‘I think,’ said Kerstin Holm suddenly, her chorister’s vocal powers composed, ‘that they were double-checking something.’
Again, a certain confusion spread through the concentration of the Supreme Command Centre. And, again, a new voice entered the chorus, altering the tune of the song and disrupting the harmony. All eyes were on her. She held her hand out to Paul Hjelm who, without hesitating, placed the little microphone into it.
She held it up before the A-Unit’s collective eyes.
‘This was taken from the underside of a table in the Kvarnen bar on Tjärhovsgatan yesterday evening. It’s a discreet listening device.’
‘The Kvarnen Killer,’ exclaimed Gunnar Nyberg, who had been sitting in silence for too long and felt excluded.
‘Not at all,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘More like a result of him. During our interrogations with the witnesses from Kvarnen, something completely different emerged. Entire groups of people ran out of the place as soon as the killing had happened; something completely different was taking place in the background of all this everyday violence. Or maybe in the foreground.’
‘Double-check?’ asked Jan-Olov Hultin, in an attempt to bring some clarity to a situation in which it was utterly lacking.
‘Yeah,’ said Kerstin Holm, gathering herself. ‘The actual check, the real check, was taking place in Kvarnen on Wednesday evening. I think that all five bodies were there on Wednesday evening. Though living.’
They stared at her. The room was completely silent.
‘I don’t know when patterns start to emerge,’ she continued, ‘but for me and Paul, they emerged early on. We had nothing at all to go on, really, except what we call a ‘scent’. Something was emerging. We didn’t know what it was, but it was there, in the middle of all the Hammarby fans. To make things a bit clearer: Gang Two were sitting listening to Gang One with this listening device. The penny’s only just dropped.’
‘But Niklas Lindberg didn’t get out until the morning after,’ said Hultin, trying to keep up. He felt rusty – but he could also feel it coming off him in large flakes as he sat at the front of the room. He was home. He was finally home again.
‘That’s true,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘If we follow Söderstedt’s reasoning then these were his men, the ones who picked him up from Kumla afterwards, maybe led by the now-departed Sven Joakim Bergwall. It might also have been Bergwall who was clear-headed enough to leave a man behind on the crime scene, to divert our attention from the gang.’
‘What can you tell us about the unidentified bodies from the Sickla Slaughter, Jorge?’ Paul Hjelm asked.
‘“Knocked about” is probably the best description,’ said Chavez. ‘Bergwall, 2B, was shot in the eye; it wasn’t pretty. Without fingerprints, we wouldn’t have had anything there. Same with the one who was blown up in the back of the car. 1A. Dark hair, that’s the only definitive thing we can say. 1B was completely shot to pieces. Twenty-four shots. Eighteen from close range. There’s no point trying to reconstruct his face. 1C looks best, and sure, he looks like he’s from the Balkans. 2A fell like a log, face down onto the floor. There’s not much left. Not much chance of putting out any reconstructions in the media.’
‘It’s 2A we’re interested in,’ said Hjelm. ‘The big guy who ran off with the briefcase and got shot in the back, the one who doesn’t have a record. Powerful build?’
‘No doubt.’
‘Thin moustache.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Shaved head?’
‘Yeah.’
Paul Hjelm fell silent. He left the rest to Kerstin. She had the notes ready.
‘From what you’ve said, I think he’s a match for a man called Eskil Carlstedt. Salesman from Kungsholmen. We spoke to him yesterday morning and bought his entire story. We let him go without suspecting a thing. So damn careless.’
‘Come on,’ said Hultin, slightly unexpectedly. ‘You had nothing to go on. You were looking for a man who’d crushed someone’s head with a beer glass. You’ve got really bloody far on the little you had. If it’s correct, that is; if it isn’t just a good old Hjelm-Holm flight of fancy.’
‘Five men,’ Holm continued without seeming to have heard him, ‘at a table by the door. “Not skinheads but almost.” “Skinheads who’ve passed the age limit.” They ran off quickly but left Carlstedt behind, since he was the only one without a record. That’s quick thinking. Carlstedt was interviewed briefly in Kvarnen by the night staff, but he identified himself and was told to come to the station the next day for a proper interview. Then he met up with the four who’d run off, and the five of them spent the night working out the best way to divert our attention. Carlstedt has to say that he saw the Kvarnen Killer. Sure enough, it diverts our attention enough to let him go without a fuss, not to his four friends but to the five of them, because the others have just been up to Närke to pick up the boss, Niklas Lindberg. Now the six of them are reunited. It’s time to wait for the following evening. They’ve got the time and place from two sources now. From Lordan Vukotic in prison, and from the group in Kvarnen which, for the most part, is identical to Jorge’s ex-Yugoslav war criminals in Gang One: 1A, 1B and 1C.’
‘Why the hell would they discuss the meeting place in Kvarnen?’ Hultin exclaimed, feeling his neutrality starting to slip. ‘It seems completely crazy.’
‘When it comes to the meeting place, there are two parties involved. They meet in Kvarnen. The briefcase that was going to be handed over at some later point presumably contains money or drugs. The two parties don’t trust one another so they meet somewhere neutral, somewhere public, to decide on the meeting place for the handover. They’re speaking English since, as we mentioned, they’re probably recently arrived war criminals from Yugoslavia. That’s probably also the reason why they chose such a public place to meet. The other party presumably has no desire to meet a group of crazed war criminals in a dark alley somewhere. Back to prison: Vukotic already knows about the provisional meeting place for the next evening, or at least that’s what Niklas Lindberg assumes. He’s taking a huge risk when – the night before he’s released – he tortures Vukotic inside the prison walls. Maybe it’s to double-check what his colleagues are soon going to find out in Kvarnen. Maybe just because it’s fun, torturing a foreigner. It’s a beautiful world.’
‘There’s still one thing missing in our line of thinking,’ said the police aura still floating around Jan-Olov Hultin. ‘Whoever it was that was speaking English with Gang One in Kvarnen. The one who was supposed to receive the briefcase before it was stolen. Where the hell did this briefcase come from, by the way? How do we know there even was a briefcase?’
‘The imprint in 2A’s blood,’ said Chavez. ‘Eskil Carlström’s, if it turns out to be him-’
‘Carlstedt,’ said Hjelm.
‘It fits that it was a bag, a briefcase. That was the most likely.’
‘OK,’ said Hultin. ‘We’ll accept that for now. Back to the other party in the English conversation in Kvarnen.’
‘I’ve been saving that till last,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘It’s not good news. We’re probably looking at a policeman.’
Sighs were heard in the Supreme Command Centre. Not surprised sighs, not agitated, more disillusioned. The previous year, PAN, the National Police Board’s personnel department, had dismissed four policemen for criminal activities. A further four resigned rather than risk dismissal. Twenty-one policemen faced disciplinary action, of which seventeen were given a warning.
Holm continued. ‘A Swedish policeman. He showed his ID to get out of Kvarnen when the doormen blocked the door.’