‘Is that alright to sit on?’
‘Yes.’
He closes the door behind him.
‘Jees, only just,’ he says, once he’s sat down. ‘This chair has aged worse than I have.’
I turn the radio down. Our contact during the autumn has been sporadic and terse. I’ve tried to call him countless times, and on those few occasions when he did answer, I think it was down to the fact that he hadn’t checked who was calling first.
We’ve bumped into each other a few times since I got back on duty — chance meetings in the corridor, quick ‘hello’s in the canteen after Levin had left the National Police Authority and had business at our place.
It’s always like this: unanswered questions, no contact, strange coincidences, and odd details. Like finding out that Levin was the one who had me placed with Internal Affairs, that he’d done so under duress, that someone above him was turning the screw — someone who knew about his past, a past that nobody else seems to know about. Or Grim saying that Levin was visiting someone at St Göran’s; that may be true, and it may be significant — or maybe not.
And now this, as though nothing had happened, and all of this was just a web constructed inside my head — Levin knocking on my door, the day before Christmas.
‘Have you come to try my spare chair?’
‘No,’ Levin says. ‘No, I haven’t.’ A short silence. ‘I understand you’ve had a quiet first month back?’
‘Oh, yeah, dead quiet,’ I reply. ‘Nothing to report.’
He laughs, but it seems forced. He adjusts his position on the chair, carefully. The backrest creaks loudly.
‘It’s frightening,’ he goes on. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘Keyser?’
‘Yes. It makes the Sweden Democrats look like an innocent party, in the eyes of the public. As if they’ve gone, well, mainstream.’
‘But they have. I just heard Olausson outside, and even he — a prosecutor, for God’s sake — reckons they’ve got some valid arguments.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Him too, eh?’ Levin says thoughtfully.
We fall silent.
‘I hear Goffman arrived in the nick of time,’ he says eventually. ‘He has a habit of doing that.’
‘Do you know each other?’
‘Too well. Some day I’ll tell you all about it.’
We sit there in silence. It’s tense — far too tense.
‘Is it right that you visited St Göran’s a while ago?’ I say quietly.
Levin seems unmoved by the question. I attempt to read his hands, looking for a sign. They lie motionless in his lap, his fingers intertwined.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ he says. ‘As you know, I’m retiring after Easter. You’re supposed to write your memoirs when you retire. I’ve got six months left, so this is a bit of a head start, I suppose. I haven’t got very far. I do a bit whenever I get the time. My visit to St Göran’s concerns an investigation from a while back — a case I never managed to solve, and which I’ll be writing about in the book. My head is getting cloudier, and I needed to double-check a few facts, so I went to see one of the people involved. She’s a resident of St Göran’s.’
I study the skin around Levin’s eyes — the tiny, tiny muscles that tense when someone is lying. Levin smiles slightly, as though he knows what I am after. That might be why he’s here, I think to myself. Levin suspected that Grim wouldn’t keep it to himself. He wanted to find out what I know, and make sure I wasn’t planning to do anything about it. Whatever it is.
‘If that’s the case,’ I say, ‘why was it so important to keep your visit under wraps?’
‘The investigation concerns a murder, or possibly manslaughter. It was never cleared up, but it was deemed to be a murder investigation, and of course the statute of limitations has recently been removed for such crimes. If word got out that I was visiting this person, it might give the victim’s family false hope, and I want to avoid that. And these things always get out, as you well know, one way or another.’
It could be true. I clear my throat.
‘Where are you spending Christmas, Leo?’
‘With Sam, and then I’m going to Salem. Why do you ask?’
‘I was just wondering.’ Levin opens his hands. ‘I do care.’
‘Do you really?’
‘What kind of question is that? Of course I do.’
Levin looks at me as though he wants to touch me. I cross my arms. I feel like a child, and I suspect I might look like one too.
‘But then,’ Levin goes on, ‘it’s as though some kind of gulf has opened up between us, since right back in May. As though we can’t talk to each other. But I do care about you.’
‘But that’s down to you,’ I say, surprised. ‘You’re the one avoiding me, even more so since you admitted to being involved in the Gotland affair. Which, by the way, you got off with very lightly. A fucking note? How respectful is that, really? You could have fucking said it to my face.’
‘I understand that you’re upset Leo, and I—’
‘I’m not upset. I’m furious.’
‘I’m sorry that it turned out the way it did, but I had no choice. And I can’t tell you what you want to know, that stuff you’ve been asking about when you’ve called.’
‘Who made you do it? What have they got on you?’
Levin smiles — a pale smile, devoid of happiness.
‘I cannot answer that question.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s not possible.’
That little note, written in Levin’s handwriting, a style so elegant and neat that the reader could almost miss the foreboding, dark content of the words — I have read it so many times that I know it off by heart:
I’m glad I can sit at your bedside and hear your breathing. Hear that you’re alive, just as I did after the events on Gotland. Events that, no matter how you look at it, can be traced back to me, not you.
I was given a memo. It instructed me to put you on our unit: someone who could be held to account if necessary. They’d done a search, and considered you an eligible candidate. Everything was hypothetical, ‘if’, ‘in the worst case’, and ‘in the event of one of our operations being compromised’.
It came from above, from the paranoid people, and I had no choice. They were threatening to leak details from my past. They still are. I can’t say any more. Not now.
Forgive me, Leo.
Charles
‘The memo,’ I say. ‘Can I see that, at least?’
‘Don’t play the fool with me, Leo. As with any important memo, it was destroyed a long time ago.’
‘Who destroyed it?’
‘Me, of course.’
I open my mouth, but nothing happens. Air and silence are all that come out. It’s hopeless, and I know it.
Levin rises slowly from the chair and pulls out a thin, brown envelope from his breast pocket, and places it on the table.
‘I just wanted to come and wish you Merry Christmas and give you a little present. I do hope you like it. I found it rather insightful — I read it myself first.’
I pick up the envelope and feel its contents.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s the only copy in existence, as far as I know.’ He puts his hat on. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I have to go. I’m having dinner with a good friend at Operakällaren.’
‘Okay.’
‘Have you asked for anything for Christmas?’ he asks, adjusting his hat.
‘A coffee machine. What about you?’
Should I have got him something? Was he expecting me to? What might that have been, in that case? If there had been some kind of truth serum available, I’m pretty sure I would have grabbed the bull by the horns and tried to pour some into him.
‘I don’t ask for things anymore.’ He says it without a trace of sadness or relief, and puts his hand on the door handle. ‘I hope you get your coffee machine. A person is only as good as their coffee.’ He hesitates for a second. ‘And you and Sam, you mentioned her name. Are you … is everything okay between you two?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
Levin smiles weakly.
‘I can tell. It’s like you’ve come home.’
I think he might be right, but I don’t say anything.
‘Merry Christmas, Leo.’
‘Merry Christmas.’
My mentor opens the door, and proceeds to disappear through it. I wonder when we’ll meet again. The noise from the party rises briefly and then falls.
I open the little envelope. It contains a thin, old book, no more than thirty pages long, a novella written by someone called L.P. Carlsson and published in 1901. The cover is beige and worn, with the title printed in black: The Falling Detective. Sitting there, in my room, I read it from cover to cover.
Then I put the book away, lock the door to my office, and take the tube of Halcion from my pocket.
24/12
Despite the country being in hibernation, my footsteps are restless. It’s Christmas Eve, and it’s half-past six in the evening. I leave Salem, heading for Rönninge railway station. During the day, I’ve experienced only snippets of the feeling of being part of something bigger, something that everyone in all the other houses and all the other living rooms share. The rest of the time, I’ve felt remarkably lonely.
staying at mum’s tonight, Sam writes in a text.
see you tomorrow? I send back, waiting for the train.
yes, she replies and then, a few seconds later, I love you
Those words take my breath away, as I stand there, alone on the platform.
Everything is so quiet.
I travel from Salem to the place where I might actually belong. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here, but I know that I’m doing it for my own sake, more than for anyone else’s.
I’m met with a smile as I open the door.
‘Merry Christmas, Leo.’
I undo my coat, and sit down on the chair I always sit on, and I don’t know what I feel. It might be anger, at the fact that I can’t stay away. Perhaps it’s relief, at finally being here, not having to pretend to be something that I’m not. I put the mobile phone, his Christmas present, on the table between us.
‘Merry Christmas, Grim.’
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my Swedish publishers, Piratförlaget, for your support, your encouragement, and for believing in me and Leo. If it weren’t for you, this story would have remained just an idea. An extra thank you to Sofia, my outstanding publisher, and Anna, my fantastic editor. You always take the story’s side, right to the end.
Thank you Marina, Anna, Marc, and all the others at Pontas Agency, who helped my stories reach more readers than I ever dared hope or imagine.
Thank you, Leif, for good company, wise words, and, not least, for taking the time to read The Falling Detective when I needed it most, and saying what you thought was good and what needed improving. I (almost) always agreed with you.
My thanks also go to Gösta, Astri, and Christine.
Thanks Mum, Dad, and my little brother, and thanks to Karl, Martin, and Tobias. And thank you, Mela, for being so wise and perceptive about the big things, the small things, and everything in between, for your humour, understanding, warmth, and love. Without you, I would be not only a significantly worse writer, I would be a worse person, too. I love you.
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
Epigraph
Prologue
Part I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Part II
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Part III
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
Part IV
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
Acknowledgements
The Falling Detective Page 31