Just the other day, outside the bicycle shop, he had run into a scarred social democratic politician who had complained. His career was over but he couldn’t keep from expressing his concern over the state of affairs.
“I’m too old to be told what to do,” he said with a crooked smile and made a sweeping gesture with his cane. “It’s worse with the young ones who have to vote against their conscience.”
“The party whip,” Ottosson said.
The old politician nodded.
“The ones who think differently are forced to go on sick leave when it’s time for a vote in parliament,” he snorted. “Prestige has come into it. I was also behind the House of Music, but now when the costs are getting out of hand you have to say no.”
They parted and the old man was swallowed up by the masses on the square. It was Saturday morning and the shopping rush was on. Ottosson remained standing in his spot for a while and wondered how the old man would have voted if he had still been sitting in city government.
Ottosson suddenly heard a shout from the corner toward Väder-kvarnsgatan and Hjalmar Brantingsgatan. It came from a collection of youths approaching each other from opposite directions. He actually felt a sting of fear. He was alone and would not have a chance if they decided to knock him on the back of the head.
Nothing happened, as it turned out. They met in the middle of the square and the youths went noisily on their way Ottosson walked slowly home, reflecting on Gusten Ander’s theory and what it would mean if they decided to accept it.
Ottosson had a great deal of respect for Ander and his judgment but on the chilly October night it was as if his mind cleared. The unlikely aspect of his colleague’s reasoning-that a serial killer was acting out an old chess game, and moreover had the queen as the ultimate target-was suddenly self-evident.
He realized that he had taken Ander’s theory seriously for a few moments simply because they had so much trouble finding any motive in the three murders. It was no advanced conjecture to think that they were connected, but the question was how? Two single, old farmers and a retired bureaucrat from the university, with horses as his passion, what did they have in common?
That question had been argued back and forth and Ottosson had noticed a certain desperation behind all the contributions.
Ottosson decided to sleep on it and to discuss the question with Ann first thing in the morning.
Asta was reading in bed but lowered her book and gave him a searching look. Ottosson knew he had to first try the idea out on his wife. For decades they had discussed police cases without Ottosson feeling as if he was breaking any code of silence. He knew she would never pass anything along.
Asta Ottosson had almost the same objections that he had raised and that he knew Ann Lindell would come up with.
After Ottosson had taken off his clothes and brushed his teeth, he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and let out a sigh. Asta put her hand on his back. He turned his head and looked at her. It would be wrong to say she was as beautiful as a lily-that might have been true thirty years ago-but at that moment he fell in love with her all over again.
“You’re something, you,” he said and smiled.
“Come on, you old lug, get into bed,” she said.
They lay as close to each other as two people can get.
Before Ottosson fell asleep he thought that Asta and Silvia were probably the same age but that was the extent of their similarities.
Sammy Nilsson refused to look at the clock but he knew it had to be close to one.
His brain was rinsed as clean as a dead tree root at the edge of a northern reservoir. Sometimes he got this image in front of his eyes when he associated something decayed and joyless. It was a childhood memory from the time when he and his father would go fishing in southern Lappland. Once they had gone past a dammed-up lake and stopped for a break. The artificial shore was littered with tree corpses. Hundreds of twisted, white-yellow tree stumps stood out as horrifying as dead animals whose bones bore witness to a slaughter of inconceivable proportions.
These stumps often returned to him in nightmares. The three murder cases that, reasonably speaking, had to be classified as one, appeared to him as something equally terrifying.
Everyone tried in their own way. Sammy’s way was to be systematic. He had an instrument, just like the ViCLAS coordinator at the Uppsala Police. He had long been skeptical about the system but in time the resistance had weakened and now he tried to view the system as the support it was intended to be.
ViCLAS was a Canadian model developed in order to aid in the collection of data so that the investigators could discover similarities in different crime cases. It was thought to deepen and help the investigative work.
When, according to his own application of the ViCLAS system’s extensive format, Sammy Nilsson now at this late hour made a data search in his clean-swept tree-stump brain, four factors came ticking out: access to a car, local knowledge, rapid chain of events, and the absence of a traditional deadly weapon.
The access to a car implicated a large portion of Uppsala’s population, but most likely the killer was not an eighteen-year-old who had borrowed his dad’s Volvo in order to go off on a murder rampage, nor was it a retired person. Probably the perpetrator was between thirty and sixty.
It was most likely a man; few women were serial killers. Sammy Nilsson had seen the statistics.
None of the cases involved a robbery. The motive must have been revenge. But revenge for what? The driving force must have been enormously strong in someone who systematically clubbed three elderly people to death. Three older men, none of whom were known to have an extensive love life or any financial difficulties. He bit his pen and stared out in front of him.
Motive? He stared at the six letters. An honor killer, he thought. Someone who had been deeply humiliated? By two farmers and an academic? Could it have been in grade school? Sammy made a note to check where the three men had gone to school. He thought that Jan-Elis Andersson and Petrus Blomgren were from the area, but what about Palmblad? Could an old wrongdoing some fifty, sixty years back in time be part of the background?
Sammy Nilsson approached the second point on his list, local knowledge. The facts that he was in possession of indicated someone who had lived in Uppsala or the surrounding area for a long time. He had trouble imagining a newcomer scraping together motive enough for three murders. Again a sign that this was old debris that had finally risen to the surface.
An amateur, he determined. In all three cases the murderer could have availed himself of a gun or even some kind of knife. Instead the victims were clubbed down with an unknown object. Ryde had hazarded a heavy iron tool but had ruled out a hammer. The murderer had been forced to come close and had surprised the victims. It was a moment that involved an element of risk.
Or perhaps the murderer was so sure of himself that he felt invincible? A perpetrator who ruled out any form of resistance. What did this say about his profile?
He shuffled the papers together into a neat pile, got up from the table, and looked at the time. In five hours he would have to get up.
Ann Lindell stared out into the darkness. She had fallen asleep shortly before midnight but had been awakened by a strange sound, turned on her lamp, and discovered that it was two o’clock.
The sound had returned several times. At first she had lain in a half daze, then she had awakened. It was a scraping, slightly squeaky noise, impossible to stand.
Her first thought was that Erik had gotten out of bed but when she checked he was sleeping peacefully.
She listened intently. Now it was completely quiet. It was pitch black in the room. She had bought new curtains that effectively kept out all light.