Then for the last twenty yards he stepped on the gas; he thought he could allow himself that much. He bolted over to Hultin’s car and got in, dripping.
“Everything okay?” asked Hultin.
“I think so.” He handed the photo to Chavez in the backseat.
Hjelm watched the hand-off. There was something deeply macabre about the Kentucky Killer’s fingerprints being on the timid, cancer-ridden pastor’s face.
Wearing plastic gloves, Chavez put the photo into a little scanner fastened to the side of the laptop. Everything had been prepared in advance. Nyberg’s fingerprints had been fed in, as had Jennings’s. After an uncomfortably long time, the computer beeped. “Match” was blinking on the screen.
“We have a match for Gunnar Nyberg’s fingerprints,” said Chavez.
No one answered. They waited. The time dragged unbearably. Each second was a step toward hopelessness.
Then another ding-another match.
“Not Nyberg again?” said Hjelm.
“Match for Robert Mayer,” said Chavez. “Wayne Jennings and Robert Mayer are the same person.”
A silvery gray turbo Volvo in an industrial parking lot in Täby heaved a sigh of relief.
“We can’t just storm in,” said Hultin. “He’d see us at least two minutes beforehand. I imagine that ten seconds would be enough for him to disappear into thin air.”
They were quiet for a moment. Their thinking could have been called brainstorming if a storm hadn’t been howling as if through the skulls of the dead.
“I’ll have to take him myself,” said Nyberg. “I think I seemed dumb enough to have forgotten something.”
“You have a concussion,” said Hultin.
“That is correct,” said Nyberg, hopping over to his car. He rolled down the window. “Be prepared. I’ll call as soon as anything happens.”
“Be careful,” said Hultin. “This is one of the most experienced professional killers in the world.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Nyberg waved, irritated, and drove off.
At the sentry box he said he’d forgotten to ask about something; he was let in. By this point Mayer-Jennings had had him in sight for fifteen seconds; he might already be gone. He hoped with all his heart that he had given the impression of being useless, a sloppy cop. The twin receptionists smiled and announced him, and he managed to resist the dancing miniskirt; at least she wouldn’t die. Ideas and plans teemed through him. How should he act? In all likelihood, Mayer would have access to a weapon within a tenth of a second. At any hint of a threat, he would immediately kill Nyberg, who wouldn’t have a chance.
But he wanted to meet his grandchild. He made a decision.
Mayer stood waiting in the corridor outside his office; he looked a bit suspicious, which probably meant that he was roiling with suspicions.
Nyberg lit up when he saw him. “I’m sorry,” he said breathlessly, tilting his head. “I remembered that there was one more thing.”
Mayer raised an eyebrow and was ready. His hand moved a fraction of an inch toward the lapel of his jacket and pulled back.
Gunnar Nyberg delivered a tremendous uppercut that tossed Mayer through the corridor. His head crunched into the wall. He didn’t get up.
And that was that.
28
“Brilliant plan,” Jan-Olov Hultin said sternly.
“Well, it worked,” said Gunnar Nyberg, grimacing. Three fingers on his right hand were broken. The cast had hardly had time to dry.
Nyberg had dragged Mayer into his office and called Hultin. They decided to keep the media at bay so as not to limit the space they had to work in. Together they came up with a strategy. Hjelm, saying he needed to get hold of his colleague Nyberg, had gotten into LinkCoop and followed one of the dance-happy twins through the corridor. Together the somewhat injured duo had located a handy back door, out of which they moved Mayer. While Hjelm stood guard, Nyberg walked coolly back through the corridor and left the premises in due order; his smile at the twin receptionists had been a bit forced. He drove his car around to the back of the building, and he and Hjelm loaded Mayer into the trunk. Then Hjelm, too, left LinkCoop via the reception area. The twin receptionists were indeed sparklingly lovely.
For a while they worried that Nyberg had actually killed Mayer, which might not have been legally justifiable. But the man was a professional even in that respect. In the small, sterile, and nearly secret cell in the basement at police headquarters, he came to after half an hour. No one else actually knew he was there; Hultin had chosen to keep an extremely low profile, even internally. The staff doctor confirmed a concussion as well as a cracked jaw and cheekbone. In other words, no broken jaw-Mayer could speak. But he didn’t.
Hultin made the first attempt. Hjelm sat on a chair behind him and to the side, while Viggo Norlander and Jorge Chavez sat by the door. Along the other wall were Arto Söderstedt and Kerstin Holm. The whole gang. No one wanted to miss this-except for Gunnar Nyberg. He bowed out.
“My name is Chief Inspector Jan-Olov Hultin,” Hultin said politely. “Perhaps you’ve seen my name in the papers. They’re demanding my head on a platter.”
Robert Mayer sat, bound to a fixed table with handcuffs, and regarded him neutrally. A competitor, thought Hultin.
“Wayne Jennings,” he said. “Or should I say the Kentucky Killer? Or perhaps K?”
The same icy gaze. And the same silence.
“So far no one seems to be missing you at LinkCoop, and we’ve arranged it so that the press doesn’t get wind of the story. As soon as your name comes out in the papers, things will be a bit different, you see. Not even your superiors at LinkCoop know you’re here. So tell us what’s going on.”
Wayne Jennings’s icy gaze was truly unsettling. It seemed to nail you down. You felt like you were in the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.
“Come on, now. What are you up to? Who do you work for?”
“I have the right to make a phone call.”
“In Sweden we have a number of controversial terrorist laws that I personally dislike, but they are actually quite useful in situations like these. In other words, you do not have the right to make a phone call.”
Jennings said nothing more.
“Benny Lundberg,” said Hultin. “What did he have in his safe-deposit box?”
No answer was forthcoming.
He held up a drawing of Jennings with a beard. “Why a beard?”
Nothing, not a movement.
“May I suggest a scenario?” Hjelm said from his corner. “My name is Paul Hjelm, by the way. We have an acquaintance in common. Ray Larner.”
Jennings’s head turned an inch to the side, and for the first time Paul Hjelm met Wayne Jennings’s eyes. He understood how the Vietcong must have felt in the jungles of Vietnam. And how Eric Lindberger must have felt. And Benny Lundberg. And tens of other people who had met their death with these eyes as their last point of human contact.
“The night of September twelfth was tough for you,” Hjelm began. “Several unexpected things happened. You had Eric Lindberger, a civil servant with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with you in your private torture chamber in Frihamnen. Incidentally, it’s very similar to the one under your farm in Kentucky. Did you bring along your personal architect?”
Jennings’s eyes might have narrowed a little. Possibly they took on a new sharpness.
“We’ll come back to Lindberger, because that’s the whole point in continuing this case. Anyway, you make sure that he loses consciousness, and you fasten him into the chair. Maybe you have time to start the procedure. You drive your pincers into Lindberger’s neck with surgical precision. Then suddenly the empty boxes fall down. A young man is crouching behind the boxes. You take him out immediately. Bang bang bang bang, four shots to the heart. But who the hell is he? Are the police on your trail? Already? How is it possible?