Arne Dahl - Misterioso

The language of intimidation , thought Hjelm, not sure what he himself was feeling.

A hailstorm pounded the windowpanes for ten long seconds. Then it was gone.

April weather , thought Hjelm and sneezed loudly.

It was two o’clock by the time he rang the bell of the Nockeby villa. He listened to the first five notes of “Ode to Joy” play three times inside, hating Beethoven’s deafness. Immediately behind the villa, the property dropped down toward Lake Mälaren, at the spot where it was most beautiful. This particular villa was not the most palatial in Nockeby, but it still deserved inclusion in this oasis of a western suburb, upon which the April sun had chosen to cast its fickle light.

The door was finally opened by an old woman, whom Hjelm assumed was the housekeeper.

“Criminal Police,” he said, starting to feel sick and tired of the words. “I’m looking for Rickard Franzén.”

“He’s taking a nap,” said the woman. “What’s this about?”

“It’s extremely important. If it’s not too much trouble, I really must ask you to wake him.”

“It’s up to you,” said the woman cryptically.

“What?”

“It’s up to you to decide whether it’s too much trouble to ask me to wake him. But maybe you’ve already indirectly answered the indirect question and just as indirectly asked me to wake him up.”

Hjelm stared at her, his mouth agape.

She invited him in with a wave of her hand, smiling up her sleeve, as it were. “Don’t mind me. I’ll always be a language teacher, to the end of my days. Sit down and I’ll go get my husband.” She disappeared up the stairs, moving with surprising agility.

Hjelm remained standing in the enormous vestibule, trying to make sense of what had just ensued. “If it’s not too much trouble, I really must ask you to wake him.” Surely that was an acceptable way to say it?

There went his language of intimidation.

After only a couple of minutes, the woman came back down the stairs, followed by an obese elderly man wearing a bathrobe and slippers. The man held out his hand.

“Rickard Franzén,” he said. “Ninety percent of my afternoon nap involves trying to fall asleep and ten percent trying to accept that I won’t be able to. So I wasn’t asleep. It’s hard to get used to being retired after a whole lifetime of working. And I assume that you’ve already noticed that the same is true of my wife.”

“Paul Hjelm,” said Hjelm. “From the Criminal Police.”

“The Stockholm police?”

“No, NCP.” Hjelm had forgotten that the man used to be a judge.

“Some sort of new special unit?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. And I also think I know why you’re here. Fast work.”

“Thanks. So what’s your view on the matter?”

“I think it’s entirely possible that I’m potentially the third victim. We talked about that this morning, my wife and I. Birgitta thought I should call the police. I was more reluctant. And I won the argument. That’s not always the case, let me tell you.”

“Do you think that someone in the Order of Mimir is behind these murders?”

“I wouldn’t venture to speculate about that, but I can understand that, in your eyes, there must be a connection.”

Franzén’s amenable attitude allowed Hjelm to get right to the point. He opted for blunt language instead of the language of intimidation.

“We have an important investigative meeting at three. Might I request that you accompany me to police headquarters so that we can ask you a number of questions about the Order of Skidbladnir and also decide on the surveillance measures for tonight?”

Franzén paused to consider it. Then he said, “Of course. The pattern. You think that the spatial symmetry indicates a temporal similarity as well, and that the third murder is going to take place tonight. Forty-eight hours between each of them. You could be right. Just give me a few minutes.”

He disappeared into the bathroom. Without a doubt, the Swedish judicial branch had suffered a major loss. In Hjelm’s eyes, Rickard Franzén had clearly been a very good judge.

Birgitta Franzén came over to Hjelm. “Do you think his life is actually in danger?”

“I don’t really know, but it’s quite possible. Will you be home tonight?”

“I rarely go out.”

“What about your husband?”

“He’s going to visit an old colleague. They usually get together once a month.”

Hjelm nodded. “Does it usually go late?”

She gave a little laugh. “Very” was all she said.

“And your bedroom is on the next floor up?”

“Two floors up.”

“What about the living room? Is it on the ground floor?”

“You’re practically standing in it. The vestibule narrows to form a corridor over there on the right and then opens onto the living room.”

Hjelm headed to the right. A short distance away the vestibule formed a sort of funnel shape, then widened to become the living room. It was a very unusual floor plan that a murderer would have to know about in advance in order to act. Against the window on the opposite wall in the living room stood a long, sectional leather sofa.

Hjelm returned to the vestibule and found Rickard Franzén fully dressed. He looked resolute, practically enthusiastic.

“Have you taken a look at the proposed murder scene?” he asked with a smile.

He gave his wife a hug and then led the way out to Hjelm’s car, ready for a temporary but much-longed-for comeback in the machinery of justice.

The sun was still shining.

Jan-Olov Hultin again made his entrance through the mysterious door on the far side of the room, which Jorge Chavez somewhat ironically called “Supreme Central Command.” The half-moon reading glasses were already perched on the wide bridge of his nose. Hultin turned to face the assembled members of the A-Unit. Everyone was leafing through their papers and notebooks.

“So this morning the whole thing was made public,” said Hultin grimly. “In all the newspapers simultaneously, by the way. Somebody was busy making calls. Or else there’s some sort of cooperation among all sectors of the media. We haven’t yet located the leak. Maybe it was simply impossible to keep such a major case secret. At least we had a day’s head start.”

He went over to the whiteboard, twisted the top off one of the felt markers, and got ready to fire. The pen was now his service weapon.

“At any rate, it looks as if some feverish activity has been going on inside your A-Unit brains today. Let’s see the results. Norlander?”

Viggo Norlander bent over his dark blue notebook. “Modus operandi,” he said. “I’ve been in contact with everybody from the FBI to Liechtenstein’s security force and done a whole bunch of cross-checking through the worldwide phone network. Three of the groups that are currently active consistently use shots to the head when it comes to blatant executions: a branch within the American mafia, under the mob boss Carponi, in Chicago, of all classic gangster cities; a semi-extinct separatist group from the Red Army Faction, under the command of Hans Kopff; and a minor Russian-Estonian crime group led by Mr. Viktor X, which you might call a segment of the Russian mafia, whatever that label is now worth. Most cases have been executions of traitors or snitches; no instance has involved two and only two shots. So far I haven’t been able to track down any examples of two shots to the head. I’ll keep looking.”

“Thanks, Viggo,” said Hultin. He’d already filled a corner of the board with notes. “Nyberg and the enemies they had in common?”

The imposing Gunnar Nyberg seemed uncomfortable as he gripped a pen in his big right hand.