“Good! Then we’ll assemble at eighteen hundred hours at meeting place three.”
“And then?”
“You’ll have to crash with your buddy.”
“It won’t work. He doesn’t know anything.”
Meeting place 3, that was the east end of the parking lot outside IKEA in Uppsala.
“The others will do reconnaissance, then we’ll lie low. You’ll have to take care of chow and the rest.”
Everything was decided. What “the rest” was, he didn’t understand. But Nyström probably knew, he always did.
“We can’t drag him in, he’s innocent” was Erland’s final resigned objection.
“Just keep your mouth shut now,” said Give, but with a laugh.
“Psychopath,” Erland said in a whisper.
“Quite right,” Give answered and clicked off the call.
When Erland “Smulan” Edman was eleven years old, he got a kitten. He missed it now, how it rolled up on his lap, purring like a low-pitched sewing machine.
Later it disappeared, maybe run over, maybe stolen, maybe simply longing for freedom. In moments of worry he would think about the kitten.
He understood that there was no turning back. Olsson and Nyström would set out the bomb, many people would die this Saturday too. Erland wished he was dead himself, but immediately thought about Li’l Erland. It couldn’t end like this.
Forty-Seven
Bodin started talking about Norberg as they passed Gränby Center and continued past Rasbo. There he fell silent. Sammy heaved a sigh of relief.
“You understand,” Bodin said, resuming his hometown inventory as they passed the approach toward Upplands Tuna. “North-Jonsson meant a great deal to my family. He played accordion and fiddle equally well, had a pretty good singing voice and he was loyal.”
“Was there a South-Jonsson?”
“Damn straight there was! But he wasn’t too bright and sank himself in the lake, but had sense enough to take enough scrap iron with him so that he stayed there.” He went on like that, about country characters and fiddlers, wise old women and fools.
“Are you nervous?”
Bodin smiled. “Is it noticeable? I guess I take hold of things that I can understand, clarify, what happened one time, what I’m used to” was the explanation he gave. Sammy nodded, thought he understood. He got the impulse to tell Bodin about his shipwrecked marriage, Jutland, and the whole thing, but decided that it was too soon, it could wait.
They turned off of Route 288 and were silent until they saw the Welcome to Tilltorp sign.
“That probably doesn’t apply to everyone,” Bodin observed.
The narrow gravel road that led up toward Rothe’s abandoned animal farm was very dusty. Had he ever visited the village when it was rainy? He said something about that, and Bodin hummed in response. “We’re visible from far off,” Sammy continued, who also felt a growing worry.
* * *
The first thing they saw was the donkey. It was lying by the pond with its legs outstretched and the ungainly head close to the edge, as if it was reaching for water, but the poor creature would never drink again.
The two policemen stood side by side and observed him, the half-closed eyes and the open wound in the throat, where the blood had coagulated. It was as if their worry was materialized by the cadaver.
“Murder,” Bodin said unexpectedly hard, as if he were spitting out the word. Otherwise he had no problem talking about hunting and butchering.
“Where’s Rothe? This must be his work.” Sammy sensed the worst, but called his name anyway so that it echoed in the farmyard. The desolation could not be illustrated more clearly. Bodin walked toward the house as if on a given signal, while Sammy chose the barn.
Sammy opened one half of the door, which actually smelled of fresh paint, in an environment otherwise dominated by the onset of decay. It reeked of urine, like cat piss mixed with the acidic odor of silage that had seasoned.
Against the far wall net cages were piled, mesh rolls and fence posts were in a muddle on the concrete floor. On the other short wall rope, loops, and chains were hanging in a certain order. That was probably where Rothe retrieved the rope that ended his life.
He was hanging from a beam in the roof. A short distance from his feet was a rabbit hutch, which he must have climbed up on and then kicked away to dangle freely. Sammy saw immediately that there was nothing to do. Rothe had succeeded in his effort.
It was not the first time that Sammy had seen a suicide, but it was definitely the most damaged and mournful figure he had seen dangling from a noose.
“Do you think he knew that his half sister was in the smithy?”
Sammy turned around. Bodin stood in the open doorway, and in the light that came into the barn’s dusty darkness his profile looked slightly satanic.
“Impossible to know,” said Sammy.
“Did he kill Daniel Mattsson?”
“No idea, but I would like to believe so.”
“The laughing Hazara will go free, in any case in the question of homicide or manslaughter,” said Bodin, and Sammy did not know his colleague well enough to decide if he thought that was good or bad.
“Now the Frimans can sail alone,” Bodin observed.
“Will you call?”
Bodin left the barn immediately and without objections. It was the kind of trivial thing that made Sammy like his colleague. He sat down on the rabbit hutch, sneaked a glance at the body, and gave Sam Rothe a kind of posthumous justice. No other services would be read over him.
Forty-Eight
Lars “Lasse” Henriksson was worried. He didn’t like trouble. He was a simple man, with straightforward thoughts and an open mind. That was the image he tried to project anyway. He had a hard time with irony and mixed messages, as well as violence, trickery, and meanness. A nice man, who wanted to see good in everyone. He thought that way about the man in the forest too. The one named Patrik.
His wife Eva-Britt was of a different sort. “Of course you have to call the police,” she said, without hesitation. She mistrusted everything and everyone. The immigrant who passed out flyers in the town house development where they’d lived for twenty years was likely a presumptive, even hardened burglar, whose only goal was to look for suitable targets. The cashier at the ICA grocery store who counted out the wrong change had a system for her deceit, that was obvious. The postman surreptitiously read their mail to get at family secrets.
“Not a soul has lived in that cabin for years. I’m sure some gang has taken it over.”
“On the contrary, he seemed extremely lonely and a little confused. I think he’s unwell.”
“A dangerous gang,” Eva-Britt repeated, and for once she was right in her suspicions.
Lars Henriksson called at last. What settled the decision was that he had heard a salvo. It was an automatic weapon, no doubt about that, and what recreational hunter or pistol shooter had such a gun?
Finally Lars Henriksson was transferred to Nils Stolpe, who immediately realized the significance of his observation: mysterious man in the forest, not far from Rasbo where the Rönn brothers lived, staying in an isolated cabin, and as frosting on the cake a salvo from an automatic weapon. He asked the witness not to say a word about what he’d seen, not to anyone. “What about my wife?” Henriksson objected. “Ask her to keep quiet.” That gave Henriksson a good laugh.
* * *
They ended the call. It struck Stolpe that it could be the missing Erland Edman who was nesting in the spruce forest. According to his wife, Mirjam, it was as if he’d been swallowed up by the earth, and she’d started to get really worried. She’d tried to reach him several times, but Erland hadn’t answered. When at last she called his acquaintance in Skåne, he denied any knowledge of a scaffolding job for Erland. Early in the morning Stolpe and two colleagues, Eva Briis and Hampus Book, made a visit to the Edman home, and that had not made Mirjam any calmer. Nothing of interest was found in the apartment. Nothing that co
uld link Erland to missing explosives, Hökarängen, or contacts with radical right-wing groups.
Eva Briis, who according to Stolpe was a good police officer despite the fact that she was a woman, sat down with Mirjam in the kitchen and tried to coax something out of her that could lead further in the search for her husband. In vain. The only thing she could say was that he would never do anything “criminal” that would risk his contact with Li’l Erland, their son. She said that with a tone of defiant pride in her voice, and Eva Briis really wanted to believe her, but was too experienced to accept that.
* * *
Stolpe first called Sammy Nilsson, and then Bodin. The three met in the command room. Stolpe had set up map sheet 70 in the Sweden series, “Gimo,” and pointed out where the cabin was located. “Isolated to say the least,” said Bodin. “I had no idea there was so much forest in Uppland.” Sure enough the map was dominated by green, with only small sections of yellow that indicated an open landscape.
“That was where the riches came from,” Sammy explained, who during his trips in north Uppland with Angelika had read up on this. “The mines needed wood and the iron processing needed charcoal.”
“It sounds like at home in Norberg,” said Bodin.
“And Saturday nights needed keyed fiddles,” Stolpe added. “Took a course many years ago. It was exactly in Gimo.”
“That’s not far from our old colleague Lindell,” Bodin observed. “Who said that the countryside is boring? Charcoal kilns, keyed fiddles, blue cheese, and arsonists.”
Sammy never ceased to be amazed by some of his colleagues.
“We’ll go there,” Stolpe decided, who gladly saw himself as commander, Sammy realized that. “We’ll need assistance, but for one Edman we don’t need a SWAT team.”
“He’s armed, if that information is correct,” Bodin objected.
“Henriksson was certain. He’s been in the civil defense and ought to know how automatic fire sounds,” said Sammy.
Stolpe took no notice. “A patrol at the forest road that Henriksson talked about, it must be here,” his meaty index finger finding a point on the map. “And two carloads of alert constables at the entry road to the cabin. Dog too. If we can get a helicopter in the air it would be good. That’s enough for one ‘Smula.’ Vests on and reinforcement weapons too.”
Bodin and Sammy gave each other a look. Sammy smiled, but had a nagging thought that someone would have to pay for this arrangement.
* * *
An hour later they were on their way. It had taken a while, and some difficulty, to anchor the response. There was a lot of nervousness in the building. Everyone wanted their rear ends covered in case anything were to go wrong, but Stolpe’s enthusiasm was boundless.
Another forty minutes later everything and everyone was in place. It wasn’t possible to scare up a helicopter, however. Sammy picked up Henriksson to serve as a guide. It was deemed necessary to find the right location as quickly as possible, if Erland Edman, or whoever it might be, were to get the idea to flee on the worn path which according to Henriksson ran from the cabin to the forest road. After having performed his mission as guide he would be brought back to civilization, that is, the police station in Gimo, which now suddenly, and to the Gimo residents’ surprise, was heavily manned. Gimo experienced some excitement, and Arnold, a notorious blogger from Ytternuttö, had already thrown out wordy speculations and honed drastic formulations, convinced as he was that the crowd of police officers was connected to the invasion of darkies.
* * *
Stolpe and Bodin, who were positioned at the approach to the cabin, made a final review before they moved ahead. They were prepared to be met by a locked gate, but they had equipment to force every obstacle. They had discussed bringing a wheel loader or tractor, which could simply push aside boom and posts, but that was judged too noisy. The decision was to advance from the gate on foot, to attract as little attention as possible. Once the main force of thirty police officers, one of whom was a dog handler, reached the cabin, the gate would be removed and a police van and two ambulances would be brought in.
It was about eight hundred meters to the gate. During the slow advance they had radio contact with Sammy, who was by the forest road with the guide and half a dozen uniformed colleagues. Everything seemed to be working.
“What a hell of a forest,” said Stolpe.
“It’s no forest,” Bodin muttered. “But this is how it looks these days.”
They reached the boom, left the cars, and continued on foot. Stolpe lagged, but Bodin, who was used to moving in the woods and fields, had no problem following the more energetic uniformed colleagues. They sensed that perhaps they were writing crime history, drawn into the country’s most extensive terrorist investigation, and they were eager to get there.
* * *
Sammy heard the crackling in the earbud before Stolpe’s hoarse voice reported that they were at the cabin. The guide Henriksson had just returned to the logging road with a policeman as escort. The cabin was visible between the trees. It looked like any other cabin: stone foundation, red siding, white corners, brick chimney, and a small porch. Sammy answered Stolpe that he too was on the scene and that the place looked completely dead. The curtains were drawn and there was no smoke from the chimney.
All according to plan, so far. Was there an Erland Edman, and was he a terrorist bomber? Were there others? Somehow they had assumed that Edman was alone, perhaps based on Henriksson’s testimony. Sammy tried to follow the advice he had once received about how he should breathe in pressure situations. Maybe it was humbug, but the mere idea made him relax.
“Nisse, no car is visible, but it may be in the barn,” he whispered to Stolpe.
“It’s a shed,” Bodin interjected.
“I love you,” Sammy whispered. “I’ll go up and check from the back side. Wait here for now.”
It took him a couple of minutes to make his way there. First he was forced to walk back a little, then sneak ahead in a crouch, screened by a low boulder and thicket of bushes he identified as waxberry. Hidden by a root cellar he peered ahead; no fluttering curtains from the windows. For two or three meters he was almost unprotected, only a few scrubby currant bushes passably covered him. He wriggled slowly forward, centimeter by centimeter, thinking that any rapid movement would more easily be noticed from the house. The overgrown grass smelled like Jutland, a Jutland that he would probably never experience again, and he had to suppress the thought of digging in and staying there.
“Shed,” he mumbled and breathed out. He had managed the maneuver. There was no window but some wide cracks between the wallboards worn from age. He peeked in, at first seeing nothing before his eyes got used to the darkness inside. The gleam of sheet metal and a faint reflection of a headlight. The discovery created a double feeling: the croft was occupied, and could house a bomber or something as simple as an ordinary bandit who was in hiding, or even more likely, a lonely man, perhaps slightly deranged as Lars Henriksson hinted, who amused himself with a completely legal weapon. All alternatives involved hazards on a sliding scale, from mortal danger to discomfort.
By moving a little he could see in between a wider crack and read the license plate. He reported the letter and number combination to his colleagues. After a minute came the answer; it was a Volvo V40 and Erland Edman was listed as owner.
Mortal danger, in other words. Sammy was struck by the thought of a booby trap. He knew very little about explosives and had never heard of Austrogel in particular before, but the mere thought of what Peppartorget in Hökarängen looked like made him report his suspicion to the others.
“Roger,” said Bodin.
* * *
The stillness was broken by Stolpe’s voice, amplified by an honorable old megaphone with 1.5 volt batteries. Sammy happened to think of an old American TV series, Hill Street Blues.
“This is the police, the house is surrounded,” Nils Stolpe intoned.
Half a minute passed. All that was heard
was a crow cawing. Sammy glimpsed it sailing across the sky.
“Erland Edman, we know you’re in the cabin. Do the simple and right thing: Come out with your hands in the air.” No reaction. The crow’s call faded out in the distance. Sammy peered at the gable of the shed.
“We have to talk,” continued Stolpe, who had put himself in what was surely an uncomfortable crouching position. He held the megaphone in one hand. “General Patton,” Sammy mumbled, forgetting that it was broadcast in everyone’s earbuds. Faint giggling was heard.
“Come out, we have to talk,” Stolpe repeated.
The response was a salvo of automatic fire through a broken window. Sammy saw his colleague being thrown backward. The megaphone made an arc in the air. Furious activity broke out over the radio. Several of the uniformed colleagues answered the fire, without any order being given, peppering the house so that chips flew in all directions and glass shattered. The war had come to the Gimo forest.
A new salvo came from inside the house. For a moment Sammy thought he saw a barrel sticking out through a window. Could he crawl closer? That would surely be madness. Erland Edman was serious. He could quickly change windows, and then Sammy would be easy prey on the open space between shed and house. Where is the SWAT team? Sammy had time to think before a motorcycle was kick-started behind the cabin, he recognized the sound. A man with a bundle on his back, leaning forward over an old dirt bike, lurched off between the thickets and trees, almost drove right into a large stone but at the last second made an evasive maneuver, skidded, but managed to thunder on. Sammy could not help but admire how capably the driver made his way in the difficult terrain.
On the back side four men were placed, and Sammy heard how at least two of his colleagues opened fire. He screamed into his microphone. The motorcycle was swallowed up by the curtain of spruce. Bodin’s voice was heard over the radio: “Fuck, fuck, fuck this all to hell!”
The Night of the Fire: A Mystery Page 31