Misterioso (36 page)

“For over a month you’ve known that Igor and Igor were an important focus of our investigation,” he said gently. “If nothing else, you must have seen the announcement of the manhunt published in the newspapers. You have willfully and intentionally misled what the head of the NCP, as recently as yesterday on TV, has called the most important investigation in Sweden since the Palme case; in addition, you used the NCP for a highly irregular, highly illegal cover-up. All of these acts are not only a dereliction of duty, they are felonies. I’m going straight to the head of the NCP to inform him of your illegal activities, and I anticipate that both of you will be off the force by this afternoon, latest. You can start packing right now.”

“Are you threatening us?” Döös stood up.

“I prefer to think of it as a promise.” Hultin smiled politely.

Gunnar Nyberg was being fed through a tube. It protruded from the bandages that covered him almost entirely from the crown of his head to his neck, and large portions of soup were running through it. His eyes were the only things visible, and they were beaming with joy.

“As I’ve just told Nyberg,” the doctor explained to the three visitors, “we’ve determined that, in spite of everything, his throat should heal completely. The bullet missed the carotid artery by half an inch; it missed the larynx by about the same distance, but it passed through the upper part of the esophagus, just below the pharynx. He’ll soon be able to sing again, but it will take a while before he can eat normally. In addition, his left zygomatic bone and left maxillary bone were shattered. He suffered a significant concussion and a number of bruises and burns on his face, and on the area from his shoulders up. He has four broken ribs, a fractured right arm, and a wide assortment of minor cuts and burns over most of his body. But,” said the doctor, “he seems to be in good spirits.” And then he left them alone.

Nyberg had obtained a little blackboard on which he could write messages in his wobbly left-handed script.
“Igor?”
he wrote.

Hjelm nodded. “Alexander Bryusov. That idiotic tackle you made on his car uncovered the whole connection between Viktor X and Lovisedal, a very real connection. Bryusov is apparently going to be the star witness.”

Nyberg wrote,
“Not our man, right?”

Hjelm had to ask Chavez and Holm for help in deciphering his scrawl.

“No,” said Chavez. “Bryusov isn’t our man. Our man is an ordinary Swedish bank teller by the name of Göran Andersson.”

The twitching under the wads of bandages could almost be interpreted as a laugh.

“We’re conducting a nationwide manhunt for him now,” said Hjelm. “But you may be back at work before he’s arrested.”

Nyberg shook his bandages emphatically. The tubes that connected him to the surrounding machinery swayed alarmingly. One apparatus began beeping, as if in fear. He wrote,
“Damn it all, no, you’ll get him in a couple of days.”
Then he erased the words and wrote a new message:
“Missa.”

“Missa what?” said Hjelm.

“Is there something we’ve missed?” asked Chavez.

“Ah.” Kerstin Holm, who had been standing at Nyberg’s feet, walked over and sat down on the chair next to his bed. She took his hand, the only patch of skin visible in all that whiteness. She hummed a pure and clear note for ten seconds, then she began to sing. It was the lead alto part in Palestrina’s
Missa papae Marcelli
.

Nyberg closed his eyes. Hjelm and Chavez just stood there, motionless.

When they returned to police headquarters, Hjelm found a fax lying on his desk. Since Hultin was waiting for them in Supreme Central Command, he cast only a quick glance at it as he headed out of the room. Not until he was out in the hallway did his brain register the name of the sender: Detective Superintendent Erik Bruun of the Huddinge police force. Hjelm went back to his desk.

“I thought it best that you hear this from me rather than in the media,” Bruun had written. “Last night Dritëro Frakulla committed suicide in his cell at Hall Prison. At least now his family will be allowed to stay. Don’t let this affect your work. You were just doing your job. Warm wishes, Bruun.”

Last night
, thought Hjelm, holding the fax in his hand. What a strange night. Gunnar Nyberg was shot in Lidingö, Ulf Axelsson was murdered in Göteborg, Dritëro Frakulla killed himself in Norrköping, and Göran Andersson was identified in Algotsmåla. And all of these events were vaguely connected.

What a small country Sweden is
, he thought, realizing that he ought to be thinking about something else.

He was still holding the fax when he entered the room of Supreme Central Command. The other members of the A-Unit were already there. It was the first time he’d seen Hultin since they’d returned from Växjö.

“An outstanding job in Växjö.” Hultin gave him a searching look.

Excellent job
, thought Hjelm, and for a moment he felt as if he was sinking into a pile of shit and had to stand on top of Dritëro Frakulla’s body in order to keep his nose above the surface. He shook off the image, let go of the sweaty fax, and sat down.

“Thank you,” he said.

“So outstanding that I’m even going to ignore the time between when you found out the perp’s name and when you called in your report.”

Hultin’s praise was seldom one-sided.

“Okay,” he continued calmly. “The surveillance effort has been moved from the Lovisedal board members in 1991 to the Sydbanken board in 1990. Daggfeldt, Strand-Julén, Carlberger, Brandberg, and Axelsson are all dead. Unfortunately, the board included an additional twelve individuals. Eight in Stockholm, two in Malmö, one in Örebro, and one in Halmstad. The sole
member from Göteborg has already been taken out. Of the twelve remaining members, we’ve located nine and set up surveillance for them. But one is out of the country, and two we still haven’t found. Both happen to be Stockholmers: a Lars-Erik Hedman and an Alf Ruben Winge. Finding them is our highest priority. An all-points bulletin was put out this morning for Göran Andersson’s green Saab 900. It turns out that for almost a month it’s been in the possession of the Nynäshamn police, without license plates and with the VIN number filed off. The techs are going over it right now, but as is to be expected, the preliminary report says they haven’t found any evidence. As for Andersson himself, we’ve put out a nationwide alert, and the most recent photo of him has been sent to all police districts and border stations. The question now under discussion at the highest level is whether to release his picture to the press and enlist the aid of that Big Detective, the public.”

“I think it would be a mistake,” said Söderstedt. “As long as he doesn’t know that we know about him, he’s going to feel relatively secure about what he does.”

“Of course that’s true,” said Hultin. “It’s just a matter of getting Mörner and the rest of the boys to understand that.”

“Do your best,” said Söderstedt. “You do have a number of secret weapons.”

Hultin gave him a stern look. “Our priorities are as follows,” he went on. “One, locate Hedman and Winge. Two, check up on all potential Stockholm contacts that Andersson may have had, in order to find out where he’s been living since February; we have that dart shop in Gamla Stan, but there must be more contacts, the dart association, or whatever else. Three, put some pressure on Lena Lundberg via that incident man in Växjö, Officer Wrede. See what else she knows. Four, show Andersson’s photograph around in the underworld.”

Hultin paused to consult his papers.

“This is how we’re going to proceed. In Nyberg’s absence, Chavez will go with the Stockholm criminal division to canvass the underworld; Holm will return to Växjö and accompany Wrede to check up on circles of friends and contacts that Andersson may have had in Stockholm; Norlander will check out the dart shop and the dart association, and afterward, along with various foot soldiers, he’ll check out hotels and apartment rental agencies for customers from around the fifteenth of February; and Hjelm and Söderstedt will locate Hedman and Winge. Keep in mind that you have access to the whole damned police force. And as usual, avoid all contact with the press and with Säpo. It’s now twelve noon on the twenty-ninth of May. It’s two months since Göran Andersson began his serial killings. Let’s see to it that the number of victims stops at five, and that the case doesn’t go on for another two months.”

Kerstin Holm went back to Växjö to “accompany” Jonas Wrede, as Hultin had expressed it. He looked a bit jittery when she stepped into his office; he’d thought that he’d no longer have to be reminded of his sins of omission in the Treplyov case. But now he would have to spend yet another day in its shadow. Holm quickly discovered that Göran Andersson’s circle of friends was largely limited to the dart club. Apparently he’d been the club’s star, but even there no one made any real claim to have been his friend. And nobody knew anything about his possible contacts in Stockholm. She and Wrede went to see Lena Lundberg, but she didn’t have the heart to “put some pressure” on the woman. It was obvious to them that she knew nothing.

Jorge Chavez’s excursions through Stockholm’s underworld were not a success. No one recognized Göran Andersson’s photo; he really didn’t expect them to. Chavez thought he’d been given the shittiest assignment of all.

Viggo Norlander felt the same way. In the dart shop they had to look up Andersson in the computer files. The clerk behind the counter remembered the darts with the extralong points but nothing else. Andersson had always ordered his darts by mail. At the dart association, no one knew anything at all about him, although they did find his name on a couple of local lists of results from Småland, always at the very top. Surprisingly, he never seemed to have competed outside Småland, even though several times he’d defeated national competitors.

Norlander finished out the day, with the assistance of a whole team from the NCP and the Stockholm police force, by going around to all the city’s hotels and consulting the rental ads in the morning newspapers, as well as the free classified paper, for February 15 onward. He got no bites at the hotels, but over the phone several people at rental agencies seemed to recognize the vague description of Göran Andersson. But when Norlander presented them with his actual photo, they all said they’d been mistaken. Norlander and his men stubbornly continued their search.

On direct orders from Hultin, the foot soldiers of the Stockholm police also went to the workplaces and residences of the Stockholm victims to show the photograph to colleagues, family members, and neighbors. The Göteborg police did the same among the circles frequented by Ulf Axelsson. No one had seen Göran Andersson anywhere.

Söderstedt and Hjelm struggled to locate the other two members of the Sydbanken board of directors
anno
1990.

Arto Söderstedt visited Alf Ruben Winge’s company, UrboInvest, as well as his home in Östermalm. Nobody seemed especially concerned about his absence; apparently he would occasionally disappear from the surface of the earth for a few days at a time and then show up again as if nothing had happened. He had the pecuniary wherewithal to afford this type of
luxury, as an astute employee expressed it. Söderstedt made a trip out to the archipelago, to Winge’s impressive summer place on the island of Värmdö, but found the house closed up. And that was about as far as he got.

It had fallen to Paul Hjelm to track down the other missing former board member, Lars-Erik Hedman.
Fallen
, in a different sense of the word, was also what had happened to Hedman. He’d been the TCO union representative on the Sydbanken board from 1986 until 1990. At the time he was also a leading negotiator within TCO, with aspirations to become the union’s president; he was married, with two children, and he owned an exquisite apartment in Vasastan. Now he lived alone in a two-room place in Bandhagen. He’d been thrown out of TCO and stripped of all board assignments. During a couple of years in the late eighties, he’d managed to combine a serious drinking problem with his work, convincing everyone to keep a lid on it. But after a number of bizarre performances in semipublic situations, the union had lost patience, and Hedman was out in the cold.

Via the social welfare office in Bandhagen, Hjelm traced Hedman to a park bench outside the state liquor store and roughly dragged him home to the man’s filthy apartment. There he ushered in the police officers who had been given the dubious pleasure of protecting Lars-Erik Hedman’s health—by definition, an impossible job.

Hjelm returned to police headquarters, certain that another fallow period in the case lay ahead. He hated the thought. Another dreary month. With the whole summer vacation frozen. And with an elusive Göran Andersson roaming the streets holding an aimed but invisible dart in his hand.

Hjelm was sitting in his office, staring blindly through the police building window at the other police building outside, when the phone rang.

“Hjelm,” he said into the phone.

“Finally,” said a quiet voice with an accent that made Hjelm instinctively switch on the phone tape recorder. The man was speaking a Småland dialect. “It was hard to find you. A difficult switchboard staff. Paul Hjelm, the hero from Botkyrka. You’ve been given nearly as many labels as I have this spring.”

“Göran Andersson,” said Hjelm.

“Before you even think about trying to trace this call, I’ll tell you the best way to avoid being tracked. Steal a cell phone.”

“Forgive me for saying this,” Hjelm said a bit recklessly, “but it goes against the picture we’ve formed of you that you’d call up to brag. It doesn’t fit the psychological profile.”

“If you find somebody who does, let me know,” said Göran Andersson faintly. “No, I’m not calling to brag. I’m calling to tell you to stay away from my fiancée. Otherwise I’ll have to break even more with the psychological profile and take you out too.”

“You’d never be able to take me out,” Hjelm declared, contrary to all recommended psychological advice.

“Why not?” said Andersson, sounding genuinely interested.