Between the two men, a quintet who were not entirely difficult to identify as officials trod, against the current, in through the customs area. Hultin stopped and exchanged a few words with the palpably nervous customs employees and joined the other four A-Unit members inside the arrivals hall. He placed himself last in a winding line to the currency exchange, where he had a good view of the hall. The others continued toward passport control, until Hjelm fell away and found himself standing and staring like an idiot at a baggage carousel that wasn’t moving. Seldom has a policeman looked so much like a policeman, and the harder he tried not to look like a one, the more he did. When he felt the blue lights start circling on top of his head, he gave up the charade and was more successful. He sat down on a bench and paged through a brochure, the contents of which would remain eternally unknown to him.
At passport control, the remaining officers were met by a senior official who admitted Norlander and Holm into their respective booths, where they perched on small, uncomfortable stools in the shadows of the immigration officers. Their presence was hardly noticeable from the outside, and if it was, it probably wouldn’t seem abnormal. They settled in, in anticipation of the coming rush.
Finally, Arto Söderstedt shoved his way through passport control and slalomed among scattered stragglers up the escalator to the concourse. He didn’t need to consult the arrivals board to identify the right gate. At gate ten, he found a collection of stubbornly recognizable men who were all but neon-blinking “police.” Söderstedt called together the Märsta officers and assigned them more discreet positions. The restrooms were the only truly secluded areas, so he placed one officer to each restroom and made sure that all the staff areas were properly blocked off. That left the duty-free boutiques, bar, and café. He stationed an officer by the name of Adolfsson at the bar, where he managed to look completely out of place, which was an achievement.
Söderstedt sat down at gate ten and waited. The concourse was still relatively empty. Scattered groups of passengers from earlier flights were wandering around.
A slight change in the state of things induced Söderstedt to push the loathsome little earpiece into his ear; he always felt as if it disappeared deep in among the creases of his brain. The fateful little word LANDED was now blinking after the notation SK 904 NEWARK on the arrivals board. Söderstedt looked to the right and through the large panorama window saw the plane roll by.
He pressed a button inside his belt, cleared his throat, and said, “The game has landed.”
He stood, straightened his tie, slung the bag over his shoulder, and waited with his eyes closed. Children were snaking back and forth between his legs; parents were yelling, sometimes heart-piercingly and sometimes just piercingly. Experienced wearers of suits kept second-class passengers at a distance with well-practiced smiles.
He remained still. People hardly noticed him. He didn’t attract attention. He never had.
Then the line started moving rather quickly. The blockage was sorted out, and he sauntered calmly through the fuselage of the plane, then along the metal jetway, and through the swaying walkway.
He stepped into gate ten. He was here.
Now it would come full circle.
Now he would be able to start for real.
It was interesting to see how many faces one’s brain could file away before they started to blur together. Söderstedt found that his limit was as low as fifty. The stream of passengers arriving from Newark was mostly an anonymous, gray mass, and sure enough, most of them were middle-aged white men traveling solo.
He couldn’t make out any signs of variation. The horde shuffled more or less as one down the concourse. Some slipped into a restroom; others stopped at a boutique; still others bought sandwiches at the café-and had their appetites spoiled at the cash register. A few ended up in the bar and attempted to converse with the human waxwork Adolfsson, who seemed about to pass out.
A tourist attraction, Söderstedt thought.
The first Newark travelers descended the stairs down to passport control.
“They’re coming,” he said out loud and, with that, found himself to be the only deviation from the norm.
The words echoed in Kerstin Holm’s ears like the declaration of peace after World War II. She had been mentally composing her letter of resignation from the police, inspired by the stealth-farting immigration officer in the gas chamber that was their booth. This wasn’t what she was meant for. But then the first American faces peered in through the half-matte glass pane and blew away her sensations of odor. The immigration officer neatly guided each passport into a small, computer-connected camera device and discreetly photographed it. Each photo and name were immediately registered on a computer. If nothing else, they would have a picture of the killer.
Face after face swept by. In every smile and every yawn she tried to imagine a killer without a conscience. A persistent tic in the eye of a man who had been extremely reluctant to remove his Ray-Bans almost convinced her to call Hultin. Other than that, all was utterly tranquil.
Viggo Norlander’s booth experience was a bit different. He was the only member of the A-Unit who’d had a wonderful year. After the fiasco during the Power Murders, when he’d run amok and been crucified by the mafia in Estonia, he’d begun to work out. He got a hair transplant and turned once again to the fairer sex, which caused his stubborn bachelor life to take on new dimensions. His stigmatized hands had proved an asset in that respect. Unlike Holm’s, the immigration officer in whose booth he had ended up was young and female, and he had flirted with her uninhibitedly. By the time the Americans arrived, she had practically finished composing her sexual harassment report.
But in a second Norlander forgot her-he was immediately on the ball. Pumped with adrenaline, he thought he recognized a serial killer in every passenger, and when he notified Hultin of his third suspect, a coal-black, eighteen-year-old junkie, he received such a sharp reprimand that it reminded him forcefully of his past, and he became more discerning in his judgment, as he put it to himself.
He had been sitting in browbeaten silence for a few minutes when a well-dressed man of about forty-five with a confident smile handed his passport over to the immigration official, who gallantly photographed it along with the name Robert E. Norton. When the man caught sight of Norlander over her shoulder, his smile vanished abruptly; he blinked and peered around uncontrollably. Then he snatched back his passport and dashed away.
“I’ve got him!” Norlander yelled into his invisible miniradio. “He’s getting away,” he continued a bit inconsistently, then he threw open the door and lit out through the arrivals hall after Robert E. Norton. Norton ran like a man possessed, his bag thumping hard against his shoulder. Norlander ran like a man even more possessed. He sent women who were in his way sprawling; he stomped on children’s feet; he broke duty-free liquor bottles.
Norton stopped for breath and looked around in wild desperation. Hjelm jumped up from his bench, threw down the unread brochure, and made a rush for Norton. The sight of the two charging policemen with an apparently dubious past was too much for the American, who swung his bag above his head and flung himself toward an unmoving baggage carousel. He leaped like a tiger through the plastic ribbons that covered the opening of the conveyor belt. His tiger leap was immediately followed by Norlander’s. Hjelm didn’t take any tiger leaps; instead he carefully parted the plastic ribbons and stepped off into the baggage area, where he saw Norlander chasing Norton among piles of luggage. Norton threw a suitcase at Norlander, who gave a muffled growl, hurled himself at the man, took another suitcase to the face, and tumbled over. Norton tore loose and headed back toward the conveyor belt. As Norlander rose on shaky legs, Norton came closer and closer to Hjelm, who had climbed back inside to await him. Norton ran straight into his arms, swung his bag, and landed a direct hit. It threw Hjelm backward, but it felt as though he turned in midair and was on top of the man. Norlander arrived and threw himself into the pile, bent Norton’s arms beyond their physical limits, and planted himself atop him with his knees on the back of the man’s neck. Hjelm, with one hand on his bleeding mouth, grabbed Norton’s bag with the other and emptied it onto the floor. Among the sundry items that fell out was a small packet of hashish.