“That’s right,” said Wrede hopefully. “The bank incident in Algotsmala. But of course you must know about that. The NCP sent a man down there. He never introduced himself, said his identity was confidential. He put a lid on the whole thing. Nothing got out to the press. I’m quite proud of that: no leaks from here whatsoever. Even the bank personnel kept their mouths shut. A matter of self-preservation, I assume.”
“What happened?”
“All the documents were confiscated by your man, so obviously you already know.”
“Just tell us everything you can remember.”
Wrede looked a bit disoriented, since he wasn’t able to make use of his computer.
“Yes, well, let’s see. It happened this year, on February fifteenth. When the staff arrived at the bank that morning and opened the vault, they found a dead body inside. And a lot of money was missing. We immediately brought in Stockholm; it was a real mystery. Your man came down here and took over the whole investigation. That’s all.”
“Our man…” said Chavez.
“February fifteenth,” said Holm.
“Tell us about the dead man,” said Hjelm.
“I was the first officer on the scene, and I was the one who contacted Stockholm. I saw it as my duty to keep the whole staff there until your man arrived. He gave me high praise and imposed a gag order on the police officers on site as well as the bank personnel. Consequently I was the first to examine the body properly. He was a big, stocky man, powerfully built. A long, sharp object of some kind, possibly a slender stiletto, had pierced his eye and gone right into his brain. A very unpleasant sight.” Wrede looked more excited than upset. “But I’m sure that you already know all this,” he insisted.
“Okay,” said Hjelm. “If you could arrange to have all the personnel who were present at the time, come to the bank in Algotsboda, then we’ll go out there right away.”
“Algotsmala,” said Wrede, and put in a call to the bank office.
Jonas Wrede personally drove the police car that carried all of them about thirty miles from Vaxjo. The sun was sinking toward the horizon.
Wrede was all fired up and in full subtlety mode, meaning he urgently prodded them to reveal what this was all about. None of the NCP officers said a word. All they saw was the narrowest of tunnels in front of them, the tunnel that would lead to a serial killer.
Wrede pounded fiercely on the locked door of the bank. A short, timid, middle-aged woman opened it. The only other person inside the minuscule bank office was an elderly gentleman wearing a pin-striped suit.
“This is the bank president, Albert Josephson, and the bank teller, Lisbet Heed.”
The officers looked at both with a certain skepticism. “Is this the whole staff?” asked Chavez.
Lisbet Heed brought them cups of freshly brewed coffee. They accepted, without really paying attention.
Josephson cleared his throat and spoke in a shrill, pedantic voice. “We lost a number of staff members in February this year, a cost-saving measure that also involved cutting back our business hours. It was part of the bank’s austerity policy, as a result of the deplorable conditions at the end of the last decade and the beginning of this one.”
“So the basic staff,” said Hjelm, “had to pay the price for the failed speculations and absurd borrowing practices instigated by the higher-ups, who later retired with their multimillion-kronor golden parachutes. Is that it?” He sounded like Soderstedt.
“Not an unreasonable way of viewing the matter,” said Josephson impassively. “The fact is that this”-he glanced at Wrede-“incident… occurred on the very day when the new business hours went into effect. And on the same day the staff had been cut in half. I opened the vault myself and found… the blinded man.”
“Here’s the vault,” said Josephson, pointing to the open vault. They went inside. There was nothing to see.
“So you found him lying inside the locked vault?” said Chavez.
“You can imagine what a shock it was,” said Josephson, without looking especially shocked.
“Do you remember what the… blinded man looked like?” asked Hjelm.
“Big,” said Josephson. “Huge, in fact.”
“A real bull of a man,” said Lisbet Heed surprisingly.
“Worn out by the matador,” said Chavez, even more surprisingly.
Kerstin Holm dug around in her bag and took out the sketches of Igor and Igor.
Time for a decisive moment.
“Was it one of these men?” she asked.
Hjelm hardly recognized her voice.
“So that’s why I thought I recognized the drawing!” cried Lisbet Heed. “It was in the newspaper for days!”
Jonas Wrede froze. What an oversight on his part! Bye-bye to any chance of being transferred to the NCP.
“I knew I’d seen that face somewhere!” Lisbet went on. “But I didn’t even think about the man in the vault. I did everything I could to repress the whole thing. It was so horrible.”
“That’s him, all right.” Josephson pointed at the sketch of Valery Treplyov’s face. “Even though his face looked slightly different, of course.”
“Wrede?” said Holm, wickedly, holding up the drawing to the pale man, who nodded mutely. Bye-bye, inspector training course.
Hjelm, Holm, and Chavez gave each other meaningful looks. One important thing was still missing. Hjelm went to the back of the office, behind the wall that divided it from the public section of the bank.
He stopped in his tracks, then gestured for Holm and Chavez to join him.
For a long time they all looked at the dartboard hanging on the wall.
Wrede, Josephson, and Heed came over to stand next to them.
“Yes, it’s still there,” said Lisbet Heed. “I haven’t had the heart to take it down.”
Chavez asked the question: “What are the names of the two people who were let go on February fifteenth?”
“Mia Lindstrom,” said Heed.
“And Goran Andersson,” said Josephson.
“Was it Andersson who played darts?” asked Chavez.
“Yes,” said Lisbet Heed. “He was really good at it. He was the first to arrive every morning, and he always started the day with a… What was it called?”
“A five-oh-one,” said Josephson. “You start at five-oh-one and work your way down to zero.”
“What happened to Goran Andersson after he was fired?” asked Hjelm. “Did he stay here in town?”
“No,” said Lisbet, looking sad. “No, he left his girlfriend high and dry and vanished. I don’t think even Lena knows where he went.”
“Lena?”
“Lena Lundberg. They lived in a little house on the other side of Algotsmala. Now she lives there alone. And she’s pregnant, the poor thing. Goran probably doesn’t even know that he’s going to be a father.”
“Do you remember whether Goran was injured sometime during the spring of ’91?”
“Yes.” Josephson had the personnel list filed in his mind. “He was out sick for a couple of months back then. It had something to do with his teeth-”
“I think he had to get a bridge, or something like that,” said Heed. “He mostly stayed indoors during that time. He didn’t want to talk about what had happened. But I saw him with a plaster cast on his arm too. I think it was a car accident.”
“One more thing,” said Hjelm. “Had Goran Andersson turned in his bank keys?”
“I don’t think he’d done that yet,” said bank president Albert Josephson, for the first time sounding a bit uncertain.
The three members of the A-Unit exchanged glances again. Things were falling into place. Loose threads were getting tied up.
Goran Andersson.
There wasn’t much more to add.
