To the Top of the Mountain (8 page)

They let him go.

Glancing at one another, they opened the plastic bags containing the sandwiches.

‘The IT types,’ snorted Hjelm, muffled by mozzarella and Parma ham.

‘I did them while you were gone, it was quick. They didn’t see anything. And they were stockbrokers, not IT types. They were sitting nearest the door and saw absolutely bloody nothing. Apart from one thing: the hen party. I got the impression they were after some kind of complicated gang bang with the bride-to-be and her blind-drunk friends.’

‘And this hen party had absolutely nothing to add, I can tell you that. As far as I could see, a complicated gang bang wouldn’t have been completely out of the question for them. So that means that the whole row over by the window, a table of stockbrokers and two tables of hens, are useless witnesses?’

‘The best the stockbrokers had to offer was: “A whole load of people rushed past right when the girls started yelling.” Both groups were just a bit too horny and drunk, simple as that. Just like that “pair of pairs” who’d gone to Kvarnen for a partner swap. They’d never met before, just exchanged erotic emails where they indulged in shared fantasies about partner swapping and group sex. Their plans probably wouldn’t have come to much, considering how drunk they were. Too horny and too drunk, all of them – even though it was only twenty to ten. Hen party, stockbrokers and the pair of pairs.’

‘Then let’s go for the people who should have been
least
horny and drunk.’

‘But also the busiest.’

‘The staff. The waitresses or those thugs on the door?’

‘The doormen, you mean. Which deserve to wait the longest?’

‘Let’s get the waitresses in.’

They pressed a button on the intercom. A short conversation with the receptionist, and in trudged a group of slightly haggard-looking beauties. Five of them. They sat down and started to complain in unison. It sounded like the monkey house at the zoo.

‘Naturally, we’re very sorry that you’ve had to wait,’ said Hjelm courteously, not quite blinded by all their feminine splendour. ‘There are a lot of people to interview, and none of you are missing work, since it’s only ten past two and Kvarnen hasn’t reopened yet.’

‘Are we
allowed
to open, then?’ said the oldest-looking one. ‘Isn’t it a crime scene?’

‘We’ve secured everything that needs securing, so it’s just a matter of going on as normal. Business as usual. It’ll probably be full – lots of free publicity in the press. The same way that Tony Olsson can write a book and get any publisher he likes to print it.’

‘Tony Olsson?’ the waitresses said in unison.

‘The police killer who came home from Costa Rica a few days ago,’ Hjelm explained. ‘And announced that he was innocent.’

‘What’s he got to do with us?’ exclaimed one of the women.

‘Nothing,’ Hjelm sighed. ‘Which of you was behind the bar when it happened?’

‘Me,’ said a small, dark woman in her thirties. ‘Karin Lindbeck,’ she added automatically.

‘How much did you see of what happened?’

‘Not much. I was at the other end of the bar taking payment for a big order. It was crowded so it took a while.’

‘Care to tell us, just to be on the safe side?’ Kerstin Holm put in.

‘All right,’ said Karin Lindbeck, with a gesture of acknowledgement.

‘So, did you feel the atmosphere was threatening?’ asked Hjelm.

‘You could say so . . . There was something in the air.’

‘And you’d served the perpetrator earlier?’

‘Probably. But he was standing towards the back of that macho gang, and a bit shorter than the others, I think. A background figure. Not especially memorable.’

‘One of these three?’ asked Hjelm, spreading the three drawings on the table.

The bartender Karin Lindbeck looked through them. With a quick, practised eye. Used to keeping track of faces.

‘Hardly,’ was all she said.

‘No likeness at all?’

‘Only the hair and the moustache.’

‘Can you produce anything better?’

‘I think so.’

‘And you’ve never seen him before?’

‘I might’ve seen some of that gang before, but not him. Not that I remember.’

‘You can help us with a couple of drawings later, Karin. Do you remember anything else?’

‘The Smålanders. A shy group who realised pretty quickly that they’d ended up in the worst place they could’ve. Too late. The one that died seemed nice, he was the one who ordered.’

‘OK, thanks. So the rest of you were waitresses? You’re divided up, aren’t you? By tables?’

‘Yeah,’ the oldest waitress replied, a fake blonde of around forty-five. ‘I had the window. The hen party and the brokers. They were flirting with each other non-stop. And drinking a lot. I was working flat out to get them served. Also, I was having a break when it happened. He was already dead when I came out.’

‘More?’

‘I was in the corner,’ said another. ‘Saw nothing, heard nothing.’

‘Very concise, but maybe not complete.’

‘I was further in. Not much happened there. Business as usual.’

‘More.’

‘I had the middle row,’ explained the young Asian woman. ‘A group of students were sitting nearest to the door, they were talking about a social anthropology exam, I think. Then there was the guy pretending to read, sitting alone, and a group of southern Europeans who had a Swede with them. They were speaking English.’

‘You didn’t happen to hear what they were talking about?’

‘I try not to eavesdrop.’

‘Like on the social anthropology students?’

She looked slightly embarrassed.

‘Come on,’ said Hjelm. ‘You heard something.’

‘They were negotiating about something. They weren’t friends. The opposite, I think. Distrust. They were trying to agree on something.’

‘On what? Try to remember.’

‘Weren’t we meant to be talking about the murder? I didn’t see that at all. I had my back to it.’

‘Just answer the question.’

‘No, I don’t know. A meeting place, maybe. I don’t know.’

‘But they left right away when the fight started? The whole gang? Did they go without paying?’

‘If you’re just drinking, you pay straight away. There wasn’t any bill to pay, everything had already been paid. But yeah, they disappeared pretty quickly.’

Hjelm thought. Something fuzzy was shifting in his mind.

‘No bill? No, it’s bloody obvious.
No bill to pay
.’

The waitresses regarded his curious little outburst suspiciously.

‘Who had the table by the door? Along the wall by the door, I mean.’

‘Me,’ said the youngest of the waitresses, a short-haired, sturdily built girl.

‘Who was sitting there, and what happened?’

‘Five really serious, quiet types.’

‘Salesmen?’

‘Not exactly, no, I don’t think so. I guess you could say that you’d
expect
them to be the rowdy kind but they weren’t at all. The opposite, they hardly said a word to one another. Just sat there, staring on the sly.’

‘Five macho gay men, staring at a kid who’s sitting there reading,’ Hjelm said clearly.

‘It wasn’t him they were staring at, it was further away.’

‘Were they listening to music?’

‘Hardly. One of them had a little earphone, but it looked more like . . . a hearing aid.’

‘And they
didn’t
pass that earphone around?’

‘No, it was just one of them that had it. He was sitting with his back to the room.’

‘And they
didn’t
drink much?’

‘A beer each at most.’

‘And
none
of them stayed behind to pay the bill?’

‘No, no, same thing. There wasn’t a bill. But one of them did stay behind. Shaved head and moustache.’

‘And the other four
hadn’t
left
before
the killing?’

‘No, but they left before anybody else. As soon as the glass broke. One of them pointed at the one who stayed behind and said something. Then he sat down again and waited.’

‘So they deliberately left Eskil Carlstedt behind?’

‘If that’s what he’s called, yeah. It looked that way. I was standing in the middle of the Hammarby gang next to them, trying to take an order. It was slow. I was standing with my back to . . . the killing . . .’

Hjelm tried to catch Holm’s eye. She was drawing heavy lines in her notebook. Eventually, she looked up. She looked composed.

‘Shall we step out a moment?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Holm. ‘But I just have one question for you,’ she added, pointing to one of the waitresses. Hjelm saw the underlined word: ‘pretending’. Holm continued. ‘Why did you say that the kid was
pretending
to read?’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘He didn’t turn a single page in that book.’

‘What was he doing, then?’

‘Don’t know. Thinking. Or listening.’

They went out into the corridor.

‘We’re sending a patrol to Eskil Carlstedt right now,’ said Hjelm. ‘He lives here on Kungsholmen.’

‘We should’ve picked up on the music, the demo tape, the reaction when we asked,’ said Holm. ‘Christ.’

‘And the bloody rest,’ said Hjelm.

Holm went away to send a patrol car after Carlstedt. Hjelm returned to the waitresses.

‘Well, ladies,’ he said, stretching. ‘We need the most exact descriptions you can possibly give us of the southern Europeans, the Swede, and the four who disappeared from beside the door.’

The oldest of the waitresses stood up abruptly.

‘What the hell is it you’re working on?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t have the faintest idea,’ said Paul Hjelm truthfully.

Three burly, traditional-looking doormen were sitting in a row, almost like the three wise monkeys who want to see, hear and say nothing.

Though only almost.

They actually talked quite a lot, even if it was exclusively about how heroically they had blocked the door despite everyone trying to get out. They described it as though they had been courageous UN troops, preventing genocide with nothing but their bare hands.

‘Considering at least twenty people got out, maybe your reaction wasn’t exactly lightning-fast,’ said Hjelm quietly.

They stared at him.

‘There’s actually a door between the cloakroom and the pub,’ said the oldest, insulted. ‘We can’t hear everything that goes on inside.’

‘We had a pretty bloody rowdy queue to deal with,’ said the biggest. ‘Lots of difficult immigrants.’

‘Immigrants?’ exclaimed Hjelm. It was clear that the man wasn’t used to using any other word than ‘wog’. He continued. ‘Still, you let thirty or so drunk Hammarby fans in, one of whom turned out to be a murderer.’

‘You know where you are with Hammarby fans,’ said the third one.

‘I see,’ Hjelm said sourly, letting the subject lie. ‘Couldn’t you have reacted a bit quicker when twenty men came running out of the pub all at once?’

‘There was a hell of a crush then, so it wasn’t exactly easy to move in the opposite direction.’

‘Anyway, our job’s to check people going
in
, not coming
out
.’

‘We didn’t know what had happened, did we? We can’t just stop people leaving the pub.’

‘What kind of people were coming out?’

‘Men. Just men. Hammarby fans, mainly, some older builders too.’

‘Builders? Like construction workers?’

‘No, like bodybuilders. There aren’t any construction jobs any more.’

‘Any . . . immigrants?’

‘Eventually some wo— gentlemen with darkish hair, yeah,’ said the biggest. ‘I seem to remember that.’

‘But you must know all this,’ said the oldest. ‘You had a man there.’

Hjelm stared at Holm. Holm stared at Hjelm.

‘A man there?’ they said in unison. It didn’t exactly sound professional, but what can you do? What were they supposed to do with their surprise?

‘Yeah,’ said the biggest of the doormen. ‘We’d just managed to push our way in and block the inner door. He hadn’t quite made it out. I pushed him back. Then he flashed his ID and ran out.’

‘His ID?’ they said in unison.

‘His police ID.’

They were paralysed.

Eventually, Kerstin Holm said: ‘You didn’t think it was strange that a policeman wanted to get
out
after a crime had been committed?’

‘I don’t know how you work, for Christ’s sake.’

‘And you can’t remember what he looked like?’

‘It was pretty crazy, to put it mildly. Some guy was lying in a pool of blood. Everyone was screaming, people were pushing towards the door. All I saw was a police ID being waved, and let him out.’

‘To freedom,’ said Paul Hjelm.

7

VIGGO NORLANDER WAS
on great form. On the ball. With it.

To an external observer, he might have seemed like a highly ambitious policeman who wanted to solve a complicated murder case whatever the cost. He gave orders, directed and dashed around. He interrogated, bossed about and shone.

Arto Söderstedt
wasn’t
an external observer. He was a
sceptical
observer. And Viggo Norlander
wasn’t
a highly ambitious policeman who wanted to solve a complicated murder case whatever the cost. He was a highly ambitious new father who, whatever the cost, wanted to spend Midsummer with his baby daughter.

Söderstedt didn’t find that quite as honourable. He thought back to all the times he had cancelled Midsummer celebrations, remembering the faces of his disappointed, sobbing sons and daughters, and felt a pang of envy for Norlander’s purposefulness. He had never been so single-minded himself.

On the other hand, his fatherhood hadn’t been as exceptional. On the contrary, he considered himself an unusually
normal
father. Anja’s five pregnancies had passed with customary minor complications, and the children had plopped out a few weeks too early or a few weeks too late, completely healthy and white as chalk. His paternity could never have been in doubt. Unless there was another ghostly-white Finn living in one of the Söderstedt wardrobes, springing out like a jack-in-the-box as soon as he had cleared off to the police station.