Misterioso

4

Detective Superintendent Erik Bruun must have pressed a green button somewhere on his desk, because accompanied by a buzzing sound a green light lit up his nameplate on the doorframe out in the hallway. Paul Hjelm, in turn, pressed down on the handle to the perpetually locked door and went in.

This was the police station, whose peculiar geographic coordinates were something like this: located in Fittja, with mailing address in Norsborg, in Botkyrka municipality, Huddinge police authority. If you wanted to avoid using the name Fittja, because of its obscene and derogatory association with the Swedish word for pussy, you could always say Botkyrka, which, in addition to providing the location for the church, encompassed quite lovely areas such as Varsta and Grodinge; or you could say Norsborg, the hometown of the table tennis genius J-O Waldner and the Balrog floorball team; or you could use the name Huddinge, even if it sounded like a bedroom suburb. Hjelm lived in a row house in Norsborg, just a few doors from Waldner’s birthplace. But he could never really specify which district he lived in, least of all now.

The place that God forgot, he thought fatefully as he stepped into Bruun’s room. The wallpaper was changed at least once a year, nevertheless it would turn brown within a matter of days. Erik Bruun always inaugurated his new wallpaper by allowing his black cigars and equally black lungs to puff clouds of smoke over the walls. Hjelm had never visited Bruun in his bachelor apartment in Eriksberg; the place had acquired a reputation of mythic proportions, but he could imagine how the walls must look. Hjelm was a nonsmoker, although he did inhale an occasional cigarette to avoid becoming a slave to virtue, as a wise man once expressed it.

Today Hjelm had already smoked six, and he knew that there would be more. The nicotine was swirling around in his head, and for once he sensed no immediate shock upon stepping into Bruun’s inner sanctum, which the authorities had designated a serious health hazard. An overly zealous official had once taped a skull and crossbones to the door, and Hjelm and Ernstsson had spent three hours of valuable work time scraping it off.

Erik Bruun was not alone in the room. He was sitting behind his cluttered desk, puffing on an enormous Russian cigar. On the sofa below the row of windows sat two well-dressed gentlemen. They were about Hjelm’s age, somewhere in their forties. But no one would ever think of calling Hjelm a gentleman; in their case, it seemed natural. He didn’t know these gentlemen, but he recognized the stern set of their expressions.

Oh well. This was pretty much what he’d been expecting.

Bruun raised his substantial body to a standing position and came forward to meet him; such an attempt at a jogging workout was rare for him. He shook hands with Hjelm and scratched his grayish-red beard.

“My congratulations,” he said, putting obvious stress on the word my. “Excellent job. How do you feel? Have you talked to Cecilia?”

“Thanks,” said Hjelm, glancing at the gentlemen on the sofa. “I haven’t been able to get hold of her yet. I assume she’ll probably hear about it some other way.”

Bruun nodded several times and returned to his favorite chair.

“As I said, you have the congratulations and support of everyone here at the station. But you didn’t answer my question about how you’re feeling.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Hjelm, and sat down on the chair in front of the desk.

Bruun nodded several times again, in the same knowing manner.

“I understand,” he said, sucking on his cigar. “This is Niklas Grundstrom and Ulf Martensson, from Internal Affairs. Whether they intend to offer you their congratulations is an open question at the moment.”

Since Bruun’s little tirade sounded like he was on the verge of leaving, both gentlemen got up from the sofa. Then came a moment of doubt as the superintendent remained where he was and continued puffing on his black cigar. This display of a hint of uncertainty was what both of them would have given anything to avoid. Hjelm thanked Bruun with a seemingly neutral expression and received the same look in return.

The superintendent took one last puff and sluggishly got to his feet. “The ombudsman for department safety has determined that I’m not allowed to leave my office holding a cigar,” he apologized, stubbing the butt into an ashtray. Then he left the office swathed in a cloud of cigar fumes.

The crushed butt continued to emit brown smoke. Grundstrom pushed aside the ashtray as if it were a month- old latrine bucket and sat, with some reluctance, in Bruun’s smoke-saturated executive desk chair. Martensson sat back down on the sofa. Grundstrom set his briefcase on the desk and pulled out a pair of glasses with almost perfectly round lenses, which he ceremoniously placed on the bridge of his nose. Then he took out a large brown envelope and an evening newspaper. He set the briefcase on the floor and held up the front page of Expressen. In big letters the headline screamed: EXTRA. HERO IN FITTJA. POLICE HERO IN HOSTAGE DRAMA. Under the headline was a photograph, almost ten years old, of Paul Hjelm, who had been a police sergeant when it was taken.

“The media have assigned the roles,” Niklas Grundstrom said in a clear, educated voice, tossing the newspaper aside. He fixed his gaze on Hjelm. “Things certainly move fast these days, don’t they? Imagine, they got the story into the evening edition. The pen moves faster than the brain.”

“An old proverb,” Hjelm said without thinking. He bit his tongue.

Grundstrom regarded him without expression. He leaned down and pulled a little tape recorder from his briefcase. “I was hoping to avoid this,” he said, pressing the start button. “Interrogation with Detective Inspector Paul Hjelm, born February 18, 1957, conducted by Grundstrom and Martensson at the Huddinge police station on March thirtieth at seventeen-oh-sixhours.”

“Interrogation?” said Hjelm.

“Interrogation,” said Grundstrom. “It was your choice.”

Hjelm bit his tongue again. Don’t give them anything.

Then it came. “Are you now or have you ever been a member of any anti-immigrant organization?”

“No,” replied Hjelm, trying to stay perfectly calm.

“What is your attitude toward immigrants?”

“Neither good nor bad.”

Grundstrom rummaged through the big brown envelope, took out something that looked like a report, and began reading. “Of all your arrests made during your time in this district, forty-two percent were of individuals of foreign origin. And in the past year that figure increased to fifty-seven percent.”

Hjelm cleared his throat and paused to gather his thoughts. “According to the latest figures, in all of Botkyrka municipality, thirty-two percent of the population are of foreign origin, and twenty percent are foreign-born citizens. Up here in the north, in Alby, Fittja, Hallunda, and Norsborg, the figures are even higher, well over fifty percent and fifty-seven percent. A forty-two percent arrest rate of immigrants actually indicates that there is a greater propensity to commit a crime among Swedish-born individuals in the area. The figures demonstrate no basis whatsoever for racism, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Hjelm was quite pleased with his reply.

Grundstrom was not. “Why the hell did you think you could go in there like some sort of Dirty Harry and shoot that man?”

“That man, as you call him, is named Dritero Frakulla, and he belongs to the Albanian minority in the province of Kosovo in southern Serbia, and I’m sure you’re aware of the situation there. Nearly all the Kosovar Albanians that we’ve had anything to do with here, people who have become acclimated and learned Swedish and who have children in the Swedish school system-nearly all of them are now going to be deported. But it’s not going to happen without resistance.”

“All the more reason not to go in and shoot him down. The hostage team of the National Criminal Police was on its way. Specialists, experts. Why in holy hell did you go in alone?”

Hjelm could no longer keep silent. “To save his life, goddamn it!”

It was approaching eight P.M. Hjelm and Bruun were sitting in Bruun’s office, the superintendent in his armchair and Hjelm in a semi-reclining position on the sofa. In front of them on the desk stood a large cassette recorder. The tape was playing. They heard: “To save his life, goddamn it!”

Bruun practically swallowed his cigar. He hit the stop button with a swift chop.

“You, sir,” he said, pointing at Hjelm with the same abrupt movement, “are a very foolhardy person.”

“It was stupid, I know…,” said Hjelm from the sofa. “Just as stupid as secretly taping an Internal Affairs