The Falling Detective

by Christoffer Carlsson

  A guy about my age is standing behind the counter. He’s as wide as a doorway, and his rectangular ribcage stretches the fabric of the shirt he’s wearing. He has dark, close-cropped hair, and on the right-hand side of his chest a white badge sits proudly with the letters RAF written in red and black. His hands are holding a baking tray full of brownies.

  ‘We don’t serve coppers,’ he says. He has grey eyes and some sort of eczema on his chin, like a red, open wound, glistening. He puts the brownies on the worktop. ‘Go to Klara’s on Hantverkargatan.’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘That you’re a cop? Yep. It’s about the door, right?’

  ‘The door?’ I say, confused.

  ‘Someone broke in last night. It was open when I got here.’

  ‘You’ve had a break-in? Did you report it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how would I know about it?’

  ‘There’s always some prick who rings the police whenever it’s anything to do with us, doesn’t matter what. I assumed you’d heard about it.’

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘No, this isn’t about the door. This is about Thomas Heber.’ Pause for effect. ‘You know about that? That he’s dead?’

  ‘We heard this morning.’

  ‘Do you know how he died?’

  ‘As I said, we heard this morning.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I change tack.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Leo Junker.’

  I put my hand out. The man hesitantly stretches out his own hand, angular and hard like a piece of timber.

  ‘Oscar,’ he says. ‘Oscar Svedenhag.’

  ‘I just want to ask a few questions.’ I can feel how nobody’s looking, but everybody’s watching. ‘Could we go somewhere else?’

  ‘This is fine,’ Oscar says as he notices that the coffee pot is empty. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He disappears through an opening in the wall and returns with a new pot, full and hot.

  ‘Do you want some?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. Your badge.’ I stare at the little, round plastic badge sitting on his chest. ‘RAF.’ I pronounce each letter, unsure of how it should be read. ‘As in Royal Air Force, or like the beginning of rafter?’

  ‘R-A-F’ Oscar says frostily. ‘As in Radical Anti-Fascism.’

  ‘And what exactly is Radical Anti-Fascism?’

  ‘A group.’

  ‘Like AFA?’

  This makes him laugh — a patronising, weary laugh.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘And what does RAF-V stand for?’

  ‘That doesn’t concern you.’

  ‘I think it does.’

  Oscar gestures silently towards a group behind me who are watching carefully. He turns to me again.

  ‘Don’t raise your voice. I can’t be arsed with any trouble here.’

  I lay my forearms on the counter, smell the aroma of fresh coffee, strong and bitter, and I contemplate buying a cup after all.

  ‘I think we have a witness to Thomas’s murder. A woman who might be involved in RAF.’

  ‘There are over one hundred active RAF members in and around Stockholm,’ Oscar says. ‘About thirty of them are women. You’re going to have to be more specific.’

  There’s something odd about him — something about his eyes.

  ‘You knew him well. You and Thomas. You knew each other.’

  Oscar tilts his head slightly to one side, as though weighing up the possible implications of his answer.

  ‘Not well. I knew who he was.’

  ‘I don’t really believe that.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit. Get out of here now. People are going to start wondering what the hell you’re playing at.’

  ‘Either we do this here,’ I say, ‘or we take a stroll down to the bunker. It’s your call.’

  He smiles, turning his back to me again, and moves the baking tray out of the way as he cleans the worktop. In the corner of the surface is a collection of knives in a wooden knife-block.

  ‘Is that block normally full?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m the inquisitive type, you know.’

  He stalls, well aware of what the answer could mean.

  ‘Yes, it is normally full. I don’t know where it is.’

  I can’t make out the blades. It could be one of them, the missing one, the one somebody stuck in Heber’s back. I try to get a look at Oscar’s shoes. They could be a size 44.

  ‘Ultimatums don’t tend to be very effective here, especially not if they come from a disgusting cop.’

  ‘Disgusting. That’s a new one.’

  ‘You like your job, right?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing against it,’ I say, truthfully.

  ‘You can tell.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Looks like you like interrogating people. It’s your thing.’

  ‘I don’t like it when people go round stabbing each other. I think it’s more that that’s my “thing”.’

  Oscar stands up, and that’s when it happens. I’ve seen it before, how people change as the realisation hits them. He drops his cloth. The big man seems struck with deep grief.

  ‘If you answer my questions, I will leave you alone.’

  Oscar bites his lip, stretching the skin over his chin and causing the glossy, red eczema to change shape.

  ‘How much detail do I need to give you?’

  ‘As much detail as you can.’

  His heavy shoulders slide forwards, and his posture slumps.

  ‘We got to know each other in Gothenburg, during the riots. Almost thirteen years ago now. We belonged to different factions within the same network and we stayed at the same guy’s place down there.’

  After Gothenburg they were close, until a couple of years ago. There was no particular reason why they started drifting apart. They were getting older. Thomas disappeared into academia, while Oscar was still active in AFA and working part-time at Cairo. A few years ago he left AFA and went over to RAF instead.

  ‘He was doing some research when he died.’ I say. ‘Were you one of his interview subjects?’

  ‘Yes, I was,’ Oscar says. ‘One of the people who gave him access to new people to interview. He’d been away from politics for quite a while, at least in terms of direct action. Thomas didn’t know the new people, and they didn’t know him either.’

  ‘Had you ever helped him before?’

  ‘No, up till then he’d managed without me, he said.’ Oscar takes a mug from the cupboard behind him and pours some coffee. The mug is white, with the words I’D TRADE MY BOYFRIEND FOR TRUE DEMOCRACY printed in black capitals. ‘But not this time. So I pulled a few strings for him.’

  ‘Do you know anything about who the others were? The others who were helping him?’ I clarify.

  ‘I asked, of course. But no, when it came to that sort of thing, he wouldn’t give anything away. He said that it applied to me as well, that I would be protected by confidentiality, too. That I’d just be a number.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What number were you?’

  ‘1584.’ He takes a swig from his mug, peering over my shoulder again. ‘Academics, eh? Secretive lot. Worse than AFA.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering,’ I say, scratching my cheek. ‘I’ve been wondering about his family life.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, we … He doesn’t seem to have had one. Men his age, our age, they’re usually at least thinking about settling down with someone. Do you know whether he was in a relationship with anyone?’

  ‘No, no idea.’

  ‘Did he often come here?’

  ‘Of
ten wouldn’t be the right word. Sometimes.’

  ‘I have a receipt that puts him here a few days ago. The eleventh. I think he met someone here, possibly someone with a first name or surname beginning with H. Were you working that day?’

  ‘No, I was on my way home from a demo in Jönköping that evening.’

  ‘Could you check who was working then?’

  ‘We don’t have lists like that — I’d need to ring round to find out. I won’t be doing that.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who would have been here then? Someone who’s here now?’

  ‘If you want to know, you’d better ask them. But I would advise you to choose your words carefully.’

  I turn towards the patrons, who have gone back to their conversations. A handful are sitting and reading alone, including a man whose head is too big and whose hands look small and hard. He’s wearing a light-grey leather jacket with a RAF badge on the chest.

  ‘Good book?’ I ask.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’

  ‘To talk.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘That wasn’t a request.’

  The man still hasn’t looked up.

  I lose patience.

  ‘Right. Fancy a nice walk back to the bunker with me?’

  Everything goes very quiet. Behind me, Oscar lets out a heavy sigh. On the street outside, a car pulls up. The little man puts the book to one side and stands up. His eyes are like a bird’s — round and jerky, bulbous.

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’

  He’s a full head shorter than me. That doesn’t matter, because behind him another four or five, maybe more, are getting up from their seats, surrounding me, looking at me the way you look at an insect before you swat it. The short man takes a step towards me, and plants a sharp punch in my guts. I feel the air leave my lungs as I fall to my knees, hissing.

  I can hear them laughing above my head.

  I struggle to stand up. It takes an embarrassingly long time, but in the end I manage it. From the corner of my eye, I notice someone standing up from their table and leaving Cairo — a woman.

  I look down, still gasping for air after the blow. Mind-blowingly stupid, this.

  The men are so close that their chests are touching my arms, their shoes are touching mine. None of them seem particularly angry, but several seem interested in what might happen next.

  ‘Your turn,’ the short guy says to one of them.

  Then something happens. The door to Cairo swings open again, and Gabriel Birck steps in, with his hands in the pockets of his trench coat and an inquisitive look on his face — a policeman in a far-too-expensive suit and with a profile so sharp it wouldn’t look out of place on a coin. When he spots the crowd and my head just visible between their shoulders, he walks over and takes his hands out of his pockets.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Not great,’ I wheeze.

  ‘I recommend that you leave the premises,’ Oscar says from behind the counter.

  ‘That sounds reasonable,’ says Birck.

  I turn around, and my eyes meet Oscar’s.

  ‘Ring me,’ I say, but I can’t say whether or not he responds, because before I know it I’m out on the street again.

  ‘I told you,’ Birck hisses, as we head for the car. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘I know.’ I’m massaging my stomach. It feels empty and sore after the little man’s punch. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘This is precisely why I said no, when you asked if I was happy working with you. You’re too unpredictable.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say again.

  ‘Fuck you. Have you got a cigarette?’

  Embarrassed, I pull one out of my pack. We get into Birck’s black Citroën. It has a unique smell: a mixture of leather, aftershave, and winter.

  ‘You should report that punch,’ he says. ‘Assaulting a police officer. That little leftie would get spanked.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘We might need to contact them again. If we make a complaint, that’ll become impossible — they’ll hate us even more. Did you see anyone leaving at about the same time as you came in?’

  ‘A woman,’ Birck says. ‘Why?’

  ‘Did you get a good look at her?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I think that she might be our witness, 1599.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘A feeling.’

  ‘Feelings? Completely useless in this line of work.’

  I wonder if Birck might be right. Maybe.

  ‘He called me disgusting.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The guy who told us to leave.’

  ‘Disgusting,’ Birck says thoughtfully. ‘Aren’t we all?’

  The autopsy on Thomas Heber confirms that he died from somebody putting a knife in him and then twisting it a quarter-turn. The blade was pretty big, somewhere between twelve and fifteen centimetres, and partly serrated. The knife tore several major arteries close to the heart, the medical names of which Birck doesn’t remember.

  The gist of what the autopsy told us was less complicated. It happened quickly. The assailant knew what he was doing, and Heber was unlikely to have remained conscious for more than a few seconds — half a minute at most. After just a minute or two, medics would not have been able to save his life.

  Heber had drunk coffee a few hours before his death, and his intestines were in the process of digesting the remnants of a sandwich he’d grabbed along with the coffee.

  ‘Who conducted the autopsy?’

  ‘Khan, thank God.’ says Birck. ‘That’s why I didn’t feel like I had to go down there, that a call was enough. If there was anything significant there, Khan would have found it.’

  Nothing else was found on Heber’s body — no usable skin particles from the assailant, no textile fibres, nothing. A few fibres had been found on Heber’s coat, at shoulder height, but they had been destroyed by the elements, Mauritzon explained once Birck had read her report. They might possibly have come from a glove, but even the type of garment was unknown.

  ‘Destroyed by the elements,’ I say. ‘The weather, in other words.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Which shoulder?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Which shoulder did they find the fibres on?’

  ‘Left.’

  ‘So,’ I say. ‘The assailant comes from behind, puts his left hand on Heber’s shoulder to get some extra force when he stabs him.’

  ‘Maybe,’ says Birck. ‘I guess so.’

  Birck parks his car in the garage back at HQ. He turns off the engine and undoes his seatbelt, but stays in his seat.

  ‘I’ve been researching Heber on the internet. Aside from the Nazi sites, which have profiles about him, there’s surprisingly little out there.’

  ‘What did it say in the profiles?’

  ‘Nothing we didn’t already know. AFA, conviction for assault, sociologist and academic, et cetera. I could try and establish who wrote those posts, but I doubt it would work. It’s probably a waste of time.’

  ‘Yes, more than likely.’

  A fluorescent lamp flickers, and the ceiling in the garage hangs low. I wonder if we’d make it out if the pillars collapsed and the ceiling fell in. I’ve been having a lot of thoughts like this recently. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone.

  ‘Something’s just not right,’ I say.

  ‘Is that a feeling you’ve got?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Birck goes quiet, in what becomes a long silence.

  ‘Me too,’ he says eventually, and opens his door.

  A man wearing a black suit, a white shirt, and a thin, black tie is standing outside my office. His blond hair is neatly slicked back. From a distance he looks qu
ite dapper, but up close I notice the creases in his suit and the flecks of grey in his hair. He dyes it, perhaps trying not to seem so pale, but his latest attempt has only been a partial success. He holds himself like a man who was on his way somewhere before forgetting his destination. As he spots me, he smiles weakly and pulls his hand from his trouser pocket.

  ‘Leo Junker, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s correct.’ I shake his hand. It is dry and cool. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Paul Goffman.’

  ‘Goffman,’ I repeat. ‘Rings a bell.’

  ‘Have you got a minute?’

  ‘Do you work in the building?’

  ‘You could say that.’ He glances at the closed door to my room. ‘Can we talk in your office? This won’t take long.’

  ‘I’m actually pretty busy. And what do you mean you could say that?’

  ‘I can explain. I’m here to help you.’

  ‘Help me? What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly that.’ His eyes flit between me and the key in the door. ‘It’s about Thomas Heber.’

  Ah. Our reinforcements.

  Goffman’s stare is clear, and his eyes are such a pale blue that they look almost white, like ice in strong sunlight. This doesn’t feel good at all.

  Goffman surveys the room, wall by wall, as though he were looking for some detail that might tell him more about its occupant. The only problem is that, aside from a coffee cup and an empty fag-packet, the room is completely devoid of ‘details’.

  ‘I’ve been back thirteen days,’ I say, for some reason feeling the need to explain myself.

  ‘I know.’ Goffman replies enigmatically, placing his hand on the little wooden chair. ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The man sits down carefully, as if unsure whether it would take his weight.

  ‘Thomas Heber,’ I say, and sit down in my own chair.

  ‘Yes, Heber,’ says Goffman, shifting in his seat as though he’s just been reminded of the purpose of his visit. ‘I would respectfully ask that you let us deal with Heber.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Yes?’ Goffman looks puzzled. ‘Us.’

  ‘Who’s “us”?’

  ‘Didn’t I say?’

  ‘No. Are you from National Crime Unit?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Goffman says, laughing, and shaking his head. ‘I thought I’d said. I’m wrecked, haven’t slept in ages. I’m from The Bureau and we …’