Dark Music

ONE
JULY 19, 2003
It was meaningless bullshit. All of it.
Chief Inspector Fransson was delivering a long, peevish exegesis about what an idiot the assistant commissioner was and Micaela Vargas could no longer listen. It was too hot in the car, and the splendid mansions of Djursholm lay outside.
“Did we go past it?” she said.
“Calm down, young lady—­this isn’t exactly my usual neighborhood,” Fransson said, fanning himself with his hand.
They drove on down toward the water, stopping at a tall gate with a CCTV camera and an entry phone. It opened after a few words from Fransson and they rolled into a large courtyard, past a fountain and up to a sumptuous mansion built from ochre-coloured stone, its large windows and colonnaded frontage overlooking the sea.
Micaela felt more nervous still. She was a local community beat cop, but this summer she’d become part of a murder inquiry because she possessed certain knowledge about the suspected assailant, Giuseppe Costa. She had mostly been tasked with running errands and doing basic checks. Nevertheless, she had been permitted to come along today to visit Professor Rekke, who would be able to assist them with their investigation—­or so the assistant commissioner said.
White stone steps led up to the house, and standing on the terrace at the top was a woman in ivory cotton trousers and a blue blouse that fluttered in the wind.
“I suppose that must be the wife,” Fransson said.
The woman looked like a film star. Micaela got out of the car feeling sweaty and uncomfortable, and crossed the raked gravel to the house.
TWO
FOUR DAYS EARLIER
More often than not, Micaela would arrive at work early. But that morning, she was sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast although it was past nine o’clock. The phone rang. It was Inspector Jonas Beijer.
“We have to go see the assistant commissioner,” he said.
He didn’t say why. But it was clear it wasn’t optional. She went to the mirror in the hall and pulled on her sweatshirt, an extra-­large one that sat on her loosely. You look like you want to hide, her brother Lucas would have said. But she thought it suited her. She brushed her hair and combed down her bangs so that they almost concealed her eyes, then headed off to the Tunnelbana.
Micaela had just turned twenty-six. There weren’t many people on the Tunnelbana. She had a whole group of seats to herself and was soon lost in her own thoughts.
It was no surprise that the case interested the top brass. The murder itself might have been an outburst of madness, a drunken act. But there were other elements that explained the attention on the investigation. The deceased—­Jamal Kabir—­had been a soccer referee and a refugee from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and he had been beaten to death with a rock after a junior soccer game at Grimsta IP. It went without saying that Assistant Commissioner Falkegren wanted a piece of the action.
She got off at Solna Centrum and continued toward the police station on Sundbybergsvägen, thinking to herself that today was the day she would put her foot down and tell everyone what she thought was wrong with the investigation.
Martin Falkegren was the youngest assistant police commissioner in the country; he was forward-looking, and wanted to keep up with what was new. People said he wore his ideas like medals across his chest, which he guessed was not meant kindly. But he was proud of his openness, and this time, yet again, he had tried a different approach. They might get angry. But, as he had told his wife, it was the best lecture he had ever attended. It was worth a try.
He set out extra chairs and bottles of Ramlösa mineral water as well as two bowls of liquorice his secretary had bought on her mini-cruise to Finland, and listened for the sound of footsteps in the hallway. No-one seemed to be on their way yet. For a moment he pictured the investigating officer, Carl Fransson, standing before him, with his hefty body and critical gaze. Frankly, he thought to himself, he couldn’t blame him. No detective wants the bosses involved in his inquiry.
But these were special circumstances. The murderer, a batshit, narcissistic Italian, was manipulating the shirts off their backs. It was an embarrassment—­nothing less.
“Sorry, am I the first to arrive?”
It was the young Chilean officer. He couldn’t recall her name, but he ­remembered that Fransson wanted her off the team—­he’d said she was a pain.
“Welcome. I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure,” he said, proffering a hand.
She took it in a firm handshake and he looked her over from head to foot. She was short and stocky, with thick curly hair and long bangs combed down over her forehead. Her eyes were big and restless and shone with a dark intensity. There was something about her that immediately attracted him yet also kept him at a distance, and he was tempted to hold on to her hand a little longer. But her expression warned him against that, and he muttered instead:
“You know Costa, don’t you?”
“I know of him,” she said. “We both come from Husby.”
“How would you describe him?”
“He’s a bit of a showman. He used to sing to us outside the flats. He can get pretty aggressive when he drinks.”
“Yes, that much is obvious. But why is he lying to our faces?”
“I don’t know whether he’s lying,” she said, and he didn’t like that.
It was inconceivable that they might have the wrong guy. The evidence was substantial and they were preparing to charge him. All that was missing was a confession. But he didn’t have time to tell her that. He heard the others approaching along the hallway and stood up to congratulate them.
“Good job. I’m proud of you guys,” he said, and while he might have tried harder to include the Chilean girl, he did not correct himself.
His attempt to sound collegial was unsuccessful.
“What a senseless incident. And all because the referee didn’t award a penalty.”
He was just trying to get the conversation started, but Fransson seized the opportunity to lecture him and said it was far more complicated than that. There was a clear motive, he said, which might not be a motive to the likes of you and me, but it was to an alcoholic soccer dad without any impulse control who lived for his son’s successes on the field.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said. “But my God . . . I saw the game tape. Costa was completely insane, while the referee . . . What’s his name again?”
“Jamal Kabir.”
“. . . while Jamal Kabir was the picture of calm. Talk about poise.”
“That’s what they said.”
“And him waving his hands. Elegant, right? As if he were controlling the whole game.”
“It is a rather unusual style, it’s true,” Fransson said, at which point Martin Falkegren turned his gaze away from him and resolved to regain control of the conversation.
He wasn’t there for chit-chat.
Micaela fidgeted. The atmosphere was not exactly relaxed, despite Falkegren trying his best to be one of the guys. But that was a hopeless project from the very start, and not just because he always smiled. He wore a shiny suit and loafers with tassels.
“How’s our evidence looking otherwise, Carl?” he said. “I spoke briefly with . . .”
Falkegren looked at her. But he couldn’t remember her name, or his thoughts were elsewhere, because he left the sentence hanging until Fransson interjected and outlined the evidence. As always when he spoke, it sounded convincing, as if all they needed was a verdict. That might have been why the assistant commissioner wasn’t really listening. He muttered:
“Absolutely. None of the evidence is directly weakened by the observations in the P7.”
“I think that’s right,” Fransson said, and Micaela looked up from her notepad.
The P7, she thought. The damn P7. She had gotten hold of it some ten days ago and still wasn’t entirely clear what it was. It seemed to be a report on the preliminary examination conducted by the forensic psychiatrist. She had read it with a certain degree of expectation, and had been disappointed almost right away. Antisocial personality disorder was the conclusion. Costa was, in other words, some sort of psychopath. She didn’t believe it.