The Falling Detective

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘Take it easy now,’ says Birck. It’s not clear who he’s talking to.

  Iris’s right arm is hanging, limply. I can see the bullet’s little entry hole in her mac; it looks almost black. She’s breathing in short, heavy breaths. As is the man holding her. She’s shorter than him, and his grip is pressing her head towards his shoulder. She is constantly writhing, desperately trying to work herself free. She makes a fist with her left hand and jerks her elbow into his ribs, which makes him lurch forward with a groan.

  ‘Sit still,’ he hisses. ‘Keep still, you stupid cunt.’ And he puts the gun to her temple. ‘You too. Stand still.’

  ‘Okay,’ Birck says. ‘We’re going to keep still. Can you tell us what’s happened?’

  He makes a stiff shake of his head, right then left. The revolver is now steady in his hand, no longer oscillating between Birck and me. It is now pointed at an invisible target somewhere halfway between the two of us.

  ‘Could y—’

  ‘Shut up. Stop talking.’

  He tightens his grip on Iris. She lifts her good arm, places her hand around his wrist, and grasps at it, trying to get some air.

  ‘Tell us what happened,’ Birck repeats. ‘With Christian. Why’s he lying out there like that?’

  ‘He was a fucking traitor.’

  ‘Is that why you did it?’ I ask.

  He suddenly goes stiff, raises his eyebrows, and yet keeps his frown intact. Then he points the gun at me. I hold my breath.

  ‘It wasn’t me. He did it himself. He shot himself.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’ says Birck.

  ‘Stop talking,’ he screams, pointing the revolver at Birck.

  ‘Well, what are we going to do then? How do you want this to end?’

  ‘Get out of here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t do that,’ I say, slowly. ‘We would have to take Iris with us in that case.’

  He shakes his head violently.

  ‘Yes,’ Birck says. ‘Let go of Iris, and let her come over here. Then we’ll retreat. I promise.’

  ‘Then you’ll shoot.’

  ‘No, we won’t shoot.’

  He looks at us carefully, as though he’s trying to work out who is weakest, who would struggle to shoot him — who he ought to shoot first to give himself the best chance of getting out of here.

  ‘We’re not going …’ is as far as I get.

  Iris tilts her head up, backwards, pressing against his shoulder. Her mouth is level with his throat. I can see her teeth. I blink, and then they’re clenched onto his earlobe.

  He whines, and his determined stare is resolutely fixed on us, as is the revolver. His face goes from wintry white to deep red, and he strains to breathe through the pain.

  A stream of blood runs across Iris’s mouth, over her chin and down her throat.

  He seems to be composing himself, and he looks down, adjusting his grip on her. Then he clenches his left hand and punches the little hole in Iris’s mac. He hits her once, lets the hand rest there, and then pushes it against the wound. Iris’s body convulses as though she’s being hit by a huge electric current, and a hiss escapes through her teeth. He hits her again. Iris groans again, louder.

  Third time around, she loses control. Her teeth let go of his ear. She spits. A little clump of blood and skin drops onto the floor.

  Then she screams.

  ‘Get back,’ he snarls. ‘Get back.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ says Birck.

  ‘Get back.’

  ‘We’ll get back if you tell us what you’re going to do. We don’t want anything unexpected to happen here.’

  ‘I’m getting out.’

  ‘Out of the flat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In this weather?’ says Birck, but his voice is shaky. ‘Come on, think about this.’

  ‘Get back!’ he screams, and the spit sprays from his mouth.

  Iris is still hanging in his grip, limper than before. She’s stopped screaming, and seems to be getting weaker, her head resting on his shoulder. The blood from his earlobe is smeared through her hair.

  We take one step backwards; he takes three steps forwards. He comes past the bed. Soon we’re so close that we can see the colour of his eyes. Birck and I back off one step at a time, until we’re out in the living room, by Christian Västerberg’s lifeless body. Splinters of glass from the blown-in window lie across his chest, and embellish the scarlet halo around his head.

  I can almost feel it, how the man in front of us has to force himself to avoid it, doing all he can not to look at the body one last time.

  ‘Backs to the TV,’ he snarls. ‘Backs against the TV.’

  I back off, and stand in the shards of splintered glass. The wind making its way inside is so cold that it burns. I’ve got cramp in my arms. He’s moving slowly forward, step by step, shunting Iris ahead of him. The revolver is alternating between me and Birck again.

  ‘How did you get here?’ he asks. ‘How did you get here,’ he repeats, louder, when none of us answer.

  The reason for the silence is that we really shouldn’t lie, but we’d really prefer not to tell the truth, either. The fact that we came by car, Iris’s car, gives him a genuine escape route. It is a cause for hope, and hope can be fatal. It makes people more desperate, more drastic in their actions. That said, it is extremely risky to lie to a man with a gun in his hand, particularly when he is using a hostage as a shield.

  ‘By car,’ Birck says.

  ‘What car?’

  ‘A Volvo. Registration number WHO 327.’

  ‘Give me the keys. Chuck them over.’

  ‘We can’t do that,’ I say.

  The barrel of the gun returns to Iris’s temple.

  ‘I’ll shoot her if you don’t.’

  I try to make eye contact with Iris.

  ‘Give them to him.’

  Her forehead is shiny, and her eyes are bloodshot. She shakes her head.

  He adjusts his grip and puts his hand against the hole in her mac again. His thumb feels for the bullet-hole in the fabric. It disappears into the hole.

  Iris gasps for breath, hoarse and rasping, her mouth open, her eyes wide as if in surprise and her left hand tugging at his forearm. When she does get hold of it, it won’t budge, and all she can do is try to control her breathing, as though she were dealing with an asthma attack.

  ‘Give them to me,’ he screams.

  She lets go of him, rummages in her pocket, and pulls out the keys. He grabs them, and carries on shunting her in front of him.

  He stops, apparently listening out for something. The only sound is the hum of the storm and the quiet sound of the television behind me, with Judy Garland singing Have yourself a merry little Christmas, and let your heart be light.

  Out in the hall, the front door is open.

  ‘Is there somebody out there?’ he asks. He puts the gun to her temple. ‘Answer me! Is there?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  … next year, all our troubles will be out of sight.

  He makes his way into the hall, facing towards us, backing out. He takes one, two, three steps. Iris is dragged along with him, unable to offer any resistance. He’s just inside the door.

  There’s no one there, and then, in the blink of an eye, he appears. He’s behind them in the doorway. The long, bony fingers are lightly wrapped around a black firearm, identical to the one in my hand.

  ‘Michael,’ Goffman says, pushing the barrel against his neck. ‘We meet at last.’

  You can see how his sharp, focused stare makes way for a cloudy, vacant expression, and his body slackens as the last of the adrenalin leaves his system. It’s over. At first he seems despondent as Goffman carefully takes the weapon from his hand, but I think he’s almost relieved to be rid of it.<
br />
  He lets go of Iris. Her legs go from underneath her, and she falls to the floor in the hall. Birck rushes in and crouches over her. I’m left just standing there amongst the crushed glass, and I drop my weapon. Christian Västerberg’s head is lying close to my left shoe. His lips are coated with gunpowder. Blood is streaming from a hole in the back of his head.

  Goffman has got him onto his front on the floor of the landing. He’s completely still. He’s blinking and breathing, but that’s it.

  Way, way ahead of us, we can just about see the blue lights of the ambulance taking Iris to Södermalm Hospital. From the passenger seat of Goffman’s car, my eyes follow it into the distance until the flashing lights disappear.

  The man is sitting in the back seat between Birck and Durelius, a sturdy constable from the Southern District. Durelius was first on the scene, despite having come from Rågsved on foot — no small feat in this weather, and well worth a place in the back seat. He’s surprisingly calm, considering it’s probably the first time he’s sat in a car with someone guilty of anything more serious than shoplifting.

  We’re surrounded by squad cars, two in front and two behind, as if we were escorting a minister. Our passenger is sitting with his chin against his chest, and Birck’s pistol in his ribs.

  ‘How are you doing, Michael?’ Goffman asks.

  ‘My ear,’ he says.

  ‘I’m sure that’ll heal nicely. It’s only the earlobe.’

  ‘It hurts,’ he snarls back.

  He’s pale, no doubt in need of a drip and a hospital bed — the kind of perks that are hard to come by if you’ve just tried to kill a politician.

  ‘Did she really bite it off?’

  ‘Yep,’ says Birck.

  Goffman is wearing a dark-grey suit under his coat, a white shirt, and black tie. His normally neat, well-combed hair is all over the place. The storm tugs relentlessly away at the car, reminding me of a plane making its final approach for landing. It makes me nauseous.

  ‘Do we know anything about his condition?’ I say. ‘Is he going to survive?’

  ‘He’s still in theatre,’ Goffman says, and lifts his gaze up to the rear-view mirror. ‘If he does end up surviving, how’s that going to make you feel, Michael? Like you failed?’

  He doesn’t seem to have heard the question.

  He isn’t obliged to say anything more than his name and his ID-number. And if he were to say anything beyond that, it needn’t be true. He doesn’t have to say a word. We might never know any more than that it was him.

  ‘Keyser,’ Goffman changes tack. ‘Unusual name. Is it Turk—’

  ‘Dutch. It means emperor.’

  That’s all he says.

  Late that evening, I’m sitting in Birck’s office, following the television news. Everyone’s waiting for news from the hospital, but none comes. I wonder what that means.

  when are you coming home? Sam asks.

  soon

  i’ll be asleep

  i’ll try not to wake you up

  Online, on far-right blogs and forums, Keyser’s actions are being endorsed by many. Screenshots from these sites are being published on the major newspapers’ websites and on social media, and discussed on the television news.

  ‘What?’ says Birck. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘That was close,’ I say. ‘You could’ve carked it. Outside Västerberg’s place, when that roof panel came down.’

  ‘Oh, that, yeah. Yes, I had a bit of luck there.’

  ‘You had Iris.’

  Birck says nothing, and carries on staring at the screen. I stay there. Ten o’clock comes, and then a quarter past. Then the news comes in from Karolinska Hospital: the leader has undergone surgery for the injuries he sustained during the attack. He was awake when he arrived at Karolinska, but lost consciousness shortly before he was anaesthetised. He lost a substantial amount of blood, but not as much as might have been expected. His condition remains critical, but the team of doctors operating on him consider the operation to have been a success.

  I realise that I’ve been holding my breath, and that I’m holding the tube of Halcion in my hand. I go out into the corridor to tell Birck, but can’t find him.

  ‘Birck? He left,’ one of the constables in the lunchroom tells me, distracted by the television.

  ‘Where was he going?’

  ‘He said he was going to Södermalm Hospital,’ the constable laughed, ‘in this weather. What a plank.’

  22/12

  The wind is still blowing outside the window on Chapmansgatan, but it’s nothing compared to when I got home last night.

  Edith’s full impact is now plain to see. The streets are lined with smashed roof-tiles. A bin is lying a little way away, a full fifty or sixty metres from the slab it was standing on. It’s now that I notice the car parked on the street, halfway between the slab and the bin. The windscreen is smashed. The bin must’ve crashed into it before being swept along by the wind. Parts of the cladding on the building opposite have been ripped off, revealing the insulation underneath.

  I return to the bed, where Sam is still in a deep sleep. A little thread of saliva runs from her mouth to a little wet patch on the sheet. She was asleep when I got home, and I didn’t want to wake her.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I whisper.

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ Sam mumbles and rolls over. ‘Or is it still Saturday?’

  ‘No, it’s Sunday.’ I push my lips against her forehead. ‘But there’s not a policeman in Stockholm who’s off-duty today.’

  ‘Did you get him?’

  ‘Yes.’ I stroke her hair. ‘We did.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Not a scratch. For once.’

  ‘Have you spoken to your family?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Checked they’re okay, after the storm?’

  ‘Oh, right. No. But I will.’

  She yawns and stretches her hand up to my face, scratching my stubble with her nails.

  ‘You need a shave.’

  ‘I know.’

  I give her a long kiss before I stand up. It seems so obvious, and it might be just that, the familiarity of it all, that makes me ask.

  ‘Will you be here when I get back?’

  She props herself up on her elbows.

  ‘Do you want me to be?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She smiles faintly. I don’t think she noticed my hesitation. I wonder if we can get through this, again.

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ she says.

  23/12

  I’m sitting in my office, having dragged an old radio in from the neighbouring room. They’re playing a Christmas song, a lone voice singing mournfully Some day soon, we all we be together, if the fates allow.

  Only a few minutes have passed since Jens Malm of Swedish Resistance declined to make any comment about Michael Keyser’s actions, and just a matter of hours since the Sweden Democrats released a statement, confirming that the party leader is doing well under the circumstances, and that he hopes the Swedish judicial system will be allowed to run its course and that no blood will be spilled in his, or anyone else’s, name. The message concludes with the Sweden Democrats wishing Sweden a quiet and restful Christmas.

  The office Christmas party starts in an hour, but I’m not going. The pre-party has already started, out in the lunchroom. My colleagues are drinking beer and playing ‘guess the crook’: a projector shows images of contemporary and historical criminals. Some faces are more familiar than others. First one to shout the right name — and you do have to shout to be heard — wins a hundred kronor.

  I hear voices near my door. It’s Olausson and someone else.

  ‘That someone actually dared,’ says Olausson. ‘I didn’t expect that for a minute. We’re very lucky h
e survived.’

  The other one agrees.

  ‘Now, I don’t fucking vote for the Sweden Democrats,’ Olausson continues, ‘but a lot of the time they’ve got a point, you have to give them that. Did you hear the speech, before he got knifed?’

  The other one says that yes, he’s heard bits of it since the attack.

  I think about Thomas Heber, the lone researcher who may have fallen for Lisa Swedberg. Everyone is missed by someone, and I wonder what Heber’s parents are doing right now. I wonder whether the little boy, John Thyrell, has been following the news and knows what’s going on; whether he and his family were in their flat on Döbelnsgatan when Edith hit, or on their way somewhere. For a minute, I’m about to call them and check that the boy is still alive, but then I stop myself.

  I think about all the questions instead — the ones that remain unanswered, the ones that always will. Most of them are insignificant, but they’re unanswered, and that bothers me. Like why Lisa Swedberg slept on the sofa instead of the bed, when her host was away travelling. Maybe Birck was right. Maybe she just preferred the sofa.

  There are several black holes, gaps, as there always are in a police investigation. You can never reconstruct the whole story. That’s the nature of the past. It’s always a fleeting thing, always incomplete.

  I wonder how the annual Christmas serial ends, what the story is actually about. I might try and see the last episode tomorrow, with Sam.

  There’s a knock on the door. It’s Charles Levin. ‘Mentor’ isn’t really the right word for him, but it’s the best I can think of.

  He’s lost weight, which makes him seem taller, sort of stretched. His normally smooth, shaved head is now displaying two or three days’ stubble, and his round, black-rimmed glasses are sitting halfway down his great hawk’s beak of a nose. He has a hat in his hand, and ends up standing in the doorway with his thick winter coat open and an eye on my spare chair.