‘How do you know?’
‘We were watching them.’
‘So they were following me and you were following them?’
‘Yes. What I want to know is: how did you identify me?’
He looked at her. Was she here on business after all? That didn’t feel good.
She could immediately see it in his face.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s not my intention to snoop. All I really wanted to ask for was my grandfather’s diary.’
‘It should be yours,’ said Söderstedt. ‘But I only have a copy. You can have it.’
‘Thank you.’
And then he told her. Against his better judgement, he told her.
‘I found you through your father. That was when I understood the scope of what you’d been through.’
‘My fate is hardly unique,’ she said. ‘It’s… European.’
He chuckled bitterly and said: ‘My turn to get technical. How did you find out about the method? What made you seek out the research group in Weimar?’
‘The Ghiottone took over our brothel in Odessa. That was back when Marco di Spinelli still left his palace. He visited us. He wanted to “test the girls”, he said. He seemed to like me a lot, because he started boasting about his disgusting war crimes in the throes of passion. That was always when he was horniest. He mentioned Weimar one day. There and then, I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. That was how it all started. Taking out di Spinelli, that was the plan. And the method he described sounded good. About that time, we were constantly being abused by his sleazy henchman, Artemij Tolkatjenko, so once we’d made up our minds, it made sense to start with him. Wherever he was. It turned out he’d gone to England. Manchester. And then we just started seeking out other horrible pimps, that was all. We were always on the way to Marco di Spinelli though.’
‘So is it over now? The Erinyes will become Eumenides?’
‘We’ll see,’ Magda said, smiling shyly. ‘Once we left Odessa and got on top of the drugs, I went to Weimar to see what he’d been doing there during the war. It was all so secretive, but eventually – using fake grades – I ended up at the Pain Centre, helping out with all the crappy jobs they had. I realised that was where he’d been. And while I was there, I kept looking. I was often alone there at nights. Eventually, I found one of those wires and I started to understand how it worked. I also found some papers from an archive. It was a hell of a shock. The name Leonard Sheinkman was mentioned in connection to some diary. It said that he was dead and that the so-called “Swede” had taken care of his diary. I realised he was my real grandfather. Dad had told me his name was Sheinkman when he was little and that his father had been taken away from Buchenwald. I burnt the paper and memorised it all. The memories are all I have. What I work with. I found a file about my dad too, later on – just a couple of loose sheets. There were some notes about a ferry headed for Stockholm, and in the phone directory for Stockholm I found a Leonard Sheinkman. My grandfather’s name. I realised it must be the so-called “Swede”. He was pretending to be my grandfather. And he had killed my father. Both my dad and my grandpa. The same man had killed them both.’
‘You hung him above your father’s grave. He was on his way there.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know that,’ Magda said, looking genuinely surprised. ‘He’d been going around on the metro for a few days, as though he was on the way somewhere. He was probably catching up with himself and his crimes.’
‘Speaking of the metro,’ said Arto Söderstedt. ‘You said you’d only killed serious criminals, murderers and people who’ve abused women. Those three thugs in Palazzo Riguardo were also serious criminals, and you knew that in advance?’
‘Yes.’
‘But what about the metro in Stockholm? Odenplan? The person who stole your phone, he was just an immigrant. His name was Hamid al-Jabiri. Did he deserve to be ripped to shreds?’
‘No,’ Magda said unhappily. ‘That just happened.’
‘Adrenalin?’
‘Probably.’
‘Can’t you see this is all starting to get out of control? Soon, the violence will be an intrinsic value. Soon, you’ll be just as speed-blind as the Baader-Meinhof or ETA or the IRA. Everyone will be an enemy. Everyone but you will be worthy of death.’
Söderstedt paused and placed his hand on Magda’s. He really was trying to express himself clearly. Lives might depend on it.
‘Stop this now,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for it any more. You got di Spinelli. Everyone involved in your grandfather’s death is gone. You saved my life and I’m begging you now: stop this. It’s dragging us into some other kind of society, and both that society and its opponents are becoming increasingly undemocratic. That’s all that will end up happening. The only thing you’re really killing is democracy. It’s fragile and it’s important. Despite everything. So stop it now.’
Arto Söderstedt felt like Athena in Aeschylus’ Oresteia.
I will not weary of soft words to thee,
That never mayst thou say, Behold me spurned,
An elder by a younger deity,
And from this land rejected and forlorn.
Eventually, the leader of the Erinyes replied: ‘Lo, I desist from wrath, appeased by thee.’ And the Erinyes became Eumenides.
But that was poetry.
This was something else.
‘I don’t think it’s possible any more,’ Magda replied with a faint smile. ‘Even if I wanted to.’
He nodded.
‘I tried, anyway,’ he said.
They sat for a moment longer. The wall between them had risen once more.
‘I’ll get the diary,’ he said, getting to his feet.
Magda waited on the veranda. She looked out over the paradisiacal landscape, and no one, absolutely no one in the world, could have known what she was thinking.
He came back and handed her the diary. They parted without a word. He watched as she wandered down the narrow, steep, crooked road to Greve.
Chianti was showing its best side. The sun was playing on her back and made her black clothes almost glow. She disappeared behind the crest of the hill like a piece of glowing coal.
The shadow of her seemed to linger long after she had gone.
It would probably never disappear.
Söderstedt stood there bathed in the scent of nineteen different varieties of basil. A warm wind gently caressed his cheek. The winemakers were pacing slowly back and forth along their vines on the sun-drenched hills. The children were running around increasingly wildly, and black could no longer be distinguished from white, white no longer from black; the clamour of their voices rose in a paean to the luminous wisps of cloud hanging in the clear blue sky.
Everything was wonderful. And everything was false.
He was standing on top of bodies in order to see Paradise.
And he wasn’t alone. He was an entire continent.
Anja appeared from her basil-scented landscape like a misplaced marrow. She walked over to him on the veranda and took a sip of his Vin Santo.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, stroking her stomach.
They stood there for a moment.
Eventually, he said: ‘How’s the little rascal doing?’
Anja laughed and hit him with her gardening gloves.
‘What is it with you?’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m not pregnant.’
About the Author
Arne Dahl is an award-winning Swedish crime writer and literary critic whose work has been translated into over twenty languages. Europa Blues won the German Crime Writing Award, which has also been won by authors including Ian Rankin, James Ellroy and John le Carré, while the Swedish adaptations of the ten book Intercrime series have been broadcast on BBC Four.