The Falling Detective

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘I don’t know how it feels. Your turn. Why am I here?’

  Grim’s eyes dart around the room. He’s now leaning forwards, with his back arched and his forearms resting on the edge of the table. Plit’s bearded face is occasionally visible through the little round window in the door.

  In two hours’ time I’m meeting Sam, and I want to get home in time to have a shower and, with luck, if I’ve got time, a shave as well. I’m already hungry. Not only that, but someone is wandering around out there knowing that they’ve killed a sociologist, and if that isn’t bad enough, I’m technically powerless to do anything about it. SEPO are now the only ones who can, and the thought of that is driving me up the wall. People have gone mad over less.

  ‘I’m bored,’ he says. ‘I wanted a visit.’

  Grim was always good at steering his body language and the signals he sent out — he could even use it to send whoever he was talking to barking up the wrong tree. It was a vital skill in the business he was in. But now something has happened. He’d been addicted to heroin a while back, but had then replaced it with a prescription substitute, which he bought on the black market. He can’t do methadone any more, because it would clash with the drugs the hospital has put him on. That might be it. Grim is more open, more vulnerable.

  I feel vibrations in my coat pocket. I take the phone out, and read the message, which is from Birck.

  ME 737 was outside my place yesterday, and by the off-licence on klarabergsgatan just now as I came out. if you see it, it’s SEPO.

  ME 737. A number plate.

  ‘Is that Sam?’

  Grim smiles weakly. You can see his little dimples when he does that. They’ve always been there, and seeing them again makes my stomach tighten — a feeling that is almost like missing him.

  ‘No. A colleague.’

  A car had arrived at St Göran’s just as I got out of the taxi. The car was then parked, its engine was switched off, and yet nobody got out. Is that what happened? It can’t be the same car, but maybe they use several.

  My eyes meet Grim’s. Suddenly, he seems very old, a boy who has aged too fast and is now worn out.

  ‘Why do you keep coming?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I said. Why do you come when I ask you to?’

  It’s a question I’ve been asked before. Not by Grim but by others — by Birck, Sam, even Mauritzon, who somehow knows about my visits and feels entitled to ask me about them. Everyone asks, puzzled and unsure, and I usually give them whatever answer is most true at that particular point in time. I need to find out what happened to the friend I once shared everything with, and the only way I can do so is to keep talking to Grim. Or, I feel guilty about what happened, and I go there as a kind of penance. The most far-fetched answer is the one I usually give my colleagues: Grim has committed dozens of crimes that he has never admitted to. I am trying, if possible, to get enough information out of him to solve those cases, perhaps even enough for a conviction.

  None of my answers are lies, but nor are any of them completely true. What keeps me going back, time after time, is the same old thing, the intimate bond that exists between us. That connection — despite me feeling more cautious, tenser in here than anywhere else — is what makes the visitors’ room the one place where I can be myself. Nothing exists, apart from me and Grim and the chains around his wrists. Sometimes we sit in silence for hours, as though we need to be close to each other to survive — Grim in here, me out there. Other times, some nights, I find myself longing to be here. And I am ashamed of that.

  That is an answer I’ve never given to anybody, and I never will, especially not to Grim. If he knew that he still had that kind of power over me, anything could happen.

  ‘I’ve got nothing better to do,’ I say. ‘I have to do something, don’t I?’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘But it’s not a lie, either.’

  Grim nods slowly.

  ‘No Serax?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You always take a Serax when you’re here.’

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘You do,’ Grim says. ‘But not today. Why not?’

  ‘I’m trying to cut down.’

  ‘How’s that working out?’

  ‘It’s working,’ I say, not sounding as convincing as I would have liked.

  ‘And people think you’ve come off them? I mean, you’re back on duty.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘But you haven’t.’

  ‘No.’

  It’s just possible, for a second, to mistake his reaction for concern.

  ‘If they find out …’

  ‘I know.’

  Grim’s lips tighten to a narrow line, and he opens his mouth, hesitates, and then thinks better of it.

  ‘Be careful,’ he says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you get thrown out of the force, you’re not just going to hole up in your flat. You’ll end up in here.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re after?’

  Grim sighs, shaking his head.

  ‘You know he was here, right?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Levin. I saw him in the corridor, on my way to lunch. He was with one of the other patients. I don’t think I was supposed to see him. Well, no, I know I wasn’t supposed to see him. He was very discreet. But he must have seen that I’d seen him … you get me?’

  ‘Yes. He’s here, and you happened to see him. But how do you know he saw you?’

  ‘Later on, I was sent out to one of the visiting rooms, and there he was.’

  ‘Okay? And?’

  ‘He wanted to talk to me — I think the phrase is “damage limitation”. He wanted me to keep quiet. I got a phone for my trouble.’ He smiles. ‘But I have no obligations to anyone, other than you.’

  ‘Who was he with?’

  ‘A woman. Did you know about this, that he visits someone here?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I didn’t.’

  I wonder if it’s true. Grim shrugs.

  ‘I thought you might like to know.’

  ‘Do you regret it?’ I ask. ‘What you did?’

  His eyes flicker.

  ‘To you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I’ve wanted to ask this since I started coming to see him, after the verdict in October, when Grim was sent here. I did ask him the first time, but I didn’t get an answer, just a snigger. Now it’s different. The medicines have had an effect, and time has passed, although it’s not even two months ago. That combination can have a strange effect on a person.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  That comes as a relief, oddly enough. If he had regretted it, it would be as though it had all been for nothing. Grim’s posture has changed now, gone from an exhausted slump to a tense, spiky position, as though he’s waiting for a chance to throw himself across the table and attack me.

  ‘The fact that you’re here,’ I say. ‘The fact that it was me who put you here. That it was me who made you fail. Has that made you hate me even more?’

  ‘I never said I’d failed.’

  ‘I can’t see how sitting here,’ I say, stretching my hands out, ‘could be considered success.’

  Grim doesn’t answer. He just stares at me, perhaps to stump me. He takes every chance he gets to throw me off balance.

  The problem is that it works. I do my best not to show him that I’m scared. Instead I ask him the real question, the one I still haven’t got an answer to and that grinds at my temples on those sleepless nights.

  ‘What were you trying to do?’

  Grim doesn’t answer, maybe because he doesn’t want to reveal that, but maybe because he doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘Considering what you did to us, we deserve to know.’ />
  ‘What I did?’ Grim laughs, derisively. ‘Considering what I did?’

  ‘I have to go,’ I say, standing up from my chair, drained. I realise that I have lost once again. ‘Unless there is something else, I’ll be off.’

  ‘Are you meeting Sam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to tell her about this?’

  I find myself standing over him, with my hands on the back of my chair.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not lying now?’

  ‘No.’ I move slowly towards the door. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got your number, of course.’

  Grim laughs, and, for some reason, the corner of my mouth tugs upwards, and soon I’m laughing too, audibly. But no one could mistake that sound for happiness.

  In reception, I take a Serax without thinking about it, just as I get a call from a number I don’t recognise.

  ‘This is Kele Valdez,’ says a man’s deep voice. ‘From the University. I’m in Thomas’s room at work.’ He clears his throat. ‘I’m sorry, it’s …’

  ‘Isn’t that room cordoned off?’

  ‘They were here doing the investigation yesterday, and this morning. They said they were finished, so I checked with Marika, Marika Frantzén, who you met, and then came in. I wanted to sit here and see … if I could find anything, something to help me understand. It’s just mad, that he’s gone.’

  ‘And have you? Found anything?’

  ‘No, and I do apologise for calling on a Saturday, but I was wondering about Thomas’s Dictaphone.’

  ‘His Dictaphone?’

  ‘I should have mentioned it yesterday, but it didn’t occur to me, because … well, I thought it was in here somewhere, but it isn’t. So he must have had it with him. It’s important that you don’t listen to the interviews, or, if you have to listen to them, keep them secure.’

  ‘I don’t remember anything about a Dictaphone,’ I say, picturing Mauritzon’s hand-written note about the contents of Heber’s rucksack. ‘Can you describe it?’

  ‘A small, dark-blue Olympus one, a few years old.’

  ‘I’ll get back to you.’

  I head for the exit, and the sliding doors hiss open. The cold bites at my cheeks, and I button my coat, scouring the car park to see whether the car that arrived just after me is still there. I’ve forgotten where it was. A taxi is waiting on the turning circle, and I get in and slump into the back seat, which smells expensive and clean. The driver is a dark-skinned man with a photo stuck to his dashboard. The photo shows three children in a country that isn’t Sweden, where the floor might be an earth-coloured rug. Or earth.

  ‘Mäster Anders, on Pipersgatan,’ I say, and pull my phone out again, to disturb Birck first, who sounds tired and irritated, and then Mauritzon.

  Neither of them have any memory of a dark-blue Dictaphone. I contemplate ringing Olausson, but don’t. Instead, I call Valdez, who is still sitting in his dead colleague’s office.

  ‘What did he keep on this Dictaphone?’

  ‘His interviews.’

  ‘And are they, er, meant to be stored like that?’

  ‘No, not really. They’re kept in a safe, here in the department. But … you suspect Thomas was on his way to do an interview when he died. A follow-up interview? At least, that’s what it looked like in his last note, the one you showed me.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Valdez must be sitting completely still; there’s no background noise whatsoever. I push the phone harder to my ear. Someone on the pavement throws a beer can into the road, causing the taxi-driver to swerve and to swear loudly.

  ‘When you’re doing this kind of interview, sometimes you want to remind yourself what happened in previous meetings — what’s been said in earlier conversations with the same person. There can be long periods between interviews, so you want to avoid asking the same questions twice, that sort of thing. Thomas, I, and several others usually transfer earlier recordings and listen again, to refresh the memory. So the earlier interviews with this … what was it …’

  ‘1599.’

  ‘That’s it. They were probably on the Dictaphone.’

  Sam. There’s something about her — something indefinable, huge. It’s as though the molecular structure of the air changes as she walks into the restaurant. She has one hand, the one that now only has four fingers, in the pocket of her jacket, while the other one sways in time with her footsteps. Her nails are unpainted, and her skin is pale. When she finds me, sitting hunched at a table far from the entrance, half-hidden behind a thick pillar, she smiles, and it’s that smile Sam gives people if she’s not sure whether she knows them.

  I brush aside thoughts of the dead sociologist, his missing Dictaphone, and 1599 — the case that is no longer ours — and straighten up. Outside Mäster Anders, darkness has fallen over Pipersgatan, and you can just hear the music coming from the speakers at low volume, someone singing Sometimes I feel very sad, again and again.

  ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘I know,’ Sam says with a giggle, one hand winding her scarf from around her neck. ‘Why do you say that? “Sorry I’m late,” when you’re not even late?’

  ‘Because you’ve kept someone waiting?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It might be that. Sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  ‘It’s fine. You had no way of knowing I was going to be early.’

  ‘No, exactly.’

  Jesus. We’re talking about nothing, and even that is excruciating. It’s been like this since that day, in late summer, when Grim stood between us and nearly killed us both. It pulled Sam away from Ricky, her partner at the time, but it didn’t bring her closer to me. She’s lonely now, and you can tell. Her eyes are jumpy and quick, as though she’s forgotten how to behave when out among people. Her eyes are green, but cloudy. The clarity they once had is gone, and their spark is missing.

  At first she was just happy to be alive. Then she moved on, and blamed me for everything. She can’t work as a tattooist anymore. Every time she looked at her hand, she was reminded of what I’d done to her, even though it was actually Grim who did it. I used to be the one ringing her, when I was high and alone and couldn’t help telling her that I still missed her, still needed her. Recently, it’s been Sam: the phone rings in the darkness, and it’s her on the other end, sometimes screaming and crying, but mostly just silent. She was on medication in the beginning — strong drugs, the kind I wish I could get my hands on. After a while she stopped. She didn’t want to be dependent on them just to function, she said. She’s not that kind of person. She is, on the other hand, seeing a therapist, and she’ll probably need to do that for some time to come.

  I wonder if she knows that I can’t cope without Serax. Maybe. I wonder what she’d say if I told her I’d thrown up at a crime scene the day before yesterday.

  I drink from my glass, and Sam takes off her coat. Her other hand glides out of her pocket, and from the corner of my eye I spot the gap where her index finger used to be. But I don’t look, more for my sake than hers.

  ‘How are things?’ she asks as she sits down. As she does so, a faint whiff of her perfume brushes past me, a scent that makes me remember the way things used to be.

  ‘Good,’ I answer, realising that I have nothing else to say. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Good,’ she says, opening the menu with one hand and continues, without looking up, ‘Have you met him today?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who I mean.’

  ‘Ah-ha. No.’

  ‘Does he still contact you?’

  ‘Every day, pretty much. He always manages to get a message to me. He even sends texts — he’s got hold of a phone.’

  ‘Did you answer?’ />
  ‘No,’ I say, opening my own menu. ‘I rang St Göran’s, and got them to take the phone off him.’

  This makes Sam laugh, a genuine laugh that reaches her eyes, making the skin around them crease lightly.

  ‘Good,’ she says.

  Neither of us want it to be like last time, for it to end the way it did then. We’re finding a way to make it work, but it’s still very fragile. Whenever we’re in each other’s company, I’m only ever a sentence, perhaps just a word, away from losing her. At least that’s how it feels. For the likes of us, the past is dangerous.

  I want to touch her hand.

  We order. Both of us drink water. Me because I mustn’t mix with alcohol with Serax, and Sam because she’s stopped drinking. On the road outside, between the dark outlines of buildings, a car passes, and its headlights illuminate an estate car parked outside the restaurant. Inside is a figure, sitting there in the darkness. That’s as much as I can process before the first car passes by and the stationary one is in darkness once more. Well, that and the fact that the driver’s face is looking at us, staring straight at me and Sam, as we’re sitting there at our window table by the big pillar. It could be the car that pulled up at St Göran’s.

  ‘Leo?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I think I shake my head at this point, as though that might make the lie more convincing. ‘I was thinking about something.’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’

  ‘That I’ve missed this.’

  ‘Me too.’

  She smiles, and looks away. When the food arrives and we’re about to start eating, she fumbles with her knife, perhaps because of the finger that’s no longer there. The knife falls to the floor.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Sam says as she bends down. ‘I’m getting used to it.’

  A car drives past the window, and this time I manage to read the letters on the parked car’s number plate. WHO. Then the car is returned to darkness, the driver just a silhouette. It could be Goffman.

  ‘Have you been to Salem recently?’ she asks.