‘So you like to make eyes at the Hammarby tribe?’ asked Holm. ‘And they take it?’
‘I assume it appeals to their latent homosexuality, the kind which always pops up when men spend time with men.’
‘Has it ever worked for you?’
‘More often than you’d think, policewoman.’
‘Though this time it wasn’t the Hammarby tribe that you were eyeing up, was it?’
The tall man laughed.
‘I have to confess that I was longing more for some intellectual stimulation this time. Or pseudo-intellectual, at least. Probably felt that the lack of it was getting serious. You know, of course, that the most threatening thing about homosexuality through the years has been its ability to cross class boundaries?’
‘You live in Östermalm, the most exclusive neighbourhood in Stockholm, and you’re a director in the Patent Office, yes?’
‘Whose main dealings are with unemployed, working-class Hammarby fans from Bagarmossen and Rågsved.’
‘Pseudo-intellectual, by the way?’
‘The chap with the book.’
‘But why “pseudo”?’
‘It seemed forced, with that book. Like he was sort of showing off with an education that really, deep down, he didn’t have. And I wasn’t alone in eyeing him up, as you so tastefully put it, policewoman. He was a tasty little titbit. You don’t happen to have his address, do you?’
‘Not alone?’
‘Nope,’ said Sten “Hard Homo” Bergmark. ‘A group of macho gays were staring at him the whole time.’
‘A group of macho gays?’
‘You’re acting like my psychoanalyst right now, policewoman. Five hundred kronor an hour to repeat what I’ve just said.’
‘The difference being that I don’t earn five hundred kronor an hour.’
‘The table next to the door – how can I describe them? Skinheads who’ve passed the age limit. Thoroughbred Swedish bodybuilders. Five of them.’
‘And they were all staring at the reader?’
‘Three of them, the ones with their backs to the wall. Two were sitting with their backs to the room. They weren’t staring, for obvious reasons.’
‘And you’re sure they were staring at the reader?’
‘That’s certainly how my competition-conscious desire interpreted it. I was jealous. Who’d choose an eel if he’s got five beefsteaks within reach?’
‘Who else would they have been able to see?’
‘My God, policewoman. I only had eyes for him.’
‘Try.’
Sten Bergmark sat stock-still. The scene loomed in his mind.
‘I was sitting at the table nearest the bar. A group of past-it cultural types were sitting next to me, discussing which Cornelis song should be sung from the as-yet unbuilt minaret on the other side of the park. Two couples were sitting right in front of me, quite unashamedly discussing their sexual fantasies. Behind them, next to our reader and by the wall, some foreign gentlemen were speaking in English with a Swede who was sitting with his back to me. They must’ve been in the skinheads’ field of vision. The student gang on the other side of our reader, too. And possibly some of the tipsy hen party by the window.’
‘Hmm,’ said Kerstin Holm.
‘Hmm,’ said Paul Hjelm.
The Hard Homo clasped hands behind his neck and leaned back.
‘But, noble police folk,’ he exclaimed, ‘wasn’t it a death we were meant to be discussing?’
4
ARTO SÖDERSTEFT HAD decided to stop driving. He didn’t own a car, and drove only rarely on duty. Still, he had now done almost two hundred kilometres behind the wheel on a midsummer’s morning which had defied all adverse weather reports, and as his tired service Volvo left the nourishing plains of Närke county and turned off towards the waste ground beneath Kumla prison, he could no longer deny it.
Driving was fun.
Since he was an active member of an association which wanted to drastically reduce traffic in the inner city, especially in Södermalm, and particularly on Bondegatan where he and his large family lived, that admission was made somewhat shamefully.
He eased off the accelerator, changed down to a lower gear, and turned to the passenger seat on which he was carrying horse feed.
A hay sack.
He poked the hay sack. It didn’t move. He poked it a little harder. It came to life, reaching instinctively for its shoulder holster.
Viggo Norlander woke up.
A magnificent patch of white baby sick had dried onto the right shoulder of his leather jacket. Arto Söderstedt laughed.
‘I’ve had five of them,’ he said in his clear Finland-Swedish accent. ‘Five babies have been sick on my shoulders. And still I never, never looked as wretched as you already do after your very first night.’
‘Shut up,’ croaked Viggo Norlander, trying to straighten himself up. Disturbing sounds were coming from his large body.
It was a strange night he had behind him. A manic-depressive night. Abrupt shifts between utter happiness and utter horror.
He had spent a night alone with his two-week-old daughter for the very first time.
It was a strange story. Like a dream. He was fifty years old and had lived the first forty-eight or so years of his life celibate, with the exception of a horribly unsuccessful month-long marriage in his youth, which had made all ensuing interaction with the opposite sex uninteresting. The thought of his own sex hadn’t crossed his mind at all. He had been the dullest conceivable policeman, circumscribed by banal rules for conduct and behaviour.
Prematurely departed, that was what he thought of the old Viggo Norlander.
Then he’d had enough. His repressed soul had broken free, and he was off to Estonia on a curious mission which, unfortunately, ended with the mafia nailing him to the floor.
It had been the best moment of his life.
One that had changed his life completely.
He had thrown away all of his boring grey suits, got rid of his paunch and even had a hair transplant. He had updated his wardrobe, finding his own style, and ventured out into Stockholm’s nightlife, where he welcomed even the sleaziest of approaches. He didn’t refuse one single passion-seeking woman his services. Nor, for that matter, a servicing.
One occasion had been different. Last autumn, right in the middle of the ongoing hunt for the Kentucky Killer, a woman almost exactly his age had crossed his threshold with the clear intention of getting pregnant. Fifteen minutes later, she was back outside on Banérgatan. But when she turned round in the doorway, smiling at him, he really saw on her face that she had been impregnated.
He was plagued by feverish fantasies about a Nobel Prize-winning son tracking down his old policeman dad in the care home, to thank him for his near-superhuman intellect.
That wasn’t quite how things had panned out. Instead, nine months later, a woman with a mewling little bundle in her arms appeared at his front door and said: ‘This is your daughter.’
Viggo Norlander held out his hand and said: ‘Viggo Norlander.’
The woman held out hers and said: ‘Astrid Olofsson.’
After which Viggo Norlander said: ‘Come in.’
‘Thank you,’ the woman replied.
And Astrid Olofsson came in, not only into his tired old bachelor flat on the quietest stretch of Banérgatan, but also into his life. And she wasn’t alone. The fourth thing she said was: ‘What should we call her?’
Strangely enough, Viggo Norlander didn’t doubt for a second that it was true. Instead, he felt an immediate, contented peace. He hadn’t imagined that pregnant smile nine months ago. His strange fantasies about the Nobel Prize-winning son hadn’t been the first sign of dementia. He had become a father. And he had felt it, biologically, like pregnancy from a distance.
Besides, his little daughter, who he suddenly found himself holding, was so undeniably like him that every possible trace of doubt was removed. The same long, stretched-out face, as though the force of gravity was especially strong just around the forehead. The same lopsided, inward-backward-sloping mug, as Arto Söderstedt had cryptically put it.