Arne Dahl - Misterioso

“Very nicely summarized,” said Hjelm and then said goodbye.

The rain was now gone. It didn’t just seem to be gone; it was in fact gone. The violent spring weather had sculpted whitecaps on the surface of Saltsjön.

April weather , thought Hjelm.

He was stopped at the red light up near Södermalmstorg, looking across Slussen toward the shape of the Gondolen Restaurant hovering overhead, more like a subway car on the rack rather than an actual gondola.

The hanging gardens of Babylon , thought Paul Hjelm as the light changed to green.

He moved into the left lane, no doubt unable to avoid the red light at the next intersection, and turned onto Timmermansgatan.

The locked door had a number code. Annoyed, he punched in a bunch of random numbers. He stood there for two minutes, pressing hundreds of made-up codes. Nothing happened. He took a step back and found himself standing next to a young girl with straggly black hair wearing a leather jacket. She gave him a suspicious look.

“Police,” he said.

“Is that how you solve your cases?” said the girl.

He glared after her as she walked away.

“Yes,” said Hjelm, and went back to wildly punching in numbers. Finally the little red LED lit up, and the lock emitted a faint clicking sound. My day in a nutshell , he thought as he stepped inside, found the name on the board posted just inside the door, and went up four flights of stairs.

It said “Lindén” on the mail slot. He rang the bell. Once. Twice. Three times. After the fourth time, a thudding sound was audible from inside, and a blond youth about eighteen opened the door and peered out. A sloppy Champion jogging suit more or less covered his body, and his hair was standing on end.

“Did I get you out of bed?” said Hjelm, holding up his ID. “You’re Jörgen Lindén, right?”

The guy nodded, trying in vain to focus on the ID, which kept flapping back and forth before his eyes. “What’s this about?” Lindén’s voice was groggy with sleep.

“Mass murder,” said Hjelm, pushing past him into the apartment.

“What the hell did you say?” Lindén followed him, stuffing his shirt into his pants. On the sofa was a rumpled blanket. In the other room the bed was meticulously made up. Two sides of the same coin , thought Hjelm, resorting to cliché, and opened the window to let in some fresh air from the tidy back courtyard with small trees and wooden benches.

“It’s one o’clock in the afternoon,” he said. “Do you always sleep this long?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘this long.’ I was out late last night.”

“What sort of work do you do?”

Lindén scrupulously folded up the blanket and sat down on the sofa. “I’m unemployed.”

“You seem to be getting by quite nicely on your unemployment checks.”

“What is it you want?”

“I assume that you haven’t read today’s paper?”

“No.”

“Bernhard Strand-Julén was murdered.”

In spite of his youth, Jörgen Lindén was the most experienced of all of the people Hjelm had interviewed that day in terms of dealing with the police. He managed to maintain an expression of vague, innocent confusion, although perhaps his eyes were a shade brighter. The wheels had started to spin in his brain.

“Who?”

“Director Bernhard Strand-Julén. You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

Hjelm took the postcard showing the highly virile Dionysus out of his jeans pocket and held it up. “Quite a hard-on, don’t you think?”

Lindén looked at the picture without saying a word.

Hjelm went on, “Is this your advertising trademark, or what? Marketing? Do you hand these cards out in the subway?”

Lindén still didn’t speak. He was looking out the window. The storm was making the low-lying cumulus clouds practically race past.

Hjelm stubbornly continued. “So if we flip over the steak, what do we find? Here it says: ‘We’re going now. You can always call.’ And then a phone number that happens to be the same as that one.” Hjelm pointed at the cordless phone next to the window. “But what’s this? There’s more. A little P.S. ‘You’re the biggest Billy-Goat Gruff.’ I think a comparison of this handwriting with that notepad on the phone table will prove very interesting.”

Hjelm sat down in the armchair facing Lindén.

“ ‘And then the big Billy-Goat Gruff rushed at the troll, lifted him on his horns, and flung him in a big arc through the air, hurling him so far that the troll was never seen again. Then the goat ran up to the mountain pasture. There was so much good grass, and the goats grew so fat that they didn’t have the energy to go back home. And if they haven’t lost that fat, then no doubt they’re still up there today.’ ”

Jörgen Lindén still didn’t utter a word.

Hjelm went on: “The land of childhood. I read that story to my children almost ten years ago, every night. I remember every word of it. What sort of troll was it that flew in a big arc through the air and disappeared for good out there on the Swan boat? The troll of poverty? The troll of abstinence? Are you still up there in the mountain pasture?”

Lindén closed his eyes but remained silent.

“My son is only a few years younger than you. At least I hope he is. Answer me right now, or I’m taking you in. What sort of troll was it that the big Billy-Goat Gruff Strand-Julén chased away?”

“Not the troll of poverty, at any rate,” said Lindén glumly. “He didn’t want a repeat. Never wanted to see us again. The cash lasted me a couple of months, no more than that. And drugs are out of the question. I’m clean.”

“No rave parties, no Ecstasy? Like last night?”

“That’s a different story. It’s not addictive.”

“Of course not.” Hjelm leaned back in his chair. “But if you keep working as a prostitute, pretty soon you’re going to need something that is addictive. Okay, I don’t have time for this right now. Here’s my most important question: Have you ever performed any services for an executive by the name of Kuno Daggfeldt in Danderyd?”

“I don’t always know their names.”

“Here’s what he looks like,” said Hjelm, holding out a photograph of an imposing man who was struggling to carry his fifty years with dignity, a battle that a couple of days ago had horribly failed. Nothing exposes vanity more clearly than death , thought Hjelm, convinced that he was quoting somebody.

“No,” said Lindén. “I don’t recognize him.”

“And you’re a hundred percent sure about that? Take a good look through your internal files.”

“I remember them, believe me. I remember them all.”

“The whole herd of Billy-Goats Gruff? Okay, give me the name of your pimp.”

“Come on-”

“Under other circumstances I would probably have picked you up off the street, lifted you up by the scruff of your neck like a little kitten… and tossed you home to your parents-”

“That would be difficult.”

“-but right now the situation is different. All I’m after is as much information as you can give me about Daggfeldt and Strand-Julén. So I need the name of your little pimp. And I need it now.”

“Do you know what he’ll do to me if he finds out that I’ve squealed?”

“He’ll never find out from me, I can guarantee it.”

“Johan Stake. I don’t know if that’s his real name, and I don’t have any address. Just a phone number.”

Lindén wrote the number on a piece of paper and handed it to Hjelm.

“One last thing: Strand-Julén’s sexual preferences. And be as specific as possible.”

Lindén gave him a pleading look and then started to cry.