‘You enjoy your food,’ he said, with an innocent expression.
‘It’s great,’ Max said, nodding at Pia. ‘Thank you. It was really great.’
‘Just say if you’d like some more,’ Johansson said.
‘Thank you,’ Max said, ‘but—’
‘There’s dessert as well,’ Pia interrupted, firing a warning glance at her husband. ‘And I’ve made fruit salad for us.’
After lunch Johansson went and lay down on the sofa in his study while Max helped his wife to clear away the remnants of their meal. Not only did he have a healthy appetite, but he was evidently very amusing as well, Johansson thought, the second time he heard Pia laugh out loud in the kitchen. And the bastard also moves without making any noise, he thought, when Max suddenly appeared in the doorway. Short and broad as the door of an old grain store on the ancestral farm. Not a sound when he moved.
‘Sorry to disturb you, boss,’ Max said. ‘Is it okay if I call you boss, boss?’
‘That’s absolutely fine,’ Johansson said. ‘Just out of interest, what do you call my brother?’
‘Evert,’ Max said, looking at Johansson in some surprise. ‘Everyone does,’ he added.
‘And what does he call you?’
‘Max,’ Max said. ‘Or Mackan.’
‘What would you like me to call you, then?’
‘Max is fine. Or Mackan. Whatever you prefer, boss.’
‘How tall are you?’ Johansson asked.
‘One metre, seventy-four.’
‘Weight?’
‘About a hundred, a hundred and five, something like that. It depends how much exercise I do.’
‘Are you strong?’
‘Yes. At least, I’ve never met anyone who was stronger.’ He was evidently surprised by the question.
‘The reason I ask is that the other day I got a bit dizzy and ended up on the floor in here, and it took me a hell of a lot of effort to drag myself up on to the sofa again. I weigh one hundred and twenty kilos, you see.’ A bit more than a hundred and twenty kilos, he thought.
‘No problem,’ Max said. ‘One hundred and twenty isn’t a problem at all. But I thought we could start by swapping that stick.’ He nodded towards Johansson’s rubber-tipped stick. ‘You won’t get any balance if you have to hold it in the wrong hand, boss.’
‘Really,’ Johansson said.
‘If you’d care to stand up, boss, I’ll show you.’
Johansson did as he was asked, while Max pulled a tape measure from his pocket and measured the distance from his right armpit down to the ground.
‘A crutch would be fine,’ Max said. He put the tape measure away and smiled in confirmation.
‘The problem is that I’d have trouble holding it,’ Johansson said, showing his weak right arm. ‘The crutches they gave me at the hospital are too short. I can’t hold them.’
‘That can be fixed,’ Max said. ‘Trust me, I’ll sort that out. One other thing, boss – I brought your new car with me. If it’s okay with you, boss, I thought we might take it for a spin?’
‘Did you, now?’ What an odd lad, Johansson thought. Unquestionable, somehow.
It was the same model as his last car, the one his brother had more or less given away to his best friend, but with an automatic gearbox and a load of electronic gadgetry that was supposed to make driving easier for him.
‘You can open and close the driver’s door with the remote, boss,’ Max said, demonstrating. ‘The seat adjusts automatically as soon as you sit down. As does the belt. It starts automatically when you press a button. This one, boss.’ He pointed to the dashboard. ‘Automatic gears. Driving with your left hand and right foot is a piece of cake.’
‘Excellent,’ Johansson said. It was black, too. Men like him – the way he was in the prime of his life, anyway – always drove in black cars, he thought.
As Johansson glided down the street, just gliding with no specific destination in mind, the tightness in his chest eased. It was easier to breathe, as well, and for the first time in almost a month he was the one sitting behind the wheel. Back on the road again, he thought. Another little step towards a normal life. He didn’t even think about the two glasses of wine he had drunk with his lunch.
59
Sunday, 1 August
When Johansson came into the kitchen on Sunday morning his wife was packing a picnic basket.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘We’re going to the country,’ Pia said. ‘The cottage has been empty for almost a month now, and there’s loads I need to do.’
‘Which “we”?’ Johansson asked. ‘Going to the country, I mean?’
‘You and me and Max.’
‘As long as I don’t have to do any cleaning,’ Johansson said. ‘I’m not feeling that great, as I’m sure you appreciate.’
‘You’ve never done any cleaning,’ Pia said. ‘So there’s no need to worry.’
What’s she saying? Johansson thought. I’ve definitely done some cleaning.
When he got in behind the wheel Max and Pia exchanged a quick glance, but neither of them said anything. Johansson said nothing either and, as soon as he got out on to the main road to Norrtälje, he pulled over and stopped at a bus stop.
‘Someone else can drive now,’ he said, without elaborating. ‘I can sit in the back. So I can relax for a while.’
Then he changed places with Pia, and he must have dozed off, because when he woke up they were already parked in front of their country cottage out on Rådmansö.
‘We’re here now,’ Pia said. ‘How are you feeling?’ She smiled at him to hide the concern in her eyes.
‘Fine,’ he said. No headache any more, he thought. Two days without a headache: a new record. The tightness in his chest had also eased. But he was tired, actually more tired than before he fell asleep. Tired and miserable for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on. Pull yourself together, he thought.
‘I feel fine,’ he reassured her. ‘Better than I have for a long time,’ he added. ‘I was thinking I might go for a dip.’
Neither of them had any objection to that, not even when he limped out on to the jetty, mustered all the strength he had in his legs and dived head-first into the water, his right arm flapping, even though he had taken a firm grip on it with his left hand. He sank slowly towards the bottom, putting up no resistance and fighting a sudden urge to take a deep breath and just let go. Instead, he held his breath for as long as he could before kicking his way back up to the surface. Easier now, he thought as he inhaled. Easier now.
After that they had lunch. Max offered to clear up. Neither Pia nor Lars Martin raised any objection. Pia lay back on a sunbed with a newspaper. Johansson sat on a chair beside her and read the file that P-2, Detective Inspector Patrik Åkesson from the Stockholm Police rapid-response unit, had given him when he last saw him, and in passing told him what had happened to his daughter at her preschool. Or didn’t happen, to take a more positive view of things.
On top of the bundle was the new, more extensive DNA analysis that the Cold Cases team had asked for six months ago, when they were planning to have a last crack at the Yasmine case before it was prescribed. Then they received an email the same day about an as yet unknown perpetrator, or possibly perpetrators, who had murdered an overly conscientious prosecutor out in Huddinge. He had been shot through the head as he stepped out of his front door to let the family dog out, thus depriving his two young children of their father, and potentially solving a tricky problem for his wife, who had been wanting a divorce for the previous six months because he worked far too much and spent far too little time with her and the children.
Then those in charge of the police redeployed their forces. The regional police chief in Stockholm called a press conference and appeared on radio, television and in the rest of the media. This wasn’t just a horrifying murder of a good and conscientious prosecutor and father of two little children, she explained. It was also an attack on the whole of the justice
system, planned and carried out by highly organized criminals. All imaginable resources would be utilized to solve the murder, and when she said this she didn’t spare a thought for a nine-year-old girl who had been raped, murdered and trodden into the mud not far from Skokloster Castle in Uppland twenty-five years before.
The investigation into nine-year-old Yasmine’s murder had been ‘put on ice until further notice’. That was what Superintendent Kjell Hermansson at Regional Crime in Stockholm was told by his boss, and a week later he carried the boxes containing everything about Yasmine’s case out of his office and put them in the group’s storeroom. The same Superintendent Hermansson who also happened to be the father-in-law of Detective Inspector Patrik Åkesson. It was a small world they lived in, and even smaller for those citizens who also happened to work as police officers.
Those boxes were still standing there when the case was prescribed, the same boxes in which little Yasmine, nine years old when she was raped and smothered, had been laid to rest for the previous twenty-five years.
Then one day, out of the blue, Kjell Hermansson’s old boss, Bo Jarnebring, appeared and asked to borrow them on behalf of a good friend. Not just any friend, either.
‘Lars Martin wants to take a look at the case,’ Jarnebring explained to Hermansson.
‘Bloody hell,’ Hermansson said, unable to contain his surprise. Why didn’t he get in touch earlier? he thought.
‘Why didn’t he get in touch earlier?’ he said out loud. ‘It’s too late to do anything about it now.’
‘You know what Lars Martin thinks about Cold Cases,’ Jarnebring said with a wry smile.
‘Yes, I’ve got a pretty good idea,’ Hermansson said with a sigh.
Fresh in his memory, even though it was almost ten years ago, was the veritable massacre to which the then head of the National Crime Unit had subjected him and his colleagues at a national symposium for senior officers from around the country who worked with cold cases.
‘So he had to wait until he had a stroke before he got the idea,’ Jarnebring said with a chuckle.
Naturally, Lars Martin Johansson knew nothing of these thoughts and this conversation as he sat there reading what had turned out to be ‘the last shot at the Yasmine case’. An utterly pointless, almost spasmodic shot from the long arm of the law. A new, more extensive DNA analysis, from the sperm left in Yasmine’s body and on her clothes by the perpetrator over twenty-five years ago.
‘Anything interesting?’ Pia wondered, putting her newspaper down and looking at her husband the second time he grunted out loud to himself as he read.
‘Sort of. I’m reading a DNA analysis,’ he answered. ‘Sperm found in the Yasmine case,’ he explained. ‘It says here that they’re more than ninety per cent certain that it comes from a perpetrator of Nordic origin, probably Swedish – from central Sweden, even – and without any traces of foreign DNA, in an ethnic sense,’ he went on. These DNA boffins are getting pretty remarkable, he thought. Soon they’ll be able to fax through a portrait of the bastard as well.
‘That sounds interesting.’
‘Not to me,’ Johansson said, shaking his head. I could have worked that out, he thought. He had figured that out long before he had any idea where the crime scene was.
‘Really?’ Pia said, and smiled. I recognize him again now, she thought.
‘Yes.’ Johansson said, already thinking about something else.
‘I’ve emptied the fridge, carried the rubbish out, hoovered and done most of the cleaning,’ Max said. ‘And I’ve made some coffee.’
He doesn’t make a sound, the bastard, Johansson thought.
In his left hand Max was holding an oblong tray with three glasses, three coffee mugs, a flask, a bottle of mineral water, a jug of milk and a large bowl of fruit. He held the tray by its edge, squeezed between the thumb and fingers of his left hand, as he moved the table that stood between them. With his right hand, same grip, no trace of a wobble.
I believe you, Johansson thought. You don’t know anyone stronger than you.
‘I thought I might drive home,’ Johansson said a couple of hours later when they were about to get in the car.
Neither Max nor Pia said anything, they just nodded, didn’t even sneak a glance at each other.
The last summer, Johansson thought as he pulled out on to the main road between Norrtälje and Stockholm. The last summer. But before that I’m going to hunt elk, he thought.
That night he dreamed. About Maxim Makarov, a Russian-born refugee who came to Sweden from a children’s home in St Petersburg when he was ten years old, and who for good reason didn’t know anyone who was stronger than him. About the sensitive but still faceless paedophile who may have brought them together.
‘Wake up, boss,’ Max said, as he gently shook Johansson’s shoulder. ‘What do you want me to do to him, boss?’ he asked.
Then he held the child-killer out towards Johansson, who was lying on his side in bed. Holding him right up, without his hand shaking at all, squeezed in a thumb grip like a tray of coffees. The paedophile just hung there. While Maxim Makarov held him up in his left hand, he just hung there, eyes closed, head lolling, his body not moving at all.
‘Let me think,’ Johansson said. ‘Let me think.’ Then he woke up. Sat bolt upright, his heart pounding like a steam hammer in his chest.
60
Monday, 2 August
Monday. A new week, a new day. Another day in Lars Martin Johansson’s new life, his life as a patient. His wife, Pia, went to work while he was still in bed, half asleep, far too tired even to talk to her when she leaned over him and ran her fingers across his forehead.
Matilda served him breakfast on a tray on the table next to the sofa in his study. A healthy breakfast, with soured milk, fruit and muesli, a boiled egg and a cup of strong coffee, as a concession to his past life. Beneath the morning paper he found an envelope containing twelve 500-kronor notes.
Hope she gave the old bag a kick up the backside, Johansson thought, the old bag being Matilda’s mother, who had broken the fourth commandment and done to her daughter what she would never have done to herself.
‘Matilda,’ Johansson said when she came to take his breakfast tray away. ‘You don’t know anything about this, do you?’ he said, holding up the envelope.
‘Not a clue,’ Matilda said, shaking her head. ‘Better check you haven’t lost a tooth.’
‘Lost a tooth?’
‘The tooth fairy. Thanks, by the way,’ she said as she pulled the door closed behind her.
Two employees, and staff problems already, Lars Martin Johansson thought, having not so long ago been boss of more than a thousand police officers. When they were getting in the car to go to the physiotherapist, Johansson got in the driver’s seat, but when Matilda went to get in next to him Max simply shook his head.
‘In the back,’ he said, gesturing towards the back seat with his thumb.
‘Why?’ Matilda said. ‘Is this a boys’ thing, or what?’
‘You’re welcome to sit in the front,’ Max said with a smile. ‘On one condition.’
‘What?’ Matilda said.
‘That you’re a qualified driving instructor,’ Max grinned.
‘Like you are!’ Matilda said.
‘But I’m stronger,’ Max said, and smiled again.
‘Stop squabbling, children,’ Johansson said, suddenly feeling better than he had in ages. So in the back seat sat the tooth fairy, a bit grumpy, but that would soon pass, and in the seat next to him a former Russian orphan who had never met anyone who was as strong as him.
The session with the physiotherapist was nothing special. No unexpected reverses, no progress either, but, quite regardless of this, Johansson’s good mood refused to budge.
‘Time for lunch,’ Johansson said. ‘Call Ulla Winbladh’s and ask if they can do some stuffed cabbage leaves with cream sauce, new potatoes and lingonberry jam.’ He nodded at Matilda in the rear-view mirror.
‘I don’t
doubt they can,’ she said, raising her eyebrows and looking up at the roof.
‘Good,’ Johansson said. You can say what you like, but that girl isn’t stupid, even if she has made a right mess of herself, he thought.
‘Maybe the cream sauce isn’t a good idea,’ Max said, squirming in his seat.
‘Listen carefully, Max,’ Johansson said, changing lane without indicating and choosing to ignore the taxi behind him that suddenly flashed its headlights and blew its horn at him.
‘Listen carefully,’ he repeated. ‘A real man can have only one boss, and if he says cream sauce, then cream sauce it is.’ No matter what my wife has tried to tell you, he thought.
‘Understood, boss,’ Max said.
‘So would you mind giving that bastard the evil eye,’ Johansson said, nodding towards the taxi that had pulled up alongside him, a wildly gesticulating taxi-driver behind the wheel.
‘Understood, boss,’ Max said. He wound the window down and waved his clenched fist at the taxi-driver.
‘Sensible fellow,’ Johansson said as he watched the taxi brake and pull in behind him. No flashing headlights, no horn, no more gestures. Just like forty years ago, when he used to share the front seat with his best friend, looking for crooks and cruising up and down the streets, kings of the world. He hadn’t felt this good since he’d stopped and talked to P-2 and his colleagues in the rapid-response unit in front of the best hotdog kiosk in Sweden, up on Karlbergsvägen.
As soon as he got back he lay on the sofa and had a little afternoon nap. He woke when Matilda came in and checked on him.
‘Are you awake?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Johansson said. So a cup of coffee wouldn’t go amiss, he thought.
‘You’ve had a letter,’ she said, holding out a white envelope.
‘Oh. Is it from the tooth fairy?’
‘No,’ Matilda said. ‘But it does look a bit mysterious.’
‘What do you mean, “mysterious”?’
‘The post came two hours ago,’ Matilda said. ‘There’s no stamp on this. No sender’s name. Just your name: Lars Johansson. Someone must have put it through the letterbox.’
The Dying Detective Page 23