To the Top of the Mountain (26 page)

‘Sara Svenhagen,’ said the lady.

‘Jorge Chavez,’ said the ruffian, adding: ‘Svenhagen?’

‘That’s also a standard reaction,’ said Sara Svenhagen. ‘Yep, Chief Forensic Technician Brynolf Svenhagen is my dad. Just so that’s out there.’

‘Unexpected quality from the chief technician’s gene pool,’ Chavez said clumsily.

‘Give up,’ Kerstin Holm whispered, which Chavez took as a hint to keep trying.

‘You don’t expect someone investigating paedophiles to look like this.’

At which point someone should have shown compassion and removed him from the stage, throwing him out of a side door. That didn’t happen, however. The conversation was already under way.

‘How come you recognised me?’ Ludvig Johnsson asked Kerstin Holm.

‘I’ve started running a bit myself,’ she said, receiving a surprised glance from Hjelm.

‘Are you getting anywhere with the Sickla Slaughter?’ Ragnar Hellberg asked Paul Hjelm. ‘It seems to be a real hornets’ nest.’

‘You could say that. We’ve started to close in on a few leads, but no arrests are imminent.’

‘Christ,’ said Hellberg. ‘You sound like a press release. And now you’re going to steal Gunnar from me, too.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Gunnar Nyberg. ‘I’m struggling to tear myself away from all those nice web pages on the Internet.’

‘Gunnar working on a computer seems like a contradiction to me,’ said Hjelm. ‘He’s the most earthbound policeman I’ve ever worked with. He once wrote off a car by tackling it. With a bullet in his neck.’

‘He seems to have lots of strings to his bow,’ Ragnar Hellberg laughed.

Sara Svenhagen, meanwhile, had been left at the mercy of the strange Latino man. Her thoughts were elsewhere, and the terrible introduction had been followed by sluggish distraction. Not from his side, though. Quite the opposite. Through sheer hard work, he had eventually managed to find a common interest, the Internet, strangely enough, and suddenly they were the only ones left, giving one another tips on how to deal with JavaScript. He was also
courting
her ceaselessly. Swapping her firmly rooted coffee mug for a champagne glass, toasting her, looking at her attentively, giving her compliments of a kind she had never heard before, incredibly aware of her reactions. And the strange thing was that she started to feel
seen
. Really
seen
. Appreciated. Valued. Things were so distorted.

The Internet made her virtual, faint around the edges; paedophilia hardened her against erotic feelings, and so when she successfully cracked a complicated code, tracking down a paedophile all by herself, she had no one to tell. She had painted herself into a corner, cut off her hair, let herself be held back by a horrible nightmare. She had disappeared among the invisible. The only person who saw her was Gunnar Nyberg, but as nothing more than a shining light, she knew that. And now, suddenly, she was standing before this passionate little man who was looking at her non-stop, really looking at her in order to uncover her true feelings, and she just wanted to let her hair down, like young, single women sometimes did. Even though she had no hair to let down. She did it anyway. Allowed her cropped hair to flow. He seemed to be spellbound, enchanted by her very existence, and she liked it. She had to admit that she really did like it.

They stayed behind until the catering staff started circling them like hungry hyenas. They hadn’t even realised that they were the last to leave, that the party had ended long before, that the police station was as good as empty for the night. When they finally did realise, she heard herself asking: ‘Do you want to come for a cup of coffee?’

They kissed in the taxi on the way to Surbrunnsgatan, engaged in a spot of light petting in the stairwell, threw off their clothes in the entrance, made love in that utterly uninhibited way, starting in the hallway, continuing in the bedroom and finishing on the floor; starting over again somewhere else. When they came to their senses, they were in the kitchen. Neither of them knew how they had ended up there. The contents of the bin were strewn over the floor. Neither of them knew why.

Sara felt as though she had thrown the windows wide open, as though air was rushing into a vacuum, as though her short hair was blowing wildly in the intense breeze. She threw her arms around him, holding him tightly.

Jorge felt as though something had shifted. Sex was no longer the end of something: it could also be the beginning. This was a radical mental shift. He wondered what it meant. He lay, curled up
in her arms
. She had thrown her arms around him, and he lay curled up, with his cheek against her chest.

It was a fantastic feeling.

A
feeling. A shared feeling.

An enormous void in their lives which had suddenly been filled in.

He was woken by the sun’s rays. Nature’s own alarm clock. Though, on closer inspection, they weren’t completely natural. They were being
directed
at him. By a crack in the blinds.

In the slanting light, she was a glorious outline. As though enveloped in a waterfall of light. He reached out for her. She came no closer. She was completely still, surrounded by light. Completely inaccessible.

Ah, he thought. A nightmare.

‘I’ve got something you should see,’ she said.

Ah, he thought. Not a nightmare. An everyday dream. A dream of happiness turned everyday. A bit early, surely.

‘Come on,’ she said.

Apparently not, he thought. Apparently not too early.

He stood up and accepted that he was awake after all. He went over to her, through the waterfall of light. She was wearing a large T-shirt which hung down below her hips. He was naked. He reached for her body.

‘Put something on,’ she said.

He put something on, and followed her into the bathroom.

For a moment, he felt sceptical. Had he misjudged her so badly? What could she be so keen to show him in the
bathroom
? A positive pregnancy test? A collection of death’s-head moths? Shrunken heads in linseed oil?

No, he was being unfair. What he entered was a darkroom. A faint red light glowed in place of a normal bulb. From the ceiling, strings of black-and-white photographs dangled from clothes pegs. On a board covering one half of the bathtub, three differently coloured trays of various stinking liquids stood. In the other half of the tub stood an enlarger. She closed the door.

Everything looked new. All of the equipment seemed to be brand new. A pile of wildly unsuccessful prints lay on the floor. If he hadn’t been so tired or so happy, the detective in him would probably have set to work. He would have thought: Hmmm, and then: New equipment, unfamiliar with darkroom techniques, keen to share. Which meant: Some kind of secret task.

The slumbering detective inside him was soon put to the test again.

Sara Svenhagen said: ‘A couple of days ago, I caught a paedophile living in Söder Torn.’

Pause. He was expected to say something, to react, if not with a ‘Eureka!’ then at least with a ‘Hmmm’. No, the detective within him was still sleeping soundly. She continued.

‘Söder Torn, Haglund’s Stick.’

Nope. The detective within him was unavailable.

‘Haglund’s Stick towers above Medborgarplatsen.’

‘Go on,’ was all he said.

‘This man spent his entire life taking photographs of kids in Medborgarplatsen and the surrounding area. He did it every day. He had a jam jar full of undeveloped films at home. I’ve developed them.’

‘Why?’

‘Wake up, Jorge. Daily. Medborgarplatsen. It was just a hunch. I’ve developed twelve of the films, and now I’ve found it.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Six thirty. I’ve been working since half four.’

‘Ah, hell. So I’ve been brought here as a policeman?’

‘Shut up. Look here.’

His eyes followed her finger up towards the photographs hanging from the ceiling. Skateboarders in Medborgarplatsen. Crossing between the square’s restaurant tables and park benches. In the bottom corner, a series of small digital numbers. 21.43 23.06.99.

The detective within him woke with a start. For a moment, he looked around in the darkness without understanding where he was. But he said: ‘Ahh.’

‘Exactly,’ said Sara Svenhagen.

‘Do those numbers mean what I think they mean?’

‘It’s a sophisticated camera. It prints them on every image. Twenty-third of June, 9.43 in the evening.’

‘Christ!’

His eyes moved along the series of images hanging from the washing line. One after another. In the second image, the skateboarders were moving towards Björns trädgård. In the third, they were in the middle of Götgatan; above their heads, a forest of moving legs was visible. In the fourth image, the skateboarders had disappeared behind the trees, down towards the ramp in Björns trädgård; the top of Tjärhovsgatan could be seen instead. There was chaos on the pavement. In the centre, a young man was running wildly in the direction of the camera. He was surrounded by others, carrying banners and wearing striped scarves. All looked agitated. Some were shouting. The man in the middle had unkempt blond hair and a moustache which went just past the edges of his mouth. He was holding something in his hand. Chavez pointed at the object. Sara pointed at the next picture. It was an enlargement of his hand.

He was clutching the handle of a beer mug.

‘The Kvarnen Killer,’ Chavez said breathlessly.

He ripped down the photograph, sending the clothes pegs flying. He studied it. Closest to the wall was a group of four men. It was impossible to distinguish their faces. But a familiar face was pushing his way out of the door. He looked better living than he did dead.

It was 1C. The driver of the Mercedes from Sickla.

Two men were waiting for him. They were just as swarthy-looking, and visibly different to the clusters of Hammarby fans.

Chavez ripped down the last photo. The Kvarnen Killer was gone. The three men were gone. Gang One had made off as soon as 1C had come out. Now, the group by the wall was more visible. One of the figures was familiar. Chavez recognised his face from the prison photographs. His name was Sven Joakim Bergwall. 2B. He was dead, too.

Gang One and Gang Two.

Group portraits.

In the pale red glow, Sara Svenhagen took some photographic paper from a packet, placed it into the enlarger and let a faint light fall on it for ten or so seconds before lifting it up with a strange plastic pincer and pushing it down into one of the liquid-filled trays. She turned it over. A picture developed before their eyes.

In it, Gang Two was also gone. One last man was leaving Kvarnen. His entire figure was nearly concealed by the Hammarby fans. Only certain features were visible.

‘“The policeman”,’ Jorge gasped.

‘What?’ asked Sara.

‘You’re a genius, I said. You, Sara Svenhagen, are nothing less than a genius.’

He placed both hands on her cheeks. She was glowing deep red in the darkness. He kissed her, sinking down to the floor. He crept in underneath her T-shirt, his face gliding upwards, over her stomach towards her breasts. He lapped up the taste of her skin.

Sara Svenhagen looked down at her enormous stomach, touching it lightly.

She imagined that it was glowing with its own, internal light.

26

PAUL HJELM WAS
sitting on the sofa. It had been a long time since he had last done so. It had been a long time since he had been home at all. He could hardly remember what it was like. A strange calm settled around him, as though a glass bubble had closed in over him.

Not that his surroundings were especially calm. His family was dashing all over the house in Norsborg. He could hear the familiar melody of the evening news drifting over from the neighbours’ house. It was nine in the evening, and they were all going out. For the first time in a long while, he felt a moment of surprise at how big his children had grown. No more hugs. No more intimate family moments. No more reading aloud. Just their long, drawn-out departure.

Danne was seventeen and heading out to play football. ‘At ten in the evening?’ Paul the father had asked. Training times were limited, Danne had replied pedagogically. Nowadays, their conversations went no further than that. Would they have time to make amends later, or was it already too late? Was it all too late? Would he suddenly, one day – like those nice Lindberg parents over in Trollhättan – be informed that his previously well-behaved son had become a violent criminal with Nazi tendencies? How would he react? Would he survive that? He could see unpleasant parallels – the well-behaved Niklas Lindberg had become an officer, his own well-behaved son wanted to be a policeman.

But at that moment, he was running around like a madman, accusing everyone – the family’s new parrot included – of deliberately and spitefully hiding his shin guards. Eventually, he found them, wrapped up in his own putrid old towel. Slightly embarrassed, he left the house.

Tova was still there. Fifteen years old and crazy. Beyond all reason. Paul had no siblings of his own, and teenage girls were brand-new territory for him. He was amazed by the role that hormones played. Right now, she wanted to go to a club. For the third time that week. He didn’t know how worried he should be. A club sounded better than a rave, in any case, and her mother, Cilla, reassured him that they were organised by teetotal youth groups. As though that would be worth any bonus points with a daughter who seemed to hate her mother more than anything else in the world. It had only recently occurred to him that it might be a matter of love, rather than hate; certain glances exchanged between the two of them suggested that. Like they were playing a game just for him. He didn’t understand it.

‘Twelve!’ Tova shrieked in her most piercing voice. Wasn’t it meant to be sons whose voices broke?

‘Twelve,’ the parrot cawed, its voice definitely breaking. Normally, that would have caused Paul to reach for a slipper to throw at the disgusting creature, but today he was immune. He was sitting in his little glass bubble, watching their performance from another planet. It was splendid.