Europa Blues Read Online Free PDF Page A

Detective Inspector Paul Hjelm’s mind in this, the two thousandth year of Our Lord – a year in which the kingdom of Sweden had been singled out by Amnesty International for a sharp rise in police violence; a year in which the police had regularly turned their batons around to strike out with the hard end; a year in which Kosovans and Albanians had been sent back to their war-torn homelands with five thousand noble Swedish kronor in their pockets.
    For a short moment, it felt like
someone else
had taken over his thoughts.
    He wondered where all the good old-fashioned sexual fantasies had gone, those fantasies the latest research said should grip us at least fifteen times a day.
    One last thought flashed through his mind before he caught a whiff of the predatory animals: who the hell were these model people who had enough time for fifteen sexual fantasies a day? But then the stench took over and Paul Hjelm found himself feeling genuine expectation, like a child in the minutes before Father Christmas turns up, at that moment when fathers sneak off to the toilet with an utterly expressionless look plastered on their faces. In this case, Father Christmas’s real name was Jorge Chavez and he was a detective inspector in Sweden’s national CID.
    Just like Paul Hjelm.
    The smell disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Paul Hjelm was lost. He would later deny all knowledge of the incident, but he really was lost inside Skansen. His children were nearing twenty and it had been years since the cheap trip-to-Skansen trick had last worked on them, the thing you resorted to when you ran out of other ideas. The section for wild animals had been completely rebuilt during that time, and he suddenly found himself talking to an utterly listless, cud-chewing male elk that looked more mechanical and stuffed than real. He had no one else to converse with. It was nearing ten, and Skansen was still closed. There wasn’t a person in sight and the bloody elk didn’t have much to say.
    Above all, he seemed remarkably clueless about where the bestial predatory animals could possibly be living.
    Eventually, Hjelm found his way to the bear mountain. This was unknown territory. Everything was heavily reinforced and he finally made it out of the labyrinthine construction with the feeling that he was following an unravelled ball of yarn. He passed horses and lynx, wild boar and wolves, and suddenly he was there.
    At the wolverine enclosure.
    There were considerably more people around him now. He immediately recognised the white-clad technicians who, like amateur mountain climbers, were moving up and down the little hills inside. He recognised the blue-and-white plastic tape stretched here and there in front of the safety fence, screaming ‘Police’. He recognised the more or less weather-beaten, eighty-odd-year-old face belonging to the chief medical examiner, Sigvard Qvarfordt. He also recognised the stern Germanic-looking face of the chief forensic technician, Brynolf Svenhagen. And he recognised the particularly energetic face of his close colleague – who was also Chief Forensic Technician Svenhagen’s son-in-law. His name was Jorge Chavez.
    Chavez caught sight of Hjelm and his face lit up. He moved towards the deep moat separating the wolverine enclosure from the rest of the park, holding out his hands and shouting, as though he had rehearsed it (which he probably had): ‘Cast off your human shell, O crown of creation, and enter into our animalistic orgy.’
    Paul Hjelm sighed and said: ‘How the hell do I do that, then?’
    Jorge Chavez raised an eyebrow in surprise and glanced around. Eventually, he turned to Brynolf Svenhagen, who didn’t seem to be doing much other than wandering around looking stern. As though it was his life’s mission.
    ‘Was it you who nicked the gangplank, Brunte?’
    Brynolf Svenhagen looked at his son-in-law with sincere distaste and helpfully replied: ‘My name isn’t Brunte.’
    Whereby he continued his