Misterioso (24 page)

By the end of April he was showering a surprising amount of attention on his family. Danne thought it was disgusting, Tova was mostly startled, and as for Cilla—he had no idea what she thought. The strange experience in the kitchen still hovered between them like an untouchable wound. Was it starting to ooze? Was it becoming inflamed?

In early May the family moved out, at least part time, to the little cabin that they’d been lucky enough to rent on Dalarö, the island that wasn’t really an island at all but rather a whole string of islands. Cilla spent almost every night out there, commuting to Huddinge Hospital. Her much-anticipated vacation
would begin in June—she would have the whole summer free. The children were also out there on weekends. Danne had evidently decided to hide away from reality during this last summer of his childhood. Paul managed to get a free weekend at the very beginning of May and spent a couple of unusually pleasant days in the spring sunshine, basking in the bosom of his family, and in Cilla’s embrace. The latter took place on a blanket on a deserted pier in the midst of a fiery red sunset, with an empty wine bottle rolling around next to them. She was silent and sad afterward. Unapproachable. The preposterous beauty of the sunset seemed to have bored its way into her. A deep red layer had spilled across the motionless surface of the sea. The red contours, clearly delineated against the surrounding black, had slowly contracted; an evaporating pool of blood above an abyss. Before long only the abyss remained. Cilla began trembling, a deep, unfathomable shivering. He watched her for a long time through the gathering dusk. He tried to share her experience, tried to see what she saw, feel what she felt. But he couldn’t. The red was gone. Only black remained. He tried to get her to go up to the cabin, but he got no response. He was forced to leave her there on the pier, all alone with an experience of utter solitude. He went inside and climbed into bed but didn’t sleep all night.

Early in the morning he went back down to the pier. She was still sitting there, wrapped in the blanket. He returned to the cabin without making his presence known.

Before the move out to Dalarö nothing much happened, from a professional standpoint. It was the period of working on details and consolidating findings. Besides collaborating with Chavez and Nyberg in both the upper- and the underworld, respectively, he completed two tasks still on his list, the second more important than the first.

First he called an 071 number and encountered the first
phone sex in his life. In a simpering voice a woman exhibiting some symptoms of dyslexia read from a script what she would do with his penis. Since the aforementioned organ remained completely limp the whole time, it would have been difficult to implement any of these acrobatic maneuvers. He then called the business registry at the Patent and Registration Office, but the only address for the simpering company JSHB was the post office box listed in the newspaper ad, a box number in Bromma. So he ended up having to drive over to the post office on Brommaplan and simply wait. He positioned himself so that he could see the post office boxes through the window and smoked a couple of cigarettes in the sweltering heat more typical of the height of summer than the month of April. Temperatures that had undoubtedly been stolen from July and August. And he waited. He kept box number 1414 in his sights for almost three hours before a short, fox-like man in his forties stuck his key in the slot and opened the box. By that time Hjelm was feeling worn out and had no energy left to tail Johan Stake to see whether his 071 premises actually housed a bordello. Instead, he went up to the man and said, “Stake?”

The man didn’t hesitate for even a second. He slipped past Hjelm and took off fast. Hjelm stuck out his leg and elegantly tripped him, making his face slam into the glass door. He fell next to a well-groomed little poodle that was tied up outside. The dog began yapping wildly. Hjelm hauled the man to his feet. Stake had a split lip, and blood was gushing out over the shrieking poodle’s mane.

“So unnecessary,” said Hjelm as he snapped handcuffs on the man and dragged him over to the car. He hoped Stake wasn’t thinking of bleeding all over his vehicle, just when he’d gotten it broken in.

Jorge Chavez was present when Hjelm interviewed Johan Stake. They kept things informal by conducting the interview in their office.

“I have a lot of questions about those 071 ads, which in happier times used to cover entire pages of the tabloids,” said Hjelm, seeming to fumble around a bit. “Why do they put the address in the ad? Is that how pimping and bordello operations work nowadays?”

“There are laws about this,” said Johan Stake belligerently as he touched his taped lip. “Don’t you know the laws? What the hell am I doing here, anyway? You have no legal right—”

“Officially you’ve been arrested for resisting an officer.”

“In that case, I have the right to a lawyer. ‘Provision of a public defender precedes interrogation.’ ”

“You seem to be as knowledgeable about the justice system as you are skilled at alliteration. The problem is that a much more serious charge is hovering in the background. Promoting prostitution. Acting as a pimp for underage boys.”

Stake looked shaken. “In that case, I really do want a lawyer.”

“Then the prosecutor will have to indict you and take you to court. But there’s another option.”

“Wait a minute. You don’t have any proof. You’ll have to release me.”

“How do you know we don’t have any proof?”

Stake didn’t reply.

Hjelm calmly went on, “Early this morning we picked up a young guy by the name of Jörgen Lindén as he boarded the first train to Göteborg. He was carrying a big suitcase, as if he was about to flee from somebody, and I don’t think it was the police. He’s now sitting in jail. Not ten minutes ago he was ready to testify. Detective Inspector Chavez here conducted the interview brilliantly, but not entirely without … shall we say, some persuasion.”

Chavez went over to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup to hide his astonishment. He took a few seconds to compose himself, then returned with an expression of persuasion etched on his face.

Good job
, thought Hjelm. Good lies should always be as detailed as possible. Then they will convince anybody.

Johan Stake seemed convinced. He didn’t say a word as he sat thinking. Apparently the scenario wasn’t the least bit improbable.

“But there’s another option,” Hjelm repeated.

Stake remained silent. He was no longer calling for a lawyer.

Hjelm completed his attack. “Step one on the road to immediate release: tell us about Bernhard Strand-Julén.”

Johan Stake cleared his throat and squirmed a bit on his chair. “Can you guarantee that you’ll let me go?”

“We’re the only ones who know that you’re here. No formal charges have been filed. You’re free as soon as you spit out what we want to know. We have much bigger fish to fry than you and your bordellos. We’ll let both you and Jörgen go if you cooperate. That’s step one.”

“Strand-Julén … I got boys for him. A crew for his boat, as he insisted on calling them. Healthy, blond boys about sixteen or so, athletic types. Two or three at a time. Always new ones. During the summer season almost every weekend. Never during the winter. That’s when he went into hibernation.”

“Step two. Were your services ever used by Kuno Daggfeldt or Nils-Emil Carlberger?”

“Carlberger,” said Stake, looking as though he’d been expecting the question. “He got my number from Strand-Julén. That was six months ago. He sounded damned nervous when he requested a boy. I had the impression it was his first time. An attempt to widen his horizons maybe, a little Socratic boy-love. What do I know?”

“Do you know how it went?”

“I talked to the kid afterward. He got a little … central stimulation.” He laughed loudly. “Carlberger was like a little boy, totally inexperienced, either a hundred percent hetero or else a hundred percent impotent. But he paid well.”

“And that was all? What about Daggfeldt?”

“No.”

“Can you tell us anything else about Strand-Julén or Carlberger? Think carefully.”

Stake thought for a moment. “No, I’m sorry. That’s all.” They let him go.

“You could have warned me,” said Chavez, sipping his coffee. “If I had, would you have agreed to go along with it?”

“No.”

They allowed themselves a good laugh at their peculiarities, both their own and each other’s. Then Hjelm crossed off Johan Stake from the investigation.

Two hours later Stake called to compliment him. It was very strange, but he’d just spoken to Jörgen Lindén, who hadn’t understood a word of what he was talking about. Stake praised Hjelm for the impressive lie and then hung up. Hjelm stood for a long time, staring at his phone.

By now Paul Hjelm was almost certain that the murders had stopped with victim number three. One morning it was raining for the first time in what seemed like a premature summer. So it was time to drive out to the Kevinge Golf Course. It was deserted. The whole clubhouse was deserted too.

Except, that is, for Lena Hansson, who was in her place at the reception desk. At first she didn’t recognize him, but when she did, her expression changed, which was precisely what he was hoping for. He instantly mobilized his heavy artillery. “Why did
you lie about the fact that you were a caddy for the three corpses on September 7, 1990?”

She stared at him with a frankly naked expression; it was obvious that she’d been expecting him. For a month. “They weren’t corpses back then,” she said hesitantly. “On the contrary. You might call it an … over-the-top life they were living.

“But not without an oversexed component, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Shall we sit down for a moment? The customers are conspicuous in their absence.”

“And what a glorious absence it is.” She sounded older than her years. She went into the closed club restaurant and sat down at a table. Hjelm followed.

Lena Hansson fiddled with the wax of a burned-out candle in a small holder. Hjelm said:

“There were three of you working as caddies, am I right?”

“Yes. That’s what they requested. A guy named Carl-Gustaf something-or-other. Some kind of aristocratic last name. I don’t really remember, but I can look it up. And my friend Lotta. Lotta Bergström. She was really upset. It was because of her that I didn’t say anything.”

“What do you mean?”

Hjelm permitted himself a cigarette. He blamed the elegant setting, but more likely the “no smoking” sign had enticed him.

“Lotta was … going through a hard time. A horrible childhood. An even more horrible adolescence. I got the job for her. We were both seventeen, in the same class in school. I felt guilty. She … well, she killed herself in ’92. I don’t really know if it had anything to do with this. Probably not. But I still feel like it was my fault.”

“What they did?”

“Yes. That Carl-Gustaf—he didn’t believe it could happen. He was from some really old upper-crust family. You know the
kind, people who still care about good breeding and etiquette, and not just as a role that you play when you go to fancy dinners and things like that. For them, it’s all part of their daily lives, both private and professional. Good breeding and etiquette and an ancient moral code seem to be injected into their genes. They’re often quite pleasant to be around. Carl-Gustaf was too. He laughed politely and shyly during the first four holes, then he shut up, letting that Strand-Julén badger him for four more holes. At the ninth green he set the golf bag down so that Strand-Julén’s putt struck the bag. Then he simply left. I’ve never seen him again. If he’d been a real gentleman, he would have taken us with him.”

Carl-Gustaf
, wrote Hjelm in his mental notebook. “But Lotta and you stayed?” he said.

“Seventeen, properly brought up, insecure. Of course we stayed. After Carl-Gustaf left, they began tossing around nouveau riche jokes about the arch-conservative nobility. It was a form of jealousy.”

“Could you be a little more precise? What exactly did they do?”

“They’d had a lot to drink here in the restaurant before the game. They seemed—I don’t know, speedy, almost, as if they’d snorted some coke in the men’s room or something like that.”

“Or in the cab on the way over,” said Hjelm, unprofessionally.

“At any rate, they started telling dirty jokes and making insinuating remarks, on a polite level that allowed at least Carl-Gustaf to join in the laughter. Lotta and I were mostly just embarrassed. There was hardly anybody else on the golf course, so they could carry on as much as they liked. After a while Strand-Julén focused his remarks on Carl-Gustaf, which let us off the hook for a time. The remarks were mostly about the size of Carl-Gustaf’s noble organ. Then he made his heroic departure, and the two of us ended up in the line of fire. Really.
I’ve never in my life been so badly treated, and I’ll never let it happen again. I promised myself that.”

“So what did you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you shoot them?”

She laughed loudly, her voice shrill and unnatural. “Oh sure,” she said at last, as she wiped away the tears. “I can’t say that I was sorry when I heard that they’d been shot. All three of them, one after the other. It was wonderful, to be quite honest. Magical, like in a fairy tale. The unknown avenger. But good God, I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”