Misterioso

addresses of all the brothers in the strange separatist faction called the Order of Skidbladnir. He found two addresses in Gamla Stan: one residential address on Prastgatan, and one business address. Since it was only a few minutes past noon, he chose the work address, a computer company on Osterlanggatan. Not waiting for the rain to let up, he gulped down the rest of his coffee and rushed out.

When he found the address, he pressed the intercom for ComData. A secretary answered, then reluctantly buzzed him in. He walked up two flights of stairs and entered a five-room apartment that had been converted for office use. The secretary was a woman with too much makeup, her hair pulled into a bun. When he showed her his ID, it dripped rain onto her neatly stacked papers, curling the edges.

“Put that away,” she said indignantly.

“Criminal Police. I want to talk to Axel Strandelius.”

“The director is unavailable at the moment. I assume that you don’t have an appointment?”

“You have thirty seconds to tell him that I’m here. After that I’ll just barge in on my own.”

It had worked earlier in the day, and it worked now. A door opened, and an impeccably dressed man in his fifties whose demeanor practically screamed “CEO” showed Hjelm into his office without a word.

“Sara said you’re from the police,” the man said as he sat down behind the desk. “How can I be of service?”

“Are you Axel Strandelius?” asked Hjelm.

“Yes,” said the man, “that’s precisely who I am.”

“Are you a member of the group known as the Order of Skidbladnir?”

Strandelius was silent for a moment. “Now we’re touching on proprietary information.”

Hjelm recognized his choice of words. “I know the rules. The only proprietary information has to do with the rituals. Membership is public information.”

“Except that the group in question is not yet public.”

“You know why I’m here. I see there a copy of Dagens Nyheter, over there Svenska Dagbladet, and here Dagens Industri. All three have the story on the front page. This isn’t some kind of game or police harassment; it’s a matter of life and death. Your life and your death. Daggfeldt and Strand-Julen were part of the little separatist group that about six months ago broke away from the Order of Mimir. That means that you too are at risk.”

Strandelius clearly hadn’t thought that far and shrank a couple of inches in his chair. “Good God. But the Order of Mimir is the most innocuous organization you could imagine. There couldn’t possibly be anyone who-”

“The strongest link we have between the two men who were murdered two days apart and in the exact same way is this little Order of Skidbladnir. Both of them belonged to the group, which has a total membership of twelve. Or had. That goes a long way in my book. There are two questions I want you to answer. One: What were the driving forces behind the secession? Two: Which members were most fiercely opposed to the secession?”

Strandelius paused to think. He was a data guy. He spent a couple of minutes organizing and analyzing. When he replied, he used the enumeration that Hjelm had used.

“One: Daggfeldt and Strand-Julen were the driving forces, but the idea actually came from Rickard Franzen. He was probably also the strongest advocate in getting the idea pushed through. At about the same level as Daggfeldt and Strand-Julen was Johannes Norrvik. First and foremost Franzen, then Daggfeldt, Strand-Julen, and Norrvik. The rest of us just thought it sounded exciting and joined in. Two: I’m afraid I can’t help you much in that area. There was a general undercurrent of opposition, which the otherworldly Clofwenhielm never even noticed. But I think it was Franzen who took the brunt of it. He would at least know who most opposed the whole idea. If, and I say if, this has something to do with the murders, then Franzen would most likely be the next victim.”

“Very nicely summarized,” said Hjelm and then said goodbye.

The rain was now gone. It didn’t just seem to be gone; it was in fact gone. The violent spring weather had sculpted whitecaps on the surface of Saltsjon.

April weather, thought Hjelm.

He was stopped at the red light up near Sodermalmstorg, looking across Slussen toward the shape of the Gondolen Restaurant hovering overhead, more like a subway car on the rack rather than an actual gondola.

The hanging gardens of Babylon, thought Paul Hjelm as the light changed to green.

He moved into the left lane, no doubt unable to avoid the red light at the next intersection, and turned onto Timmermansgatan.

The locked door had a number code. Annoyed, he punched in a bunch of random numbers. He stood there for two minutes, pressing hundreds of made-up codes. Nothing happened. He took a step back and found himself standing next to a young girl with straggly black hair wearing a leather jacket. She gave him a suspicious look.

“Police,” he said.

“Is that how you solve your cases?” said the girl.

He glared after her as she walked away.

“Yes,” said Hjelm, and went back to wildly punching in numbers. Finally the little red LED lit up, and the lock emitted a faint clicking sound. My day in a nutshell, he thought as he stepped inside, found the name on the board posted just inside the door, and went up four flights of stairs.

It said “Linden” on the mail slot. He rang the bell. Once. Twice. Three times. After the fourth time, a thudding sound was audible from inside, and a blond youth about eighteen opened the door and peered out. A sloppy Champion jogging suit more or less covered his body, and his hair was standing on end.

“Did I get you out of bed?” said Hjelm, holding up his ID. “You’re Jorgen Linden, right?”

The guy nodded, trying in vain to focus on the ID, which kept flapping back and forth before his eyes. “What’s this about?” Linden’s voice was groggy with sleep.

“Mass murder,” said Hjelm, pushing past him into the apartment.

“What the hell did you say?” Linden followed him, stuffing his shirt into his pants. On the sofa was a rumpled blanket. In the other room the bed was meticulously made up. Two sides of the same coin, thought Hjelm, resorting to cliche, and opened the window to let in some fresh air from the tidy back courtyard with small trees and wooden benches.

“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon,” he said. “Do you always sleep this long?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘this long.’ I was out late last night.”

“What sort of work do you do?”

Linden scrupulously folded up the blanket and sat down on the sofa. “I’m unemployed.”

“You seem to be getting by quite nicely on your unemployment checks.”

“What is it you want?”

“I assume that you haven’t read today’s paper?”

“No.”

“Bernhard Strand-Julen was murdered.”

In spite of his youth, Jorgen Linden was the most experienced of all of the people Hjelm had interviewed that day in terms of dealing with the police. He managed to maintain an expression of vague, innocent confusion, although perhaps his eyes were a shade brighter. The wheels had started to spin in his brain.

“Who?”

“Director Bernhard Strand-Julen. You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

Hjelm took the postcard showing the highly virile Dionysus out of his jeans pocket and held it up. “Quite a hard-on, don’t you think?”

Linden looked at the picture without saying a word.

Hjelm went on, “Is this your advertising trademark, or what? Marketing? Do you hand these cards out in the subway?”

Linden still didn’t speak. He was looking out the window. The storm was making the low-lying cumulus clouds practically race past.

Hjelm stubbornly continued. “So if we flip over the steak, what do we find? Here it says: ‘We’re going now. You can always call.’ And then a phone number that happens to be the same as that one.” Hjelm pointed at the cordless phone next to the window. “But what’s this? There’s more. A little P.S. ‘You’re the biggest Billy-Goat Gruff.’ I think a