played bandy together, thirty years—and almost as many kilos—ago.

  He called the communications exchange and got Ottosson’s home number. If his chess theory was correct Ottosson would have nothing against getting this call so late.

  Luckily it was Ottosson himself who answered.

  “Hi Otto, this is Ander. I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

  He realized how idiotic the question was. To call a policeman with a work-related question was to disturb him, it was that simple, and he corrected himself right away.

  “Of course I am, but this is important. It’s about the serial killer. I think I know who the final target will be.”

  “This sounds like something,” Ottosson said and Ander could not tell from his voice how imposed upon he felt.

  “It’s Queen Silvia.”

  Ottosson reaction to Ander’s explanation was unanticipated. Ander had to hold the cell phone ten centimeters from his ear in order not to be deafened by his colleague’s peals of laughter.

  “I’m serious,” he said when Ottosson had collected himself somewhat.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “You know I haven’t,” Ander said sharply, “do you want to hear me out?”

  “Okay, I can tell this at the club later. I never have any good jokes to contribute.”

  Ten minutes later Ottosson was bent over in the hall clumsily tying his shoes. Asta Ottosson stood behind him, looking at her husband with a mixture of irritation and tenderness.

  “Is it the Queen’s Lifeguards coming to the rescue? Do you want any help with those laces?”

  Ottosson straightened up, red in the face.

  “Ander is no court jester,” he said. “Certainly the idea sounds completely crazy, but what if it’s true?”

  Gusten Ander laid out his hypothesis as methodically as he could. Ottosson immediately explained that he didn’t play chess, so Ander started with the basics. He described the tournament in Barcelona, the commotion the game between Urberuaga and Antonov had caused, and he also summed up the remarkable life of the Basque player.

  “You mean that this game is world famous, like Beamon’s long jump in Mexico?” Ottosson asked. “That in my ignorance I’ve overlooked this?”

  “Not exactly,” Ander said. “It’s famous in chess but not among the general public.”

  “Among chess nerds, in other words.”

  Ottosson looked thoughtful. Ander knew that everything weighed in the balance in this moment.

  “Is it described in any books?”

  Now Ander knew Ottosson was hooked.

  “Yes, I’ve probably read about it in six or so articles. There are probably more. I can ask around. You can probably search the Web.”

  “Let’s do this,” Ottosson said. “You put together a report about this game, where you can read about it, what’s been written recently. No long history. Can you have it ready tomorrow morning?”

  Ander nodded. He would start at once.

  “It’s urgent, of course,” Ottosson said. “She’ll be here in three days.”

  “What is she doing here?”

  “She’s going to open some home,” Ottosson said distractedly and Ander understood that he was thinking about which directions the investigation should now take.

  “But can anyone be so damned crazy?” Ottosson burst out suddenly. “It seems so
unbelievable, so, what can you say . . . ?”

  “. . . so deliberately calculating,” Ander filled in.

  “It’s like it’s been taken from an English television series.”

  “I never watch crime shows,” Ander said.

  “No, you’re too smart for that.” Ottosson chuckled. “You figure everything out twenty moves in advance.”

  “Don’t we have to get in touch with the Royal Court?”

  “Maybe not just yet. This is such a delicate thing, a slightly daring analysis. We’re going to proceed with this all calm and collected.”

  They went their separate ways outside the entrance to the police station. It was close to eleven o’clock in the evening on Tuesday, the twenty-first of October. On the twenty-fourth Queen Silvia was scheduled to come to Uppsala.

  After several hundred meters Ottosson stopped short. Vaksala Square lay deserted except for a young couple walking diagonally across it. Ottosson could tell at a glance that they were newly in love. The man had his arm around the woman’s shoulders. They laughed from time to time. Ottosson followed their stroll until they turned the corner by Bodén’s Bicycle Shop in the Gerd block. A block that was now in danger of being torn down because a majority in city government had gotten the idea of building a House of Music right there. It was doubtful if they fully represented the district’s citizens. Ottosson was convinced there would be protests.

  Just the other day, outside the bicycle shop, he had run into a scarred social democratic politician who had complained. His career was over but he couldn’t keep from expressing his concern over the state of affairs.

  “I’m too old to be told what to do,” he said with a crooked smile and made a sweeping gesture with his cane. “It’s worse with the young ones who have to vote against their conscience.”

  “The party whip,” Ottosson said.

  The old politician nodded.

  “The ones who think differently are forced to go on sick leave when it’s time for a vote in parliament,” he snorted. “Prestige has come into it. I was also behind the House of Music, but now when the costs are getting out of hand you have to say no.”