‘And what’s the thing we’re assuming?’
Bullet looked up at him.
‘That they haven’t chucked the radio,’ he said quietly.
The golden one could feel himself grimacing.
‘And why the hell would they keep it? Surely it’s just the key they’re interested in?’
‘I think,’ said Bullet emphatically, ‘they got just as much of a surprise as we did, whoever they are. I think they’re gonna have to search for the safe-deposit box. And I think they’ll keep hold of the radio so that they’re not chucking away any chances. Though,’ he added, ‘that’s just what I think.’
‘It’s good enough for me,’ said the golden one. ‘It’s normally enough.’
Just then, the waves began to dance on the oscilloscope. Bullet gave a start and shouted: ‘What the fuck, I’m getting something!’
The police radio on the carpenter’s bench burst into life.
‘This is a message for the person who stole my briefcase. You know that I will find you, and you know what will happen then. To know roughly what will happen requires no more than a minimum amount of imagination. But not even the most well-developed imagination is enough to know exactly. So give the briefcase back now. If you think about it, it’s in everyone’s interests.’
Then it was repeated in English.
The golden one started to laugh. He laughed loudly for some time. Then he said: ‘That smooth-tongued bastard. I’m going to blow the fucking tongue out of him. That’s a promise.’
Bullet looked sceptically at him.
The man sat motionless. Everything had gone to hell. He was trying to make sense of his life. He couldn’t, there was no way out. It was meant to happen smoothly, discreetly and silently. Instead, a bomb had gone off. An utterly real, clumsy, extremely visible and noisy bomb. Five dead. He couldn’t believe it was true.
All he wanted was to get away to a place where the winters were shorter.
Well, that wasn’t strictly true. He also wanted to put away a man no one had managed to put away. Capture the thing that had never let itself be captured.
He looked around the room. An anonymous room. Completely anonymous, in fact. He thought about the word: anonymous. I’m anonymous, he thought. All ties to the past were gone. What he was doing now had nothing to do with the past, it was pure future.
And it had gone to hell.
The kitchen table was cheerless and white. Plastic. That would have been impossible before. Now anything was possible. A terrible freedom. Even this was possible.
The man stood up to fetch a cup of coffee. The machine bubbled chaotically, like it did every time its job was done. First chaos, then the great calm.
The calm was death.
He poured the coffee, looking down into the pitch-black brew, as though into the kingdom of the dead, and heard a crackling from the kitchen table. He rushed over so fast that the coffee splashed out of the mug, throwing open the briefcase with such force that papers flew out of the brown folder. Among the piles of paper lay a sophisticated two-way radio; the kind that scans a large number of frequencies simultaneously. It said: ‘This is a message for the person who stole my briefcase. You know that I will find you, and you know what will happen then. To know roughly what will happen requires no more than a minimum amount of imagination. But not even the most well-developed imagination is enough to know exactly. So give the briefcase back now. If you think about it, it’s in everyone’s interests.’
The civilised brutality of the voice. The almost-polished, refined cruelty.
Two things struck him. They went together, sort of.
First, that they were hunting the money. That meant that they themselves couldn’t get at it. But they would presumably get it back, and in a way that would probably involve more deaths. And then perhaps everything would be possible again. So this was also a message for me, he thought. It said: ‘I know you’re listening. Hold on, don’t do anything hasty, wait, the money’s coming. Whatever you do: don’t do anything hasty.’
What the hell had he started? A terrible snowball had been set in motion and he wouldn’t have a hope of being able to stop it. It would roll in over Stockholm, taking down everything in its path.
Everything.
It was him and him alone who had set it in motion.
Second, he thought: danger. Before, he had completely ignored the personal risk. But when things had grown chaotic, when his colleagues had got involved, when everything had started to fall apart, that was when it had all destabilised, even for him. Maybe they would come after him now.
His insurance wasn’t really valid any longer.
He was afraid of the pain, that was all.
When he finally lifted the coffee mug to his mouth, there was nothing left in it. The jet-black brew had spilled out over the floor and table.
It wasn’t time to drain the bitter draught yet.
There were things left to do.
15
THE SUPREME COMMAND Centre. A name with a past.
Everything was the same in the sad old miniature lecture theatre which had, at one time, served as the temporary meeting place for CID’s A-Unit, later known as its ‘Special Unit for Violent Crimes of an International Nature’.
Now risen from the dead.
Maybe just as temporarily.
The dirty, yellow, windowless cement walls; the row of nailed-down seats you had to flip down to sit on, like a line of toilet seats; the table on the platform at the front, like a schoolteacher’s desk, crowned by a what was now a fairly outdated computer; the clock on the wall, just past ten. And then the two doors.
The remains of the old A-Unit entered in dribs and drabs through the first. One after another, with almost tentative steps.
Paul Hjelm was first, like an overly eager student. He watched the others arrive. Trying to compare their outward appearances with those in his head. They never really matched.
They didn’t even match when it came to Kerstin Holm, who was second to arrive. Even though they had worked closely the whole of the previous day, her appearance came as a surprise. He stole glances at her while she slipped over towards him. That wonderful woman. Always dressed in the simplest possible choice of clothes, but they always fitted her perfectly. A pair of loose, straight-legged linen trousers. A summery white blouse. That was all. And above: that dazzling face, ageing better than any burgundy ever had. Every hint of a wrinkle was an improvement.
Though he was a touch biased, of course.
She sat down and turned to him with a smile he was forced to call ‘spirited’, a word he had always been suspicious of, but which had now undergone a metamorphosis.
‘Have you got it?’ she asked.
Hjelm nodded and took a small microphone from the breast pocket of his short-sleeved blue shirt. He waved it in front of her eyes. She nodded. He continued to wave it. She continued to nod. He continued.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she said eventually, laughing indulgently.
The door opened again. A thin, extremely pale man dressed in a striped T-shirt underneath an ill-fitting, light-coloured suit entered the room. He caught sight of them and spread his arms.
‘My favourite people,’ he shouted in his clear Finland-Swedish accent.
They stood up and hugged Arto Söderstedt. He chuckled continuously.
‘Well, we all had our hands full with those nice little cases yesterday, didn’t we?’ he said. ‘The media’s already come up with names. The Kumla Bomber and the Kvarnen Killer. It didn’t take long.’