Hjelm returned and tossed the large portrait of Wayne Jennings as a young man onto the desk.
“Haven’t you seen it before?” he said.
Nyberg stared at it. The youth with a broad smile and steel-blue eyes. He placed his hands on the photo, letting only the eyes peer out. He had seen those eyes before. In his mind he made the hair gray and moved the hairline up. He added a few wrinkles.
“Meet Robert Mayer,” he said, “chief of security at LinkCoop.”
Hjelm looked at the photo, and then at Nyberg. “Are you sure?”
“There was something familiar about him, but I didn’t put it together. He must have undergone some sort of plastic surgery, but you can’t get rid of your eyes and your gaze that easily. It’s him.”
“Okay.” Hjelm tried to calm down. “We have to get confirmation. It would be logical for you to contact him after the Benny Lundberg incident.”
“Me?” Nyberg gaped. “I’d just give him a whupping.”
“If anyone else goes, he’ll get suspicious. It has to be you. And it has to seem routine. Play dumb-that ought to work. Bring along some lousy, unrelated photo.” He rummaged in the desk drawer for a photograph of a man, any man at all. He found a passport photo of a man in his sixties smiling serenely. “This will be good,” he said. “Who is it?”
Nyberg looked at the picture. “It’s Kerstin’s pastor.”
Hjelm stopped short. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that he was sitting at Kerstin’s desk. “Do you know about it?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Nyberg. “She told me.”
Hjelm felt a little twinge and fingered the picture clumsily. “Okay. It’ll have to do. We’ll wipe it, and then you make sure to get Mayer’s fingerprints.”
“Can’t we just bring him in? Once we get the fingerprints, it’s over.”
“We might not get that far. There are powerful interests involved. A lawyer could get him released before they even get to fingerprints. And we can’t ask him-he’ll run. I’ll check with Hultin.”
He called Hultin, who came right in, as though he had been waiting outside. He quickly got a clear picture of the situation, then nodded at Hjelm.
“Okay, let’s do it. Gunnar will go back to Frihamnen. Mayer ought to see it as pure chance that Gunnar and Viggo showed up in Frihamnen, which it is-he’s had the idea to check the rest of the storage spaces there. He shouldn’t have any idea how far we’ve gotten. Provided it doesn’t leak at the FBI. I just got a report from Holm-she’s on her way. Benny Lundberg had some secrets in a safe-deposit box, but they were picked up this morning, probably also by this Robert Mayer with a ridiculous fake beard. We’re getting a composite sketch.”
“How will we do the fingerprint checks?” said Hjelm. “There are these new microvariants, you know.”
“Can you do them?”
“No. Jorge can.”
“Get him. We’ll all go together. In case he tries to run when Gunnar is there.”
Hjelm ran into his office and found Chavez contemplating “Nurse Gregs has wooden legs” and “Brother Kate’s breasts are great.” Were those children’s rhymes?
“Get a laptop with fingerprint equipment,” said Hjelm. “We’re going to take K.”
The children’s rhymes dissipated, and Chavez got a move on. He was the last one to arrive at Hultin’s service car and threw himself into the backseat beside Hjelm, placing the small computer on his lap. Hultin drove like a madman toward Täby. Gunnar Nyberg was in the passenger seat. He had pulled himself together and called LinkCoop, sounding perfectly blasé. Robert Mayer was there. He would be available for another couple of hours. Nyberg asked to discuss last night’s incidents with him. He needed to show him a photo.
That was fine.
They turned off of Norrtäljevägen, drove past Täby’s city center, which they could vaguely see through the drizzle, and arrived on a small side street.
“This isn’t good,” Nyberg said. “They have megasecurity. Sentry boxes at the gates. Monitoring systems. He’ll see everything.”
Hultin drove to a bus stop and pulled over. He thought for a moment, turned around, and drove back. It was incredibly frustrating. In the garage at police headquarters, Nyberg changed cars-he hopped into his own good old Renault. Then he followed them to Täby.
Hultin’s Volvo turned off into a parking spot next to an industrial building a few hundred feet before LinkCoop’s gate. There it stayed, in the storm.
When Nyberg drove up to the sentry box, everything was just as it had been at his last visit. On the surface.
The twin receptionists were the same too. Although he insisted that he could find his way to Mayer’s office himself, one of them walked ahead of him through the stylistically pure building; he became more convinced than ever that this was a well-thought-out marketing strategy. This time, however, his interest in the miniskirt and what it hid was minimal. Incredibly tense, he entered chief of security Robert Mayer’s office with the blinking-monitor walls.
Mayer fixed him with his ice-blue gaze, Wayne Jennings’s gaze, while Nyberg made the utmost effort to seem effortless. Mayer was otherwise relaxed; only his gaze was firmly focused, and it seemed to see right through him. The evening before, Mayer had tortured Benny Lundberg, beaten Viggo Norlander unconscious, and broken Nyberg’s own nasal bones in three places. Mayer himself seemed fresh as a daisy.
“That doesn’t look good,” he said, tapping his nose lightly.
“It’s a tough job,” Nyberg said, shaking Mayer’s extended hand. He refrained from using his Mr. Sweden grip this time.
“I’ve been looking more closely at what that building has been used for recently,” said Mayer, sitting down and folding his hands behind his head. “It really has been empty-all that’s there is old empty boxes. So it’s been accessible to anyone at all. And apparently for any purpose at all.”
Nyberg was blinded by Mayer’s professionalism. “It’s a horrible story.”
“It really is,” Mayer said sympathetically.
Nyberg felt like he was going to throw up. “Naturally, this places the break-in in a slightly different light.”
Mayer nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Benny reports a break-in in one place while at the same time the Kentucky Killer is at work nearby. Then he’s nearly murdered himself in that very same spot. What do you make of that?”
“Nothing, for the time being,” Nyberg said nonchalantly. “But one wonders what Benny Lundberg was up to.”
“It certainly seems very strange,” said Mayer. “We knew, of course, that he had a past as a skinhead, but we thought he deserved a chance at a new life. I suppose most of this would now indicate that he had something to do with the break-in.”
“I don’t quite understand,” said Nyberg with meticulous stupidity.
“I’m not going to get involved in your work,” Mayer said briskly. “That’s hardly necessary. You were close to getting him, after all.”
“It would be nice to have that honor, but the truth is that we were only down there doing a routine check of all the buildings in the vicinity.” Nyberg took out the photo of Kerstin Holm’s deceased pastor and extended it to Mayer. Upside down.
Mayer took it and had to turn it around. He glanced at it and shook his head.
Nyberg took the photo back and put it in his wallet.
“I’m sorry,” said Mayer. “Should I recognize him?”
“We picked him up in a car that was leaving Frihamnen at high speed. One of the warehouse workers thought he recognized him. That he might have worked at LinkCoop.”
“No, I don’t recognize him.”
Nyberg nodded doggedly and stood. He extended his hand toward Mayer, and they shook in a civilized fashion.
He had to check himself so that he didn’t run through the corridors. He smiled at the twin receptionists and received a double dividend. His car rolled calmly out through the gates and rounded the curve slowly.