The Blinded Man (3 page)

The place that God forgot
, he thought fatefully as he stepped into Bruun’s room. The wallpaper was changed at least once a year, nevertheless it would turn brown within a matter of days. Erik Bruun always inaugurated his new wallpaper by allowing his black cigars and equally black lungs to puff clouds of smoke over the walls. Hjelm had never visited Bruun in his bachelor apartment in Eriksberg; the place had acquired a reputation of mythic proportions, but he could imagine how the walls must look. Hjelm was a non-smoker, although he did inhale an occasional cigarette to avoid becoming a slave to virtue, as a wise man once expressed it.

Today Hjelm had already smoked six, and he knew that there would be more. The nicotine was swirling around in his head, and for once he sensed no immediate shock upon stepping into Bruun’s inner sanctum, which the authorities had designated a serious health hazard. An overly zealous official had once taped a skull and crossbones to the door, and Hjelm and Ernstsson had spent three hours of valuable work time scraping it off.

Erik Bruun was not alone in the room. He was sitting behind his cluttered desk, puffing on an enormous Russian cigar. On the sofa below the row of windows sat two well-dressed gentlemen. They were about Hjelm’s age, somewhere in their forties. But no one would ever think of calling Hjelm a gentleman; in their case, it
seemed
natural. He didn’t know these gentlemen, but he recognised the stern set of their expressions.

Oh well
. This was pretty much what he’d been expecting.

Bruun raised his substantial body to a standing position and came forward to meet him; such an attempt at a jogging workout was rare for him. He shook hands with Hjelm and scratched his greyish-red beard.

‘My congratulations,’ he said, putting obvious stress on the word
my
. ‘Excellent job. How do you feel? Have you talked to Cecilia?’

‘Thanks,’ said Hjelm, glancing at the gentlemen on the sofa. ‘I haven’t been able to get hold of her yet. I assume she’ll probably hear about it some other way.’

Bruun nodded several times and returned to his favourite chair.

‘As I said, you have the congratulations and support of everyone here at the station. But you didn’t answer my question about how you’re feeling.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Hjelm, and sat down on the chair in front of the desk.

Bruun nodded several times again, in the same knowing manner.

‘I understand,’ he said, sucking on his cigar. ‘This is Niklas Grundström and Ulf Mårtensson, from Internal Affairs. Whether they intend to offer you their congratulations is an open question at the moment.’

Since Bruun’s little tirade sounded as if he was on the verge of leaving, both gentlemen got up from the sofa.
Then
came a moment of doubt as the superintendent remained where he was and continued puffing on his black cigar. This display of a hint of uncertainty was what both of them would have given anything to avoid. Hjelm thanked Bruun with a seemingly neutral expression and received the same look in return.

The superintendent took one last puff and sluggishly got to his feet. ‘The ombudsman for department safety has determined that I’m not allowed to leave my office holding a cigar,’ he apologised, stubbing the butt into an ashtray. Then he left the office swathed in a cloud of cigar fumes.

The crushed butt continued to emit brown smoke. Grundström pushed aside the ashtray as if it were a month-old latrine bucket and sat, with some reluctance, in Bruun’s smoke-saturated executive desk chair. Mårtensson sat back down on the sofa. Grundström set his briefcase on the desk and pulled out a pair of glasses with almost perfectly round lenses, which he ceremoniously placed on the bridge of his nose. Then he took out a large brown envelope and an evening newspaper. He set the briefcase on the floor and held up the front page of
Expressen
. In big letters the headline screamed:
EXTRA. HERO IN FITTJA. POLICE HERO IN HOSTAGE DRAMA
. Under the headline was a photograph, almost ten years old, of Paul Hjelm, who had been a police sergeant when it was taken.

‘The media have assigned the roles,’ Niklas Grundström said in a clear, educated voice, tossing the newspaper
aside
. He fixed his gaze on Hjelm. ‘Things certainly move fast these days, don’t they? Imagine, they got the story into the evening edition. The pen moves faster than the brain.’

‘An old proverb,’ Hjelm said without thinking. He bit his tongue.

Grundström regarded him without expression. He leaned down and pulled a little tape recorder from his briefcase. ‘I was hoping to avoid this,’ he said, pressing the start button. ‘Interrogation with Detective Inspector Paul Hjelm, born 18 February 1957, conducted by Grundström and Mårtensson at the Huddinge police station on March the thirtieth at seventeen-o-six hours.’

‘Interrogation?’ said Hjelm.

‘Interrogation,’ said Grundström. ‘It was your choice.’

Hjelm bit his tongue again.
Don’t give them anything
.

Then it came. ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of any anti-immigrant organisation?’

‘No,’ replied Hjelm, trying to stay perfectly calm.

‘What is your attitude towards immigrants?’

‘Neither good nor bad.’

Grundström rummaged through the big brown envelope, took out something that looked like a report and began reading. ‘Of all your arrests made during your time in this district, forty-two per cent were of individuals of foreign origin. And in the past year that figure increased to fifty-seven per cent.’

Hjelm cleared his throat and paused to gather his thoughts. ‘According to the latest figures, in all of Botkyrka
municipality
, thirty-two per cent of the population are of foreign origin, and twenty per cent are foreign-born citizens. Up here in the north, in Alby, Fittja, Hallunda and Norsborg, the figures are even higher, well over fifty per cent and fifty-seven per cent. A forty-two per cent arrest rate of immigrants actually indicates that there is a greater propensity to commit a crime among Swedish-born individuals in the area. The figures demonstrate no basis whatsoever for racism, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ Hjelm was quite pleased with his reply.

Grundström was not. ‘Why the hell did you think you could go in there like some sort of Dirty Harry and shoot that man?’

‘That man, as you call him, is named Dritëro Frakulla, and he belongs to the Albanian minority in the province of Kosovo in southern Serbia, and I’m sure you’re aware of the situation there. Nearly all the Kosovar Albanians that we’ve had anything to do with here, people who have become acclimatised and learned Swedish and who have children in the Swedish school system – nearly all of them are now going to be deported. But it’s not going to happen without resistance.’

‘All the more reason not to go in and shoot him down. The hostage team of the National Criminal Police was on its way. Specialists, experts. Why in holy hell did you go in alone?’

Hjelm could no longer keep silent. ‘To save his life, goddamn it!’

* * *

It was approaching eight
P.M.
Hjelm and Bruun were sitting in Bruun’s office, the superintendent in his armchair and Hjelm in a semi-reclining position on the sofa. In front of them on the desk stood a large cassette recorder. The tape was playing. They heard: ‘To save his life, goddamn it!’

Bruun practically swallowed his cigar. He hit the stop button with a swift chop.

‘You, sir,’ he said, pointing at Hjelm with the same abrupt movement, ‘are a very foolhardy person.’

‘It was stupid, I know …’ said Hjelm from the sofa. ‘Just as stupid as secretly taping an Internal Affairs interrogation.’

Bruun shrugged and started the tape again. First a brief pause, then Hjelm’s voice resumed:

‘That unit specialises in one thing, and you know that as well as I do: their directive is to render the perpetrator harmless without injuring the hostages. Render harmless, meaning eliminate, meaning kill.’

‘Do you really want us to believe that you shot him in order to save his life?’

‘Believe whatever the hell you like.’

Bruun glanced at Hjelm, shaking his head sternly; now it was Hjelm’s turn to shrug.

‘That’s precisely what we’re not allowed to do.’ Grundström had spoken in his normal voice; the last couple of things he said had sounded different. ‘We’re here to determine right from wrong, to ensure that you haven’t committed any dereliction of duty, and then clear your name without issuing any reprimands. That’s how
the
justice system becomes undermined. If necessary, we may have to censure you. This has nothing to do with our personal beliefs.’

‘For the record’ – Hjelm – ‘the shooting took place at eight forty-seven
A.M
., the special unit arrived at nine thirty-eight. Were we supposed to just sit there taking cover outside, and wait for almost an hour, with a desperate gunman, terrified hostages and a paralysed Hallunda shopping centre on our hands?’

‘Okay, for the moment let’s drop the question of why and take a look at what you
de facto
did.’

Pause. Grundström and Mårtensson had switched places then, while Hjelm pondered what sort of person says
de facto
.

The sharp voice was replaced by one that was significantly coarser. ‘All right then. So far we’ve just skimmed the surface. Now let’s get down to brass tacks.’

With a frown, Bruun switched off the tape recorder and turned to Hjelm with genuine surprise.

‘Do you mean to tell me that they in all seriousness tried to pull that good-cop–bad-cop routine on you? When you’re an experienced interrogator?’

Hjelm shrugged as fatigue overtook him. An already long day wasn’t going to get any shorter. When Mårtensson spoke again, his voice merged with words and images from all the other layers of Hjelm’s mind. For a brief moment as he hovered between wakefulness and sleep, these layers fought for dominance. Then he fell asleep.

‘Okay, one step at a time. First, you shouted through
the
door without any warning; that alone could have caused a disaster. Second, you claimed to be unarmed, even though your gun was sticking out of your waistband. All he had to do was ask you to turn round, which would also have been a disaster. Third, you lied to the perpetrator. If he’d been aware of certain facts, again, disaster would have ensued. Fourth, when you fired, you aimed at a spot that was not according to regulations; that also could have led to disaster.’

‘How is he?’ Hjelm’s voice.

‘What?’ Mårtensson’s.

‘How is he?’

‘Who the hell do you mean?’

‘Dritëro Frakulla.’

‘What the fuck is that? The name of some kind of orange? A Transylvanian count? Just focus on the facts, for fuck’s sake!’

‘It
is
a fact.
That
is a fact.’

The pause went on so long that Bruun fidgeted, wondering if it was over. Hjelm was sound asleep. Then Grundström’s voice piped up from the background.

‘He’s in the Huddinge clinic, under round-the-clock guard. His condition is stable. I can’t say the same about your situation. We’ll continue tomorrow morning at ten-thirty. Thanks for your time today, Hjelm.’

Sounds of chairs scraping, a tape recorder being switched off, papers shuffled, a briefcase snapped closed, a door shutting.

Superintendent Erik Bruun lit another pitch-black cigar
that
had been unevenly rolled, and listened. Then came what he’d been waiting for. It was Grundström.

‘He’s incredibly cunning. Why the hell did you let him off so easy? “A Transylvanian count”? Damn it, Uffe! We can’t let this guy slip through our fingers. A Dirty Harry who knows how to use the system and come out unscathed opens the door to hundreds of others all over Sweden, all of them more or less racist.’

Mårtensson mumbled something, Grundström sighed, chairs clattered, a door opened and closed.

Bruun stopped the tape and for a moment didn’t move.

Outside the police station the bright spring day had dissolved into pitch-darkness. Slowly and laboriously he got up from his chair and went over to Hjelm, still in a deep sleep. Before taking in a big breath and blowing smoke right in his face, Bruun studied his subordinate and gently shook his head.

I won’t be able to keep him here much longer
, he thought.
One way or another, he’s going to disappear
.

Hjelm coughed himself awake. His eyes were running, and the first thing he saw through the cloud of smoke was the combination of a reddish-grey beard and a double chin.

‘Ten-thirty,’ said Bruun, packing up his ratty old briefcase. ‘You can sleep in. Try to be clear and concise tomorrow. Maybe a little better than today.’

Hjelm stumbled towards the door. He turned round. Bruun gave him a good-natured nod. It was his way of offering a hug.

* * *

What is it they usually say?
Hjelm wondered as he opened the fridge and took out a beer. Middle-aged heterosexual men with full-time jobs and white complexions are the societal norm. It’s on that set of features that all assessments of what is normal are based. And health standards. Another phrase appeared in his mind:
Being a woman is not a disease
. But it
is
a deviation. Not to mention homosexuality and youth and old age and dark skin and speaking with an accent.

That was how his world looked: inside the boundaries were all those heterosexual, middle-aged white policemen; outside was everybody else. He looked at the deviants sitting on the sofa: his – how old was she now? – thirty-six-year-old wife, Cecilia, and his twelve-year-old daughter, Tova. Public Enemy was playing from the opposite direction, clearly audible.

‘It’s on, Papa!’ cried Tova. ‘It’s on now!’

He went into the living room, slurping the beer between his teeth. Cilla regarded this decades-old habit of his with a certain distaste, but turned her attention back to the TV. The theme music of the evening news programme was playing. The story was part of the headlines.
Way out of proportion
, he thought.