When Arne Carlman woke up beside his wife early on Midsummer Eve morning, he went to the window and gazed over a landscape weighed down by rain and wind. He quickly quelled a wave of irritation and disappointment. He had learned to accept that he had no power over the weather. Five years before he had had a special collection of rainwear designed for his guests. Those who wanted to be in the garden could be, and those who preferred to be inside could be in the old barn, converted into a huge open space.
When the guests began arriving around 8 p.m., what had promised to be a wet, nasty Midsummer Eve had become a beautiful summer evening. Carlman appeared in a dinner jacket, one of his sons following him holding an umbrella. As always, he had invited 100 people, of whom half were first-time guests. Just after 10 p.m. he clinked a knife on his glass, and gave his traditional summer speech. He did so in the knowledge that many of his guests hated or despised him. But at the age of 66, he had stopped worrying about what people thought. His empire could speak for itself. Two of his sons were prepared to take over the business when he could no longer run it, although he wasn’t ready to retire. This is what he said in his speech, which was devoted entirely to himself. They couldn’t count him out yet. They could look forward to many more Midsummer parties — at which the weather, he hoped, would be better than this year. His words were met with half-hearted applause. Then an orchestra started playing in the barn. Most of the guests made their way inside. Carlman led off the dancing with his wife.
“What did you think of my little speech?” he asked her.
“You’ve never been more spiteful,” she replied.
“Let them hate me,” he said. “What do I care? What do we care? I still have a lot to do.”
Just before midnight, Carlman strolled to an arbour at the edge of the huge garden with a young woman artist from Goteborg. One of his talent scouts had advised him to invite her to his summer party. He had seen a number of transparencies of her paintings and recognised at once that she had something. It was a new type of idyllic painting. Cold suburbs, stone deserts, lonely people, surrounded by Elysian fields of flowers. He already knew that he was going to promote the woman as the leading exponent of a new school of painting, which could be called New Illusionism. She was very young, he thought, as they walked towards the arbour. But she was neither beautiful nor mysterious. Carlman had learned that just as important as the painting was the image presented by the artist. He wondered what he was going to do with this skinny, pale young woman.
It was a magnificent evening. The dance was still in full swing. But many of the guests had started gathering around the TV sets. Sweden’s football match against Russia would be starting shortly. He wanted to finish his conversation with her so that he could watch it too.
Carlman had a contract in his pocket. It would provide her with a large cash sum in exchange for his acquiring the exclusive right to sell her work for three years. On the surface it seemed a very advantageous contract. But the fine print, difficult to read in the pale light of the summer night, granted him certain rights to future paintings. He wiped off two chairs with a handkerchief and invited her to sit. It took him less than half an hour to persuade her to agree to the arrangement. Then he handed her one of the designer pens and she signed the contract.
She left the arbour and went back to the barn. Later she would claim with absolute certainty that it had been three minutes to midnight. For some reason she had looked at the time as she walked along the gravel path up towards the house. With equal conviction she told the police that Arne Carlman had given no impression that he was uneasy. Nor that he was waiting for anyone. He had said that he was going to sit there for a few minutes and enjoy the fresh air after the rain. She hadn’t looked back. But she was certain that there was no-one else in that part of the garden.
Hoover had been hiding on top of the hill all evening. The damp ground made him cold. Now and then he got up to shake some life into his limbs. Just after 11 p.m. he had seen through his binoculars that the moment was approaching. There were fewer and fewer people in the garden. He took out his weapons and stuck them in his belt. He also took off his shoes and socks and put them in his backpack. Then, bent almost double, he slipped down the hill and ran along a tractor path in the cover of a rape field. When he reached the edge of the property, he sank onto the wet ground. Through the hedge he had a view of the garden.
It was not long before his wait was over. Carlman was walking straight towards him, accompanied by a young woman. They sat down in the arbour. Hoover couldn’t hear what they were talking about. After about half an hour the woman got up, but Carlman remained seated. The garden was deserted. The music in the barn had stopped; instead he could hear the blare of TV sets. Hoover got up, drew his axe, and squeezed through the hedge right behind the arbour. Swiftly, he checked again that no-one was in the garden. Then all doubt vanished, and his sister’s revelations exhorted him to carry out his task. He rushed into the arbour and buried the axe in Arne Carlman’s face. The powerful blow split the skull all the way to the upper jaw. He was still sitting on the bench, with the two halves of his head pointing in opposite directions. Hoover pulled out his knife and cut off the hair on the part of Carlman’s head that was closest. Then he left as quickly as he had come. He climbed up the hill, picked up his backpack, and ran down the other side to the little gravel road where he had left his moped leaning against one of the road workers’ huts.
Two hours later he buried the scalp next to the other one, beneath his sister’s window.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the wind had died completely. Midsummer Day would be both fair and warm. Summer had arrived. More quickly than anyone could have imagined.
Skane
25–28 June 1994
CHAPTER 11
The emergency call came in to the Ystad station just after 2 a.m.
Thomas Brolin had just scored for Sweden in the match against Russia. He rammed in a penalty kick. A cheer rose in the Swedish summer night. It had been an unusually calm Midsummer Eve. The officer who received the call did so standing, since he had leapt to his feet shouting. But he realised at once that the call was serious. The woman shrieking in his ear seemed sober. Her hysteria was real. The officer sent for Hansson, who had felt his temporary appointment as police chief to be such a responsibility that he hadn’t risked leaving the station on Midsummer Eve. He’d been busy weighing how his limited resources could best be employed on each case. At 11 p.m. fights had broken out at two different parties. One was caused by jealousy. In the other the Swedish goalkeeper, Ravelli, was the cause of the tumult. In a report later drafted by Svedberg, he stated that it was Ravelli’s action in the game against Cameroon, when Cameroon scored their second goal, that triggered a violent argument that left three people in hospital.