attempt to save them, he would be forced to leave the country as soon as he had served his prison sentence. The irony of fate seemed to Hjelm an understatement.
He sat in the chair in the courtroom of City Hall, giving his testimony. He tried to be as clear and objective as he could, almost managing to ignore the press, who harassed him before, during, and after the trial. But he couldn’t escape Dritero Frakulla’s surly gaze directed at him from the defendant’s bench. Frakulla still had his arm in a sling, and he never took his eyes off Hjelm. It was not an accusatory look but rather an open, candidly shattered gaze. Even so, Hjelm couldn’t rid himself of the impression that he was being accused; perhaps that emotion was to be found only within himself. He thought that Frakulla was not accusing him of having shot him but of not having killed him. If he had been killed, his family would have been able to stay; now they would loyally follow him back to the Serbs in a few years’ time. Frakulla’s lawyer was a jaded old man who asked all the right questions. Why hadn’t Hjelm waited for the special unit? Why hadn’t the Department of Internal Affairs investigated the case? Apparently Bruun and Hultin and Morner had managed to erase all trace of the interrogation conducted by Grundstrom and Martensson. And yet the attorney’s attacks were nothing compared to Frakulla’s unyielding eyes.
When Hjelm stepped down from the witness stand and walked through the courtroom between the rows of spectators, he met the gaze of a little boy. His expression was identical to his father’s.
It took a while before Paul Hjelm could think again about the investigation.
A couple of days later Viggo Norlander suddenly appeared at Supreme Central Command during a morning meeting. He was actually still on sick leave, but he came in, hobbling on crutches and looking quite subdued. Something had been extinguished in his already extinguished expression. Gauze bandages were wrapped around his hands. They all greeted him warmly, and Kerstin Holm jumped up to get the bouquet of flowers that they had bought. They’d taken up a collection and were planning to deliver it to him that evening. Norlander looked genuinely touched and sat down in his usual seat at the table.
It had been left vacant. No one had replaced him.
While he was convalescing in the hospital in Tallinn and then in Huddinge, he had been convinced that Hultin had kicked him off the investigation and that Internal Affairs might even be after him. When he sank down onto the chair, he understood that he was… forgiven. He couldn’t come up with any other word. He wept openly.
Norlander looked like a broken man. They wondered if he should have come back to work, but when he looked up at them with his red-rimmed eyes, they saw happiness beneath the tears, sheer happiness.
The more they got to know each other, the harder it became to understand each other. As always.
As they were leaving Supreme Central Command, Hjelm saw out of the corner of his eye Soderstedt go over to Norlander, put his arm around his shoulders, and say something. Norlander laughed out loud.
Not much had been said during the meeting, no new progress had been made. They were now working from the theory that the killing spree was over, and that the deficit for the Swedish business world was going to stop at three and only three entries: Kuno Daggfeldt, Bernhard Strand-Julen, and Nils-Emil Carlberger.
They were wrong.
19
The acrid smoke has settled; the pungent smell has disappeared. The man has finally been put to rest. It took a bit longer this time.
It has been a long day.
Now it’s night.
It’s night in the living room.
As the first notes from the piano slide out into the room, he is leaning back against the sofa, looking at the man. The piano notes walk up and down, back and forth; the saxophone comes in and walks at the piano’s side. The same steps, the same little promenade.
When the sax takes off and the piano starts scattering the seemingly indolent chords in the background, it’s as if the man rises up off the floor. A couple of little drum fills. And when the sax continues to chirp with a few dissonant notes, it’s as if he’s bending over a void. The saxophone jabs, chops, works its way up in higher and higher spirals. The blood is running out of the man’s head. It’s as if he’s slamming his fist right into the abdomen of the void in front of him. When the piano falls silent, the other, harder blow slams against the void’s stomach.
It’s a pantomime, a peculiar dance of death.
Yeah. Whoo-ee. The first kick. At the knee.
The saxophone climbs even farther, faster and faster. Ai. The second kick. To the groin.
It’s so choreographed. Each blow, each kick at the void’s invisible body, has been predetermined, occurs in exactly the right place.
He has envisioned it so many times before.
And right there, when the applause comes in, that’s when the big punch is delivered. The audience is murmuring; the piano takes over. The blow falls at that very instant. The void’s teeth are rolling under the tongue, and that’s when it happens. At that precise moment.
The piano begins by taking a tentative step. Then it cuts loose. Ever freer wanderings, ever more beautiful. He is certain of the beauty now. It’s as if the man aims a kick at the prostrate void. It’s as if he kicks once, twice, three times, then four. The piano sings, lingering.
The void no longer exists.
The bass disappears. The piano is strolling again. Just like in the beginning.
It’s as if the man is aiming a fifth kick-when the front door opens out in the hallway.
“Papa?” shouts a girl’s voice.
The man collapses flat. Returns to a prostrate position.
He’s already out of the room, out of the house, out of the yard.
He’s so far away that he doesn’t hear the heartrending scream.
That’s why he ran.
20
Gunnar Nyberg was jolted out of the double bed, which was still there, a symbol of hope in his three-room Nacka apartment. Viggo Norlander was wrenched from the more basic cot in his three-room place on Banergatan. Kerstin Holm was pulled from the mattress on the floor in the little apartment belonging to her ex-husband’s ex-wife in Brandbergen. Jorge Chavez was yanked up from the little drop-leaf table in the kitchen alcove of his rented room at the intersection of Bergsgatan and Scheelegatan, where he had fallen asleep, holding a full wineglass in his hand and resting his face on the remains of his meal. Arto Soderstedt got up from his chair in his apartment on Agnegatan and took off his reading glasses. And Paul Hjelm was hauled out of the unpleasantly empty double bed in his row house in Norsborg.
Jan-Olov Hultin had already been rousted out of bed. He was waiting for them in a kitchen in Rosunda, Saltsjobaden.
Chavez was the last to arrive, looking unashamedly fresh, a night flower in the pitch-black May darkness.
“What the hell? Did you take a shower?” asked Hjelm, holding a big coffee mug.
“Don’t ask,” said Chavez curtly. “Okay, who is he?”
“Have you had a look inside?”
“It looks the same as usual. Have the techs started working?”
“I called all of you here before I contacted the techs,” said Hultin. “Among other things because I want you to see everything untouched. There were two shots to the head, right?”
A couple of the team members nodded. “The bullets are still in the wall,” said Soderstedt.
Hultin nodded. “All right. We finally have something to go on. A different sort of society big shot. His name is Enar Brandberg. He became a member of parliament in the last election. Before that he was general director of a small government agency.”
