‘Sex is the thing we men are willing to spend most money on, more than alcohol and drugs. Maybe there’s a glimmer of hope buried somewhere in that monstrous fact. Though hope is hardly the right word when it comes to the business itself. Prostitution comes increasingly hand in hand with drugs these days. They keep the women in check with drugs until they’re worn out and then they just throw them away and bring in replacements from their inexhaustible Eastern European pool. What we’ve been seeing lately is that the women are being cast aside much, much quicker than before. These days, you’re done being a whore by thirty. By which age, as a rule, you’re also dead. At least if you come from the East.’
Marconi lit a cigarette and held the packet out to Söderstedt, who took one without thinking. Since he had smoked a total of three cigarettes in his entire life, the grappa alone made the next ten minutes bearable.
That and Marconi’s sparse information.
‘So there’s your background,’ he continued. ‘The Italian criminal organisations, though they’ve been overshadowed slightly by the Russians, have started to catch on to these developments in the modern slave trade. They buy in experienced pimps and send them out across Europe to take over independent groups of prostitutes. Nikos Voultsos was that kind of pimp, probably sent there by a crime syndicate here in Milan.
‘As far as we know, the syndicate brought him over to Italy as early as 1993, after he murdered three prostitutes who tried to get away from him in Piraeus, Athens’ seaport. The organisation in Milan, they’re called the Ghiottone, realised he was someone they could use. I’ve spent my entire working life on that organisation and I’ve seen just how deep into north Italian society it reaches. That’s why I’ve had to move forward so carefully.
‘Everything suggests that highly placed individuals of all kinds are involved in the Ghiottone. And that’s why I must also ask you to proceed as carefully as I have. One careless step from your side, Signor Sadestatt, and decades of work will be ruined. It’s important you understand that. You look so white.’
‘I am white,’ said Söderstedt, realising that he was more green at that particular moment. ‘It’s my nature.’
He stubbed out the cigarette after smoking only half of it; that had to be enough to count as social competence.
Marconi looked sceptically at the cigarette and the empty grappa glass, and carried on regardless. ‘After a lot of work, we found the spider in the web; we’re fairly sure that the brains behind the Ghiottone syndicate here in Milan is a respected old banker. He was active in local politics and is now one of the driving forces behind Lega Nord, if you’ve heard of it.’
‘Separatist party in the north which wants to split the country into a rich north and a poor south,’ Söderstedt coughed.
‘Roughly, yes. I don’t want to reveal the name of this man here, but the reason we left Nikos Voultsos alone, despite the fact that he was suspected of at least five serious crimes, is that we’re after bigger fish. If we can break Ghiottone from the top then everyone else in the organisation will be biting the dust. Though it seems it was in vain. Your otters took that part of our job away.’
‘I see,’ said Söderstedt, feeling as though a pigment or two was starting to return to his face. Since he still couldn’t remember the word for wolverine in English, he didn’t bother to correct the commissioner’s zoological mistake. Instead, he went on: ‘And the motive for Voultsos’s murder?’
‘Competition,’ Marconi said nonchalantly. ‘As I said, there’s a war going on in Europe. For control of the prostitution. From what we can tell, it was an Eastern European crime syndicate with ambitions in Sweden which killed him. Using badgers.’
Söderstedt nodded. Marconi was clearly planning on going through every single member of the marten family – other than the wolverine itself. It made him feel slightly annoyed.
Marconi held up what looked like a fax.
‘Your assignment has been officially sanctioned, Signor Sadestatt. It seems you’ve been granted a provisional position with the European police agency, Europol. Formally, that means you have full access to my investigation. How is your Italian?’
‘Not quite conversational,’ said Söderstedt. ‘But I can read it fine.’
‘Great,’ said Marconi, handing a cubiform box to his new Europol colleague, who stared at it in confusion. ‘A collection of CDs containing the whole Ghiottone investigation. I’m assuming you have a computer.’
Söderstedt nodded. He had mostly been using his little laptop to play hearts, the banal but relaxing card game which came pre-installed with Windows. He very rarely won.
‘You’ll find the names of all the suspects, including the key figure, the banker. Your contract means you’re bound by professional secrecy and that any indication of anyone but yourself having access to these disks will be treated as a criminal act. Is that understood?’
‘Understood,’ said Söderstedt. ‘One thing, though. The strange method of execution. Have you ever come across anything like it?’
‘You mean the weasels?’ asked Italo Marconi, smiling.
‘No, I mean the wire in the brain. I mean the hanging upside down.’
The commissioner nodded. He had understood. The whole thing with the otters and badgers and weasels was just some kind of game that Söderstedt hadn’t understood – yet. But he knew that he would understand it soon. He resisted.
‘I’ve actually put a few men on to that,’ said Marconi. ‘We’re currently going through murders in our country, looking for similar cases.’
‘I suspected you might be,’ said Söderstedt. He thought Marconi would catch the appreciation hidden in that line.
Marconi’s smile suggested that he had.
He stood up and held out his hand. Söderstedt took it. His respect for the Italian police force had increased markedly.
‘I’ve got a feeling we’ll be hearing from one another again,’ Italo Marconi said, stroking his enormous moustache.
‘Same,’ said Arto Söderstedt, shaking the hand which had been extended to him and turning to leave. As he reached the door, he heard Marconi’s voice.
‘By the way, do you know what ghiottone means in Italian?’
Söderstedt turned round.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Ghiottone means wolverine,’ said Italo Marconi.
Söderstedt laughed.
Of course it did.
17
ANDERSSON’S FIRST NAME was Hubald.
Hubald Andersson.
Gunnar Nyberg didn’t quite know how to handle the fact that a sporty, tough and quite recently qualified twenty-four-year-old policeman with a look that could kill was called Hubald.
Now wasn’t the time for laughing, in any case.
The dark little woman in her fifties was sitting in her office, looking Russian. ‘I’m Ludmila Lundkvist, senior lecturer in Slavic languages here at Stockholm University. And you’re Detective Inspectors Gunnar Nyberg and Viggo Norlander, and Police Assistant Hubald Andersson. Is that correct?’
‘Viggo?’ Hubald Andersson said spontaneously.
‘Hubald?’ Viggo Norlander replied spontaneously.
At which both started roaring with laughter.
After that, Ludmila Lundkvist talked exclusively to Gunnar Nyberg, who was clearly a big, level-headed, handsome man in the prime of his life.
‘Are you Russian?’ the big, level-headed, handsome man in the prime of his life asked.
‘Yes,’ Ludmila Lundkvist answered with a smile. ‘I’m from Moscow. I fell in love with a Swede researching Old Russian, Hans Lundkvist. We met when he came to a conference in Moscow in the late seventies. I took a long, winding road out of the Soviet Union and followed him back to Sweden, and then we got married. He died of testicular cancer five years ago. We never had any children.’