‘Yes,’ Birck says. ‘Maybe.’
‘And that it was someone she trusted. That isn’t a very big group of people.’
‘No, luckily for us,’ Goffman says, standing in the kitchenette, staring into the sink. ‘Luckily for us, Radical Anti-Fascism is a small group.’
‘Radical Anti-Fascism?’ Birck replies. ‘How do you know it’s them?’
Goffman doesn’t answer. I attempt to discern the size of the bullet holes in Lisa Swedberg’s chest.
‘Shit,’ says Birck. ‘We were so fucking close. When’s that fucking technician going to get here?’
It isn’t obvious who he’s talking to. I want to put my hand on Birck’s shoulder — he looks like he needs it.
‘He’s coming,’ says Goffman. ‘Calm down.’
Birck doesn’t say anything. Nor do I. There are no last words, and everything is very quiet.
‘I wonder why she slept on the sofa,’ I say.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, if the girl who lives here, Lundin, is away for a while, why didn’t Swedberg sleep in her bed?’
‘Maybe she preferred the sofa,’ Birck says. ‘Who knows.’
‘Since we’re done here,’ says Goffman, who is now standing between us, ‘I suggest we take my car.’
‘Are we done already?’ I ask.
‘I’ve seen everything I need to see. Shall we? Before it gets crowded in here.’
‘I’ve got my own car,’ says Birck.
‘I know.’ Goffman is already halfway down the hall. ‘But the music’s better in mine.’
‘Tragic business, this Heber and Swedberg case,’ Goffman says once we’re in the car and he’s steering us away from Bandhagen. ‘So tragic, so very tragic.’
His Volvo is a cool, nippy little car with comfortable seats in the back. You’re sitting so low that it feels like you’re in a capsule. The world flashes past at eye level. A subtle hint of aftershave hangs in the air. The trim is black and light-grey, and the police radio is switched off. Bob Dylan is singing on the ordinary radio instead, his voice rasping and melancholy.
‘Where are we off to?’ Birck asks.
‘I haven’t decided yet.’ Goffman stops at a red light. ‘The car is a good place to think in. And we need to think. And talk.’
‘Is this your own car?’ I ask.
‘Oh, I wish it were. But no, although I do use it more than anyone else.’
‘So it was you then. You’ve been following us the whole time.’
‘That’s right.’
Goffman’s eyes flit from the road to the rear-view mirror. There is a chink of regret in his eyes, as though he’s just admitted doing something he hadn’t wanted to do, but it’s impossible to tell whether or not it’s just a ploy. Everything, including life itself, could be a game to Goffman.
‘I’m afraid so,’ he adds. ‘I’m afraid that’s right.’
‘Who’s in WHO 327?’
‘A colleague.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Her,’ Goffman replies, ‘name is Iris.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She’s at home, grabbing a couple of hours’ sleep, I should think. She’s been on duty tonight.’
‘Outside Martin Antonsson’s house,’ I say.
The red light turns amber and then green. Goffman rolls gently into the junction, turns left, and we’re heading north, slowly. Through the trees, I catch a glimpse of Globen Arena’s distant white dome.
‘Yes,’ Goffman says. ‘Outside Antonsson’s.’
‘Why?’ says Birck.
‘Why what?’
‘Why have we had you as a tail?’
‘Certain people in our department had reason to believe that you hadn’t completely handed over the Heber case to us.’ He smiles weakly, and the skin around his eyes wrinkles slightly. They are fine wrinkles, revealing a comfortable life, or a tendency to greet adversity with a smile. ‘And, once again, unfortunately, it turned out to be true.’
‘Yes, about that,’ Birck says hesitantly. He takes the little Dictaphone out of his coat pocket, and holds it up alongside Goffman’s right cheek. ‘I think you should hear what’s on this.’
Goffman peers at it.
‘I’m afraid I already know what’s on there,’ he says. ‘Interviews with Lisa Swedberg, right?’
Birck withdraws his hand.
‘No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I’ll take it, gladly,’ Goffman says. ‘I think that might be for the best, for everyone. Is this the only thing these files are stored on?’
‘Yes. But I’ve edited them, and saved the important parts. Listen to the last file,’ says Birck. ‘It’s not Swedberg and Heber, but it is what I managed to get out of Ebi Hakimi before he died.’
Goffman takes the Dictaphone and puts it in his trouser pocket.
‘Ah yes, Ebi,’ he says, shaking his head slowly. ‘It really is tragic, the whole business.’
At some point since we’ve been in the car, Goffman has changed the music, from Dylan to The Beach Boys. I try to keep an eye on his hands, but I keep forgetting about it, as though Goffman has perfected the art of diverting attention from them.
‘How do you know what was on the Dictaphone?’ I say. ‘I mean, we’re talking about confidential interviews between a researcher and his subject.’
‘Confidential,’ Goffman says, as if trying it out in his mouth. ‘This is where I don’t know where to begin.’
‘How come your voice is on the Dictaphone? Start there — a telephone call between you and Lisa Swedberg.’
‘Yes,’ Goffman says, apparently distracted by what seems to be a choice between staying in the right-hand lane or changing to the middle, ‘perhaps that is where I should start.’
So Goffman tells us a story, a story which in the end turns out not to be completely true, but maybe it would have been naïve to expect anything else.
It starts one day in February, when Goffman is sitting in his office. He’s a man who likes to be on the go, in a car or on foot, and sitting in that same chair in the same old room for too long makes him irritable. That’s partly why he reacts so angrily when he gets the message. A note informs him that his duties with the Counter-Subversion Unit have been altered by an unnamed superior. He is now tasked with identifying and collecting intelligence about extremist groups on the Swedish far left.
He’s an uncomplicated man with an uncomplicated outlook. He has never been politically engaged, nor felt sympathy for the left or right. He favours simple solutions to complex problems, and what is right or wrong is secondary to what is practical. So he decides to work intensively, to gather sufficient information in as short a time as possible to enable him to claim to have done his bit, and then move on with his life, get on with things in other parts of SEPO’s operation that are more productive.
He soon finds himself heading to Cairo, where he and I are both outsiders. He has a good nose, of the kind that can sniff its way to information, and that’s what leads him to Lisa Swedberg. He follows her from Cairo one afternoon, and gets hold of her ID-Number.
‘You don’t want me getting hold of your ID-Number,’ Goffman says now. ‘Give me that, and anything can happen.’
At the beginning of March, he gets word of Lisa Swedberg’s links to a serious crime, the investigation into which was never completed. She was guilty — there was no doubt in his mind, once he’d verified a few basic pieces of information. One morning she wakes up, and he’s sitting there, cross-legged on a chair in front of her, his hands joined in the way you do when you appear in front of someone like that.
He tells her what he knows, and how he knows it. Then he ‘requests’ — that’s the word he uses — an exchange of favours. In return for information, she gets Goffman’s silence.
‘Not regularly,’ he
says, ‘and not anything that could hurt her. That was our agreement, if you can call it an agreement.’
‘You blackmailed her,’ says Birck. ‘You exploited someone who was already pretty much helpless.’
‘Yes, true,’ Goffman says, ‘I suppose we should call things by their proper names.’
Silence. I chew my bottom lip, and think. The Beach Boys are singing about being gone for the summer.
‘What was the crime?’ I say.
‘If there’s one thing I have learnt, it is never to speak ill of the dead. A serious crime, but perfectly understandable under the circumstances — let’s just leave it at that. She didn’t set out to hurt anyone. Where it mattered, she was a good person.’
Unfortunately, trusting people is not a part of Goffman’s life, no matter how decent they might seem. That’s why he feels compelled to keep her under surveillance, and to keep following her. Later in March — Goffman claims not to remember the exact date, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t know not only the date but the exact time as well — he’s sitting in a car, rolling along a steady twenty metres behind her, in bright spring sunshine. The sun reflects off the bonnet, causing Goffman’s vision to white out for a split second, making Lisa Swedberg disappear, and then suddenly she really has disappeared. She’s gone from the street altogether.
Stranger things have happened in Goffman’s life, so he parks and walks to the spot where he last saw her, inspects the ground, the nearby side streets, and the shops and cafés. And there she is, sitting in a café.
‘With Thomas Heber,’ I say.
‘That’s correct.’
Although, needless to say, Goffman doesn’t know who Heber is at this point, he takes a picture of him with his phone. It is Iris who identifies him when she sees the photo a couple of hours later.
They continue with the surveillance, and when she goes home with Thomas Heber a few days later, that’s enough to persuade Goffman to do a more thorough background check on Heber.
‘I soon found out the same things you know,’ he says. ‘AFA, the Gothenburg riots, sociology, social movements, blah, blah, blah. It struck me that he might still be the kind of individual our department is interested in.’
Goffman contacts Lisa Swedberg, and she tells the truth, just as Goffman had hoped, except about whether she has any connections to the university. She names various students she knows, people she sympathises or socialises with, but fails to mention Heber. Goffman should really break their agreement at this point and leak what he knows about her past, but — he says, as he taps his nose twice — something makes him stick with it and play along.
‘And then bug Heber’s apartment,’ he adds.
‘Of course,’ Birck says.
‘Of course,’ Goffman repeats.
Iris manages to get a youngster from Criminal Intelligence to do it, in exchange for information from SEPO’s records, which he wouldn’t otherwise have access to. It is the kind of information that will give him a discreet, but nonetheless effective, lift upwards in the organisation’s hierarchy.
It’s a classic bugging device, speech-activated, and since Heber lives alone but hasn’t yet become the sort of person who talks to himself, the recordings are primarily of his conversations with Lisa Swedberg, since she is pretty well his only visitor.
‘That was lucky,’ Goffman says now, as we glide slowly past Globen. ‘It saved us an inordinate amount of work. I’m one of those people who talk to themselves.’
‘Yes, I can imagine,’ I say.
‘Sad really, talking to yourself.’ Goffman looks as though he’s just realised something disappointing about himself. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘Yep,’ says Birck.
Since then, Goffman has known everything about Heber and Swedberg, right down to what they say to each other while having sex. It’s strange, he says, knowing how two now-deceased individuals sounded as they came.
‘They would have made a lovely couple,’ he states. ‘Don’t you think?’
Neither of us says anything.
‘Well, perhaps one can’t really say, without ever having seen them together.’
The vast amounts of intelligence they are now gathering on Heber free up resources for other things. When Goffman calls Swedberg to verify a vague tip-off he’s received about a threat to a mink farm near Stockholm, he knows that she’s sitting face-to-face with the man they’re bugging.
‘That’s when you hear me,’ he says, patting the Dictaphone in his trouser pocket, ‘when I make my involuntary appearance on this.’
In early December, Goffman confronts Lisa Swedberg with some information that he could only have heard through her conversations with Thomas Heber. It’s a slip-up; a moment of carelessness on Goffman’s part, and he later feels clumsy, although he is not clumsy by nature. Their agreement states only that Lisa Swedberg is to tell Goffman the truth, not the other way round, yet something happens to you when you’re snooping on someone, hearing all the things that Goffman has heard, so he gives her straight answers.
‘Had we been following her? Yes. Had we been bugging her? Yes. Where had we bugged her? In Heber’s flat. “Fuck off, you fucking pigs.” ’ Goffman rolls his eyes. ‘And so on.’
She doesn’t tell Heber, perhaps because she’s scared it will end their relationship, or that it might even mean the end of Heber’s academic career.
‘Actually, she did,’ Birck says. ‘They met outdoors somewhere, a last meeting. Heber recorded it, even though it wasn’t an interview. That’s when she told him. She said that his flat wasn’t safe.
This surprises him. He tries to conceal that fact, but doesn’t succeed.
‘She said that?’
‘Yes. It’s on the Dictaphone.’
‘That could mean all sorts of things.’
The black Volvo rolls over the bridge that links Gullmarsplan and Södermalm, sound-tracked by The Beach Boys at low volume.
The dreamy blue skies and blue sea of the music contrast brutally with reality outside. In Goffman’s car, the world feels a bit skewed, like it’s leaning slightly and the lines have been erased.
Life carries on as normal in the days leading up to the murder. When the police radio crackles that night, Goffman is sitting in the car outside his apartment in Gärdet, for some inexplicable reason unable to go in. A suspected murder on Döbelnsgatan gets his nose twitching, and he heads down there, peers up the alley, and sees Heber’s body lying there. He then goes straight to Vanadisvägen, lets himself in to Heber’s flat, using the same key that the young technician had used when he bugged the place, and leaves with the device in his pocket.
… I have watched you on the shore, standing by the ocean’s roar …
‘I did a poor job,’ Goffman says, embarrassed. ‘I know I marched straight in without shoe-covers, didn’t think first. I was stressed and sleep-deprived. That’s one of the reasons we were trying to get the inquiry finished as quickly as possible. I had no choice but to inform Olausson of the complicated nature of the situation straightaway.’ He goes quiet while we drive out on to Ringvägen, before adding, ‘I’m a practical sort, but I know what the law says about collecting intelligence through listening devices. We would have been in hot water.’
Birck’s gaze follows the Christmas decorations in the shop windows. Even the newsstands have put up advent candles and illuminated flashing Father Christmases.
… do you love me? Do you, surfer girl?
‘I met Lisa as soon as I could and tried to get her to talk. But she was, as you can imagine, far too preoccupied with anger and grief. I think she blamed us for what happened, even though that is completely illogical, but then those emotions are not guided by reason.’
‘She came to us instead,’ Birck says.
‘I know, we saw.’
‘Who killed Thomas Heber?’ I say.
‘Ah,�
� says Goffman. ‘The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. We can’t answer that yet. What we do know is that a little boy, John Thyrell, almost certainly saw the murderer. We’ve had him look at a few pictures of faces we know, but rather unsurprisingly, this resulted in nothing more than a waste of taxpayer’s money. It was worth a try, my colleagues maintain, but, well, I’m not sure. We also know that one of the knives in the set they have at Café Cairo matches the type of injuries that Heber sustained. We cannot, however, technically tie that knife to his body, because the knife is missing. We can’t even put it at the crime scene, since we don’t know who used it. We do, however, know that an intruder, or someone wanting to give that impression, broke into Café Cairo that evening. The problem is that one thousand two hundred and fifteen kronor also disappeared from the till that same night.
‘An ordinary break-in — they were after the money,’ Birck says.
‘Or someone on the inside who wanted to make it look that way. That movement is riddled with internal splits, far more so than they would care to admit. Who knows? Someone, of course. Someone always knows. But not us.’
‘I was there,’ I say. ‘At Cairo. They never mentioned the money.’
‘Well, I’d say they were trying to avoid attracting any more suspicion. We’re already on them fairly hard, for various reasons.’
We turn off onto Hornsgatan, where people are laden down with heavy carrier bags, and have tired but contented, hopeful faces.
‘Look at them,’ he says. ‘Shop, shop, shop. That’s all Christmas is about. Anyway, we think it must have been something like this. At the end of November, Lisa gets word of the imminent threat, if that’s what we’re going to call it. It’s probably Ebi Hakimi who tells her, if Heber’s notes are to be believed. Swedberg is distraught, anxious, and feels that she needs to talk to someone. She goes to Heber, of course, because the relationship between researcher and subject allows her to reveal it to him without having to worry about potential consequences. The problem is that someone finds out that Heber knows. Who that is, and how they found out, is not known, but in all probability it is someone inside the organisation.’
The Falling Detective Page 18