The Blinded Man Read Free Page B

stepped into Bruun’s room. The wallpaper was changed at least once a year, nevertheless it would turn brown within a matter of days. Erik Bruun always inaugurated his new wallpaper by allowing his black cigars and equally black lungs to puff clouds of smoke over the walls. Hjelm had never visited Bruun in his bachelor apartment in Eriksberg; the place had acquired a reputation of mythic proportions, but he could imagine how the walls must look. Hjelm was a non-smoker, although he did inhale an occasional cigarette to avoid becoming a slave to virtue, as a wise man once expressed it.
    Today Hjelm had already smoked six, and he knew that there would be more. The nicotine was swirling around in his head, and for once he sensed no immediate shock upon stepping into Bruun’s inner sanctum, which the authorities had designated a serious health hazard. An overly zealous official had once taped a skull and crossbones to the door, and Hjelm and Ernstsson had spent three hours of valuable work time scraping it off.
    Erik Bruun was not alone in the room. He was sitting behind his cluttered desk, puffing on an enormous Russian cigar. On the sofa below the row of windows sat two well-dressed gentlemen. They were about Hjelm’s age, somewhere in their forties. But no one would ever think of calling Hjelm a gentleman; in their case, it seemed natural. He didn’t know these gentlemen, but he recognised the stern set of their expressions.
    Oh well
. This was pretty much what he’d been expecting.
    Bruun raised his substantial body to a standing position and came forward to meet him; such an attempt at a jogging workout was rare for him. He shook hands with Hjelm and scratched his greyish-red beard.
    ‘My congratulations,’ he said, putting obvious stress on the word
my
. ‘Excellent job. How do you feel? Have you talked to Cecilia?’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Hjelm, glancing at the gentlemen on the sofa. ‘I haven’t been able to get hold of her yet. I assume she’ll probably hear about it some other way.’
    Bruun nodded several times and returned to his favourite chair.
    ‘As I said, you have the congratulations and support of everyone here at the station. But you didn’t answer my question about how you’re feeling.’
    ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Hjelm, and sat down on the chair in front of the desk.
    Bruun nodded several times again, in the same knowing manner.
    ‘I understand,’ he said, sucking on his cigar. ‘This is Niklas Grundström and Ulf Mårtensson, from Internal Affairs. Whether they intend to offer you their congratulations is an open question at the moment.’
    Since Bruun’s little tirade sounded as if he was on the verge of leaving, both gentlemen got up from the sofa. Then came a moment of doubt as the superintendent remained where he was and continued puffing on his black cigar. This display of a hint of uncertainty was what both of them would have given anything to avoid. Hjelm thanked Bruun with a seemingly neutral expression and received the same look in return.
    The superintendent took one last puff and sluggishly got to his feet. ‘The ombudsman for department safety has determined that I’m not allowed to leave my office holding a cigar,’ he apologised, stubbing the butt into an ashtray. Then he left the office swathed in a cloud of cigar fumes.
    The crushed butt continued to emit brown smoke. Grundström pushed aside the ashtray as if it were a month-old latrine bucket and sat, with some reluctance, in Bruun’s smoke-saturated executive desk chair. Mårtensson sat back down on the sofa. Grundström set his briefcase on the desk and pulled out a pair of glasses with almost perfectly round lenses, which he ceremoniously placed on the bridge of his nose. Then he took out a large brown envelope and an evening newspaper. He set the briefcase on the floor and held up the front page of
Expressen
. In big letters the headline screamed: EXTRA. HERO IN FITTJA. POLICE HERO IN HOSTAGE DRAMA . Under the