The Blinded Man (31 page)

‘Not just your social circle in general,’ said Hultin, in an attempt to regain the initiative. ‘The Lovisedal board of directors,
anno
1991, in particular.’

Lidner again uttered a brief laugh. ‘What has made you come to such a specific conclusion? Director Strand-Julén was certainly a good friend, but he never had anything to do with the company. You should be looking at the board of Sydbanken instead. All four of them were members for a while in 1990.’

Lidner’s insight into the inner workings of the investigation was astounding. Hultin controlled himself as usual and struck: ‘As far as I know, Sydbanken hasn’t been in close contact with the Russian-Estonian mafia the way Lovisedal has. Because you’re still refusing to cooperate with the mafia, aren’t you?’

Lidner gave him a somewhat peeved look, the way a person looks at a fly that’s disturbing him when he’s busy with important matters. ‘Of course,’ he said curtly. ‘They continue to be an annoying element. But if you think that the mafia is behind the murders, then you’re really out of bounds.’

‘Why would you say that?’ Hultin retorted.

‘In particular because of what happened to your private detective in Tallinn.’

Hultin was on the verge of boiling over. He cast a
determined
glance at Lidner’s bushy eyebrows. ‘I need to ask how you happen to have such insight into our investigative work, Mr Lidnér,’ he said, keeping his tone as neutral as possible.

Pronouncing someone’s name in the wrong way can be just as effective as using the wrong title, but Lidner didn’t seem to let it bother him. Whether the fly shits or not makes no difference; in either case, it’s just as annoying. Until you take out the fly-swatter.

Lidner took out his. ‘You’re free to ask, and I’m just as free not to answer.’

Hultin gave up. ‘We’re going to bring in our own men as well as detectives from the Stockholm police to give you round-the-clock protection. I hope you can put up with their presence for a few days.’

‘As usual, the taxpayers’ money could be put to much more effective use,’ said Jacob Lidner, and he turned on his heel and left.

It took almost two full minutes before Jan-Olov Hultin did the same.

25

A WEEK PASSED
in which almost nothing happened. After that came an event that should have been decisive.

The criminal division of the Stockholm police made a routine raid on an illegal gambling club in the city centre. An alert officer by the name of Åkesson recognised one of the gamblers, even though he had affected a trendy goatee, was wearing horn-rimmed glasses and had shaved off all his hair.

The gambler was Alexander Bryusov, the slimmer half of Igor and Igor.

He was now sitting mute in the city jail. The members of the A-Unit were peering through the peephole, one after the other, like curious schoolchildren.

Hultin turned to the officer who had arrested Bryusov. Åkesson was looking worn out; he was desperate to go home.

‘Not a word?’

Åkesson shook his head. ‘I’ve sat here almost all night
trying
to get something out of him. He’s pretending to be deaf and dumb.’

‘Okay,’ said Hultin. ‘Damned good job, in any case, Åkesson. Go home now and get some sleep.’

Åkesson left. They hoped he wasn’t planning to drive himself home.

The visiting schoolchildren of the A-Unit stood there, shifting from one foot to the other in the corridor of the jail. The guard was staring at them with a slightly indulgent expression.

‘I’ll go in with Söderstedt,’ said Hultin, and asked the guard to unlock the steel door. ‘The rest of you can leave,’ he added, and slipped inside.

Söderstedt gave them an apologetic wave and followed.

No one left. They took turns looking through the peephole. The guard’s expression grew progressively less indulgent.

Hultin and Söderstedt sat down across from Alexander Bryusov. He didn’t look much like the police sketch.

It was Söderstedt who did the talking. He repeated each question he asked; first he posed the question in Swedish, then in Russian. But it was a very one-sided conversation.

Bryusov began by demanding a lawyer. The demand was denied with vague references to national security; an infallible excuse. The rest of the questions, including one about the Monk tape, Bryusov answered with an ironic smile. Once he said to Söderstedt, ‘I recognise you.’ Otherwise he
remained
mute, up until the question: ‘Where is Valery Treplyov?’

Then Bryusov laughed loudly and said in crystal-clear Swedish, ‘That, my good sirs, is a profoundly religious question.’ After that he said nothing more.

The chief prosecutor didn’t have an easy time of it at the indictment hearing.

Not only was there already an overwhelming lack of evidence. But when the case was presented in famed lawyer Reynold Rangsmyhr’s rhetorically elaborated and sarcastic statements, it became downright ludicrous.

The members of the A-Unit were flabbergasted as they sat scattered among the spectators. They were far less concerned with whether one half of the Igor duet was going to be released than with the question of why the most prominent lawyer in Sweden, and definitely the most expensive, was defending a Russian booze smuggler.

What they witnessed was a battle royal, Tyson versus Anders ‘Lillen’ Eklund, which logically ended with the judge sternly admonishing both the office of the prosecutor as well as the police authorities for wasting the time and resources of the judicial system with a matter that could end in only one way. And the freed Alexander Bryusov actually managed to go underground while still inside the courthouse. No one even saw him leave the building.

‘What just happened over there?’ Gunnar Nyberg
dared
to ask at the afternoon meeting in Supreme Central Command. A thick haze of disappointment hovered over the A-Unit. Through the fog they could just make out their badly lacerated, but not yet beaten commander, Hultin, sitting at the end of the table. He was deliberately rolling the shattered lance of his lead pencil between his fingers. Without looking up from this Sisyphean labour, he said grimly, ‘The question is quite simple. Does the Viktor X group have sufficient resources and contacts within the Swedish judicial system to get Bryusov off so easily? Or what is it we’re actually encountering here?’

The group tried as much as possible to relieve the Stockholm police and take over most of the night-time surveillance of the Lovisedal board of directors,
anno
1991.

Hjelm had spent a night keeping an eye on a man by the name of Bertilsson, and another night guarding a man named Schrödenius. He’d also spent a couple of nights at home in Norsborg.

He’d had no contact whatsoever with Cilla, who was staying at the Dalarö cabin and remained an enigma. Apparently the worst thing he could do would be to try and reason with her. He had seen her loneliness. And Danne and Tova were living their own lives, with Danne spending most of his time in his room. Tova was often with her friend Milla, whose parents had cheerfully promised to look after her, but at the same time, it seemed to
Hjelm
, had given him a number of reproachful looks. He stocked the freezer with food, wondering who was really to blame and for what.

Tova said that she thought the blemish on his cheek looked like an astrological sign, but she couldn’t decide which one. Not until the following morning, just as he was about to leave for work, did she say that it was Pluto she meant – a
P
with a little line through the loop. He asked her what the significance was. She replied merrily and innocently that she had no idea.

‘Are you coming to the closing ceremonies at school?’ she asked him. ‘Mama is coming.’

‘I’ll try,’ he said, feeling a pang.

In the car on his way into town he thought about what Pluto might mean for Tova: a cute Disney dog, the most distant planet in the solar system or an archaic god of death.

When he entered the office, Chavez hadn’t yet turned on the computer. That was very unusual. He was sitting at his desk, grinding coffee beans. ‘It’s going to be June soon,’ he said tersely.

‘Do you have plans for the summer that are going to end up frozen?’ said Hjelm as he sat down.

‘I suppose
frozen
is the right word.’ Chavez looked out the window of the small office. The clear blue sky was peeking through the upper-right corner. Then he seemed to remember something. ‘Oh, that’s right,’ he said, invoking his rather distracted memory banks. ‘A guy called. Said he’d call back.’

‘Who was it?’

‘No idea. I forgot to ask.’

It was a fundamental dereliction of duty, but Hjelm stopped himself from criticising his colleague. ‘What did he sound like?’

‘What did he sound like? Someone from Göteborg, I think.’

‘Ah,’ said Hjelm with renewed hope. He punched in a long string of numbers and waited. ‘Hackzell?’ he shouted into the phone. ‘Hjelm here.’

‘I think I’ve come up with something,’ said Roger Hackzell, his voice crackling on the line from Hackat & Malet in Växjö. ‘Something actually did happen a couple of years ago when I played a jazz tape here in the restaurant.’

‘Don’t go anywhere!’ Hjelm slammed down the phone. Already out in the hall, he said to Chavez, ‘Tell Hultin that Kerstin and I have gone to Växjö. We’ll be in touch.’

‘Wait!’ yelled Chavez.

Hjelm rushed into room 303. Gunnar Nyberg and Kerstin Holm were sitting there singing a complex Gregorian chant. He stopped and stared at them in astonishment. Without seeming to notice him, they sang to the end. Chavez threw open the door behind him and also halted abruptly. When they were done, Hjelm and Chavez applauded for a long time. Then Hjelm said, ‘I think we’ve got a nibble regarding the cassette tape in Växjö. Want to come along?’

Kerstin Holm wordlessly put on her little black leather jacket.

‘Is there room for me?’ asked Chavez.

The three of them flew to Växjö. Jorge’s presence made any intimate conversation between Paul and Kerstin impossible. Neither of them seemed to mind. Their tunnel vision had been activated.

Just after eleven o’clock they found Roger Hackzell inside Hackat & Malet. The restaurant had just opened for early lunch customers.

Hackzell showed them into his office, leaving the restaurant in the hands of a waitress. ‘Misterioso’ was playing loudly inside the office. Hackzell turned off the cassette player, which was set up to play the same tune over and over again.

‘Yes, well,’ he said, motioning for them to sit down on the sofa. ‘A couple of days ago I got a feeling that there was something special about that tune, so I’ve been listening to it like a maniac. And then I remembered. It was late one night a few years back. We’d been running the restaurant here in town for several years and were the only place open until three
A.M
. It could get a little rowdy, with all the late-night partygoers gathered here. Later the rules were changed, and now we’re open only until midnight. On that particular night, though, the restaurant was deserted, and I was just about to close.

‘There were two men still here. One of them, Anton,
big
as a house, requested that I play this tape again. I had just played it and then put in a new one with some rock music. But Anton had a kind of crazy look in his eyes, and he wanted the jazz back on. So I put in the tape again, and I’m positive that it was this tune. Then he started shouting wildly and lit into the other guy, punching and pummelling him.

‘I remember it all very clearly now; it was as nasty as hell. Anton kept screaming the same thing over and over. I can’t recall what it was, something really incoherent. He was as drunk as a skunk, and I was fucking scared. First he delivered a couple of blows to the stomach, then a kick to the knee and one to the groin, and finally a hell of a knockout punch right on the jaw, making the guy’s teeth fly. He fell to the floor, and Anton kicked him as he lay there, again and again.

‘But he was conscious the whole time, the guy who was lying there getting beaten; he just stared up at Anton with a strange expression. Then Anton stepped back to take aim for a fucking big kick that definitely would have killed the guy. I screamed at him. Anton stopped himself and instead picked up a bottle and hurled it against the wall. Then he left.

‘I helped him up, the guy who was lying on the floor. He was beaten real bad, his teeth were rolling around under his tongue and he spat them out, one after the other. One arm was hanging limply, bent at an odd angle, and he had terrible pain in his stomach and abdomen. “I’m going to call the police,” I said, “and an ambulance.”
“No,”
he said, “he was totally justified.” That’s what he actually said about the lunatic who had just beaten him to a pulp: “He was totally justified.” Okay, I thought, it was great not to have to bring in the police, because then we’d lose our nighttime licence. I helped him sop up the worst of the blood, and he left. And that was it.’

‘I think that’s good enough,’ said Hjelm. ‘This Anton, who is he?’

‘Anton Rudström is his name. He’d opened a gym here in town – that must have been back in 1990. But when this happened it was about a year later, in the spring, and the gym had gone bankrupt. He’d got a bank loan without having to provide any collateral – you know how easy that was in those days – and then he couldn’t pay it back. That happened a lot in the late Eighties. At the time of the episode in the restaurant, Anton had just started on his drinking career. Now he’s a full-blooded alcoholic, one of the drunks who usually hang around outside the state off-licence.’

‘Although he still looks like a bodybuilder,’ said Hjelm pensively, amazed at the coincidence.

Roger Hackzell, Kerstin Holm and Jorge Chavez all looked at him in surprise.

‘What about the other man?’ said Chavez. ‘The victim. Who was he?’

‘I don’t know. I’d never seen him before or since. I don’t think he was from here in town. But he was a fucking expert at darts, I do remember that. Stood there for several hours, throwing them.’

‘Throwing them?’ said Kerstin Holm.