Bad Blood: A Crime Novel Page 9

  Bertilsson gaped wildly at the man upon whom he had unloaded his life’s disappointments, and who he had thought was out of his life. He didn’t move a muscle. Finally he managed to say, “I don’t know his password.”

  “Is there someone here who knows it?” A shadow of a thought flew through Bertilsson’s diffuse consciousness. He shuffled over to a computer ten or so yards away, where he exchanged a few words with an overweight woman in her early forties. Her long hair, which was hanging free, was raven black; her tiger-striped glasses were oval; her flowery summer dress was tight. She sent a long, frosty look over at the duo of heroes and returned to her computer.

  Bertilsson came back and pecked in a password; Chavez observed the keyboard concert attentively.

  Bertilsson didn’t get in. Access denied. He hit the screen in an outburst of rage and returned to the woman with a substantially longer stride. A short palaver played out that Hjelm and Chavez observed in pantomime. The woman threw up her hands and let the corners of her mouth fall—her entire massive form radiated indifference. Then she lit up with a flash of inspiration, stabbed her index finger into the air, and uttered a word.

  Bertilsson came back and wordlessly pecked out the key to the electronic remains of the deceased.

  “You can leave us now,” Hjelm said, unmoved. “But don’t leave the office. We’ll need to talk with you some more in a bit.”

  Chavez felt immediately at home in front of the monitor, but no exhibition of professionalism was forthcoming. He dug around a bit in the in- and outboxes and consulted “deleted messages” but found only empty pages.

  “There’s nothing left here,” he said.

  “Okay.” Hjelm waved to Bertilsson, who arrived like a dog that has been punished into loyalty.

  “Why are all of Hassel’s messages gone?” Hjelm asked.

  Bertilsson, looking at the monitor rather than at Hjelm, shrugged. “He’s probably deleted them.”

  “No one else has cleaned them out?”

  “Not that I know of. Either the whole mailbox and all the addresses should be gone, or else they should still be there. And that is probably everything. Maybe he was in the habit of cleaning it all out—what do I know?”

  “There are no shortcuts?” Hjelm asked Chavez. “And no chance of finding out who deleted them?”

  “Not from here,” said Chavez. “Network trashes are hard to manage.”

  Since Chavez was speaking in tongues, Hjelm had to accept this remark without understanding, like a true believer. He turned to Bertilsson again. “Who is your colleague Elisabeth B something? Is she still in the office?”

  “Everyone is still here,” Bertilsson said, in a tone of Everyone is always still here. Then he roused himself: “You’re talking about Elisabeth Berntsson, I assume.”

  “Probably,” said Hjelm. “Is she here now?”

  “She was the one I was just talking to.”

  Hjelm glanced over toward the black-haired woman, who was typing like mad. “What was her relationship with Hassel like?”

  Bertilsson cast a nervous glance around, one that ought to have triggered the curiosity of anyone who wasn’t asleep. But no one reacted. Möller, sitting behind his glass doors, was staring out the window. He didn’t appear to have moved an inch since Hjelm’s previous visit.

  “You’ll have to ask her,” Bertilsson said resolutely. “I’ve said more than enough.”

  They walked over to the writing woman, who looked up from her computer. “Elisabeth Berntsson?” Hjelm said. “We’re with the police.”

  She peered at them over her glasses. “Your names?” she said in a slightly hoarse smoker’s voice, clearly experienced at this.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Paul Hjelm. This is Detective Inspector Jorge Chavez. From the National Criminal Police.”

  “Aha,” she said, recognizing their names from the headlines. “That means there’s more behind Lars-Erik’s death than we’re allowed to know.”

  “Can we go somewhere a bit more private?”

  She raised an eyebrow, stood, and walked toward a glass door. They followed her into an empty office that was a carbon copy of Möller’s.

  “Have a seat.” She sat down behind the desk.

  They found a pair of chairs sticking up among the mess of papers and took a seat.

  Hjelm jumped straight in. “Why did you call the maternity ward at Karolinska Hospital during the book fair in 1992 to inform the mother of Lars-Erik Hassel’s newborn son that her husband was engaged in copious amounts of sexual relations in Gothenburg while her son was being born?”

  Her jaw ought to have dropped, but it remained as steady as her gaze. “Well, what do you know, in medias res,” she said, not missing a beat. “Very effective.”

  “It ought to have been,” Hjelm replied. “But apparently you’ve been expecting the question.”

  “Because you two are who you are, I realized that you would have ferreted it out.” Had she said it in another tone, they could have taken it as a compliment.

  “What was it? Revenge?” Hjelm asked abruptly.

  Elisabeth Berntsson took off her glasses, folded them up, and placed them on the desk. “No,” she said. “Drunkenness.”

  “Maybe as a catalyst. Hardly as a reason.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Hjelm switched tactics. “Why did you delete all of Hassel’s e-mails?”

  Chavez pointed out, “That wasn’t very difficult to trace.”

  Hjelm gave him a look that he hoped would not be too easily interpreted as grateful.

  Elisabeth Berntsson, however, seemed to have other things on her mind. An inner battle was being waged behind the naked concentration on her hardened face. Finally she said, “The copious relations you were talking about took place primarily with me. Larsa needed something a bit more solid than that twenty-year-old. It was practically over already; all I did was hurry the process up a little. A catalyst,” she said with a sardonic touch.

  “And then? Was it the two of you forever and ever amen?”

  Berntsson snorted. “Neither of us was particularly interested in forever and ever amen. I suppose we were both too scarred by the downsides of cohabitation. And had developed a taste for the alternative. One-night stands are really nothing to sneeze at. Me, I lead an active social life and want to be free to do what I want. And Larsa’s tastes were probably more in the vein of … the younger age groups. For me, he was a decent lover and a more or less reliable part of my life. Like a TV show, maybe. Same time, same channel. And I do mean channel.”

  Hjelm made a quick decision. “Did he let you read the threatening e-mails?”

  “I got tired of them. They were all different variations on the same theme. An almost unbelievable amount of persistence. A fixation. Someone had found a scapegoat he could lay all his life’s frustrations on.”

  “He?”

  “Everything suggested it was a man. Male language, if that makes sense.”

  “How many were there?”

  “There were only scattered sprinklings of them for the first six months. During the past month, they accelerated into a veritable flash flood.”

  “So it’s been going on for just over six months?”

  “About that.”

  “How did Hassel react?”

  “At first he was pretty shaken up. But when he realized that they seemed to be written mostly for therapeutic purposes, he became more thoughtful. As though he were pondering his past actions and what he was being punished for. But later, when they started to come more frequently, he got scared again and decided to fly the coop for a while. That’s how the New York idea was born.”

  Hjelm didn’t comment on the cost of this escape. Instead he said, “Can you describe the contents of the e-mails in greater detail?”

  “Very explicit descriptions of how evil Larsa was and, above all, what would be done to his body. They said nothing about what wrong he had actually committed. That was what made him nervous, I think:
that the source was so vague.”

  “Who do you think it was?”

  She fingered her eyeglasses, turning them at different angles on the desk. Then she finally said, “It must have been an author.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve read what Larsa wrote.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Möller told me. Which means you know that he didn’t mince words about things he disliked. That was what made him stand out as a critic. That was how he built up his nationwide reputation. But when you do that, you hurt people. And sometimes when people are hurt, they never get back on their feet. Bad blood always comes back around.”

  Hjelm wondered at her strange final comment. Was she quoting someone?

  “Did the sender write like an author?” he asked.

  “A fallen author. Yes.”

  Hjelm usually didn’t touch his cheek in public, but now he scratched his blemish absentmindedly. A small flake of skin floated down toward his pant leg. Elisabeth Berntsson watched it expressionlessly.

  He gave Chavez a meaningful glance, then said, “So we’re back where we started: why did you delete all of Hassel’s e-mails?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Hjelm sighed and turned to Chavez. His partner had had enough time to fabricate a story, but Hjelm wasn’t sure he was in on the plan; after all, they’d gotten a little rusty.

  Chavez was in. “We arrived here at the editorial office at 15:37. At 15:40, Bertilsson asked you about Hassel’s password. At 15:41, he entered it; it was wrong. He went back to you, and you came up with the correct password at 15:43. We got into Hassel’s inbox at 15:44. By then everything had been deleted. I found the time stamp of the deletion: 15:42, two minutes after you had learned what we were doing and given us the wrong password.”

  Chavez had done his homework and had outdone his teacher by a mile: if you’re going to lie, lie in great detail.

  Elisabeth Berntsson stared deep down into her desk.

  Hjelm leaned toward her. “If you weren’t the one who wrote them, then why delete them? To salvage Larsa’s reputation? Hardly. Where were you on the night between the second and third of September?”

  “Not in Newark,” she said quietly.

  “Have you been going around hating him all these years? How did you have time to write all this hate mail? Did you do it during working hours?”

  Elisabeth picked up her glasses, unfolded the earpieces, and settled them onto her distinguished nose. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to meet Hjelm’s. The gaze he saw was a completely new one.

  “I suppose you could say I loved him. The hate mail was about to break me.”

  “So you hired a hit man to make the pain end?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But he told you who he suspected was behind them, right? And you deleted everything to protect his murderer. Sort of strange behavior toward the dear departed, isn’t it?”

  Now she looked determined, but not in a self-confident way; rather, she was determined not to speak at any price. She wasn’t going to say anything more.

  But she said more than words could have: “It’s private.”

  Then she broke down. It was unexpected for everyone present, including herself, but the repressed sadness came tumbling out in long, sweeping waves.

  When they stood up, Hjelm realized he liked her. He would have liked to place a comforting arm around her, but he knew the comfort he was capable of offering wouldn’t go very far. Her sorrow was much deeper than that.

  They left her alone with her pain.

  In the elevator, Chavez said, “A pyrrhic victory—isn’t that what it’s called? Another victory like that, and I’m done for.”

  Hjelm was silent. He told himself he was planning his next step. In reality, he was crying.

  Bad blood always comes back around.

  In the taxi to Pilgatan, they didn’t say much. “It’s lucky she didn’t check the times,” said Chavez. “I was at least five minutes off.”

  “I don’t think she was planning to let us leave without a confession,” said Hjelm. Then he added, “You did an excellent job.”

  He didn’t have to tell Chavez where they were going. On their way up the stairs of the stately building on Pilgatan, between Fridhemsplan and Kungsholmstorg, he said, “You remember the password, don’t you?”

  Chavez nodded. When they arrived at the top floor, Hjelm took out a set of keys and unlocked the three locks on the door marked “Hassel.” They stepped into a gym; the entire enormous hall had been converted into an exercise room.

  Apparently, in a previous life, Lars-Erik Hassel had been an alchemist on the hunt for the fountain of youth.

  They walked past modern glass vases and ceramic pots and arrived at modernity: a computer on an antique desk in the middle of the living room.

  Chavez turned it on and settled into the grandiose easy chair that functioned as a desk chair.

  “Do you think he has a personal password?” Hjelm asked, leaning over the seated hacker.

  “No, not at home,” said Chavez. “If he does, we might have a problem.”

  Hassel did have one. The computer blinked out a scornful ENTER PASSWORD.

  “I guess we’ll try the same one.” Chavez typed in the letters L-A-B-A-N.

  The scornful blinking of the computer halted. They were in.

  “Strange for a father and son to live so close to each other,” Chavez said as the computer coughed to life.

  Hjelm peeked out through the window toward the beautiful old county council building, which seemed to shiver in the shadow of the clouds. If the window were placed at a slightly different angle, he could have looked straight up at Kungsklippan.

  Autumn seemed to arrive in just an hour. Heavy clouds rolled up over a fast-descending sky. Wind whined through the elegant gardens of the council building, tearing both green and gold leaves from the trees. A few raindrops spattered the windowpane.

  While Chavez pecked at the keyboard, Hjelm explored Lars-Erik Hassel’s apartment thoroughly. Not only was it a bourgeois turn-of-the-century flat, Hassel seemed to have wanted to return it to its original condition. In the living room, each detail seemed modeled on a Biedermeier aesthetic. He had a hard time associating this almost ironically exaggerated bourgeois taste with the critic who despised literature.

  “Well, look at that,” Chavez said after a while. “I don’t even need to go into his trash. He has a folder called ‘hate.’ ”

  “I thought he might.” Hjelm came up to the computer. “Are the e-mails there?”

  A gigantic list unfurled across the screen. At the bottom left corner it said “126 items,” and the 126 files were numbered.

  “Year, date, time,” said Chavez. “Complete records.”

  “Look at the first one.”

  The message was short but to the point.

  You evil bastard. Your body will be found in eight different places, all over Sweden, and no one will know that this head belongs with that leg; this arm with that cock. And they don’t, either. See you. Don’t look over your shoulder.

  “Dated the end of January,” said Chavez. “The most recent ones are from August twenty-fifth.”

  Hjelm nodded. “The same day Hassel went to the United States.”

  “He didn’t save any after that, of course. If more e-mails showed up when Hassel was in the States—and it’s probably pretty important to know whether this bully kept threatening him while he was gone—they disappeared when Elisabeth deleted them. If the author of the e-mails is the murderer, or hired the murderer, then he ought to have realized that this was the final threat.”

  “Let’s look at it.”

  The writer’s writing had, without a doubt, evolved during the past months. The very last saved e-mail read

  You tried to change your e-mail address again. There’s no point. I can see you; I can always see you; I will always be able to see you. I know you’re going to New York, you evil bastard. Do y
ou think you’re safe there? Do you think I can’t reach you there? Death is on your heels. You will be found in every state, with your cock in deep-freeze in Alaska and your bowels rotten with shit in the swamps of Florida. I will tear out your tongue and split open your vocal cords. No one will be able to hear you scream. What you have done can never be undone. I am watching over you. Enjoy the Metropolitan. I will be there, on the bench behind you. Don’t look over your shoulder.

  Hjelm and Chavez looked at each other and saw their own thoughts reflected back. New York, the Metropolitan: a striking knowledge of details. Still, such information was relatively easy to come by.

  But splitting the vocal cords and “No one will be able to hear you scream”—things were heating up.

  How had the writer known a week before it happened that Lars-Erik Hassel’s vocal cords would be taken out of commission and that no one would be able to hear him scream?

  “Didn’t someone suspect that this had nothing to do with the Kentucky Killer?” Chavez said self-righteously.

  “Go back a bit,” Hjelm said. His focus had narrowed considerably.

  A random selection of the 126-file-strong “hate” folder flew by:

  You evil bastard. You are the most bourgeois of the bourgeois. Your repulsive remains will rot in small silver jars and then be distributed to your cast-off mistresses one by one, and they will be forced to masturbate with your deceased organ.

  You tried to change your e-mail address. Don’t do that. There’s no point. One day the source of all the excrement you produce will be exposed. Everyone will be able to see the defective digestive system of your rotten soul. Your intestines will be wound around the glass cock on Sergels Torg. All will be revealed. Those intestines held the only intellect you ever had. Never look over your shoulder.

  I am going to slit the throat of your little son. His name is Conny, and he’ll be six years old soon. I know where he lives. I have the code to their door. I know what school he goes to. I’m going to fuck his cut-open throat, and you will be called to identify your son, but because you’ve never seen your son, you won’t recognize him. You will deny both head and body. It has happened before. Your whole cultural veneer will be exposed.