“Then why would they leave the car in Frihamnen, completely wiped?”
“Maybe he was the other body, the one in the car. Our unknown body could have been a foreign companion. Maybe they were superfluous and were weeded out. But the cabin could have tight security.”
“That could be,” said Hjelm, “completely rationally. But let’s be completely irrational. Here’s a piece of paper and a pen, and I’ll take some paper and a pen. We’ll write down what we think we’ll find up there, fold up the papers, and put them in our pockets. Then we’ll compare them later.”
Chavez laughed and wrote something. Hjelm was back.
They placed the pieces of paper in their pockets.
Then Hjelm disappeared again. His gaze dissolved in the unending cascades of rain.
Fatherhood. How incredibly easy it was to inflict irreparable wounds. A random word, a moment of indifference at the wrong time, too hard a grip on an upper arm, demands, not enough demands. If the parents have a rotten relationship, what’s best-silence, constant fighting, divorce? An icy hell, like the one Laban Hassel would always be frozen in? Or the white-hot, crackling, absurd hell of fighting? Last summer the Power Murders, the separation-how had their absence affected the children at their most sensitive age? And how much of their behavior was inherited?
The banner of biology waved grandly nowadays. It didn’t seem to matter anymore what people were subjected to; everything was preprogrammed in their genes. This ought to have given Paul Hjelm some comfort: maybe it wasn’t his fault that his son associated with drug dealers. Maybe there was a gene for drug abuse that made his upbringing irrelevant. But he refused to believe it. Somehow or another Danne’s behavior was his fault, but how? What the fuck was the problem? That he hadn’t been able to change diapers without throwing up? That he chose to converse in relatively masculine jargon? That he was a policeman? What the fuck was it?
He knew that there wasn’t one answer. That was one advantage of his job. For each case there was one answer, one guilty person. Your focus narrowed, filtering out anything ambiguous and complicated.
The rain poured down.
Two hunters traveled north on Norrtäljevägen.
Two pieces of paper burned in two pockets.
Riala had a small downtown, but the district was spread out across a large area in heavy pine woods, and the map took them farther and farther from the downtown. In the end, the road was nothing more than a cow path through virgin forest.
“Stop here,” Hjelm said with his eyes on the detailed police atlas.
Chavez stopped the car.
“Two hundred yards or so. Up the rise and then to the right. It’s isolated.”
Chavez nodded, took out his service weapon, checked it, and put it back into his shoulder holster. “Do we dare leave the car unlocked?” He grinned.
Hjelm gave a weak smile and hurled himself out into the pouring rain. It was past five o’clock. The waterlogged skies were made more ominous by the suggestion of dusk; the forest lay in a dense gloom.
Hunching slightly, they ran through the autumn storm. The crowns of the trees danced above their heads and released copious needles, which the rain carried through their hair. A bolt of lightning lit up the forest with piercing clarity. For a fraction of a second, the trunks of the trees were separate from one another; when the thunder came, hard and heavy, only a few seconds later, they merged again.
The cabin was wedged among trees up on a hill; if they hadn’t known it was there, they probably would have missed it. It was small, brown, and dark. From where they stood, not a single sign of life was visible.
They made their way up to the door, their weapons raised, ready.
Next to the door was a glass pane with a round hole in it. Hjelm pressed the door handle down silently. The door was locked.
He extended his hand through the hole in the glass pane and turned the lock. Then he kicked the door open, and they rushed in.
Even before Chavez found the light switch and the light blinded them, the stench struck them. They exchanged glances. Both knew immediately what it was.
They bustled around the cabin; it didn’t take long to get through the living room, the kitchen nook, and the tiny bedroom. Everything was empty, unused. Had it not been for the hole in the glass and the stench, they would have put their pistols away.
There was another door, just next to the sink. Hjelm cracked it open carefully. A dark cement staircase led down to a cellar. There was no light switch. Keeping close to each other with their weapons raised, they trod carefully down the stairs.
They could see nothing. Then they were down. The stench intensified.
They felt their way along the ice-cold stone wall. Finally, Chavez found a light switch.
A naked, faint lightbulb on the ceiling lit up.
In a chair sat Andreas Gallano.
His eyes stared lifelessly at them. A pain that was beyond words remained in his eyes.
In his bare neck were two small holes.
They went back upstairs. Hjelm sat on the floor and, his hand trembling, dialed Hultin’s cell number. Meanwhile Chavez leaned over the sink and splashed water on his face. Both of them still had their service weapons in hand.
Chavez stared out into the loud darkness for a moment. A flash of lightning lit up the forest. It looked horribly insignificant.
He sat down next to Hjelm. The crash of thunder came. He moved a bit closer. Hjelm didn’t move away. Their shoulders were rubbing. They needed it.
Almost simultaneously they fished their pieces of paper out of their pockets and, with effort, unfolded them.
Chavez’s read “Corpse with holes in its neck.” Hjelm’s read “Neck-perforated stiff.” They smiled weakly at each other.
Such good teamwork.
16
Retired. He tried the word in his mouth a few times on his way down to the boathouse. He still hadn’t really gotten used to it.
A life full of activity. Always in a tight spot. The conference rooms. The meetings. The trips. That suppressed jubilation when the contract was signed.
He missed it all. It was a fact that was impossible to run away from.
Now there was only the boat. His wife had been dead for many years; he hardly remembered her, a vague fluttering somewhere on the edges of the landscape of his past.
Everything was fixated on the boat now. His pride and joy. A fine old two-masted wooden yacht of the classic and tragically forgotten brand Hummelbo. From 1947, in superb condition.
But only because it was so well cared for.
Twice a day he went down to the boathouse. He had turned into the boat club’s unpaid guard.
Not even the worst autumn storm could stop him. It didn’t usually look like this in September, did it? Had the greenhouse effect started to show its ugly mug? He rejected the thought-he didn’t believe in it. An infantile fantasy of the green movement. They were always blaming industry and cars. Didn’t they understand what industry and cars had done for the Western world? Did they want to live without them? By the way, how much shit did Greenpeace’s old ships release?
But the autumn storm was irrefutable. He fought his way down toward the Lidingö coast and entered the boat club’s grounds with the help of a robust set of keys. Another couple of keys got him out on the pier.
He could hardly see his own hand in front of him. He was standing right next to his Hummelbo yacht before he could see it at all. Every time the same little jolt of happiness and pride coursed through him. His life in a nutshell.
He checked the locks. The chain was in place; the trap-which resembled a bear trap-was in its place. He got down on his knees, hunched forward, and let his hand slide across the well-polished stem.