The Dying Detective

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘I daresay,’ Johansson said. ‘And one or two who’ve been rather worse?’

  ‘The problem is that they’re pretty much all dead,’ the doctor replied. ‘You’ve put on two kilos since I last saw you. I interpret that to mean that you’re ignoring my advice about diet and exercise. Your blood pressure is even worse than last time, so now I’m going to have to increase the medication to lower it. You need to realize that this is a very short-term solution. Eat healthily, get some exercise, avoid stress. Is that really so difficult to understand?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, you’re the doctor,’ Johansson said. ‘Not me.’

  ‘That’s not the impression I’m getting. What’s so wrong with following my advice?’

  ‘What sort of life is it if you’re just counting down the days to the end?’ Johansson said, getting to his feet.

  Max drove them home to Södermalm. He cast a few surreptitious glances at Johansson. He didn’t say anything until they were parked outside the house on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan.

  ‘How are things, boss?’ Max said.

  ‘Fine, Max. How about you?’

  ‘I get the impression that I’m feeling better than you, boss.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Johansson said. He smiled and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Let me know if you fancy a bit of arm-wrestling.’

  Max didn’t smile. He just looked at him. Then he shook his head. ‘Let me know if there’s anything you want me to do, boss,’ he said.

  ‘That’s kind of you.’

  ‘I know how it feels to have something eating you up from inside,’ Max said.

  After lunch Johansson went and lay on the sofa in his study. Matilda plumped up his cushions and brought him a large bottle of mineral water in an ice-bucket. She tilted her head to one side and looked at him. ‘Shout if you want anything else,’ she said.

  ‘Stop fussing,’ Johansson grunted.

  Then he fell asleep. He woke up to find Pia sitting by his side, stroking his cheeks and forehead with her fingers.

  ‘What did the doctor say?’ she asked.

  ‘Tip-top form,’ Johansson said. ‘Tip-top.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Pia said with a gentle smile.

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of lying to you,’ Johansson lied, sitting up on the sofa without any great difficulty. My right arm, he thought. At least my right arm is getting better and better by the day. Probably looking forward to the elk hunt, just like its master, he thought.

  ‘Do you feel like talking?’

  ‘Of course,’ Johansson said. As long as we don’t talk about me, he thought.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what we talked about the day before yesterday. About the man who murdered Yasmine,’ Pia said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Assuming everything else was the same, if this was about one of your own children, or one of your grandchildren, what would you have done then?’

  ‘I’d have killed him,’ Johansson said. ‘In the Old Testament way. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ And I’d have counted the blows as I did it, he thought.

  ‘That’s not the impression I got when we talked about it. I was hoping—’

  ‘That’s because we weren’t talking about me,’ Johansson interrupted. ‘For me, hatred is a matter of distance. But if it gets too close, then . . . If anyone were to harm you, or the children or our grandchildren, then there’s no other way out. Would I be capable of killing someone like that? Yes, definitely.’

  ‘For my sake?’ Pia said.

  ‘“For your sake”. How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, for my sake I hope you choose a different solution.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Johansson said, taking her hand. ‘I promise to think very carefully before I do anything.’

  ‘You wouldn’t consider just letting it go? I’m worried about your health.’

  ‘Never,’ Johansson said. ‘How would it look if someone like me let go of something like this? Where would that leave us? Neither you nor I would want to live in a world like that.’

  76

  Wednesday, 11 August

  Alf called before breakfast and asked if he could invite Johansson to lunch. Bloody hell, Johansson thought. It’ll be interesting to see how much he charges for that when the invoice finally arrives.

  ‘I’ve found a few things that I think you might find rather interesting,’ Alf said. ‘About Staffan Nilsson’s time in Thailand in the late eighties, early nineties.’

  ‘Really?’ Johansson said. Interesting, he thought.

  ‘It turns out that I had an old acquaintance who was very familiar with Nilsson. We’re members of the same order, and he’s also a member of my club, Stora Sällskapet. He was involved in the same hotel project as Nilsson towards the end of the eighties, but he’s a very particular fellow. Slightly older than you and me, lived over there for many years, for long periods at a time. He sold most of his assets after the tsunami; I think he has only a very small share left now. If you don’t object, I was going to suggest that you meet him. I thought it would be better for you to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.’

  ‘By all means,’ Johansson said. ‘So what have you told him? About my interest in Nilsson?’

  ‘I told him Nilsson had asked if you were interested in investing in a number of new projects in Thailand. That you had asked me to find out what he’s like, both as an individual and as a potential business partner. All very discreetly, of course,’ Alf said, and cleared his throat quietly.

  ‘Excellent,’ Johansson said. ‘Where and when?’

  ‘May I suggest the club? One o’clock today. The worst of the rush tends to have died down by then, so we’ll be able to sit there in peace and quiet.’

  When Johansson stepped through the doors of Stora Sällskapet’s dining room on Blasieholmen in Stockholm at exactly one o’clock, it was very clear that the ‘worst of the rush’ had died down. In one corner sat an old duffer in a three-piece suit, picking at a dish of herring as he read Dagens Industri and took small sips of what had probably been a large glass of vodka when he started. In the opposite corner sat Johansson’s party: his brother-in-law Alf and a somewhat older man who bore a striking resemblance to Alf – tall, thin, slightly bent-backed, with thinning hair and a fetching suntan. He wore a blue blazer bearing the emblem of the Royal Swedish Yacht Club, grey linen trousers and highly polished brown shoes. Apart from them, the room was completely deserted, with the exception of an elderly waiter who had taken up position beside the door to the kitchen.

  ‘A pleasure to meet you at last, Lars Martin,’ his new informant said, smiling with his eyes, his mouth and his nice white teeth as he held out a sinuous, suntanned hand. ‘My wife has a god-daughter who’s in the police, and she lives with one of your former colleagues, so I’ve heard plenty of stories about you over the years. I’m Carl – my friends call me Calle; Calle with a “C”. It will be a pleasure to offer you lunch.’

  To offer me lunch, Johansson thought. Well, that explains that, he thought, glancing at Alf, whose mind seemed to be elsewhere.

  ‘Thank you, Calle,’ Lars Martin Johansson said, patting his arm warmly, because his right hand still wasn’t any good for shaking – his punctilious brother-in-law had no doubt already explained what had happened. ‘My friends call me Lars,’ he said. And if you call me Lasse I’ll kill you, he thought.

  ‘Your god-daughter,’ Johansson added as he sat down with some difficulty and leaned his crutch against his chair. From the corner of his eye he saw the waiter hurry over to help him. ‘Your god-daughter, what’s her name?’

  ‘A young colleague of yours,’ his new friend said. ‘Susanne Söderhjelm. She worked with you for a while when you were head of National Crime. She’s currently living with one of your closest associates from that time, Police Superintendent Wiklander. But perhaps you already knew that?’

  So they finally got it together? High time, Johansson thought. It’s a small world. Must call Wiklander. We’ve barely spoken
since I left, he thought.

  ‘Two quite excellent colleagues,’ Johansson declared. ‘Very competent.’ Watch yourself now, he thought.

  ‘With such a boss to advise them, how could they have turned out otherwise?’ Carl said, with another smile. ‘Alf and I have just ordered beer, seeing as it’s still summer, but if I can tempt you with anything else you’d be very welcome. I was thinking of ordering a dry Martini to go with lunch.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Johansson said, nodding affirmatively at the waiter, who had the good sense not to try to remove his crutch.

  ‘Splendid,’ his host said. ‘In that case, we’d like another beer and two properly chilled dry Martinis, my special recipe. So be careful with the Martini. Very careful. A little splash will do nicely.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Blomquist,’ the waiter said, and gave a slight bow. ‘Please, gentlemen, just let me know when you’re ready to order food.’

  Kalle Blomquist, Johansson thought. But with a ‘C’, and probably at least one ‘Q’ and ‘U’ as well. No matter, it was a fine moniker, seeing as Astrid Lindgren’s books featuring a young detective of that name had both influenced his choice of career and shaped his life at a time when he was still running about in short trousers with permanently scabby knees on a farm in northern Ådalen.

  Half an hour and a dry Martini later, when they each had a dish of soused herring in front of them, Johansson’s new friend got straight to the point.

  ‘Your brother-in-law, Alf here, told me that you have recently been approached by Staffan Nilsson,’ Calle said. ‘Some property project in Thailand that he wants you to invest in.’

  ‘I’ve never met this Nilsson,’ Johansson said, shaking his head as he sprinkled some chives on his herring. It glistened plump and silver, looking extremely appetizing as it lay there beside the yellow-white new potatoes. ‘He’s sent me a lot of information,’ he went on. ‘I was asked to take a look at it by my brother, Evert. I’m on the board of the family’s property-investment business, and he didn’t himself have time to look into it. It’s a combination of time-share apartments and housing, both wholly and part-owned, with shared facilities, a hotel, restaurant, staff – the works. In Khao Lak in Thailand. I have to say, I don’t even know where that is. The total cost was a couple of hundred million, and we’ve been invited to invest ten per cent,’ Johansson said without difficulty, because he had spent half an hour after his trip to the physiotherapist studying the papers Gun had given his best friend.

  ‘If I were in your shoes, I’d be very careful with that man,’ said the master-detective’s namesake. He emphasized the point by shaking his head and raising his silver fork in a warning gesture.

  ‘Really?’ Johansson said. ‘Go on.’ A witness is someone who has something to say, and this one was doing so with a degree of style, he thought.

  A word of warning – not that his new acquaintance was familiar with the project that Johansson and his brother had been invited to invest in. Anyway, he himself had sold his assets in Thailand several years ago, immediately after the tsunami, and these days he visited the country only as a tourist, in the company of his wife, children and grandchildren. He still had a house to the north of Khao Lak, which he shared with his family. A wonderful country, wonderful climate and, not least, wonderful people, but still – a word of warning. Staffan Nilsson, or Staffan Leander Nilsson, or Staffan Leander, as he also styled himself, wasn’t the sort of man one would choose to do business with, regardless of anything else.

  ‘Really?’ Johansson said again. ‘What’s the problem? Describe him to me. Like I said, I’ve never actually met him. I haven’t even spoken to him on the phone.’

  ‘Lazy, incompetent and a fraud,’ Johansson’s new friend said. ‘You don’t want to touch a man like Nilsson, not even with the longest barge-pole,’ he went on.

  ‘Really?’ Johansson repeated once more.

  In the mid-eighties, Carl Blomquist had used a sizeable portion of the money he had made on the Swedish stock market in previous years to buy a majority stake in a hotel project on the east coast of Thailand, on the bay near Koh Samui, in what was at the time a largely unexploited area: virginal, beautiful in an exotic sense that was hard for Swedes even to imagine. It was also a new concept, because it was aimed at families with children – people from the middle class, in younger middle-age, people who wanted sun and warmth, peace and quiet, good food that was just exotic enough, not too spicy, and one or two umbrella-bedecked cocktails to drink with the wife while the resort’s child-minders and play-leaders looked after the next generation.

  ‘Not a load of twenty-year-olds living it up, no discotheques or bars full of whores or any of the things that people still associate with holidays in Thailand, regrettably,’ Carl Blomquist said as he poured HP sauce on the Biff Rydberg that had just been presented to him.

  ‘How did Staffan Nilsson come to be involved in the project?’ Johansson asked, poking suspiciously at the steak with horseradish which he ought, on closer inspection, to have avoided.

  ‘My partner and I were looking for co-investors. We didn’t want to take on the entire project ourselves. So the bank helped us. It was them – I was with the SE Bank at the time – who introduced us to young Nilsson. I say young Nilsson, because he must have been a good twenty years younger that my partner and I. Not even thirty, if I remember rightly.

  ‘He was charming, pleasant. And he had money, too – even offered a couple of million he had inherited from his mother. Sadly, we allowed ourselves to be persuaded and let him come on board,’ Carl Blomquist went on with a sigh.

  ‘A shame,’ Johansson agreed.

  ‘Unfortunately, we made an even bigger mistake than that.’

  ‘You did?’ Johansson asked, trying not to sound too eager as he did so.

  ‘Even before he joined us, he had told us that he was thinking of emigrating to Thailand, of leaving Sweden for good. It was the year Palme was murdered – early summer 1986 – and you didn’t have to be a right-wing voter to think that Sweden was heading to the dogs, so he wasn’t the only one having that sort of thought. Anyway, he was thinking of moving to Thailand and starting up or buying a share in a business in the hotel and restaurant trade. Setting himself up and making a future in a new country. My partner and I thought this sounded very appealing. Our impression was reinforced by the fact that he had excellent references – and we did check – in the hotel and restaurant industry. He spent his summers working in hotels and restaurants when he was still at school. Long before he started to study economics at Uppsala. I seem to recall him saying that he specialized in the economics of the hotel trade.’

  ‘So you employed him,’ Johansson said. ‘To look after the whole project.’ You certainly put a lot of bloody effort into checking his references, he thought.

  ‘My partner and I had a lot to deal with here at home, and we’d recruited good local staff in the area, everyone from the Thai colleague we appointed as MD, right the way down to the serving staff. But we couldn’t help thinking that it would make sense to have a Swede on site, so to speak. Someone to represent us, act as our liaison. So young Nilsson was appointed deputy MD and finance director.’

  ‘But it went wrong?’ Johansson said, pushing the remains of his greying steak aside. I’ll have to have a decent dessert instead, he thought.

  ‘Well, it did take a while. He turned out to be utterly incompetent when it came to the finances, so we worked that out relatively quickly.’

  ‘He was stealing from you?’ Johansson asked.

  ‘Yes, although that didn’t come as any great surprise. Not in that business. And he wasn’t really stealing more than anyone else. No, there were other things that were considerably worse. When we discovered the inadequacies – to put it mildly – of his financial management, we replaced him and let him concentrate on the hotel and restaurant side of the business, particularly the service end, which was designed to appeal to our type of clients: ordinary families with children.’
<
br />   ‘What happened?’ Johansson asked, even though he already knew the answer.

  ‘To start with, it went very well. He organized plenty of activities for the children: aqua-aerobics and excursions, treasure hunts by boat out to the islands, theatrical performances and courses in Thai dancing – anything and everything.’ Carl Blomquist shook his head.

  ‘So what was the problem?’

  Director Carl Blomquist, the master-detective’s namesake, if you were prepared to ignore the spelling, took a sturdy mouthful of red wine before managing to say what his new acquaintance had been waiting for.

  ‘He was only a young man, of course, charming, handsome. He seemed perfectly normal. A mother-in-law’s dream, really. When I heard that we had received complaints from guests saying that he had fiddled with their children – well, their little girls; he didn’t seem at all interested in the boys – I practically fell off my chair.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Johansson said. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘We did what people always do. Hushed the whole thing up and paid people off. It cost a fair bit, unfortunately, but we didn’t have any other option. We even employed extra security guards to make sure he didn’t come anywhere near the complex.’

  ‘So he was never prosecuted? The police never found out what he was up to?’

  ‘In Thailand, back in those days?’ Carl Blomquist said, and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you can forget that. Millions of dirty old men from Western Europe used to show up each year to have sex with young girls. The only thing that was unusual about Nilsson was that he was half the age of all the others. Dear God, Lars. In those days – and I don’t know what it’s like now, but I can’t bear to think about it – poor peasants from the north of Thailand used to sell their children. They sold their own children for less than you’d pay for a puppy back home. They would end up in brothels or bars in Bangkok and the other big tourist resorts. There weren’t many who ended up working as maids in hotels. And I daren’t even think about what share of the takings ended up in the pockets of the local police. The police in Thailand weren’t like you and your colleagues back home in Sweden.’