‘They stayed. You’ve got their names. The Hard Homo is Sweden’s bravest fag. Always got his eye on someone from the tribe. We’re used to it now. He was just staring at that kid with the book, though. I didn’t recognise the drunks, but they were the usual. Alcoholics, culture and media types, the kind who love their artsy Södermalm area. Probably haven’t done a blind thing for culture these past thirty years.’
‘And next to the reader, you said “a gang of Slavs”?’
‘Yeah, three or four Slavs. Yugoslavs. They were talking. The guy with the book was sitting right next to them, he got pushed closer to them by the Hammarby tribe.’
‘How do you know they were Yugoslavs?’
‘They looked like they were. They disappeared, all of them.’
Kerstin Holm paused. Passed on the baton. Hjelm had returned. Recovered. He was ready again.
‘So that entire group of “three or four Slavs” rushed towards the exit as soon as Anders Lundström got the beer mug to the head?’
‘Yeah. There was something dodgy about them, that’s for sure.’
‘You saw a lot for someone who didn’t see anything,’ said Hjelm with a vague feeling of déjà-vu.
‘I’m on the committee,’ said Jonas Andersson, looking up. ‘I always try to keep an eye on what’s going on. I’m just really bloody sorry that I was focused on the wrong things. I want to get the bastard just as much as you. He’s ruined years of good work.’
‘The drunks,’ Paul Hjelm said carelessly to the four grizzled men dressed in worn-out corduroy jackets, each with flowing locks and greyish-white beards of various lengths.
‘What do you mean?’ said the one to the right.
‘Pardon?’ said the one to the left.
The two in the middle looked like they had been stuffed by an eager amateur taking a night class in taxidermy.
Hjelm pulled himself together and turned the tables.
‘Did any of you gentlemen see anything of what the drunks by the bar in the Kvarnen were up to during the course of yesterday evening?’
‘Unfortunately, at the time and place in question, we were deep in conversation about acutely important matters.’
‘Dare I ask which important matters these were?’
‘Of course you may dare,’ said the one on the right. ‘Quod erat demonstrandum.’
‘A self-answering question,’ said the one on the left.
The two in the middle leaned gravely towards one another, as though the seams were about to burst and the stuffing come out.
‘Let’s be serious now,’ said Paul Hjelm.
‘We are the Friends of Vreeswijk, Cornelis Vreeswijk’ said the one on the right. ‘Sweden’s finest balladeer. We were having our annual meeting.’
‘We’re trying to gain support for a Cornelis museum in the middle of Medborgarplatsen,’ said the one on the left. ‘The hope is that we’ll be able to convince the Muslims to sing his “Agda the Hen” from the top of the minaret.’
‘No, “Felicia, adieu”,’ exclaimed the second from the right.
‘No, “Lasse small blues”,’ retorted the second from the left.
Following this, the duo in the middle fell silent.
‘The multicultural society,’ said the one on the right, with a visionary glint in his eye.
‘Did you see anything at all?’
The duo in the middle came back to life.
‘“Grimaces…”’ said the mid-left soberly.
‘“… and telegrams”,’ the mid-right finished for him equally soberly.
‘You saw grimaces and telegrams in Kvarnen yesterday evening?’ asked Paul Hjelm, starting to think about claiming his pension. But the bright orange envelope containing information on the new pension system which had recently come through his letter box at home just outside of Stockholm made the thought impossible. He had miscalculated by thousands of kronor per month. Like all other Swedes of his generation.
The duo in the middle leaned forward over the table and simultaneously interrupted his ill-humoured thoughts about his pension.
‘1966,’ said the mid-left confidently.
‘An unsurpassed single,’ said the mid-right equally confidently.
‘My moral sensibilities greatly enjoyed hearing such ambitious plans for partner swapping as those going on at the neighbouring table,’ said the one on the left, as the duo in the middle slumped back as though someone had let go of the strings.
‘And my moral sensibilities equally greatly enjoyed the multicultural conversation which was going on at the table beyond that,’ said the one on the right.
‘Can I just ask if you know why you’re here?’ said Hjelm, wondering where Kerstin had gone. ‘Fled the field’ was the term which came to mind.
‘You can, yes.’
‘Go right ahead.’
‘Do you know why you’re here?’ asked Paul Hjelm silkily.
‘Unfortunately not,’ said the one on the right. ‘We expect to be questioned by the police authorities every now and then. It’s in the nature of our societal role.’
‘Outsiders,’ said the one on the left solemnly, nodding.
‘So you don’t even know that someone was killed in Kvarnen yesterday?’
They fell silent. Exchanged surprised glances over the heads of the middle duo, who were now completely out of it.
‘Naturally, we will do all we can to support you in your operation. But, unfortunately, we did not notice the event in question.’
‘Next to us, two not-exactly-youthful pairs were deep in an increasingly lively discussion on partner swapping. And behind them, the multicultural exchange.’
‘Besides which, we were pleased that Kvarnen was the venue for both listening to music and reading on a late Wednesday evening.’
‘Ovid. The blind king who murdered his wife.’
‘And then his mother. A significant cultural figure.’
‘I assume that you’re alluding to Oedipus and Orestes respectively,’ said Paul Hjelm.
‘Exactly. Or Ovid, as he was also called.’
‘Local variations.’
‘And the music?’
‘An entire table over by the door, enjoying… could it have been a jazz concert? One of them had earphones.’
‘I recognised their way of listening. Attentively. Like jazz. Or a ballad. Cornelis.’
‘“Letter from the Colony”,’ sputtered the middle duo, instantly lapsing back into insignificance.
Hjelm stared at them, one after another, from left to right. He was having difficulty concentrating. He groaned slightly and fixed his eyes on the notes in front of him. ‘Multicultural exchange’ it read in a scrawl that didn’t seem to be his own.
‘Why did you call the conversation which was going on behind the partner swappers “multicultural”?’ he managed to ask.
‘Because it was clearly a Swede in conversation with some southern friends, let’s say Turks.’
‘Or Basques.’
‘Basques?’ exclaimed Hjelm.
‘Or similar. Indians, perhaps. Probably South Mongolians.’
‘They were talking broken English on both sides. Fragments of the conversation reached our table.’
‘English? And they were sitting right next to the reader?’
‘Exactly. Though they disappeared later.’
‘When the killing took place,’ Hjelm pointed out.
‘Which we unfortunately missed. But suddenly they had all gone. Women were screaming, I remember. The pair of pairs didn’t manage their swap since the women suddenly turned hysterical. Perhaps we should have reacted to that.’
‘Perhaps,’ Hjelm allowed himself to say. ‘Perhaps it should have invited a moment’s consideration.’
‘Yeah, I saw him.’
Kerstin Holm and Paul Hjelm glanced at one another and then turned to give the man with the shaved head and thin blond moustache a doubly searching look.
‘You saw him?’ asked Holm. ‘That wasn’t what you said last night at Kvarnen. You told the Södermalm police night staff, and I quote, “I didn’t see anything.”’
‘It was late, I was tired and a bit drunk, and we were just about to make a move. The others were already outside in the street. I was still inside, paying. It was my round. I was pretty mad that I was stuck there in Kvarnen while the others went on to the next place, so I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’ve thought it over now, I saw him.’