Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End: The Story of a Crime

by Leif G. W. Persson

  “Okay,” said Jarnebring. “Do you remember that editorial in Mini-Pravda, our beloved evening paper, the day after you put those guys in the can? Half a page. Do you remember that?”

  “I have a vague memory now that you mention it,” Johansson lied; he could recall the editorial in detail.

  “I seem to remember that the headline was ‘An Honorable Cop,’ ” said Jarnebring.

  “Now that you mention it,” said Johansson evasively.

  “Exactly,” said Jarnebring. “Me and the other guys almost laughed ourselves silly. Lars Martin Johansson, a completely ordinary constable, one of us, allowing for the fact that a lot of water has run under the bridge since we shared the front seat and the same lookouts, you could swear he’s well on his way to becoming a government minister. The only one in Swedish police history to get a positive mention in that rag. And a real policeman besides, not one of the kind you run into nowadays.”

  “Was it that bad?” said Johansson, and the discomfort he felt was genuine.

  “Cut it out,” said Jarnebring. “It’s cool. I guess we know you. What about that drink, by the way?”

  “I’ll take care of that in a moment,” said Johansson, signaling to his friend the restaurant owner.

  But how did she or he know my home address? he thought.

  [WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27]

  The night before had been a late one. Jarnebring had gone home with him and they had stayed up drinking and talking until one o’clock. Then Johansson looked at the clock and declared that he for one had had enough and that if Jarnebring was considering staying he could choose between the couch in the living room and the one in the study. Jarnebring thanked him for the invitation, called a taxi, and went home. He was rather in the mood and she had been unusually affectionate lately. I guess she’s heard all that talk about my good morals, thought Jarnebring contentedly as he journeyed through the night.

  Johansson woke at six as usual, got up, took two aspirin and a large glass of water before he set the clock for eight and went back to sleep again. He had to be at a conference out on Lidingö at ten o’clock, and because he wasn’t a speaker but a member of the audience, he didn’t have anything in particular to be concerned about. Except for that annoying little slip of paper.

  Now he was sitting where he should be according to the calendar on his desk, but as one speaker followed another at the podium, his thoughts were going their own way, and every time they came back to that slip of paper.

  My address, thought Johansson, for he could not let go of that thought. How did he get hold of my address? I’m not in the phone book. I don’t give it out at work, and no one in my family or among my friends would do so either. On the other hand, it would be no big deal to get hold of it for someone who really wanted to. But why would Krassner have his name and address? Johansson had a good memory for both names and people and their appearances and various dealings, as you should have if you’re an old detective; he had truly ransacked his memory these past twenty-four hours. No Krassner, thought Johansson.

  Assume that Jarnebring was on the right track. That Krassner was an ordinary scatterbrain, the type who liked to be a little important and secretive and could even imagine gadding about in shoes with hollow heels. Hollow heels. Johansson shook his head. Of all the thousands of crooks he’d run into during his years as a policeman, he couldn’t recall any who’d had shoes with hollow heels. On the other hand there were several who hadn’t had any shoes at all. Dope, thought Johansson. There were sure to be one or two who had chosen to store the goods that way. A tall tale was even circulating in the building about a black guy who was extremely tall to start with, who had tried to bring in a pound of heroin through customs at Arlanda in a pair of knee-high, crocodile-leather platform boots. He didn’t know if it was true, and that wasn’t the point anyway, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to talk with one of the boys in narcotics? How can I do that? thought Johansson gloomily, and if he knew Jarnebring it had already been done. Wonder what we’ll get for lunch, he thought, looking at his watch.

  Jarnebring was not the type to surrender unnecessarily to brooding. Krassner was a closed chapter. It only remained for him to write up the case and put it in the files. He would do that as soon as Hultman called to report on what the American police had come up with regarding Krassner, and he was already convinced that this would not essentially change anything. Suicide, concluded Jarnebring, and after that he’d devoted the morning to practical matters and the afternoon to physical training. What he was going to do after work was his own business.

  Good news, thought Wiijnbladh. If police-station gossip was true, it was evidently the acting head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Lars Martin Johansson, who had written the statement about the officers who had missed the two corpses in the elevator shaft. The type who gladly steps over the bodies of his colleagues, thought Wiijnbladh, and he would scarcely miss that dilettante Olsson when he let the ax fall. True, Olsson had not been at the scene of the crime, he’d been somewhere else, which only further underscored his negligence and general incompetence, but he was still the chief of the group at the tech squad where the officers were working. The job that rightly should have been mine, thought Wiijnbladh, and yet it was clearly not too late. Now it was a matter of making an extra effort before the celebration of the chief’s sixtieth birthday. I’m of course in charge of both the collection and the party, thought Wiijnbladh contentedly.

  . . .

  On Monday morning Bäckström had returned to his usual job as murder investigator on the homicide squad, and with him he had an as good as completely investigated case of wife abuse. Normally he wouldn’t have touched shit like that with a pair of tongs. The homicide squad had yielded to political pressure from a lot of red-stockings and leftist pansies and established a special investigative group for violence against women, to which the closet fags and dykes in the corps had of course applied. Violence against women? thought Bäckström. A bunch of drunken hags who both needed and wanted a little regular ass-whipping. The problem was just this case: a pile of dough and boobs like melons and the drunk she was married to was still sitting in stir. Bäckström himself had seen to that.

  First he had thought about playing the good cop and simply asking his immediate superior to let him finish up the case himself. For one thing, the investigation was as good as done, and for another, there were no fresh murders that required his efforts. Just piles of old, unsolved shit that no normal person could bear to poke into, but the problem was more complicated than that. Bäckström’s boss was an old idiot, six foot six and 280 pounds who completely lacked a fuse. When Bäckström saw him on Monday he had been monumentally hungover, and only a suicidal person with impaired vision would have asked the question, so Bäckström decided to lie low and not say a peep about the matter. All he needed was a couple of extra follow-up sessions with the poor victim. He was already halfway there, he’d heard it in her voice when he was talking with her on the phone. In the worst case he could always change the date on the interviews.

  Jarnebring wasn’t what he seemed to be, thought Oredsson, and when he talked with his older comrades he also understood why. Jarnebring was clearly an old colleague and best friend of that fifth columnist Johansson, who was head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Too bad, thought Oredsson. If you’re going to tackle crime in earnest it’s important to have people like Jarnebring on the right side.

  . . .

  When Stridh came home he turned on the TV to watch the evening news, but it was the same old pile of misery so he turned it off again. It never ends, thought Stridh; the only bright spot was that he would soon be off again.

  [THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28]

  Hultman was not one to hesitate to pull the trigger, thought Jarnebring with delight, and the Americans weren’t either. When he checked his mailbox after morning prayers he found a fax from the American embassy. A record of an interrogation carried out by the police in Albany, New York,
a few short official lines from the legal attaché at the embassy, as well as a handwritten letter from Hultman that summarized the essentials: Ten years ago Krassner had tried to take his own life by jumping from the balcony of the house where he was living. The local police had pulled out an old investigation of the incident. His girlfriend at that time had also been questioned, and to make a long story short, she could confirm everything that Jarnebring had suspected right from the start. Krassner was, to say the least, a complicated person. Krassner had tried to take his life before, and in the same way as now.

  As a suicide attempt it was not much to write home about. Krassner had suffered a concussion and a broken leg. This time you were more successful, thought Jarnebring; he decided to finish up the investigation of the cause of death as soon as he received the final statement from the forensic doctor. Suicide, thought Jarnebring once again, and the simplest thing would be to just forget that annoying little slip of paper with his best friend’s name on it. Perhaps that ridiculous shoe with the hollow heel too, thought Jarnebring. He could, of course, have found the safe-deposit box key somewhere else, and the very simplest thing was just to include it along with everything else in the confiscation report. I’m not going to write a spy novel, thought Jarnebring, so that might as well stay between Lars Martin and me.

  Johansson was bewildered and felt a growing irritation. First he’d tried to create some order in his head by seeing to it that he was fully occupied. Until lunch he had quickly and efficiently cleared away all old annoyances and the usual trifles, which could just as well have remained dormant for good, and after lunch he had started to inspect an old proposal for reorganization of the operation at the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which even the person who had proposed it didn’t have the energy to care about anymore. … and then he called Jarnebring.

  “Okay,” said Jarnebring. “Come over and we’ll talk.”

  Jarnebring had told him about the message from the embassy, but that didn’t seem to make an impression on his best friend. Nor did the fact that in his investigation he had decided not to mention the obnoxious little scrap of paper and the shoe with the hollow heel. Johansson hadn’t even heard that, it seemed.

  “Okay,” said Jarnebring, with a slight resignation in his voice. “How can I help you?”

  “You had a photo of Krassner,” said Johansson. “Could I borrow it?”

  Jarnebring grinned and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Who were you thinking of questioning?”

  Johansson also shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’ve been going over this in my head until I’m about to go crazy. I wasn’t thinking of questioning anyone.”

  “Just snooping around a little?”

  Johansson smiled reluctantly and Jarnebring chuckled.

  “Put your ear to the rails?”

  “More or less,” said Johansson.

  “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree,” said Jarnebring. “You’re that type, but okay. Anything else I can help you with?”

  “The letter,” said Johansson. “Think I could borrow that letter he wrote?”

  “I meant to put the original in his file, of course, but if you can get by with a copy? Sure,” said Jarnebring.

  “A copy would work fine,” said Johansson.

  Jarnebring grinned and nodded; apparently he was psychic, for both Krassner’s photo and a photocopy of his letter were already in the plastic folder that he took out and handed over to Johansson.

  “Anything else you need?” asked Jarnebring, leaning back in his desk chair with his fingers clasped behind his head.

  “No, such as?”

  Jarnebring shook his head, acting concerned.

  “I’m worried about you, Lars,” he said. “Not because you’re getting unnecessarily worked up over this lunatic—you’ve always been the type, so that doesn’t worry me—but you do seem a bit rusty. What do you think about these?”

  Jarnebring took a different plastic folder out of his desk drawer and handed it to Johansson. In it were ten or so photos of men approximately Krassner’s age and appearance.

  Johansson smiled unwillingly.

  “I wasn’t thinking about questioning anyone,” he said. “That’s your job.”

  “No, certainly,” said Jarnebring, “but suppose you change your mind and get it into your head to do it anyway. Would be sad if the person you’re talking with didn’t have any pictures to choose from.” He sighed. “You’re worrying yourself unnecessarily,” he continued. “I want the photo array back, by the way.”

  “Of course,” said Johansson. “There was one more thing.” A thought had just occurred to him. “That ink cartridge for the typewriter, do you still have it?”

  “It’s one of those plastic cartridges,” said Jarnebring, “for a Panasonic brand electric typewriter. The only thing it was used for was to write out that letter you got a copy of. I’ve checked the cartridge against the letter myself. I can assure you, Lars, that every single damn stroke on the ink cartridge, every single correction which has been made on the correction tape, I’ve checked off on the letter.”

  Jarnebring looked expectantly at Johansson, who made a deprecating gesture with his hands.

  “I’ll pull back,” said Johansson. “Sweet Jesus,” he said and smiled wryly. “I’m crawling in the dust.”

  Jarnebring appeared not to have heard the last. “True, I’m only a simple police inspector,” he said, “and if it hadn’t been for one colleague who insisted that we Indian-wrestle, there wouldn’t have been any need for me even to warm this chair.”

  Johansson smiled and nodded. The reason for Jarnebring’s sudden promotion was already part of police history as recounted among those who could trust each other.

  “One thing I learned early on,” continued Jarnebring, and it sounded as if he was thinking out loud. “This was even before you and I ran into each other.”

  Johansson nodded. “Go on.”

  “Well,” said Jarnebring. “If you must do something that takes a little time, then see to it for Christ’s sake that you do it properly, otherwise you might as well not bother at all. It took me a good hour to check off the letter against the ink cartridge and correction tape.”

  “Quickly done at that,” said Johansson approvingly.

  “Sure,” said Jarnebring, grinning broadly. “Which actually might have been due to the fact that old man Rosengren helped me.”

  Seated in his car down in the parking garage, Johansson took the plastic folder with the letter and the photo of Krassner out of his briefcase. On the back of the photo Jarnebring had attached the irritating little scrap of paper with a paper clip. It was wrapped in plastic but Johansson could still see that it was the original.

  Bo, he thought.

  [FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29]

  Now the shit has hit the fan in earnest, thought Bäckström, when the chief of homicide’s secretary buzzed him on his intercom and said that the chief wanted to see him immediately. That damn sow, thought Bäckström. She’s knifed me in the back and what the hell am I going to come up with now?

  The day before he’d set up a meeting with the crime victim on Karlavägen. They were to meet at her home and Bäckström had set the time at six o’clock in the evening. A quick questioning, a little heartwarming idle chatter, and then straight to the little red beet. So I can treat you to a trip you’ve never made before, thought Bäckström contentedly.

  When he actually got there and rang her doorbell, no one opened. Bäckström rang and rang and finally he peeked through the mail slot to see if anything had happened. The only thing that happened was that her neighbor stuck his ugly snout out of the door and asked if there was anything he could help him with. Sour, skinny, bald old bastard, Bäckström diagnosed, while he considered whether he should stick his badge right in his kisser or simply request that he go to hell. But before he managed to do either, the old bastard had shrieked at him to get away from there or else he would call the police.
<
br />   Because he didn’t have any desire to stand in the stairwell negotiating with one of those Nazis from the uniformed police—for some reason he’d started thinking about that idiot Oredsson—he had carried out an orderly retreat and trotted down to a nearby Chinese restaurant, where he placed himself in the bar to be able to think better. In the ball, thought Bäckström, grinning.

  “Rarge beer, rarge stlong beer,” he said to the saffron monkey in the bar, but the humorless bastard didn’t even crack a smile.

  After a few more beers he trotted out and scouted around her building a little. The lights were off in all the windows.

  Bäckström found a new bar, downed a few more beers, and finally called her from a pay phone. No answer, and after a number of rings the answering machine came on and he hung up.

  Then things had just rolled on by themselves, or so it seemed. Next bar, two more beers, another attempt at the pay phone, and suddenly he’d been standing outside the usual old dive on Kungsgatan. First he’d taken a cautious peek through the window. That fucking whore who worked at Saab—the one he’d screwed last summer—was sitting in the half-empty bar, lacing her fingers together with some fucking homo watchman. Bäckström decided to go in.

  “It’s full,” said the half-ape who stood in the doorway, grinning.

  “What do you mean, full?” said Bäckström.

  “It’s always full here,” said the half-ape and grinned even wider. “Besides, you seem to have had a few too many already.”

  A few too many, thought Bäckström. Don’t try and get familiar with me or I’ll kill you. But he didn’t say that. He just left. Finally he made it home, squeezed the last drops out of one of the bottles he had bought on payday, then called her again. No answer, so he left a message on her answering machine. And what the hell was it I said then? he thought as he walked into the chief’s office.