The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [82]
“Who could be thought to have the motive for a serial killing with the queen as the final target?”
Fredriksson’s question made Ottosson sink back into his chair. Until then he had been sitting leaning forward, as if about to spring into action.
“We’ll have to consult upstairs,” Berglund said, “however much it hurts.”
“And who would set this up like a chess game?” Fredriksson continued.
“And a relatively unknown chess game at that,” Ottosson said.
“We can do a Gallup,” Sammy Nilsson said. “Is there anyone here who knows about even one game somewhere in the world?”
“I lost to my brother once,” Ola Haver said.
“Which one?”
“My little brother.”
“I see why you still remember it,” Nilsson said, grinning.
“Well,” Ottosson said, “that’s how it is, but it restricts our search. Ander was going to come by with a memo. He’ll be here presently.”
“Is this it?” Lindell asked and picked up a green folder. “It’s lying on your desk. Antonov versus Urberuaga, and the date is 1936.”
“That’s the Basque,” Ottosson explained. “How the devil could he be so fast?”
“It’s at least fifteen pages,” Lindell said, who had opened the folder.
“Read it and then let me know how and if we can proceed with this thing.”
“You mean,” Lindell said, “that the victims have nothing more in common with Silvia or each other, apart from the fact that they have been selected more or less at random in order to coincide with moves in a chess game.”
“Read it and weep.”
Lindell looked far from amused. Ever since she got up that morning she had had the feeling that there was something about Petrus Blomgren that she had missed. It was a thought she had had last night that had whirled by without gaining a foothold. Since then it lay working in her subconscious but she couldn’t get ahold of the loose thread.
Now she would have to put Petrus aside in order to study chess history.
Sammy Nilsson told them about his night activities at the kitchen table with the ViCLAS method. He read through his list: “access to a car, local knowledge, rapid succession of events without excessive complications, and no use of a conventional deadly weapon.”
“What does this tell us?” he asked rhetorically and acknowledged Ola Haver’s smile. “Yes, I know, we’re constantly asking ourselves this question, but it’s the pattern we have to detect. I don’t believe in the chess idea, it seems too unbelievably sophisticated. Stuff like that only happens in books. No, I think this is a local guy with a number of enemies who pops them off with a weapon he happens to have near at hand. Is it the same weapon? I think so, and what does that tell us? The weapon itself may have a symbolic value for the perp. Or else it’s simply a lack of imagination.”
“But it’s also smart to bring the weapon with him,” Berglund said.
“True,” Sammy Nilsson said emphatically.
He who normally was not particularly active at these meetings was now overflowing with energy.
“We’re looking for a man, in fair physical shape, with a relatively nondescript car, maybe someone with a country background, and I don’t think we’ll find him already in the database.”
Edvard, Lindell thought, and couldn’t help but smile.
“It’s not a clerk at the Department of Agriculture,” Haver muttered, “that much is clear.”
“Or else that’s precisely what he is,” Beatrice said in an unexpectedly sonorous and forceful tone of voice. “A little dry, flabby man, balding, with a townhouse in Valsätra, wife, dog, a Volvo 760, half-grown children, and troubling sex dreams at night.”
“There, we have him!” Haver burst out.
Ottosson coughed.
“What do you say, Allan?”
Fredriksson pinched his nose, as he usually did when there were too many questions.
“I can buy two farmers,” he said after a short pause, “but throw in an academic on top of that, that changes things. The motive must be very complicated. It can’t simply be someone out to settle a score with farmers, as we initially believed. It’s true that Palmblad was out in the country a lot as the owner of some stables, but is this