In the stairwell, Chavez said, “What the fuck did you bring me along for?”
“Kerstin thought you needed to get out in the sun,” Hjelm said heartily.
“Not much sun in there.”
“To be honest, I needed a sounding board, someone without any preconceived notions about Lars-Erik Hassel at all. So?”
They wandered down the stairs to Pipersgatan. The sun got caught up in some stubborn bits of cloud and cast the northern half of City Hall in shadow. The result was a strange optical double exposure.
“Right or left?” Chavez asked.
“Left,” said Hjelm. “We’re going to Marieberg.”
They walked quietly down Pipersgatan. Down at Hantverkargatan they turned right, wandered past Kungsholmstorg, and stopped at the bus stop.
“Well,” Chavez returned to conversing, “I wonder how Laban’s literature studies are going.”
“Check,” Hjelm said.
The bus had almost made it to Marieberg before Chavez, calling on his cell, managed to get past the switchboard at Stockholm University and reach the department of literature, whose telephone-answering hours were of the irregular variety. Hjelm followed the phone-call spectacle from a distance, like a director laughing covertly at the efforts of the actors. They were crammed into different parts of the overcrowded bus, Hjelm in the aisle in back, Chavez in the middle, leaning over a baby carriage that was cutting into his diaphragm. Every time he half-yelled into his phone, the baby in the carriage screamed back three times as loud, accompanied by the equally crammed-in mother’s increasingly acid remarks. By the time Chavez stepped off the bus at Västerbroplan, he had a vague idea of what hell was like.
“Well?” Hjelm said again.
“You are an evil person,” Chavez hissed.
“It’s a difficult line of business,” said Hjelm.
“Laban Hassel was registered for basic studies in literature three years ago. There are no results listed in the register today. No courses at all.”
Hjelm nodded. They had arrived at the same conclusion from different directions. He was pleased with the synchronicity.
They reached the newspaper building. This time the elevator worked. They walked into the arts and leisure offices purposefully. If everything went well, this whole thing would be solved before the A-Unit’s evening meeting.
Erik Bertilsson was leaning over a jammed fax machine. Hjelm cleared his throat half an inch from the man’s red-mottled scalp. Bertilsson gave a start, looking as if he’d seen a ghost. Which, Hjelm thought, wasn’t far from the truth.
“We could use a little help,” Hjelm said with a neutrality that would have given Hultin’s a run for its money. “Can you get us into Hassel’s e-mail inbox? If it still exists.”
Bertilsson gaped wildly at the man upon whom he had unloaded his life’s disappointments, and who he had thought was out of his life. He didn’t move a muscle. Finally he managed to say, “I don’t know his password.”
“Is there someone here who knows it?” A shadow of a thought flew through Bertilsson’s diffuse consciousness. He shuffled over to a computer ten or so yards away, where he exchanged a few words with an overweight woman in her early forties. Her long hair, which was hanging free, was raven black; her tiger-striped glasses were oval; her flowery summer dress was tight. She sent a long, frosty look over at the duo of heroes and returned to her computer.
Bertilsson came back and pecked in a password; Chavez observed the keyboard concert attentively.
Bertilsson didn’t get in. Access denied. He hit the screen in an outburst of rage and returned to the woman with a substantially longer stride. A short palaver played out that Hjelm and Chavez observed in pantomime. The woman threw up her hands and let the corners of her mouth fall-her entire massive form radiated indifference. Then she lit up with a flash of inspiration, stabbed her index finger into the air, and uttered a word.
Bertilsson came back and wordlessly pecked out the key to the electronic remains of the deceased.
“You can leave us now,” Hjelm said, unmoved. “But don’t leave the office. We’ll need to talk with you some more in a bit.”
Chavez felt immediately at home in front of the monitor, but no exhibition of professionalism was forthcoming. He dug around a bit in the in- and outboxes and consulted “deleted messages” but found only empty pages.
“There’s nothing left here,” he said.
“Okay.” Hjelm waved to Bertilsson, who arrived like a dog that has been punished into loyalty.
“Why are all of Hassel’s messages gone?” Hjelm asked.
Bertilsson, looking at the monitor rather than at Hjelm, shrugged. “He’s probably deleted them.”
“No one else has cleaned them out?”
“Not that I know of. Either the whole mailbox and all the addresses should be gone, or else they should still be there. And that is probably everything. Maybe he was in the habit of cleaning it all out-what do I know?”
“There are no shortcuts?” Hjelm asked Chavez. “And no chance of finding out who deleted them?”
“Not from here,” said Chavez. “Network trashes are hard to manage.”
Since Chavez was speaking in tongues, Hjelm had to accept this remark without understanding, like a true believer. He turned to Bertilsson again. “Who is your colleague Elisabeth B something? Is she still in the office?”
“Everyone is still here,” Bertilsson said, in a tone of Everyone is always still here. Then he roused himself: “You’re talking about Elisabeth Berntsson, I assume.”
“Probably,” said Hjelm. “Is she here now?”
“She was the one I was just talking to.”
Hjelm glanced over toward the black-haired woman, who was typing like mad. “What was her relationship with Hassel like?”
Bertilsson cast a nervous glance around, one that ought to have triggered the curiosity of anyone who wasn’t asleep. But no one reacted. Möller, sitting behind his glass doors, was staring out the window. He didn’t appear to have moved an inch since Hjelm’s previous visit.
“You’ll have to ask her,” Bertilsson said resolutely. “I’ve said more than enough.”
They walked over to the writing woman, who looked up from her computer. “Elisabeth Berntsson?” Hjelm said. “We’re with the police.”
She peered at them over her glasses. “Your names?” she said in a slightly hoarse smoker’s voice, clearly experienced at this.
“I’m Detective Inspector Paul Hjelm. This is Detective Inspector Jorge Chavez. From the National Criminal Police.”
“Aha,” she said, recognizing their names from the headlines. “That means there’s more behind Lars-Erik’s death than we’re allowed to know.”
“Can we go somewhere a bit more private?”
She raised an eyebrow, stood, and walked toward a glass door. They followed her into an empty office that was a carbon copy of Möller’s.
“Have a seat.” She sat down behind the desk.
They found a pair of chairs sticking up among the mess of papers and took a seat.
Hjelm jumped straight in. “Why did you call the maternity ward at Karolinska Hospital during the book fair in 1992 to inform the mother of Lars-Erik Hassel’s newborn son that her husband was engaged in copious amounts of sexual relations in Gothenburg while her son was being born?”
Her jaw ought to have dropped, but it remained as steady as her gaze. “Well, what do you know, in medias res,” she said, not missing a beat. “Very effective.”
“It ought to have been,” Hjelm replied. “But apparently you’ve been expecting the question.”
“Because you two are who you are, I realized that you would have ferreted it out.” Had she said it in another tone, they could have taken it as a compliment.
“What was it? Revenge?” Hjelm asked abruptly.