‘I’ll be damned,’ said Ludvig Johnsson.
That was all.
When Gunnar Nyberg left Grillby, it felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. An old friendship had been revived, properly revived, and he felt like he had found a sounding board for life. It felt good. As though yet another stray piece from the past had fallen into place.
He pulled out onto the E18 and returned to Stockholm.
35
‘YES, YES, YES!’ shouted Bullet. ‘Got it again!’
It was the second time that day. The first had come and gone. A brief signal which might have been, though probably wasn’t, a false alarm. But this time it was clear. Bullet felt extremely pleased. Even he had stopped believing.
Niklas Lindberg could see it in him. His short but broad body almost quivering with sudden, unanticipated expectation. Like a soufflé, he surprised himself by thinking.
He looked down towards his parents’ home. It was so still down in the valley. The cute little rows of houses where he had come into existence. Undisturbed by foreigners. A clean and healthy childhood where everything was as it should have been. Trollhättan – so typically Swedish. And now? Shady pizzerias on every corner, mafia gambling joints, dishonest southerners’ shirker mentality. A world of rapists, drug pushers, madmen with knives, benefit scroungers; of Arabic-Jewish-Catholic corruption and weakness dressed up as machismo. At least he knew what he was fighting against. It was more difficult to say what he was fighting for.
‘Gone again,’ Bullet said, subdued, turning the dials.
‘Did you get a direction?’ asked Niklas Lindberg.
‘Yeah,’ said Bullet. ‘Eastward. Either on the 44 or the 42.’
‘What’s out there? Rogge?’
Roger Sjöqvist leafed through the atlas.
‘Hard to see. Right between pages. The 44 splits in two. Continues as the 44 up to Lake Vänern, Lidköping. As the 47 it goes to Falköping. But the 47 meets the E20 which goes up to Skara and Skövde. What else did you say? The 42. It doesn’t go anywhere. Vårgårda. Fristad.’
‘We need another signal,’ said Bullet.
Niklas Lindberg thought. ‘Take the 44,’ he said. ‘And put your foot down.’
‘The speed limit, though?’
‘Fuck it. We’re close now.’
‘What are you thinking, Nicke?’ asked Bullet.
‘That we’ll get another signal,’ Niklas Lindberg replied. ‘And then we’ll know.’
36
DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT JAN-OLOV Hultin wasn’t at all happy that Jorge Chavez was sitting on his desk, swinging his legs. Not happy at all. Though he didn’t really know why.
Probably because he couldn’t be seen.
It was Friday 9 July, and time was passing quickly, quickly. They had no real hot leads to go on. Lots of new information all the time, but nothing really hot, really important. Maybe things would start looking up today.
Why this sudden optimism?
The past few meetings in the Supreme Command Centre had actually been dominated by a kind of hopeless resignation. So much information, and so little room for action. Nedic was lying low, and the inevitable nationwide alert for Niklas Lindberg and his men was drawing closer. If they released their identities, the tabloids would blow the Sickla Slaughter up into something enormous, Lindberg would be depicted as the Antichrist and the three others his apostles of darkness. They wanted to avoid that at all costs.
So far, Hultin had Mörner, the head of CID and the Police Commissioner on side when it came to keeping the lid on Lindberg, Sjöqvist, Andersson and Kullberg’s identities, but the longer the investigation failed to produce any results, the more the demand for disclosure grew. Soon, they would no longer be able to avoid bringing PC General Public into the equation – increasing Rajko Nedic’s room for manoeuvre considerably by doing so; he would suddenly know exactly who had robbed him. Soon they would have no other way to go. Hultin dreaded that moment. It would paralyse their investigation, they would end up in a hopeless period of checking tips, and any chance of giving the team a free rein would disappear.
And what was the A-Unit without a free rein?
The sight of the free-reined Gunnar Nyberg down in the depths of the Supreme Command Centre was one of the reasons for Hultin’s sudden optimism, but there were others. Everyone looked so psyched up – perhaps with the exception of Viggo Norlander, sleeping open-mouthed and dribbling. A nice titbit for the tabloids. ‘A behind-the-scenes glimpse into how the hunt for the country’s most dangerous criminals is being run.’ Accompanied by a close-up of his dribbling mouth. Nice.
He had learned to read the facial expressions of the A-Unit well enough to know what to expect. Jorge looked lively up on the desk – that boded well. For the past few days, he had been noticeably absent; infatuation – but also a kind of visible pressure, as though there were unwanted obstacles in the way of love. Paul looked as though he was in real high spirits – which, actually, he had done since he was paired up with Kerstin, and Hultin suspected that there were certain complications. Kerstin, in turn, also looked charged. But she always looked good. Still, it was Arto who caught his attention the most. The corners of his mouth were taut in a way that Hultin hadn’t seen for a long while. He’d be damned if Arto Söderstedt hadn’t gone and cracked the whole bloody thing. It certainly looked that way.
So, it was not without expectation that Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin handed over to the A-Unit.
A television and VCR stood by alongside the desk. Chavez pressed play on a remote control. A sequence of a few seconds played. A short, broad man wearing a hat entered a bank. Experienced, he hid his face from the camera using his hand, stepping out of frame. Only his legs were visible. He was wearing boots, and stood for a few seconds next to a table. Then the picture disappeared into static. Chavez played the sequence once more.
‘Bank robbery in Gothenburg,’ he said. ‘Before the CCTV cameras were shot out. Look at his feet. Measurements at the scene showed that they were size 7.’
‘Though those aren’t four-year-old Reeboks,’ said Arto Söderstedt.
They looked at him, waiting for a continuation which never came.
‘No,’ Chavez admitted. ‘They’re not the four-year-old Reeboks that walked through Eskil Carlstedt’s blood in the Sickla industrial estate. But it is possible to change shoes. Such things have actually happened.’
A defiant glance at Söderstedt. No reaction. Chavez continued.
‘This bank robbery yesterday was the crown on what, with hindsight, is clearly a real string of raids in south-west Sweden. Everything from shops to banks along the west coast. It started on Midsummer’s Eve, with a petrol station in Skillingaryd, between Jönköping and Värnamo in Småland. The Sickla Slaughter took place in the early hours of Midsummer’s Eve.’
‘Skillingaryd isn’t on the west coast, though,’ said Kerstin Holm.
‘Of course not,’ said Chavez. ‘That came later. Six further places have seen raids: Ängelholm, Mellbystrand, Halmstad, Varberg, Ulricehamn, and the culmination, yesterday, in Gothenburg, where they took 420,000 kronor. Since the evidence from witnesses is basically non-existent, we still don’t know if it’s the same gang behind all of these raids. But with the combination of experienced behaviour in the bank in Gothenburg and size 7 shoes, it’s not entirely unlikely that it really is our boys in this gang on the west coast. There were four bank robbers, after all, of which one was apparently injured. I want to say that it is our boys. And there’s one more thing.’