Joona Linna Crime Series Books 1-3: The Hypnotist, The Nightmare, The Fire Witness. Lars Kepler

       9

       tuesday, december 8: morning

      Detective Joona Linna orders a large sandwich with Parmesan, bresaola, and sun-dried tomatoes from the little breakfast bar called Il Caffè on Bergsgatan. The café has just opened, and the girl who takes his order has not yet had time to unpack the warm bread from the large brown bags in which it’s been delivered from the bakery.

      Having inspected the crime scenes in Tumba late the night before, and in the middle of the night visited the hospital in Solna and spoken to the two doctors Daniella Richards and Erik Maria Bark, he had called Reconnaissance once more. “Have you found Evelyn?” he’d asked.

      “No.”

      “You realise we have to find her before the murderer does.”

      “We’re trying, but—”

      “Try harder,” Joona had growled. “Maybe we can save a life.”

      Now, after three hours of sleep, Joona gazes out the steamed-up window, waiting for his breakfast. Sleet is falling on the town hall. The food arrives. Joona grabs a pen on the glass counter, signs the credit slip, and hurries out.

      The sleet intensifies as he makes his way along Bergsgatan, the warm sandwich in one hand and his indoor hockey stick and gym bag in the other.

      “We’re playing Recon Tuesday night,” Joona had told his colleague Benny Rubin. “We have no chance. They’re going to kill us.”

      The National CID indoor hockey team loses whenever they play the local police, the traffic police, the maritime police, the national special intervention squad, the SWAT team, or Recon. But it gives them a good excuse to drown their sorrows together in the pub, as they like to say, afterwards.

      Joona has no idea as he walks alongside police headquarters and past the big entrance doors that he will neither play hockey nor go to the pub this Tuesday. Someone has scrawled a swastika on the entrance sign to the courtroom. He strides on towards the Kronoberg holding cells and watches the tall gate close silently behind a car. Snowflakes are melting on the big window of the guardroom. Joona walks past the police swimming pool and cuts across the yard toward the gabled end of the vast complex. The façade resembles dark copper, burnished but underwater. Flags droop wetly from their poles. Hurrying between two metal plinths and beneath the high frosted glass roof, Joona stamps the snow off his shoes and swings open the doors to the National Police Board.

      The central administrative authority in Sweden, the National Police Board is made up of the National Criminal Investigation Department, the Security Service, the Police Training Academy, and the National Forensic Laboratory. The National CID is Sweden’s only central operational police body, with the responsibility for dealing with serious crime on a national and international level. For nine years, Joona Linna has worked here as a detective.

      Joona walks along the corridor, taking off his cap and shaking it at his side, glancing in passing at the notices on the bulletin board about yoga classes, somebody who’s trying to sell a camper, information from the trade union, and scheduling changes for the shooting club. The floor, which was mopped before the snowstorm began, is already soiled with bootprints and dried, muddy slush.

      The door of Benny Rubin’s office is ajar. A sixty-year-old man with a grey moustache and wrinkled, sun-damaged skin, he is involved in the work around communication headquarters and the change-over to Rakel, the new radio system. He sits at his computer with a cigarette behind his ear, typing with agonising slowness.

      “I’ve got eyes in the back of my head,” he says, all of a sudden.

      “Maybe that explains why you’re such a lousy typist,” jokes Joona.

      Benny’s latest find is an advertising poster for the airline SAS: a fairly exotic young woman in a minute bikini suggestively sipping some kind of fruit-garnished cocktail from a straw. Benny was so incensed by the ban on calendars featuring pin-up girls that most people thought he was going to resign, but instead he has devoted himself to a silent and stubborn protest for many years. Technically, nothing forbids the display of advertisements for airlines, pictures of ice princesses with their legs spread wide apart, lithe and flexible yoga instructors, or ads for underwear from H&M. On the first day of each month, Benny changes what he has on the wall. The variety of ways that he avoids the ban is dazzling. Joona remembers a poster of the short-distance runner Gail Devers, in tight shorts, and a daring lithograph by the artist Egon Schiele that depicted a red-haired woman sitting with her legs apart in a pair of fluffy bloomers.

      Moving on, Joona stops to say hello to his assistant, Anja Larsson. She sits at the computer with her mouth half open, her round face wearing an expression of such concentration that he decides not to disturb her. Instead, he hangs up his wet coat just inside the door of his office, switches on the advent star in the window, and glances quickly through his in-box: a message about the working environment, a suggestion about low-energy lightbulbs, an inquiry from the prosecutor’s office, and an invitation from Human Resources to a Christmas meal at Skansen.

      Joona leaves his office, goes into the meeting room, and sits in his usual place to unwrap his sandwich and eat.

      Petter Näslund stops in the corridor, laughs smugly, and leans on the doorframe with his back to the meeting room. A muscular, balding man of about thirty-five, Petter is a detective with a position of special responsibility and Joona’s immediate boss. Everyone knows that Joona is eminently more qualified than Petter. But they know, too, that he is also singularly disinterested in administrative duties and the rat race involved in climbing the ranks.

      For several years Petter has been flirting with Magdalena Ronander without noticing her troubled expression and constant attempts to switch to a more businesslike tone. Magdalena has been a detective in the Reconnaissance Division for four years, and she intends to complete her legal training before she turns thirty.

      Lowering his voice suggestively, Petter questions Magdalena about her choice of service weapon, wondering aloud how often she changes the barrel because the grooves have become too worn. Ignoring his coarse innuendoes, she tells him she keeps a careful note of the number of shots fired.

      “But you like the big rough ones, don’t you?” says Petter.

      “No, not at all, I use the Glock Seventeen,” she replies, “because it can cope with a lot of the defence team’s nine-millimetre ammunition.”

      “Don’t you use the Czech?”

      “Yes, but I prefer the M39B,” she says firmly, moving around him to enter the meeting room. He follows, and they both sit and greet Joona. “And you can get the Glock with gunpowder gas ejectors next to the sight,” she continues. “It reduces the recoil a hell of a lot, and you can get the next shot in much more quickly.”

      “What does our Moomintroll think?” asks Petter, with a nod in Joona’s direction.

      Joona smiles sweetly and fixes his icily clear grey eyes on them. “I think it doesn’t make any difference. I think other elements decide the outcome,” he says.

      “So you don’t need to be able to shoot.” Petter grins.

      “Joona is a good shot,” says Magdalena.

      “Good at everything.” Petter sighs.

      Magdalena ignores Petter and turns to Joona instead. “The biggest advantage with the compensated Glock is that the gunpowder gas can’t be seen from the barrel when it’s dark.”

      “Quite right,” says Joona.

      Wearing a pleased expression, she opens her black leather case and begins leafing through her papers. Benny comes in, sits down, looks around at everyone,