“What about your husband?”
“He’s going to visit an old colleague. They usually get together once a month.”
Hjelm nodded. “Does it usually go late?”
She gave a little laugh. “Very” was all she said.
“And your bedroom is on the next floor up?”
“Two floors up.”
“What about the living room? Is it on the ground floor?”
“You’re practically standing in it. The vestibule narrows to form a corridor over there on the right and then opens onto the living room.”
Hjelm headed to the right. A short distance away the vestibule formed a sort of funnel shape, then widened to become the living room. It was a very unusual floor plan that a murderer would have to know about in advance in order to act. Against the window on the opposite wall in the living room stood a long, sectional leather sofa.
Hjelm returned to the vestibule and found Rickard Franzen fully dressed. He looked resolute, practically enthusiastic.
“Have you taken a look at the proposed murder scene?” he asked with a smile.
He gave his wife a hug and then led the way out to Hjelm’s car, ready for a temporary but much-longed-for comeback in the machinery of justice.
The sun was still shining.
9
Jan-Olov Hultin again made his entrance through the mysterious door on the far side of the room, which Jorge Chavez somewhat ironically called “Supreme Central Command.” The half-moon reading glasses were already perched on the wide bridge of his nose. Hultin turned to face the assembled members of the A-Unit. Everyone was leafing through their papers and notebooks.
“So this morning the whole thing was made public,” said Hultin grimly. “In all the newspapers simultaneously, by the way. Somebody was busy making calls. Or else there’s some sort of cooperation among all sectors of the media. We haven’t yet located the leak. Maybe it was simply impossible to keep such a major case secret. At least we had a day’s head start.”
He went over to the whiteboard, twisted the top off one of the felt markers, and got ready to fire. The pen was now his service weapon.
“At any rate, it looks as if some feverish activity has been going on inside your A-Unit brains today. Let’s see the results. Norlander?”
Viggo Norlander bent over his dark blue notebook. “Modus operandi,” he said. “I’ve been in contact with everybody from the FBI to Liechtenstein’s security force and done a whole bunch of cross-checking through the worldwide phone network. Three of the groups that are currently active consistently use shots to the head when it comes to blatant executions: a branch within the American mafia, under the mob boss Carponi, in Chicago, of all classic gangster cities; a semi-extinct separatist group from the Red Army Faction, under the command of Hans Kopff; and a minor Russian-Estonian crime group led by Mr. Viktor X, which you might call a segment of the Russian mafia, whatever that label is now worth. Most cases have been executions of traitors or snitches; no instance has involved two and only two shots. So far I haven’t been able to track down any examples of two shots to the head. I’ll keep looking.”
“Thanks, Viggo,” said Hultin. He’d already filled a corner of the board with notes. “Nyberg and the enemies they had in common?”
The imposing Gunnar Nyberg seemed uncomfortable as he gripped a pen in his big right hand.
“It looks like a dead end,” he said dubiously. “I haven’t found any common enemies. Both men attended the Stockholm School of Economics, but Strand-Julen was seven years older, so they weren’t there at the same time. That’s the place where people tend to make friends and enemies for life. A couple of decades ago Daggfeldt kicked a colleague out of a business that they’d started together under the name of ContoLine. The man’s name is Unkas Storm. I located him, in a highly intoxicated state, at a small scrap-metal company in Bandhagen. He still harbors a deep hatred toward Daggfeldt. He said that he, quote, ‘danced on his coffin,’ unquote, when he heard about the murder. But he doesn’t know Strand-Julen.
“The latter has an ex-wife by the name of Johanna, whom he left without financial means after their divorce in ’72. Nobody could be as filled with hatred as she is, but it’s a strictly personal hatred. She hopes, quote, ‘to eat his liver before they cremate the swine, and that really should have been done while he could still feel the flames,’ unquote. I spoke with the family members, who showed varying degrees of grief, and came to the conclusion that of the two, Daggfeldt, in spite of everything, will be missed more. Both his son, Marcus, age seventeen, and his daughter, Maxi-”
“Maxi?” Hjelm interrupted him.
“Apparently that’s her given name,” said Nyberg, throwing out his hands.
“Sorry. It’s just that Daggfeldt’s sailboat is called the
“Marcus and Maxi, who’s nineteen, seem to be genuinely mourning their father, even though he made himself practically invisible at home. His wife, Ninni, is taking his death with what we might call great composure. Speaking of the sailboat, she asked whether she would be allowed to sell it immediately. I told her yes. The same is true of Strand-Julen’s widow, Lilian. Great composure, I mean. Evidently she’d already more or less moved out of their apartment on Strandvagen, even though divorce was, quote, ‘out of the question,’ unquote. She’d seen what had happened to his first wife, the one named Johanna. She made certain insinuations about Strand-Julen’s sexual preferences. And I quote: ‘Compared with my husband Saint Bernhard, the pedophiles in Thailand are God’s own angels.’ Unquote. That may be something we should follow up.”
“I’m beginning to see a red thread,” said Hjelm, “regarding their leisure activities. If you’re finished, that is?”
“I’d like to finish by saying that I haven’t been able to get in touch with Strand-Julen’s children. A daughter, Sylvia, thirty years old, from his first marriage, and Bob, age twenty, from the second. Both are apparently employed abroad.”
Then it was Hjelm’s turn. “Strand-Julen’s Swan boat was evidently a pleasure craft, in the most literal sense of the word. I’ve talked to one of the members of his ever-changing crew, consisting of blond young boys. I don’t know how nauseated you’d like to feel, but I have a detailed description of what took place on that boat.”
“A rough summary will do,” said Hultin laconically.
“And rough it is. He liked to watch and give orders, creating little, quote, ‘tableaux,’ in which the crew members were supposed to freeze in the middle of the act while he walked around to study the scene. One boy, for example, might have another guy’s dick or some similar object stuck up his ass for fifteen minutes without being allowed to move an inch until Strand-Julen gave permission for the activities to resume. He himself never participated, other than as stage director. But there doesn’t seem to be any connection with Daggfeldt. I’ll keep looking. I have a lead on the procurer.”
“Holm and the circle of friends,” Hultin moved on to the next topic he had assigned. His notes already filled a significant area of the whiteboard. His handwriting was gradually getting smaller.
Kerstin Holm’s melodic Goteborg accent rippled through the room. “Nyberg and I have been crossing into each other’s territory; it can be difficult to distinguish between friends and enemies. At the risk of falling into cliche, I can say that people in the upper echelons seldom make friends with someone just because they happen to like each other. Of course, it’s an advantage if they do, but that’s mostly of secondary interest, an extra bonus.
“In short, they acquire friends in order to exploit them. For the sake of prestige, to demonstrate what a large and impressive circle of friends they have, and for the sake of business, in order to expand their contact network- which is the alpha and omega in their lives-as well as for the sake of sex, to establish contacts with the former, sex-starved housewives of other men. The impression I get reinforces what I know from the other side of Sweden, meaning Goteborg: that the trading of marital partners is so sanctioned and so common that you can talk about generations of inbreeding and bastard progeny. Do you think I’m exaggerating?”
