Thorulf Winge didn’t need any help translating diplomatic bullshit.
He spoke it fluently, had used it himself for the greater part of his life.
The ambassador had just made it clear that the United States would not accept anything other than the extradition of John Schwarz alias John Meyer Frey, that he was to be returned to Death Row to await his execution.
He had prepared strategies for two different scenarios.
This was the worst one, the one he had hoped to avoid.
THEY HAD AGREED TO MEET IN FRONT OF THE HOT-DOG STAND IN Björns Trädgård, a small public park opposite Medborgarplatsen. Ewert Grens had got there early, as was his wont, and was walking around, almost nervous, back and forth on the asphalt, waiting. It had been tricky to decide what to wear. All his suits were over ten years old, the shoulders on the jackets had been white with dust when he took them out of the closet and laid them in a row on the bed. Seven of them; the entire color spectrum from summer-evening white to a funeral black. He had tried them all, very pleased that they still fit. After three quarters of an hour he had whittled it down to two: a dark gray slightly shiny one, and a light gray linen one that he had bought for the last office party he’d been to—a totally tragic affair with colleagues who had found each other after a few glasses of wine, their husbands and wives at home, and he had decided never to waste his free time with the idiots again. He had eventually gone for the gray slightly shiny one; after all, it was winter, and the darker shade made him look slimmer.
Some junkies were hanging on to each other on the steps near the playground, farther away a couple of small-time criminals he’d known for years, a prostitute here and there, freezing in short dresses and thin boots, panic-stricken eyes when the cash wasn’t enough for their next fix. Same as it always was. All these years since he’d driven the police van, even longer since he been on the beat, and it was still just as wretched, nothing had changed.
Some colleagues in a car creeping along Tjärhovsgatan amongst all the Wednesday night riffraff—they waved and he raised his hand in greeting.
She turned up at half past eight on the dot, as agreed. She’d come on the metro and crossed the street from the station, weaving between men who turned and looked at her as she passed. She waved to him when she got to the old hotel entrance and he waved back. She looked happy, and it made him happy to see her.
“This might sound . . . damn, this is what I said I was afraid of . . . it sounds a bit like a lecherous old man, but . . . you look lovely.”
Hermansson smiled, almost embarrassed.
“Thank you. And you, let me have a look, you’ve got a suit on, Ewert. I didn’t think you even owned one.”
They were in no rush and walked slowly around Medborgarplatsen, which was more or less deserted. An elderly couple looking for somewhere to eat, the odd group of teenagers who probably had no idea of where and why, and otherwise the usual tired souls trying to gather strength for the next day’s exertions. Grens was glad that she had been so fucking stubborn—he had hidden and kept out of her way and made excuses until he didn’t have any left. He remembered that only a few hours ago when he’d finally said yes, she had rushed out to buy a paper to see what was open, explained to him that she was looking for somewhere suitable for gentlemen who listened to Siw and needed to dance.
The wind blew cold over the open square and they were huddled close when Ewert pointed in the direction they were heading, his voice quiet.
“Göta Källare. I’ve never been there before.”
She could see that he was tense; his authority, so evident as he moved around the police headquarters that anyone walking beside him kept their distance as a mark of respect, was not evident here. Ewert Grens was another person in his suit and tie and on his way to a dance with a woman for the first time in twenty-five years. She could see it and tried to help him to hold his head high here too, to look people in the eye.
They left their coats in the cloakroom. He commented again, almost bashfully, on how beautiful she looked, and she made him blush when she took him by the arm and said that he was very elegant in a suit.
It was a Wednesday evening in a tired week in January, a long time to payday and still in debt from Christmas and New Year’s, but the place was nearly full all the same. Hermansson studied the people, who on average were nearly twice her age, with curiosity and surprise. On the dance floor, by the bar, sitting at tables with entrecôte steaks, they all looked so happy, full of expectation, they had come here because they wanted to laugh and to hold someone and to sweat to a four-beat, so that just for a while life would be simple.
The band and the dancers were thronged together under the strong spotlights at the far end of the expansive wooden dance floor. Ewert recognized the music—“Oh Carol,” he’d heard it on the radio—and for a moment, so brief that he almost didn’t catch it, but yet very real, that feeling in his tummy, like a butterfly, that he recognized as joy. He took a step—his limp meant that he rolled, as if he were about to start dancing.
“Already, Ewert?”
Hermansson laughed, Grens shrugged and kept walking. Oh Carol I am but a fool. They got to the bar and for a while squeezed in between those who had been there for slightly too long. Grens ordered a beer for both of them and tried to balance the glasses as he wove his way through the tight crush of bodies to an empty table.
“They’ve been around since the end of the sixties. I’ve danced to them quite a few times in the past.”
Grens pointed to the band. Five elderly men in black suits, wide shirt collars on the lapel. He noticed that they seemed to be having a good time, that they were grinning up there on the stage. How the hell could they do that night after night, the same chords, the same lyrics?
“Tonix. That’s what they’re called. Ten hits on the Swedish charts.
Nineteen records. You see, Hermansson, they know what works.”
They drank their beer, watched the people around them, looked at each other a few times. Suddenly it was difficult to think of anything to say.
They couldn’t just comment on the band and the other patrons forever, and when they weren’t talking about work, it became painfully obvious how little they knew each other and how many years there were between them.
“Do you want to dance, Ewert?”
She really did want to dance; she smiled, already starting to stand up.
“I don’t know. No. Not yet.”
They drank some more beer, looked at some more people, and then she asked gingerly who it was he was grieving for, because she’d realized that he was mourning a woman, that much was obvious.
He held back. But then started to talk and it struck him once he’d started that this was the first time. He talked about a woman who was roughly the same age as Hermansson was now. She had been his colleague and they had gradually grown together, everything had been so simple, so clear, then it was all shattered.
He fell silent and she didn’t ask anything more.
They emptied their glasses and Ewert was about to go up and buy another when his mobile phone rang. He mouthed Sven and she nodded. A couple of minutes later the conversation was over.
“The doctor on duty at Kronoberg has been in touch. He’s examined Schwarz and also sent him for X-rays at St. Göran’s. And as I thought, the bastard’s got nothing wrong with his heart. Young and healthy. Not a trace of any cardiomyopathy.”
Hermansson pulled her chair closer to the table when a large man holding hands with an equally large woman tried to squeeze past onto the dance floor. She followed them with her eyes, inquisitive, waited until they had their arms around each other in a slow dance.
“So the diagnosis was wrong.”
“If his story is true, I’ll bet my bottom dollar that the diagnosis was wrong on purpose. They’d given him medicine to make him ill. So that they could later confirm that he was. And have a plausible explanation as to why a young person should suddenly die on the floor of his cell.”
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The slow song blended into another equally slow one. Grens was now also watching the couple who had just squeezed by and still had their arms around each other.
“He said that if we were in any doubt, if we wanted to be absolutely certain, he could do another test, something that’s apparently called a myocardial biopsy. But he also explained there are some risks involved. I asked Sven to say that it wasn’t necessary.”
He gave a short laugh.
“Jesus, Hermansson, they were thorough. Even planning a serious illness several months in advance, even that.”
They sat together in silence for the time it took for the second slow dance to finish. Then Hermansson stood up abruptly and hurried toward the dance floor, between the patrons standing two by two waiting for the next song. Grens saw her talking to one of the men onstage, the one who sang and played the guitar and had fair, slightly too long hair, before she came back and stood in front of him.
“Now we’re going to dance, Ewert.”
He was about to protest when he heard what they had started to play. Siw. “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.” The one he liked best of all.
He looked at her, shook his head and laughed, loud and booming, and she thought to herself that it was the first time she had heard him do that, with feeling, for real, from his belly with joy.
She held his hand on the way to the dance floor—he was still laughing, as if he would never stop.
He knew every word, every pause, both key changes. I couldn’t bring myself to say good-bye. It was comfortable, he knew that he could move in rhythm and that it wouldn’t look clumsy, limping or not. So long since he’d stood like this, in a crowd of people who seemed to be happy, so long since he’d touched a woman who wasn’t a suspect or lying dead on a metal table in forensics. He looked at Hermansson, at her face, for a moment thirty years back, with another woman looking at him, he was holding her, leading her while the band played.
They danced for two more songs. A slower one that he’d never heard before, and a faster one that sounded like American sixties.
He raised a hand to the band in thanks for Siw; the singer with the guitar and the long blond hair smiled and stuck his thumb in the air. They went back to the table where they’d been sitting, two glasses half full of lager where they’d left them.
It was warm and they emptied their glasses.
“Still thirsty? Shall I get another?”
“Ewert, I can manage to buy one myself.”
“You forced me here. And I’m grateful for it. You’ve done enough.”
He waited for her to make her mind up.
“A Coke, maybe. It’s an early start tomorrow.”
“I’ll get us both one.”
He turned and walked toward the bar. She followed him, it was getting late and she didn’t want to be a woman sitting on her own at a table and saying no to anyone who asked her to dance.
It was still just as full as before, so they waited at one end of the bar so as to avoid being crushed with the most thirsty. They had been waiting for a couple of minutes when Grens felt someone tap him on the shoulder.
“Hey, how old are you?”
The man in front of him was quite tall, a dark mustache that looked as dyed as his hair. He was in his forties and he reeked of booze.
Ewert Grens looked at him and turned back around.
Fingers prodding his shoulder again.
“You, I’m talking to you. I want to know how old you are.”
Grens swallowed what was now anger.
“That’s none of your business.”
“What about her, then? How old is she?”
The drunk with the dyed mustache came a step closer. He pointed at Hermansson, his finger no more than a couple of inches from her eyes.
It wasn’t possible.
He couldn’t stop it, the rage that now thumped in his chest.
“I suggest that you leave us alone.”
He stood there in front of them laughing.
“I’m not going anywhere. I just want to know how much you paid. For your bit of foreign fluff, that is.”
Hermansson saw it flash in Ewert’s eyes. The sudden rage, and it turned him into someone else, or maybe that was who he was; the suit became creased, his body straightened out, he got bigger and was back in the corridors of the police headquarters.
His voice, she’d never heard it like that before.
“Now you listen really fucking carefully to me, because I’m only going to say it once. I didn’t hear what you said. Because you are just about to leave.”
The mustache sneered with laughter.
“Well, if you didn’t hear it, I’ll say it again. I wondered how much that bit of foreign fluff you’ve dragged in here cost you?”
Hermansson was sure she could feel Ewert’s fury and knew that she had to get there before him.
She raised her hand and hit the drunk man in the face, a hard slap on the cheek. He staggered, caught hold of the bar while she looked for her ID in one of the pockets of her wallet.
Then she held it up to his face, as close as he’d held his finger to her eyes, explained that the woman he had just called a bit of foreign fluff was in fact named Mariana Hermansson and was a detective sergeant with City Police, and that if he repeated what he had said again, his evening would continue in an interview room at Kronoberg.
They had danced again.
As if to get rid of the man.
When the two doormen in green uniforms who approached saw the two police IDs, they had escorted the drunken jerk-off out. But it wasn’t enough, he was still there, his words splattered around the sweaty hall and no band music in the world could undo them.
When they left the dance hall, the cold January air felt almost pleasant.
They didn’t say much as they walked, past Slussen, over Skeppsbron and past the palace, over the bridge to Gustav Adolfs Torg, pausing there amongst all the prestigious buildings: the opera house behind them and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in front.
She lived on Kungsholmen, by Västerbron, he on Sveavägen, by the crossroads with Odengatan. They couldn’t walk in the same direction any farther and were already going their separate ways.
Ewert Grens watched her back as she slowly disappeared. He stood at a loss for a couple of minutes. He didn’t want to go home.
He held his face up to the sky for a while, to the light snow that fell on his skin. Until he felt cold and his cheeks were red; then he spun around and looked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the window up there on the second floor that was still lit.
He thought he could see the outline of a person.
Someone standing looking out over the city.
No doubt some bureaucrat or other who was sitting there struggling with the John Schwarz case and the diplomatic pitfalls it entailed.
And good luck to them.
Half an hour until midnight. State Secretary Thorulf Winge stood by the window in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, looking out at Gustav Adolfs Torg, not concentrating. An older man and a young woman down there, the woman kissed the man on the cheek and then they parted.
Thorulf Winge yawned, stretched his arms up above his head and turned back into the room.
He was starting to get tired. The long day had become even longer a few hours ago. A formal request for the extradition of John Meyer Frey had arrived by fax as soon as Leonardo Stevens had politely wished Winge good night and gone down the steps to the black car that would drive him to the residency at Gärdet.
But this was what he lived for.
Diplomatic sparring with no onlookers other than power.
He had been in contact with the foreign minister several times that day.
Twice with the prime minister. And for the past three hours he had been locked up in his office together with two civil servants, going through every sentence of the extradition agreement between the EU and the United States in detail, looking at different solutions and the consequences that a
refusal to extradite might have on relations between the two countries, trying to predict how the press and the public would react if the extradition case became known.
He stretched again, leaned forward, then back, as his physiotherapist had taught him. He got some warm water and put some fresh tea in the strainers in their cups.
Still a few hours of night left.
By dawn they would have a proposal regarding John Meyer Frey’s future, and how to ensure it caused as little damage as possible.
EWERT GRENS WALKED THROUGH THE COLD AND ALMOST SILENT Stockholm night. He had tried to get her to take a taxi, it wasn’t entirely without risk for a beautiful girl dressed up for dancing to walk alone through the city, but she had insisted, got him to cancel the reservation and trust that she could look after herself. He was in no doubt about that, of course, she could look after herself perfectly well. But he still wasn’t happy about it and made her promise to keep her phone at hand with his number at the ready, just the press of a button away.
She had kissed him on the cheek and thanked him for a lovely evening, and when she left he had felt happier and lonelier than he had for years.
Now, with the front door to his large, empty apartment open in front of him, he felt the waste like a hand around his throat. He wandered in and out of the rooms that all looked the same as when he’d left them.
He drank some ice-cold water straight from the tap in the kitchen.
He leafed through a book that lay half-read on the table in his study.
He even switched on the TV and watched part of an episode of some police series that he’d watched a few years ago on a different channel, the sort where everything moves fast to monotone music and the cops always hold their guns with two hands when they fire.
Ewert Grens didn’t want to be there.
He put his coat on again, called a cab, and hurried down to the entrance.
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