Bad Blood: A Crime Novel (3 page)

“This is going to be complicated,” he said. “The Arlanda and Märsta police are already at the airport. Hordes of armed officers have been rushing around in the international arrivals hall, threatening tourists with aggravated assault. I think I’ve gotten rid of them now. We’re up against a man who’ll stop at nothing. That much I’ve understood—he’s a well-programmed murder machine, and if he starts to suspect anything, we’re risking a bloodbath and hostages and an all-around worst-case scenario. In other words, we must act with great care.”

Hultin paged through pieces of paper.

“There are more than 150 people on the plane, and we can’t very well shove them all into some old hangar and check them one by one. We would probably effectively kill several of them. So instead, we’ll have careful passport checks, done under our supervision of course; and we’ll do extreme vigilance over all white middle-aged men—which will probably be quite a few people on a typical business-class flight.

“In addition, customs has provided us with digital cameras that allow the person who inspects passports to discreetly photograph each passport photo. The immigration officers won’t be alone in their booths; you will be there behind them. You’ll be practically invisible from the outside. I’ve gotten the number of passport control booths reduced to two, which will cause some disruption in the flow of people, but it makes it possible for us to have an overview of the flow. Kerstin and Viggo will be located in these two booths. I urge you to be meticulous, attentive, and careful. Take action only in reaction to very strong indications; otherwise use the radio.

“The risk shouldn’t be as great during the passage through the concourse from the gate to customs, which is critical in and of itself, because there’s no exit there. It’s a straight stretch through bars and boutiques. I’ve placed the Märsta police in the concourse, under the leadership of Arto. So you, Arto, will go up to the gate in question, where a gang of Märsta detectives will be waiting. Above all, make sure they remain invisible. Your task is to try to make sure that no one deviates off course on their way to the passport check. Place people in the bathrooms, in boutiques, in all accessible locations—there aren’t many. The rest of us will be spread out around the terminal and outside. Because if anything is going to happen, it will happen there; everything indicates that that’s the case. Arto’s job is really just to herd the whole flock to passport control. Shepherd.”

“Are there any other planes arriving at the same time?” Arto Söderstedt asked in his resonant, almost exaggerated Finland-Swedish accent, looking doubtfully down at the E4 highway, which they were following like a helium-filled barge on the Danube River. “Black sheep,” he muttered nearly inaudibly. Hjelm heard him and gave him a cutting side-glance.

Hultin took another deep dive into the wind-whipped sea of paper.

“No other arrivals in the vicinity, no.”

“And the armed guys?” Nyberg said.

“They’ll be immediately accessible. But only if necessary.”

“Säpo?” said Söderstedt.

Söderstedt was eager to bring up Säpo, the Security Police. The line between the unit’s jurisdiction and Säpo’s was incredibly narrow, which meant that there were frequent overlaps, violations of taboos, and conflicts. The way Säpo had horribly sabotaged the investigation in the Power Murders was fresh in everyone’s mind.

“They’ll probably be there,” Hultin nodded with a sigh. “But since they never tell us much, we’ll act as though they
weren’t
there. Anyway, as you know, there’s only one exit out of the arrivals hall, which divides into two parts like a T via the customs area, just inside the main entrance. We need one man on either side just outside: Gunnar, Jorge. Paul and I will try to look like nonpolice somewhere near the baggage claim, to get an overview of the arrivals hall itself. This means that there will be something of a four-phase control: first the gate, Arto with the other men; passport control, Kerstin and Viggo; the arrivals hall, Paul and me; and finally the exit, Gunnar and Jorge. Is this clear?”

“The placement is crystal clear,” said Hjelm. “The question is how it will survive confrontation by hundreds of hung-over, jet-lagged passengers.”

Hultin let this remark pass without comment. “All of it depends, then, on our being able to move quickly from Plan A to Plan B. If we get the name our man is flying under from the United States
before
the passengers get to passport control, then
that’s
where we have to focus our attention, and then we have to take him on the spot. Is that clear? That’s Plan A. But if he’s changed identities in the plane, or if we’re not told his name, then the responsibility that Viggo and Kerstin have in the booths increases radically. That’s Plan B. As it is now, Plan B is in effect. But we haven’t the slightest idea yet who the fuck he is. Right now it’s … seven thirty-four, and at any moment”—his cell phone rang with a silly Mickey Mouse ringtone, which Hultin suppressed with a swift grab—“Right. Special Agent Larner will call.”

He answered the phone and turned away. The E4 ran on through exhaust-fertilized fields that were dotted here and there with a bravely struggling tractor. It was a crystal-clear late summer day, shot through with indescribable sparks that portended fall.
Summer is over
, Hjelm thought balefully.
Autumn over Sweden
. His inner voice trembled forlornly.

An exceedingly misshapen complex of buildings towered in the distance, beyond the fields.

“Arlandastad, right?” Kerstin Holm shouted.

“Unmistakably!” Arto Söderstedt shouted back.

“About five minutes left,” said Gunnar Nyberg.

“But why?” Hultin’s jaw suddenly dropped. Then he listened for another moment and ended the call.

“No,” he said, “they aren’t having any success in getting the name. It seems the killer canceled the flight in the murdered Swede’s name, then immediately booked the empty seat in a fake name. So that’s the name we’ll have to go on, and I don’t get why it’s taking such a fucking long time to find who booked that last ticket. Plan B is in effect until further notice.”

The helicopter turned away from the E4 and swung over the forests of Arlanda. They landed at Arlanda International twenty-four minutes before flight SK 904 from Newark was due, and five minutes later all members of the A-Unit had settled into position.

Chavez stationed himself inside the doors of the main entrance. Having plowed his way through a crowd of soon-to-be and former tourists, who were not yet particularly repellent, he found a bench next to a Coke machine where he had a good view of his entire area of responsibility: the far half of the exit from the customs hall. He turned on his eagle eye. His level of ambition was, as usual, just above the maximum setting.

Some thirty seconds later Gunnar Nyberg arrived, a bit depleted by the helicopter ride. He sat down at a café table, his face covered in both cold and hot sweat, and turned toward Chavez and the other half of the exit. Needing extra energy, he ordered a bottle of sports drink, of a brand he recognized from his former career as a body builder. As he downed the half-liter in one gulp, he realized that these days the drink was prepared with what was wrung out of left-behind workout clothes collected from all the world’s gyms. It was possible that he restored his fluid balance; it was certain that he restored the balance of his nausea.

Between the two men, a quintet who were not entirely difficult to identify as officials trod, against the current, in through the customs area. Hultin stopped and exchanged a few words with the palpably nervous customs employees and joined the other four A-Unit members inside the arrivals hall. He placed himself last in a winding line to the currency exchange, where he had a good view of the hall. The others continued toward passport control, until Hjelm fell away and found himself standing and staring like an idiot at a baggage carousel that wasn’t moving. Seldom has a policeman looked so much like a policeman,
and the harder he tried not to look like a one, the more he did. When he felt the blue lights start circling on top of his head, he gave up the charade and was more successful. He sat down on a bench and paged through a brochure, the contents of which would remain eternally unknown to him.

At passport control, the remaining officers were met by a senior official who admitted Norlander and Holm into their respective booths, where they perched on small, uncomfortable stools in the shadows of the immigration officers. Their presence was hardly noticeable from the outside, and if it was, it probably wouldn’t seem abnormal. They settled in, in anticipation of the coming rush.

Finally, Arto Söderstedt shoved his way through passport control and slalomed among scattered stragglers up the escalator to the concourse. He didn’t need to consult the arrivals board to identify the right gate. At gate ten, he found a collection of stubbornly recognizable men who were all but neon-blinking “police.” Söderstedt called together the Märsta officers and assigned them more discreet positions. The restrooms were the only truly secluded areas, so he placed one officer to each restroom and made sure that all the staff areas were properly blocked off. That left the duty-free boutiques, bar, and café. He stationed an officer by the name of Adolfsson at the bar, where he managed to look completely out of place, which was an achievement.

Söderstedt sat down at gate ten and waited. The concourse was still relatively empty. Scattered groups of passengers from earlier flights were wandering around.

A slight change in the state of things induced Söderstedt to push the loathsome little earpiece into his ear; he always felt as if it disappeared deep in among the creases of his brain. The fateful little word
LANDED
was now blinking after the notation
SK 904 NEWARK
on the arrivals board. Söderstedt looked to
the right and through the large panorama window saw the plane roll by.

He pressed a button inside his belt, cleared his throat, and said, “The game has landed.”

He stood, straightened his tie, slung the bag over his shoulder, and waited with his eyes closed. Children were snaking back and forth between his legs; parents were yelling, sometimes heart-piercingly and sometimes just piercingly. Experienced wearers of suits kept second-class passengers at a distance with well-practiced smiles.

He remained still. People hardly noticed him. He didn’t attract attention. He never had.

Then the line started moving rather quickly. The blockage was sorted out, and he sauntered calmly through the fuselage of the plane, then along the metal jetway, and through the swaying walkway.

He stepped into gate ten. He was here.

Now it would come full circle.

Now he would be able to start for real.

It was interesting to see how many faces one’s brain could file away before they started to blur together. Söderstedt found that his limit was as low as fifty. The stream of passengers arriving from Newark was mostly an anonymous, gray mass, and sure enough, most of them were middle-aged white men traveling solo.

He couldn’t make out any signs of variation. The horde shuffled more or less as one down the concourse. Some slipped into a restroom; others stopped at a boutique; still others bought sandwiches at the café—and had their appetites spoiled at the
cash register. A few ended up in the bar and attempted to converse with the human waxwork Adolfsson, who seemed about to pass out.

A tourist attraction
, Söderstedt thought.

The first Newark travelers descended the stairs down to passport control.

“They’re coming,” he said out loud and, with that, found himself to be the only deviation from the norm.

The words echoed in Kerstin Holm’s ears like the declaration of peace after World War II. She had been mentally composing her letter of resignation from the police, inspired by the stealth-farting immigration officer in the gas chamber that was their booth. This wasn’t what she was meant for. But then the first American faces peered in through the half-matte glass pane and blew away her sensations of odor. The immigration officer neatly guided each passport into a small, computer-connected camera device and discreetly photographed it. Each photo and name were immediately registered on a computer. If nothing else, they would have a picture of the killer.

Face after face swept by. In every smile and every yawn she tried to imagine a killer without a conscience. A persistent tic in the eye of a man who had been extremely reluctant to remove his Ray-Bans
almost
convinced her to call Hultin. Other than that, all was utterly tranquil.

Viggo Norlander’s booth experience was a bit different. He was the only member of the A-Unit who’d had a wonderful year. After the fiasco during the Power Murders, when he’d run amok and been crucified by the mafia in Estonia, he’d begun to work out. He got a hair transplant and turned once again to the fairer sex, which caused his stubborn bachelor life to take on new dimensions. His stigmatized hands had proved an asset in that respect. Unlike Holm’s, the immigration officer in whose booth he had ended up was young and female, and he had flirted with
her uninhibitedly. By the time the Americans arrived,
she
had practically finished composing her sexual harassment report.

But in a second Norlander forgot her—he was immediately on the ball. Pumped with adrenaline, he thought he recognized a serial killer in every passenger, and when he notified Hultin of his third suspect, a coal-black, eighteen-year-old junkie, he received such a sharp reprimand that it reminded him forcefully of his past, and he became more discerning in his judgment, as he put it to himself.

He had been sitting in browbeaten silence for a few minutes when a well-dressed man of about forty-five with a confident smile handed his passport over to the immigration official, who gallantly photographed it along with the name Robert E. Norton. When the man caught sight of Norlander over her shoulder, his smile vanished abruptly; he blinked and peered around uncontrollably. Then he snatched back his passport and dashed away.

“I’ve got him!” Norlander yelled into his invisible miniradio. “He’s getting away,” he continued a bit inconsistently, then he threw open the door and lit out through the arrivals hall after Robert E. Norton. Norton ran like a man possessed, his bag thumping hard against his shoulder. Norlander ran like a man even more possessed. He sent women who were in his way sprawling; he stomped on children’s feet; he broke duty-free liquor bottles.