The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  But when I started on those patrols, one of the first things I learnt was the importance of contacts — junkies, whores, moles inside the organised gangs, teenagers kicking around the concrete estates, old soaks sitting on the steps outside the methadone clinic every morning. A couple of well-chosen individuals can give you more useful information on a case than three hundred others. The challenge is identifying them, and if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s that: judging whether someone is useful or not. It’s not a trait that makes you well liked, but it’s what I’ve got.

  I went on from there to the armed-response unit, as a sergeant with the city police, where serious violent crimes would end up on my desk. It was at the city police that I met Charles Levin, who was a superintendent at the time. I was there for several years, during which time I worked closely with Levin, who taught me more about police work than anyone else. He watched me go from work-a-day cop to skilled investigator. By then I’d met Sam, and Levin watched our relationship grow and then die.

  Levin’s apartment is on Köpmansgatan in Gamla Stan. When I get there, a chill rain is falling hard, and fallen leaves are swirling about in the wind. Autumn is almost here; I can taste it on my tongue. Across the front of the building, near the entrance, someone has written I KNOW I LOST in white capitals, each letter the size of a man’s face. I examine the letters, attempting to decipher their meaning, trying to imagine someone writing them. Around me is the smell of damp clothes and the constant swarm of tourists streaming along lanes too narrow to accommodate them. I take the lift up and knock on the door.

  ‘Leo,’ Levin says as he opens the door, clearly taken aback. He studies my face. ‘When did you last shave?’

  ‘An hour ago.’

  ‘I thought so.’ He steps to one side and lets me past him into the hall. ‘This must be important.’

  ‘Thanks. Yes.’

  Levin has a rare eye for detail. It’s the key to his success. According to him, it comes from childhood and his early interest in train sets and models. Miniature aeroplanes, buildings, landscapes, and flagships were the young Charles Levin’s major interest. The difference between a mediocre model and a great one was all in the detail. Now they are all displayed in a large glass-fronted cabinet covering most of one wall in the bright living room. They are arranged in chronological order, like an alternative life story.

  It’s quiet up here. Through the window I can see the buildings rising up, but at a comfortable distance. The city isn’t as suffocating here. That’s what money can buy you in Stockholm: peace and quiet. Distance.

  ‘Coffee?’ he says as I sit down in a comfortable armchair with its back to the cabinet.

  ‘And absinthe, if you’ve got any.’

  ‘Absinthe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ he says frostily.

  ‘Well, water then?’

  ‘I think we can manage that.’

  Levin is tall and thin, with a shaved head, and a pair of small, round glasses perched on the end of his nose. He’s wearing black jeans, a white vest, and an unbuttoned shirt. He’s been abroad. The holiday brochures for Argentina are still on the table. After his wife died from cancer, Levin started travelling, because Elsa loved it but they’d never been able to do it together. Levin’s job got in the way. She used to go away on her own instead, and showed him the photos when she got home. Now it’s Levin taking pictures of his own trips. When he gets back he visits the grave, sits there showing the pictures and describing them, just as she once did for him.

  Levin comes back to the living room with two cups of black coffee and a glass of water.

  ‘The owner before me was a policeman,’ he says. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He was the good kind of cop. Led the national murder unit at one time. He moved here after he got divorced.’

  I take a Serax from my inside pocket and pop it on my tongue, then swallow it with a gulp of water.

  ‘Three a day,’ I say as Levin’s eyes follow the trajectory of my hand.

  ‘Because you still need them?’

  ‘Because they check that I’m taking them.’

  ‘You could chuck them.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  We take the first sip of coffee without looking at each other, as though it were some kind of ceremony. It isn’t; I’m just trying to work out what I’m going to say. Since the Gotland affair we’ve had very little contact, and what contact we have had has been cool, apprehensive. He knows something I don’t, that much I’m sure of.

  ‘How’s life, Leo?’

  ‘I manage.’

  ‘And Sam?’

  ‘We don’t talk anymore. It was just that once, when I’d just come home from hospital after Gotland; she wondered how I was doing.’

  He nodded slowly, like a psychologist might.

  ‘Well, Leo.’ He lifts the coffee cup and slurps. ‘I understand you have something on your mind.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Is this about the Gotland affair? I haven’t heard anything new.’

  ‘It’s not about that.’

  This surprises him. He leans back in the armchair, and puts one leg over the other.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A woman died in my block last night. Shot at point-blank range in the temple. The perpetrator is a ghost, by all accounts.’

  Levin is aware of the incident, I can tell, but it takes a moment for him to make the connection with where I live.

  ‘Right underneath your place,’ he says slowly. ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘Eight, nine metres under.’ I clear my throat. ‘Her name was Rebecca Salomonsson. There’s something about her death that bothers me.’

  ‘Rebecca Salomonsson,’ Levin repeats.

  ‘Probably about twenty-five, druggie, possibly on the game.’

  ‘It’s unusual for women to get killed,’ Levin muses as he drinks some more coffee. ‘And for them to be shot.’

  ‘Even more unusual is the fact that nearly twenty-four hours have passed and there is still no suspect. No motive either, as far as I know. And no idea what actually happened, except that he entered Chapmansgården through the front door and left through the window. He had size forty-three shoes and knows how to handle small-calibre weapons.’

  ‘Sometimes it takes a while for the right witness to come forward, or to do the right forensic tests. It’s early days yet.’

  ‘She had something in her hand, some sort of jewellery — could have been a necklace.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think it’s important.’

  ‘Has the necklace gone to the lab?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, there you are.’ Levin looks puzzled. ‘We’ll have the results in a few days.’

  I look down at my hands.

  ‘I want to be part of the investigation,’ I say quietly, so quietly that it comes out as a whisper.

  ‘Since you live in the building, you already are. As a potential witness.’

  I look up at him. I think I’m looking pleadingly, but I can’t be sure. There’s a burning sensation behind my eyes.

  ‘You know what I mean. I need to do something. I need … I can’t just sit around my fucking flat smoking cigarettes and necking pills. I need to be doing something.’

  Levin says nothing for a long time, and avoids making eye contact.

  ‘What exactly are you asking me for, Leo?’

  ‘I want to go back on active duty.’

  ‘That’s not in my remit.’

  ‘Not much of what you’ve been getting up to is actually in your remit.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asks, calmly, and drinks some more coffee.

  I hesitate, hoping to provoke him i
nstead. ‘You know that I’m a good detective. No one knows what really happened in Visby. No one knows who duped them. It was chaos. If you had been there, you’d understand. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘But you’re the one who lost it,’ he says, suddenly cold. ‘You’re the one who shot Waltersson.’

  ‘And it was the force who sold me down the river,’ I say, only now realising that I’ve stood up, that I’m now standing over Levin as he sits in his armchair looking strangely tiny. My voice shakes. ‘You owe me this.’

  ‘I don’t think we should be talking about guilt, Leo. You are never going to win that argument.’

  I realise that I’m sinking back down into the armchair again, involuntarily.

  ‘I just want … something’s not right with Salomonsson.’

  Levin thoughtfully scratches his bald head, where his sunburnt scalp has started flaking.

  ‘Who is the detective in charge?’

  ‘Birck.’

  ‘So Pettersén’s calling the shots.’

  Olaf Pettersén is the only Swedish–Norwegian prosecutor in the place. He also happens to be the only person who Gabriel Birck can bear to take orders from.

  ‘If you seriously think something’s not right here,’ Levin begins, ‘then do what you’re good at. But,’ he adds, ‘so far you haven’t said anything that points to something being amiss, aside from it being an unusual event. And unusual events occur all the time.’

  ‘I can’t do what I’m good at without formal permission.’

  ‘Have I been overestimating you?’ Levin picks up one of the holiday brochures, and tears off part of the first page. He pulls a pen from the back pocket of his jeans, scribbles something on the scrap of paper, and offers it to me. ‘Use your imagination. And ring this number when you need help.’

  I inspect the note.

  ‘Whose number is it?’

  ‘Someone I know very well,’ is all Levin says.

  VII

  I spent a lot of time on my own. I don’t know why it turned out like that; my friends were around, but for some reason I didn’t really spend much time with them outside school.

  Vlad and Fred used to hit me. It started when I was ten, and went on for a couple of years. At first I didn’t hit back, and when I did they were so incensed that the beatings just got worse. So I stopped fighting back. That was best for everyone. Vlad was the worst. Fred could sometimes look at me with something approaching empathy; I wouldn’t really know what to call it. But Vlad never did. He seemed to genuinely hate me.

  I never told anyone. I was ashamed. It always happened outdoors, with few or no potential witnesses around; despite my determined efforts to avoid certain places, they always seemed to find me, as though they could track me, follow my scent. They stole my cap, my money. Then they would normally hit me in the stomach or on the arm — never on the face, where it would show. I told my parents that I’d lost the cap, that I’d spent the money on sweets, that I’d fallen awkwardly at school and had strained my stomach muscles, that I’d been arm-wrestling a classmate and strained something. I didn’t understand why it was happening, or why they were picking on me, but I assumed that I must have done something wrong, that it was just the way life was.

  One day in early spring, when I was thirteen or fourteen, I’d finished school early but forgotten a book in my locker. My mum made me go back and get it. As I was walking from the bus stop up to Rönninge Middle School, I heard someone make a noise. It was a stifled sort of sound, like someone breathing through pain.

  The school stood like a giant among the small houses and the trees that were just getting their leaves back, and I looked around, wondering where the noise had come from. The back of the school was just a stone’s throw further on, the goods entrance. Daily deliveries arrived there at the loading bay. After nightfall you would sometimes hear heavy music coming from a ghetto-blaster, mumbling voices and sudden laughter, beer cans opening and lighters clicking away. If you got close enough, you could catch the sweet smell of hash smoke.

  This was something else.

  On the loading bay, with their backs to me, were two guys I didn’t recognise. They didn’t look like pupils at the school — more like high-school students. I stood behind one of the trees so they couldn’t see me, but ensuring I still had a good view of them. The two guys had trapped someone between them; they were standing close together, each with one hand on the brick wall. Whoever it was had nowhere to go.

  ‘You little cunt.’

  One of them hit him, and I heard the choking sound of someone who’d lost all the air in his lungs, and saw his torso fall forward between them. That’s when I saw Vlad’s face, red and contorted, gasping for air.

  ‘One more,’ the other one said.

  The first guy pushed him up against the wall and piled into his stomach, making him fall forwards again. I carried on watching them, although I didn’t really need to in order to understand what was going on. Vlad might have snogged or maybe even shagged someone he shouldn’t have, or borrowed money he couldn’t repay, although I doubted it. Everyone had seen this sort of thing before. It happened because it could happen; people treated each other like this because they could. Because they were bored. Because no one cared.

  ‘Wallet,’ the one who had hit Vlad said, holding out his hand.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ said the other one.

  The first guy turned his head and looked around, making me take a step back behind the tree.

  ‘We might as well take it,’ he said. ‘This dick’s not about to report us is he? He never has, so why would he do it this time?’

  ‘We’ve never taken his stuff before.’

  ‘He’s never been this cheeky before.’

  ‘Cunts,’ Vlad managed to force out.

  ‘And he’s asking for it. He deserves to have it nicked.’

  I heard them pulling at his clothes. Once they’d taken the wallet, one of them kneed Vlad in the stomach while the other one looked around sheepishly. Vlad collapsed on the loading bay, and the two of them jumped smoothly to the ground, walking away with calm, deliberate strides.

  Next time he and Fred started on me, Vlad went completely white when I confronted him about it. I can’t remember what I said — maybe something about him being a pussy.

  Fred gave Vlad a look of complete surprise; in turn, Vlad just stared at me, blinked once, and started chasing me around the outskirts of Salem.

  THIS WAS YEARS AGO, but as Grim and I got off the bus and started walking up towards the school’s goods entrance it all came back to me. Vlad and Fred had turned eighteen and had both moved away from Salem. That happened to lots of them. They just disappeared.

  I tried to remember whether they’d got hold of me, the time I’d confronted Vlad and they’d started chasing me. That time merged with so many others. Maybe I got away that time; maybe not.

  ‘You look thoughtful,’ Grim said, walking alongside me.

  ‘I just remembered something.’

  ‘Something bad?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  He lowered his gaze and gave a quick nod.

  ‘Your fists are clenched.’

  I didn’t look at them, straining to relax them instead.

  ‘No they’re not.’

  He looked at my hands again, which were now exaggeratedly relaxed and floppy. We went over to the loading bay, and jumped up onto it. I leant against the bit of wall that Vlad had once been pinned against. We were waiting for Julia, who still had a while left at the middle school. I wondered how it was possible that I’d never seen her before. She’d started the year after me; we must have seen each other in the corridor. Julia Grimberg was the sort of person I should have noticed. Grim sat there swinging his legs. A click came from the big roller shutter to our left, and with a little
creak it started to open. When it reached my thigh level it stopped, and out came Julia, in her light jeans and a black T-shirt with THE SMASHING PUMPKINS printed on it in soft yellow characters.

  ‘You can just go round, you know,’ Grim said. ‘You don’t have to sneak out this way.’

  ‘There’s a supervisor just round the corner. She would have seen me.’

  Julia sat down with Grim on the loading bay, and I sat next to her. I don’t think Grim thought it was weird, but I wasn’t sure. Her denim rubbed against mine. Grim pulled a big notebook out of his bag and flipped through to a blank page. As he was doing so, I saw that most of the pages were full of stuff that wasn’t schoolwork: sketches and little cartoons; some had so much scribbled text that I couldn’t decipher what they said.

  ‘What’s this note about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Julia said. ‘Something about me going away.’

  ‘Are you going away?’ I asked.

  ‘No, we’re going on a class team-building trip. If you can’t go, you need a note from your parents.’

  ‘Can’t you ask them for one then?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Today’s the last day to hand the note in, and I forgot. Anyway, they would never agree to it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Julia looked at Grim, who didn’t say anything. He’d written a short note in handwriting that wasn’t his own. The only thing left was the signature. He flipped through to an earlier, full page in the notebook. It was covered with this one pattern, three columns of what must have been a signature. A scrap of paper was glued to the page — what I later realised was the original. He studied it for a second, before flipping back through and, with a couple of deft hand movements, copying the signature. He ripped the page out and showed it to Julia.