To the Top of the Mountain (31 page)

‘Do we know who they are?’ the great man asked gruffly.

‘Not really,’ said one of the Swedes. ‘We’re working on it.’

‘It seems racial,’ said the other. ‘That’s top of the list. Wog money. Royal straight flush. Can’t get any higher.’

‘Who the hell blew Lordan up?’ the great man demanded.

‘Like we said, we can’t access that information. It’s not possible.’

‘You’re ex-police,’ said the great man. ‘So what the hell
can
you actually access? What’re you doing to earn your money?’

He paused, gathered himself, and continued.

‘Could we get to any of the investigators?’

Both of the ‘security consultants’ shook their heads.

‘They’re difficult. We’ve had a bit to do with them . . .’

‘Dyed-in-the-wool types. Tight, smart, a bit eccentric. Untouchable.’

‘No one’s untouchable,’ said the great man. ‘The one who came here. Hultin?’

‘Forget it,’ said the first of the Swedes, looking troubled. ‘A rock. Old school. You’ll never get to him. You could kill him, but you can’t squeeze him.’

‘Fuck the police,’ said the other. ‘Just stay ahead of them. Like normal.’

‘Nothing from our man?’

‘He’s lying low. Isn’t it time to squeeze him a bit now?’

‘Absolutely not. His insurance is watertight. If anyone’s going to squeeze him, then it’ll be my people doing it. Understand?’

That was the end of the discussion. The Swedes had left without even giving Ljubomir a glance. Then the great man had just dragged Ljubomir along with him, without a word. He dragged him out, through the paradise garden to the garage door. They stopped. Three men had immediately come rushing out of the guardroom and followed them, close on their heels. They went past Ljubomir and the great man, entered the garage and started the car. Everything was fine.

These three men tested everything. They shielded him with their bodies, they entered all rooms first, they tasted his food, they opened his post, they started his car, and they
drove
his car. That’s what they were doing now. Ljubomir was squashed in between two lumps of meat on the back seat as the car raced into town.

And now they were
there
. In
that place
.

It was disarmed. Disinfected. Not a trace of its disgusting past left. An empty flat. Apart from two additional, almost identical men. Like parodies of gangsters. The civilian look.

But they simply didn’t know how civilians dressed. They had been recruited to various armies and paramilitary forces since they were young. Since before they had learned how to dress.

But they knew how to follow orders.

No one said a word.

If you ignored the precision binoculars in the window, it was a completely normal flat.

If you ignored the screams which bombarded Ljubomir’s ears from the soundproofed walls.

Those clear, piercing screams.

Ljubomir imagined that they had been absorbed by the porous walls, which looked like they had golden foam cushions fastened to them. All the screams. They bombarded him in unison, like a terrible, piercing accusation. He was overwhelmed. He could feel that he had turned pale. He stepped over to the window, tried to open it. No fresh air blew in. It was stuck.

The great man came over to him and put his arm around him. It wasn’t a gesture of friendship – he saved those for outside of working hours. It was a test. To see how much he was shaking.

To see if he was about to throw up.

They stood together, childhood friends from the little mountain village in eastern Serbia, looking down at the bank on the other side of the street. You could almost believe they were friends.

A short, well-built man wearing a hat had just entered the bank.

A short, well-built man wearing a hat had just entered the bank. He scratched his forehead as he walked, scratched it so that his hand covered his face. He looked around for a moment. Big, inner-city bank. Not yet converted into an open-plan office. Half ten, mid-morning: low traffic. Four customers, none of them potential heroes. Three cameras. He worked out their range, pulled the black hat down over his face, and peered out through the balaclava’s eye holes. As the others came running into the bank, he pulled out a pistol and shot the surveillance cameras. Three shots were all that was needed.

One of the others stood guard by the door. He could hardly lift his gun. Two went over to the counter, weapons raised. One of them was wearing a golden balaclava. He said, clearly: ‘We know you’ve pressed the alarm. So we’re asking you to fill these two bags with money as quickly as you can. You’ve got thirty seconds, then we’ll start shooting customers.’

The bags were quickly filled. No one screamed, no one made a sound. A strange silence spread through the room. As though everyone had instinctively understood that he had meant it.

On the way out, they took off their balaclavas, wrapped a chain around the door handles and locked it using a padlock.

The four men walked calmly down the street, the two bags over their shoulders, turning off into a side road. No one paid any attention to the fact that one of them could hardly walk.

The short, well-built man wearing a hat had just left the bank in the company of a young blonde girl. He put his wallet into the inner pocket of his jacket, and ruffled the girl’s long hair before they hugged and parted ways. The great man pointed at him.

‘He’s probably just seen his daughter in the bank. A chance meeting. His
daughter
. Do you understand, Ljubomir?’

Ljubomir met the great man’s gaze. It bored into him. The great man continued.

‘This flat is for surveillance and nothing else. You’ve got to forget everything else, Ljubomir. We can see
everything
from here. Sooner or later, they’ll come here, and then we’ll catch them. It’s that simple.
No one
cheats Rajko Nedic, Ljubomir, and
no one
lets him down. I really want you to understand that.’

Ljubomir nodded. He understood. He understood
exactly
.

And still, he didn’t want to forget.

32

THEY WERE AS
close to one another as they could get. Though the blinds couldn’t stop the sun in its tracks, they lay pressed up close to one another, as much of their bodies as possible touching the other’s. The heat could never be oppressive.

It was forty degrees in the little flat on Surbrunnsgatan.

They had done something that neither of them had done before. They had skipped work. Suddenly, as if following a simultaneous, shared impulse, they had just gone home and made love. As though they had been following orders from some higher and more important being than the National Police Commissioner.

Both realised – around the same time – that they had wandered into an emotional wilderness of work, work and nothing but work, and that they had only now found an oasis; not another mirage, but an oasis. That was where they planned to stay. That was where they planned to settle down.

Nothing else would have been able to tear them from their duties.

Only this. A higher calling, a higher right.

They would get to know one another inside and out, out and in. Nothing would be kept secret any longer.

Still, that was exactly what happened. Two walls were raised between their tightly entwined bodies. Walls of sworn secrecy, built from both sides. And between them, a strange minefield.

They tried to convince themselves that the walls didn’t affect
them
, that they didn’t have anything to do with their being together – only with their jobs. But it didn’t quite work. Their jobs were a part of them.

There are, essentially, only two real attitudes to work. Either you can take any job at all, so long as the pay cheque falls into your hands at the end of the month, or you can deliberately look for a job that, in some way, chimes with your character.

Both Sara Svenhagen and Jorge Chavez had done the latter. When they worked on their investigations, when they slowly but surely worked their way towards hidden truths, they were also doing something else. Something more important. They were restoring an order, finding patterns in their environment, exposing hidden structures, slowly approaching the
meaning
itself. They were
devoted
. There was no other word for it.

And now they were also devoted to one another. Two devotees in an embrace.

Jorge agonised over how ungrateful he had been. Determined ‘only’ to help find the Kvarnen Killer, Sara had given the A-Unit photographic material which had enabled them to identify the whole of Gang Two and also provided them with pictures of all of Gang One. It was like a token of her affection. Unfortunately, the picture of the ‘policeman’ was as good as non-existent, and it was ultimately this policeman that was the reason behind his ungratefulness. If a policeman really was involved, then the strictest possible secrecy was absolutely essential, and that meant it was impossible to discuss any of the main points of the Sickla Slaughter. He was convinced that an exchange of ideas about Niklas Lindberg and Bullet Kullberg really would help move the case forward; he would have loved to hear Sara’s thoughts on Rajko Nedic and Lordan Vukotic, on Danne Blood Pudding and Roger Sjöqvist, Sven Joakim Bergwall, Eskil Carlstedt and a gang of probable war criminals from the former Yugoslavia. And, above all, on the ‘policeman’. But he couldn’t. A wall was preventing it.

Of course, Sara had wondered what the strange cry of ‘The policeman’ had meant, the thing Jorge had blurted out when the photograph of the hidden man was developed. But it had quickly disappeared behind a dilemma of her own.
Her
wall. Her boss, Detective Superintendent Ragnar Hellberg, had silenced her investigation, classified it as top secret – and the question was whether that was a case of misconduct. Or even a crime. He had deliberately erased all traces of an email address that had appeared quite frequently on various paedophile websites: ‘brambo’. Judging by all appearances, ‘brambo’ was a paedophile, active online. She had two possible options. Either she could confront Ragnar Hellberg, or she could keep searching for ‘brambo’s’ identity. The only thing she couldn’t do was talk to Jorge. That was
her
wall and no one else’s.

And so they lay there, as close to one another as they could possibly be. But still oceans apart.

Between them, a strange minefield.

33

SURE ENOUGH, THE
Florento sisters were criminals. Arto Söderstedt managed to find them fairly quickly in the news archives. The story had gained lots of column inches, particularly in the tabloids, over the few days around Midsummer – it was uncommon for any story to last longer than that.

The sisters were prostitutes in Atlanta, Georgia. They had been part of an enormous brothel controlled by a mega-pimp called Big Ted Curtis, who treated his whores badly even by pimp standards. Under challenging circumstances, the sisters had set up an Internet connection, gained access to Big Ted’s bank account, emptied it, and then vanished into thin air. Penniless, he had committed suicide, and the whole brothel was set free.

A few weeks ago, the sisters had broken their silence. They communicated with the press via email, telling their story. But still, no one knew where they were.

Söderstedt pondered their story. Each second he neglected to spend on Niklas Lindberg and Rajko Nedic gave him a guilty conscience. Though less and less so. He couldn’t let it go.

Two people, presumably lovers, were calling themselves Orpheus and Eurydice – the ancient musician and his beloved, whom he had sung back from the kingdom of the dead. They were quoting two criminal sisters who had also made their way back from the dead and, on top of that, managed to sink their tormentor and become rich. They were sending messages about their respective positions in different places across Sweden using
Gula Tidningen
’s
THIS WEEK
’
S
‘
I LOVE YOU
’ feature. Something outside the bounds of the law was probably going on here.

Söderstedt sat at his desk with the extensive investigatory material on the Sickla Slaughter in one hand, the measly printouts from
Gula Tidningen
in the other. The strange thing wasn’t just that they seemed to weigh the same amount, but that they were also being pulled together like magnets.

Two positions: Orpheus in Arvika, Eurydice in Alingsås. Two citations, quotation marks and all: ‘No crime is worse than bitter betrayal, said the Florento sisters.’ ‘But the sisters vanished into thin air.’ He had a brainwave, phoned
Gula Tidningen
and spoke to the webmaster.

Yes, the paper had backups for the last six months’ ads.

Arto Söderstedt clenched his fist for a brief moment. He asked whether he could have the last month’s entries for the
THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU
’ feature sent to him. He could. It took just under an hour.

He searched through the extensive material on his computer. As ‘Orpheus’ after ‘Orpheus’ popped up on his screen, he was struck by how drastically this little computer function had aided their police work. Eventually, he was left with a cluster of similar messages on the screen in front of him. They all looked alike. First, the name of the recipient – Orpheus or Eurydice – then, in quotation marks, a short phrase which was more or less obviously connected to the Florento sisters; then, the position marker from the atlas which, without exception, referred to an urban area; finally, the sender (Orpheus or Eurydice). Always exactly the same form.

The first message was sent on Midsummer’s Eve, 25 June. Söderstedt could feel the two piles of paper being pulled even closer together. The Sickla Slaughter had taken place on the night of the 24th.

He looked more closely at the first message. It had come from Orpheus. The code from the road atlas said Orsa in Dalarna county. There was no quotation, but a reference: ‘Expr., 24.06, p. 12 top’. The reply from Eurydice had come just under two hours later, along with a code that pointed to Falkenberg on the west coast. Here, there was a quotation: ‘The sisters were just spiritual sisters.’