‘The little group within RAF,’ I say.
‘Yes, let’s go with that for now. They suspect that Heber is about to step out of his academic role, become a responsible and upstanding citizen, and go to the police with what he knows. So they silence him. Then comes the next question, which naturally follows from what we already know, and that is: How on earth did Heber know about this? They go through their own lists, and soon realise that it has to be Lisa Swedberg. They decide to act, and, in the hope of avoiding any connection being made between her death and Heber’s, they use a firearm this time. They may have known that we had her under surveillance, but that’s unlikely. Three people know that; me, Iris, and then one more. It’s probably a coincidence.’
‘There’s one more person who knows about the threat,’ I say. ‘1601. If Heber’s notes are to be believed.’
‘Yes,’ says Goffman, ‘If they are to be believed.’
‘Do you have reason not to do so?’ asks Birck.
‘I believe them as much as I believe any scientist. By which I mean, I’m sure that parts of it are true. But he does leave things out. He fails to mention, for example, his relations with Swedberg.’
‘Do you know who that is? 1601?’
‘No.’
‘Would you tell the truth, if you did know?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ says Goffman.
We’re standing at the traffic lights on the approach to the Västerbron Bridge, which stretches out in front of us. I make eye contact with Goffman. His expression is calm, sincere, but I’m still convinced that he’s deceiving us.
I’ve been in this town so long that back in the city I’ve been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time …
‘Why Antonsson?’ says Birck.
‘He is pouring money into far-right groups like Swedish Resistance and People’s Front. He’s getting older now, must be forty-something? He bought shares in the early Nineties that he had the good fortune to sell at just the right time, before the dotcom bubble burst, so he has been financially secure since then. Anyway, he is now a middle-aged man with far too little time to do anything with the money. Not only that, he is an idealist, one who genuinely loves the White Power movement. We know that, as well as being rather gifted in the field of stocks and shares, he is also a significant player in the distribution of White Power music across northern Europe. If they managed to get rid of him it would be more than just reducing the cash flow. They would also undermine vital parts of the nationalist movement and the White Power scene, which is all built around music and symbolism. He makes an ingenious political target for left-wing extremists.
… it’s all an affair of my life with the heroes and villains …
‘Ebi Hakimi,’ says Birck. ‘It must have been him.’
Goffman raises an eyebrow.
‘What must have been him?’
‘That she stole the Dictaphone from,’ Birck says. ‘She claimed she’d been given it, but I don’t think that was the case. I think she stole it. It ties him to the crime scene, and to Heber.’
‘Yes,’ says Goffman. ‘That’s probably what happened.’
‘I never know whether you mean what you’re saying or the exact opposite,’ I say.
‘I do apologise if that’s the case.’ Goffman watches the traffic light intently. It turns green. ‘I can’t help that.’
We stop and climb out in front of HQ on Kungsholmen. Three men in heavy overcoats, we could be mistaken for a father and his two sons.
‘I am working on the assumption that this is the end of it, for the time being,’ Goffman says, with a new, colder expression. ‘That we can be done with each other now, that you are going to get on with what you’re paid to do, and I’ll get on with my duties. And that you’ll forward any information you may have to me or Iris.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Alright.’
High above us, so high that it seems to be almost touching the clouds, a large bird sweeps past. No one else seems to notice it. It heads off over the water, with its long wings and gentle movements. I follow it until it disappears. A strange sensation: I’m not really here.
Goffman looks at the car.
‘Would you look at that? I forgot to take the blue light off. Typical me, so absent-minded.’
III
LIKE A GHOST
In the days that follow, the temperature in Stockholm drops markedly, from minus fifteen, to minus twenty, to minus twenty-five degrees, causing the homeless, the feral cats, and stray dogs that move in the shadows of the capital to die. As the days pass, rumours of an approaching snowstorm, which the Met Office christens ‘Edith’, spread through the city. Edith starts in Western Russia and is, strictly speaking, a hurricane. Closest to the eye of the storm, winds of 37 metres per second are recorded, and the hurricane is predicted to peak over Stockholm on the twenty-first of December. Her progress is covered in detail by the websites of the tabloid newspapers. They recount tales of the worst storms in history. They broadcast live. They wait, with bated breath. We all do. Meteorologists, the police, and spokesmen from Fire and Rescue appear on news bulletins, urging people travelling home for Christmas to postpone their journeys until the following Monday, the twenty-third.
As Edith’s reputation grows, so does the gathering storm around HQ. Ebi Hakimi’s death has caused uproar in the media and the concrete estates around Stockholm. The police, the organisation itself and the bright spark who put a bullet in a demonstrator’s eye, come under heavy fire, and accusations of abuse of power fly around. The justice minister cuts short a visit to the UK to deal with the situation, and gets off to a good start by lamenting the death of the protester. Then as everyone expected, she goes on to make everything even worse by calling the demonstrators ‘left-wing extremists’ and describes the police’s actions as ‘largely very effective and successful.’
If you’re looking for me on the evening of the sixteenth of December, you’ll find me on a chair in a flat out in Salem, face to face with my father, within the four walls where I grew up. My mum’s gone to a Christmas do with her former colleagues — ‘former’, since Dad got so bad that he needed full-time care at home.
For people seeing me and my dad for the first time, it probably takes a while for our similarity to become apparent — the slightly crooked nose, the prominent eyebrows, the somewhat lopsided smile, and the way we hold the handle on a teacup when lifting it from the kitchen table.
The TV is showing today’s Christmas speech, this time from the leader of the Christian Democrats. He has more of the hedge-fund manager than the politician about him, but he has a friendly voice that puts Dad at ease.
‘I think I’m going to go to bed soon,’ he says. ‘I’m tired, you know. While you’ve been having fun at school, I’ve been working all day.’
‘Oh, right,’ I say.
The clarity that was present in Dad’s voice the last time we spoke on the phone is gone, replaced by a thicker fog than any he has been in before. Tonight is the first time he’s spoken to me as if I were a child.
‘It is fun, isn’t it?’ Dad says, unsure.
‘I almost never had fun at school, Dad. You know that.’
He doesn’t answer. His eyes settle on the tea instead, as though he’d forgotten it was there, and he takes a careful sip.
On the telly, the Christian Democrat expounds the value of having your family close at Christmas time, the only time of the year when everyone arrives, from near and far, to gather round the traditional food and the sparkling, hopeful tree. Keeping traditions alive is something we humans do by our very nature, he goes on, and this is more important than ever against a backdrop of huge social change, as illustrated by today’s report from The Institute for Social Research.
My eyes move from the screen to the newspaper lying folded on the table.
NEW STUDY SHOWS:
CHILDREN OF ETHNIC MINORITIES DISCRIMINATED AGAINST, MONITORED, AND ISOLATED. Children from minority backgrounds are subjected to strict social control by their own families, according to a new report from The Institute for Social Research. The aim is to avoid western-style adolescence. Several anti-racist organisations are extremely critical of the report’s working assumptions and its conclusions.
‘Did you read this?’ I say, and flip the newspaper’s front page.
He doesn’t answer. I don’t ask again; I can’t be bothered.
We finish our tea. I want to take a Serax, but I resolve not to. I need to try to stop. Before long, my back is warm and sweaty, and my hands are trembling. To distract myself, I help Dad to rinse his toothbrush, and I put some toothpaste on it and give it to him. Dad remembers how to do the brushing, but not the prep work. I imagine a parasite, moving around randomly in Dad’s brain, consuming him, replacing his memory with black holes, voids.
I help him to bed, although Mum says he can manage without. Then I carefully press my lips to his forehead, and whisper something, before leaving him and closing the door, and sitting on the chair outside his room where Mum usually sits when he’s resting.
It is only then, as I sit there in the hall where Micke and I used to chase each other with our plastic swords and shields, that I start to cry.
Christian is holding himself upright, using the wall next to the stairs for support. Everything is swaying. One minute he’s in the stairwell; the next, he’s on the sofa.
‘How long have you had it?’ he asks, attempting to appear normal. ‘I mean the sofa? It feels like you’ve had it for as long as I’ve known you.’
‘I don’t know,’ Michael says, his eyes fixed on the screen of his mobile phone. ‘Fuck’s sake.’
‘What is it?’
‘I got a text from Jens.’
Christian feels a strong sense of foreboding. There aren’t many people who scare him. Jens Malm is one of them.
‘What does he want?’
‘He was asking about Lisa Swedberg.’
‘What about her?’
‘He wanted to know if I knew who killed her.’
Christian looks up.
‘Do you?’
Michael shrugs and smiles. He has a nice smile. It makes his eyes sparkle.
History crashes over him like a wave, and he remembers how it used to be, how he and Michael stuck together when no one else was on their side out in Hagsätra. They were practically children then, yet it still feels so recent: Michael was bored and was wandering around a car park in Salem, moving in between the cars. It was winter. Michael had been a member of the youth movement for less than two months; Christian, a little over one. Michael was convinced he’d ended up in the right crowd; Christian wasn’t. Yet.
Christian shaved Michael’s head. They did it in Christian’s bathroom one night when his mum was out. The thick blond locks disappeared, and coarse stubble took their place. After a few days of deliberation, Christian shaved off his own hair. It felt liberating, almost like becoming a different, cleaner version of himself.
Michael was wearing his black SKREWDRIVER T-shirt under his coat. Christian didn’t wear his anymore. He stood smoking a cigarette. A Swedish flag adorned his disposable lighter.
Michael stopped next to one of the cars, a dark-coloured BMW, and spat on it. Then Christian heard the sound of a key scoring into the car’s paintwork, relentless and aggressive. He went on and on, from one car to another, until headlights swung across the car park as someone drove in.
He and Christian ran off: he was first, Christian a few steps behind. It was winter, late evening. The moon was out. They were fifteen years old. Christian was turning sixteen in six months, Michael in two.
A few days later, they were back in Salem again, despite the fact that they didn’t live there. They’d heard about a new guy who could sort out cheap booze, cheaper than Oliver and all the others in Hagsätra. It was a fair old trip, but it was worth it. They went past the car park on their way there, because Michael wanted to see if the cars were still there.
They were. A couple of shadows were moving in the car park, and then a voice came from the gloom: ‘That’s him! There’s the fucking little whore.’
Time and space, and how they converge. Had they been a minute later, or earlier, their paths might never have crossed. Everything might have been different.
Michael started running, but it wasn’t Michael they were after. It was Christian. He didn’t get further than the little alley between two of the nearby blocks. That’s where they caught up with him, and he can still, years later, feel the force of those blows, the pain of the kicks, the taste of blood in his mouth. One of the kicks snapped something, a rib. The pain made him scream.
They’d got the wrong person, but that didn’t matter. He got a kick in the head that turned everything black. His head was shaved, and the ground underneath him was so cold, and he was going to die at fifteen.
That was a long time ago, but he still remembers the way Michael hid in the shadows, invisible to them. Christian didn’t blame him, but perhaps he should have.
Michael’s wall was decorated with a poster of Charles Manson’s face, with the words DO SOMETHING WITCHY TO LET THE WORLD KNOW THAT YOU WERE THERE written across it. He claimed to have been given it, but Christian was pretty sure he’d made it himself.
It was a quarter past three, the twenty-eighth of May. The radio reported a bank robbery that had just taken place in Kisa. Witnesses said that three men had left the scene in a car, heading in the direction of Malexander.
Even though four months had passed since the assault, and breathing was no longer painful, Christian still found walking a struggle. He dreamt about it at night. That’s when the fear took root and flourished — the fear, and the absolute conviction.
They weren’t members of Jens Malm’s movement. This was purely a youth movement, and was somewhat more open, less demanding of its members. It had existed before, but then disbanded, and had recently been re-launched. Jens Malm thought that it would be good for Michael to see how a political organisation was built, from the very beginning. And, if he didn’t like it there, Malm had apparently added, he could always talk to him.
But they did like it there, at least to begin with.
Four months since the assault. A lot can happen in four months.
They stood handing out flyers by the square in Kärrtorp. They stood at the entrance to the underground station in Skarpnäck. In Jakobsberg. In Orminge and Gustavsberg, Solna, Danderyd, Gärdet.
They stood all over the place, and they weren’t alone. On other squares, in other parts of town, there were others standing there, and then even more. For the first time, something swelled up in Christian’s chest: a feeling of strength.
‘It doesn’t matter whether I know or not,’ Michael says now, about Lisa Swedberg’s death. ‘What matters here is that you don’t know.’
‘Why am I not supposed to know?’
‘What the hell do you think? I don’t want you getting in any trouble.’
‘I’m already in trouble. I’m the one who stole the knife.’
‘The only reason I asked you to do that was because I couldn’t be in two places at once. And I don’t trust anyone, apart from you.’ Michael looks genuinely saddened. ‘I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. We had no choice. You do understand that, don’t you?’
‘Course I do,’ Christian says, and as he’s saying the words he realises they’re actually true.
‘It was necessary,’ Michael says, as if trying to convince himself. ‘I still don’t get how the fuck she knew about it.’
‘Are you sure that she did?’
‘If you’d listened to the Dictaphone, you’d know. Not only that, it shows that that fucking Hakimi knew as well.’ He laughs out loud. ‘Luckily, that cop sorted that out for us
anyway. We got out of doing it ourselves.’
All of it, all this death, is spreading inside Christian, like a cancer. He feels nauseous, and wishes he could show it, that he could submit to his body’s desire to bend double and throw up.
‘It started with Heber,’ Michael goes on. ‘He said it to Hakimi, who told Swedberg. The question is how the fuck Heber came to know about it.’
‘There must be others who’ve heard us talking about it. That’s what happens when you have to deal with things on the hoof.’
‘True.’ He puts the phone to one side. ‘It must be the same bastard who stole the Dictaphone.’ His eyes have gone cold, and dark. ‘How the hell could we have a leak, with all the entrance tests and checks that we do?’
He gets up, and starts pacing up and down the room. This is what it’s been like recently. Michael, unpredictable and paranoid, and Christian, doing his utmost to calm him down. This time, he doesn’t succeed. More than anything, he wants to get out of there. Then Christian realises something.
‘How did you find out that Heber knew?’
He hadn’t asked that question. Once again, he’d just accepted it, because he’d always trusted Michael that much.
‘Don’t you trust me? Michael asks, as though he can feel Christian’s uncertainty.
‘Course. This isn’t about that.’
Michael is unsure; Christian can see that in his eyes. Then he says, ‘Heber called, and wanted to talk to me.’
‘And you answered?’
‘He rang from a fucking payphone. I didn’t recognise the number. I shouldn’t have answered it.’ Michael stops, over by the window. ‘Fuck. Way too many people know, or have heard something, or know someone who’s heard something. It’s starting to get risky.’
‘But did Heber tell you what it was about?’ says Christian. ‘What he wanted?’
‘Yes. He said he knew what we were up to.’
‘What did he know? The rumour about Antonsson? How the hell could that have come from us? The only people who know about it are me and you. And Jonathan.’
The Falling Detective Page 19