‘Could you stop saying “whores”?’ asked Kerstin Holm.
‘Why? They are whores.’
‘There’s something so violent about that word. It’s like a rape, every time someone says it.’
Paul Hjelm glanced cautiously at her.
‘I’ll try,’ said Norlander. ‘But old dogs are old dogs.’
‘Very true,’ said Kerstin.
‘So, I’ve talked to a few girls,’ (without even a pause, Viggo thought happily, just as he continued), ‘who were part of Johansen’s group. He could be tough, apparently, but if you behaved then he was one of the better pimps on the street. That probably just means they had to go to A&E slightly less often than the others. Otherwise, there’s not much to say.’
‘Good,’ Hultin said honestly. ‘Paul?’
‘You’ve all heard about Voultsos’s stay at the Grand by now. Sixty-three thousand kronor, paid posthumously. Or rather, paid by his employer; according to Arto, the account belongs to the Ghiottone. I didn’t find anything of interest among the other phone numbers to and from Slagsta. The incoming calls were mostly from johns, the outgoing calls mostly from Finn Johansen, but under an alias of course. Girlfriend’s phone. Then there’s this thing with the Erinyes. “Ερινυ”. From a literary point of view, it’s pretty damn exciting. Have you heard of Aeschylus?’
‘I’m assuming you’ll be looking into the literary side of it in your own time?’ Jan-Olov Hultin said brutally.
‘Of course,’ Hjelm replied, continuing without further ado. ‘In ancient Greece, in the fourth century BC, people used to compete in the field of tragedies. The authors of these tragedies each wrote three dramas: they took themes from older myths, and the three tragedies belonged together, like a kind of suite. Only one complete suite, a trilogy, I suppose, survived. It was written by the eldest of the three great tragic authors, Aeschylus, and it’s called Oresteia. The first of its dramas is called Agamemnon and it’s all about a Greek commander from the Trojan War coming home. He brings a lover with him as a war trophy, an enchantress called Cassandra. His wife Clytemnestra has also found herself a new lover while he’s been away and she murders both her husband and his innocent lover. That’s the end. It sounds pretty banal, but I’ll be damned if it’s not one of the most venomous things ever to have been written. OK, part two of the suite is called The Libation Bearers. In this one, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s son Orestes is on the hunt for his mother and her lover. Honour demands that he avenges his father. A blood feud. Are you following?’
‘Mmm,’ said Hultin tentatively.
‘And just as he should, he takes his revenge and murders his mother. End of part two. The third part is called The Eumenides. Since he’s guilty of murder, Orestes is now being hunted by the most terrible beings that mythology has to offer. They come from the most ancient parts of the kingdom of the dead. They’re the goddesses of revenge, the Erinyes. “We are the children of eternal Night, And Furies in the underworld are called.”
‘They manage to catch up with Orestes, but just as the hour of vengeance is about to strike, Athena – the wise goddess of Athens – appears. In court, she replaces the ancient laws of bloodlust – the driving force behind the Erinyes – with a modern rule of law worthy of Athens’ new-won democracy. Barbarism is subdued, civilisation is triumphant. And the Erinyes are tamed; they become part of society by being offered “a calm and peaceful haven”. The era of primordial rage is over. The young, reasonable gods take over from the old, blind, hateful ones. And the Erinyes become Eumenides. Powerless, but with a new-found peace. For the first time ever.’
Hjelm glanced around the Tactical Command Centre. It actually looked as though they were listening.
‘Is that how we want this to end?’ he asked.
There was a moment of silence. He looked at Kerstin; she looked back. With the same look he had given her. And it was very, very difficult to interpret.
Eventually, Hultin said: ‘Don’t you read anything else?’
‘Yeah,’ said Hjelm. ‘Leonard Sheinkman’s diary. But it’s too hard right now. I’d like to come back to it.’
‘Too hard?’
‘Too hard.’
‘Right then,’ said Hultin, slightly paralysed. ‘Well, Gunnar?’
‘One new thing,’ said Gunnar Nyberg. ‘The other skinheads confirmed Reine Sandberg’s version of events. They went out there to get drunk, break gravestones and sing Nazi battle songs in the Jewish cemetery. Then they caught sight of the old man. He didn’t have a little hat on, but they knew right away he was Jewish. They’d been planning on going over to harass him, maybe even beat him up a bit. And in that excited state of mind, they saw the black figures gliding over. That’s when they got scared like only those with exaggerated, false courage can be. They ran like mad.’
‘And the new thing?’ Hultin said neutrally.
‘He’d stopped at the gravestone. Leonard Sheinkman was standing by the gravestone with “Shtayf” on it.’
‘Yes!’ blurted Chavez. ‘I knew it.’
Nyberg continued, unperturbed: ‘When Sheinkman saw that the grave was broken, it looked like he started laughing. He bent down and touched the broken pieces. That was when the figures appeared. They peeled away from the trees like “strips of bark”, according to this Reine guy. The skinhead who stayed the longest says they were talking. Sheinkman exchanged a few words with the dark figures. Completely calm. Then it all happened really quickly, as though the whole process had been practised.’
‘It had been,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘It was the eighth time. At least. If I’ve managed to get on top of things, then it started in March last year. In Manchester. It was Antwerp in July, Budapest in October, Wiesbaden in December, Venice in February, Maribor in March – and Stockholm in May. You can see how the pace has been picking up. They’re getting better and better. It took them two months to plan the Stockholm attack. They had a lot to coordinate here, after all.
‘Stockholm was a renewal on many levels. A development. On the one hand, they were sending a sophisticated message to the Ghiottone organisation in Milan. On the other, they were going to murder another man, someone from a completely new category: an old professor. Both of these are a bit mysterious. Why send a greeting to Milan? Why murder a man who can’t plausibly have had the slightest thing to do with prostitution or pimps? Does the message to the syndicate in Milan mean something like we know who you are, you haven’t heard the last of us?’
‘Doesn’t sound so implausible,’ said Paul Hjelm. ‘Maybe they’ve finally managed to find one of the big crime syndicates behind the growth in prostitution across Europe? And now they’re going after it, and they want them to know. They’re doing their bit for their fellow man.’
‘Isn’t it funny that we automatically say “man”? I do it too. But the fact is, if that’s true then they’re doing it for their fellow women. Our language always conditions us to put the emphasis on men. Just like society.’
‘And biology,’ said Jorge.
‘What are you saying?’ exclaimed Sara.
‘I read a comment piece in the newspaper this morning, by a scientist in forensic psychology. According to him, male violence is a purely biological phenomenon and has nothing to do with man’s role in society. There was even a diagram, with one line showing the concentration of testosterone in the blood and another the number of violent crimes which led to prosecution. The two lines followed each other point for point. Testosterone causes violence. Men who’ve been castrated have a decreased tendency for aggression. Evolution put this tendency for aggression in the male species so that they would compete with other men for the chance to reproduce and provide food. In all known cultures at all known times, men have been more prone to violence than women. All men are violent, but since we primarily focus on what’s in our own interests, we realise that using violence in the type of society we live in doesn’t have a positive effect. And so we divert our tendency to violence towards other, more productive activities, like sport.’