Free Europa Blues by Arne Dahl Page A

unison.
    The two women glanced at one another.
    ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ Chavez said firmly. ‘At the very least, the whole thing screams underworld. He’s not in our databases, which means he’s probably foreign. If he was Swedish, the systems would’ve gone crazy with matches.’
    ‘So what happened to him?’ Hjelm continued. ‘Someone chased him through the Djurgården woods. He shot at them, but there’s no indication of him hitting anyone other than Lisa Altbratt. He made it to the fence and decided to climb up, even though there was a little path right alongside the fence. What does that tell us? Desperation, maybe? Blind panic? He ripped his fingers to shreds on the fence, didn’t care about grabbing the barbed wire – it cut deep into his hands – and then threw himself into the wolf enclosure. Luckily for him, they seem to have been well fed and content.’
    ‘One thing,’ Kerstin Holm said pensively. ‘
Was
there even anyone following him? Maybe it was just some kind of drug-induced psychosis? The only thing suggesting a crime is surely the rope around his leg. But maybe we should assume he had that there for some other reason. I don’t know, sexual maybe – some sort of bondage thing? He might have just been running from his own demons and fallen into the wolverines in blind panic?’
    There was silence. Chavez leafed through his papers.
    ‘The rope had been chewed off,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s no evidence it was tied around both legs, so it might have just been around one of them. Some kind of decoration. But,’ he added more loudly, ‘is that really likely?’
    ‘The key thing’s got to be whether there’s any sign of anyone else there,’ Holm continued. ‘It could be in a number of places, if I’ve followed everything you’ve been saying: outside Skansen, on the fence, in with the wolves, on the wall at the edge of the wolf enclosure, on the ground between the wolves and the wolverines, in with the wolverines. It doesn’t seem too likely we’d find anything in with the wolverines, but what about the other places? If his blood is all over the fence then why don’t we have anything from whoever was following him? Why didn’t they leave a single trace behind?’
    Chavez tore his papers.
    ‘Apparently there aren’t even any clear footprints from him. In the wolf enclosure, the ground’s practically all rock between the fence and the wall. There’s no trace of him on the asphalt – not on the fence around the wolverine enclosure, either.’
    ‘But in with the wolverines, surely his footprints have got to be there?’ said Holm. ‘I mean, he was writing in the earth with his fingers. It must be porous. Is there no sign of him there, by the letters?’
    Chavez nodded – the way a man who has missed something nods.
    ‘I know, Kerstin, but there aren’t any. There are wolverine prints, a general kind of chaos, traces of the actual ingestion … but no footprints. It rained that night, remember that.’
    ‘But not enough to get rid of the letters …’
    ‘He might’ve been thrown down once he was already tied up,’ said Hjelm. ‘If he was thrown in, maybe he got injured. All he managed to do was write that word which, for some reason, was more important than getting up. And then the wolverines appeared.’
    ‘And there’s no sign of anyone else having been there at all?’ Kerstin Holm persisted. ‘Not even on the fence?’
    ‘No,’ Chavez replied doggedly.
    ‘So let’s try to work out what happened with the wolves,’ said Hjelm. ‘Let’s imagine he got rid of the gun because he’d emptied the magazine. Not a smart move, but understandable. Blind fury. Then why did he tear his expensive chain off, that ridiculous extension of his penis, and throw it to the wolves?’
    ‘Maybe that’s just another sign of drug psychosis,’ Holm said. Hjelm thought he knew her well enough to realise she was now doing it just to annoy Jorge, who had a dark look in