Bad Blood: A Crime Novel by Arne Dahl Page A

initially the message will reach only the police. That means he’s now either waiting for the usual old leaks to start and for everything to come out, or else he’s
aiming for the police
and, if that’s the case, a very small group of police: just the ones he knows in advance will take up the case.”
    “If anyone here in the A-Unit, or higher up, has a past that is similar to Lars-Erik Hassel’s,” Hjelm continued, “then he should probably be on guard.”
    “And come forward,” said Holm.
    “Come out of the closet,” said Hjelm.
    It was quiet. Suddenly they had not only taken the leap to international politics and the aftermath of the Cold War—they had also dragged in the A-Unit personally. Could the Kentucky Killer really be that sophisticated?
    Was he after one of them?
    “What do we know about Mörner’s background?” Hjelm said wickedly.
    In among the suspicious, sweeping glances, he caught Kerstin’s.It was the first time in a long time they’d exchanged pleased looks, which hid a great deal. She smiled a reserved and captivating smile.
    Hultin did not smile. “Mörner is hardly a security risk for anyone other than himself,” he said sternly. “Is there anyone else who feels like coming out of the closet?”
    No one else felt like it.
    Hultin continued silkily, “All due respect to speculations, but this one deserves the paranoia prize of the year. From the banal fact that the body was discovered before the plane landed, you are drawing the elegant conclusion that the KGB is targeting the A-Unit, that the entire wave of serial murders in the United States is based on Soviet indoctrination, that the twenty-four victims, whom you have in no way investigated more closely, were Soviet traitors, that all of this has gone over the heads of the FBI, and that one of your close colleagues has had contact with the KGB. You really covered a lot.”
    “But wasn’t it fun?” Hjelm said just as silkily.
    Hultin ignored this rejoinder and raised his voice: “If this has anything to do with international political power plays, then we are a very, very small piece in the game. Neither Larner nor I has overlooked that risk. But if it is the case, it hardly looks the way you’re describing it. We wouldn’t be able to see more than the contours of it.”
    “Anyway, the point is,” said Holm, “that there’s a lot we can’t see.”
    “Let’s do this,” said Hultin in a conciliatory tone. “You, Kerstin, take on the American victims: make a close study of who they actually were and what the FBI says about them, and see if there is any sort of link among them, or between them and Sweden. See if you can find anything from your point of view that the FBI might have missed from theirs. It’s a hard nut to crack, so to speak, but blame yourself.”
    Hultin rummaged through his papers and seemed, for a second, to be as disorganized as they were. Then he pulled himself together. “This meeting was actually meant for Jorge, who spent the whole night surfing the Internet.”
    Chavez was sitting in a corner, exhausted. For a person who spent a lot of time on the Net, with all its virtual cross-connections, paranoia was always a temptation, and he appeared tempted. But also very, very tired.
    “Well,” he said, “I don’t know if we can bear to listen to much more right now. But I’ve chatted for several hours with a group that is well hidden on the Net, namely FASK, Fans of American Serial Killers, a shady organization whose Web site required some finesse and, I’ll admit it, a financial contribution to get into. The Kentucky Killer goes quite simply by the designation K, and the crazies in FASK consider him to be a great hero. They knew that K had killed again but not, as far as I could tell, that he had made his way to Sweden, which probably indicates that their contacts, fortunately, don’t go that high up.”
    “I hope you didn’t leave behind a bunch of tracks that would lead here,” said Hultin,