To the Top of the Mountain (27 page)

‘Eleven!’ Cilla shouted, sounding precisely like both daughter and parrot. ‘You know, you could tell her too, Paul, rather than just sitting there like a dolt!’

A dolt? Did those still exist? Paul wondered to himself from inside the bubble. He didn’t lift so much as a finger.

The door opened and Tova slipped out, Cilla running after her, shouting from the doorway: ‘If you come back later than eleven, I’ll kill you!’

Hmm, Paul thought to himself from inside his bubble. Was that good parenting? Was that a model of tolerance and understanding?

‘Dolt!’ Cilla repeated in the direction of the lump of jelly on the sofa, as she pulled on her coat.

‘Dolt,’ croaked the parrot.

‘Aren’t you head of ward?’ asked the dolt. ‘Don’t they have normal working hours?’

‘Do you think I’m cheating on you?’ shrieked Cilla, ‘Is that what you think? Do you think I’m running off to fuck some doctor?’

That was something that hadn’t even crossed his mind. But it would be lodged in there now, that much he knew. There was just one way to get rid of it. Temporarily. He glanced in the direction of the piano, which had been shoved into a corner, detested by all except him. As compensation, he had been forced to accept the parrot, something they had been desperately asking for without success for years.

The worst thing was when it mimicked his mediocre piano playing. A real nightmare.

‘No,’ he said, holding back the rest.

Cilla sighed deeply and made a slight conciliatory gesture.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Tova’s driving me crazy. And work. I have to go in and do the night shift sometimes, you know. Otherwise everything’ll fall apart. We’re on our knees, you know that.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Go on. Have as good a time you can.’

A quick kiss on the cheek. Nothing more.

He sat in the glass bubble for a while longer. Waited until it was safe. Then he smashed it. One hit, and it broke into pieces. He went over to the piano and lifted the lid. Sat down. Let his fingertips touch the keys. Enjoyed it for a moment.

He started playing. A little tune he had learned. ‘Misterioso’. Monk. Strange, beautiful notes. He fell into dangerous improvisation. Eventually, he started to hum along. He didn’t sing, though. He hadn’t come that far yet.

He wondered why. But not now. Now, he was just playing.

Instead, the parrot sang. With an awful breaking voice.

Paul Hjelm laughed and continued to play.

He didn’t sing.

27

IT WAS WEDNESDAY
morning. Or, to put it more dramatically: it was the last June morning of the millennium.

Jan-Olov Hultin preferred to call it Wednesday morning. There was hardly any reason to go over the top. Their investigation was going surprisingly slowly. He still felt rusty.

Hultin was sitting at the desk at the front of the room, waiting. While he waited, he went through the latest documents from Brynolf Svenhagen’s overexcited forensic technicians. More about the weapons. An Interpol list of places where the Russian Izh-70-300 pistols had been found; it was endless – Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro were just a few among many.

There was also a list of places that the sub-machine guns from Boden had ended up after they were stolen a few years ago. Sure enough, several had been recovered from right-wing extremist circles around Europe; two had been found with a fascist group in Bulgaria, two more with a Danish motorcycle gang. It didn’t seem unlikely, though it was far from certain, that Sven Joakim Bergwall and Niklas Lindberg had carried out the break-in at the weapons arsenal in Boden themselves. Then there were the explosives. New indications suggested that the highly explosive liquid had been developed by the South African security services during the final years of apartheid, apparently with the intention of using it at one of the ANC’s international mass meetings. But this was all still unconfirmed.

Hultin looked up and sighed. It still wasn’t time. The A-Unit could wait.

He had tried to look at the case from above, to summarise it and tie all of the threads together, but it hadn’t quite worked. Something was missing. Swedish–Yugoslav drug cartel, a lone Swedish ‘policeman’, right-wing extremist techno-robbers, sophisticated explosives from South Africa, dead war criminals from the former Yugoslavia. It stank – he couldn’t stretch his analysis any further than that. The guesswork went much further. Wasn’t there a whiff of
continuation
in this crime? Was the crime they were investigating really over – or was it ongoing? Were the fascist robbers really just out to steal from the drug dealer? Was that all? Wouldn’t the money, or whatever was in the hypothetical briefcase, ultimately be used for some specific goal? By this point, he was skating on increasingly thin ice.

He read on, turning to a compilation of the kingdom’s ongoing crimes from the National Police Board. A violent spring had turned into an equally violent summer. Further attacks on the police had taken place after the Malexander shootings, most recently in Malmö, where a policeman had been called to an abandoned car following a report of a theft. When he opened the door, the car exploded. He was left blind. It was an attack aimed directly at the police. This was something new, Hultin thought to himself. A new, incomprehensible trend. Why were they focusing on the police? He thought about the World Police and Fire Games for a moment. Twelve thousand competitors from every corner of the earth, coming to a country where policemen were being executed and blown up . . .

What else? A Norwegian with links to international alcohol and cigarette smuggling had recently been found murdered in a van to the south of Stockholm. A string of robberies was taking place on the west coast, from Ängelholm northwards. An investigative journalist specialising in Swedish Nazism had, along with his son, been blown to pieces in his car in Nacka. Everything seemed to be curiously linked to everything else. But only vaguely.

Hultin looked up again. No. Still not time.

He was starting to feel annoyed. The after-effects of the day before were still lingering. Mörner’s speech to the police Olympians, the embrace which had followed – all had left a bitter taste in his mouth. And now this meeting which he hadn’t even called – and then the idiot had the cheek to not even turn up. As though Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin had nothing better to do.

They still hadn’t had any response from the authorities of any ex-Yugoslav states other than Slovenia, where none of Gang One had left any traces. Considering the circumstances in Serbia and Kosovo, they couldn’t expect any answers from there. They could hardly expect anything from Bosnia or Macedonia either, both of them preoccupied with their own problems. He was still hoping for Croatia to come through.

He was on the verge of cancelling the meeting when the lead character came trudging in, a triumphant smile ready to burst across his face. Jorge Chavez went straight to the whiteboard and attached, on top of all the earlier pictures, three black-and-white enlargements. Each of the photographs required eight of the absurd ladybird magnets to hold it in place.

Eventually, Chavez said, pointing: ‘Especially for you, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present a curious breakthrough in the investigation. Three photographs of Tjärhovsgatan by Björns trädgård at 21.43 on Wednesday the twenty-third of June. A week ago. Pictures without parallel when it comes to the concentration of crooks.’

Hjelm and Holm looked at one another.

‘In other words, the pictures were taken a minute after the Kvarnen Killer smashed a beer glass on the head of a poor Smålander inside the bar, the entrance of which can be seen
here
in picture one,’ said Chavez, pointing. ‘In the middle, we have the Kvarnen Killer himself. To the right, by the wall, we have Gang Two. Minus Eskil Carlstedt and Niklas Lindberg who were, at that time, inside Kvarnen and Kumla prison, respectively. Up to the left, we have Gang One, complete with 1C here in the doorway. The driver of the Merc.’

It was completely silent in the Supreme Command Centre.

‘Picture two,’ Chavez continued in the same slightly irritating, triumphant tone. ‘Gang One is gone, the Kvarnen Killer is gone. But you can see Gang Two more clearly here. And here, beside 2B, Sven Joakim Bergwall, we’ve probably got our three unnamed robbers. Carlstedt, or 2A, the other one who died at Sickla, is inside Kvarnen, waiting to deal with the police. These three should all still be alive, though one’s injured. So, these are three of the four Sickla killers that we’re looking for. The picture’s good enough to identify them, and I spent yesterday doing just that. It wasn’t easy, but we should have enough to release the identities of all four robbers now,
if
you want to release them.’

He stopped talking for a moment, glancing around the silent room. Sure enough, he had their undivided attention. Then he began to draw red circles around the four faces, one after one.

‘
This
is Sven Joakim Bergwall, the man shot in the face. He’s followed by
this
man, a real jailbird called Dan Andersson, often called Danne Blood Pudding because of the burns he suffered as a young offender when a large chunk of his skin turned purple. I’m not sure how they got to blood pudding from that. Andersson’s thirty-eight and has been convicted of – wait for it – eighty-six crimes, mainly bank robberies, since the age of fifteen. He left Kumla in February and was a member of that so-called Nazi clique in there, even if the right-wing extremism has never been one of his main activities. He’s a professional criminal, simple as that.

‘
This
man is Roger Sjöqvist, the only member of the gang convicted of murder. Thirty-three, bodybuilder with a military background. Killed a drug dealer ten years ago, escaped when he was on leave from Tidaholm a year ago, and has been lying low ever since. He appears more frequently in right-wing extremist circles and was probably involved in a number of bank robberies. He’s a wanted man.

‘Finally,
this
man, the shorter of the well-built men, is the technician in the gang. Agne Kullberg, called Bullet because a tough guy can’t have a name like Agne. He’s only been inside once, for assault and battery. Was released six years ago. He beat up and blinded a Turkish pizza chef in Hagsätra. He’s thirty-six and trained as a civil engineer when he was inside, specialising in telecommunications. He’s never had any work as a civil engineer, though. Doesn’t feature directly in a right-wing extremist context, but he’s a member of a dodgy shooting club which also had two of our more notorious colleagues from Norrmalm’s police as members, as well as Bergwall.’

‘Where the hell did these pictures come from?’ Hultin exclaimed, staring at the enlargements.

‘Can’t we wait a minute before going into that?’ Chavez asked, continuing: ‘We’ve still got picture three. In this one, Gang Two have disappeared as well. It’s from when the doormen managed to block the door in Kvarnen. The Hammarby fans are still there, talking; they know it’ll be a few minutes before the police arrive, that there’s no rush. The queue, apparently full of “difficult immigrants”, didn’t exist, as you can see. Just fans. Apart from
this
man, who’s sadly almost completely hidden behind the fans and who, in all probability, is our so-called “policeman”.’

They looked at the figure. He could hardly be seen at all. Only the very left edge of him. He might have been dark-haired. Maybe he was wearing jeans. His right shoe was clearest. Nike Air trainers.

‘We’ll see what the technicians can do with the picture,’ said Chavez. ‘They’re working flat out.’

‘Where are the pictures from?’ Hultin asked, mustering his best ice-cold neutrality.

Chavez looked at him. There was a pause which seemed to go on for an eternity. A trial of strength. Hjelm sensed that he was looking at the beginnings of a future power struggle.

‘They were taken from a high spot nearby,’ said Chavez, telling them nothing in particular.

‘Haglund’s Semi,’ exclaimed Södermalm inhabitant, Arto Söderstedt.

Chavez was silent.

‘Where are the pictures from?’ Hultin repeated, iciness intact.

Chavez broke free from the clinch hold and leaned back against the ropes, catching his breath.

‘I can’t say for the moment,’ was all he said.

‘My room,’ said Hultin.

Chavez nodded. Then he said: ‘Just let me sum up first.’

Hultin allowed him to sum up first.

‘Times,’ said Chavez, following the Hultin model and drawing a kind of flow chart onto the whiteboard. ‘Where does this story start? What comes first? The “policeman” prepares an attack on Nedic? Why? Does he have something to sell? Is it blackmail? Is it the start of a future collaboration? In any case, he makes contact with Nedic, and Nedic goes along with delivering whatever was in that famous briefcase. It’s looking more and more like money.

‘Somehow, someone in what turns out to be Gang Two finds out that a handover is going to take place. Considering Niklas Lindberg seems to be the driving force, we can assume that it was him, or at least his so-called “Nazi clique” in Kumla, who found out about the delivery. Probably via Nedic’s right-hand man, Lordan Vukotic. Sven Joakim Bergwall and Dan Andersson are part of this gang. Andersson is released in February, so he’s probably already out when the information reaches the “clique”. Bergwall, who was released in May, and Lindberg, who was released on the morning of the twenty-fourth of June, were still inside. Maybe they happen to overhear some part of a conversation that Vukotic is having with someone inside. They realise that it’s about something
big
– probably just
a lot of money
– and they bide their time, join forces with their prison friend Dan Andersson plus Bergwall’s mate from the shooting club, the civil engineer Agne “Bullet” Kullberg, and a couple of right-wing extremist friends – the as-yet-clean Eskil Carlstedt and the murderer Roger Sjöqvist.

‘Bit by bit, they work out that a meeting’s going to take place in Kvarnen. It turns out it’s going to happen the night before Niklas Lindberg gets out. He probably thinks this seems like a happy coincidence, so he pulls Lordan Vukotic’s shoulders out of joint the same evening, to get the information out of him or just because he enjoys it. But the fact that Vukotic keeps quiet about it suggests it wasn’t just a bit of fun for Lindberg. In other words, Lindberg manages to get information out of Vukotic, probably the
provisional
meeting place for the handover; the other details are going to be decided in Kvarnen by the “policeman” and Nedic’s men: Gang One.