The prison governor stopped and formally introduced them. Manly handshakes were exchanged.
‘Arto Söderstedt and Viggo Norlander from national CID. Bernt Nilsson from the Security Service. And Lars Viksjö from our own Närke CID.’
‘First on the scene,’ the fat man said.
‘What’ve we got?’ asked Söderstedt, glancing in through the doorway. The devastation was complete. The entire room was black, and everything within was twisted beyond recognition. A macabre deep-sea aquarium. That enormous sea urchin might have been a bed, that sculpturesque coral a TV. Maybe those algae formations on the wall were actually the remains of a person. The forensics team were literally scraping Lordan Vukotic from the walls, packing the remains into small, well-labelled plastic bags. These were then being placed into a blue plastic box marked with the droll label ‘Pathologist puzzle’. Söderstedt had a feeling that Qvardfordt, the forensic examiner, was behind this black humour; it was Qvardfordt who would be fitting all of the pieces together, in any case. Nowhere among the bags and boxes were any labels marked ‘Explosive’ or ‘Detonation mechanism’.
‘Amazingly little,’ Bernt Nilsson from the Security Service eventually said. ‘We can’t even establish the most basic of facts straight off. Normally you’d know what kind of explosive had been used almost immediately, but the technicians are at a loss.’
Söderstedt prodded at an annoying, bright red patch of sunburnt skin on his otherwise chalk-white left arm. The result of a hole in his shirt. He didn’t cope especially well in the sun.
He turned to a feverishly working technician who was apparently at a loss.
‘No news?’
‘Nope, nada,’ the technician said, continuing to scrape the wall.
Söderstedt turned ostentatiously to the flabby Lars Viksjö from Närke CID.
‘Do you have a sequence of events?’
Viksjö leafed through his little notebook.
‘Woken up half six, breakfast at seven. Work duty for everyone who isn’t studying from seven thirty. Vukotic was studying to become a business lawyer, so he was in his cell rather than in the workshop. We’ve got a statement saying that he “skipped” breakfast, so presumably he hadn’t left his cell at all. We haven’t got a clear picture of what this “skipped” breakfast means.’
The prison governor looked anxious.
‘We don’t count people in to breakfast,’ he said apologetically.
‘Who was it that said he “skipped” breakfast?’ Söderstedt asked.
Viksjö flipped frantically through his notebook.
‘A guard,’ he eventually said. ‘Erik Svensson.’
‘OK. Go on.’
‘The explosion took place at 08.36. Apparently everyone in this section studies, so his neighbours were in their cells too. But it seems that the charge was so precisely measured for his cell that the walls weren’t damaged. The four inmates closest to his cell are being treated for hearing loss in the infirmary, though.’
‘Difficult to interview them,’ Norlander chipped in, running his finger over the jet-black wall. The technician closest to him gave him a stern look. The black came off on his fingertips. It felt nauseating. Burnt cell remains – in both senses.
‘Could he have been tinkering with his own charge?’ Söderstedt asked, without turning to anyone in particular. ‘Was that why he didn’t turn up to breakfast?’
‘I find it hard to believe,’ said the prison governor. ‘Though that’s just based on my personal knowledge of him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Vukotic was the type who’s a model of good behaviour while he’s inside for the simple reason that he wants to get out as quickly as possible.’
‘And become drug baron Rajko Nedic’s legal expert.’
‘Probably, yes. We were under no great illusions about rehabilitating him. Rather business law than aggravated assault, in any case. That’s how we have to look at it.’
‘But the arm of the law isn’t always especially long,’ said Söderstadt, repeating Norlander’s blunder. The black stuck to his fingertips like glue. ‘As you know,’ he added, scratching his sunburn with his black, sticky fingers. He sighed deeply and withdrew into himself.
Viggo Norlander had, however, somewhat unexpectedly recovered and taken command.
‘Are any of Rajko Nedic’s other helpers in here? Who did Lordan Vukotic spend time with?’
‘No one admits to any contact with Nedic at all,’ said Bernt Nilsson from the Security Service, the crime database in his head. ‘But there are a couple of other Slavs of the same kind here. Zoran Koco, Petar Klovic, Risto Petrovic.’
‘So these three people are “a couple of other Slavs of the same kind”,’ Söderstedt said in summary.
This summary earned him a sharp look from Bernt Nilsson.
‘Though you can’t really say that he spent much time with anyone, really,’ the prison governor said. ‘He kept himself to himself.’
Norlander retook the command.
‘What we need are the following. One: an interrogation room. Two: the guards, especially Erik Svensson. Three: to get past the deafening ringing in the four neighbours’ ears. Four: “a couple of other Slavs of the same kind”. And five: constant updates from forensics and the doctors. Are Qvarfordt and Svenhagen in charge?’
Those present stared at the former hay sack, astounded.
After a moment, Bernt Nilsson nodded stiffly.
‘Gentlemen,’ Norlander said formally while he picked the baby sick from his shoulder in paper-thin, white flakes, ‘tomorrow is Midsummer’s Eve and I’m planning to devote it to my newborn daughter, not violent thugs in the Kumla Bunker. So let’s get to work.’
He cast one final glance into the burnt-out cell. He shouldn’t have done so.
The crime scene technician was just coaxing a rough, burnt lump loose from the cell wall with a kind of large spatula. He weighed it in his hand, turning it round. For a moment, it ended up staring at Viggo Norlander.
The lump was staring. In the shapeless piece of unidentifiable material, a human eye was wedged. Completely unspoilt. As though it could still see.
He imagined that it was staring at him accusingly.
‘False eye,’ said the technician, grinning.
5
IT WAS TIME for a coffee break.
It was just after lunch, and for the third time that Thursday, it was time for a coffee break. They would manage to fit at least three more in before it was time to go home. To celebrate Midsummer.
Probably by having a coffee break, Gunnar Nyberg thought, staring down into his untouched mug of black coffee.
One of his ascetic’s coffee breaks, as Ludvig Johnsson called them.
Johnsson himself wolfed down at least four Danish pastries a day; he was thin as a rake.
‘It’s your metabolism,’ Sara Svenhagen had explained a week or two earlier, on Saturday 12 June to be precise, just after half two in the afternoon. The paedophile hunters, as the group was unofficially called, were having a coffee break in the Strandcafé on Norrmälarstrand.
‘You ruined your metabolism when you were Mr Sweden,’ she had continued didactically. ‘The anabolic steroids knocked the whole thing out of kilter. Ludvig’s the exact opposite, he’s got the build of a marathon runner. He probably ran his way out of his sorrow. Sixty kilometres a week.’
‘Sorrow?’ Nyberg had asked, glancing with sorrow at the Danish pastry which had been bought for him. He had been in the middle of a strict diet, but seemed to keep finding Danish pasties and cinnamon buns and macaroons and almond cakes at his helpless fingertips.
Sara Svenhagen had looked at him, slightly surprised. He had looked back. She was stunningly beautiful. In her thirties. Her thick, dark blonde hair, shining like gold somehow, ran like a waterfall down to the thin, twisted shoulder straps of her top; shoulder straps which lay delicately against her freckled, golden-brown skin.