Read Bad Blood: A Crime Novel for Free Online

to face certain problems. The likely scenario is that the killer murdered Hassel, called in his name to cancel his ticket, then called again and booked the recently canceled spot in his own fake name. What does this tell us?”
    Since everyone realized that the question was rhetorical, no one was interested in answering it. Hultin complicated the laws of rhetoric by answering it himself, with another question: “The basic issue is, of course: Why Sweden? What kind of evil thing have we done for this to happen to us? Let us assume the following. A notorious serial killer finds himself in an airport. His intention is to flee the country, hence the fake passport. Maybe he can feel the FBI breathing down his neck. But in his excitement, his desire to kill is acutely intensified. He waits in a suitable place until a suitable victim comes close. He does his deed, finds the ticket, and gets it into his head that it’s a suitable place to flee to; the plane is leaving soon, after all. But when he calls to book his seat, it turns out the plane is full. He knows, however, that one seat is definitely free. He takes a peek at the ticket, finds the difficult-to-pronounce name Lars-Erik Hassel along with a booking number, and calls to cancel, at which point a spot is vacant. What is wrong with this picture?”
    “Spot the difference,” said Hjelm. No one laughed.
    “It is actually almost possible to find several,” Chavez said with an unintentional but hardly career-boosting dig at Hultin,who didn’t blink. “The most important part of your scenario, Jan-Olov, is the
coincidence
. If he truly didn’t get the idea to travel to Sweden until
after
the murder, one might ask if he would really go to that much trouble to get to such an arbitrarily chosen country. The traffic to and from Newark is nonstop, after all. Why not just as well fly to Düsseldorf five minutes later or Cagliari eight minutes later?”
    “Cagliari?” said Nyberg.
    “It’s on Sardinia,” Hjelm said helpfully.
    “It was just an example,” Chavez said impatiently. “The point is, Sweden doesn’t seem to have been chosen randomly at all. It feels a little extra unpleasant.”
    “And then one might ask,” Kerstin Holm added, “if he would really risk first going up to the counter and getting a no, then calling in Hassel’s name, and then returning to the counter a few minutes later and asking the same question, only to get a yes this time. A man who has been eluding the FBI for twenty years would hardly take such a risk of attracting attention and being directly linked to a corpse that could be discovered at any moment.”
    Hultin seemed a bit thrilled by two such keen objections to his scenario and countered his opponents: “On the other hand, there is an obvious moment of risk in what he actually did. If they had gotten hold of a data expert eleven minutes earlier, we would have had him. It was far from an idiot-proof plan.”
    “I still think the evidence points to Sweden being his goal when he set out for the airport,” Chavez persisted. “But when he arrives, it turns out the flight is fully booked. Then his plan takes shape. Why not combine work and pleasure? Somehow he locates a solo traveler to Arlanda, murders him in his usual, pleasurable way, and takes his place, even though this involves a definite but limited risk. The risk of discovery, on the other hand, is an important ingredient in a serial killer’s enjoyment.”
    “Then what does that suggest?” Hultin asked pedagogically.
    “That his desire to come here to Sweden was so strong that it caused him to take a risk that he probably wouldn’t have taken otherwise. And in that case, he has a very definite goal here.”
    “Ice-cold calculation combined with impulsiveness and a craving for pleasure. Something to sink our teeth into …”
    “There’s nothing to indicate Sweden in his profile?” Arto Söderstedt wondered with exemplary precision.
    “Not according to the FBI.”