Zetterlund considered putting out a search bulletin, which prompted his young colleague Axel Andersson to enquire whether Westman should be treated as dangerous. Maybe Andersson was unable to tell Westman himself apart from the characters he played on screen. But to give the man his due, the situation was looking increasingly messy.
The murder was evidently no ordinary settling of scores within the family, no booze-up gone wrong, no crime committed in a fit of passion. It was a cold-blooded, well-planned assault. Matters did not improve when the chief of provincial police, Jan-Henrik Rolf, weighed in with his assessment that the killing must be treated as an attack on Swedish industrial interests. Zetterlund was finding himself at the heart of an incident of major domestic political importance and even if he were not the brightest mind in the force he realized that what he did now would have a significant long-term impact.
Zetterlund, who had turned forty-one two days earlier and was still suffering some of the after-effects of his birthday party, had never been close to taking charge of an investigation of this importance. The reason he had now been detailed to do it, if only for a matter of hours, was that there had not been so many competent people on duty during the night and his superior had chosen not to wake the National Murder Squad or any of the more experienced investigators in the Stockholm police.
Accordingly Zetterlund found himself in the midst of this confusion, feeling less and less sure of himself, and was soon shouting out his orders. To begin with he was trying to set in train an effective door-to-door enquiry. He wanted rapidly to gather as much testimony as possible, even if he was not expecting to get very much out of it. It was night-time, and dark, and there was a storm blowing. The people living nearby had most likely not seen anything at all. But you never knew. So he had himself questioned Blomkvist, though God only knew what he was doing there.
The presence of one of Sweden’s best-known journalists did not make matters any easier and for a while Zetterlund imagined that Blomkvist was examining him critically with a view to writing a tell-all. Probably that was just his insecurity. Blomkvist himself was shaken and throughout the interview he was unfailingly polite and keen to help. But he was not able to provide much in the way of information. It had all happened so quickly and that in itself was significant, the journalist told him.
There had been something brutal and efficient about the way in which the suspect moved, and Blomkvist said that it would not be too far-fetched to speculate that the man either was or had been a soldier, possibly even special forces. His way of spinning around to aim and fire his weapon had seemed practised. He had a lamp strapped to his tight-fitting black cap, and Blomkvist had not been able to make out any of his features.
He had been too far away, he said, and had thrown himself to the ground in the instant the figure had turned around. He should thank his lucky stars that he was still alive. He could only describe the body and the clothes, and that he did very well. According to the journalist, the man did not seem all that young, he could have been over forty. He was fit and taller than average, between 185 and 195 centimetres, powerfully built with a slim waist and broad shoulders, wearing boots and black, military-style clothes. He was carrying a rucksack and looked to have a knife strapped to his right leg.
Blomkvist thought that the man had vanished down to and along the water’s edge, past the neighbouring houses, and that also matched Blom’s and Flinck’s accounts. The policemen had admittedly not seen the man at all. But they had heard his footsteps disappearing down along the sea and set off in vain pursuit, or so they claimed. Zetterlund had his doubts about that.
He presumed Blom and Flinck had chickened out, and had stood there in the darkness, fearful and doing nothing. In any event, that was the moment when the big mistake was made. Instead of identifying escape routes from the area and trying to cordon it off, nothing much seems to have happened. At that point Flinck and Blom were not yet aware that someone had been killed and as soon as they knew they had had their hands full coping with a barefoot boy running hysterically out of the house. Certainly it cannot have been easy to keep a cool head. Yet they had lost precious time and, though Blomkvist exercised restraint when describing the events, it was plain to see that even he was critical. He had twice asked the policemen if they had sounded the alarm and got a nod for an answer.
Later on, when Blomkvist overheard a conversation between Flinck and the operations centre, he realized that the nod was most likely a no, or at best some sort of bewildered failure to grasp the enormity of what had happened. It had taken a long time for the alarm to be raised and even then things had not proceeded as they should have, probably because Flinck’s account of the situation had not been clear.
The paralysis had spread to other levels. Zetterlund was infinitely glad he could not be blamed for that — at that point he had not yet become involved in the investigation. On the other hand he was here, and he should at least try to avoid making a mess of things. His personal record had not been so impressive recently and this was an opportunity to put his best foot forward.
He was at the door to the living room and had just finished a call to Milton Security about the character who had been seen on the security camera earlier that night. He did not at all fit the description Mikael Blomkvist had given of the presumed murderer. He looked like a skinny old junkie, albeit one who must have possessed a high level of technical skill. Milton Security believed that the man had hacked the alarm system and put all the cameras and sensors out of action.
That certainly did not make matters any easier. It was not only the professional planning. It was the idea of committing a murder in spite of police protection and a sophisticated alarm system. How arrogant is that? Zetterlund had been about to go down to the forensic team on the ground floor, but he stayed upstairs, deeply troubled, staring into space until his gaze fastened on Balder’s son. He was their key witness but incapable of speech, nor did he understand a word they said. In other words pretty much what one might expect in this shambles.
The boy was holding a small, single piece of an extremely complex puzzle. Zetterlund started towards the curved staircase leading to the ground floor — then he stopped dead. He thought back to his initial impression of the child. When he arrived on the scene, not knowing very much about what had happened, the boy had seemed the same as any other child. Zetterlund would have described him as an unusually pretty but normal-looking boy with curly hair and a shocked look in his eyes. Only later did he learn that the boy was autistic and severely handicapped. That, he thought, meant that the murderer either knew him from before or else was aware of his condition. Otherwise he would hardly have let him live and risk being identified in a witness parade, would he? Although Zetterlund did not give himself time to think this through in full, the hunch excited him and he took a few hurried paces towards the boy.
“We must question him at once,” he said, in a voice that came out louder and more urgent than he had intended.
“For heaven’s sake, take it easy with him,” Blomkvist said.
“Don’t you interfere,” Zetterlund snapped. “He may have known the killer. We have to get out some pictures and show them to him. Somehow we must...”
The boy interrupted him by slamming the puzzle with his hand in a sudden sweeping movement. Zetterlund muttered an apology and went downstairs to join his forensic team.
Blomkvist remained there, looking at the boy. It felt as if something else was about to happen with him, perhaps a new outburst, and the last thing he wanted was for the child to hurt himself again. The boy stiffened and began to make furiously rapid circular movements over the rug with his right hand.