Chavez stirred. He’d pulled out his gun.
Time stood still.
Then a crackling in their earpieces.
“I saw it,” said Arto Soderstedt. “I saw a gun in the gap next to the window shade. It moved past for a second. He’s walking around inside.”
Time contracted. Long, muffled waves for each second that ticked by in their brains.
Hultin’s silence.
The decision.
Still no sound from the little target cottage. But something had changed inside, not visible but palpable.
Moving through the cottage was a presence, possibly several.
Then Hjelm’s cell phone rang.
A ringtone that was normally quite faint magnified itself in the silence to a mad peal of bells.
He answered as fast as he could.
“There, I heard the ringtone,” Goran Andersson said on the line. “Very clearly. So you’re in the cottage across the way. I’ve been waiting for you.”
For a good long moment Hjelm couldn’t utter a sound. Then he merely said, in an unrecognizable voice, “Are they alive?”
“In the case of one of them, it’s a matter of definition,” said Goran Andersson. “The girl is scared but alive. The other one already looked dead by the time he got here.”
Again silence. Chavez held his walkie-talkie close to the cell phone. The conversation was being transmitted to the other cottages.
“What are you going to do?” said Hjelm.
“What am I going to do?” Andersson said sarcastically. “What are
Hjelm took a deep breath. “I’m coming in.”
Now it was Andersson’s turn to be silent.
“All right,” he said then. “But no gun stuck in the back of your waistband this time. And no walkie-talkie.” Andersson hung up.
“Jan-Olov?” Hjelm said into Chavez’s walkie-talkie.
“You don’t have to do this,” said Hultin.
“I know.” Hjelm handed his service revolver to Chavez, then put his jacket, walkie-talkie, and cell phone on the floor.
Jorge looked at him through the darkness, placed his hand on Hjelm’s arm, and whispered, “Make some sort of noise for a few seconds when you go in, so I can get over to the left window. I’ll keep watch outside.”
Hjelm nodded, and they stepped out into the night. Jorge stopped behind the cottage, while he continued on around the corner.
Wearing only a T-shirt and trousers, with his hands raised, he crossed the little path between the cottages. Those few yards seemed endless. He thought he would freeze in the cold.
For a moment he thought he was running up the stairs to the immigration office in Hallunda.
The door opened slightly. No one was visible. Only the glare of a light.
He stepped onto the small terrace and slipped through the doorway. Seeing a little metal wind chime hanging from the doorpost, he purposely bumped his head against it. While it jangled, out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Chavez crossing the path.
The light from the small ceiling lamp was actually quite weak, but it blinded him because his eyes had become accustomed to the dark. It took a moment before he could distinguish anything else.
On the floor in the far right corner were two figures, tied up, with tape over their mouths. Anja Parikka’s pale blue eyes were staring at him above the tape; Alf Ruben Winge’s eyes were closed. She was sitting up; he was lying down, curled in a fetal position. Their bodies were not touching.
Along the wall on the left stood a small, unmade bed.
On a chair just to the left of the door sat Goran Andersson. He looked exactly like the photographs and was smiling a bit shyly at Hjelm. In his hand he held Valery Treplyov’s gun with the silencer attached. It was aimed straight at Hjelm’s chest, six feet away.
“Close the door,” said Goran Andersson. “And go over there and sit down on the bed.” Hjelm did as he was told.
“All right then,” said Andersson, keeping the gun aimed at him. “And the sharpshooters are swarming all over the Tanto cottages, am I right?”
Hjelm didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.
“Do you remember what I said I’d do if you kept pestering Lena?” Andersson said with a crooked smile. “I just talked to her. From here. She’s not doing very well.”
“That’s hardly our fault, is it?” Hjelm said tentatively.
“My question was whether you remember what I said I’d do,” said Andersson, his tone a bit harsher.
“I remember.”
“And yet you still came in here?”
“You’re not a murderer.”
Goran Andersson laughed loudly, but it sounded strained. “A rather strange thing for a man to say with a gun pointed at him that’s already killed five people.”
“Come on,” said Hjelm. “I know you want to put a stop to this whole thing.”
“Is that right?” Andersson said calmly.
“I’m not really sure when that change happened. It’s possible to pinpoint it to several different moments. Do you know?”
“No.”
“The first two murders were perfect crimes. You left not a single scrap of evidence. Carried them out with real thoroughness. Then all of a sudden, in Carlberger’s living room, as you stood there wrapped in that marvelous music and pulling the slugs out of the wall with your tweezers, something happened. You left a bullet behind. Was that when you started to think about things?”
“Go on.” Goran Andersson’s face was impassive.
“Then you took a long break, which made us draw a lot of erroneous conclusions. You could have stopped there and returned home to your pregnant wife.”
“Is that actually what you think?”
“Not really,” said Hjelm. “No one who shoots another human being will ever be the same. Believe me, I know. But it’s still possible to go on living. Put down your gun, and you’ll get to see your child grow up.”
“Cut that out, and go on.”
“Okay. It took some time for you to plan the first three murders in such an elegant fashion. The victims had to come home late and alone, and within a reasonably tight time frame. It took two days in both cases. Then you had to plan the rest. Although I wonder whether you really needed a month and a half for the planning, from the early morning hours of April the third until the early morning hours of May the eighteenth. What were you doing all that time? Hesitating? Pondering?”
“Mostly I was listening. As I told you on the phone. I traveled around on public transportation back and forth, taking subways and buses and commuter trains. Everywhere people were talking, I sat and listened; listened to their theories and ideas and thoughts and feelings. Maybe you’re right that I hesitated. But everyone’s reactions made me go on.”
“One little question,” said Hjelm. “Why the two shots to the head? Why such… symmetry?”
“You’ve been to Fittja,” Andersson said wearily. “Didn’t you count the bullets? Seventeen board members, thirty-four bullets. Everything fit together. Can you even understand how well everything fit? That ox in the bank gave me my weapon, the tape that was playing while I was getting beat up, and two bullets per board member. It was all so precise. And two shots to the head are the surest way to kill a victim if you only have two bullets at your disposal. It was as simple as that.”
“But then there was the cassette you left behind. Surely you could have grabbed it and taken it along, even
