If you’ve got an older relative who is a paedophile, then you know that you’ll become one yourself. There is no real reason to resist temptation. It would only be in vain.
She began to get agitated. It was time to return to reality.
There was an enormous collection of paedophile sites on Witréus’s computer, most of them known to her, some of them unknown, some well hidden behind faked headings like ‘Calendar of activities at Gothenburg University’ or ‘Spitfire aeroplanes: a historical outlook’. It could be anything at all, anywhere at all, any time at all. These hidden pages opened on Witréus’s computer, revealing, once again, a parallel universe. Everywhere, she came across address lists of varying types.
Above all, she was confronted by a series of pseudonyms she hadn’t come across before. They were mentioned in various strange presentations and, as a rule, appeared alongside email addresses of a certain type: ‘xxxxxxx@hotmail.com’. From these previously unknown websites, she compiled a list of pseudonyms: ‘crushy_tomboy’, ‘limmeystone’, ‘rippo_man’, ‘sweetfacepowder’, ‘lungan’ and ‘brambo’. From these she went further, searching for IP addresses. It wasn’t easy. These figures hadn’t made the same mistake as John Andreas Witréus. The IP addresses belonged to official institutions from around the world, the pseudonyms to Swedish numbers.
She logged into the central police computer and searched the paedophile unit’s material for those six pseudonyms. Three of them had already been found and arrested. Remaining were: ‘rippo_man’, ‘sweetfacepowder’ and ‘brambo’. In the more extensive material from the international Operation Cathedral, she eventually found both ‘rippo_man’ and ‘sweetfacepowder’. Both had been traced back to Sweden, and they had managed to find the computers from which these pseudonyms were used.
Then things got really complicated.
Following an extremely thorough search of the material, she realised the following: that some policeman had already been to all these home pages. The name ‘rippo_man’ only appeared alongside ‘brambo’.
But now ‘brambo’ was gone.
This ‘brambo’ was nowhere to be found in the files.
Yet the policeman who entered ‘rippo_man’ into the reports must have known about ‘brambo’. Adding ‘rippo_man’ to the report without also adding ‘brambo’ was gross misconduct.
She saw that ‘rippo_man’ had already been arrested for distribution of child pornography and for sexually assaulting children. He was a twenty-four-year-old medical student from Linköping who had, in April, earned himself a four-year prison sentence in Hall.
But why the hell, why the bloody hell was this pseudonym ‘brambo’ missing from the investigation?
The more she searched, the clearer the pattern became.
The investigating officer had deliberately left ‘brambo’ out of the reports. And the investigating officer was from her own group. From CID’s own division for paedophile cases.
A deep, heartfelt unease coursed through her.
She clicked the up arrow and watched the text fly by. She was heading for the top of the document.
To the investigating officer’s name.
The doorbell rang.
She knew who it was. She had been waiting for him all day. She loved him.
But she couldn’t talk about this. Not right now.
The text scrolled past. The bell kept ringing.
She had to find the name. Now.
Come on, please; come on!
She shouted, desperate: ‘Hang on a sec, I’m coming!’
The bell kept ringing.
The text stopped. She saw the name.
It was as she had thought.
Detective Superintendent Ragnar Hellberg.
She closed the document and ran towards the door.
Jorge Chavez would never forget the hug she gave him when the door finally opened.
29
ON FRIDAY 2 July, Hammarby’s losing streak ended. 3-0 at home to Norrköping. Hans Berggren’s goal-scoring dry spell was over. Kennedy Bakircioglü scored his very first league goal.
Perhaps as a result of what happened earlier that day.
Just before ten in the morning, two shabby-looking young men wandered into the police station on Agnegatan. They asked to see Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm. Since they had gone to the county police station, there was a certain hesitation at reception. The detectives’ names were unfamiliar. During their long wait, the older and taller of the two men stood with his arm around the younger and shorter one.
Eventually, the receptionist managed to track down Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm. She phoned them, and asked the two men to take a seat on a nearby sofa. Neither man sat down. It was something they were physically incapable of doing.
Hjelm and Holm arrived together. They immediately recognised the older and taller of the men. It was Jonas Andersson from Enskede, committee member of the Bajen Fans club. After a while, they also recognised the younger and shorter of the two. From a black-and-white photograph, attached to a whiteboard with ladybird-shaped magnets. The unkempt blond hair and the drooping moustache slightly past the edges of his mouth were, by this point, well known.
What they hadn’t expected was the Kvarnen Killer’s eyes, puffy and red from crying.
‘He was sitting outside the clubhouse this morning,’ said Jonas Andersson from Enskede. ‘He said he didn’t want to do any more damage to Hammarby.’
They nodded at him.
‘Thanks, Jonas,’ said Kerstin Holm.
Jonas Andersson smiled faintly and trudged off.
‘What’s your name?’ Paul Hjelm asked the Kvarnen Killer.
‘Conny Nilsson,’ the Kvarnen Killer said faintly. His vocal cords seemed to have tied a knot in themselves.
‘Why are you coming forward now?’
‘I saw my picture in the paper. Not the drawing, the photograph. It was enough. It hasn’t been fun.’
‘I understand,’ said Paul Hjelm, sitting down on the visitors’ sofa. He patted it. Conny Nilsson sat down next to him. He was small, compact. And completely broken.
‘Where have you been hiding?’ Kerstin Holm asked, sitting down on the other side of the Kvarnen Killer.
Without a word, they both mentally decided never to use that name again.
‘At home,’ said Conny Nilsson. ‘I live with my parents in Haninge.’
‘How have you been able to stay hidden? Are your mates that loyal?’
‘My mates… I don’t know them, they don’t know me. I just followed a group after the game. They didn’t seem to know I was there. They were so bloody angry. A draw against Kalmar at home. They started mouthing off against some Smålanders in Kvarnen. The atmosphere was really heated. The Smålanders were lying, saying they didn’t support Kalmar. One of them pushed me. I don’t know what happened, it’s completely black. I guess I must’ve wanted to show I was there, that I wasn’t some worthless little shit you could just push around. I’d already passed the metro when I realised there was a bit of bloody glass in my hand. I chucked it away and ran. I took a bus from down by Stadsgården. That’s it. I’ve been ill for a week.’
‘Off sick?’
‘I don’t work. I don’t have any job to be off sick from. My mum’s the only one who realised I was sick. I heard her talking about that Kvarnen Killer one night. She was wondering what kind of sick world she lived in.’
‘Now she knows.’
‘She’ll know soon,’ Conny Nilsson nodded. ‘Jesus Christ.’
They didn’t have much else to say.
They left him to the local police.
They felt ill at ease.
30
ARTO SÖDERSTEDT DROPPED his children off at nursery. In the summer, he enjoyed dropping the children off. He liked to watch their attitude change, how they transformed from daddy’s girl into just one of the group. A real little metamorphosis.