He had to stop the car.
I sing for you! he shouted without making a sound, as though pincers were clamping his vocal cords. Don’t you realize I sing for you!
But no one heard him, no one in the world.
He drove slowly out onto Värmdöleden again, rounded the long curve at Danviksklippan, and crossed the Danvikstull bridge in the pounding, smacking, striking rain.
Then he was there. He didn’t know how it had happened; it was as if the last few miles were gone, blown into the great void.
When he’d gone a ways into the port warehouse district, he saw the familiar blue lights rise, sweeping through the rain clouds. He followed their signal, drove slowly in on the narrow roads, and stopped the car at the blue and white stripes of the police tape. The blue lights flew through the air uninterrupted.
There were three police cars there, and one ambulance. And Jan-Olov Hultin.
He was standing under an umbrella in the middle of the soaking-wet collection of police officers, and even in this weather and this situation, he was managing to look through a bunch of papers.
Nyberg sneaked in under his umbrella, but three-fourths of his body didn’t fit. “What have we got?” he said.
Hultin looked at him neutrally over his owlish glasses. “See for yourself.”
“Holes in his neck?”
Hultin shook his head.
Nyberg sighed heavily. He walked over to a bundle of blankets in the middle of the narrow road. A white face with dead eyes looked up at the black-as-night skies. The rain struck the irises relentlessly.
Nyberg bent down and took mercy on the man’s eyes. He closed the eyelids and, crouching, studied the body.
It was a man of about twenty-five. A young man.
It could have been Tommy, he thought.
Then he shuddered. Maybe it was his son. There was no chance he would recognize him.
Nyberg shook his uneasiness away, a giant bulldog in the pouring rain.
He looked at the exposed throat. No marks. But right where his heart would be, in a perfect pattern, were four bullet holes. Very little blood had run out. Death must have been instantaneous.
Groaning, he pulled up his heavy body and returned to Hultin, whose papers were still dry under the umbrella.
“Does this really have anything to do with us?” Nyberg asked.
Hultin shrugged. “It’s the most promising thing so far. There are certain details.”
Nyberg waited for him to continue. There was no point in trying to get under Hultin’s umbrella; the last dry spot on his own body had disappeared.
“At three-twelve a security guard from the company LinkCoop called the police and reported a break-in on their premises. By then the police were already on their way. Because just before that, at three-oh-seven, emergency dispatch got a call from an anonymous man in a telephone booth at Stureplan. Want to hear?”
Nyberg nodded.
Hultin bent down into one of the police cars and popped a cassette into the stereo. At first there was a crackling sound. Then an agitated male voice: “The police, please.”
Then silence and crackling again and a woman: “Police.”
“There’s a corpse in Frihamnen,” the excited voice hissed.
“Where, exactly?”
“I don’t know the name of the road. A narrow road, a ways in, near the water. He’s in the middle of the road. You can’t miss him.”
“What is your name, and where are you calling from?”
“Forget that. A guy in a balaclava was shoving a similar bundle into a car. We surprised him. He drove away really fucking fast.”
“Make of car, license plate?”
Then just the crackling sound and then silence.
Hultin popped out the tape and put it back in his inner pocket.
“And that was all?” said Nyberg.
Hultin nodded. “It could be a double murder. And the balaclava might indicate a certain amount of professionalism.”
“That’s still quite far from our man,” said Nyberg. “Is the security guard here?”
Hultin nodded and gestured. They pushed their way through the throng of police. The ambulance crew moved the corpse up onto a stretcher; out of the corner of his eye, Nyberg could see that it was as stiff as a board.
They made their way around a few rows of buildings and arrived at a sentry box in front of a row of warehouses that belonged to LinkCoop; an almost bizarre logo was blinking spiritedly, in four colors, above the entrance, in glaring contrast with the faint light that floated out through the rain from the sentry box.
They stepped into the microscopic sentry box, dripping water. A uniformed guard was having coffee with three police officers, also in uniform.
“My, what a well-guarded guard,” said Nyberg.
“Out in the rain,” said Hultin neutrally.
The three officers went off with their tails between their legs.
The guard rose quickly and stood at attention. He was a young man, apparently in his twenties, with a nearly shaved skull and genuinely pumped-up muscles. The scent of steroids struck Nyberg’s very sensitive olfactory organ with force. As the guard stood there at attention, he recognized the type: a commando or ranger background, solid training in the hierarchy, substantial use of steroids, possibly a few rejected applications for officer and police training, a not entirely tolerant attitude toward immigrants, homosexuals, people on welfare, smokers, civilians, women, children, people…
Gunnar Nyberg had to be careful not to throw stereotypes around as heartily as his imagined stereotype did.
The guard presumably spent his nights here, along with an extensive selection of men’s magazines, Nyberg thought, sinking deeper into the swamp of stereotypes. He would have liked nothing better than to glimpse a CD of Schnittke’s Requiem and the magazine Modern Art Forum in the quickly closed desk drawer; unfortunately, what swept by under the experienced hands of the guard was the porn mag Aktuell Rapport.
Hultin paged through his bone-dry papers. “Benny Lundberg?”
“Present,” Benny Lundberg said distinctly.
“Sit down.”
The guard followed orders and took his place at his worn desk in front of eight television monitors, all of which displayed the pitch-black interiors of warehouses. Hultin and Nyberg pulled up stools, already warmed by police backsides, and sat. The rain beat on the little booth intensely.
“What happened?” Hultin asked curtly.
“I was going on my usual three o’clock rounds, located a door on one of our warehouses that had been broken into, went in, found the warehouse in disarray, and called the police.”
“End of story,” said Nyberg.
“Yes,” said Lundberg seriously.
“Was anything stolen?” Hultin asked.
“I can’t answer that. But boxes were lying all over the place.”
“What kind of boxes?” Nyberg asked without much interest.
“Computer equipment. LinkCoop is an import-export company in the computer industry.” Lundberg sounded like he was reciting something he’d memorized.
“Shall we look at the warehouse?” Hultin said with about the same amount of interest as Nyberg.
The guard led them through the rain toward the LinkCoop buildings. They took a left at the entrance with the absurdly blinking logo and approached one of many doors on a loading dock alongside the building. The blue and white plastic police tape was already in place.
They looked for stairs but found none nearby, so they had to heave themselves up; it took some time. Inside the forced door were the same three police officers who had recently been having coffee in the sentry box. Perhaps they should have expected that their superiors might be on their way.