‘So what makes the police think it was you?’
‘There are certain … there’s evidence that points to us. But I’m pretty certain that someone’s trying to frame us, to fuck things up for us. This demo today, I think it’ll be the last one we’ll be able to do for a while. As long as we’ve got the cops tailing us, we’re not going to be able to do anything. I don’t suppose you happen to know anything about this?’
‘What do you mean, about what?’
‘Why the cops are constantly on our backs.’
Jonathan gets off the swing.
‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’
Ebi stares at him, without flinching. Then he sighs and shakes his head.
‘Nothing. I don’t know. I’m so bloody confused. I shouldn’t be talking to you, I wish I’d never come. I can’t … I can’t trust you.’
Jonathan’s sudden jump off the swing has left it rocking back and forth.
‘Sit back down,’ Ebi insists.
Jonathan stops the swing, and sits down. He’s cold.
‘The sociologist was called Heber,’ Ebi says. ‘You haven’t spoken to him?’
‘Why would I have spoken to him? I don’t even know who he is.’
Ebi scrapes the snow with the toe of his shoe.
‘He was researching us. Interviewing people from your side and my side.’ Ebi fiddles with the little device. ‘How do you get it going?’
‘You press it,’ Jonathan says, and gets off the swing, and leans over Ebi’s shoulder. He can smell Ebi’s hair. It’s newly washed, healthy. ‘Here. Press here.’
‘Thanks.’ Ebi turns the little machine on, and a list of files fills the screen. ‘I think these are the interviews he did.’
‘What I heard sounded like an interview, too,’ says Jonathan. ‘Are you on it, too? Did you get interviewed as well?’
‘No,’ says Ebi. ‘He never interviewed me. I think he wanted to, though. He tried. He’d heard about Antonsson, and wanted to talk to me about it. And …’
‘What?’
Ebi turns off the Dictaphone. Jonathan wonders what he’s thinking.
‘How did you get hold of this?’ he asks slowly.
‘Someone I know had it.’
‘Who?’
Jonathan says the name.
‘And how did it get to him?’ Ebi asks.
‘I don’t know.’
Ebi stands up.
‘He must have taken it from Heber, that night. How else could he have got hold of it? And that means it must have been … It has to be …’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t talk about it now. We’ll have to talk about it another time, if we meet again. But you should be looking closer to home.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I haven’t got time.’ He stops. ‘See you at the demo, I suppose.’
‘Yes. Be careful.’
That’s all. And that’s the last thing he says to Ebi.
Café Cairo opens at ten. That gives us half an hour till Oscar Svedenhag has to open the doors for the day. Birck parks his Citröen just as the radio informs us that the Met Office have raised their state of alert ahead of Edith’s arrival, and have now issued a Class 3 warning for the greater Stockholm area.
‘This is going to be a hell of a night,’ says Birck.
‘I know.’
We move quickly through the cold. The little street is shielded by buildings, making the wind less evident, but it still manages to grab the door and whip it open, almost slamming it into the wall.
The eczema on Oscar’s chin is larger, redder, and even shinier that it was when I last saw him.
‘We didn’t really say hello last time,’ Birck says, and stretches his hand out once we’ve managed to shut the door behind us. ‘Gabriel.’
‘Oscar,’ he says, taken aback by Birck’s politeness.
Cairo seems smaller without the customers. The tables have been cleaned, and are surrounded by neatly arranged chairs. The smell is a mixture of detergent and coffee. There’s a freshly brewed pot behind the counter, and Oscar grabs three cups — two black and one red. There’s a white box on the counter top, about the size of a shoebox.
Oscar gives Birck and me a cup each, and opens the box.
‘This is Ebi’s,’ he says. ‘His roommate put it to one side when he got injured, because he was scared that he wasn’t going … well, that he wasn’t going to come back. Some of it is from the flat; the rest is stuff Ebi had on him when he got injured.’
Oscar clears his throat, as though the sound might chase the thought away.
‘I thought he lived alone,’ says Birck. ‘He was the only one registered as living at that address.’
‘The Electoral Register is one thing,’ Oscar says. ‘Reality is another.’
The box contains small keepsakes like leaflets, badges, and stickers, old photos from festivals and demos, a key that might be for a bike lock or some kind of box, and a mobile phone. I pick it up.
‘It’s on,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ says Oscar, his voice thick. ‘Apparently, his roommate kept it on. They had the same phone, so her charger worked.’ He picks up one of the photos. ‘This is what I thought was strange. It’s taken with a digital camera and then printed.’
The picture shows four serious, young men, standing in a line but without touching each other. They have shaved heads, each one is wearing heavy boots and tight jeans, and the sun is behind them. They’re holding a banner in front of them that’s dirty yellow with what looks like blue lettering. The colours are hard to discern because of the backlight, but the words are clearly visible: IMMIGRANTS OUT! SWEDEN FOR THE SWEDES!
‘This is before a NSF-demo about three years back,’ Oscar says. ‘These guys are now members of Swedish Resistance. It was founded by Patrik Höjer, a guy from Strängnäs who was involved in the White Power music scene in the mid-Nineties. He was friends with the people who shot Björn Söderberg, the journalist. They were very big in the aftermath of the murder in Salem, in terms of membership numbers, or whatever you want to call them. Then they gradually fell away, but were resurrected just after the Sweden Democrats made it into parliament.’
‘Is there a connection?’ Birck asks. ‘Between them being elected, and this lot coming back?’
‘I’m sure there is. There were people who felt let down by the Sweden Democrats when they started toning down their racist image. Today, Swedish Resistance is bigger than ever — there are at least a hundred of them, maybe more, in Stockholm alone. Anyway, it was this picture that made Ebi get involved in politics, and join RAF.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because we asked him. We always do. Everyone has to go through a fairly long process before they’re let in, considering the risk that they … well. We want to make sure that people are genuinely passionate about what we’re passionate about, and that they’re not just pretending, for whatever reason.’
‘How old are they in this picture?’ I say.
‘They must be about nineteen there. They’re the same age. And this guy,’ Oscar says, pointing at the young man second from right in the picture, ‘I know he was nineteen when the picture was taken. His name is Jonathan Asplund, and he was a childhood friend of Ebi’s. They both grew up in Hallunda. Apparently, Jonathan was a kind person, incredibly warm and generous towards everyone he met, but very amenable. Receptive to other people’s opinions and ideas. A lot of his friends weren’t Swedish, like Ebi. Jonathan and Ebi drifted apart during high school. That’s where it started.
‘Where what started?’ Birck says.
‘He was seventeen or so, I suppose, and was drifting further and further to the right. Well, in fact, it was like this; there was a little group of right-wing extremists in Hallunda. It wasn’t even an organisa
tion — just a group of snide racists who liked drinking beer and listening to white-power music like Totenkopf and White Aggression. He started hanging out with them, and it went from there, until, well …’ He taps the picture. ‘Sometimes that’s enough. They get brainwashed by older guys. One of Ebi’s friends showed him the picture, and Ebi was completely distraught. When he told the story, he almost had tears in his eyes. But for Ebi it wasn’t just the fact that he’d lost a friend. He realised that if even someone like Jonathan could get dragged into this kind of shit, then anyone could. Ebi wanted to actively combat that, and he felt like RAF was a good tool for doing so.
‘What is it about this stuff then?’ Birck looks from the picture down at the rest of the stuff in the box. ‘This doesn’t tell us anything.’
‘I thought they didn’t talk anymore,’ Oscar says, scratching at his eczema, his nails scraping on the raw skin. He picks up the mobile phone. ‘But they did. At least occasionally, and certainly just before Ebi’s death.’ He opens the text messages on the phone. ‘Here. It starts in October … well, you can read it yourselves.’
I lean over Birck’s shoulder and read the text conversation:
JA: it’s jonathan, can we meet?
EH: why?
JA: need to talk
EH: about what?
JA: can’t say here.
EH: yes you can, say here. what’s it about?
JA: heard a rumour you’re about to lose it altogether.
EH: what do you mean? what was the rumour?
JA: can we meet up?
EH: no. what’s the rumour?
JA: attack on martin antonsson
JA: hello?
‘Does Ebi Hakimi not answer this?’ asks Birck.
‘No,’ says Oscar. ‘He doesn’t.’
‘Do you recognise this?’
‘You mean the attack?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, I recognise it. But it sounds a lot worse than it actually was. We were planning to sabotage his recording studio.’
‘Recording studio,’ Birck repeats. ‘Am I supposed to believe that?’
‘You believe whatever the hell you like. Do you want to see the rest of the messages, or what?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look. Those earlier ones were sent on the nineteenth of October, I think it was. This is early November.’
JA: have you even checked it out?
EH: yes.
JA: and?
EH: how did you find out?
JA: doesn’t matter. can you stop it happening?
EH: no.
JA: why not?
EH: because it’s the right thing to do.
JA: have you told anyone? that I know about it?
EH: are you mental? if people find out that I’ve even had contact with you I’ll get branded a traitor, and kicked out.
‘Is that right?’ I ask. ‘That he would’ve been kicked out if anyone had found out he’d been talking to Asplund?’
‘That depends,’ says Oscar. ‘We don’t like spies.’
‘This isn’t the KGB and MI6 we’re talking about,’ says Birck.
‘No, but the principle is the same.’
‘But he’s not even spying,’ I say. ‘He was trying to help you.’
‘True,’ says Oscar. ‘But that’s not how it would’ve looked. I mean, they were childhood friends after all.’
My gaze lands on the knife-block behind the counter. The knife that was missing last time I was here is still missing.
I feel a heavy lump in my chest as I read the texts. At first I can’t explain it, but then I realise what it is. It’s the coldness in the words the childhood friends exchange, how the gulf between them is so huge, and how every word is met with suspicion. I can imagine them now, in their beds, on opposite sides of town, lying there late at night reading the messages over and over again, trying to decipher what they mean. I recognise that alienation all too well.
‘Then it goes quiet between Ebi and Jonathan for a while, at least as far as I can see. He might have deleted the messages, though — erased the history. But if he had, surely he would have got rid of these, too. Jonathan writes to Ebi the evening before the demo in Rålambshov Park, late, and it was just this:’
JA: by the swings tomorrow at 8. I’ve got something you need.
EH: what?
JA: you’ll find out when you get there. you have to come. alone.
‘So they meet up at eight, the morning before the demo?’ I say.
‘Well, that’s what we have to assume,’ says Birck.
‘Do you know what Hakimi does next?’
‘Yes,’ says Oscar. ‘He comes here. We had a meeting here before the demo, starting at eleven. He’d just talked to Lisa Swedberg. He told us that she was ill and wasn’t going to make the demo.’
I inspect the photo of the four young men again. You can make out heavy scars on Asplund’s face, one of which cuts right across his eyebrow, running like a parenthesis over his left cheek.
‘He’s got some serious scars,’ I say.
‘They nearly all do,’ says Oscar.
‘He mentions the attack on Antonsson,’ Birck says cautiously. ‘Your attack on Antonsson.’
You can feel how this puts Oscar on the defensive.
‘Which is why I hesitated about showing you this.’
‘You’d planned it?’
‘Not me. But I knew that there was a plan.’
‘So who knew about the plan?’
‘I’m not about to tell you that. And you’ve got no right to demand an answer either.’
Birck looks over at me, and shakes his head. There’s no point. Besides, I suspect we’ll find out as soon as we get in the car.
‘What was he going to get?’ Oscar says. ‘Hakimi, I mean. What was he going to get from Asplund, do you know?’
I glance at Birck. He blinks twice.
‘No,’ I say. ‘No idea.’
Only when Birck has got into the driver’s seat, and I’ve slumped into the passenger seat beside him, do I pull out my phone and end the call. I turn my head, towards Goffman’s weathered face in the back seat. Next to Goffman is his colleague, Iris.
‘Did it work?’ I ask, with the phone in my hand. ‘Could you hear?’
‘Very well indeed,’ Goffman replies, before putting away his own phone.
The heavy doors slam shut behind Christian. He was let in and had to show his ID. He was searched, and had to put his coat and shoes in plastic trays, which then went through a security check as he walked through a metal detector. The detector beeped. The security guard, a grumpy man with a fat neck and chubby hands, nodded wearily at the chain just visible by his collar.
‘It’s that thing,’ he said. ‘Take it off.’
‘Do I have to?’
‘No. But you’re not coming in if you don’t.’
The little swastika, handmade from real silver, was placed in a tray that was far too big for the purpose, making the necklace look like a miniature.
The place: Mariefred Young Offenders. They’d sent Michael here, because of his young age. The area was enclosed by a high, beige wall and an equally high chain-fence. The top portion of the fence was angled inwards, towards the institution, to impede escape. It was terrifying.
‘Thank you,’ said the guard. ‘There won’t be anyone else in the visiting room, but there’s a camera in there. So if anything happens, we’ll see it.
Christian put his chain back on and hid it under his shirt. It felt cool against his chest.
The visiting room they showed him into was smaller than he’d expected. Michael was already sitting there. The first thing Christian noticed was that one of his cheeks was slightly swollen and purple-red. He suspected he knew why, but didn’t ask, because he couldn’t
face having his fears confirmed.
In front of Michael was a table with a light-wooden tabletop and, on the opposite side, a chair meant for Christian.
It had been three weeks — no longer — since the last time they’d seen each other. But it certainly felt like more. Michael was wearing clothes that weren’t his: grey tracksuit bottoms and an equally grey long-sleeved top. They made him look pale.
‘Hi,’ Christian said, as he sat down.
‘You’ve got the chain,’ Michael said, looking at his shirt collar.
‘Course I have.’ Christian pulled it out. ‘I had to take it off at security.’ He paused. ‘How’s it going?’
Michael blinked once, slowly, as though the question had made him tired.
‘Alright. I guess.’
He seemed to be trying to smile, and when he did, Christian spotted two gaps in his upper jaw — missing teeth.
He looked up at the clock above the door. Less than half an hour ago he’d been sitting on the train on his way here. It seemed unreal, that more time hadn’t passed.
‘You’re getting respect,’ said Christian. ‘Everyone’s bigging you up.’
‘I know.’
On a patch of grass on the outskirts of Skarpnäck’s shopping precinct, they’d clashed — Swedish Resistance and a bunch of reds. It had been a peaceful demonstration against racism, with young families and students gathered to demonstrate their disgust at xenophobia. At least that’s how it was described in the media, afterwards. That’s how it always turned out in the media.
They were there in an organised counter-demonstration to show their distaste, show their hatred and their strength.
They had turned twenty. Christian was working at a builders’ merchant’s near Älvsjö, and Michael at a plumbing company based down by Globen Arena. They’d both booked the day off.
There were loads of them, nearly fifty. A group calling itself Radical Anti-Fascism had got wind of the event, and saw a chance to attack the object of their hatred. There were fewer of them; they hadn’t managed to round up enough supporters to pose a physical threat.
Christian, Michael, and the others were armed with shields, flares, and pokers. They sang marches as they made their way to the field.
The Falling Detective Page 24