Bad Blood: A Crime Novel Read Online Free PDF

where they were, demanding their passports.
    Hjelm ran through customs. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Gunnar Nyberg being showered with passports from a clusterof white, middle-aged men. His baggy lumber jacket was unbuttoned.
    Hjelm hurried outside and surveyed the congested sidewalk. An airport bus came over the crest. Taxis swarmed. It was impossible to get an overview.
    He sprinted along the sidewalk. He queried ten or so potential serial killers, who watched his mediocre running pace. They identified themselves without protest. As he skimmed their passports, his suspicion became a full-fledged thought.
    He did another second of futile surveying. Suddenly Hultin was standing beside him. Each read his own thought in the other man’s eyes. It was Hjelm who formulated the unavoidable conclusion: “He’s out.”
    Hultin held his eyes for another moment and gave an unofficial nod that was contradicted by his stern injunction: “We have to go inside and continue. Don’t stand here wasting time.”
    Hultin disappeared. Hjelm stayed there for a minute, wasting time.
    He fingered his lips and was surprised by the blood. He turned his face up to the darkening sky and received a chilly sprinkle of rain.
    Autumn had come to Sweden.

5
    That afternoon the A-Unit reconvened in the room that had once been called “Supreme Central Command,” whose quotation marks had become less and less ironic as the Power Murders investigation had gone on. Now a secret wish for a similar course of events whistled through the somewhat stale air. Otherwisethe dominant atmosphere was relatively well-controlled fear; there was no question about the gravity of the situation.
    Jan-Olov Hultin came out of the bathroom absorbed in some papers that looked as though he had used them and forgotten to flush them. He settled into his well-worn armchair and, after ten seconds, began. “The results of the Arlanda debacle are discouraging. The only concrete result is three complaints against officers. Two are against Viggo.”
    Norlander’s expression managed to unite shame with pride.
    “The first complaint is from the immigration officer at passport control,” Hultin continued without looking up. “She found your attention far too intense but says she’ll be satisfied if you are reprimanded. If we didn’t have other things to worry about, I wouldn’t have settled for that. Bonehead. The second complaint is in regard to a little girl you ran over while you were chasing the seriously drug-smuggling Robert E. Norton. You have a real flair for handling the fairer sex, one could say. Double bonehead. The third complaint is a bit hard to interpret. An officer from Märsta has been reported for having been, quote, ‘out of control’ in the concourse bar.”
    Arto Söderstedt laughed shrilly and abruptly. “Sorry,” he said, calming himself. “His name is Adolfsson.”
    Since further clarification was not forthcoming, Hultin continued neutrally. “So, on to the essentials. Edwin Andrew Reynolds does not exist. Naturally, the passport was a fake. And despite the laborious efforts of our data technicians, the passport photo is still not helpful.”
    He turned the computer monitor around on the desk, to show an enlargement of a completely dark face. One could make out the shape of the face and a few contours; possibly he was blond. Otherwise it was unrevealing, and the man was anonymous.
    “We don’t even know if he used his own picture. They willaccept ten-year-old photos, of course, and it’s really not that hard to use a photo that has only some reasonable resemblance. In any case, customs’ new photo devices were wasted—all the pictures they took look about the same. They’re blaming this failure on the fact that the technology is brand new, and they didn’t have enough time to prepare properly, and so on.
    “It’s a given that information about our man has gone out to hotels, Swedish Railways, airports, ferries, dung heaps, et cetera. I