Never Fuck Up: A Novel (62 page)

Adamsson’d died in a car accident on the E18 highway, by the Stäket rest stop. According to Hägerström, the investigation showed that the guy’d driven into the middle divider and bounced back out into the lane. That’s when a forty-ton trailer truck made mush of Adamsson’s Land Rover. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe it was part of something bigger.

Something would happen to him, with all certainty. He could live with that thought. But the second thought was harder: it could happen to Åsa. The third thought almost crushed him: it could happen to the child that they still hadn’t been given, Sander.

Still: let whatever was going to happen, happen. Thomas couldn’t think of any alternatives. He had to keep searching.

He talked to his brother, Jan. They didn’t really have too great of a relationship. Worn down after too many years of silence. The only thing that still made it feel like they were brothers was the irritation: it was different from what you felt toward a stranger. But they still cared for each other, sent postcards from their vacations, Christmas greetings, and birthday cards. Thomas’d made sure that he and Åsa were invited over to Jan’s house for Christmas Eve.

The next night, Christmas Day, he went up to speak with Åsa. The TV was on: some documentary about right-wing extremists in Russia. They looked fat and stupid, the lot of them. He wondered why they were showing such tragic shit today of all days.

She was sitting with her legs pulled up on the couch. On the coffee table was the folder that was so often in front of her these days, the one with the pictures of Sander.

The adoption agency’s final home visit a week ago’d gone well. It felt like the women who’d come by thought that Åsa and Thomas were well prepared to receive a small child. Åsa’d decorated the house more than usual for Christmas this year. Maybe to show off for the adoption agency women, maybe in preparation for the family life they would soon have.

She looked up. The Russians on the TV show babbled on in the background about how the motherland’s property was being sold off to foreigners.

“It was really very nice yesterday, at Jan’s,” Åsa said.

Thomas took a deep breath. “Åsa, we have a difficult decision ahead of us.”

She was breathing with her mouth open; it looked pretty dumb.

Thomas went on, “Sander will be here soon. It’s going to be the best moment of our lives.”

She smiled. Nodded. Continued to flip through the folder—uninterested in Thomas again. Almost as though she was trying to say, I agree with you, now leave.

“I don’t want to ruin that moment,” Thomas said. “And I don’t want to jeopardize it either. So we have to make certain changes. Together.”

Åsa’s smile faded.

“I am in the middle of a bad situation right now. A dangerous situation. It’s an investigation I’m involved with. Do you remember that Internal Affairs guy I was complaining about before?”

Åsa looked uncomprehending.

Thomas felt himself twist uncomfortably. “He and I are mixed up in something that I can’t handle, and the National Police can’t either. There are people who are out to get me on a personal level. Who have threatened to hurt me and who have already attacked me.”

“Why haven’t you said anything?”

“I didn’t want to worry you. Not now when Sander is coming and everything. But it’s gone too far now. And I can’t stop. I have to keep going, get to the bottom of this thing. There is no one else who can take over.”

“Can’t we get some sort of protection?”

“We can’t get enough protection. This is the price you have to pay as a police officer. I am so damn sorry. If it’d just been about me it would’ve been okay, but now it involves you, too. It might involve Sander too, when he gets here.”

“But there’s got to be some protection we can get. There’s got to be help for police officers involved in dangerous investigations. Right?”

“I’m sure that exists, but it won’t help now.”

“But it’s Christmastime!”

“That’s never mattered less.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said. The police can’t help us now. Christmas won’t stop anyone. No one can stop what I’m involved in.”

She sat in silence. Thomas waited for her to say something. Instead, she flipped through the folder.

“You can stay with Jan for a few weeks, until this is all over,” he said. “And if it isn’t over in two months, then we can’t bring Sander here. That would be too dangerous.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Åsa, I’m just as upset about this as you are. But there is no other solution.”

The industrial area by Liljeholmen. Hägerström’s car was parked facing the water. Thomas’s car was parked next to him, but facing in the opposite direction. It was already dark out. Hägerström rolled down his window first.

“So, how was Christmas Eve?”

“We were at my brother’s place. They have a huge family. Tons of kids everywhere, dogs, cats, even a hamster. It was the first time I celebrated
Christmas with him in more than fifteen years. How about you?”

“I was at my parents’ place, then I went to Half Way Inn. You been there?”

“Once or twice. It’s near the police station in Södermalm, right? The one that’s next door to that gay place?”

“That’s right. My haunt. Not the gay place, that is.”

“Maybe I should’ve come?”

“You’re welcome next year.”

“Next year I’ll have my own family. Hopefully no hamster, though.”

Hägerström looked unhappy.

“How long do we have to meet up like this?” he said. “We’d work better if we had some proper place to be.”

Thomas nodded. “I’ve sent Åsa away now. So I feel better, safer.”

“Damn, how’d it go?”

“Felt like shit. But I think she understood. We can meet up at my house later.”

“Good.”

Thomas turned up the heat even more. There was half an inch of snow on the hood of the car.

“So, what do we have to discuss today?”

Hägerström leaned out through the open window. “I actually have a whole lot to tell you. I was at work today and heard some talk in the hallway. They’ve arrested someone for the murder of Rantzell.”

Thomas felt himself stop breathing for a few seconds.

“His name is Niklas Brogren, the one I brought in for informational questioning a few months ago. The guy had a good alibi then. But it’s starting to fall apart. He said he’d been at a friend’s house the entire night of the murder, until late. The friend’s been in for questioning and confirms that Brogren was there, but the investigator is skeptical about his testimony. Apparently, the guy seems disjointed and stressed out. But the most important part is that the mother has started talking. She says that Niklas Brogren came home pretty early that night and that he was drunk and in a bad mood. You know how it is with alibis, either you have one or else you’re really deep in the shit ’cause you tried to lie.”

“Hm.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“That Niklas guy doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re looking at.”

“No, but his mom had a long-term relationship with Rantzell at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties. So there are some connections and possible motives.”

“So, what’s the motive?”

“Rantzell apparently beat the mother.”

“How do they know that?”

“I guess the investigators ordered old medical records and stuff like that, I know I would’ve. They say she had to go to the hospital several times, sometimes with fractures.”

“Damn.”

“You can say that again.”

Thomas sighed. “Maybe I’m too set on our lead, but I don’t know. It just sounds too easy, that the son of an old battered woman is out for revenge. Like some pathetic crime thriller. The past visits the present, all that crap. But that’s never the way things are in reality.”

“I’ve got the same gut feeling. But what the hell. There’s a lot pointing at this Niklas Brogren. Except the forensic lab hasn’t found any matches.”

Thomas took a deep breath. “I don’t think we should end our project.”

“Absolutely not. But what does it give us? Adamsson died, but there’s nothing pointing to anything shady about it. Wisam Jibril died and we can’t get any further there. We haven’t gotten hold of Ballénius. What do we have, exactly? You’ve got a bunch of documents at home that we haven’t been able to get anything substantial from. You’ve tricked and forced answers out of a few old cops that suggest they’re right-wing extremists. So? It doesn’t lead anywhere.”

“Stop it, Martin. We have a lot. But so far, nothing that points to the actual murderer. But soon we’ll have gone through all the documents from Rantzell’s basement—I never would’ve been able to do it without you—and there are lots of weird things there. Lots of names of people to interrogate, companies to take a closer look at, payment streams to follow.”

It was true. Thomas and Hägerström’d divided the document piles between them. Thomas’d already gone through a bunch of it, but there was still too much he didn’t understand. They had to do it together. Hägerström knew numbers and finance stuff—explained as well as he could, but it wasn’t enough. The sheer amount of information almost felt overwhelming. All the numbers, addresses, names. They worked
methodically. Thomas sorted and structured the material, Hägerström analyzed it. They were using a point system of their own divising. Graded the level of suspicion for the information they were investigating. Made lists of people, telephone numbers, company names. Created an order of priority: everything that pointed to a connection between Rantzell and Bolinder’s company, everything that pointed to a connection between Skogsbacken AB and something illegal.

So far, no traces led to Adamsson. But there was still so much they hadn’t gone through.

“It’s going to take us several months. Maybe years,” Hägerström said. “You can’t have Åsa living somewhere else for that long, and if they find out that I’m involved, I’ll have to look around for another job pretty quick. That won’t work. We need a breakthrough soon or else we’ll have to drop it and let the prosecutor nail that Brogren guy. Anyway, if you ask me, it doesn’t seem improbable that he did it.”

Thomas was breathing through his nostrils. The winter cold pushed down into his lungs. Filled him even though it was still warm in the car. He wasn’t going to bother commenting on whether Brogren was the murderer or not.

“I’m going to keep at it, in any case. I believe in our lead, even if it seems fuzzy right now. And there’s a particular lead we have to follow up on. We have to find Ballénius. He knows something, I can feel it. An old fox like that wouldn’t have acted the way he did at Solvalla if not for something special. He knows something.”

The Stockholmers were running around, harried as they made exchanges, returned Christmas gifts, and did post-Christmas shopping while, at the same time, everyone was trying to rest up and be on vacation. Thomas talked to Åsa a million times a day. She was sitting at home at Jan’s house with all the animals, bored. She was maybe going to spend New Year’s Eve with some friends and wanted him to come. He couldn’t say no to everything. Thankfully: what Åsa was most worried about was how she would hide the fact that she was staying with her brother-in-law from her friends at the New Year’s party. That felt like the biggest triviality ever.

Thomas’d scaled back work at the club while still doing his utmost to find facts on Bolinder. He spoke with cop acquaintances. Searched on the Internet. Asked Jonas Nilsson for help again—he was going to ask his older colleagues. Went to a library and asked to look through
the newspaper archive. He asked around at the club. “Bolinder,” Ratko said. “Why are you so interested in him all the time?” After that, Thomas lay low at the club for a few days.

It was Sunday. High, clear blue sky, for once. The air was crisp. Thomas and Hägerström were standing outside the entrance to Solvalla. The day’s race was called the Silver Horse. It was a high-class V75 championship with a trophy statuette shaped like a royal silver horse as icing on the cake. The place would be packed with people. Ballénius ought to be there. This time, they wouldn’t lose him.

Agria pet insurance was still dominating the ad space. The excitement in the air was almost as thick as the mashed potatoes on the old guys’ steak platters. But there were fewer people outside than the last time Thomas’d been there—the colder weather was sending people indoors.

They worked their way through the outdoor crowd. Even though Thomas was certain that Ballénius wouldn’t be there, he wanted to be sure.

Ballénius wasn’t there.

They went into Ströget, the sports bar. Pretty much the same crowd with their jackets still on, just like last time. Definitely the same bacon chips in the bar. Mostly younger dudes here, downing burgers and beer. They wouldn’t find Ballénius here, he was certain.

Thomas eyed Hägerström; he looked nervous. Or else he was just tense, on alert. Double emotions: Thomas was grateful that the ex-IA guy was with him. At the same time, he was ashamed—hoped no old colleagues would see them together.

They moved on, up to the Bistro. The entrance was crammed with Finnish gypsies. Thomas pushed his way through. Walked up to the bar. He recognized the Danish restaurant boss with the beer gut whom he’d talked to last time. It looked like the beer gut’d swelled somewhat. He got the Dane’s attention. Asked his questions. The Dane shook his head—sorry, he didn’t know anything. Thomas asked for Sami Kiviniemi, the man who’d pointed Thomas to the right floor last time. But the Finn wasn’t there. So far, their Solvalla lead was worthless.

Thomas and Hägerström took the escalator up toward the Congress. The names of the horses that’d won the big championship were printed on the wall, year by year. Gum Ball, Remington Crown, Gidde Palema.

Before they walked into the Congress, Hägerström looked at Thomas.

“Are you armed, Andrén?”

He patted the front of his jacket. Felt the SIG Sauer through the fabric.

“Even though I’m just a traffic cop these days, I’m still the best shot in the Southern District.”

Hägerström smiled a little. Then he said, “It’s probably best if I stay by the entrance, right? You go in, because you’ll recognize him. If the old guy tries the same thing as last time, I’ll be a brick wall up here.”