‘Should we assume,’ said Viggo, ‘that the ladies also had Swedish passports? That they did the whole thing as Swedes? And their real passports stayed behind?’
‘Yeah,’ said Kerstin, standing up and stretching. ‘It seems pretty likely they were given fake Swedish passports. Or Western European ones, at least. So there wouldn’t be any problems with customs. We’ll send the picture of that girl out, plus the registration plate, as soon as the technicians are done. Sara, are you still going to Karlskrona?’
‘It’s too late now,’ said Sara, glancing at her watch. ‘Apparently it’s the same crew coming back from Gdynia tomorrow. I’ll catch them then.’
‘Take Viggo with you,’ said Kerstin. ‘He doesn’t seem to have much to do. Plus I think a bit of sea air will cool him down.’
Viggo Norlander nodded eagerly.
It would be another thirty years before he blushed again.
26
THE TIME HAD come. Chavez couldn’t quite understand why Hjelm was making such a big deal of it. They were in a drab old bachelor pad in Eriksberg, to the south of Stockholm. Their host, serving them coffee, looked like any other old man.
But for Paul Hjelm, it was a momentous occasion. He would probably have felt exactly the same if he were given access to Jan-Olov Hultin’s legendary house down by the waters of Ravalen. Though he had worked under Erik Bruun for considerably longer.
The fact was, he had learned everything he knew from Bruun; nothing to make a fuss about.
But he didn’t recognise him.
It wasn’t exactly a tragic experience, like seeing an old sports star strutting about in a body that looked like it might fall apart at any moment. It was more complicated than that.
Detective Superintendent Erik Bruun had always been a fairly solid-looking man with a greyish-red beard that covered his multiple chins. His most distinguishing feature had been an omnipresent, foul-smelling, black Russian cigar resting between his lips. The health authorities had condemned his office in Huddinge, known as the Bruun Room, on a regular basis. And it was that very fact, that he had incessantly gone against all conceivable rules and regulations, which had prevented such a brilliant policeman from advancing further through the ranks. If Erik Bruun had been National Police Chief during the past few decades, a lot of things would have been a lot better. Paul Hjelm was convinced of that.
But now, he was a shrunken old man with only one chin, no greyish-red beard, no black cigar. He looked much healthier – but also more boring.
And his legendary bachelor pad in Eriksberg looked like any other pensioner’s flat. And this particular pensioner was serving – cinnamon buns.
‘You know, I know exactly what you’re thinking,’ he said, sitting down.
‘Probably,’ said Paul Hjelm.
‘I had to,’ said Erik Bruun. ‘I would’ve died otherwise. The legend would’ve lived on and I would’ve died. I’d rather the legend died and I lived.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Paul Hjelm.
‘Of course,’ said Bruun, leaning forward. ‘Of course you understand it. But you don’t accept it. You can’t accept the fact that I’ve become a plain old pensioner who shuffles around in slippers and serves thawed cinnamon buns with a high mould content. It would’ve been better to keep living on the legend. And the fact is that at this very moment, you’re thinking it’s a shame the heart attack didn’t finish me off.’
‘You’re hardly a plain old pensioner,’ Hjelm argued, taking a bite of a bun. ‘Though the mould content’s high all right.’
‘What is an ordinary pensioner anyway?’ asked Chavez in an attempt to join in on what seemed to be some kind of mutual appreciation society. ‘Is it something like an ordinary immigrant?’
‘Something like that,’ said Erik Bruun with a neutrality that immediately made Chavez understand. Understand Hultin’s roots, understand Hjelm’s roots. It was an enlightening moment. ‘Boys, boys, your boss is a former pensioner. It’s not everyone can say that. When Jan-Olov was a pensioner, we used to play chess in the Kulturhus once a week. Those were the high points of my life. But we never do it any more. I’m lonely in the way that only an old policeman can be. Utterly lonely.’
Hjelm and Chavez glanced at one another and realised that this might well turn out to be hard work.
‘Just don’t forget that I know exactly what you’re thinking,’ Bruun continued with a smirk. ‘Both of you.’
‘You don’t know me,’ Chavez said irritatedly. ‘How can you claim to know what I’m thinking?’
‘Because I know what kind of policemen you both are.’
‘Come off it,’ said Chavez.
‘You thought you were hearing the start of some kind of pensioner’s lament just then, but that’s not the case. I am utterly lonely – but I want to be. It suits me to a tee. I hope I’ll get the opportunity to die utterly alone as well. I want them to find my body after it’s started to stink. I want them to have to fish me out from a sea of maggots.’
The combination of Bruun’s imagery and the amount of mould in the cinnamon buns was worrying.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Hjelm.
‘You know full well. You’re the same, despite the wife and kids and cat and dog.’
‘Parrot,’ said Hjelm.
Chavez laughed, short and abrupt. Like a parrot. He still felt annoyed at the old man. He was a know-it-all, that much was clear.
‘Jorge Chavez,’ said Bruun, glancing wryly at him, ‘you think I’m a know-it-all, don’t you?’
‘True,’ said Chavez, attempting to seem unperturbed.
‘I just think that happiness has become a bit predictable. We know in advance what the concept of “happiness” is meant to involve, and loneliness is right down at the bottom of the list. Behind mental illness and drug addiction. We can understand the mentally ill and the addicted, we’re socially educated humans after all, but we’ll never understand the lonely. Loneliness is an unpleasantness we try to overcome whatever the price. We’ll go through any suffering necessary if it means we can avoid being lonely.’
‘So you want to rehabilitate loneliness?’ Chavez asked sceptically.
‘That’s neither here nor there. Quite simply, we live in a society which is afraid of loneliness and silence. I want to be alone and I want to have silence around me. I know you two in the exact same way I want to know people in generaclass="underline" in detail, but from a distance.’
‘What do you mean? How do you know us?’
‘How do you think we passed the time during those chess games? The way pensioners always do: we recounted old stories.’
‘So you sat there in public, discussing individual police officers’ personalities?’
‘You had code names. You, Jorge, were Soli. And you, Paul, you were Keve.’
‘Keve Hjelm,’ said Paul Hjelm. ‘What an uncrackable code.’
‘Keve Hjelm was the first person to play Martin Beck on film,’ said Erik Bruun, looking up at his former trainee.
‘I’m hardly Martin Beck,’ Hjelm said self-consciously.
‘Not exactly, no,’ Bruun replied cryptically.
‘What about Soli, then?’ asked Chavez. ‘What’s that?’
‘The Mexican composer Carlos Chavez’s most characteristic work.’
‘You seem to have had a right royal time,’ Chavez said sourly. ‘What did you say about me, then? About… Soli?’
‘That’s confidential,’ said Erik Bruun with his head held high. ‘But we mulled over the pair of you so much that I think I can claim to know roughly how you think.’
Without thinking, Paul Hjelm took another bite of his cinnamon bun. He regretted it long afterwards.
‘What do you know about this case, then?’ he asked, feeling the lump of mouldy bun stick to the roof of his mouth. Each attempt to poke it loose with his tongue was in vain.