To the Top of the Mountain Read Free

classics. What had happened? It was impossible to guess. An outsider at school? Thrown out of his father’s firm? Made to feel small, but on the way up? Rebellion against his father? Generally obstinate? Former addict? Dim-witted?
    No.
    Maybe the others, but not that. Not dim-witted. That much Paul Hjelm had seen, even though he felt, well . . . dim-witted.
    Demoted to the dreary limbo of pub brawls.
    Paradise lost.
    No, not dim-witted. On the contrary, Per was unusually observant. But now Hjelm had to forget him. Now they had to plough on through more miserable interrogations with hungover witnesses, and Per Karlsson needed to be on someone else’s mind. Only his evidence could remain.
    Hjelm yawned, his thoughts trundling on. The months spent with the local police. The violent crimes division of Stockholm’s City district. Police headquarters on Bergsgatan. The utterly temporary office which, equally temporarily, he had been liberated from. The office actually belonged to Gunnarlöv, a policeman on sick leave, whose telephone he always answered with: ‘Gunnar Löv’s telephone, Paul Hjelm speaking.’ It was only when an old colleague of Gunnarlöv, now stationed in Härnösand, came in and asked after ‘Nils-Egg’ that he understand why there was always a pause on the other end of the line when he answered. People were simply recovering from his strange pronunciation of Gunnarlöv. His jaw dropped when he looked up the name in the internal telephone catalogue and saw it there in black and white: it wasn’t ‘Gunnar Löv’ at all, but ‘Nils-Egil Gunnarlöv’. Shortened to Nils-Egg.
    Were people really allowed to be called such things? Weren’t there laws? Wasn’t it the same as naming your child Heroin, like a family in Gnesta had tried to do a while ago, Heroin Lindgren? They had been turned down and written a whole series of letters to the local press where they went on the offensive against the nanny state.
    In any case, Gunnarlöv was on sick leave because he had, while on duty, found himself in the Stureplan branch of Föreningssparbank when a hysterical female bank robber aged around fourteen rushed in with a staple gun at the ready, demanding ‘all your high-yield shares, ready to go’. Don’t staple guns need to be plugged in? Gunnarlöv had thought to himself, going over to the robber to calmly point out that fact and receiving, to his surprise, no fewer than thirty-four staples peppered across his face. Miraculously enough, none of them hit his eyes. The first thing he said on waking from unconsciousness was: ‘Don’t staple guns run on electricity?’ His wife stared at his bandage-covered head, her eyes swollen and red with crying, and answered: ‘There are ones that run on batteries.’
    The adventures of Nils-Egil Gunnarlöv.
    Nils-Egg in Wonderland.
    Still, Paul Hjelm’s own story wasn’t all that much more entertaining. Quite the opposite, in fact, since the story of Nils-Egg actually had its bizarre moments.
    Kerstin Holm came back, leafing through a notepad.
    ‘Welcome to reality,’ Paul Hjelm said gruffly.
    ‘It’s not much different in Gothenburg.’
    ‘Sweden’s shithole.’
    ‘What’re you getting at?’ exclaimed Kerstin Holm in her good-natured Gothenburg accent.
    ‘Ah, sorry. No, well, it was just something that was being bandied about in the media a few weeks ago. The Black Army, you know, the AIK supporters’ club, it was on their answering machine before the team’s cup final against IFK Göteborg, in Ullevi Stadium. Stockholm arrogance and tribal football hate in an unhealthy union.’
    ‘Yeah, and now we’ve got it again. Stockholm arrogance and tribal football hate, only a more serious type. Did you see him?’
    ‘Anders Lundström from Kalmar? Yeah. Really nasty. His head was a terrible mess. To think a beer mug can do so much damage!’
    ‘Why? How do we explain it?’
    Paul Hjelm looked at Kerstin Holm. They had a shared past which meant that no glance