Arne Dahl - Misterioso

Göran Andersson stared at him. Only now did Hjelm notice how tremendously tired the man looked. Tired of everything.

“There are so many reasons,” Andersson said. “All the strange connections that have landed me here. Coincidences piling up that I thought were fate. Maybe that’s what I still think. But without the music, the mystery disappeared. And you, you in particular, Paul Hjelm, were the final nail in the coffin. The empty apartment that I heard about turned out to be right next door to the police station in Fittja. Okay, that was to be expected; it was part of the overriding pattern. The fact that the hostage drama took place out there, at the very same time as my first murder, and that it stole all the media attention from me… that was also only natural. Everything was conspiring.

“But later, when it turned out that you had been out to my house in Algotsmåla and talked to Lena, that you were the one who was hunting me, then I realized that our fates were interlinked, yours and mine. I know that you were about to lose your job because of that hostage drama. I know that you, just like me a few months earlier, stood in your row house in Norsborg and looked at yourself in the mirror but saw no reflection. I know that you felt the ground being ripped out from under your feet. I know that you were dangling in midair and wishing death on the police top brass because they didn’t back you up but just hovered somewhere high over your head. Maybe you even thought about killing the whole lot of them.

“Don’t you understand how alike we are? We’re just two ordinary Swedes that time has left behind. Nothing we believed in exists anymore. Everything has changed, and we haven’t been able to keep up, Paul. We signed up for a static world, the most Swedish of all characteristics. With our mother’s milk we imbibed the idea that everything would always remain the same. We’re the paper that people reuse because they think it’s blank. And maybe it is. Completely blank.”

Göran Andersson stood up and went on.

“The next time you look at yourself in the mirror, it’ll be me that you see, Paul. In you I will live on.”

Paul Hjelm sat mutely on the bed. There was nothing to say. There was nothing he could possibly say.

“If you’ll excuse me,” said Göran Andersson, “I’ve got a dart game to finish.”

He took out of his pocket a measuring tape and a dart. He placed the dart on the table in front of him, and with the gun still aimed at Hjelm, he eased over to the two figures in the corner. From Alf Ruben Winge’s passive, corpulent body he measured a specific length, and then drew a mark on the floor a short distance from the chair. Then he sat down again, put the measuring tape on the table, and picked up the dart, weighing it in his hand.

“You know how to play five-oh-one,” he said. “You count backward from five-oh-one down to zero. When I hit that bull’s-eye in the bank in town, I only had the checkout left. I still do. And I’ve never left a game unfinished. Do you know what the checkout is?”

Hjelm didn’t answer. He just stared.

Andersson held up the dart. “You have to hit the right number inside the double ring in order to get down to zero. That’s what I’m going to do now. But the game doesn’t usually go on for four months.”

He stood up and went over to the mark on the floor.

“Ninety-three and three-quarters inches. The same distance that I measured in the living rooms.”

He raised the dart toward Hjelm. Hjelm merely watched. Anja Parikka stared wildly. Even Winge had opened his eyes. They were fixed on the dart.

“The same dart that I pulled out of the bull’s-eye back home in Algotsmåla on February fifteenth,” he said. “It’s time for the checkout.”

He raised the dart, aimed, and hurled at the spare tire that was Alf Ruben Winge’s stomach. The dart stuck in his paunch. Winge’s eyes opened wide. Not a sound slipped out from under the tape.

“The double ring,” said Göran Andersson. “Checkout. The game is over. It was certainly a long one.”

He went over to Hjelm and crouched down a short distance from the bed. The gun was still aimed at Hjelm.

“When I play,” said Göran Andersson lightly, “I’m a very focused person. When the game is over, I’m very ordinary. The tension is released. I can go back to daily life with renewed energy.”

Hjelm still couldn’t get a sound across his lips.

“And daily life,” said Göran Andersson, “daily life involves dying. I’d like you to grab my body when I fall.”

He stuck the silencer into his mouth. Hjelm couldn’t move. The hostage hero turned to stone , he managed to think.

“Checkout,” Göran Andersson said thickly.

The shot was fired.

But the report was louder than it should have been.

Andersson fell forward. Hjelm caught his body. He thought the blood running over him was his own.

He looked up at the window above Anja and Winge. Shattered glass was everywhere. The shade had been pulverized. Jorge Chavez stuck his black head into the room.

“The shoulder,” he said.

“Ow!” said Göran Andersson.

Even Gunnar Nyberg was present. He was sitting in his usual place with his head wrapped in bandages and looking like the mummy in the old horror film. He really shouldn’t have been there.

But there they all sat, ready to say goodbye to each other and return to the police stations in Huddinge, Sundsvall, Göteborg, Västerås, Stockholm, and Nacka. It would be June in two days. Their summer was saved.

The mood was ambivalent. No one said a word.

Jan-Olov Hultin entered the room through his mysterious special door, this time leaving it open. They saw an ordinary bathroom inside.

The mystery was gone, but the mist still remained.

Hultin plopped a thick file onto the table, sat down, and set his reading glasses on his big nose.

“All right,” he said. “A brief summary of last night is in order. Göran Andersson is being treated in the hospital for his relatively minor shoulder wound. Alf Ruben Winge is being treated at the same hospital for an equally minor wound in his large intestine. Anja Parikka, not unexpectedly, was affected the most; she’s in intensive care, suffering from severe shock. We can only hope she’ll recover. What about you? Paul?”

Everyone exchanged glances, a bit surprised.

“I’m fine,” Hjelm said wearily. “The hostage expert has recovered.”

“Good,” said Hultin. “Tell us what happened, Jorge.”

“It was no big deal,” said Chavez. “I made my way over to the window to the left of the door, as Paul and I had agreed. But I couldn’t see a thing, so after a moment I slowly moved over to the window where Arto said he’d seen a gap. I got there just as Andersson went over to Hjelm. So, following a well-known example, I shot him in the shoulder.”

“Quite against the rules,” Hultin said. He went over to the whiteboard and drew the last arrows. It was a powerful diagram that he’d managed to create, a complex, asymmetrical pattern. Every name, every place, every event from the long and intensive investigation had been recorded.

Hultin stood there for a moment, studying his work.

“The beauty of the abstract,” he said, and came back to the table. “And the filthiness of solid police work.”

He returned to what was solid.

“So,” he said, “at least we achieved a final symmetry. Jorge’s shot was fired before the stroke of twelve, so the case lasted for exactly two months.”

Söderstedt said in surprise, “That means the case was solved on the twenty-ninth of May, the anniversary of the Turks’ invasion of Constantinople in 1453, which is the date of the start of the new era.”