Misterioso (21 page)

He went inside and was directed to the jail. There he found an officer on duty who was about his own age. They immediately recognized the policeman in each other. That was how he looked—Policeman with a capital
P
. And Swedish.

“Norlander,” said Norlander.

“Jönsson,” said Jönsson, speaking with a distinct accent stemming from both Skåne and Gotland. “Vilhelm Jönsson. We’ve been expecting you. Peshkov is ready whenever you are.”

“I assume that you’re aware of the gravity of this investigation. There is nothing more important in Sweden today.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“So how do we do this? Does he speak English?”

“Fortunately, he does. An old, international seaman. I assume that it would have been inconvenient to have an interpreter present. If I understood you correctly.”

“We certainly do understand each other. Where is he?”

“In a soundproof room, as agreed. Shall we?”

Norlander nodded, and Vilhelm Jönsson led the way along several corridors, recruiting a couple of guards from the break room as they walked past. Then they all went down to the basement. The four men stopped outside a gray-painted steel door with a peephole.

Jönsson cleared his throat. “As you’ve explained,” he said, “because this investigation is classified, and for other reasons as well, we won’t be allowed to participate in the interrogation,
but we’ll stand guard outside. Here’s the panic button. Press it and we’ll be inside in a second.”

Norlander accepted the little box with the red button. He put it in his pocket. “Don’t look unless you have to,” he said calmly. “The less you know, the better. That way any eventual complaints will be directed to NCP management. It’s for the best.”

They unlocked the door and let him in. A table, two chairs, padded walls. Nothing more. Except for a small man wearing prison garb sitting on one of the chairs. A sharp face, skinny biceps.
The sinewy, ropy muscles of a sailor
, thought Norlander, assessing the man’s potential strength to resist—it wouldn’t be in his body, at any rate. The man stood up and greeted Norlander politely, “How do you do, sir?”

“Very brilliant, please,” said Norlander, placing a notebook and pen on the table before sitting down. “Sit down, thank you.”

The conversation proceeded, although not without certain linguistic infelicities. In the same knotty English, Norlander continued, “Let’s get right to the point, Mr. Alexey Peshkov. During a bad winter storm you and your crew ditched a hundred and twelve Iranian, Kurdish, and Indian refugees in two rubber rafts hundreds of yards off the east coast of Gotland, then headed back to Tallinn in your fishing boat. But the Swedish coast guard managed to stop your vessel before it left Swedish waters.”

“Very straight to the point,” said Peshkov.

Since irony wasn’t Norlander’s strong suit, his attempt to imitate Hultin’s icy tone came out a bit abruptly. “I need information,” he went on, “about the serial killings of Swedish businessmen that have occurred in Stockholm over the past few days.”

Alexey Peshkov’s jaw dropped. After he managed to close it again, he blurted out, “You must be joking!”

“I am not joking,” said Norlander and continued in the same
calm manner. “If you don’t give me the information I want, I have the authority to kill you right here and now. I’m specially trained for that. Do you understand?”

“I’m not buying this,” said Peshkov, eyeing Norlander’s slightly flabby build. At the same time, Norlander’s utterly composed steadiness of purpose brought a dubious expression to the man’s face. Norlander hammered home the point:

“We know that you’re part of a Russian-Estonian crime group headed by Viktor X, and that a couple of booze smugglers calling themselves Igor and Igor are in the same group. Correct?”

Peshkov didn’t say a word, but now he was on the alert.

“Correct?” Norlander repeated.

Still not a word.

“This is a soundproof room. Nothing that takes place in here will be heard by anyone else. The powers that I’ve been granted have no limit; they come from the highest authority. I want you to understand that and think carefully before you answer. Your personal welfare depends on the next answer you give.”

Peshkov closed his eyes; he seemed to think that he must be dreaming. This was something quite different from the good-natured Swedish police officers he’d met so far. Maybe he saw the glint of something monstrous in Norlander’s eyes. Maybe he’d seen that glint before.

“This is a democracy,” he said cautiously.

“Of course,” said Norlander. “And it’s going to remain so. But occasionally every democracy has to defend itself by using undemocratic means. Any sort of defense is actually by definition undemocratic. This is one instance when that will be made abundantly clear.”

“I’ve been in here for two months. I know absolutely nothing about any serial murders in Stockholm. I swear it.”

“Viktor X? Igor and Igor?” said Norlander, in exactly the
same tone. Somehow he realized that it was important not to change it.

Alexey Peshkov calculated the risks.

Norlander clearly saw that the man was contemplating the best way to postpone his own death for as long as possible. He gave him time to think but also slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. The sound of him clicking off the safety on his gun seemed to echo off the walls.

Peshkov sighed deeply. “I was a seaman on international routes during the entire Communist era. I kept out of the clutches of the KGB and GRU by constantly changing my identity. I scraped enough money together to buy my own fishing boat when the regime fell. For about a year I was an ordinary Russian-speaking fisherman from Tallinn, a bit oppressed but free.

“You might say that was our only free year, because then other forces came into play. I was contacted by anonymous protectors. First it was just money they wanted, payment for not setting fire to my boat or blowing it up. The usual protection racket. But soon it began to escalate. I was ordered to take on … transports of this type. This was my third. Tens of thousands of desperate refugees are stuck in the old Soviet Union, just waiting to be fleeced.

“I’ve never been anywhere near the boss; Viktor X is just a name, a myth. My contact was an Estonian by the name of Jüri Maarja. He’s supposedly close to Viktor X. I’ve never heard of any Igor and Igor, but the group has lots of booze smugglers, as well as all sorts of other smugglers in Northern Europe.”

Norlander was surprised by the man’s sudden volubility but didn’t let it show. “Addresses? Contact places?” he said quietly.

Peshkov shook his head. “They keep moving them around.”

Norlander studied Peshkov for a good long time. He couldn’t decide whether the man was a victim or a criminal or both. He
slapped his notebook against the table and stuck his pen in his breast pocket. “I’ll be leaving for Tallinn now. If it turns out that a single detail of what you’ve told me is wrong, or if it turns out that you haven’t told me everything, I’ll be back. Do you understand what that means?”

Peshkov stared down at the table without saying a word.

“Last chance to change or add anything,” said Norlander, standing up.

“That’s all I know,” Peshkov said, sounding resigned.

Viggo Norlander suddenly held out his hand toward Alexey Peshkov. The Russian-Estonian fisherman reluctantly got up and shook hands.

“How do you do, sir?” said Norlander.

Peshkov gave him a look that he would never forget.

Tallinn was a crazy city.

That’s what Viggo Norlander thought after being there only fifteen minutes. Later on he would by no means change his opinion.

He had trouble getting a rental car at the airport. Finally he headed out into the chaotic afternoon traffic, struggling to find his way with the help of an English-language tourist map. He ended up in Old Town, on the slopes of Toompea Hill, circling around as if inside a medieval labyrinth. Since he kept coming upon ancient walls with magnificent tall defensive turrets, he almost thought he was still in Visby.

But in reality the city was nameless, a mere backdrop for his single-minded purpose. Street signs, traffic signs, billboards in a foreign language—it was like in a movie. He was a stranger and wanted to stay that way. Everything should remain nameless, no more than a backdrop. Nothing would be allowed to distract his attention. He felt as if new blood were pumping through his
body. This was what he was meant for. Enduring all those idle hours in life just so he could arrive at this specific moment.

Finally he located the big, modern police headquarters. He parked illegally and went inside. He entered the reception area, a small room where the old Soviet bureaucratic drabness fought in vain against the modern Western interior design. In the same way, the duty officer was both accommodating and dismissive in a strange mixture that Norlander had never encountered before. Under other circumstances he might have been surprised. Now he was merely stubborn.

“Superintendent Kalju Laikmaa,” he said for the third time in his broken English. “He’s expecting me.”

“I don’t see any Swedish police officer in my authorization documents,” said the young man, managing to sound both stern and apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he added for the third time.

“At least give him a call,” said Norlander with composure, using the icy tone that had proved so successful at the Visby jail. Finally the duty officer did as he asked. He sat for a while with the phone receiver expertly held between his shoulder and chin as he stirred his cup of coffee. When he finally spoke, his words sounded like Finnish with a bunch of misplaced
o
s. Eventually he hung up and said with politely disguised annoyance: “The superintendent will come down and get you, Mr. Norrland.”

“Please,” said Mr. Norrland courteously.

It took only a minute before he heard the elevator in the lobby of police headquarters, and out stepped a fair-haired man wearing a wrinkled corduroy suit and glasses of the type that were handed out free of charge when Norlander was doing his military service in the distant past.

“Norlander, I presume,” said the man, holding out his hand. Norlander shook it. The man had a firm handshake. “I’m Laikmaa.”

They got in the elevator and rode up to the fifth floor.

“You could have told me that you were on your way,” said Laikmaa, speaking with an elegant East Coast American accent. “Then we could have avoided all the trouble.”

“I wanted my arrival to go unnoticed, as much as possible,” said Norlander, resorting to the icy tone that was by now well practiced. “There’s too much at stake.”

“I see,” said Laikmaa drily. “Over here businessmen as well as others are dying in hordes. We’re living in a new climate of violence. Everybody interprets the laws of the market economy any way they like. What was suppressed under the Soviets is now bubbling up with all the force we had expected. Our job was undoubtedly easier when we were the tools of the oppressor, but hardly more pleasant. We now live in a state within a state that has exactly the same ability to infiltrate as the union of states did in the past. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if your arrival is already known within certain circles. We need to be very careful at all times about what we say and reveal. Just like before. There are ears everywhere. Come in.”

They went into a pleasant little office. Dead plants lined the sills of the windows facing Old Town and the castle with its imposing tower, called Pikk Hermann. But for Norlander the view didn’t exist. He sat down in the visitor’s chair in front of Laikmaa’s desk.

“The day starts with an electronic sweep of my office,” said Laikmaa, lighting a cigarette. “To make sure that no listening devices have been planted during the night. But of course that doesn’t prevent long-distance bugging. In my position as head of the nominal fight against the mafia in this country, I’m a popular target. As far as the mafia is—”

“You of all people should know,” said Norlander coolly.

“The more I know, the more I realize how much I don’t know,” Laikmaa said sagely. “Cases dealing with all forms of organized crime land on my desk, from simple protection and
collection rackets to matters that reach all the way up to the highest imaginable levels. The only common denominator is the desire to exploit the new opportunities. Some think we’re looking at the naked face of the market economy; others say it’s the natural continuation of state terrorism. In either case, what’s most apparent is the complete lack of, shall we call it empathy, or perhaps an intrinsic sense for the essence of democracy. As always, people are grabbing as much as possible for themselves, at others’ expense. It makes no difference whether the state is an absolute power or nonexistent.”

Laikmaa rummaged through the multitudes of documents and somehow managed to find the right one.

“All right,” he said. “Regarding your earlier questions on the phone, I don’t exactly have anything new to offer. The Viktor X gang is a constellation of Russians and Estonians operating primarily in Tallinn. They’ve started making forays into Sweden since the Finnish market will soon reach saturation point. We don’t really know how far they’ve gotten—whether a contact network has already been established, or whether a regular smuggling operation is under way—but we do know that there’s no lack of ambition.

“As we’ve said, they execute traitors with a shot to the head; that’s a consistent trademark, and I’ve never seen any deviations. They use ammunition from the weapons factory in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, as we’ve already discussed. There’s no doubt about any of this. But you need to know that most of the groups use the same ammunition and that here in Tallinn the evasive Viktor X’s group is quite a small, marginal enterprise. Seven or eight gangster rings have divided up Tallinn and eastern Estonia into districts, and they avoid crossing each other’s boundaries.

“We know very little about their contacts higher up with the larger intra-Russian mafia. If we disregard Yugoslavia, right now
Estonia tops the charts for European murder statistics. We have more than three hundred homicides a year in this country, and Tallinn has one of the highest murder rates in the world. That’s the background that you need to be aware of when you step out onto our streets.”