Bad Blood: A Crime Novel by Arne Dahl Page B

superficial.”
    “To say the least.”
    “And still he confided in you that he had received threatening e-mails.”
    Laban Hassel kept his eyes on the rotting table. He seemed broken. He said, short and to the point: “Yes.”
    “Tell us everything you know.”
    “I know just what he said—that there was someone terrorizing him.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. That was all. He just tossed it out in passing.”
    “And yet you found it worth telling your mom?”
    Laban looked at him in earnest for the first time. It wasn’t a look to mess with. It held a bottomless intensity that was rare among twenty-three-year-olds. That look set the unemployed but ready-for-action detective inside Hjelm into motion.
    “My mother and I have a very good relationship,” Laban Hassel said.
    Hjelm didn’t push him any further; he would need a new angle of attack before he returned. Because he would return. He and Chavez thanked the young man and left.
    In the stairwell, Chavez said, “What the fuck did you bring me along for?”
    “Kerstin thought you needed to get out in the sun,” Hjelm said heartily.
    “Not much sun in there.”
    “To be honest, I needed a sounding board, someone without any preconceived notions about Lars-Erik Hassel at all. So?”
    They wandered down the stairs to Pipersgatan. The sun got caught up in some stubborn bits of cloud and cast the northern half of City Hall in shadow. The result was a strange optical double exposure.
    “Right or left?” Chavez asked.
    “Left,” said Hjelm. “We’re going to Marieberg.”
    They walked quietly down Pipersgatan. Down at Hantverkargatan they turned right, wandered past Kungsholmstorg, and stopped at the bus stop.
    “Well,” Chavez returned to conversing, “I wonder how Laban’s literature studies are going.”
    “Check,” Hjelm said.
    The bus had almost made it to Marieberg before Chavez, calling on his cell, managed to get past the switchboard at Stockholm University and reach the department of literature, whose telephone-answering hours were of the irregular variety. Hjelm followed the phone-call spectacle from a distance, like a director laughing covertly at the efforts of the actors. They were crammed into different parts of the overcrowded bus, Hjelm in the aisle in back, Chavez in the middle, leaning over a baby carriage that was cutting into his diaphragm. Every time he half-yelled into his phone, the baby in the carriage screamed back three times as loud, accompanied by the equally crammed-in mother’s increasingly acid remarks. By the time Chavez steppedoff the bus at Västerbroplan, he had a vague idea of what hell was like.
    “Well?” Hjelm said again.
    “You are an evil person,” Chavez hissed.
    “It’s a difficult line of business,” said Hjelm.
    “Laban Hassel was registered for basic studies in literature three years ago. There are no results listed in the register today. No courses at all.”
    Hjelm nodded. They had arrived at the same conclusion from different directions. He was pleased with the synchronicity.
    They reached the newspaper building. This time the elevator worked. They walked into the arts and leisure offices purposefully. If everything went well, this whole thing would be solved before the A-Unit’s evening meeting.
    Erik Bertilsson was leaning over a jammed fax machine. Hjelm cleared his throat half an inch from the man’s red-mottled scalp. Bertilsson gave a start, looking as if he’d seen a ghost. Which, Hjelm thought, wasn’t far from the truth.
    “We could use a little help,” Hjelm said with a neutrality that would have given Hultin’s a run for its money. “Can you get us into Hassel’s e-mail inbox? If it still exists.”
    Bertilsson gaped wildly at the man upon whom he had unloaded his life’s disappointments, and who he had thought was out of his life. He didn’t move a muscle. Finally he managed to say, “I don’t know his password.”
    “Is there someone here who knows it?” A shadow of