Life Deluxe (4 page)

He was working on something else nowadays. Hägerström didn’t know what exactly.

An hour later he was standing outside the door to Torsfjäll’s office. The inspector had asked him to come immediately.

Torsfjäll didn’t have his office on Polhemsgatan, where all the other hotshots were. He also wasn’t to be found at one of the other ordinary police stations in the district. The office was situated in a much more humble space—Torsfjäll carried on in the building reserved for the department in charge of the service of process. Serving defendants their processes: after the seizure department, it was probably the dullest, least sexy thing a cop could do. But Hägerström suspected that he was actually involved in more sophisticated business.

He had no idea what Torsfjäll wanted from him. But asking him to come here had not been a question. It had been an order.

He knocked on the door and stepped inside.

Inspector Torsfjäll’s room looked like a museum. Or rather, more like a kitschy art gallery. He had framed and hung every single diploma and every single course certificate and credential he had ever received. There was a diploma from the Police Academy, anno 1980, a certificate from a shooting test, a coat of arms from the Norrmalm’s SWAT team dated 1988, a certificate for a number of courses in criminology taken at Stockholm University, courses in DNA-search and wiretapping techniques, leadership distinctions, the public prosecutor’s police courses parts one to five, certificates attesting to collaborations with Interpol, the State Police Department in Texas, and different police units within the EU.

Hägerström could come up with only one word to describe the room:
unpolicelike
. He wondered how Torsfjäll had had time to work these last twenty-five years. What’s more, the inspector had hung up so many photos of children and grandchildren that you might get the idea that he was a Mormon.

Torsfjäll interrupted his staring. “Welcome. Please, have a seat. Aren’t they cute?”

“Absolutely. How many are there?” Hägerström asked, even though he had already figured it out.

“Seven. And I’ve babysat them all.”

“That’s nice.”

Hägerström sat down. The chair frame creaked when he leaned back.

Torsfjäll’s desk was bare except for a file lying in front of him. Rays of sun were streaming in from the window. Not a single speck of dust gleamed in the light, Hägerström noted.

Torsfjäll opened the file in front of him on the desk. “I don’t know how familiar you are with developments within organized crime in the Stockholm area today, so I thought I would go over some of the background information.”

Hägerström looked him in the eyes. Still didn’t understand where this was all going. But he didn’t ask. Let Torsfjäll say what he wanted to say first.

The inspector began describing the reality in the city. He counted off numbers, statistics, theoretical truths. They’d made thirty hits against the new designer drug mephedrone just this winter. New gangs were being created in the projects faster than you could say
integration policy
. Internet fraud had risen 300 percent since the New Year alone.

Suddenly he fell silent. Hägerström waited for him to continue.

Torsfjäll smiled. Then he leaned forward over the desk and brushed Hägerström’s arm. “Let me give you some more background information.”

Hägerström felt his arm twitch, but he shut the feeling off so that it wouldn’t show.

“Five years ago we made one of the biggest cocaine hits ever in Swedish history. Operation Snowstorm. Over two hundred and twenty pounds. Do you know how they’d smuggled that shit in?”

“Yes, I remember. They grew the drugs into vegetables.”

“Good, good. You’re familiar with the case. We pinched a couple of the guys who were involved. One is Mrado Slovovic, infamous hit man and midlevel boss in the so-called Yugo mafia, which is controlled by Radovan Kranjic. Another is Nenad Korhan, who was also part of Kranjic’s network and active within the narcotics section of the operation. The third is named Abdulkarim Haij, an Arab who sold for the Yugoslavs. And then there was a strange bird too.”

Hägerström interrupted him, “Johan Westlund, JW, the guy from up north who lived a double life. He was spared the murder charge, was convicted on aggravated drug charges.”

Torsfjäll smiled his broadest smile yet. Hägerström thought it must be impossible for a human being to smile broader than that.

“You
are
good, Hägerström. How come you know these details?”

“The case interested me.”

“Excellent. There’s obviously nothing wrong with your memory either. So Johan Westlund was a very different kind of character. Maybe that’s why he only got eight years. Considering the enormous amount of cocaine involved, he should’ve gotten fourteen, if you ask me. But the courts in this country are pussies. In reality, since he’ll probably get released early, he won’t end up with more than five years. He’s being released on parole soon. At present, JW is serving his final months in the Salberga Penitentiary.”

Hägerström tried to analyze what Torsfjäll was talking about, but he still didn’t see how it was all connected to him.

Maybe Torsfjäll could tell what he was thinking by looking at him. He said, “Don’t worry—soon you come in.” He glanced down at the file on the desk.

“Hägerström, you are simply made for the operation I’ve been planning. I’ve looked through your history and your career. Let me explain. You grew up in a grand forty-three-thousand-square-foot apartment on swanky Östermalm. Your father was the CEO of Svenska Skogs AB, a successful company on the commodities market. Your mother was a physical therapist but comes from a wealthy background. Old money, as it’s called. Landowning money, as I like to say. You have a brother who’s a lawyer and a sister who’s a real estate broker, but you chose a health care focus in high school at Östra Real. A solid family with predictable career choices, to put it simply. Except for yours.”

Hägerström put one hand over the other. “I don’t recall you saying this was a Stasi review.”

Torsfjäll chortled. This time it seemed more genuine. “I understand if this seems strange. But there is a point, I promise. When you were a senior in high school, you were evaluated for your military service. You were in good shape already, after years of tennis training at the Royal Tennis Academy. But even with your background, your results were extraordinary. It was easy for you to be admitted as a coastal ranger in Vaxholm—you would’ve gotten in anywhere.”

This run-through was feeling stranger and stranger. So far everything was true, even if it wasn’t exactly like this stuff was confidential or
anything. Though Hägerström was flattered, he wanted to know where this was going.

“You finished after two years with top marks,” Torsfjäll continued. “In your final certificate I note the following statement, for instance.”

The inspector flipped through the file. “ ‘Martin Hägerström belongs to a small group of trained rangers who can be trusted with any kind of assignment, no matter the external circumstances or level of difficulty.’ ”

He grinned. “If I were you, I’d hang a recommendation like that on my wall.”

Hägerström refrained from commenting.

Torsfjäll kept talking, “But then, you did something that wasn’t exactly comme il faut in your family’s circles. You applied to the Police Academy. Or rather, you were headhunted by the police. That was good for us. And now everyone says you will be made inspector any day. Not bad.”

Torsfjäll obviously wanted to recruit him for something, since he was showering him with flattery. The inspector already seemed to know everything, even Martin’s family’s attitude toward the police profession.

“And in this context, there is one more thing about you that I’d like to mention. You have, I am sorry to say, gotten a divorce. And lost custody of your son. I am really very sorry. Some women are cunts.”

Hägerström didn’t know what to say. This entire conversation was strange: a summary of his life that mostly resembled a tribute. And now this stuff about Anna. Sure, she’d taken his son away from him, and that was unforgivable. But no one was going to call her a cunt.

Torsfjäll regarded Hägerström. “I may have used an inappropriate word. I apologize for that. But now I’m finally getting to the heart of things, so to speak. You are perfect for a job I have in mind. A special kind of operation, with permission from the feds.”

“I suspected that you were going to say something like that.”

Torsfjäll was sitting completely still now. Only a faint smile danced on his lips. His eyes did not radiate a speck of life—only his voice was human.

“I wonder if you want to become a UC operative.”

Silence.

“Perhaps you can guess who it is I want you to approach?”

Hägerström waited. Sure, he had taken a course for undercover operatives, but only one. He had no idea whom Torsfjäll wanted him to
approach. Then he thought about Torsfjäll’s lengthy run-through. The way cocaine and amphetamines were routed into Sweden. The Yugo network, Radovan Kranjic—the godfather of godfathers. Hägerström didn’t speak Serbian and wasn’t well versed in their culture. Other names popped into his mind. Operation Snowstorm: one of the biggest hits in Swedish police history. Mrado Slovovic. Nenad Korhan. Abdulkarim Haij. The odd man out: Johan “JW” Westlund.

The pieces fell into place.

“You want me to approach JW,” he said.

“Exactly. I want you to gather information from Johan Westlund and his circles.”

“I understand. You think I’d be good for the job because JW played the part of a Stockholmer, even though he was actually from up north. You think I’d be good because my background conforms to JW’s striving to rise among Stureplan’s party crowd. You think he’ll look up to me and that I’ll be able to get under his skin. I just have one question: why exactly do you need an infiltrator?”

“It’s not just any old infiltration operation,” Torsfjäll responded. “We want you to start working in JW’s unit as a corrections officer. The feds suspect that he’s currently using one of the screws there, Christer Starre, as a mule somehow.”

“You’ve given this some thought, I see.”

“I give everything thought, always,” the inspector responded, missing the irony in Hägerström’s comment. “There is one more circumstance that makes you perfect.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t have any children—you’re alone.”

“That’s incorrect. I have Pravat.”

“I know. Of course you have Pravat, your adopted son. But not on paper. You don’t have custody anymore. As far as the outside world is concerned, it appears as though you’re single, without kids.”

Torsfjäll fell silent. Hägerström wondered if he expected an answer right away.

The inspector crossed one leg over the other. “There’s a war out there.”

“No, there’s no war.”

For the first time during their conversation, Torsfjäll stopped smiling. “Why not?”

“Because war has an end,” Hägerström said.

“You’re absolutely right,” Torsfjäll spoke slowly. “And that is exactly why you’re perfect. No one is going to try to go after your son in the unlikely event that something goes wrong. No one can see that you have a son. We can’t find anyone better than you. There is no one better than you.”

Natalie was waiting with mixed emotions. Viktor was meeting Mom and Dad for the first time tonight. That was a big deal in and of itself—but almost the bigger deal was the fact that he was coming over to their house. To sit on their leather couches, look at the moldings in the ceiling and the busts that Dad’d had made of himself and Mom. He was going to sip their tea and probably be served
rakia
. He would eye Mom’s potted plants and laugh at her framed picture of the king that was hanging in the guest bathroom, where the smell of air fresheners was so dense that you could hardly breathe.

But above all: the biggest deal was that Viktor was going to meet Dad.

Dad
.

Natalie’d come home from Paris a few weeks before. She’d been there for six months. Studied French two days a week, and the rest of the time she’d worked in a restaurant that was owned by a friend of Dad’s—working there had been better for her French than being in school. She felt more at home in a restaurant than in most other places. Dad’d been bringing her along to his joints since she was little. And at fifteen, she’d started working at different restaurants in Stockholm—not because she needed the money but because Dad thought it was important that she did right for herself. In the beginning, she waitressed mostly. But later she worked the bar and ran the cash register at the entrance to clubs. During the final years, she’d been head of the weekend staff at Clara’s Kitchen & Bar. She knew that industry inside and out. But she didn’t plan on staying in it forever.

She’d met Viktor a few months before she left for Paris. He was a good guy who knew half the city and had the right attitude about life. And he was hot. Sure, maybe he wasn’t the love of her life—but this was the first time a boyfriend would be permitted to come for an audience. It was important that Dad and Mom learn that she could keep company.