fell silent again and seemed to be studying a random section of the cork matting.
Bloody hell, this conversation was nothing like what she’d expected.
Suddenly the sounds of all the computers and gadgets combined into one single enervating, piercing note that seemed to penetrate her head and nail her brain to the inside of her skull.
She screwed up her eyes, swallowed a couple of times and, when she’d regained control of her body, pushed her way past Manga and into the little cubbyhole she’d glimpsed behind the bead-curtain.
Lukewarm water from a dirty glass. Long, restorative gulps that rinsed all unwelcome thoughts away. Pull yourself together, for God’s sake, Normén!
Even if Manga seemed to be in desperate need of a confessional, she certainly hadn’t come here for anything like this. Chewing it all over and wallowing in the past. The really sick thing was that she only had to say a few words and she could absolve him from some of his sins. Tell him who the real murderer was. But something told her that the truth wouldn’t set either of them free, and certainly not her.
Better to return to the present, focus on the task at hand and get out of here. If she could just get hold of Henke, things would sort themselves out, she was convinced of that, without really knowing why.
She refilled the glass and put in on the counter beside Manga. He seemed to have used her absence to pull himself together. His eyes still looked a bit red, but his face was more or less back to its usual colour.
He drank in silence.
‘I can see the way you’re thinking, Manga, but I honestly don’t think anyone could have stopped things from happening,’ she said slowly. ‘It just turned out the way it did, and we all have to try to move on. At least that’s what I’ve tried to do.’
She could hear how false her words sounded, but Manga nodded in agreement.
‘Of course, you’re right,’ he said curtly. ‘It feels good to have got it out, anyway, after all this time. Sorry about the tears.’
He smiled forlornly and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his shirt.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll stay between us.’
He smiled again, more relaxed this time, and she took the opportunity to change the subject.
‘Look, are you really sure you haven’t seen Henke?’
Another shake of the head.
‘No, not really …’
She fixed him with her cop’s stare, reluctantly, and it worked instantly.
‘What do you mean, not really, Manga? Have you, or haven’t you seen him?’
Her voice had suddenly lost all its previous softness. It felt a bit mean to apply interrogation tactics now, especially after his emotional outburst, but she didn’t actually have any choice. She had to get hold of Henke, and didn’t have time for any more distractions.
‘Not for a few days,’ he muttered morosely, staring at the floor, and as far as she could tell that was probably the truth. She looked round and sniffed at the smell of smoke.
‘Listen, those kids who set fire to your shop …’
She said it very slowly, fixing him with her stare. He wriggled like a worm on a hook, but she had no intention of letting him get away.
‘Is it the same kids who set fire to Henke’s flat?’
‘Yes … er, I mean no, or rather …’
His eyes were flitting about, and he suddenly didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.
‘Oh, Magnus …’ she said in her gentlest voice and she leaned over the counter.
She waited until he met her gaze again:
‘What’s my idiot brother dragged you into this time?’
Okay, he’d just have to accept the truth – he’d got the whole thing on the brain.
Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, Gene Hackman’s character, Brill, in Enemy of the State, that’s what he was turning into. The obsessive, the lone lunatic, the conspiracy nutter who lived his life in discussion forums and saw intrigues round every fucking corner. He might as well get his own homepage, a cottage in the woods and a wall covered in newspaper cuttings, then everything would be perfect!
True, that idea about the Palme murder was maybe a bit far-fetched, but on the other hand as a theory it was no crazier or worse than any of the other so-called lines of inquiry. Kurds, the ‘baseball’ police squad, his wife Lisbet, or a drunk acting on his own?
All aboard the Crazy Train!
Doors closing, next stop Looneyville!
There was a vast flock of weirdo theories out there in cyberspace, like shrieking harpies, each one crazier than the last. So why not his?
Just think about it!
How else could you fuck up the largest police investigation in the world so spectacularly? Forgetting all common police sense, breaking any number of laws and rules by appointing an amateur to lead both the police work and the preliminary legal investigation? And, as if that wasn’t enough, setting up a Social Democrat political stooge with his own miniature version of the security police to run a parallel investigation directly sanctioned by the Justice Minister …
The whole thing was a cascade of peculiarities, and the case threw up loads of questions to which there were no logical solutions, exactly as Erman had warned him. There just weren’t any good explanations, or at least none that were better than the one he was beginning to accept more and more.
Besides, he could think of another political murder where, even though the killer had been caught, the case was a good match for the profile ‘single perpetrator with no good motive’. Not to mention the so-called Laser Man back in the early nineties. There was something methodical about the progress of his criminal career, something that made you think of computer games. As if he had been working his way through different stages of difficulty, taking greater and greater risks. Almost as if he was clambering up some sort of league-table …
According to the clips HP found on the Swedish Television website, the culprit had blown the money he took from his victims in a German casino, so he evidently liked gambling. Was he actually a player, in two senses of the word? It made perfect sense, but at the same time it sounded completely insane! What about the Kennedy assassination? The sinking of the Estonia? 9/11?
Yes, he’d got it all on the brain.
Big time!
He was scouring the
