Misterioso

members, we’ve located nine and set up surveillance for them. But one is out of the country, and two we still haven’t found. Both happen to be Stockholmers: a Lars-Erik Hedman and an Alf Ruben Winge. Finding them is our highest priority. An all-points bulletin was put out this morning for Goran Andersson’s green Saab 900. It turns out that for almost a month it’s been in the possession of the Nynashamn police, without license plates and with the VIN number filed off. The techs are going over it right now, but as is to be expected, the preliminary report says they haven’t found any evidence. As for Andersson himself, we’ve put out a nationwide alert, and the most recent photo of him has been sent to all police districts and border stations. The question now under discussion at the highest level is whether to release his picture to the press and enlist the aid of that Big Detective, the public.”

“I think it would be a mistake,” said Soderstedt. “As long as he doesn’t know that we know about him, he’s going to feel relatively secure about what he does.”

“Of course that’s true,” said Hultin. “It’s just a matter of getting Morner and the rest of the boys to understand that.”

“Do your best,” said Soderstedt. “You do have a number of secret weapons.”

Hultin gave him a stern look. “Our priorities are as follows,” he went on. “One, locate Hedman and Winge. Two, check up on all potential Stockholm contacts that Andersson may have had, in order to find out where he’s been living since February; we have that dart shop in Gamla Stan, but there must be more contacts, the dart association, or whatever else. Three, put some pressure on Lena Lundberg via that incident man in Vaxjo, Officer Wrede. See what else she knows. Four, show Andersson’s photograph around in the underworld.”

Hultin paused to consult his papers.

“This is how we’re going to proceed. In Nyberg’s absence, Chavez will go with the Stockholm criminal division to canvass the underworld; Holm will return to Vaxjo and accompany Wrede to check up on circles of friends and contacts that Andersson may have had in Stockholm; Norlander will check out the dart shop and the dart association, and afterward, along with various foot soldiers, he’ll check out hotels and apartment rental agencies for customers from around the fifteenth of February; and Hjelm and Soderstedt will locate Hedman and Winge. Keep in mind that you have access to the whole damned police force. And as usual, avoid all contact with the press and with Sapo. It’s now twelve noon on the twenty-ninth of May. It’s two months since Goran Andersson began his serial killings. Let’s see to it that the number of victims stops at five, and that the case doesn’t go on for another two months.”

Kerstin Holm went back to Vaxjo to “accompany” Jonas Wrede, as Hultin had expressed it. He looked a bit jittery when she stepped into his office; he’d thought that he’d no longer have to be reminded of his sins of omission in the Treplyov case. But now he would have to spend yet another day in its shadow. Holm quickly discovered that Goran Andersson’s circle of friends was largely limited to the dart club. Apparently he’d been the club’s star, but even there no one made any real claim to have been his friend. And nobody knew anything about his possible contacts in Stockholm. She and Wrede went to see Lena Lundberg, but she didn’t have the heart to “put some pressure” on the woman. It was obvious to them that she knew nothing.

Jorge Chavez’s excursions through Stockholm’s underworld were not a success. No one recognized Goran Andersson’s photo; he really didn’t expect them to. Chavez thought he’d been given the shittiest assignment of all.

Viggo Norlander felt the same way. In the dart shop they had to look up Andersson in the computer files. The clerk behind the counter remembered the darts with the extralong points but nothing else. Andersson had always ordered his darts by mail. At the dart association, no one knew anything at all about him, although they did find his name on a couple of local lists of results from Smaland, always at the very top. Surprisingly, he never seemed to have competed outside Smaland, even though several times he’d defeated national competitors.

Norlander finished out the day, with the assistance of a whole team from the NCP and the Stockholm police force, by going around to all the city’s hotels and consulting the rental ads in the morning newspapers, as well as the free classified paper, for February 15 onward. He got no bites at the hotels, but over the phone several people at rental agencies seemed to recognize the vague description of Goran Andersson. But when Norlander presented them with his actual photo, they all said they’d been mistaken. Norlander and his men stubbornly continued their search.

On direct orders from Hultin, the foot soldiers of the Stockholm police also went to the workplaces and residences of the Stockholm victims to show the photograph to colleagues, family members, and neighbors. The Goteborg police did the same among the circles frequented by Ulf Axelsson. No one had seen Goran Andersson anywhere.

Soderstedt and Hjelm struggled to locate the other two members of the Sydbanken board of directors anno 1990.

Arto Soderstedt visited Alf Ruben Winge’s company, UrboInvest, as well as his home in Ostermalm. Nobody seemed especially concerned about his absence; apparently he would occasionally disappear from the surface of the earth for a few days at a time and then show up again as if nothing had happened. He had the pecuniary wherewithal to afford this type of luxury, as an astute employee expressed it. Soderstedt made a trip out to the archipelago, to Winge’s impressive summer place on the island of Varmdo, but found the house closed up. And that was about as far as he got.

It had fallen to Paul Hjelm to track down the other missing former board member, Lars-Erik Hedman. Fallen, in a different sense of the word, was also what had happened to Hedman. He’d been the TCO union representative on the Sydbanken board from 1986 until 1990. At the time he was also a leading negotiator within TCO, with aspirations to become the union’s president; he was married, with two children, and he owned an exquisite apartment in Vasastan. Now he lived alone in a two-room place in Bandhagen. He’d been thrown out of TCO and stripped of all board assignments. During a couple of years in the late eighties, he’d managed to combine a serious drinking problem with his work, convincing everyone to keep a lid on it. But after a number of bizarre performances in semipublic situations, the union had lost patience, and Hedman was out in the cold.

Via the social welfare office in Bandhagen, Hjelm traced Hedman to a park bench outside the state liquor store and roughly dragged him home to the man’s filthy apartment. There he ushered in the police officers who had been given the dubious pleasure of protecting Lars-Erik Hedman’s health-by definition, an impossible job.

Hjelm returned to police headquarters, certain that another fallow period in the case lay ahead. He hated the thought. Another dreary month. With the whole summer vacation frozen. And with an elusive Goran Andersson roaming the streets holding an aimed but invisible dart in his hand.

Hjelm was sitting in his office, staring blindly through the police building window at the other police building outside, when the phone rang.

“Hjelm,” he said into the phone.

“Finally,” said a quiet voice with an accent that made Hjelm instinctively switch on the phone tape recorder. The man was speaking a Smaland dialect. “It was hard to find you. A difficult switchboard staff. Paul Hjelm, the hero from Botkyrka. You’ve been given nearly as many labels as I have this spring.”

“Goran Andersson,” said Hjelm.

“Before you even think about trying to trace this call, I’ll tell you the best way to avoid being tracked. Steal a cell phone.”

“Forgive me for saying this,” Hjelm said a bit recklessly, “but it goes against the picture we’ve formed of you that you’d call up to brag. It doesn’t fit the psychological profile.”

“If you find somebody who does, let me know,” said Goran Andersson faintly. “No, I’m not calling to brag. I’m calling to tell you to stay away from my fiancee. Otherwise I’ll have to break even more with the psychological profile and take you out too.”

“You’d never be able to take me out,” Hjelm declared, contrary to all recommended psychological advice.

“Why not?” said Andersson, sounding genuinely interested.

“Helena Brandberg, Enar Brandberg’s daughter. You could easily have shot her too and taken along the cassette, but instead you chose to flee and leave the tape in our hands.”

“Was it the tape that identified me?” Goran Andersson said in surprise. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

“No, it wasn’t,” said Hjelm. “How did you think we’d found you?”

“Because of the bank robber in the vault, of course. I was just waiting for that whole episode to come out and for you to start hunting me. But when nothing happened, I decided to proceed. Later he showed up in that police sketch in the newspapers, as if he were still alive. What was that all about?”