Rajko Nedic wasn’t the kind of man to do anything if he thought it would get him into trouble; he would hardly carry out an enormous massacre leaving a whole load of tracks behind him, he would rather cajole the bag back to him using threats and professional investigation. Still, Hultin felt – and again, it was a kind of instinctive feeling rather than any kind of logic or reason which guided this – that it was good to put some pressure on Nedic, to establish personal contact, to show a presence and his own, personal interest in the course of events.
Plus, he was the one who decided.
With that incontestable argument on the tip of his tongue, he trudged up to an enormous, locked metal gate set into a long brick wall. A surveillance camera zoomed in on him, and before he had even started to look for a doorbell, a voice said: ‘Name and business.’
Jan-Olov Hultin cleared his throat and said, authoritatively: ‘Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin from CID. I’d like to speak with Rajko Nedic.’
There was a moment of silence. Then the gate slid open and he walked into a gardener’s paradise. A man dressed in dungarees and a filthy cap was fiddling with some flowers on a magnificent, exceptionally pretty bush. All around him, the garden was in full bloom. Hultin who, as we know, couldn’t tell grass from weeds, felt an instinctive jealousy. He walked over to the man in the dungarees and hat and said: ‘I’m looking for Rajko Nedic.’
‘An unusual plant,’ said the man without looking up, still fussing with the pretty purple flowers. ‘But in this garden, you’ll find everything.’
He took off his gardening gloves and held out his hand. ‘Rajko Nedic.’
‘Jan-Olov Hultin,’ said Jan-Olov Hultin, shaking the man’s hand, surprised. He really did look more like a gardener than a leading drug dealer. Though what do leading drug dealers look like? Maybe like a slightly furrowed but healthy-looking man without a single grey hair, dressed in dungarees and a cap.
‘I think it must be my poor childhood in a barren country that’s caused this abundance of flowers,’ he said, without a trace of a foreign accent. ‘I come from a little mountain village in eastern Serbia. Maybe you know that already.’
‘I wish I had such a green touch in my garden,’ said Hultin, looking out over the display of colour.
‘I must admit, it’s not just a matter of a touch,’ said Nedic, smelling the flower in his hand. ‘Unfortunately it’s also a matter of money. Some of these plants are rarities, but not this one. My favourite flower. It’s in almost every Swedish garden, flowering nicely. Completely normal columbines. My goodness. The first time I saw it, I thought I was seeing proof of God. Look at the shape of the flowers. These four fantastic cupped petals arching around a common point. As though they’d found the centre of the universe.’
Hultin looked at the columbine. It really was exceptional.
‘A masterpiece,’ he said honestly.
‘Yes, it really is. Well, Detective Superintendent, what can I do for you? Yet another baseless accusation? I’ve made a real effort to explain that I’m just a normal restaurant owner. A restaurateur.’
‘I’m not here to accuse you,’ said Hultin, lifting his gaze from the columbine. ‘More to express my condolences. Four such devoted colleagues.’
Rajko Nedic’s gaze didn’t falter. He remained the good-natured gardener showing off the results of his green-fingered patience.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Vukotic in Kumla and the three war criminals on the Sickla industrial estate. Really tragic.’
‘You’ve lost me now, Detective. I really don’t understand what you’re talking about.’
‘Haven’t you heard about the Kumla explosion and the Sickla Slaughter?’
‘Unfortunately I don’t have time to follow the gambols of the press too closely. I work rather hard.’
A mobile phone rang somewhere within his dungarees. Nedic fished it out and answered: ‘Hello… Ja, ja, guten Tag. Leider können wir uns jetzt nicht sprechen… Ich rufe zurück in etwa zehn Minuten… Ja. Tschüß.’
‘Zehn Minuten?’ asked Jan-Olov Hultin.
‘An estimation,’ said Rajko Nedic, shrugging. ‘It might be sooner if you would get to the point, Detective.’
‘German contacts?’
‘Suppliers. Most of my time is spent in negotiation with suppliers.’
‘Suppliers?’
‘Of Mosel wine in this case, yes. Direct import. It’s lawful nowadays, as you know.’
‘Then I’ll use my allotted ten minutes economically. This time we know more than normal, and it’s not the usual drugs or finance police who are involved, but it’ll be me and my group that you’ll be dealing with, Mr Nedic. It’s a good group. Specialists. We know that the contents of a briefcase were stolen from you down in Sickla, and that you lost four of your key staff. Maybe you’ll start to feel the loss, even if you can bring in as many replacement war criminals as you like, whenever you like, from the former Yugoslavia. We also know who robbed you, if it’s of interest. You were delivering money or drugs in that briefcase, to a party who never received it. That party will be annoyed by this time. Maybe that’s a risk factor. We know that you’ll do all you can to get the briefcase back, and we’ll be here the entire time. Is there a case of blackmail that you’d like to report?’
Rajko Nedic regarded the elderly man with owl-like glasses perched on his enormous nose.
‘No,’ he replied.
‘Fantastic,’ said Jan-Olov Hultin, turning on his heels. ‘But remember that this isn’t the normal situation. From now on, everything will be more difficult.’
He began walking towards the gate. After a few metres, he turned round.
‘One more question,’ he said. ‘What’s the difference between grass and weeds?’
Rajko Nedic chuckled faintly.
‘It’s easy, Detective Superintendent,’ he said. ‘Weeds are the things you clear out of the way.’
19
AS SARA SVENHAGEN stood outside, looking up, she realised why she hadn’t recognised the address, Fatburstrappan 18.
It was the address of Söder Torn, the high-rise which loomed over Södermalm.
In 1980, the redevelopment of the Södra Station area had begun in Stockholm. In practical terms, this had meant that a completely new quarter would be built. An architectural design competition was announced. HSB, the cooperative housing association, suggested that a ‘Södermalm Manhattan’ be built, covering the entire twenty-five hectares with skyscrapers. Their suggestion gained support from a surprising number of camps, but it was the beginning of the eighties, after all. A time of accelerating madness. Naturally, their outlandish suggestion couldn’t go through. Instead, in 1984, an alternative proposal was made by the Town Planning Office, a plan where one tall building remained; a compromise that was meant to ensure both that the quarter’s traditional character was retained – with one high tower, a campanile or a church tower – and that those clamouring for skyscrapers wouldn’t be left empty-handed. Later the same year, yet another competition was announced, focused on the tower that would be built close to Medborgarplatsen. Seventy different entries flowed in, the vast majority suggesting a pseudo-American skyscraper with around fifty floors. One of the judges was hardly neutral. His name was Sune Haglund, the city planning commissioner for the Moderate Party. He argued enthusiastically in favour of an extremely high and bulky office block, ideally with a rotating restaurant at the top. No winner was announced from the competition, but several commended entries were allowed, two years later, to take part in a new competition to design a considerably slimmer high-rise than Haglund had suggested. The Danish architect Henning Larsen won with a plan for a circular tower of forty-three floors. Its nickname was ‘Haglund’s Stick’. This was in 1986. After a couple of years of consideration by the committee, it was decided that forty-three floors was abnormally high, that the tower would rise like a distorted phallus up out of Södermalm, with the large, round testicle of the Globe Arena a sorry addition in the visible distance. And so the tower was lowered to thirty-three floors, which then became twenty-three, which, after the Stockholm Party vetoed it, eventually became eleven. The hand was reduced to nothing but a thumb. In 1990, a hardly impressive office block of eleven floors was officially approved. By then, the Söder Station area was almost complete. The stalls and boutiques of the Södermalmshallarna, the flats in Bofills båge, the areas of Fatburstrappan and Fatbursparken. But this was the start of the nineties, the property crisis a reality. All further building projects were put on hold. Until 1992. Then the authorities decided that it was no longer offices that were needed, but residences. So, from the office block of eleven floors, Henning Larsen created a residential building of twenty-three floors; sixty-six metres high, home to around one hundred flats. In the spring of 1995, these new plans were approved. Building work could begin.