Arne Dahl: Misterioso

Hjelm looked Grundström right in the eye. He wasn’t really sure what he saw there. Ambition and careerism at war with dedication and honesty, perhaps. Maybe even genuine concern about the attitudes that were doubtless simmering beneath the uniformed surface. Grundström could never be just another colleague; his role would always be special, outside. He wanted to be the superego of the police force. Only now did Hjelm understand what a top-level power they had sent after him. And maybe even why.

His eyes bored into the table as he said quietly, “All I wanted to do was resolve a difficult situation as quickly and simply as possible, in the best possible way.”

“There’s no such thing as a simple action.” Grundström sounded almost human. “Every act is always linked to a multitude of other actions.”

“I knew that I could save him.” Hjelm looked up. “That’s all I wanted to do.”

Grundström gave him a penetrating stare. “Is that really true? Look deep into your heart, Hjelm.”

They sat for a moment, studying each other. Time passed. Something happened, an exchange took place.

Finally Niklas Grundström got up with a sigh, and Ulf Mårtensson followed. As Grundström packed up his briefcase, Hjelm noticed how young he still looked, yet they were the same age.

“To start with, we’ll need your ID badge and your service weapon.” Mårtensson said. “Until further notice, you’re on suspension. But the interrogation will continue tomorrow. It’s not over yet, Hjelm.”

Hjelm placed his ID and service weapon on the table and left the interrogation room. He closed the door but left it slightly ajar, perfect for eavesdropping, and placed his ear to the narrow opening.

It was possible that he heard a voice say, “Now we’ve got him.”

It was possible that no one said a word.

He stood in the pitch dark taking a leak, for a very long time. Five late-night beers needed to be excreted in a single nightly piss. As he stood there and the stink of urine rose up from the toilet, the contours of the bathroom gradually emerged around him. There was just enough light for the dark to take shape. Thirty seconds earlier it had been so dark that the darkness didn’t exist. Only when he shook out the last drops did it seem real.

As he flushed the toilet, he thought about the fact that the only urine that didn’t stink was one’s own.

He looked in the mirror again, a vague rim of light encircling darkness. In that darkness, in the dark that was always himself, he saw Grundström, who was saying, “Look deep into your heart, Hjelm.” Then Mårtensson appeared: “It’s not over yet, Hjelm.” And Svante: “Wait, Pålle. Don’t do anything stupid.” And then Danne, his son, within the encircling light, stared with the horrified eyes of puberty straight at him. Now Frakulla was there, saying quietly, “I’m sacrificing myself for their sake.” And Cilla was there too, in the faceless darkness, saying, “Why the hell are you still disgusted by a woman’s bodily functions?”

“Look deep into your heart, Hjelm.”

So empty, so terribly empty.

Everything had fallen apart. Suspended, fired. No unemployment checks. On the dole. Who’d want to employ a used-up police officer?

He remembered the coffee room at the station, the hatred toward welfare recipients there, the epithets about dark-skinned immigrants. Of course he had participated, leveling scorn at those who accepted welfare, the riffraff living luxuriously on public support. Now he found himself in the same situation. There was no floor under his feet. He was floating in a dreadful emptiness.

Where were the police higher-ups? Everybody had abandoned him. He could kill them all.

Grundström: “Then we’d be damned near approaching a police state.”

The details of the bathroom had emerged from their dark haze, taken on depth, assumed their proper positions. The light was hauled forth from the night; his eyes had hauled it out. The features of his face should have also taken shape by now.

But they hadn’t. They were still cloaked in darkness.

A silhouette.

“Look deep into your heart, Hjelm.”

He is sitting motionless in the darkness, which isn’t truly dark. Through the balcony door light is seeping in from the streetlights below the luxury apartment. If he turned his head, he would see both of the big museum buildings resting quietly in the faint light issuing from inside. But he doesn’t turn his head. The silence is absolute. His gaze is directed unwaveringly across the floor of the large living room toward the half-open double doors leading to the hallway. He has already surveyed the space. A tiled stove and a fireplace in the same room. Next to the fireplace a dull-black big-screen TV and the stacked units of a VCR and stereo. On the floor are three artistically hand-woven rya rugs, a dining table with two place settings, and a five-piece oxblood leather sofa group. On the walls hang genuine examples of modern Swedish art, three paintings by Peter Dahl, two by Bengt Lindström, two by Ola Billgren. Enthroned on the mantelpiece above the fireplace is one of Ernst Billgren’s big mosaic ducks. A total of seven tile stoves on both floors of the apartment. If the previous living room was ostentatious, this one is thoroughly stylish.

He sits in the same position for over an hour.

Then he hears the front door open. There is a fumbling with keys. He knows that the man is alone. The man swears softly out in the hallway, a noticeable but not extreme intoxication. More like the inebriation of a man who knows exactly where to find the point of greatest possible enjoyment and how to keep himself there all evening. He hears the man take off his shoes and methodically put on his slippers; he even thinks he can hear how the man unknots his tie so that it hangs loose, draped down the front of his silk shirt. The man unbuttons his jacket.

The man pulls open one side of the double doors, already ajar and almost ten feet tall. He enters the living room, stumbles out of one slipper, swears, bends down, and manages to put it back on, then straightens up again and catches sight of him through the pleasurable haze. He tries to get a fix on him.

“What in holy purple perdition!” says the man pompously.

Famous last words.

He raises the gun from his lap and fires two rapid, silent shots.

The man stands still for a moment, stock still.

Then he sinks to his knees and leans forward.

He stays there for ten seconds, then topples over sideways.

He places the gun on the glass table and takes a deep breath.

In his mind he sees a list. Mentally he checks off a name.

Then he goes over to the stereo and turns it on. He lets the cassette door open and the tape slide down and the door close again, and the first piano notes glide through the room. The fingers wander up and down, the hands move up and down. Then the saxophone comes in and wanders alongside the piano. The same steps, the same little promenade. When the sax cuts loose and dances and leaps, and the piano starts to spread out the gentle chords in the background, the tweezers pull the first bullet out of the wall. He drops it into his pocket, then lifts the tweezers to the second hole-and waits. A couple of small drum rolls, and then that strange little Arabian-sounding twitter from the sax, a couple of seconds of Oriental digression. The piano vanishes. Sax and bass and drums now. He can see the pianist swaying as he waits. Yeah, u-hoo. He’s waiting too. The tweezers are raised.

The saxophone keeps climbing toward the heights, faster and faster. Ai. Is the sax player himself producing those little cries that punctuate the crescendo?