‘An expensive bonus.’
‘You know I put the entire paedophile unit together myself. It was me who made sure people started taking child pornography seriously in this tolerant country. Freedom of speech till the end. My own sons died. I saw all of these children suffering, I saw how the Internet meant an explosion of all kinds of sexual assault on children. Each child I saved became my own, somehow. I trained Sara up, we were one hell of a team. Then Party-Ragge appeared and took all the credit. I didn’t really care, that’s how the world works, but I also didn’t have anything against using him as my scapegoat.’
‘So you stuck a little beard on yourself when you met Nedic’s gang in Kvarnen.’
Johnsson chuckled. ‘Yeah. That was a bit stupid, but I needed a way out. He got to be the scapegoat. Those guys were tough negotiators; we sat in Kvarnen for a long time, going back and forth, just about the meeting place, and the thing being handed over wasn’t even money or the material from the investigation. It was just two safe-deposit-box keys and a communication device. Eventually, we were going to let one another know which bank it was in. A pretty complicated way of doing things, but I let him pull the strings. All I did was get hold of the most modern police radio. Yeah, we were sitting arguing in Kvarnen, we’d just managed to agree on Sickla as the meeting place, at two the following morning, when that idiot smashed the beer glass over someone’s head. I sent the Yugoslavs away pretty quickly and thanked God for that stupid little beard; I waited until they were out of sight and then the doormen turned up. I flashed them my ID to get out.’
‘You’d been bugged. Didn’t you check the place out? A whole group of Nazis were listening to you from the corner.’
Ludvig Johnsson nodded. ‘Was that how it happened? Yeah, it was lazy not to look around properly, but I was damn scared. That simple. Those guys weren’t to be messed with. Three real monsters from Bosnia. They could’ve just decided to torture me to get me to reveal my insurance.’
‘Insurance?’
‘The standard. A copy of the entire investigation with an old childhood friend. In the event of my death, it would’ve been sent to the police and Rajko Nedic would be outed as a paedophile.’
‘You were photographed coming out, the whole group, by a paedophile up in Söder Torn. A bit ironic, don’t you think?’
‘So you’ve had me for a long time, then?’
‘The picture was useless, unfortunately. You could see a bit of the beard, that was all.’
Ludvig Johnsson laughed. ‘See,’ he said. ‘A blessing in disguise.’
‘Tell me everything now.’
‘OK. It was February, something like that. I found a whole load of hidden websites online and tracked down a whole group of pseudonyms. I put all of them away – all apart from one. The idea was born right away when I realised that “brambo” was Nedic. Taking money from that bastard didn’t feel so dangerous. My life was a complete mess. All I did was run. I was running for my life. Like the original marathon. I hated winter more and more. It was in winter that my family had been wiped out. Damn winter roads. I wanted to get away. Die in the warmth somewhere. I had the strange idea of just going to some Polynesian island and drinking myself to death. Me, someone who doesn’t even like the strong stuff much. Anyway, I sent all the material to a friend in Säffle and got in touch with Nedic. He was completely dumbfounded. Had thought he was completely secure online. I put a sum that sounded good out there, ten million, and he went with it. I was speechless. He went with it. Ten mill. You have to wonder how much a man like that has… We agreed that I had to meet his men to decide on a handover. I suggested Kvarnen – as public as possible. Somehow, it must’ve got out.’
‘Nedic’s closest man was called Lordan Vukotic. He knew the Kvarnen meeting was going to take place. He’d trained as a corporate laywer in the Kumla Bunker and was probably going to be the one looking after the empire’s finances. Evidently, he told his friends inside about it, and one of them – a Croat called Risto Petrovic – told one of his old friends from the Foreign Legion, a right-wing extremist and former officer called Niklas Lindberg. He seems to have been the leader of some kind of “Nazi clique” in Kumla. Sven Joakim Bergwall and Dan Andersson were involved in it, too. Andersson was released in February, so he was out when the information about the handover of ten million came up in…’
‘It must’ve been May,’ said Johnsson.
‘In May, the ideological motor Bergwall was released. By that point, Andersson might’ve already started to get a gang together to steal that ten million. Lindberg was inside until the twenty-fourth of June, the day after your meeting in Kvarnen. He knew that Bergwall and the men were going to listen to your meeting, but at roughly the same time he decided to torture Vukotic to find out what he knew about the meeting place. The next day, he was released. The men picked him up from Kumla in a van. Once he was safely outside the walls, he detonated a bomb, blowing the injured Vukotic to pieces. A farewell gesture to Kumla, a greeting for Nedic, and a way of erasing his tracks – all in one go.
‘Then this gang of six right-wing extremists set off for the Sickla industrial estate. Lindberg blew up the car containing the three monsters from Bosnia. One of them died immediately. They took the briefcase containing the safe-deposit-box key and the radio, got a shock when there was no money in the briefcase, and that gave the battle-tested Bosnian monsters their chance: they whipped out their pistols using the mechanisms in their jacket sleeves and shot and killed two of them, Carlstedt and Bergwall, injuring another, Andersson. They died themselves, of course. But at the same time, the briefcase disappeared.
‘A completely separate gang, calling itself Orpheus and Eurydice, some kind of Nedic defectors, also knew about your little delivery. In the middle of the firefight, they managed to steal the briefcase. They’re not too thrilled about finding a key and a radio instead of money, either. They split up and set off into the countryside, looking for the bank. They must have some kind of idea about where it should be. That means they must be relatively close to Nedic. From the Nazi gang, Lindberg, Sjöqvist, Kullberg and an injured Andersson are left. Kullberg’s a civil engineer, and made some kind of device for locating the police radio. They set off after Orpheus, Eurydice and the briefcase. Eurydice had the briefcase. After a couple of weeks of hunting, they found her. In Skövde. We were there. We killed Sjöqvist and Andersson and captured Kullberg. Lindberg managed to get away. Eurydice, too. Hjelm and Holm were shot.’
Ludvig Johnsson stared at his formerly apathetic colleague, half amazed.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘You’ve been working hard. Who are this Orpheus and Eurydice?’
‘That we don’t know, and it’s no longer of interest. We’ve got the key. Do you have any idea where the bank might be?’
‘No, but it should be near town. Stockholm. My box, with the material from the investigation, is in town. The branch of Handelsbank on Odenplan. Why are you telling me all of this? The criminal? The “policeman”?’
‘So that you can tidy up after yourself. I’ve got computer equipment and mobile phones and connection devices in the car, enough for two men in a cottage without electricity or a telephone. I’ve filled your fridge with food. So now we’re damn well going to stay here until we’ve cracked this!’
‘But what’s left?’ Johnsson exclaimed.
‘To hell with Nedic for the moment,’ Gunnar Nyberg said clearly. ‘I think Sara will deal with that. To hell with Orpheus and Eurydice, too. They’re out of the game. What’s left – properly left – is Niklas Lindberg. He wants your ten million for something particular. He sets off advanced, extremely powerful microscopic bombs with pleasure, and he managed to steal almost a million kronor while he was hunting for Eurydice. He’s hardly going to get hold of that ten million unless he goes directly for Nedic, but maybe that near-million he already has is enough.’