Twenty-four

Gusten Ander had no blood ties to the infamous murderer, the one who was the last man to be executed in Sweden. The fact that they shared the same name was something that Ander had had pointed out to him many times, but more so before. Now it was rare that anyone joked about his name. It was because of the worsening school system, he believed, or because oral storytelling traditions had changed. One hundred years ago the hunt for Alfred Ander and the dramatic execution was the climax of a thrilling tale. Now it was everyday fare. Who reacted if someone was executed? That happened on TV every day.

Therefore he was amazed when his young opponent, after some hesitation, posed the question. Gusten Ander smiled enigmatically and continued setting up his pieces.

“Could be,” he said after a while.

The young man, Tobias Sandström, who Ander judged to be about nineteen years, gave him a quick glance, dropped the black queen on the floor, and blushed.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“I’m amazed you’ve heard the story.”

“We read about it at school and of course it’s a pretty exciting thing,” Tobias said and overturned both of Ander’s theories in one blow.

“White or black, that is the question,” he said and held out both hands.

Tobias pointed to the right one and got black. Ander made a move immediately and Tobias started by thinking and that made Ander thoughtful in turn. Is it really so much to think about? he thought irritably.

Then Tobias made his move and Ander countered at once.

“Are you new to the club?” Ander asked and broke one of his own principles: never to begin a personal conversation during a game.

Tobias nodded and moved.

“Recently moved,” he said curtly, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

Ander smiled quietly to himself and made his move.

The unexpected attack came at the eleventh move. But perhaps it wasn’t so unexpected, Ander had seen almost everything, but the way in which the young player proceeded bewildered Ander for several moments.

He countered immediately and was convinced the game would be over in a dozen more moves. He sighed, another strike against his own rules, and waited for the next move, which was what he had foreseen.

A couple of minutes later he lost his second piece. Sandström attacked with a pawn and left the board free for a bishop that now threatened a white knight.

Ander bounced off his chair.

“I have it!” he cried.

All the players in the room looked up in terror. Afterward Jonasson would tell over and over again for those that could be bothered to listen how the silence after Ander’s outburst had felt intensely frightening.

“You are trying the variant from Barcelona!” he said loudly.

Ander looked around the large room. He could not complain about the lack of attention.

“You remember it, right?”

Everyone looked blank except Lind, who was a chess historian of a high order.

Lind left his game, came over, and stopped to study the board.

“Do you remember the name of that Basque?” he asked.

“Sure,” Ander said absently.

“In the middle of a raging civil war. Do you remember what Lundin wrote?” Lind continued, and lost himself in a discussion of the late nineteen thirties. He had written an article about the world championships in Argentina that started on the same day as World War II. As the only member to have played against the legendary Gideon Ståhlberg, and to achieve a draw at that, he felt justified in launching into old anecdotes at any moment.

“You will have to excuse me,” Ander said and turned to his opponent, “but I give up the game.”

“Give up?” Lind said, baffled. “But you have it in the bag!”

“There’s something else that’s more important. Thank you,” he said and stretched out his hand to the astonished Sandström, and immediately departed.

Doubt came as Ander was turning the key in the ignition. Suddenly the idea seemed completely preposterous. How many were familiar with Antonov’s exhibition match from 1937?

He himself had read about it during the sixties and been completely fascinated. Not only the frame of civil war and gunfire in the streets between the different factions on the republican side—the process of the tournament itself and especially the match between Antonov and Urberuaga.

From what he could recall Antonov was as old as the century and had been a grand master for many years. He had played all of the greats. The Basque, who came from Ea, a small coastal village outside Bilbao, had recently turned twenty and was completely unknown in the chess world.

Ander rolled out from the Fyris School’s parking lot, driving past the half finished new police building, and checked the time. He knew that it was Lindell’s investigation. But could he call her this late?

He and Lindell had not had much to do with one another. Of course they had met on occasion and had collaborated to some extent on some previous cases, but not more than that. If it had been an older, male colleague he would not have hesitated. As it was it felt strange to call a woman at half past nine in the evening.

He decided to call Ottosson instead. He knew the old wolf well. They had even played bandy together, thirty years—and almost as many kilos—ago.

He called the communications exchange and got Ottosson’s home number. If his chess theory was correct Ottosson would have nothing against getting this call so late.

Luckily it was Ottosson himself who answered.

“Hi Otto, this is Ander. I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

He realized how idiotic the question was. To call a policeman with a work-related question was to disturb him, it was that simple, and he corrected himself right away.

“Of course I am, but this is important. It’s about the serial killer. I think I know who the final target will be.”

“This sounds like something,” Ottosson said and Ander could not tell from his voice how imposed upon he felt.

“It’s Queen Silvia.”

Ottosson reaction to Ander’s explanation was unanticipated. Ander had to hold the cell phone ten centimeters from his ear in order not to be deafened by his colleague’s peals of laughter.

“I’m serious,” he said when Ottosson had collected himself somewhat.

“Have you been drinking?”

“You know I haven’t,” Ander said sharply, “do you want to hear me out?”

“Okay, I can tell this at the club later. I never have any good jokes to contribute.”

Ten minutes later Ottosson was bent over in the hall clumsily tying his shoes. Asta Ottosson stood behind him, looking at her husband with a mixture of irritation and tenderness.

“Is it the Queen’s Lifeguards coming to the rescue? Do you want any help with those laces?”

Ottosson straightened up, red in the face.

“Ander is no court jester,” he said. “Certainly the idea sounds completely crazy, but what if it’s true?”

Gusten Ander laid out his hypothesis as methodically as he could. Ottosson immediately explained that he didn’t play chess, so Ander started with the basics. He described the tournament in Barcelona, the commotion the game between Urberuaga and Antonov had caused, and he also summed up the remarkable life of the Basque player.

“You mean that this game is world famous, like Beamon’s long jump in Mexico?” Ottosson asked. “That in my ignorance I’ve overlooked this?”

“Not exactly,” Ander said. “It’s famous in chess but not among the general public.”

“Among chess nerds, in other words.”

Ottosson looked thoughtful. Ander knew that everything weighed in the balance in this moment.

“Is it described in any books?”

Now Ander knew Ottosson was hooked.

“Yes, I’ve probably read about it in six or so articles. There are probably more. I can ask around. You can probably search the Web.”

“Let’s do this,” Ottosson said. “You put together a report about this game, where you can read about it, what’s been written recently. No long history. Can you have it ready tomorrow morning?”

Ander nodded. He would start at once.

“It’s urgent, of course,” Ottosson said. “She’ll be here in three days.”

“What is she doing here?”

“She’s going to open some home,” Ottosson said distractedly and Ander understood that he was thinking about which directions the investigation should now take.

“But can anyone be so damned crazy?” Ottosson burst out suddenly. “It seems so unbelievable, so, what can you say . . . ?”

“. . . so deliberately calculating,” Ander filled in.

“It’s like it’s been taken from an English television series.”

“I never watch crime shows,” Ander said.

“No, you’re too smart for that.” Ottosson chuckled. “You figure everything out twenty moves in advance.”

“Don’t we have to get in touch with the Royal Court?”

“Maybe not just yet. This is such a delicate thing, a slightly daring analysis. We’re going to proceed with this all calm and collected.”

They went their separate ways outside the entrance to the police station. It was close to eleven o’clock in the evening on Tuesday, the twenty-first of October. On the twenty-fourth Queen Silvia was scheduled to come to Uppsala.

After several hundred meters Ottosson stopped short. Vaksala Square lay deserted except for a young couple walking diagonally across it. Ottosson could tell at a glance that they were newly in love. The man had his arm around the woman’s shoulders. They laughed from time to time. Ottosson followed their stroll until they turned the corner by Bodén’s Bicycle Shop in the Gerd block. A block that was now in danger of being torn down because a majority in city government had gotten the idea of building a House of Music right there. It was doubtful if they fully represented the district’s citizens. Ottosson was convinced there would be protests.

Just the other day, outside the bicycle shop, he had run into a scarred social democratic politician who had complained. His career was over but he couldn’t keep from expressing his concern over the state of affairs.

“I’m too old to be told what to do,” he said with a crooked smile and made a sweeping gesture with his cane. “It’s worse with the young ones who have to vote against their conscience.”

“The party whip,” Ottosson said.

The old politician nodded.

“The ones who think differently are forced to go on sick leave when it’s time for a vote in parliament,” he snorted. “Prestige has come into it. I was also behind the House of Music, but now when the costs are getting out of hand you have to say no.”

They parted and the old man was swallowed up by the masses on the square. It was Saturday morning and the shopping rush was on. Ottosson remained standing in his spot for a while and wondered how the old man would have voted if he had still been sitting in city government.

Ottosson suddenly heard a shout from the corner toward Väder-kvarnsgatan and Hjalmar Brantingsgatan. It came from a collection of youths approaching each other from opposite directions. He actually felt a sting of fear. He was alone and would not have a chance if they decided to knock him on the back of the head.

Nothing happened, as it turned out. They met in the middle of the square and the youths went noisily on their way Ottosson walked slowly home, reflecting on Gusten Ander’s theory and what it would mean if they decided to accept it.

Ottosson had a great deal of respect for Ander and his judgment but on the chilly October night it was as if his mind cleared. The unlikely aspect of his colleague’s reasoning—that a serial killer was acting out an old chess game, and moreover had the queen as the ultimate target—was suddenly self-evident.

He realized that he had taken Ander’s theory seriously for a few moments simply because they had so much trouble finding any motive in the three murders. It was no advanced conjecture to think that they were connected, but the question was how? Two single, old farmers and a retired bureaucrat from the university, with horses as his passion, what did they have in common?

That question had been argued back and forth and Ottosson had noticed a certain desperation behind all the contributions.

Ottosson decided to sleep on it and to discuss the question with Ann first thing in the morning.

Asta was reading in bed but lowered her book and gave him a searching look. Ottosson knew he had to first try the idea out on his wife. For decades they had discussed police cases without Ottosson feeling as if he was breaking any code of silence. He knew she would never pass anything along.

Asta Ottosson had almost the same objections that he had raised and that he knew Ann Lindell would come up with.

After Ottosson had taken off his clothes and brushed his teeth, he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and let out a sigh. Asta put her hand on his back. He turned his head and looked at her. It would be wrong to say she was as beautiful as a lily—that might have been true thirty years ago—but at that moment he fell in love with her all over again.

“You’re something, you,” he said and smiled.

“Come on, you old lug, get into bed,” she said.

They lay as close to each other as two people can get.

Before Ottosson fell asleep he thought that Asta and Silvia were probably the same age but that was the extent of their similarities.

Sammy Nilsson refused to look at the clock but he knew it had to be close to one.

His brain was rinsed as clean as a dead tree root at the edge of a northern reservoir. Sometimes he got this image in front of his eyes when he associated something decayed and joyless. It was a childhood memory from the time when he and his father would go fishing in southern Lappland. Once they had gone past a dammed-up lake and stopped for a break. The artificial shore was littered with tree corpses. Hundreds of twisted, white-yellow tree stumps stood out as horrifying as dead animals whose bones bore witness to a slaughter of inconceivable proportions.

These stumps often returned to him in nightmares. The three murder cases that, reasonably speaking, had to be classified as one, appeared to him as something equally terrifying.

Everyone tried in their own way. Sammy’s way was to be systematic. He had an instrument, just like the ViCLAS coordinator at the Uppsala Police. He had long been skeptical about the system but in time the resistance had weakened and now he tried to view the system as the support it was intended to be.

ViCLAS was a Canadian model developed in order to aid in the collection of data so that the investigators could discover similarities in different crime cases. It was thought to deepen and help the investigative work.

When, according to his own application of the ViCLAS system’s extensive format, Sammy Nilsson now at this late hour made a data search in his clean-swept tree-stump brain, four factors came ticking out: access to a car, local knowledge, rapid chain of events, and the absence of a traditional deadly weapon.

The access to a car implicated a large portion of Uppsala’s population, but most likely the killer was not an eighteen-year-old who had borrowed his dad’s Volvo in order to go off on a murder rampage, nor was it a retired person. Probably the perpetrator was between thirty and sixty.

It was most likely a man; few women were serial killers. Sammy Nilsson had seen the statistics.

None of the cases involved a robbery. The motive must have been revenge. But revenge for what? The driving force must have been enormously strong in someone who systematically clubbed three elderly people to death. Three older men, none of whom were known to have an extensive love life or any financial difficulties. He bit his pen and stared out in front of him.

Motive? He stared at the six letters. An honor killer, he thought. Someone who had been deeply humiliated? By two farmers and an academic? Could it have been in grade school? Sammy made a note to check where the three men had gone to school. He thought that Jan-Elis Andersson and Petrus Blomgren were from the area, but what about Palmblad? Could an old wrongdoing some fifty, sixty years back in time be part of the background?

Sammy Nilsson approached the second point on his list, local knowledge. The facts that he was in possession of indicated someone who had lived in Uppsala or the surrounding area for a long time. He had trouble imagining a newcomer scraping together motive enough for three murders. Again a sign that this was old debris that had finally risen to the surface.

An amateur, he determined. In all three cases the murderer could have availed himself of a gun or even some kind of knife. Instead the victims were clubbed down with an unknown object. Ryde had hazarded a heavy iron tool but had ruled out a hammer. The murderer had been forced to come close and had surprised the victims. It was a moment that involved an element of risk.

Or perhaps the murderer was so sure of himself that he felt invincible? A perpetrator who ruled out any form of resistance. What did this say about his profile?

He shuffled the papers together into a neat pile, got up from the table, and looked at the time. In five hours he would have to get up.

Ann Lindell stared out into the darkness. She had fallen asleep shortly before midnight but had been awakened by a strange sound, turned on her lamp, and discovered that it was two o’clock.

The sound had returned several times. At first she had lain in a half daze, then she had awakened. It was a scraping, slightly squeaky noise, impossible to stand.

Her first thought was that Erik had gotten out of bed but when she checked he was sleeping peacefully.

She listened intently. Now it was completely quiet. It was pitch black in the room. She had bought new curtains that effectively kept out all light.

The image of Laura Hindersten came to her. An unusual woman. In some way Ann felt something in common with her. Perhaps only for such a trivial reason that they both lived alone.

Laura Hindersten wasn’t exactly a dime a dozen. Her apparently senseless method for closing a chapter on her old life by burning up a valuable library attracted Ann in a strange way. It indicated a consistent and merciless attitude that Ann felt was lacking in herself. Everything she undertook was half-hearted. Even in something like raising Erik she proceeded without plans or deeper intentions. But Erik seemed completely normal in his development. He was happy and social and linguistically advanced. She was surprised at how easily and quickly he could orient himself and adapt to the most diverse situations. And she wasn’t just a little proud when she heard how other parents at the day care worried about this and that.

Ann smiled to herself in the dark, but the thought of Laura Hindersten wouldn’t leave her. The pillow was starting to feel more and more uncomfortable and her thoughts circled around the remarkable house in Kåbo. What had really happened to Ulrik Hindersten?

Laura had denied any knowledge of Jan-Elis Andersson and Petrus Blomgren and there was nothing that argued in favor of there being a connection between the three men. But it was also not a given that Laura would know her father’s complete history and all acquaintances.

Shortly before three she hit on what the sound was that had woken her up: the skirt that she had hung out on the balcony to be aired out. It was swinging on its hanger and dashing against the window. That’s what it had to be. And so it was that Charles Morgansson was the last thing she thought of before she fell asleep.