“Go on,” said Hultin with inscrutable terseness.
“Ninni Daggfeldt hinted at a number of strange but heterosexual escapades that her husband engaged in while he was traveling around the country and especially while he was abroad, in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. But at home he seems to have been quite monogamous. And he always spent his vacations on the famous sailboat with his family-no one but his family.
“As mentioned, the daughter was named after the boat, which they’ve had since the early seventies. The type of boat, that is, not the actual vessel-they’ve traded up to a larger version approximately every three years. Ninni hated, quote, ‘that disgusting dry dock,’ but she decided to make the best of the situation. Daggfeldt had a standing joke about her and the boat that he never failed to cite.” Holm leafed through her notebook.
“ ‘Hearty but seasick,’ ” said Hjelm.
She gave him an appraising look and then went on. “Precisely. So Ninni put up a good front, but she was disgusted, and I quote again, ‘by the cloying family intimacy that was supposed to appear like a letter in the mail for two weeks a year but never existed at any other time.’ Lilian Strand-Julen was even more blunt. Gunnar has already quoted the Saint Bernhard passage and-Paul, is it?-has with the utmost clarity reported the facts of the Swan boat expeditions. It’s possible to imagine that the two widows, who are now free and financially independent for the rest of their lives no matter what they decide to do, might simply have joined forces to hire a professional hit man. If that’s the case, the whole idea of a serial killer is moot.
“But the problem is that they don’t know each other. They have plenty of friends and acquaintances in common-they frequent the same social circles-but neither has any recollection of meeting the other. So they claim. Of course we’ll continue to check this out.
“A woman named Anna-Clara Hummelstrand, wife of George Hummelstrand, vice president of Nimco Finance, seems to be close friends with both of them. She left for Nice this morning, which may be of interest. Mrs. Hummelstrand could have acted as a sort of intermediary between Ninni and Lilian. In general, there are numerous potential motives on both sides, but no real link.”
“Thank you,” said Hultin as he finished writing a flurry of words on the board. “Hjelm.”
“I’d like to give the rest of my report last, if that’s okay. We need to finish with a discussion of how to carry out the surveillance tonight.”
“Do you have such a strong candidate that we’ll need to do a stake-out tonight?”
“That’s what we have to decide. But I think it’d be good if we heard all the other reports first. Provided that Soderstedt and Chavez don’t have an equally strong candidate, of course.”
Both men shook their heads.
Hultin gave a slight nod. “Okay,” he said. “Soderstedt?”
“I’ve been thinking about this idea of a serial killer,” he said, speaking with a Finnish intonation. “From an international perspective, we’re a bit premature. Two similar murders really means nothing more than two similar murders-”
“Granted,” Hultin interrupted him. “But in the guidelines presented by Commissioner Morner and the NCP director, as well as the inner circle of the National Police Board, the aspects of protection were emphasized. That’s why we’re treating this as a serial murder case even before it officially takes on that definition. Besides, I’m convinced that that’s what it is. And when it comes right down to it, my judgment is what steers the direction of this investigation.”
But Soderstedt wasn’t about to budge. “I was just thinking about the fact that serial murders are very ‘in’ at the moment. It’s easy to be led astray by American perversities. That madman Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life in prison for having killed, dismembered, and eaten seventeen black youths. His father wrote a best seller about what it was like to have such a monster for a son. Both the father and Dahmer himself have become rich on the crimes. Sympathizers, some of them from South Africa, have sent him money in prison, and plenty of magazines in the United States make heroes out of serial killers and mass murderers. It’s related to the fact that their society is on the verge of collapse. A widespread feeling of general frustration makes it possible for an entire nation to empathize with extremists and sick outsiders. Their disregard for all social rules exerts a strong fascination, so strong that people will even send money to a mass murderer. Sort of a retroactive reward. But the victims are always small and weak, and their only shared characteristic, as reported in the media, is the fact that they became victims. We need to ask ourselves what sort of effect this kind of mess could have on the national soul of the Swedish people. There’s no such thing as a simple act.”
Hjelm flinched.
“Soderstedt, I’ve heard from Vasteras that you have a tendency to go off on tangents,” said Hultin, his tone neutral. “Let’s stay on topic. What about the financial aspect?”
“I just think we shouldn’t lose perspective,” muttered Soderstedt as he looked through his thick stack of printouts. “As you mentioned, Hultin, it’s a real hodgepodge. I’ve only been able to scratch the surface. Daggfeldt had two large companies that were under his sole ownership: the finance firm of DandFinans AB with four subsidiaries; and the import company MalackaImport AB. He was also part owner of eight other smaller enterprises, three of them holding companies. And he had a huge stock portfolio, primarily with shares in all five of the country’s biggest export corporations. Strand-Julen’s main company is called simply Strand-Julen Finans AB, with a bunch of interlocking holding companies attached to it. His business ventures are even more difficult to delineate than Daggfeldt’s, if that’s possible.”
“One question,” said Hjelm. “What’s a holding company?”
All eyes of the A-Unit seemed to turn on him at once.
“All muscles and no brains,” he said apologetically.
“A holding company is a management company that owns shares in other businesses,” said Soderstedt.
“Is that all it does?”
“Yes. The only company that I’ve found with any connection to trade and industry-to the production of goods-is Daggfeldt’s import firm, which imports canned goods from the Far East. You can find them in any well-stocked grocery store. And that’s only
“Have you checked with the financial police?” asked Hultin.
“That’s the first thing I did. Both men were involved in ongoing tax cases-the kind that drag on for years and then simply go up in smoke, as the bite is gradually taken out of the tax laws. Daggfeldt ruined his first partner, Unkas Storm, as Nyberg mentioned, and was accused of fraud. He was acquitted. Otherwise nothing.”
“Chavez,” said Hultin. “The board memberships.”
“Also a mess,” said Chavez, getting tangled up in a long sheaf of printouts, “although on a smaller scale. They were on a total of seventeen boards, either separately or together. They were both members on eight of them: Sandvik, 1978-83; Ericsson, 1984-87; SellFinans, 1985; Skanska, 1986-88; Bosveden, 1986-89; Sydbanken, 1987-01; and MEMAB, 1990. During the period before they were killed, they sat on only one board together, which is not without a certain irony: the Fonus Funeral Company, from 1990 on.”
“So at least we now know which undertaker will be hired,” Soderstedt remarked.
“But doesn’t this imply that they knew each other?” said Viggo Norlander.
“They must have known each other,” said Hjelm.
“On the other hand,” said Chavez, “plenty of people sit on any given board of directors, and they hold regular meetings only a few times a year. It’s possible to be on the same board with somebody without exchanging a single word, and maybe without even knowing that the other person exists.”
“Don’t the membership periods seem rather short?” said Holm. “A few years with each board?”
“What I’ve reported are the years when they were
