Gieger

by Gustaf Skördeman

  The apprehended were four lads – two ‘ethnic Swedes’ and two ‘of foreign heritage’. They all denied everything, even those break-ins where their DNA had been found at the scene or they’d been captured on CCTV. Two of them had alibis for the time of Stellan Broman’s murder, but Bielke – head of the preliminary investigation – took the view that this simply meant that other members of the gang had carried out the break-in. That was probably why it had gone off the rails – the leaders of the gang hadn’t been there to keep their underlings in check.

  The atmosphere at the station in Solna had been one of high spirits. The general feeling was that they’d solved the murder of Stellan Broman, and in just a few hours. Someone probably ought to let the papers know so that they could write something positive about the police for once . . .

  The key thing now was to find Agneta Broman. The search party still hadn’t found anything, and Anna was forced to admit to Sara that they had no clues. But they’d begun checking CCTV across a much wider area.

  Sara asked Anna whether she’d brought up the spy theory with Bielke, but since they’d arrested a group of suspects, Anna hadn’t thought there was any point. Personally, Sara found it hard to accept that they weren’t pursuing all avenues of inquiry simultaneously – if only to avoid ending up with a new Palme investigation and some new cock-and-bull theory about Kurdish rebels.

  Anna agreed with Sara, but it sounded as though it was only to bring the conversation to an end. Her friendly openness about the investigation had apparently drawn to a close – presumably because Anna was convinced that they’d found the guilty parties. Sara thanked her and ended the call.

  Nevertheless, it was time for her to go back to work. David had said he would cover for her, since it was personal, but Sara realised there were limits to collegial helpfulness, just as had been the case with Anna. She drove across the Barnhusbron bridge, along Scheelegatan and Hantverkargatan as far as Fridhemsplan, and then turned into the police car park, where she parked up and headed straight for her office.

  She read through David’s report, changed a couple of sentences relating to the arrest of Vestlund and then tried to focus on work – future plans and the impending review of the prostitution unit’s structure. She called Becky, the woman at Artillerigatan who’d been assaulted, to check she was OK. All important parts of an important job, Sara thought.

  But eventually she couldn’t contain herself any longer. She pushed her own work to one side and returned to the Cold War. Using the photos she’d taken at Hedin’s flat, she went online to merinfo.se and began to search for the names from the files. Some had too many hits, while others were less common, and in several cases the combination of name and age were enough to find the right person.

  Then she set about searching using different directory inquiry services and social media. Eventually, she had a list of five names and numbers.

  Gerhard Ackerman, Günther Dorch, Fred Dörner, Angela Sundberg and Hanne Dlugosch. All she had to do was call.

  Ackerman hung up before Sara had finished introducing herself, and didn’t pick up when she tried calling again.

  Dorch was silent while she told him she’d received information that he’d once run into trouble after an East German informant disclosed information about him. Then he explained very calmly that he had nothing to say on the matter and wanted to be left alone.

  Dörner was full of bile that he wanted to spew up: hatred for East Germany and for Sweden’s compliant attitude, and fury that the guilty had never been held accountable.

  Sundberg didn’t answer the phone and didn’t have voicemail.

  Dlugosch was more than happy to talk. She’d fled East Germany, and when she tried to get her mother out of the country by inviting her to a wedding in Sweden, someone had given them away. Not only had her mother been prevented from travelling, but she’d been given a six-month prison sentence for some made-up offence, and had been so broken by being incarcerated that she’d fallen ill and passed away half a year later.

  ‘Was it him?’ said Dlugosch.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Uncle Stellan? Was it him who reported us? I’ve always wondered.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Sara asked.

  ‘Because I met him on the street outside the SVT studios, and I said I thought he should stop praising East Germany because it was a dictatorship. And I said I wanted to get my mother out. He said he would try and help me, and asked for my mother’s name. He said he had contacts there. Knew important people.’ Dlugosch paused. ‘He must have known a lot of important people there – they arrested her right away.’

  So there was something in what Hedin had said, Sara thought to herself. There were people who had cause to harm Stellan.

  It was odd to picture a snitch and spy behind the television personality’s laughing, father-of-the-nation face. She realised that the truth about Uncle Stellan was probably going to ruin the cherished childhood memories of many Swedes.

  But surely that was how it was with everything when you were growing up? Adults’ secret lives. Sex, alcohol and sweets whenever you wanted. Imagine if children knew what adults got up to when they were out of sight . . .

  What did Sara do when her children weren’t watching?

  After the call to Dlugosch, she dialled the number for the Security Service, stated her inquiry – the Cold War – and requested that she be connected to someone who could help.

  ‘Brundin.’

  Sara had always thought it was strange to hear women answer the phone using only their surname.

  ‘My name’s Sara Nowak and I’m calling about the murder of Stellan Broman.’

  Sara took care to avoid saying she was working on the investigation – better safe than sorry, she thought.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘We’ve received information indicating he was an informant for the DDR back in the day, and we’re looking into whether that may be related to his murder.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What do you have on Broman? If this was in fact the case, do you know who he harmed with his activities? Have you identified any threats?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘To what? That he was a spy, or whether there was a threat?’

  Silence was the only response.

  ‘Come on – a murder! Of one of Sweden’s most famous people ever.’

  ‘I’m with you so far.’

  ‘Help me out, then! Do you have evidence that he worked for East Germany – yes or no?’

  ‘Listen to me. You’re asking about old Stasi collaborators who’ve remained undiscovered and unpunished. Anything relating to such issues is top secret. That means I can’t even confirm whether any such investigations exist, and in the event that they do exist, I can neither confirm nor deny whether certain named Swedish citizens appear in these investigations, quite simply because if we said who wasn’t in them you would soon be able to work out who was. Ergo, all those people we haven’t cleared. And as I said, I can’t even confirm that any such files exist, let alone what it might say in them. This is about Sweden’s relationship with another sovereign state, which means there is absolute secrecy.’

  ‘A state that no longer exists.’

  ‘Germany exists.’

  Sara sighed as exaggeratedly as she could and hung up. She’d never encountered anything like this before.

  Why were they refusing?

  What did they want to hide?

  Had they missed Hedin’s research?

  No, she’d been forced to take legal action against the Security Service – so they must be aware of it.

  Did they have something bigger in play with relation to Stellan Broman?

  Or was it simply that they knew Hedin’s conclusions were wrong?

  Did they know that Uncle Stellan’s death couldn’t be connected to the Cold War?

  ‘Got a minute?’

  The text message from Lindblad was
friendly, as ever, but Sara knew a question from her was never a question.

  She walked down the depressing grey-brown corridor with its fabric wallpaper and plastic flooring towards her boss’s office, while thinking about what to look at next. She wasn’t going to waste time just sitting around and waiting for the leader of the preliminary investigation to realise that the burglary line of inquiry was wrong. And she couldn’t really see how she could help in the search for Agneta.

  What was it David had said?

  You don’t give up.

  ‘Do you mind?’ said Lindblad as she stepped in. As if Sara could genuinely have said ‘yes’ to her without any consequences. ‘I just need to get this sent.’

  Sara sat down while her boss typed away for another thirty seconds. Then the swoosh of an email departing was audible, and Lindblad leaned back and looked at Sara.

  Åsa-Maria Lindblad was a woman of about fifty with fine, brown hair cut short, cold hands and a sharp gaze. Her constant smile never reached her eyes.

  She was someone who’d made a career by pushing diagonally upwards, over and over again, until she’d become a chief inspector and head of the prostitution unit – mostly because her superiors thought that was where she would do the least harm. The officers in the unit were sufficiently experienced that they could get by on their own.

  Lindblad believed she was a committed and inspiring boss. Her approach to leadership was primarily about writing jaunty posts on Facebook:

  ‘So proud of my colleagues out on the streets making a difference.’

  ‘ProstU – you’re the best!’

  ‘My heroes!’

  She was always first to congratulate her colleagues on social media when it was their birthday, but she never understood what they were talking about when they had problems.

  She’d never accompanied any of them in the field. In fact, she hadn’t done any real police work for twenty years.

  And she spent most of her working hours checking her subordinates’ schedules and attendance, so that she could make deductions from their salaries if they were late or absent.

  ‘Good work,’ said Lindblad.

  ‘With what?’ said Sara, thinking about the call to the Security Service.

  ‘That you spotted the blood on his knuckles. Not many people would have done.’

  Lindblad always copied what other people said and then repeated it as if she knew what she was talking about. But Sara knew what the situation was.

  ‘David told you?’

  ‘Yes. He was impressed. Me too.’

  Bollocks.

  Lindblad had no clue what was impressive. She was equally lyrical whether you’d made coffee or saved a life. Always hysterically encouraging – she seemed to think that drove the people around her. She probably believed that everyone around her thought she was a great boss, when in practice everyone knew that nothing came out of her mouth but empty words. It was chaos in there, and she was fighting desperately not to go under.

  She clasped her hands and leaned forward.

  ‘But he’s also somewhat worried about you.’

  Sara didn’t reply. She looked expectantly at Lindblad.

  ‘You were reportedly rather heavy-handed with the man you apprehended.’

  ‘He ran, I chased – when I caught up, he fell over and hit himself pretty hard.’

  ‘Not according to the report,’ said Lindblad, pushing a file across the desk.

  ‘Report?’

  ‘The man has reported you for excessive violence. Grievous bodily harm. He says you didn’t identify yourself as a police officer before knocking him down. And then you kicked him repeatedly when he was in handcuffs.’

  ‘Absolutely not. He just wants payback because we arrested him.’

  ‘David is partially able to confirm the complainant’s statement.’

  Sara didn’t know what to say.

  ‘David?’

  ‘He’s worried about you, like I said. He says he hasn’t seen this side of you before. And before you get angry at him, remember that he was the one who praised you for the thing with the blood on the knuckles.’

  Sara stayed quiet. If you had views on your colleagues’ conduct, then you took it up with them, not with the evil boss. Lindblad must have prised it out of him. Or he was genuinely worried.

  ‘If no witnesses come forward, he’ll struggle to get much of a hearing with his report,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t make much difference to me. For me, the worst thing is that the report exists at all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  For a brief moment, Sara thought Lindblad was going to ask her to put pressure on Vestlund to withdraw the complaint.

  ‘I don’t want to hear about any excessive violence,’ the chief inspector said instead. ‘It makes me look like a bad boss. It’s like this – if I get praise for our work, then you get praise from me. If I get shit, you get shit.’

  ‘OK.’

  Lindblad was mad – everyone knew that – but no one dared raise it with management. People were afraid of what she’d do if they did.

  ‘And that brings us to the question of what we can do to help you,’ Lindblad continued.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘To get a handle on this behaviour. As I said, David’s worried about you. And I am, too. But I don’t want to point fingers and make people out to be villains. I want colleagues who are happy, and who are able to perform at work.’

  ‘I can perform,’ said Sara.

  ‘But at what cost? This job wears you down. It eats into you.’

  Sara shrugged her shoulders. Lindblad had no idea what Sara’s job did to her.

  ‘I’ve personally heard you talk about how the perpetrators should be punished,’ said her boss.

  ‘And about how the victims should get help.’

  ‘Mostly about the perpetrators, if I’m honest.’

  ‘I’m just so sick of seeing so many of the johns coming back time and again. They get their letters at work so that their families don’t know, they pay their fines and then they start buying sex again. And degrading the girls. Assaulting them, beating them, pissing on them. And there’s a constant stream of girls forced to come here from Bulgaria and Romania whose lives get ruined, just because Swedish men can’t be satisfied with wanking off.’

  ‘You’ll have to talk to Udenius. That’s an order. Every week until she says you’re better.’

  Sara had no intention of talking to Udenius, but she didn’t tell Lindblad that. Why blab to a psychologist who reported right back to the boss?’

  ‘Can’t you put me on secondment? I could help with the Stellan Broman murder inquiry.’

  ‘We need you here.’

  ‘They’re stuck on the wrong line of inquiry. They think it’s some teenage boys. And now they’re wasting time.’

  ‘But you know what they should be looking at?’

  ‘Yes. Well, at least what they should check out.’

  ‘Pass your information on to them and they’ll get to it as soon as they can.’

  ‘But I know the family. I know things.’

  ‘Tell them to the leader of the preliminary investigation. And if he doesn’t want to listen, then I promise to have a word.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what they are?’ said Sara.

  Lindblad raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Stellan Broman was an informant for the DDR and the Stasi,’ Sara continued. ‘He ruined lots of lives.’

  ‘A spy?’ said Lindblad, looking sceptically at Sara.

  ‘Eva Hedin is a highly regarded researcher who—’

  ‘One,’ her boss interrupted her. ‘You work here, not in the Western division. Two – you’re overworked and need to talk to a therapist. Three – you need to control yourself. There will be zero tolerance of violence. Four – forget this spy theory.’

  ‘Can’t you listen?’

  ‘Listen? I’m listening! Are you saying I don’t listen? Are you dissatisfied with the way I lead the prostit
ution unit? Are you sitting there saying I don’t give a damn about my colleagues? You have no idea how much I suffer when you’re out working on the streets! I cry through sleepless nights – that’s how worried I am about you. That’s why I’m here with you right now. Because I’m worried about how you feel. And all I get in return is a spit in the face – stuff about how I’m a bad boss who never listens to my subordinates. It really upsets me when you say that.’

  Lindblad had now worked herself up to the point where tears had formed in her eyes. Uncomfortable . . . But the worst thing was that Sara knew that she would get payback somehow. Some really awful way.

  ‘No, you listen,’ Sara said, getting up and leaving.

  Once back in her office, she searched online for information about the Cold War, the Stasi, informal collaborators and Uncle Stellan.

  His entire television presenting career, the dominance of Swedish television entertainment that was incomprehensible by today’s measures, and his political engagement on behalf of East Germany and peace.

  His career had even run in parallel with the Berlin Wall. His first presenting slot had been in 1961, the year the Wall went up. And his final television programme was broadcast in 1990, just a few months after the fall of the Wall and two years after the commercial channel TV3 launched. His era was that of the Berlin Wall and television monopolies.

  But what was this country that Stellan Broman had been so passionate about?

  Sara wasn’t all that clued up on the DDR, and essentially only knew that it had been communist and a Soviet vassal. But now she was going to do some research.

  Following the Second World War, defeated Germany had been divided into four zones overseen by each of the four conquering powers: Britain, the USA, France and the Soviet Union. In recognition of their help in defeating Hitler, the Soviets were allowed to establish their own country in their zone. And it was the Soviets who were then in charge, via their puppets in the government. The Russians chose who led the country and which decisions were made. It was a controlled economy and a constant fight on behalf of socialism.

  The result was that millions of East Germans fled west. The mass flight came to pose a threat to the very existence of the country. So the Communist Party in East Germany were obliged to build a wall to prevent people from escaping – a wall straight through the divided capital city. Berlin, where it had previously been possible to move freely between the countries.