To the Top of the Mountain (11 page)

A strange year.

Kerstin Holm turned towards him on the park bench.

‘What did your family say?’ she asked.

‘They’re at the cottage out on Dalarö,’ Hjelm replied. ‘I can paint the town red all night if I want to. Party all night with an old flame in Kvarnen.’

‘All in good time,’ Kerstin Holm smiled. ‘How are they?’

‘Good. Danne’s finally over the worst of his teenage madness. He’s seventeen and wants to join the police, strangely enough. I’m hoping it’ll pass. Tova’s fifteen, and absolutely unbearable. Every cell in her body is unbearable.’

‘And . . . Cilla?’

Paul laughed and looked at Kerstin. She peered back. He could see the thin rings around her irises, giving away her contact lenses. Her upper lip, bulging like she had been mistreated. Though only by the tobacco company, Gothia Snus AB.

‘Good, thanks,’ he said. ‘She’s ward sister now, rehab at Huddinge hospital. Normal hours. And enjoying a long holiday at the minute, thanks to all the leave they owed her.’

They sat in silence a while. The past moved like a ghost between them. Though it was like Little Ghost Godfrey. Or Casper. The world’s friendliest ghost.

It was a time they both looked back on with an open heart. And completely without bitterness.

Eventually, Kerstin Holm said: ‘Shouldn’t we feel guilty about not focusing one hundred per cent on finding the Kvarnen Killer?’

‘We have been, by the book. We can just look at this as . . . a private investigation. Outside working hours.’

‘We don’t dare put it down as overtime, then?’

‘That depends on the result, I guess.’

Kerstin sighed deeply, and stretched her arms out sideways. Her fingertips grazed the hair at the nape of his neck.

‘Let’s just hope there won’t be any more violence this summer,’ she said, without seeming to believe her own words.

‘We’ll have to see whether the Police Olympics’ll be enough to discourage them. World Police and Fire Games. You know there’s going to be a party in a couple of days? You’ll probably get to meet all of the others there, from the A-Unit.’

‘How embarrassed should I be that I don’t really get the appeal of these games?’

‘Very. You’re police, you know.’

They laughed for a moment.

‘It’s an American thing,’ Hjelm eventually said. ‘The world’s police, prison guards, customs officers and firemen are getting together to compete against each other for the first time in Europe. The boxing in particular should see a lot of criminals in the spectators’ seats. Watching the law going at one another.’

A chilly breeze blew life into the evening. It quickly turned cold, sobering their thoughts. Focusing them on the task.

‘It’s probably time to say what we’ve been thinking,’ said Kerstin.

When the one concrete bit of action – picking up Eskil Carlstedt – had gone down the drain, there hadn’t been much left to do. The barmaid, Karin Lindbeck, had produced a drawing of the Kvarnen Killer that seemed more reliable than the three earlier attempts. That was the one they had chosen to give to the press. It was already in the papers. There wasn’t much more they could do at that point. All of the city’s police districts were busy conducting their own separate hunts for Hammarby fans. The fate of the Kvarnen Killer was now in their hands. It was very much a regional case.

They had been listening to the interview tapes all afternoon. What was the sequence of events that was emerging? They had both been drawn to the same sections.

‘How many parties are actually relevant?’ asked Hjelm. ‘Is it two or three?’

‘Instinctively, I’d say three,’ said Holm. ‘But the third is too vague. Still, I’m wondering what Per Karlsson was up to. He was reading Ovid and didn’t see anything, but all the same, it turns out he saw a lot. He wasn’t focusing on the book, that’s clear. The only thing he
didn’t
see and
didn’t
hear was the gang sitting closest to him, talking English right in his ear. It’s not enough, though. He didn’t run off after the killing so I’d say two. Two parties.’

‘Two gangs. One’s sitting by the door, at the table next to the wall. The other’s sitting at the middle table, furthest away against the opposite wall.’

‘The first consists of five “macho homos”, “skinheads who’ve passed the age limit”, “thoroughbred Swedish bodybuilders” you’d expect to be “the rowdy kind”. The other consists of “three or four Slavs” or “probably South Mongolians” having an English “multicultural exchange” with a Swede who was presumably the man that waved his police ID to get out.’

‘And in this English-speaking gang, there’s “distrust”, they’re “trying to agree on something”, possibly about a “meeting place”. Three or four “southern Europeans” in discussion with a – real or fake – Swedish policeman. Nothing suggests they were aware of the five thoroughbred Swedes in the other gang who seemed to be watching them. Our friend Hard Homo said of our friend with the book: “A group of macho gays were staring at him the whole time,” but the waitresses said: “They weren’t staring at him. Further away.” And then, further away, we have our little “multicultural exchange”.’

‘And then there’s the headphones.’

‘Then there’s the headphones. And then the killing takes place. They react instinctively, realise the place is going to be crawling with police soon. So they run. Both groups blend into the Hammarby fans running off. One man from each group stays behind. Should we assume that the “policeman” stays behind so that he’s not seen running off with the “Slavs”? In that case, it’s highly likely that he really is a police officer. Or someone who’s aware of police work at least. He knows that the time around the killing is going to be looked at from all possible angles so he aims to slip out towards the end, when the “Slavs” have already gone. But he’s a little too late. The doormen have suddenly realised that something more dramatic than keeping the place free of “immigrants” is required of them. So he weighs up the situation for a moment. Is it worth showing his police ID to get out? Or is it better to stay and make up a nice excuse? Act like a policeman should act, and take control of the situation. From his decision, maybe we can draw the conclusion that there’s a lot at stake for him. He doesn’t dare take the risk of being identified. He waves his ID in front of the stressed doormen and slips out. No one can identify him. He made the right choice.’

‘One man from the thoroughbred Swedish gang stays behind. He’s ready to leave like the others but he’s told to stay behind. Why? What was your first impression when you saw Eskil Carlstedt?’

Hjelm thought about it. The man with the shaved head and thin blond moustache walking into the interrogation room. He was in his thirties, wearing quite a stylish pale suit with a yellow tie; he was a real powerhouse. Hjelm wondered whether his jacket sleeves were hiding a range of prison tattoos.

‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Eskil Carlstedt was bait. All five of them probably looked just as dodgy, but Carlstedt must’ve been the only one without a criminal record. By staying behind, he drew our attention away from the fact that the gang, when you think about it, were acting damn suspiciously. They weren’t talking, they weren’t drinking; they were just staring, listening. It was real quick thinking. For a moment, he got us to believe that they were a group of salesmen out drinking and chasing women, even listening to a demo tape. And that was all he needed to go up in smoke, and with him the rest of his band of thieves. He was pretty experienced for someone without a record.’

‘They had the entire night to go through their strategy. Carlstedt’s kept behind by the police, gives a short statement saying he didn’t see anything, tells them his name and address and comes back to us in the morning. By then, his statement has changed. The whole thing was well rehearsed. The only time he slipped up was when we mentioned the earphones. But he dealt with that nicely.’

‘The four names he gave for his friends were pure fabrications. Not one of them exists in the real world. He was looking at his watch the whole time, they were going to meet and disappear together. He just needed to get out of the police station and then that was the end of it. So he was playing along, went to the police artist and put together a fake drawing, left four false names that he knew wouldn’t be checked out for several hours, and left. And now the whole gang is lying low together somewhere. What for?’

‘What we can say is that both parties were acting extremely professionally. But we can also say that they haven’t actually done anything illegal. Not really. Not like killing someone with a beer mug.’

They both stood up from the park bench. A hint of dusk had begun to fall over Björns trädgård, the playground had started to empty. Only the skateboarders remained, continuing to arc up and down, back and forth, over and over. Like the pendulum of a clock.

‘Should we check, then?’ asked Paul Hjelm. ‘If all of this is just a figment of our imagination, two frustrated CID officers who aren’t happy with it being
just
a pub brawl?’

‘Or if we’re actually on the way to becoming CID officers again,’ Kerstin Holm nodded.

It wasn’t far to Kvarnen, one of Sweden’s last remaining beer halls. It had turned ninety the previous year. Never before had it been a murder scene, though it had been on the verge of it.

It had been built during the first decade of the twentieth century as a replacement for Källaren Hamburg, the legendary tavern where those sentenced to death ate their last meal and had a last drink for the road before they were taken up to the gallows in Johanneshov.

The same had happened with Anders Lundström from Kalmar.

The doormen recognised them and let them past the non-existent queue of ‘difficult immigrants’. The inner door opened and they entered the pub. The waitresses nodded briefly at them.

Sure enough, the pub was packed. Outside, it was a beautiful summer’s evening, but inside, in the smoke-filled pub, it was jam-packed. They glanced to the right, towards the table where Eskil Carlstedt and his friends had sat. They looked over to the bar, where Anders Karlström from Kalmar had met his unexpected fate. They peered over to the middle table, where Per Karlsson and Ovid had sat. And they pushed their way over to the table against the opposite wall, the table where the multicultural exchange had taken place.

A group of a dozen twenty-year-olds sat squashed together around the table. They were laughing, smoking and drinking beer. They looked like they were having fun. Enjoying being in a place that was the object of so much rumour and speculation in the media. The centre of the action.

Hjelm guessed that seventy-five per cent of them dreamt of being TV presenters. The national average.

‘Hi,’ he said, kneeling down.

They stared at him, instinctively moving their legs out of the way. He descended among the dewy young women’s legs and bunched-up miniskirts. Their protests subsided as he ducked into the darkness under the table; he presumed that Kerstin had shown her ID.

Open sesame.

He crept further under the table. He hadn’t needed to. A small gadget was stuck near the very edge of the table, so small that he had gone past it without noticing.

He pulled it loose, crawled out, heaved himself to his feet, brushed the ash and snus tobacco from his knees, and turned towards Kerstin Holm.

He waved the little microphone before her eyes.

And the figment of their imagination fell dead to the floor of Kvarnen.

10

THEY’RE LYING IN
bed. The sunset is reflected on their young bodies, still damp with sweat. It’s the calm after the storm. The desire has subsided but it will wake again soon, it’s never far away. It will always be there. Not even death can keep them apart.

But it’s also the calm
before
the storm. That’s how the saying really goes. And now, for them, the storm really is approaching.

The hurricane.

That’s the insight that slowly begins to spread through them. The calm, the always temporary calm, gives way.

Trembles of unease ripple through their nakedness.

He sits up on the edge of the bed. He is pale, she is dark, and she can see, at that moment she can see where his mind has gone. Again. She leans over to him, her breasts softly grazing his back. Slowly and carefully, she pulls him back from the shadow of death. Like he has done so many times for her.

She knows that he can see the school playground. She knows that he has stepped out of himself. She knows that he can see a boy, a young, pale boy, lying on the desolate football field. She knows that he can hear ‘If you get up, we’ll hit you.’ One after another, they go forward. Stand there a moment. Peering down at him. Then they piss on him. One by one. Only the boys at first. The girls are in the background, giggling, thrilled. The brave ones leave, though none of them are brave enough to tell. It’ll just keep going on. And on. Still, no girl has done it yet. A comfort in his distress. Then the last floodgate opens. A girl comes forward. She is wearing a skirt. She has already taken her knickers off, she is holding them in her hand. She squats over him, carefully. Slowly pisses on his body. She is dark.

He feels something soft against his back, and it brings him to his senses. He lifts off, floats, soars ahead. He is sitting on the edge of a bed, flying. He puts his hand behind his head and reaches her. Lets his hand move through her dark hair.

And she can smile again.

‘I was hurt,’ she says, trying to stop herself from crying. ‘I was dead. You brought me back. You know that.’

They sit there, their limbs strangely twisted. They’re a sculpture. For ever united. By an eternal love.

‘What do you want?’ she asks.

It’s a ritual. Neither can depart from it. He smiles, and says: ‘I want to sit on a veranda, reading. It’ll be warm, but raining gently. The rain’ll be pattering nicely on the roof of the veranda, and when I look up from the book, I’ll see the steam rising between the raindrops.’

She smiles. She knows it so well. She says: ‘D’you know what I want?’

He laughs. ‘No idea.’

‘I want to hear the dolphins singing. I want to see the foam along the edge of the pale blue water. I want to see the dolphins playing in freedom. I want to hear them talk to one another when there’s no trainer there to drill them.’