Bad Blood: A Crime Novel by Arne Dahl Page B

who had only moderate insights into the ring-dance of the Web.
    “I was well disguised,” Chavez said laconically. “Anyway, they had a whole bunch of theories about K that it might be good for us to be aware of. Most of them were crazy ideas like Kerstin and Paul’s, but others were more sensible. Even they think there’s some sort of professionalism involved. A few think he’s high up in the military. Apparently there was a secret commander behind the Vietnam task force Commando Cool who was somehow directly below the president. His identity is unknown; that was the only thing Larner never caught, but in these circles he goes by the name Balls; apparently they’ve never seen
The Pink Panther
. The rumor is that Balls personally invented the notorious vocal cord pincers, and that since then he has occupied acentral position within the Pentagon. Larner’s suspect, the guy with the country singer name, who died in the car crash—”
    “Wayne Jennings. Not Waylon,” corrected Hultin.
    “Thanks. According to FASK, he was just Balls’s henchman. The truly important operations in Vietnam were carried out under the personal leadership of Balls. Again, according to FASK. They’re also convinced that Balls is K. Apparently he’s a general at this point. According to the serial killers’ cheerleaders, he stopped killing when he was transferred to Washington, D.C., and got Vietnam out of his blood, and he started up again when he retired. The reasoning itself seems pretty coherent, I think.”
    “But it can hardly be your Balls who’s come here,” Hultin said. “He was traveling with a thirty-two-year-old’s passport.”
    Chavez nodded with as much enthusiasm as his exhaustion would allow.
    “Exactly. That gives us a little perspective on the FBI’s reasoning. The whole theory that the Kentucky Killer has come to Sweden actually rests on pretty flimsy grounds. It was a quick, smart conclusion under the circumstances, but it is based on something as trivial as Hassel not having a ticket on him. Then the speedy hypothesis became an axiom. We don’t even know
when
Hassel was murdered. Our literary critic could very well have had some whim at the airport, thought of something else he had to do, and decided to stay another night or two. Maybe he called to cancel his own ticket, then threw it away. Maybe he stuck around for a while and had a few drinks. On the way to the toilet he was attacked and murdered. Meanwhile a young criminal with a fake passport arrived at the airport, maybe on the run from angry bookies or something, and wanted to get the first international flight he could find a seat on. The plane to Stockholm was going to take off in about an hour, and he hopped on. In which case, the Kentucky Killer never left the country. Does that sound unreasonable?”
    Hultin looked around the room. Since no one else seemed willing, he raised the objections himself. He did so honorably.
    “Aside from the fact that there are a few too many coincidences, it seems pretty bizarre that Hassel would have gone to the airport only to change his mind
once he was already there
, not bother to check in an hour ahead of time as is required, wait for at least half an hour, and then
call
to cancel instead of just walking up to the ticket counter.”
    “To my ears it sounds like classic alcoholic behavior,” said Gunnar Nyberg. “Maybe he arrived too late, wandered about aimlessly, realized he had missed the check-in deadline, thought that meant he’d missed the flight, and called the desk in order to avoid facing the contempt of the ground agent. Then he kept boozing at the airport and picked a fight with the wrong person. In which case, Jorge’s hypothesis would work better.”
    “The problem,” Hultin said coldly, “is that the autopsy didn’t show any elevated alcohol levels in the blood. And no drugs. You would know that if you’d followed orders and read Larner’s report.”
    “What happened to his luggage?”