The Falling Detective

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘Can I see your badge?’

  I show it to her.

  ‘Do you have to talk to him right now?’

  ‘Yes. If that’s okay?’

  John purses his lips as though weighing up the pros and cons of letting a strange man into his home. Eventually he moves out of the way.

  ‘You have to take your shoes off,’ he says.

  ‘Of course. How old are you, John?’

  ‘He is six,’ the woman says.

  She introduces herself as Amanda. Her hand is warm. The little hall is short and narrow, leading into a larger living room, passing a kitchen and the half-open door to the parents’ bedroom on the way. I stand by the large Christmas star glowing on the windowsill, clear and red.

  ‘What has he seen?’ she asks.

  ‘When you saw me down there, John, when we waved to each other — you were here, weren’t you, standing by this window?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it that he’s seen?’

  Amanda walks over and looks down to the yard below, gasps, and puts her hand to her mouth.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  She asks John if he’s okay, if he can really talk to me.

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll just …’ She composes herself. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, I think. Would you like some tea, John?’

  He shrugs. She walks away, unsteady.

  I put my hands on my thighs and crouch down to see the world down there, as he must have seen it. Even from here you get a good view of the yard, where Mauritzon is in the process of carefully removing the dead man’s shoes.

  More people are now moving around close to the body — and judging by Mauritzon’s body language, this has done nothing for her mood.

  ‘You smell,’ the boy says.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You smell of sick.’

  ‘It’s my coat. We policemen meet a lot of people who are sick, and you don’t always manage to get out of the way in time.’

  ‘But your eyes?’ The boy squints, suspicious. ‘They’re red.’

  ‘I haven’t slept for a long time.’

  John contemplates the truth of this statement before apparently letting it go.

  ‘Someone is lying down, down there.’

  ‘Yes.’ I straighten up again. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I look for something to sit on, and find a large leather armchair next to a low glass table. I perch on one of the wide armrests, and at that moment John coughs — a violent, hoarse cough. His lungs gurgle like a blocked drain, and he grimaces with pain, and goes red in the face.

  Amanda seems to have forgotten why she went out to the kitchen, or else she changed her mind on the way. She returns with a glass of water, puts it on the table, and sits on the sofa, pulling a blanket over her legs.

  ‘I would like to be present.’

  ‘Oh, naturally.’ I look over at the window. ‘You saw me down there, John. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long were you standing there?’

  The boy folds his arms.

  ‘A while. Not that long.’

  ‘Can you tell me what you saw when you came to the window? What was happening down there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There was no one there?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘But then someone came.’

  ‘When?’

  John coughs again, but not as violently this time.

  ‘You’re asking me to tell the time, but I haven’t learnt that yet.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m asking about time.’ I hesitate. ‘Don’t worry about it. Who came into the backyard?’

  ‘A guy. The one who’s lying there now.’

  ‘How do you know it was him?’

  ‘Because that’s what I think.’

  I stifle a tut. Kids.

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t really know. I had to go to the toilet, and when I came back he was lying where he is now.’

  ‘Was he still alone?’

  ‘No. Someone was standing next to him, looking in his bag.’

  ‘Can you describe what he looked like?’

  John pauses.

  ‘Black clothes.’

  ‘Was he tall or short?’

  John looks me up and down.

  ‘About the same as you.’

  ‘What colour was his hair? Could you see?’

  ‘No, he had a hat.’

  ‘Did he have a hat you can pull down over your face?’

  This question makes the boy laugh — a deep, clucking laugh, a pleasant sound that gives me a feeling of wellbeing. The laugh gives way to a cough, and John’s face goes red again.

  ‘Drink some water, love,’ Amanda says.

  I hold up the glass towards him. He takes a gulp. He grimaces, as though it hurts.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘You don’t have hats like that.’

  ‘When you came back, there was somebody next to the guy down there, looking in his rucksack. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he find anything?’

  ‘I didn’t see what it was.’

  ‘But he found something?’

  ‘Yes. Then he went.’

  ‘Which way did he go?’ I point out through the window, and get the boy to follow my finger with his eyes. ‘That way, or this way?’

  ‘The first one.’

  Back towards town.

  ‘And then,’ the boy continued, ‘the other one disappeared, too.’

  ‘The other one? The guy lying down there?’

  ‘No. The one who was hiding.’

  ‘Was there another person there, hiding?’ I raise my hand and stick my thumb out. ‘First there was the guy who’s lying down there …’

  The boy nods. I extend my index finger.

  ‘Then there was the one standing by the rucksack.’

  John nods, again. I stretch out my middle finger.

  ‘And then there was one more.’

  ‘Yes.’ John looks pleased with himself, as though he’s just completed the none-too-straightforward task of getting an adult to understand something. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Was it a boy or a girl, this last one?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What about their hair — was it long or short?’

  ‘I didn’t see.’

  ‘Where was this person hiding?’

  ‘Behind one of the green bins. When the one who was looking in the rucksack had gone, the other one came out and then disappeared.’

  ‘How did this person move? Slowly or quickly?’

  ‘Quite quickly.’

  ‘Nimbly? I mean …’ I say to the boy, who obviously doesn’t understand, ‘did he seem clumsy? Was he walking straight or wonky — did he trip up or fall over?’

  John shakes his head.

  ‘He just walked.’

  ‘So maybe it was a guy after all?’

  ‘No, I don’t know. You’re the one saying “he”.’

  The boy is right, and I don’t say any more. I head over to the window instead. The floodlights illuminating the body are blinding. Mauritzon is giving him something resembling a pedicure.

  ‘Were you alone the whole time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You never got up?’ I ask Amanda.

  ‘No.’ She looks as though I’ve insulted her.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ She doesn’t say anything, and I turn to the boy. ‘That’s good, John. Thanks for your help. You’ve told me
some important things that might help us.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ the boy says again. ‘The one lying down there.’

  ‘That’s right. That much we can be sure of.’

  The Christmas star causes the backdrop to melt away, makes the snow falling outside a blurred, dark-grey sludge.

  ‘Are you going now?’ the boy asks.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Happy Saint Lucia, then.’ His gaze falls away, towards the hall. ‘Don’t forget your shoes.’

  Down by the body, a lot has changed, yet nothing has changed. He’s no longer wearing shoes, and someone has taken off his overcoat. From a distance, the body is scarcely visible, obscured by everyone moving around it. Outside, far away near the edge of the cordoned-off area, what could be an undercover police car is waiting. In fact, it belongs to Aftonbladet or Expressen. The constables are nowhere to be seen. They might be composing themselves after calling Gabriel Birck. It’s even colder now, at least it feels like it, but changes like these are neither here nor there, because the dead man is just as dead, the snow is falling as relentlessly as before, and some nights that sort of thing is all that matters.

  ‘Who made the emergency call?’ I ask, holding my phone in my hand.

  I don’t trust my memory anymore, and I need to summarise the conversation with the boy, but I don’t have anything to write on, apart from my phone. One of the uniformed constables is holding a notebook in one hand and a half-eaten ham-and-cheese roll in the other. His name is Fredrik Marström, a young officer from Norrland with shoulders like a weightlifter.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he says, and flips back two leaves. ‘It was an anonymous call made from a mobile. The individual’s voice sounded strange, as though he or she was disguising it. But we don’t know. I’ve ordered a copy of the recording, which is being sent to you. The duty officer tried to get their name, but then they hung up, apparently. Fortunately they decided to send someone down anyway.

  ‘And that was you?’

  ‘Me and Hall,’ Markström says, taking another bite of the roll. Åsa Hall is from Gothenburg, and is essentially the complete opposite of Fredrik Markström: chatty, small in stature, and cheerful.

  ‘Who came after you?’

  ‘Larsson and Leifby.’

  ‘Larsson and Leifby?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What the hell were they doing in town?’

  Markström takes another bite.

  ‘No idea. They said they were in the area.’

  Larsson and Leifby are beat officers out in Huddinge, and they’re the type that almost never get to represent the force on information days and at recruitment events. One is scared of heights, the other of guns — burdens that are troublesome, to put it mildly, for police officers to carry. Not only that, but they like a sensational story as much as the tabloid hacks do.

  When Markström and Hall arrived at the scene, they did everything by the book. Larsson and Leifby were charged with talking to possible witnesses. Neither is anywhere to be seen, and I wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

  I head over to the big bins that line the walls of the yard. They smell sour. I kneel down in front of them, once again feeling the cold from the ground surge through my jeans and up my thighs, only this time my senses are slightly dulled and the cold is blunter, more bearable.

  Behind one of the containers, the thin dusting of snow is not intact. Someone has been standing there, taking a few steps back and forth. The shoeprints are indistinct. Boots, but well-worn — the sort you wear if you can’t afford to buy new ones every year.

  ‘Victoria,’ I say quietly, causing Mauritzon to look up from the body. ‘I think someone has been standing here.’

  She makes a note in the notebook she keeps in the breast pocket of her overalls.

  I walk out onto the street and down the road, go past the cordon, and smoke a cigarette. The music from the club is pulsating, this time an old tune that’s been remixed, so that you can dance to it. I remember the melody from being a teenager, and for a second I wish I was fifteen years younger, that I was still in education, that the future felt a little more unwritten.

  In the inside pocket of my coat, my phone vibrates. It’s a text from Sam.

  are you asleep?

  no I’m on duty

  having a good night?

  I consider my answer, take a drag.

  it’s alright I end up writing. murder in vasastan, I go on, but then change my mind, delete it, and write how about you?

  i miss you, comes the reply, making me wish that I was somewhere else right now.

  tomorrow?

  yes, tomorrow’s good for me.

  I wonder what it means. Sam almost always cancels or postpones when we’re supposed to meet up.

  A well-dressed man with equally well-kept hair and with his unbuttoned overcoat flapping behind him walks through the snow towards me. He raises his hand and looks at the cigarette between my fingers, with a disdain that becomes desire as he gets closer.

  ‘Happy Saint Lucia,’ I say.

  ‘Can I have the end?’ he asks.

  I give Gabriel Birck the half-smoked cigarette, and he sucks the life out of it.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked.’

  ‘There’s a lot you don’t know. Who’s in charge here?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Me? We need a commissioner. Where’s Morelius?’

  ‘On leave.’

  Birck rolls his eyes.

  ‘Well, get Calander down here then. He’s not on leave, and I know that for sure, because I saw him by the hotdog stand on St Eriksplan a few hours ago, and he looked very much ready for action.’

  ‘He’s busy with the axe man on Tegnérsgatan.’

  ‘Fuck. What about Bäckström? He’s better than nothing.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘On secondment with the National Crime Squad.’

  ‘Fucking hell. Poor NCS.’

  Birck stubs out the last embers against the wall of the building and moves as if to leave, but then stops, sniffing the air.

  ‘Have you been sick?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You smell of vomit.’

  ‘I haven’t been sick.’

  ‘In that case, someone’s been sick on you.’

  ‘Not today.’

  This tickles Birck, and he laughs. He pulls a pair of gloves from the pockets of his coat.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the yard at the back.’

  ‘We’ve got one witness,’ I say, and look up at the window where the Christmas star is still glowing. ‘John Thyrell. He has, in all probability, seen the perpetrator.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to him.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Well, quite a lot, I think, but …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘According to his mum, he’s six years old.’

  ‘Six years old?’ Birck grimaces. ‘Great.’

  He crouches beside Thomas Heber’s still, lifeless face. The card holder is lying in its spot by the rucksack, and he picks it up and pulls out the ID-card.

  ‘A good-looking bloke.’

  ‘They die too, you know,’ says Mauritzon.

  Birck puts the card back in the card holder and puts it back on the ground, gets up and looks around, taking a couple of minutes to orientate himself at the crime scene.

  ‘Heber comes here,’ I say. ‘He stands here. Maybe there’s already someone else here, behind one of the bins. There probably is. Another person arrives, the one who puts the knife into Heber. Considering the wound is in his back, he probably comes from behind. Heber drops, and then the perpetrator roots around in his rucksack, finds what he’s looking for — we should probably assume —
and then leaves the scene, probably with Heber’s mobile phone on him, since we haven’t found one here. He’s heading for the city centre. After that, the person behind the bins also leaves, according to the witness. Maybe it’s him, the one behind the bin, who makes the call to the police. The question is, what was he doing here? Either he’s got something to do with it, or else it’s a coincidence. Maybe some homeless bloke or a junkie.’

  ‘Your witness is a six-year-old boy,’ says Birck.

  ‘But his account tallies with how it looks behind the bins. Someone has been standing there.’

  ‘Let’s hope there are other witnesses.’ He looks around. ‘It could have been a robbery. But why leave the cash, in that case? It must have been something else.’

  ‘Yes. The question is what. The phone, maybe?

  ‘But would Heber have had it in the rucksack? How many people keep their phone there?’

  Markström approaches us with his notebook in one hand and coffee in a plastic cup in the other. I wonder if I have ever seen Markström without food or drink in his hands. I doubt it, but then again haven’t known him that long.

  ‘Thomas Markus Heber,’ he says, then slurps some coffee. ‘Born seventy-eight. Single, no children. Living at Vanadisvägen 5, less than a kilometre from here. Convicted of assault eleven years ago, 2002, and a breach of the peace the year before that.

  ‘Assault and breaching the peace,’ Birck says, turning to me. ‘You’ll take that?’

  ‘Yes.’ I look up at the window again. ‘I suppose I will.’

  John has disappeared, probably forced into bed by his mother. I wonder if this has affected the boy, whether this evening will stay with him. I hope not. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll do his apartment,’ says Birck.

  ‘Have you got a key?’

  Birck points quizzically at the key ring lying on the ground. I hesitate.

  ‘Do you want company?’

  ‘No. But you can’t always get what you want.’

  Those who don’t know that there’s something wrong with the door never notice, despite Christian having used a big fucking hammer. That was all he could think of at the time, the only thing he took with him. The door handle is hanging loose, and the door won’t close completely, but that’s all. In the dark it’s hardly noticeable.