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

quite surprised to open the door to “Supreme Central Command” and find not only everyone already gathered there but Waldemar Mörner himself sitting at Hultin’s lectern, drumming his fingers.
    Because he hadn’t had a chance to prepare himself for the confrontation, he burst into spontaneous peals of laughter. This didn’t go over very well. Mörner looked audaciously fresh, unaffected by the incident at Arlanda, but Söderstedt’s laughter caused him to put a small, permanent mental mark on Söderstedt’s record. He wrinkled one eyebrow for a short but murderous second. Then he was himself again.
    “I hope lateness won’t become a habit for you, Söderstedt,” he said sternly. “We’re facing a task of a nature we have never come close to in modern times in this country. But
tempus fugit
, and we will too. Don’t allow the four complaints from Arlanda to disturb your work; instead let’s move forward with the extensive investigation.”
    “Four?” said Norlander.
    “Currently,” Hultin said neutrally.
    Mörner didn’t hear them but continued with glowing passion: “After extensive work in the upper echelons, I have persuadedthem that this case should be entrusted into your warm hands, and I sincerely hope that you don’t fall short of the confidence that I have placed in you. Inasmuch as a mustering of strength is needed, I urge you to develop expanded horizons and widened scopes. Your joint capital is firmly rooted in the visions of the management team, and the future looks bright. The light is visible at the end of the tunnel. Ahead of your great burden lies a fair reward. Seize the day, make the most of every minute, pull out all the stops. Work hard now, gentlemen. And lady, of course. Lady. The welfare of Sweden rests in your hands.”
    With these words of wisdom, Mörner departed, glancing at the clock.
    The room fell silent. Language itself seemed to have become constipated. After this address, no word would be innocent. Any one might become a weapon of murder aimed at the heart of the Swedish language.
    “With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Hultin said neutrally, grasping wisely at a proverb in order to normalize the linguistic situation. “I have spent the night with the Kentucky Killer,” he continued.
    “Then he ought to be easy to locate,” said Söderstedt, who hadn’t quite collected himself yet.
    Hultin ignored him. “A summary has been distributed to your offices. There is an enormous amount of material, and somewhere in there is the hidden link to Sweden. My examination didn’t turn up anything new, but if you have extra time, you can study it in detail. I’m afraid, however, that the killer will have to start up again for us to obtain any adequate clues.”
    “What if he’s come here to retire?” Gunnar Nyberg longed profoundly for retirement himself. “Then we’d sit here twiddling our thumbs until
we’re
retired.”
    The thought did not seem entirely repellent to Nyberg.He had been shot in the throat during the hunt for the Power Murderer. The industrious church vocalist had been close to having sung his last note. After six months’ convalescence, he had returned to the Nacka church choir; his bass had become deeper, taken on a more extensive tone, and these days he sang in jubilation, less at the benevolence of God, even if that were in his thoughts, than at the fact that he had a voice at all. For Nyberg, the Kentucky Killer’s vocal cord pincers were identical to the devil’s pitchfork. He ran the risk of becoming personally engaged in a way that he carefully avoided these days, in anticipation of his retirement. His problem was that that lay twenty years in the future.
    “He came here with fresh blood on his hands,” Hultin answered. “I don’t think that’s how a person ends his career. He could very well have slunk in completely unnoticed, but his craving got the upper hand. No, he has some sort of target—”
    “That’s something I’ve