Anger Mode (22 page)

Martin stroked his chin, deep in thought. Everybody has a weak point, a secret they would not want to see the light of day. He needed only to find Uddestad’s weak spot. He was not concerned about getting sponsors for such a project within SÄPO. Together with the head of SÄPO, Anders Holmberg, and the National Police Board, Uddestad was pushing hard for the creation of a Swedish-style FBI, and the establishment of RSU was the first part of the process. This idea was shunned like the bubonic plague among officers within SÄPO. First, he needed to start with his immediate superior Thomas Kokk and his network of contacts higher up in SÄPO’s hierarchy. That would also resolve the third and final problem.

A smile found its way onto his troubled face and, all of a sudden, he felt elated. It was as if he had had a small epiphany. Now, he needed only to schedule all the steps in his plan. He took out his personal laptop and started up Microsoft Office Project. He christened the project “Three Crowns” and began to input the variables.

WALTER GRÖHN OPENED his eyes at Karolinska University Hospital one hour after the brain surgeon Täljkvist had completed the operation. Walter had insisted that he was unconscious during the operation. For the life of him, he could not understand why they wanted to operate on his brain under only local anaesthetic and while he was fully awake, although it was routine. The removal of the tumour lying inside Walter’s head had gone as planned, despite the complexity of the procedure. The medical profession deserved a certain recognition after all, even if he thought the majority of those practising it consisted of snotty brats who each earned the salaries of twenty nurses. After having tried to use his recently operated-on brain to reconsider the facts of the drug and the murders, he was finally forced to give in to the ensuing fatigue. It was as if someone had slowly dimmed the lights.

The following day, Walter woke up early. The clock stood at five-thirty. With some surprise, he looked around the room. He must have been moved during the night, because he was in the company of three other patients. Faint breathing was the only sound that he could hear. Opposite him was a young girl with red hair, who apparently had a broken leg. It was in plaster from her thigh down to her toes. Across from him and to the right was a foreign woman, about forty, with her mouth half open. Her blanket had fallen off and he noticed she was bandaged around one breast under her nightgown. An amputated breast. Probably cancer. The bed directly to the right, however, Walter could not see. A screen separated the bed from the rest of the room. However, he could hear deep snoring at regular intervals, revealing that he had a man as his closest neighbour. Just before eight, the nurses came in with breakfast. A blonde assistant nurse bade good morning to Walter and placed a tray with sandwiches, orange juice and coffee on the bedside table. Walter took a big bite of a cheese sandwich and drank the glass of orange juice. The nurse went behind the screen and woke up the snoring man. He was lying with his back facing Walter. The man wearily cleared his throat and remained still for a minute before he finally sat up on the edge of the bed and started picking at his breakfast. Walter said hello to the girl and the one-breasted lady, who had also started to wake up. As if on cue, the man turned around. At first, Walter could not see who it was because of his battered face. But then the curly-haired man started talking and Walter choked on his coffee.

“Well, if it isn’t the detective!” Jörgen Blad burst out, so loudly that the others in the room could not help hearing. The one-breasted woman and the redhead directed their gazes first at the man with a face like a colour chart and then at the new patient with the bandaged head.

Walter cleared the coffee from his nose and put his coffee cup on the bedside table. “What’s happened to you then?” he asked, carelessly. “Have you stuck your nose in one time too many?”

Jörgen’s grin remained on his face.

“What about you?” he asked and drew a halo in the air around his head.

“Had some rubbish in my head that needed to be removed,” Walter answered.

“A bullet?” Jörgen quickly became serious.

“Hardly that,” Walter said dryly. “A tumour.”

Jörgen’s face looked concerned. “Is it serious?”

Walter shook his head in denial.

“I had a ladder fall on me, myself,” Jörgen said, sighing melodramatically.

“Sounds feasible,” Walter answered, equally melodramatically, and turned his back. With all the sick people in the country, the odds must have been one in a million that he would end up with Jörgen Blad in the bed next to his. Nonetheless, there he lay. One of them was going to have to change rooms.

Jörgen looked thoughtfully at Walter’s back for a long while. An idea had popped out of nowhere and refused to get out of his head. Suddenly, he saw everything clearly. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? There was actually an alternative and a possible way out despite everything that had happened.

“Are you interested in a win-win deal?” Jörgen asked, after pondering for a moment. Walter did not answer, but became more and more irritated by the reporter’s presence.

“If I were you, I would listen,” Jörgen continued. Walter did not bother to reply. If he was quiet long enough, the wretch would perhaps tire, at least until one of them switched rooms. But then a twinge of curiosity appeared like a piece of spam email in his inbox. What could a journalist offer that would benefit both himself and the police?

Walter was no stranger to cutting a deal with criminals, as long as the payoff was greater than the cost of the favour. But to bargain with journalists was a completely different business. The crooks were actually a better bet, because they were relatively predictable, but you never knew where you were with journalists and the media. I suppose it couldn’t do any harm to listen to what the scumbag has to say, Walter thought.

“Listening never killed anyone,” Jörgen grumbled.

Walter turned around. “What is it you want to say?”

“I can give you something if you give me something in return,” Jörgen explained.

Walter looked carefully at Jörgen. “Such as?” he replied sarcastically.

“How about a high-ranking policeman who leaks information like a sieve and, on top of that, is consorting with serious villains?”

“Sounds highly unlikely,” Walter said sceptically.

“Why do you think I’m lying here?” Jörgen said, getting up from the bed and putting on the hospital slippers.

“Well, perhaps it was a ladder?” Walter suggested.

Jörgen looked at Walter with a smug expression.

C
HAPTER 16

“I CAN’T DO anything more now,” Johan Hildebrandt insisted and shook his head in resignation. “At SÄPO, they’re extremely irritated about the memo, and I’m having my head bitten off, since they think we’re spreading wild speculation with absolutely no reason or evidence. Apparently, SÄPO’s been talking to the CID, where Walter Gröhn has also submitted a similar memo. Gröhn is, of course, also suspended from duty pending an investigation by Internal Affairs. Thomas Kokk was exceedingly upset that we at RSU are undermining SÄPO.”

“And Åsa Julén?” Jonna asked.

“She was kind enough to forward her copy of the memo to Martin Borg at SÄPO, who in turn went with it directly to Thomas Kokk, who already had the same memo, which he had received from me,” Hildebrandt said and studied Jonna grimly with his sharp eyes.

“I don’t understand why they’re so upset,” Jonna said. “Initially, they ignored the memo and now when you ask them to acknowledge its existence, they’re infuriated by its content. What’s the real issue here? They only have to confirm its receipt, even if they find it of no interest. As for ‘wild speculation’, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Hildebrandt said, morosely. “But this matter lies a long way outside our area of responsibility, a fact that the security service, police and prosecution authorities have explained to me with absolute clarity.”

“This is quite ridiculous. What are we going to do?” Jonna asked, throwing her hands up in frustration.

“We?” Hildebrandt exclaimed, disapprovingly. “We should definitely not do anything. To be specific, ‘we’ means you.”

JONNA LOOKED AT the huge building that was the police headquarters through the window at Rut’s café. Her latte was tasteless and, for the first time since she had started at RSU, she had doubts about the choice she had made. She began to ponder her situation in life. Instructors at the police academy had warned them. The system shapes each individual police officer. Brutal environment, brutal cops. Corrupt society, corrupt cops. And so on. But the country she was living in was neither brutal nor corrupt. It was however plagued by the envy attributable to a tall-poppy culture, popularly known as Jante’s Law; a practice that was probably not pursued so zealously anywhere else in the world. This envy-based egalitarianism was of course reflected even in the police force.

Perhaps she would have been better off never applying to MIT and subsequently to the police academy, and instead doing as her father wished. Getting an education in business and economics and then working in the family’s shipowning company. By now, she would have been a middle manager making eighty thousand a month. In another five years, she would have been vice president and, after yet another five years, she would have taken over from her father as CEO.

She could have been financially independent and in charge of over two thousand employees and thousands of tonnes worth of vessels. But she would also probably have died of stress before she had reached thirty-five.

It had taken her father a long time to get over Jonna’s decision to pursue another path. Jonna was the first from many family generations not to work within the company that her ancestors had built up. He had turned his back on her and nearly banished her from the family. They had not spoken for years. Eventually, her father had given up and accepted Jonna’s decision. He had not argued even when she applied to the police academy, but acknowledged her enrolment with a reserved “how amusing for you”.

Jonna’s brother, three years younger, was always around for last orders at the bars in the Stureplan entertainment district. With her father’s reluctant approval, he had been selected as the person to eventually take over as CEO – despite the fact that he lacked Jonna’s intellect and preferred to play with sports cars and speedboats.

Jonna’s desire to be a police officer had been born from a sense of fairness she developed as a child. She had no idea where it came from, but she had poured out lemonade with exact precision and shared biscuits equally between her friends. If anyone was bullied at school, she was always the first to berate the bully, which had inevitably resulted in her becoming the target of the abuse. She had an almost compulsive need to be honest, even if this occasionally led to difficulty.

Jonna’s thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of her mobile phone. At first, she hesitated, but then saw Walter’s number on the phone’s display.

“It’s time to start the ball rolling,” Walter began, as if they were still in the middle of a conversation.

Jonna took a deep breath in order to compose herself when she heard Walter’s determined voice. Well, it can’t get much worse than it is now, she thought.

“Is the operation already over?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Walter said, as if it was a trivial thing. “With today’s technology, they can do most things in their coffee breaks.”

“What a relief. You must feel really happy that it’s over,” she said in a cheerful voice.

“Yes, of course.”

“When can you go home?”

“In about ten days, according to Darth Vader, the laser expert. He says that I can’t move about or leave the bed for at least a week. I’m already beginning to feel as if I’m strapped into a restraint bed.”

“Darth who?” Jonna said, puzzled.

“And I’m only allowed to go to the toilet assisted by a nurse and in a wheelchair,” he added.

“How inconvenient for you,” Jonna said, attempting to sound sympathetic.

“Now let’s get to the reason I called you,” Walter said, lowering his voice. “It’s a well-known fact that private investigators have never been very successful at solving crimes.”

“That’s probably true,” Jonna assented.

“But if it’s police officers freelancing for an investigation, then it has a very different outcome.”

“Really?” Jonna said, with mounting apprehension in her voice. She saw where he was going with this conversation.

“Favours returned for favours given by former colleagues and so on,” Walter said. “You know what I mean.”

Jonna murmured that she understood.

“As things stand today, it’s not going to be possible to start a new investigation,” Walter continued. “I’ve spoken with Lilja, and nothing of any sense is coming out of that man at the moment. Apparently, I am well and truly tainted by the drug operation that went wrong. And the memo that Lilja forwarded to SÄPO was appreciated about as much as a North Korean propaganda film at the Oscars. Julén is not returning my calls, despite dozens of voicemail messages. She ought to be more appreciative; it’s the first time ever that I’ve left her a voicemail.”

Jonna hesitated before responding. “I know where you’re going with this talk about freelancers. You want me to use the police databases and start digging up information on court cases, even though I am neither authorized nor involved in the investigation anymore,” she replied in a stern voice.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Walter retorted. “You see, there have been some developments here at the hospital.”

“Really, such as?”

Walter lowered his voice to a whisper. “We need to talk, but not on the phone. The problem is that I share a room with a few patients. And, as I said before, I’m stuck in this bed for a week. You need to come here and wave your police badge so that we can talk undisturbed in another room. Say you need to question me, or something like that. My bed has wheels, so they just need to roll me out of here.”

“Wait just a minute,” Jonna burst out, leaning back in her chair. “I have just been given an unambiguous reprimand from my superior. He apparently got complaints from SÄPO, the police and Åsa Julén about the memo. Not that I understand the reasons, but that’s how it is. If I want to end my career in the police force, then I only have to follow your suggestions. How long do you think it will be before Internal Affairs pays me a visit, and asks me to turn in my badge, if I do as you say?”

“A few days, at the most,” Walter said.

“Exactly. And what would be the point of that?” Jonna replied, irritated.

“Two days under normal circumstances. But we’ll do this a little differently,” Walter whispered, barely audible.

Jonna sighed so loudly that it sounded like a gust of wind over the phone line.

“If Mademoiselle would be so kind as to get her well trained derrière over here, I will explain everything,” he said, trying to sound convincing.

Jonna quickly reappraised her situation. Visiting Walter again could hardly do much damage. What she did on her own time was not anyone’s business and, as long as she did not break the rules, she had nothing to worry about. She would, however, have to be careful about waving her ID around. If somebody at the hospital called RSU to check up on her, she would be in trouble.

“I’ll drop by to see how you’re doing. Nothing else,” Jonna finally resolved.

Walter accepted her terms and she drank up the last of her latte and paid the bill. She could not help smiling a little in spite of herself. There was something childish and yet mischievous about him. You never knew what to expect with Walter Gröhn.

MARGARETA FORS, DIRECTOR-GENERAL of the National Courts Administration, and the Chief Magistrate of Stockholm District Court and senior judge, Law Speaker Evert Kihlman, looked long and hard at Åsa Julén, who had, in broad terms, explained how the investigation into Bror Lantz and Karin Sjöstrand was progressing. She had informed them that the Security Service had taken over the investigation from the local police. Also that they had, on reasonable grounds, arrested a group of Muslims whom they suspected were not only behind the events surrounding Lantz and Sjöstrand, but had also precipitated District Prosecutor Lennart Ekwall’s tragedy. Since the Muslims were not very talkative, there was no news, except that which SÄPO had already reported. How and where the so-called Drug-X had been obtained was still unclear, but everything pointed towards a terrorist prince in Saudi Arabia. The motive behind this was fairly well established.

Evert Kihlman had a troubled frown between his eyes, and he stroked his hand pensively over his three chins.

“Let’s rewind the tape a little,” he began, both calm and factual. “I must confess that I’m having difficulty understanding the motive. Why should these supposed Islamist terrorists be interested in Stockholm District Court?”

Åsa Julén squirmed a little.

“It may sound rather far-fetched, but the fact is that these individuals have clearly broadcast their contempt for Swedish society. First, they admit to not recognizing our courts or, for that matter, Swedish law. They want to introduce strict Islamic law, in the form of Sharia, and ultimately turn the country into an Islamic state when there are sufficient numbers of Muslims in Sweden. Therefore, SÄPO considers it probable that these individuals are in some way behind recent events. They have resources, money and, very likely, the technology.”

Kihlman exchanged a pointed look with Fors.

“Is that all you have to go on at the moment?” Fors asked.

Chief Prosecutor Åsa Julén looked apprehensively at the Director-General. She wished Martin Borg were sitting beside her to explain the operational details, which was where the conversation was now heading.

Julén shrugged unapologetically. “That’s all we have so far. There are no other leads today.”

“SÄPO contacted me this morning to inform me that there’s no longer any threat towards Stockholm District Court,” Fors said pointedly. “The plan to place our staff under protection has therefore been withdrawn, which also affects you at the Prosecutor’s Office. Are you really sure about this?”

“If SÄPO has made that assessment, then it’s probably also correct. I have no opinion on that.”

“But what do you believe yourself?” Kihlman countered, leaning forwards on his elbows.

Julén looked unsettled.

“To recap, I don’t have any thoughts. Instead I have absolute confidence in what SÄPO says and recommends.”

“Do you think that sounds reasonable?” he kept on.

“You will have to expand on that a little,” Julén said, her tone changing.

“I’m not sure I can explain my question much more, since it was relatively straightforward and unambiguous,” Kihlman replied and looked at her inquiringly.

Julén sighed quietly.

“To respond to your question, the answer is yes. I think that it sounds reasonable. And, as I said earlier, we have no other leads at this point.”

Kihlman was not satisfied. “Are you investigating any other possibilities at all or are you completely fixated on these Islamist activists?” he asked.

Julén silently swore to herself. This was Borg’s damned field of expertise.

“As far as I know, they are ‘fixated’ on this group,” she replied.

“As far as you know,” Kihlman said dryly, “but you should know for certain in this type of case. It’s still you, in your role as prosecutor, who’s in charge of this investigation.”

Margareta Fors quickly realized that the conversation was getting out of control. Åsa Julén looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“It all seems so absurd, with drugs here and terrorists there,” Fors interrupted. “As you can appreciate, Åsa, we are just concerned for our colleagues. My staff and I want to be assured that you will do everything in your power to ensure that these tragedies will not repeat themselves.”