‘Size 7,’ said Hjelm. ‘Is that a small man? Or a woman? Eskil Carlstedt was at least a 12.’
‘11,’ said Chavez, his eyes on Qvarfordt’s forensic report.
‘There’s no real correspondence between shoe size and body size,’ said Holm. ‘Or any other anatomical size, for that matter…’
‘What else?’ asked Hultin. ‘Kumla?’
Söderstedt and Norlander looked at one another. Both seemed to to be leaving the next word to the other. Eventually, Norlander said: ‘Everyone’s keeping their mouths shut.’
‘That’s because you always tell everyone to shut up,’ said Söderstedt. ‘I’m holding you personally responsible for all the shut mouths.’
‘Shut up,’ said Viggo Norlander.
Söderstedt continued, egged on by his own quick wit. ‘According to the guards, there was some kind of Nazi clique in Kumla. Nothing new, I know. Organised criminals always seem to be either immigrants or Nazis nowadays. Maybe what we’re seeing in the underworld is some kind of nasty prelude to a wider development in society. Or rather, some kind of clearer, less veiled version of the polarisation which is becoming more and more obvious in society.
‘I mean, what’s it really like when it comes to racism, if we really ask around in society? If we scratch the surface a little. At the moment, we don’t need to be especially worried about any political parties with Nazi tendencies or anything like that; but on the other hand, we should be more vigilant than ever when it comes to the enemy within. The enemy within ourselves, I mean. That’s where attitudes seem to have changed. A barrier has been lowered. It’s not easy to detect, but it’s a change from a few years back. It suddenly seems to be much easier to think of people as objects. As non-people. As people whose blood isn’t quite as red as our own. Is the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Bosnia really a strictly internal, historical Balkan affair, or does it have something to do with the wider change in… well, enlightened mentalities after all? How big a difference is there between sending all the immigrants to the outskirts, to Rinkeby or Hammarkullen or Rosengård, and driving people out of their home towns?’
‘Back to Kumla,’ Hultin said, remaining completely neutral.
Söderstedt changed tracks without much of a problem.
‘Niklas Lindberg and Sven Joakim Bergwall were both part of this Nazi clique. Lindberg might’ve been the leader. Otherwise, we’ve scraped together about twenty or so names. Eight of them are out now. Some of the other criminals might be part of this eight, but at the moment we can’t say for sure. As many as three of the men released have AB negative blood: Christer Gullbrandsen, Dan Andersson and – no joke – Ricky Martin.
‘On the other hand, we’ve got a rookie like Eskil Carlstedt, a used-car salesman, in their gang. Linking this too closely to the Kumla Bunker is probably a mistake. The question is whether we’re right to link it to these Nazis at all. We’ll see. We spoke to several members of this clique, the ones that’re still inside. Viggo’s laconic description fits well there: they’re all keeping their mouths shut. Our ex-Yugoslav friends are keeping their mouths even tighter shut. No one is saying a word. They pretend they don’t understand a single word of Swedish. Still, they listened carefully to our account of Lordan Vukotic’s torture. And Göran Andersson didn’t have much else to say. He did tell us quite a lot of interesting things about how Fra Angelico played with different shades of blue, though.’
‘What else?’ said Hultin.
‘I spoke with Eskil Carlstedt’s workmates at Kindwall’s Ford garage in Hammarby harbour,’ said Kerstin Holm. ‘With his old mother out in Bromma, too. A picture of a man with quite extreme opinions when it comes to racial issues is emerging, so we can keep that Nazi connection for the time being. Violent tendencies aren’t lacking, either. His workmates described a pretty scary paintball game, the start to some company party, where Carlstedt gave two of them a beating under the cover of darkness. He’d gone berserk. Actually, no one there really seemed to like him at all. A couple of them said he was a strange character, impossible to get to know. But on the other hand, he sold cars better than anyone else. Easily the best. It was this car-seller trait that Sven Joakim Bergvall trusted when he let Carlstedt stay behind in Kvarnen. And now both of them are dead. All that trust was in vain.
‘We’ve also tried to recall the witnesses from Kvarnen to get some better descriptions of this so-called “policeman” who was sitting with Gang One. News of his existence came so late that we didn’t have time to ask earlier. Most of the witnesses had left the city for Midsummer, and the ones who’d stayed behind didn’t have anything useful to add. So we don’t have any description of the “policeman”. The same’s generally true of Gang Two. Everyone remembers Carlstedt clearly, the broad one with the shaved head and moustache. A couple thought that they recognised Bergwall when we showed them his photo. Someone mentioned a man with a purple face. Otherwise, nothing. The man with the earphones was neither Carlstedt nor Bergwall, so we can assume this means that the technician in the group is still alive and well.’
‘Speaking of technicians, our own have gone through Eskil Carlstedt’s hard drive,’ said Hjelm, glancing down at yet another forensic report. ‘The problem is that it was empty. Completely empty, I mean. Which means it was new. The computer wasn’t new, but the hard drive was. As far as we can tell, it was replaced for our benefit. Which, again, tips the balance in favour of professionalism. The night before Carlstedt came and let himself be interviewed by us, the same night that they cobbled their story together, the hard drive seems to have been swapped. They realised we’d be making a visit. Scrapping the whole computer was too risky; there’s always the chance of someone finding a scrapped computer. So they swapped the hard drive so that they didn’t leave any evidence. That means there must’ve been something on the hard drive, in all probability of a racial character. Now we’ve got a swapped hard drive, a sophisticated listening device in Kvarnen, and two utterly subtle bombs. They don’t seem to be lacking technological competence.’
‘Can you commit a crime without technical competence nowadays?’ asked the technologically minded Chavez.
‘Meat cleavers and penises are still popular,’ said the less technologically minded Kerstin Holm. ‘The latter have worked especially well as instruments of crime for millennia.’
There was a moment of silence. Everyone seemed to be thinking about their penis as a potential crime tool. Kerstin Holm smiled covertly.
‘I suppose that’s a kind of technique, too,’ Hultin said eventually.
‘Speaking of those two ingenious bombs,’ said Norlander, glancing briefly at Kerstin Holm’s notes. ‘In one of Svenhagen’s reports, I’ve finally managed to find some information on the bombs. It’s a case of highly explosive, highly concentrated liquid, like nitroglycerine but more effective and easier to handle. It’s detonated by electricity alone; not warmth, not impact, just that little microscopic trigger that sends a short, sharp burst of electricity through the liquid, causing it to explode. Works brilliantly with a remote detonator, as we’ve seen. It’s an explosive that hasn’t been used in Sweden before, but there are certain hints of something similar in the US. They’ve not found a name for it yet, though.’
‘In any case, we can probably assume that Niklas Lindberg’s stock isn’t empty,’ said Chavez. ‘Do you want to hear a bit more about him, by the way? I’ve devoted my life to him for the time being. Searched all the databases I could think of, interviewed a whole load of former friends and colleagues over the phone, even been down to Trollhättan to talk to his parents and ex-wife.