They stared at him.
‘Now, if the police had been mythologically ignorant,’ he continued, ‘then this cryptic little message would have passed us by. That’s not the case, though. Philemon and Baucis are another classical pair of sweethearts from antiquity, though in some ways the opposite of Orpheus and Eurydice. Instead of being stormy and dramatic, their relationship was settled and peaceful. If we weave the two stories together, it’s roughly as follows. The god of marriage, Hymenaeus, is called to Thrace, where Orpheus is going to marry his Eurydice. But Hymenaeus comes in vain, because Eurydice is dead: “ran joyful, sporting o’er the flow’ry plain, a venom’d viper bit her as she pass’d; instant she fell, and sudden breath’d her last”. Orpheus, the divine singer, makes his way to the kingdom of the dead and appeals to Hades: “all our possessions are but loans from you, and soon, or late, you must be paid your due”. Even Sisyphus stops his eternal rolling of the stone up the mountain. The entire kingdom of the dead allows itself to be seduced, and Eurydice is carried up from the shadows. As long as Orpheus doesn’t turn round and look at his bride before they’ve left the underworld, then he’ll have brought her back to the world of the living. But he couldn’t resist; in his care for her, he glances back over his shoulder anyway. Obviously it’s impossible for us to know what kind of hell our young pair has been through, but just as Eurydice is on her way back into the kingdom of the dead, just as Orpheus is on his way to return to be torn apart, alone, by the Thracean women, just then – they transform the transformation. The metamorphosis undergoes a metamorphosis. Instead of being Orpheus and Eurydice in Thrace, they become the industrious pair of Philemon and Baucis in Phrygia. A couple of gods in human form go there, to test the population. Everywhere they ask, they’re refused a room. Everywhere apart from with Philemon and Baucis. The penniless pair offer the gods everything they have, and they’re given their reward. The gods reveal themselves:
‘The neighbourhood, said he,
Shall justly perish for impiety:
You stand alone exempted; but obey
With speed, and follow where we lead the way:
Leave these accurs’d; and to the mountain’s height
Ascend; nor once look backward in your flight.
Philemon and Baucis’ old hut is transformed into a golden temple, and the couple become its keepers. Asked by the gods, they have just one single wish: to be able to die together. And eventually, both are transformed, simultaneously, into trees. “At once th’ incroaching rinds their closing lips invade,” or “ora frutex” in Latin.’
Söderstedt broke off, looking out over the dumbfounded congregation.
‘I hope you appreciate the subtle transition. Just as Eurydice is on her way back down into the kingdom of the dead, she’s saved and becomes the poor but industrious Baucis instead, the woman who, together with her husband, follows the gods up to the top of the mountain, and eventually dies at the same moment as him. ‘Cura deum di sint, et qui coluere colantur.’ Maybe you could call it maturity.’
‘Dare I ask what it is you’re citing from?’ asked Paul Hjelm.
‘Of course,’ said Arto Söderstedt. ‘It’s Ovid’s Metamorphoses.’
40
GUNNAR NYBERG HAD successfully managed to give himself tennis elbow when he broke his way in through the hotel window in Skövde, and pointed his gun at the robbers. He had probably been grasping it too tightly – several strange dents in the butt of the gun suggested as much.
Or maybe he had just developed mouse elbow.
Mouse elbow, or repetitive strain injury, affected computer nerds. A new national disease was on the approach. No more occupational lung disease, no more crippled backs, but RSI? Of course. Societal progress can be read on different scales.
He looked around his office. It felt so empty. No Kerstin Holm to sing duets with. Nothing at all. How long had it actually been since he had visited his grandson Benny in Östhammar? He was afraid the boy would forget his grandad.
On the other hand, his son, Tommy, hadn’t forgotten him in twenty long years. They had become reacquainted in a surprisingly unforced way. Life returned. The blood, the viscous liquid, started flowing its marathon distances around Sweden’s Biggest Policeman once more.
Now it was thickening again. He remembered how he had felt, sinking to his knees in the mud next to Kerstin Holm’s bleeding head. How fleeting life was. It felt as though life itself had broken free from him and sailed away through the rain-filled sky. It was a moment he would never forget.
He was close to Kerstin Holm. They shared a love of choir singing which sometimes grew to abnormal proportions. People who sing together, who stretch the voice to its limits and create the greatest harmonies possible – could you come any closer to God?
During his twenty-year vacuum, there had been only one other woman who had been as close to him, and who, as he sat there stretching his enormous mouse elbows, came into his office. He thought for a moment about mystical correspondences.
Sara Svenhagen wasn’t herself. She looked haggard, worn out, as though she hadn’t slept for days. Her white T-shirt had several large coffee stains on it, and her shorts were absurdly crinkled.
‘Gunnar,’ she said, stroking her newly cropped golden hair, ‘I need your help.’
He stood up, walked over to her and put a protective, fatherly arm around her shoulders. It felt both right and wrong. On a purely professional level, she was his parent; it was her who had carefully guided him into the hell of child pornography. Her and Ludvig Johnsson.
He led her over to Kerstin Holm’s chair and helped her down into it. He sat on the edge of the desk. He didn’t care that it buckled alarmingly.
‘What about Jorge?’ he asked. ‘What can I do that he can’t?’
She looked at him with what was, at least, mock surprise.
‘You know about that?’
‘I guessed,’ said Gunnar Nyberg, feeling like a crook. ‘Was I wrong?’
‘No,’ said Sara. ‘No, not at all. I love him. He loves me. We’ve come to life, both of us. But we’ve also built walls around our cases, without really knowing why. Presumably it’s some kind of absurd protective instinct. Spare him. Spare her. No, Gunnar, the only real connection between these two cases is you. And also, it affects you personally.’
A sense of foreboding ran through Nyberg.
‘Personally?’ he asked. ‘Privately?’
‘You could say so,’ said Sara, looking into his eyes.
‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘Shoot.’
‘I could spare you all this crap,’ she said. ‘I could just leave and let you avoid the whole problem.’
‘Shoot,’ he repeated.
Sara Svenhagen looked up at the ceiling. She didn’t quite know where to begin. She decided to make a long story short.
‘The pseudonym of a paedophile, “brambo”, has been deliberately left out of our reports. It happened almost six months ago. When I looked into it, I discovered that all these incomplete reports had been filed by the same policeman.’
Nyberg felt the same sense of foreboding as before. It ran through his veins instead of his blood, which had now coagulated completely.
‘It was Ragnar Hellberg,’ she said.
‘What?!’ he exclaimed. ‘Party-Ragge?’