Free Bad Blood: A Crime Novel by Arne Dahl Page A

fantasy, nor the empty roads, nor the absolute lack of culture. And when it came to the children, he had produced a small list of arguments for use by inner-city parents when aggressive suburbanites pressed them up against the wall with accusations of child abuse. Memories of childhood follow a person throughout his entire life, and if these memories are of playgrounds, gravel lots, and lonely roads rather than diverse building facades, church steeples, and people, then that’s a deciding factor. In the city the likelihood that a child will get a good education is greater, visits to the theater and museums are considerably more numerous, access to activities is enormous, encounters with people of all sorts are legion. In general, in the city one’s powers of observation and vigilance are developed in a way that lacks a counterpart outside.
    What struck Söderstedt now, as he sauntered through this very city, was that this whole manner of thinking was dictated by a drummed-in guilty conscience.
    What kind of societal stereotypes truly determined the picture of happiness?
    Not, in any case, the five-room apartment on Bondegatan where the seven-person household was without doubt a bit cramped. The question was whether it really mattered that much.
    Since Anja had taken care of the day’s deliveries of their children,he permitted himself to walk from Söder to Kungsholmen; he had a feeling that it would be the last time he would be allowed that luxury for a long time. When he stepped into the police station on that beautiful early-autumn morning, he continued straight to the service vehicle pool and checked out a robust Audi. He pocketed the keys and stepped into the elevator.
    Arto Söderstedt caught a glimpse of himself in the elevator mirror. He’d made it through another summer without getting skin cancer, he thought, looking for some wood to knock on. He had the kind of skin that only Finns and Englishmen have, he thought with jovial prejudice, the absolutely white-through kind that doesn’t have a chance of turning anything other than red in the sun. It was the fourth of September, and he had just managed to take the crucial leap from SPF 15, the variety for newborns, to SPF 12.
    Actually, he liked autumn best.
    Except maybe not this autumn.
    He had read up on serial killers in connection with the Power Murders, and as usual he found himself giving a few lectures to the group. Since then he had rationed them out. He was afraid that the time for rationing would soon be over. Sweden’s last levee had broken, and violent crime of an international character, to cite a familiar source, had arrived. It would hardly be an isolated incident.
    The fact was, he recognized the Kentucky Killer. He had read about him and vaguely remembered him. He had been one of the first in a long series of such killers.
    There was something strange about his modus operandi, something that didn’t really match up with the profile of a serial killer. Those terrifying pincers … he couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was wrong. He needed to speak directly with Ray Larner at the FBI, but he didn’t know how to get past Hultin. Certainly Hultin was the best boss he’d ever worked under,but he lacked Söderstedt’s own insights into the gray areas of the workings of justice. Söderstedt had once been a defense attorney, one of the most prominent in Finland, and he had defended the worst of the worst in the upper echelons. Then his conscience had rebelled; he’d quit, fled to Sweden, enrolled in police college at a slightly advanced age, and settled down as a policeman in Västerås. He had gotten it into his head that an attorney’s role as a vicarious criminal could be useful in this case. There had to be some sort of identification in order to catch a serial killer, he knew that.
    So lost was he in his reflections about inner-city parents and serial killers that he didn’t notice he was late. Which wasn’t like him. So he was