Europa Blues by Arne Dahl Read Free Book Online

much he understood.
    He was sitting in the metro. He had no idea where he was. It didn’t matter. The lights rushed by, sometimes a station, sometimes only sporadic flashes in the tunnels. There were arms on top of him, legs on top of him, thin, thin legs, thin, thin arms, and he saw an upside-down face, and he saw a thin wire being pushed into a temple, and he saw the upside-down face distorted by pain. And then he was writing in a book. He was reading the words which he himself was writing and the book was talking about pain, about pain, pain, pain.
    He looked at his arm where the line of digits was tattooed, and the numbers passed through him, moving away from him.
    He passed further, further through the heart of the city, and death was by his side, death wanted something and he couldn’t understand what.
    All he did was travel.

5
    SINCE SARA SVENHAGEN was having trouble working out why she was in an unmarked police car, en route from Kungsholmen to a motel somewhere in Stockholm’s southern suburbs, her thoughts drifted back to that morning. They floated in through an elegant doorway in Birkastan, up a genuine art nouveau staircase and in through a door marked with the area’s only foreign name, through the stylish but messy kitchen of a little three-roomed flat and then into a loudly creaking marital bed. Just as she caught a first glimpse of her fiery latin lover’s olive-coloured skin, the long panning shot of her thoughts was broken by an aggressive honking of a horn. Her attention was brought back to being in the passenger seat of an unmarked police car, en route from Kungsholmen to a motel somewhere in Stockholm’s southern suburbs.
    So it goes.
    Kerstin Holm let out a particularly coarse string of abuse, turned round and said: ‘I am sorry.’
    Sara Svenhagen pulled a face and managed to focus on her older colleague behind the wheel.
    ‘I don’t know what I’m meant to be forgiving,’ she answered honestly.
    Kerstin Holm looked at her and smiled wryly.
    ‘Let me guess where you were,’ she said, giving the finger to a confused old man in a checked cap driving a silvery Volkswagen Jetta.
    ‘What did he do?’ Sara Svenhagen asked, still half asleep.
    ‘He just proved that driving licences have a best before date. Don’t try to change the subject. You were in the bedroom of a newly bought three-roomer in Birkastan. Right?’
    Sara smiled weakly and felt like she had been caught red-handed. Kerstin nodded self-righteously, struggling with the lid of a stubborn pot of snus tobacco and eventually managing to push a portion of it up under her lip.
    ‘You still haven’t told me what it cost.’
    ‘It was pretty run-down …’
    ‘That’s a new one. Nice. Normally I hear: “We exchanged for two rentals”, “the price per square metre was surprisingly low”, and then the cryptic “second mortgage rates are pretty good at the minute”. I want a hard figure.’
    ‘Two point two.’
    ‘Thanks,’ Kerstin Holm said, accelerating gratefully.
    ‘Including two rentals. One of which was in Rågsved.’
    ‘Sounds pretty cheap.’
    ‘It was a good price. The price per square metre
was
surprisingly low. And it
was
pretty run-down.’
    ‘What did you get for your place on Surbrunnsgatan?’
    ‘I didn’t sell it illegally. We exchanged.’
    ‘Who said you sold it illegally? That came from the heart.’
    ‘Three hundred thousand. And I think they saw Jorge’s bloody studio in Rågsved as more of a punishment. A cross to bear.’
    ‘So it was up around two and a half million?’
    ‘Almost. We were thinking of having a house-warming party next weekend. What do you think?’
    ‘Sounds good.’
    ‘Other halves are welcome too.’
    Kerstin Holm accelerated slightly less gratefully.
    ‘Wow, what a subtle turn of events,’ she said gloomily. ‘What a smooth interview technique.’
    ‘Let’s hear it now,’ Sara Svenhagen said, turning to face her. She couldn’t quite escape the feeling that