To the Top of the Mountain (18 page)

‘And then the explosives,’ said Norlander. ‘What kind of highly volatile, liquid explosive is it? One that’s set off by an electronic detonator? No one seems to have the answer, but it’s probably important.’

‘Probably,’ said Hultin. ‘We’ll keep working on it. Interpol again. Lots needs to be confirmed, too. We should take some fingerprints from Eskil Carlstedt’s flat and compare them with the body of 2A, for example. And then we should think about how to handle Rajko Nedic. He’s made a point of operating in the open, after all. Honest businessman. Restaurant owner.’

‘We should probably talk to him,’ said Hjelm, ‘though the question is, when? When should we reveal what we know? What do we stand to lose or gain by talking to him? Etc., etc.’

Hultin nodded, glancing out over the room.

‘And I suppose you want to know what’s going on, don’t you? Staffwise. You know what they said on TV yesterday. Police staff shortages are acute in the summer. The Justice Minister is openly talking about bad holiday planning. People have already set up vigilante groups in several places, to keep on top of the things we no longer can. Even if we’ve been called in specially, we still have to justify being here, seven police officers of differing rank, working on this. It’s Midsummer’s Eve. It’s getting close to midday. Most policemen are on leave now, and will soon put down the bottle of schnapps to dance, legs unsteady, to Midsummer tunes with their children. But not you. On the contrary, you’ll be costing the National Police Board more money because of all the overtime you’ll be doing. Any problems with that?’

‘I’d like to make a quick trip out to Dalarö, at least,’ said Hjelm.

‘My kids will be waiting for me at Skansen at three,’ said Söderstedt.

‘I’d really like to spend the evening with my newborn daughter,’ said Norlander.

‘My son’s carved a maypole for my grandson in Östhammar,’ said Nyberg.

Chavez and Holm said nothing.

‘Forget it,’ Hultin said brutally. ‘We’re setting up a new operation. There hasn’t been one for almost a year. No one’s complaining about holiday before this is wrapped up.
Right now
, you’ve got all the freedom you want to return to your previous work, but not in three hours’ time, not tomorrow. You’ve really got to want this. As I understand it, this is also a chance to make the A-Unit permanent. The last chance. Unfortunately, it seems like they need us. That means: if any of you have developed a taste for the normal police life to such an extent that you don’t give a damn about this, you’re welcome to go. But only if you go right this moment. Anyone?’

Gunnar Nyberg looked up. Distracted, he took a sip of his ice-cold black coffee. It made him almost throw up. Drinking coffee had become a reflex.

‘It’s not the normal police life I’ve got a taste for,’ he said, in the midst of a bout of nausea. ‘It’s the more
abnormal
parts. I’m in the middle of several ongoing paedophile investigations. I can’t just chuck that all to the side.’

‘I know,’ said Hultin. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on your careers. Jorge wants nothing more than to return from theory to practice. Kerstin has just come back from Gothenburg. Together with Paul, she’s completed her part of the Kvarnen Killer case. Arto and Viggo’s explosion in Kumla seems as though it can easily be incorporated into the Sickla case. For you five, it seems as clear as it does for me. It’s you, Gunnar, you’re the weak link. You’re right in the middle of truly important work. What are your thoughts on that?’

Nyberg sighed loudly. ‘You don’t have coffee breaks as often,’ he said. No one understood that this was the highest possible praise. He continued more clearly. ‘It’s definitely tempting to get to work on a proper A-Unit case again. That feeling of free fall. But for me, it would be best if I could . . . I don’t know, work half-time for a while, so I can work out what to do with the paedophile investigations. So that there aren’t any delays. So that no one suffers for a moment longer than necessary. If you can understand that.’

‘I think we understand,’ said Hultin. ‘And as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine. I haven’t forgotten that it was you who was right about the Kentucky Killer, while the rest of us were wrong. Anyone else?’

No one else.

Hultin nodded and continued. ‘OK then. Before I start to deal out more distinct tasks, we should spend a bit of time, each of us, working out what we should do next. And what we can expect to happen now. We’re assuming that Gang Two now has the briefcase. That could be an end to it. Nedic might have no idea who took the briefcase, but that’s if we ignore the Vukotic explosion. How long will it be before he manages to link it all to Niklas Lindberg? And what’ll happen then? A big showdown? Can we assume that Lindberg’s gang is happy with the briefcase? Or do they want more? Might their Nazi links suggest that? Are they after an ethnic cleansing of the Swedish drugs trade? And why was this briefcase being delivered to a possible Swedish policeman? If there was money in the case, then why is the drug dealer Rajko Nedic, who has never been locked up by the police, giving money to them? Is that why he’s never been caught? Etc., etc.

‘What we need is the following. One: more information on the mysterious explosives; two: the identities of 2C, 2E and 2F; three: the possible policeman; four: to find out why Nedic is paying the Swedish police money (if that is the case). If you come up with anything else, tell me right away. So. Let’s keep working till Midsummer’s Eve turns into night. No flowers beneath your pillows, no home-made schnapps, no Midsummer children being created. Nothing but work, work, work.’

16

NOTHING BUT WORK,
work, work. Though from home.

She looked out onto Surbrunnsgatan. Never before had her little corner of the world felt so abandoned. The midsummer weather was in two minds; sometimes sun, sometimes rain, occasionally lots of rain. And she was surfing. In cyberspace. Surfing the Web.

At that moment, the rain was beating against the window. Surbrunn’s rain. One of those magnificent little showers. Short, intense, fleeting.

Sara Svenhagen had almost forgotten her public holiday anxiety. The kind that drives the suicide rate up during those very days when medical staff are paid holiday overtime. That notorious lump in the chest. The voice saying: you’re alone, you know. Completely alone.

No one wants you.

She knew she shouldn’t have felt that way. It was her who didn’t want anyone, not the other way round, but public holiday anxiety didn’t seem to discriminate. It sunk its teeth in. It spoke unwelcome truths.

No lights went on in the windows on the other side of the street. Not a person went by down on the pavement. Not one car engine started the entire day. The city was deserted. For once, it wouldn’t be Stockholm topping the violence statistics. It was missing both its perpetrators and victims.

They were in the countryside.

She could have celebrated Midsummer at her parents’ villa in Tyresö. The family wouldn’t have been complete, though. That was some comfort in her sorrow. She knew that for her dad, it was also work, work, work. The difference being that Chief Forensic Technician Brynolf Svenhagen was in seventh heaven. Two magnificent cases to crack. First the Kumla explosion, then the Sickla Slaughter. She imagined the strict, grey man being coloured in and given a carnivalesque sheen. She could just picture him dressed in a colourful grass skirt, little purple tassels spinning on his nipples. She smiled. The lump disappeared.

She looked around the small flat. It wasn’t so stupid after all. Her inner sanctum.

She returned to the computer.

Since 19:36:07 on Thursday 24 June, she had allowed herself only a wink or two of sleep. Eighteen hours ago. That was when she had saved the address list from that strange, fleeting website.

Sure enough, it was an address list. An address list for paedophiles. A network which, to a large extent, certainly seemed to touch upon other known networks, but still: it was a completely new list. No names, of course. No real, physical addresses, but a list of email addresses, several of which she had never come across before. The fact was, her head was full of them. Overfull, maybe. About to burst, maybe.

Those short spells of sleep had immediately been invaded by the nightmare. The glowing stomach, the shadow, the penis, forcing its way into her and towards the child. She was convinced that the dream was trying to tell her something. Something vital. But she couldn’t understand what. She only knew the fear she felt when she woke in the moment of death. She felt that the dream went
much too far
to be able to deliver a message. Any message was drowned out by horror.

Anyone can open an email address anonymously online. Hotmail was the favourite. There were millions of addresses ending in @hotmail.com. Access was unlimited. But there were always tracks; behind all the camouflage there was always an IP address, the computer’s own fingerprint. Finding this IP address using the email address was sometimes impossible – when the person was particularly good with computers, for example – though sometimes, even if it was complicated, it was still possible.

But even if you managed to find the IP address, it wasn’t by any means certain that you would find a physical person behind it. Most paedophiles were smart enough not to open these email accounts from their own computers, but from a public computer connected to the Internet, in the Kulturhuset or the Kungliga biblioteket, for example. That said, it was a bit more difficult to enjoy the forbidden fruits in these public places. Masturbating to babies who had been raped didn’t exactly belong in the open spaces in the Kulturhuset. Normal practice was to check your mail on a public computer, transfer the images onto a disk and then enjoy them from the safety of your home. You were safe then. No tracks, other than the physical. Every now and then, material from this or that computer was downloaded in one place or another. When this happened, it was possible to link a physical person to that time frame and that computer, but it wasn’t easy. The easiest to catch were the
blockheads
, those people who, every once in a while, let their impulses take over and risked downloading material to their own computers, using their computer’s unique IP address. In that moment, the tracks were established.

So far, Sara had counted three
blockheads
on the latest list. Tracing them was a complicated process, one that involved several automatic elements, operations she could have carried out in her sleep. If she ever slept, that was. Through a complex interplay of the central police computer, Interpol, the Internet and the intranet, she had managed – having gone through around a third of the list – to find eighteen IP addresses already. Eight of them were Swedish. Five led back to public institutions. The others to private citizens in Boden, Lund and Borås.

She was starting to grow tired of cyberspace. Now and then, she caught sight of the crop-haired little thing in the computer screen. By now, she was no longer mistaking it for a young boy. It was her. The
living
,
breathing
Sara Svenhagen. That was how she looked. She was no virtual paedophile victim, but a real policewoman. She needed to get stuck into some practical police work soon. And so she was searching feverishly for a Stockholm number in the address list. None had turned up so far, but that was what she was looking for. So that she could strike right away. In person. So that she could physically look the man in the eye.

And confirm the old chestnut: that the paedophile didn’t think of himself as evil. On the contrary, he was
nice
, he took the child’s inherent sexuality seriously while the rest of the world misunderstood their nature and made them asexual. The paedophile gave the children the most important gift of their lives: he gave back the sexuality which had been taken away from them.

She had heard it all before. But she would never be able to understand it.

The question was whether the list was enough of a catch to begin a grand international offensive. That is, would she be forced to wait six or so months before taking action, alongside the Americans and Brits and Germans and French, not forgetting the Belgians? And what would happen during that time?

It was a question of conscience even before it existed in the material world; a classic moral dilemma, only in virtual form.
If
a physical Stockholm address turned up, one that Sara Svenhagen could go for immediately, should she do it? She was forced to weigh the risks and chances against each other. On golden scales. The risk that the virtual Stockholm paedophile would violate more children against the risk he would squeal to the rest of the network, therefore causing harm to considerably more children. The chance of catching a man with even more information about paedophiles against the chance of catching an entire network.

Somewhere during the course of her calculations, she suddenly started to understand the basic principle of market economics. Everything had a price. Or rather: a price could be
put
on everything. Absolutely everything. Every relationship, every sign of life. The question of conscience she was struggling with was an economic calculation. It was simple: plus and minus. Minimising the losses. The least possible damage. The smallest number of sexual assaults on minors.

It felt disgusting.

Necessary, but disgusting.

A price could be put on
everything
. Commercialisation of the intimate sphere. The transformation of humans from physical beings to legal entities to virtual people. All that was left behind was a number, a value, a share price.

She suddenly knew precisely why she had chopped off her hair.

And just then, the physical address for the IP address appeared. It was in Stockholm.

But it felt strange. Fatburstrappan 18. Somewhere in Södermalm.

And then reality hit her. The moral dilemma was, on closer consideration, fictitious, or at least not hers. She had forgotten one important factor.

Rank.

It was almost two on Midsummer’s Eve. Dancing around the maypole would already be well under way in many places. Friday. Followed by Midsummer and then Sunday. Weekend, with a minimal number of staff in the city. The majority were in the countryside. Her superiors would be dancing to Midsummer tunes. Ragnar Hellberg too, in all probability; comedy Superintendent Party-Ragge. But she had an emergency number. A mobile number.