It felt disgusting.
Necessary, but disgusting.
A price could be put on everything. Commercialisation of the intimate sphere. The transformation of humans from physical beings to legal entities to virtual people. All that was left behind was a number, a value, a share price.
She suddenly knew precisely why she had chopped off her hair.
And just then, the physical address for the IP address appeared. It was in Stockholm.
But it felt strange. Fatburstrappan 18. Somewhere in Södermalm.
And then reality hit her. The moral dilemma was, on closer consideration, fictitious, or at least not hers. She had forgotten one important factor.
Rank.
It was almost two on Midsummer’s Eve. Dancing around the maypole would already be well under way in many places. Friday. Followed by Midsummer and then Sunday. Weekend, with a minimal number of staff in the city. The majority were in the countryside. Her superiors would be dancing to Midsummer tunes. Ragnar Hellberg too, in all probability; comedy Superintendent Party-Ragge. But she had an emergency number. A mobile number.
The question was whether she wanted to contact Hellberg. There was no real hurry. The paedophile living at Fatburstrappan 18 might not commit any serious assaults during the Midsummer weekend. Though ‘might’ wasn’t enough for Sara Svenhagen. He might, on the other hand, celebrate Midsummer by indulging in a real orgy of sexual assault on minors.
What would Hellberg say? Maybe he would have already downed his first few schnapps and be wearing his party hat at a jaunty angle, rambling away. She couldn’t really say how well she knew Hellberg. He was the police force’s youngest and most up-for-a-laugh detective superintendent, though his was the kind of forced, businesslike fun. Everyone had to take part. That was an order. We’ll wear blue lights on our heads at the Stockholm Marathon, right? All of us? Right? But sure, he was competent enough when it really mattered. Still, she couldn’t really look past the way he had outmanoeuvred Ludvig Johnsson, the man who had already built up the entire paedophile division when the National Police Board brought in the more media-friendly careerist Ragnar Hellberg, and quickly promoted him. And Hellberg really did make a good impression on TV. Party-Ragge, who called reporters by their first names and always had a joke ready.
But she didn’t really know anything about him. Not whether he had a family, not where he lived, not whether he was hiding out at his place in the country, mobile phone switched off. Would the very fact that she had the cheek to contact him on Midsummer’s Eve close all doors? Would she get a telling-off from a herring-munching, loose-jawed Hellberg, mid-drinking song?
It was either/or. Either she would get a green light or she would get a red one. At the moment, it was yellow. Changed according to the EU standard.
She rang. Hellberg answered almost immediately, as though he had been waiting for her call. He didn’t seem to be in the midst of a paradise of schnapps and song; when his voice echoed down the line, she recognised, to her surprise, a hint of public holiday anxiety.
Was Party-Ragge sitting at home, just as lonely and abandoned as she was? Was his whole bon vivant attitude just a professional front? Inside, she felt quite surprised as she said: ‘I’ve found something.’
‘You’re working now?’ Hellberg asked, without the expected jovial tone in his voice which suggested that she should be rolling around in the Midsummer hay instead.
‘Yeah.’
‘Me too.’
‘On what?’ she exclaimed clumsily. Ragnar Hellberg didn’t seem the type to take his work home with him, even on normal weekdays.
‘Mmm,’ he said, seeming to chuckle. ‘Administrative stuff, I suppose you could say. What’ve you found, Sara?’
‘A new network.’
‘What? Is it the Nässjö code? It seemed uncrackable.’
‘Yeah, the Nässjö code. A blockhead in Stockholm. Fatburstrappan 18. Several others, too. It’s just a question of whether we should pick him up immediately, or wait for the rest and take them all together.’
‘Are there international numbers?’
‘The majority, yeah. But also in Boden, Lund, Borås. So far. I’ve got lots left.’
‘How many other countries?’
‘Three so far. The US, Germany, France. It’ll take time to organise an international effort.’
Yeah,’ said Hellberg, seeming to think it over. ‘And you want to clip its wings immediately, if I’ve understood you right. So that they don’t cast a shadow over the Midsummer blossoms?’
‘I guess I do,’ Sara Svenhagen admitted, without really understanding Hellberg’s flower analogy.
‘Sigh and groan,’ Hellberg articulated. ‘We can’t pick up Boden, Lund and Borås now. But we’ve got a chance here, I agree with you. OK. Two things. First, you need to find enough to arrest him and keep him. Under no circumstances can he make contact with anyone else who could warn the network. No conversations, no lawyers. Refer to the new rules. But – like I said – you have to find something in his flat.’
‘Are you suggesting that I-’
‘No, I’m not. Just make sure you find something.’
‘And second?’
‘This is between you and me. Solely.’
‘What? Why?’
‘That’s an order. OK?’
‘I don’t understand-’
‘OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Two rank-and-file officers from the local police to kick the door in. Give them only the minimum information. I’ll fix the authorisation. Go straight to Södra Station and take a couple of assistants with you. Don’t call ahead.’
‘I don’t really understand what’s-’
‘You understand what you need to understand. OK?’
‘OK,’ said Sara Svenhagen, confused, ending the call.
She looked at the receiver.
Was that really a green light she’d been given?
17
CERTAIN TRACES HAD been left behind. A folder of invoices, order confirmations and booking forms lying here and there, looking lost. Posters, or rather the torn corners of posters, still pinned to the walls; almost all of the escapist kind. Images of paradise islands, fantastic scenes of virgin Swedish countryside, unobtainable archipelago idylls, endless Turkish beaches with bars at every turn.
The administrative staff had been told to give their room back to the A-Unit in a hurry, and each member of the team sat in their old room without really recognising it. Paul Hjelm came to a rash and not entirely objective conclusion: administrative work required a large dose of escapism.
Police work did too, though for completely different reasons. He didn’t know if the things he dedicated his free time to could really be called escapism. He read, listened to jazz music and ‘played piano’; he always made sure that the quotation marks were in place around the last of them. But he had kept an old promise and bought himself a piano. He would check that his house – and ideally the entire neighbourhood – was completely empty before he started tinkling the ivories. But then he enjoyed taking liberties, experimenting with reckless harmonies, testing the limits, mimicking, taking out simple accompaniments and even humming, like Glenn Gould. Because Paul Hjelm never sang. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t bring himself to sing. That was his limit.
When it came to reading, there were no quotation marks. He dared to assert that he did that straight out. He read. And he really tried to avoid shying away from anything, he tried not to stop where he instinctively felt he wanted to stop, but to venture into unknown territory. Maybe reading was actually some kind of midlife crisis. He didn’t want to bloody die without having explored as many of life’s opportunities as possible.