To the Top of the Mountain (17 page)

‘Our conclusion was that the perpetrator realised his exploits would be discovered and so he got rid of all traces of his crime. So we were searching for inmates with a knowledge of explosives. We spent the night interrogating a whole range of people who had some connection to explosives. I’ve only just realised how wrong we were. If the perpetrator really wanted to “cover up his tracks”, as Göran Andersson put it, then we’re assuming that he hadn’t really understood the consequences of torturing Vukotic. But of course he had. He knew that Vukotic was Rajko Nedic’s right-hand man, that he was untouchable. Closest to what might be Sweden’s most dangerous man. Of course he knew what he was doing when he got Vukotic out of the way. The explosion was hardly a display of regret or the result of some kind of fear of being discovered. It was more like a challenge, a statement. One which said: “Pay attention, you fucking foreigner, we’re coming!” But not just that. It also said: “Pigs, I don’t give a damn if you identify me, you can’t catch me!”’

It was silent in the Supreme Command Centre. Once again, in the blink of an eye, it seemed to have lost the quotation marks around its name. Something unpleasantly – but also attractively –
big
was emerging.

‘So,’ said Arto Söderstedt, ‘now you see what I’m getting at. Two points. First: the Kumla bomber wasn’t a man rotting away in the clink, full of fear. He was someone
leaving
Kumla – guns blazing. Second: what we’re looking at is a confrontation between neo-Nazi, professional, maybe even
paramilitary
attackers on the one hand, and one of Sweden’s leading drug dealers, Rajko Nedic, and his group of war criminals from the former Yugoslavia on the other. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? And maybe that explains why no one from Gang One – not 1A, 1B or 1C – left any identifiable fingerprints behind. They’d been imported directly from . . . well, maybe even from Kosovo. In any case, from the centre of the conflict in the Balkans.’

‘And all three die,’ Jorge Chavez said, breathless. He hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. He looked at Arto Söderstedt, languid, gangly and chalk white in appearance, and throwing out these horrible truths almost in passing.

Söderstedt continued, waving a piece of paper. ‘I’ve got the fax in my hand. It’s from the governor of Kumla. At half eight yesterday morning a prisoner was released from the Kumla Bunker. Six minutes before the explosion. He’d been inside for three years, sentenced to six for grievous bodily harm, but got out halfway through for good behaviour. He’s known on the fringes of racist and Nazi organisations, too. He beat up two Kurdish citizenship campaigners when they were taking part in a demonstration in Solna Centrum three years ago. There were explosives involved too, meant for a Kurdish cultural centre, but nothing could be proved. His name sounds so harmless, Niklas Lindberg. He’s thirty-four and comes from Trollhättan. He trained as an officer in the army, quickly climbed the ranks, went on a few campaigns with the UN in Cyprus – and then joined the French Foreign Legion. Apparently – though this isn’t confirmed – he has good ties with xenophobic organisations around the world. Not least in the US. My guess, if that kind of thing’s allowed, is that Niklas Lindberg is your 2D, Jorge. The leader
and
the crazy man. The man who fired eighteen shots from close range into an injured person.’

‘Who, in all probability, was a war criminal from the former Yugoslavia,’ Jan-Olov Hultin nodded. ‘It’s beginning to make sense now, even for an old pensioner like me. Jorge, you said that Sven Joakim Bergwall did his last stint in prison in Kumla. Does the time frame overlap with Niklas Lindberg’s?’

‘Lindberg’s name is new to me,’ Chavez confessed immediately, leafing through his papers, ‘but Bergwall was released from Kumla a month ago. So it’s not exactly unlikely that two violence-prone Nazis like these met inside. Bergwall arranged things on the outside, Lindberg the inside. We can look at it like that.’

‘What is it they’re up to?’ Hultin continued. ‘The night before he was released, Niklas Lindberg tortured Lordan Vukotic, but it seems to be better planned than that. The night before. It surely must go further back in time. Six men in a well-planned attack – that surely wasn’t something they decided on eighteen hours before?’

‘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.’

‘Couldn’t it have been a fake ID?’ Hultin asked.

‘Sure it could. But he was the only Swede in the gang. And the only Swede waved the police ID. Also, he seemed to be pretty familiar with police procedure. He
didn’t
want to get stuck in Kvarnen when the interrogations around the Kvarnen Killer started up.’

‘Well then, it’s time to ask what all of this is about,’ said Hultin. ‘If we accept all these rash hypotheses that have been flying around your rusty detective superintendent for the past half-hour. What’s it all about? Rajko Nedic has to be at the heart of it. He’s going to deliver something in a briefcase to a man who may be a Swedish policeman. What high-value object fits in a briefcase? Presumably money, since every policeman knows how difficult it is to dispose of drugs without being noticed at some point. It’s obviously not a question of routine payment either, so it must be a handover. That means the “policeman” must be scared, which means it must be a one-off payment. Why? Is a Swedish policeman on his way to breaking through into the drugs branch? That doesn’t sound good. Blackmail? Mmm, why not? But about what? And how did this criminal, probably Nazi-tinged, gang find out that the delivery was going to happen? They’ve known it was going to happen for a while, the six of them were ready as soon as Niklas Lindberg got out of jail, but they don’t know exactly where and when it’s going to happen. That’s what they find out, in two different ways, the night before. But how did they find out to begin with?’

‘It seems likely that it happened earlier, via Vukotic,’ said Söderstedt. ‘Lindberg and Bergwall are in Kumla, listening to a secret conversation. They know that a delivery is going to happen, but where, when, how? Maybe Lindberg found out that the Kvarnen meeting was going to take place while he was still in prison.’

‘Lots of questions,’ said Paul Hjelm.

‘Yes,’ Hultin conceded, looking up. ‘But lots of answers, too. Considerably more than I could’ve hoped for when I glanced through the anaemic information in Waldemar Mörner’s air-conditioned Saab.’

‘So what have we got, then?’ Chavez asked, summing up over by the whiteboard; he seemed slightly overwhelmed. ‘We’ve probably got three of the six men from Gang Two. 2A is Eskil Carlstedt. 2B is the Nazi, Sven Joakim Bergwall. These two are dead. 2D is the leader, Niklas Lindberg. Missing are the injured 2C, as well as 2E and 2F. As far as Gang One is concerned, we’ll send the fingerprints from the bodies of 1A, 1B and 1C to Interpol – maybe to the ex-Yugoslav authorities too, if that’s possible.’