To the Top of the Mountain

After the disastrous end to their last case, the Intercrime team – a specialist unit created to investigate violent, international crime – has been disbanded, their leader forced into early retirement.

The six officers have been scattered throughout the country. Detectives Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm are investigating the senseless murder of a young football supporter in a pub in Stockholm, Arto Söderstedt and Viggo Norlander are working on mundane cases, Gunnar Nyberg is tackling child pornography while Jorge Chavez is immersed in research.

But when a man is blown up in a high-security prison, a major drugs baron comes under attack and a massacre takes place in a dark suburb, the Intercrime team are urgently reconvened. There is something dangerous approaching Sweden, and they are the only people who can do anything to stop it.

About the Author

Arne Dahl is an award-winning Swedish crime writer and literary critic whose work has been translated into over twenty languages.
To the Top of the Mountain
won the German Crime Writing Award, which has also been won by authors including Ian Rankin, James Ellroy and John le Carré, and is the third book in the internationally acclaimed Intercrime series, adapatations of which were shown on BBC Four.

Alice Menzies is a freelance translator based in London.

Also by Arne Dahl

The Blinded Man

Bad Blood

To the Top of the Mountain

Arne Dahl

Translated from the Swedish by
Alice Menzies

‘
I DIDN’T SEE
anything.’

Paul Hjelm gave a heartfelt sigh.

‘You didn’t see anything?’

He tried to catch his eye, but the young man kept looking down, morose.

Morose? When had he last used the word ‘morose’? Had he ever, at any point in his life, used the word ‘morose’?

He felt old.

‘Let’s try again,’ he said calmly. ‘Even though a full-on fight broke out behind you, you saw nothing at all. Is that right?’

Silence.

Hjelm sighed again. He lifted his knuckles from the interrogation table, stretched his back, and cast a glance in the direction of his colleague, leaning against the drab concrete wall.

As their eyes met, he felt the contradictions of the moment. On the one hand, his relocation to the violent crimes division of the local police force, working in Stockholm’s City district, and the whole range of hopeless, everyday crimes that went with it. On the other, the return of his favourite colleague, Kerstin Holm, to Stockholm.

And the first challenge facing the seasoned duo after their reunion? A pub brawl.

Paul Hjelm sighed once again and returned to his reluctant witness.

‘You didn’t glance over your shoulder even once?’

The young man smiled faintly. A slight, introspective smile.

‘Not even once,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

The young man met his eyes for the first time. Bright blue. There was an unexpected sharpness, as though he were on the verge of saying something completely different, when he said: ‘Because I was reading.’

Paul Hjelm stared at him.

‘Hammarby have just played a home game against Kalmar. It’s a 2–2 draw, and they finish last in the Allsvenskan league, and you’re sitting in the Hammarby fans’ favourite haunt, reading? In Kvarnen – a rowdy bar, heaving with frustrated Hammarby fans – twenty-year-old Per Karlsson is sitting alone, with a book? It’s a very strange choice of reading place, I must say.’

Per Karlsson smiled again, the same soft, introspective smile.

‘It was quiet when I got there,’ was all he said.

Hjelm pulled out the chair and sat down with a thud.

‘I’m really curious now,’ he said. ‘Which book had caught your attention to such a degree that you not only managed to ignore all the shouting and screaming and chaos, but also a fight that ended in someone getting a beer mug to the head and dying?’

‘Dying?’

‘Yeah, he died. He bled to death in the bar. On the spot. The blood just gushed out, he lost two litres in twenty seconds. It just poured right out of him. His name was Anders Lundström, he came from Kalmar and, for some unfathomable reason, he made the mistake of going to Kvarnen, which was about as close to Hell as an opposition supporter could get. And, sure enough, the Hammarby fans killed him with a beer mug. But you didn’t see any of this, because of which book? I’m very interested.’

Per Karlsson looked stricken. He mumbled: ‘It’s nothing you’ll have heard of . . .’

‘Try me,’ Paul Hjelm said in English, with a faux New York accent.

Kerstin Holm shifted for the first time since Per Karlsson had entered the interrogation room. She moved silently over to the table and took a seat next to Hjelm.

‘My colleague here knows more about literature than you’d think,’ she said. ‘The last time we met, almost a year ago, you were reading . . . Kafka, wasn’t it?’

‘K,’ said Paul Hjelm ambiguously.

Kerstin Holm gave a short, slightly bitter laugh.

‘K,’ she repeated in the same faux New York accent. ‘So try him.’

The young man looked confused. Almost completely swathed in black, at the height of summer. Limp, unkempt blond hair. A budding intellectual? No, not quite. His cagey, almost wounded gaze, those introspective smiles. Definitely not a university student. Maybe just a young man reading to educate himself.

A rarity.

‘Ovid,’ said the rarity. ‘Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
.’

Paul Hjelm laughed. He hadn’t meant to; the last thing he wanted was to mock Per Karlsson. Still, it had happened. It was happening more and more often.

The insignia of bitterness.

Morose.

Hjelm felt a short but fleeting wave of self-loathing.

Holm stepped in. ‘And what a metamorphosis it was. For Anders Lundström from Kalmar. The ultimate metamorphosis. The transformation of all transformations. Which of Ovid’s metamorphoses would you say fits Anders Lundström’s fate, Paul? Orpheus?’

‘Sure,’ said Hjelm sluggishly. ‘Orpheus torn to pieces by the Thracian Maenads.’

Per Karlsson stared at them, suddenly quite indignant.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not Orpheus.’

Hjelm and Holm looked at one another, surprised.

‘Anyway,’ Hjelm eventually said, ‘we know that your little “I didn’t see anything” is a lie. It’s going to undergo a metamorphosis now, so tell us what you saw, Per, from the beginning. We’re going to do this like a proper interrogation. So, your name is Per Karlsson, born in Danderyd on the fourth of December 1979, currently living in Aspudden; you’re unemployed and did nine years of compulsory education. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ said Per Karlsson faintly.

‘Today is the twenty-fourth of June, the time is 08.13. Tell us everything that you saw in the Kvarnen bar on Tjärhovsgatan at 21.42 on the twenty-third of June. Yesterday evening, that is.’

Per Karlsson looked pale. He stared down at the table, fiddling with his fingers.

‘Are you recording this?’ he asked.

‘We’ve been recording everything since you entered the room. Including this.’

‘OK, well, when I got to Kvarnen there weren’t many people there. I had no idea there was a match on that evening, I probably wouldn’t have gone there if I had. It was quiet, I read. Then they arrived. The first fans got there just after nine, then it filled up. I tried to keep reading, it went pretty well, I’m good at concentrating. I was sitting a little way off, with my back to the bar, almost right over by the window, so I heard more than I saw. But sure, I turned round now and then.’

‘Why did you say that you didn’t see anything?’ Kerstin Holm asked.

Paul Hjelm said: ‘Is this how it is now? Is the automatic answer “I saw nothing” when the police ask? Have things gone that far?’

‘It’s the most common answer we get in any case.’

‘Should I go on?’ Per Karlsson asked, confused.

‘Of course,’ said Hjelm and Holm in unison.

Jalm and Halm, that famous American comedy duo.

‘A gang of six or seven Hammarby fans heard another group, four guys, talking with southern accents, Småland accents. Both groups were standing by the bar. The Hammarby fans started arguing with the Smålanders, who said they lived in Stockholm and supported Hammarby. You could hear that they were scared, that they were lying. The Hammarby fans could hear it, too. They got more and more aggressive. Two of the Smålanders managed to get away and cleared off. Two of them were left. The atmosphere got ugly. Some more Hammarby fans turned up and tried to get the gang to move back, away from the Smålanders, I guess they could see what was happening. Eventually, one of the Smålanders made a run for it. He shoved one of the Hammarby fans so hard that he fell over, and then three of the others from the gang pushed him, the Smålander, up against the bar and the one who’d fallen over got up, grabbed a beer mug and smashed it as hard as he could on the man’s head.’

‘Did you see it?’

‘No, not really. I saw a little bit now and then, quick glances. But I heard it. I turned round when I heard the crack, a really fucking nasty crack. Not like when glass breaks, really. I think it was his head cracking. Fuck . . . his skull, the blood. I turned around just when the glass had hit him. There was a little empty space around him. He had his hands to his head and the blood was just gushing out, through his fingers and down his arms. Fuck! Then he collapsed, limp, just straight down onto the floor. And the Hammarby gang, they cleared out immediately, they just ran right out the door. The one who’d done it still had the handle of the beer mug in his hand, covered in blood. A whole crowd managed to squeeze out before the doormen woke up and blocked the door. Then the police came pretty quickly. The other Smålander was down on the floor trying to stop the blood with his jumper, there was a Hammarby fan trying to help, I think, but it was hopeless. Christ, there was blood everywhere.’

Per Karlsson was white.

Hjelm and Holm tried to make sense of the information.

‘You saw a lot for someone who didn’t see anything,’ said Hjelm.

‘Don’t keep going on about that,’ Per Karlsson said sullenly.

‘A whole crowd managed to get out?’ Holm asked. ‘Hammarby fans?’

‘Mostly. Some others, too.’

‘How many?’

‘I was mostly looking at . . . the victim . . .’

The victim.

Hjelm shuddered.

Per Karlsson said: ‘About ten Hammarby fans cleared out, I’d say. Him first. The perpetrator.’

The perpetrator.