The Invisible Man from Salem

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘I started with a sort of introduction, a presentation in one of the big halls, and after that I followed their daily routine for a couple of hours. That part, the tagging along, wasn’t planned, and I don’t think Skacke would have approved, but the head there at Jumkil invited me to do it, and I felt it was the least I could do to minimise the distance between me and the youths there. So I did it, and made sure I was available to anyone who might have wanted to talk to me. There was certainly hostility there, but not as bad as I’d feared. Several seemed to be interested in police work. One of the ones who didn’t say a word to me, neither during the presentation nor afterwards, was John Grimberg. He sat right at the back during the introduction, and kept himself to himself for the rest of the day. I did notice him, but didn’t give it much thought.

  ‘Before lunch, I had a quick meeting with the director of the institution in his office in the main building. We were supposed to have had it earlier, but hadn’t had time. They were still busy with the aftermath of the unrest. We sat there talking for a while, and Westin told me about the problems at Jumkil, about the clients — that’s what he called them — and the offences they committed there. He was, of course, worried about the number of assaults, the number of threats and thefts. No one really knew how bad it was there, but the things that the staff got to hear about were undoubtedly, as they say, the tip of the iceberg.’

  The taxi stops at the end of Vasa Bridge, and I look at Rosenbad and at Fredsgatan, which runs down to the right, the windows of its mute buildings lit from within. I remember chasing a suspect through there once, a man who was accused of robbing a bureau de change. He hadn’t. The robber was the man’s fifteen-year-old son. The man I’d been chasing had merely supplied him with the weapon.

  ‘On Westin’s desk was a little box,’ Levin continues. ‘I looked inside, and saw that it contained a collection of ID cards. “What is this?” I asked. “Items we’ve confiscated,” he said. “I see,” I said, “From whom?” and then I picked up the box and flipped through its contents. “John Grimberg,” Westin said. According to Westin, Grimberg claimed that he wasn’t going to do anything with them, that he’d just made them to kill time and to hone his skills. They were …’ Levin goes quiet. ‘They were outstanding. Really outstanding. They weren’t just cards, but various invoices, certificates, benefit-office claims and correspondence, flow diagrams about the tax authority’s procedures for registering and de-registering citizens, lists of registers that one is automatically entered on at birth, lists of other registers and how you might end up on them. He even had copies of real police reports, with his illegible notes in the margins, maybe to denote what information had been garnered from surveillance and what must have come from an insider. The internet featured heavily in his notes — it was all quite new then, don’t forget. He could see the threat it posed, that was for sure. He seemed to have tried to work out what information was available, and from how many different sources. And I promise you, Leo, judging by what I saw, he was practically qualified for employment with the fraud squad even then.

  ‘I asked Westin whether Grimberg had committed other offences during his time at Jumkil. “None whatsoever,” he replied. That was it. I couldn’t help smiling, which I’m a bit ashamed of now. But I told him not to worry about the naughty kids who go round punching each other or stealing CD players. The vast majority will have respectable jobs and probably kids of their own by the time they’re thirty. It’s the likes of John Grimberg you need to be careful with. Westin, of course, looked completely bemused, and had no idea what I was going on about. Which, I suppose, was understandable, even if that’s the sort of approach which had led to incident after incident that could have been avoided.’

  The taxi turns up Hantverkargatan, past the streets where barely an hour ago I had managed to escape the reporters waiting on my doorstep. I look for them, expecting them to still be standing there, on corners, but the only people visible are still-sleepy Stockholmers, standing at traffic lights, staring intently at the red lights, the ground, invisible dots somewhere just in front of them. The first cafés are opening. The noise of the city is slowly building.

  ‘I asked if it might be possible to meet John, to talk to him one on one. Westin looked a bit bewildered, but he nodded and asked me back to his room. The long corridor of closed doors was alarmingly prison-like, and when Westin unlocked the door, John wasn’t there. He asked me to go in and wait, and I asked if it was really okay for just anyone to go into someone’s room without the client’s — I used that word — consent. “Of course,” Westin said.’ Levin shakes his head. ‘There’s no respect for privacy in those places. I think it’s even worse now; I’ve heard that certain rooms even have CCTV cameras. Anyway, I went in and sat on a chair by the desk, with my back to it, while Westin went to get John.’

  ‘What was his room like?’ I ask.

  ‘Bare. Compared to most young men’s rooms, these quarters are always bare, but even compared to the others, John’s felt unusually simple. He had few clothes. The bed wasn’t made — a breach of the rules. His desk was what I was most interested in, but it seemed too private for me to investigate without John being there. I could see from the corner of my eye that there were a few things on it, but I assumed that they were of no value to John or the likes of me. He was too clever for that. If he was still at it, he would have hidden it away. The box of stuff that Westin had shown me earlier had been found in a cavity behind the wardrobe — by chance, he claimed, and I’m pretty sure that was true.

  ‘John had been sent to Jumkil for GBH, but that was just the main offence. The full charge-sheet included threatening behaviour, possession of an offensive weapon, forgery, and attempted serious fraud. If I understood correctly, he had been trying to sell ID cards to someone. A physical altercation occurred, and John had threatened the buyer with a knife. It had been an open-and-shut case — loads of forensic evidence and several witnesses. I believe he was no longer living in Salem at that time. His sister Julia, who you mentioned, had died a few years earlier, and even if the family had always had problems, apparently it was her death that ripped the family apart. He was on the electoral roll as a lodger at an address in Hagsätra. It was there, on the street outside the house, that the crime had taken place.’

  For a moment, he’s quiet, as the taxi stops at the junction between Bergsgatan and Polhemsgatan. Kronoberg Park is very, very green, but I think the drink Levin gave me has made all the colours appear unnaturally vivid. Everything has a shimmer to it, which makes the world seem like a more hopeful place.

  ‘John came into the room, led by one of the staff. He was surprised to see me — that much was obvious — but he soon regained his composure and just nodded slightly in my direction. “Is it okay if I sit here?” I asked. “Sure,” he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed, as though prepared to quickly stand up again. He was tense and nervous. “How long have you been here?” I asked, and John answered that he didn’t know. “You lose track of time in here,” he said. But he thought it was just over eighteen months. He had in fact been there for exactly eighteen months when I was there, almost to the day. He had way more of an idea than he wanted to let on. That in itself is remarkable; most criminals of that age are the opposite. They want us to believe that they are cleverer than they really are. I asked him what he was in for, and he asked me whether I didn’t already know. “Yes,” I said. “Sorry, it was a stupid question.” I got my police badge out instead, and held it up in front of him. “Have you ever seen one of these, up close?” I asked. “Only constables’,” he replied. “Never a superintendent’s.” He took it off me and inspected it carefully — the back, the edges, the pattern in the plastic, the little chip. Held it up to the light. He knew exactly where to look to find the important details. “You could make one of those, couldn’t you?” I asked. “Police badges are difficult,” he answered. “They have a different pattern. And the chip just becomes a use
less bit of plastic. You can’t store the necessary information on it.” “How did you find that out?” “Practice,” he replied. “And what do you plan to do with your talents?” “Who knows?” he said.’

  The taxi has stopped outside the entrance on Kungsholmsgatan.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the driver says, looking for eye contact in the rear-view mirror. ‘We’re here.’

  ‘Yes?’ Levin says and looks up.

  ‘We’re here,’ I say.

  ‘Yep.’

  I pay, and Levin opens the door and climbs out while the driver prints the receipt and hands it to me. I give it to Levin, who looks blankly at it.

  ‘Ah, yes. Thank you.’

  He walks up a couple of steps and sits down, scratches his shiny head, and straightens his glasses, which have slipped down his nose.

  ‘John knew full well what he was planning to do with his talents. It was plain to see. I asked him where he’d got the police reports from. It could’ve been a leak, I thought to myself — and blow me down, it was. But I never found out who the mole was. He said nothing, of course. “Are you interested in police work?” I asked instead. “Yes,” he said. “You’ve never thought about joining the police?” This was the first time he displayed any kind of emotion. My question made him laugh. I ignored that, and explained that, with his background, and above all his criminal record, proper tests would be necessary, and I would need to pull all manner of strings in Solna, but that it was far from impossible. “Would you be willing to do that?” he asked. I said that what I’d seen in Westin’s box was evidence of his skill.

  ‘As I said, he was pretty much ready for the fraud squad. Unfortunately, you do have to take the traditional route, but people have been known to climb very fast. Within six, seven years he could, with some further training, be working on the stuff he was already doing. I even offered him the chance to keep himself up to date with his field of interest alongside the training. There was so much upheaval in the world of Swedish registers and ID documents around the millennium, and it was important that he kept up with the changes.’

  One of the officers from the NOVA group, the organised-crime unit within Stockholm Police, climbs out of a black car with tinted windows and goes up the steps, past us. He nods to Levin and looks puzzled at my presence, but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘You’re thinking: did Levin think he had a chance? Well, yes, I did, because I did have a chance, I could tell. John considered my proposition. He was going to get out just before the application deadline. He had time to prepare and send in the application. “But,” I added, “make sure all the information on the form is genuine.” That made him laugh, too. People like John Grimberg … I’d met a few before him, one or two since. Five, six people during my forty years in the force. And the reason I tried to get him to join was actually two-fold. It’s always a shame when a talent is misused. As a criminal, there was a risk that he wouldn’t last long; it’s that sort of world. I wanted to give him another chance. That’s always been my weakness, and my strength, I think, as a cop. But my reason was also simple crime prevention. A crook like John could cause a lot of damage, and use up a lot of police resources.’

  ‘Did you say that to him?’

  ‘The first part — not the second.’

  ‘How did he react?’

  ‘Not at all. He said nothing. It was time for me to leave, and I gave him my card, asked him to call when he’d made up his mind. He never called.’

  An elderly couple pass on the other side of the road, and Levin’s eyes follow them. They look tired but unbowed, happy almost.

  ‘About a year later,’ he went on, ‘his name cropped up in an investigation. A failed armed robbery. The problem was that the culprits were all wearing masks, so we didn’t know who they were. But we had our usual suspects, of course, and we put them under surveillance. One of them was spotted with someone who the snoop didn’t recognise. I got to see the picture and, right enough, it was John Grimberg. Shortly afterwards, our suspect disappeared — vanished into thin air. John was interviewed, but it led nowhere. He was released, and after that I never heard his name again until Alice said that you had asked about him.’

  ‘He’s changed his identity,’ I say. ‘For the last ten years he’s only been in the Whereabouts Unknown register.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Levin says.

  ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘There’s something about certain people, as though they start to disappear right in front of you. As though they’re always in character, wearing a mask — not just in front of others, but even for themselves. To be devoid of identity like that has an effect on human beings. It’s dangerous, of course, but people who change themselves so drastically often do so to protect themselves from something even more dangerous. What it was in the case of John Grimberg, I couldn’t tell you; in fact, you probably know more about that than I do. There’s nothing weird about role-play in itself; it’s a matter of practice and competence, an ability that most of us can acquire. It’s a part of this job, even for you and for me. But, unlike us, unlike those officers who sometimes claim to be someone else, or the opportunistic fraudster flashing a false ID card, who can go back to their real selves afterwards, the likes of John Grimberg don’t have that option, and they don’t want it either. There is something about that emptiness a person can create in themselves which makes me very uneasy.

  ‘Now, in retrospect, I wish I could say that I knew all along, but I didn’t. It was no more than a hunch, a flash of insight into how things might turn out for him. And that flash came just at the point in our conversation when he almost started to become transparent in front of me. There was nothing behind his facial expressions or the look in his eyes, just more facial expressions, other looks, none of them any more false or more genuine than the other.’

  Levin goes quiet and sits there a while, before shaking his head, standing up, and brushing off his trousers with the palm of his hand. ‘Sorry about this rambling, Leo,’ he says, visibly embarrassed. ‘I’m getting old.’

  ‘Did you see anything else in that box in Westin’s room that could give any clues as to where … or who he is today?’

  Levin shakes his head.

  ‘I’m not sure; my memory lets me down these days, Leo. But I don’t think so.’

  ‘No signature, no initials, nothing?’

  ‘Nothing. As far as I remember.’ He clears his throat. ‘I remember his language.’

  ‘His language?’

  ‘I remember that he was very eloquent. That’s unusual among kids on the estates.’ He blinks rapidly. ‘Yes, that’s right. I remember one other thing, but it might not have anything to do with John Grimberg. That robbery I was telling you about, the unsuccessful one, when he popped up during the investigation …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The detectives thought that the robbery was linked to drugs, like most things in this town are. The robbery was apparently instigated because a kilo or two of heroin had disappeared, and the victims of this theft had to pay their debts to their suppliers. They were desperate, I suppose, which isn’t really that surprising. When desperate people need to get their hands on a lot of money, fast, it often ends in a robbery. The heroin was found later at the home of a woman called Anja, I think her name was. She wasn’t much to look at, as they say, but she was light-fingered, and she knew one of the people convicted of the robbery. That’s how they found her, via her contact network. Somehow Anja had managed to lift the consignment, with the intention of using some of it herself and selling the rest, climbing a rung or two in the hierarchy. She was arrested for possession with intent to supply, and she was sentenced to jail; I can’t remember if was two or three years in Hinseberg Prison.’

  ‘When was this? You said “about a year later” before.’

  ‘Oh,’ Levin says. ‘It must
have been … maybe 2002 or 2003, I can’t quite remember. Anyway, the detectives thought that she must have had someone else, not necessarily an accomplice in that case, but someone who was close to her and who moved in the same circles. Because Anja had no one — her parents were dead, and she had no family of her own. And when they checked through her phone, which was of course stolen, they found a number they couldn’t trace.’

  ‘You suspect it was him.’

  ‘That’s right. Someone had made a list of Anja’s known contacts; it was in her file, and someone had written “JG?” on it. There were a lot of relevant people with those initials around at the time, men and women — Johan Granberg, Juno Gomez, Jannicke Gretchen. But I had a feeling that it might have been him.’

  ‘What gave you that feeling?’

  ‘Hard to know. Intuition, maybe.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘In the Forest Cemetery.’ Levin looks downwards. ‘She hung herself in her cell at Hinseberg. It was in the papers.’

  ‘I didn’t start reading the papers until I was thirty.’

  This makes Levin laugh. Then he looks at me.

  ‘You should tell all this to Gabriel.’

  ‘Birck?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Leo.’ Levin ’s expression is grave. ‘You may be in danger. In more than one sense.’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’

  Levin looks up and examines an advertising hoarding on one of the external walls: DO YOU WORRY ABOUT WHAT YOUR DOG GETS UP TO? KEEP TRACK OF YOUR DOG ON YOUR SMARTPHONE!

  ‘Keep track,’ Levin says thoughtfully. ‘Not surprising that people want to disappear. Not surprising that in a society like ours, people hate the police, they don’t trust us. Ten thousand or twenty thousand police won’t make a difference. It’s the wrong job, at the wrong time. In the wrong system, in the wrong part of the world.’ He breathes out, heavily. ‘So his sister died young,’ he says, more quietly. ‘You knew each other, you and her?’