Yes, the paper had backups for the last six months’ ads.
Arto Söderstedt clenched his fist for a brief moment. He asked whether he could have the last month’s entries for the THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’ feature sent to him. He could. It took just under an hour.
He searched through the extensive material on his computer. As ‘Orpheus’ after ‘Orpheus’ popped up on his screen, he was struck by how drastically this little computer function had aided their police work. Eventually, he was left with a cluster of similar messages on the screen in front of him. They all looked alike. First, the name of the recipient – Orpheus or Eurydice – then, in quotation marks, a short phrase which was more or less obviously connected to the Florento sisters; then, the position marker from the atlas which, without exception, referred to an urban area; finally, the sender (Orpheus or Eurydice). Always exactly the same form.
The first message was sent on Midsummer’s Eve, 25 June. Söderstedt could feel the two piles of paper being pulled even closer together. The Sickla Slaughter had taken place on the night of the 24th.
He looked more closely at the first message. It had come from Orpheus. The code from the road atlas said Orsa in Dalarna county. There was no quotation, but a reference: ‘Expr., 24.06, p. 12 top’. The reply from Eurydice had come just under two hours later, along with a code that pointed to Falkenberg on the west coast. Here, there was a quotation: ‘The sisters were just spiritual sisters.’
‘Expr.’? And then ‘p. 12 top’? That must have been a reference to the top of page 12 in the previous day’s issue of Expressen. There weren’t any tabloids on Midsummer’s Eve, were there? Maybe Orpheus had got hold of the day before’s number – and found…?
Söderstedt rang the police station’s library. A woman answered, and five minutes later, a girl brought him a copy of Expressen from 24 June. Most articles were about the Kvarnen Killing, but at the top of page 12 was one with the headline: ‘THE SISTERS WHO VANISHED INTO THIN AIR.’ It was a follow-up article on the Florento sisters. Partway through, it said: ‘The sisters were just spiritual sisters.’ Towards the end, it read: ‘No crime is worse than bitter betrayal, said the Florento sisters.’
And the article ended with the words: ‘But the sisters vanished into thin air.’
He went through the rest of the messages from THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’. All were quotations from the Expressen article.
Reconstruction, Söderstedt thought to himself, leaning back. Orpheus finds the article about the Florento sisters. In his first message to Eurydice, he refers to it. She replies after two hours, during which time she’s presumably gone out in Falkenberg, where everything’s closed for Midsummer, to get hold of a copy of Expressen. She then replies with a quote from the article: ‘The sisters were just spiritual sisters.’ The pair must have agreed in advance to call one another Orpheus and Eurydice, those who escaped the kingdom of the dead. They find an article on a couple of spiritual sisters who have done the same thing – and who have also got hold of an enormous sum of money. They identify with the sisters, so they send a quotation from the article each time they communicate. They’re moving through Sweden, each in a different location, and they’ve decided in advance to keep in touch using Gula Tidningen’s most harmless, well-hidden page: THIS WEEK’S ‘I LOVE YOU’. That implies that they have access to the Internet. Wherever they are, the pair seem to have immediate Internet access. How? And why the Internet? Why not direct contact? To avoid the chance of being traced? Hmm.
The server, Söderstedt nodded. It must be possible to find out where the messages to Gula Tidningen were coming from.
He contacted the webmaster again. Yeah, Orpheus and Eurydice were using the same server. A free Spanish server called Virtud. He found it online. After some linguistic confusion and general resistance, Virtud’s Spanish webmaster finally accepted that Arto Söderstedt was calling from the Swedish police and, very reluctantly, gave him Orpheus and Eurydice’s details. They were registered as Baruch Spinoza and Elton John. That didn’t mean a great deal. The most important thing was that there were two phone numbers.
Two mobile phone numbers.
In other words, Orpheus and Eurydice were connecting to the Internet using their mobile phones.
He looked up the numbers with the provider, Comviq. Both were registered. At the same address. A restaurant.
The Thanatos restaurant in Östermalm, Stockholm.
He contacted the Patents and Registrations Office. What could they tell him about the Thanatos restaurant?
Eventually, Arto Söderstedt found the name of the owner.
The Thanatos restaurant was owned by a man called Rajko Nedic.
Arto Söderstedt suddenly felt completely, completely calm.
34
THE WEAK LINK between Sara Svenhagen and Jorge Chavez was called Gunnar Nyberg. A few weeks ago, he and Sara had been working as a pair. Now, the other half of the pair was Jorge.
Though ‘pair’ was maybe a bit much. They didn’t take it in turns running up dingy stairwells, service weapons raised; they didn’t cover one another as they crept down some dark alley; they didn’t play good cop, bad cop in any dark interrogation rooms. No, they sat at their computers. Through no fault of his own, the once boorish bodybuilder policeman had been thrown from one computer nerd to the next and, as a result, had actually become quite good at working online.
Though enough was enough.
Moving back to the A-Unit had somehow breathed life into old habits. Or maybe they were bad habits. He went out into the underworld, into the old Gunnar Nyberg territory. Suddenly he’d had enough of virtual cyber-Nazism, and put a surprising number of rank-and-file officers to work, hunting the only line of business which never took a break.
First of all, there was a gang of robbers. It was primarily made up of relatively young right-wing extremists, but also of more out-and-out professional criminals like Danne Blood Pudding. Nyberg organised an extensive interrogation of professional criminals, bank robbers and skinheads. He followed up leads, above all on Danne Blood Pudding and Roger Sjöqvist.
So far, it hadn’t led to anything.
Then there was a drugs ring. Rajko Nedic really did seem untouchable, but in the long run there must be something to go on. Anything at all.
And that was what he was currently busy with. The old intimidation techniques were like reflex. He heaved his irritatingly constant 146 kilos towards the thin figure of a man named Robban, a known big-time pusher in Hjulsta. Robban was in his flat, gaping with surprise at the broken front door which was hanging in scraps – not splinters, not pieces of wood, but scraps. Robban thought: How the hell did he manage to break the door into scraps? But that wasn’t what he said. Instead, voice shaking, he said: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Think again,’ said Gunnar Nyberg.
‘Shit, man,’ Robban half sniffed. ‘You know as well as I do that it’s an idiot-proof system. You don’t know anyone else! There’s a delivery, you pick it up. You deliver the money, they look happy. When they don’t look happy, you’re dead.’
Nyberg heaved himself a little closer. His grizzly bear’s face was only a few centimetres from Robban’s, which was more rabbit-like than anything else. The grizzly’s breath didn’t smell of raw meat and fresh blood – it smelt of coffee.