Their stakeout position was slightly strange. They really could have peered straight down through the floor and observed Yilmaz’s law-defying transactions, but that would have meant lying on the floor with their cheeks in rat droppings and syringes, hour after hour. It was a bit simpler, they found, to tape a miniature camera to the hole and observe the spectacle on a monitor. It was in front of this monitor that all three were now crouching.
A steady stream of customers passed through Yilmaz’s hardly hidden drugstore. It was like a cross-section of society, from peculiar relics of the 1960s trying to escape their overdoses in unfathomable ways to fresh-looking middle-class kids on their way to raves; from prostitutes with advanced AIDS to executive secretaries on secret missions. If Hjelm felt a pang of nostalgia for his old workplace, it had long since passed.
Yilmaz was sitting like a pasha on an old chest freezer and, with great control, fishing the orders up out of another one. To his drug customers, he was God. His goodwill meant the difference between heaven and hell. He found pleasure in waving the keys to the pearly gates for a few seconds.
Hjelm hated every one of those seconds, not only because the line of the downtrodden was endless but also because time crept on and Gurra was conspicuous by his absence. Yilmaz’s visiting hours would be over soon, and the day would be wasted. Three hours had passed. It was already afternoon. The dampness sucked itself deeper and deeper into the rotten building. The steady stream of customers began to subside.
Yet another young middle-class boy showed up to treat himself to some small, colorful pills with funny figures imprinted on them. He was about sixteen or seventeen and strode self-confidently up to the pasha on the freezer. In the background, a friend was waiting with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. He stood with his back to the camera and stamped his feet nervously while his buddy extended his hand to Yilmaz. Then the friend threw a short, ultranervous glance over his shoulder-at which point Hjelm saw his face.
It was more than enough for Hjelm. His body contracted into an incredible convulsion that threw him sideways, and he vomited straight out. Even as it happened, his reaction surprised him. Shame and guilt rippled through him. He saw the procession that is said to pass before the eyes of the dying. His whole life as a father passed by, and he saw every false step, every wounding shot that he had inflicted upon his son over the years.
When he looked up after thirty seconds, transfixed, and stared past his astounded colleagues, Danne was still there, standing with his back to the camera. His friend’s transaction had been temporarily interrupted. A truly rock-bottom junkie came in and fussed at Yilmaz.
“It’s Gurra,” Svante Ernstsson whispered.
Hjelm didn’t give a damn. He stood up so violently that his chair flew over, and he took off. All the eyes on the lower floor looked straight up at the camera. Before Yilmaz could close his shop, Hjelm charged downstairs, drawing his weapon. Not until they saw him do so did Ernstsson and Chavez think to follow him.
Hjelm kept everyone frozen in place. The massive bodyguard who had been standing beside Yilmaz was now sprawled flat on the ground. Hjelm dug a large western-style revolver out of the man’s waistband and tapped its barrel lightly against Yilmaz’s forehead. Chavez took over and kept a gun trained on Yilmaz and the bodyguard. Gurra tried to slink away unnoticed, but Ernstsson yanked him to the ground.
Hjelm walked over to the teenager, who was in the process of stomping the colorful pills into the rotten wood floor. He grabbed the kid’s collar and pulled his deathly pale face close until there were only a few fiery inches between it and his own. “Your face is engraved on my corneas, you bastard.” His nose told him the kid was pissing himself in his grip. He let him go. The kid collapsed, sniffling.
Hjelm then turned to his son, who was cowering in the doorway, gawking in astonishment. His jaw was moving, but no words came out.
“Go home,” said Hjelm neutrally. “And stay home.”
Danne took off and disappeared.
His friend stared wildly. “Get out of here,” Hjelm ordered, and the kid scrambled away.
Hjelm then turned to Gurra, who was lying under Ernstsson with his back in the rat crap. Somewhere behind the practiced sneer he could see genuine pallor.
“Andreas Gallano,” Hjelm said, with emphasis on each syllable.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Hjelm bent over. His facial expression was nothing to mess with, Gurra noticed. “Try again,” said Hjelm softly.
“I haven’t seen him since he went in.”
“But?”
“But he… well…”
“It’s simple. Speak and live. Keep silent and die.”
“Yeah, yeah, what the hell, he thinks he’s so fucking fancy now anyway. He has a secret cabin somewhere up north. Riala, I think it’s called. I have the address. In my address book.”
“I’m surprised,” Hjelm said, fishing damp, folded papers from Gurra’s inner pocket. “Not only do you have an address book, it contains the address of an escaped criminal.”
“Encoded,” Gurra said sophisticatedly. “It’s listed under Eva Svensson.”
Hjelm tore out the page with Eva Svensson’s address in Riala and put the address book back in Gurra’s pocket.
He heard sirens in the distance; Ernstsson had called for backup. They shoved Gurra into the freezer corner next to Yilmaz and the bodyguard. “Have you got this, Svante?” Hjelm said, already on his way.
“Keep an eye on them,” Ernstsson said to Chavez, then took Hjelm aside. “You ruined our best stakeout spot, Pålle,” he said, a dash of disappointment in his voice.
Hjelm closed his eyes. This hadn’t occurred to him, even for a second. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “The circumstances were a little special.”
Svante Ernstsson stepped back and looked at him. “They’ve actually managed to change you.” Then half-turning, he added, “I hope it works out with Danne.”
Hjelm nodded heavily.
“Now get out of here,” said Ernstsson. “I’ll take care of this. Lagnmyr’s gonna love it.”
Hjelm remembered to contact Hultin from the car. The detective superintendent promised, without having received more than an outline of the course of events, to contact Sten Lagnmyr and try to salvage the situation. As for everything else, Hjelm was at a loss.
Chavez felt petrified. It had all gone so fast, all of it. He had seen sides of Paul Hjelm that he’d never seen before, but that wasn’t unpleasant. Not until they reached Skärholmen did it occur to him that the teenage boy must have been Paul’s son. He decided not to mention it. “Aha” was all he said. Hjelm turned to him expressionlessly, then went back to being out of it.
They avoided Stockholm. These days one could easily get from the southern to the northern suburbs without passing Go. Still, the price had been high.
Around Norrtull, Chavez began to organize his thoughts. Without having exchanged a word with Hjelm, it was clear that they were on their way to Riala, in Roslagen, between Åkersberga and Norrtälje.
Judging from the police atlas, the address belonged to a cabin in an isolated forest lot.
“Are we going to do it alone?” said Chavez.
He didn’t receive an answer. Hjelm just stared out the window.
“Are you ready for this?” Chavez said a bit more sharply.
Hjelm turned to him with the same blank facial expression. Or was it resolute?
“I’m ready,” he said. “And we’re going to do it alone.”
“If we look at it rationally, then Frihamnen could have been a drug deal. And in that case, of course, a whole lot of shit might be waiting for us up in Riala. Gallano’s cabin, for example, could be a center for his new drug syndicate.”