Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime

by Leif Gw Persson

  This piece of writing upset the government’s minister of finance to such a degree that a week later he grabbed a firm hold of his suspenders during a fine bourgeois dinner at home with the business elite and took the opportunity to “read the riot act to the newspaper’s editor in chief.” According to witnesses who were present, it was superb entertainment and, considering the limited social establishment in the small country of Sweden, completely logical when seen against the background of what had happened. But it never really went further than that. The whole matter was far too un-Swedish.

  III

  It was not a bad police investigation, it was a truly lousy investigation, and considering that it concerned one of the most serious crimes in postwar Sweden, this was not really easy to understand. One of the explanations discussed within the top police command, including in confidential conversations between the national commissioner of police and his closest younger colleagues, was that the government, in some mysterious way, seemed actively disinclined to touch the subject, and that this in turn had rubbed off on the police. Here was a crime with clear political overtones, at the same time a government that was very clearly pushing the whole matter away, and what could the police do with that?

  The head of the Stockholm police department’s homicide squad was not a man who devoted himself to political theorizing. That sort of thing could be left to other people, and the government’s attitude on one issue or another left him cold. He didn’t usually even vote for them. On the other hand he was indignant because the government had meddled in his investigation and repatriated his perpetrators. How could a crime investigation be conducted if there was no opportunity to question the suspects?

  The homicide chief had personally looked forward to being able to talk with them—in peace and quiet, in proper sequence, and as many times as needed to put all the pieces in the right place. He had managed this countless times before, and he was convinced he would have done so this time too, and without even needing the help of an interpreter. For in contrast to his colleagues he actually had a diploma, from Whitfeldska secondary school in Gothenburg no less, and his old school German was still impeccable. What the government had been guilty of in terms of technical investigation was pure sabotage. And the damage was not mitigated by the fact that they were certainly completely unaware of that fact.

  So he and his colleagues basically had to be content with conducting a technical investigation under conditions that were far from ideal. Immediately after the explosion it appeared as if all hell had broken loose. According to what the terrorists had mentioned on the phone during one of their extortion calls with the government, they were supposed to have brought at least thirty pounds of TNT into the building and there was nothing at the scene that belied that assertion.

  The efforts of the fire department, however unavoidable they were, had not made matters better—pouring tons of water on top of all the other debris was not good. But what had disturbed him and his colleagues most were all the more or less extraneous individuals running around at the crime scene. Their German colleagues, for example, hadn’t added much to the affair, even if he made allowances for their involvement. If you were to be formal, the crime scene was actually German territory, so he had no right to simply tell them to leave.

  It was the same way with the “felt slippers” from Sec and their irritating (to say the least) bad habit of always standing and glaring over his colleagues’ shoulders when they were only trying to do their job. When in addition they had the gall to offer him their own technicians, he really put his foot down, because if you worked that way it would all turn out to be a muddle, and personally he did not intend to spend his time pissing in the woods. Others could do that, and if they didn’t want to rely on him and his men, they could take over the whole damn case themselves.

  But it had not been good, and when the police chief, after more than a week, on the same day they took away the outer barricades, informed the homicide chief that the continued investigation would be run by the secret police, he had actually experienced it as a relief.

  He and his colleagues, on the other hand, had managed to establish a fairly good idea of the reason for the explosion. There was nothing to point to the terrorists’ having deliberately blown up the building. Instead most everything suggested an accident, carelessness, and ignorance combined, and the one who probably caused the discharge was the terrorists’ own “explosives expert” who, like all children, put his fingers in the wrong place. He never would have passed an ordinary Swedish rock-blasting examination, as was shown with enviable clarity by the wiring and connections that survived the explosion, even if the tabloids had praised his expertise in this area.

  But there was never more to it than that, and as far as the homicide chief was concerned it was really all the same. As mentioned, what the secret police actually accomplished in the investigation they took over was unclear. In any event nothing was done that led to judicial proceedings or legal actions; instead as usual they “worked in silence,” and if anyone were to ask the homicide chief about it he was convinced that, as so often before, they had not accomplished much of anything. You didn’t need to be a police officer to figure out that there must have been more individuals involved than the six terrorists who occupied the embassy building itself.

  Who otherwise could have left the message that at one o’clock in the afternoon on Thursday the twenty-fourth of April landed in the mailboxes of three different international news agencies housed in the Swedish News Agency TT’s office in the first Hötorget skyscraper, less than two miles and no more than five minutes by car from the West German embassy out on Djurgården? The six people inside the building—“commando holger meins” as they called themselves with lowercase letters throughout—could not have done it in any event.

  The head of the homicide squad had thought a good deal about what must have happened before the six had entered the embassy. They must have had somewhere to stay; they must have done reconnaissance on the scene, likely tracked those who worked there and mapped out their routines, investigated suitable ways to get there and to flee if something went awry. They must have had a roof over their heads, beds to sleep in, tables, chairs, and eating utensils, vehicles to ride in, food and drink and all the practical nastiness in the form of weapons, explosives, and false documents. All combined, the preparations for the operation must have taken at least a month or two.

  In a word, the terrorists must have had help. Probably from several individuals. Probably from individuals with a connection to Sweden and Stockholm. Individuals who spoke Swedish, who were familiar with the area, with the surroundings, with local customs, usage, and everyday necessities such as buying a ticket for the subway or shopping for large quantities of food in a grocery store without attracting attention. Ordinary, anonymous people their own age without a criminal record who looked and thought the way they did.

  The head of the homicide squad was not one to complicate matters unnecessarily. In his profession he had learned that the simplest explanation is most often the right one. A group of young students, he thought. Radical, motivated, with self-discipline and minds in good working order. Perhaps they even lived together in one of those strange collectives he had read about in the newspaper. And a not terribly bold guess was that they were Swedes.

  When he turned over the case to his colleague at Sec who would be assuming responsibility for the investigation, he brought up his musings. Simply a few words in passing, which of course he should have spared himself. His colleague was not a real police officer but rather a legally educated police superintendent of the usual self-confident type and his reaction was familiar.

  He had nodded with the expression of a man who always knows best, sighed wearily, and drawn a well-manicured index finger along his long nose. “I’m sure that thought has occurred to us too,” said the police superintendent deliberately, but that was it. Before long the head of the homicide squad thought less and less about the whole matter, a
nd after a few years it was not even included in the assortment of heroic police stories he used to tell when he encountered real policemen. Nowadays there were newer, better ones.

  Otherwise the secret police should have had a few things to work with. The warnings that German terrorists were planning some form of action on Swedish soil had arrived with increasing frequency during the year preceding the embassy occupation. It was a jumble of high and low, just as it ought to have been: anonymous leads, information from various informants, and even a report prepared by one of Sec’s own undercover agents, but they all had one thing in common. There was nothing concrete or tangible to get hold of, and during the spring it had seemed most likely that the whole thing had settled down. All was quiet on the informant front; not even their best informants had the least little thing to bring in.

  A few leads and observations had also arrived via colleagues within the open operation. Mostly they concerned “mysterious vehicles” and “shady individuals” who had been observed at and around the West German embassy before the terrorists’ action, but despite investing a lot of time in following them up, they had not led to anything. It was exactly as usual, in other words, for leads of this type almost never led to anything. This is in contrast to activities you initiated and guided yourself in the form of surveillance, infiltration, and the organized gathering of information through telephone monitoring, other types of eavesdropping and radio surveillance.

  The recurring assertions in the media that the secret police had ignored a clear threat were discussed at several of the secret police’s command meetings, and also in the secret police’s parliamentary committee. As so often in the past it was possible to show that this was pure nonsense, baseless idle speculation intended to damage the operation. Measures had been taken that there was reason to take, and for a few weeks, when the host of rumors was at its strongest, the West German embassy had been entered on the list of highly prioritized surveillance objects.

  The result of that measure had been unambiguous. No indications whatsoever had emerged that something was in progress, and the allocated extra surveillance had been withdrawn, which was a gift from above because the Russian squad suddenly had an unexpected need for extra personnel. The parliamentarians in the committee were completely satisfied with the report they received. The occupation of the West German embassy was an isolated incident, planned and executed by a faction within the West German terrorist underground that could best be described as a collection of fanatical loose cannons from the University of Heidelberg. According to information Stockholm authorities had received from their colleagues in the German secret police, many of the faction’s more established comrades—in the regrettably extensive circle of radical elements—had taken strong exception to what had occurred. The embassy occupation had not benefited the common struggle.

  Leading that struggle to a successful finish demanded better planning and more organization. The Swedish secret police, strangely enough, drew the same conclusion in the report that was submitted to their committee less than a year after the embassy drama. “For this reason, among others, the risk of another, similar event on Swedish territory, directed against German or Swedish interests and executed by German terrorists, is judged to be very small.” There were “other risks that [were] significantly more serious,” and regardless of whether this was true or false, it would have been bureaucratic suicide to maintain the opposite. And the secret police’s investigation of the embassy drama was thereby concluded.

  IV

  What remained were the memories. Police memories.

  Jarnebring remembered the smell of burnt telephone, but because that was an extremely unusual smell even at his place of work, less common even than the odor of madeleines, that was not what would bring up the images in his head. Other things did, or nothing at all. Sometimes, most often in his dreams, the memories of those minutes in the stairwell of the embassy would come crowding in on him without his having the least idea how or why. It was no big deal, for fairly soon he stopped talking about what had happened, and not long after that he also stopped wondering about it. We human beings are fortunately constituted in that respect, he thought.

  His best friend and closest colleague, Lars Martin Johansson, a newly appointed detective inspector as of a month before the embassy occupation, also had his memories despite the fact that he had not even been in the vicinity of the West German embassy. On Thursday the twenty-fourth of April 1975 he had taken comp time to take care of his two small children who were too runny-nosed to go to day care. He had followed the embassy drama from the couch in front of the TV in his living room on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan on Söder. And he had definitely not phoned Jarnebring ten times, despite what Jarnebring’s wife at the time maintained. He had phoned three times, neither more nor less, and not to satisfy his curiosity either but to ease his worry about what might happen to his best friend.

  In a way he too had become a victim of what had happened. In his line of work there was no merit in sitting at home taking care of sick children while all of his comrades who were able to stand upright were in position with service revolvers covering the embassy. The gibes had come pouring in and had continued for quite some time. They reached their peak about a month after the embassy drama, when someone furnished the name plate outside his office with a printed label with his name at the top, and below that his new title: DIRECTOR OF THE GRASS SNAKE DAY CARE CENTER.

  For a time what had happened was also played out in some quiet bickering with his best friend and closest colleague. When the phone rang in their joint office—often because someone wanted to speak with a different Lars Johansson than the one who happened to sit with Jarnebring in the police headquarters on Kungsholmen—it would be resolved by waiting as long as possible to answer. Usually it was the caller who gave up first.

  But not always, and when the ringing at times got too persistent, Lars Martin Johansson would glance up from whatever papers he was occupied with at the moment, sniff like a foxhound, and look questioningly at his best friend and colleague.

  “Am I the only one who thinks it smells like burnt telephone?”

  And after that Jarnebring would always pick up the receiver.

  Someone else who had strong memories of the embassy drama, besides having been involved from start to finish, was then police constable Stridh. Stridh was driving a patrol car on Östermalm, and Djurgården was part of his area. Stridh was also in charge of the patrol car that arrived first at the West German embassy, according to his own notes up to the moment before central command sent out the alarm he was responding to, and only due to the fact that his watch was a few minutes slow.

  Stridh’s quick action had greatly surprised both his bosses and his colleagues, among whom Stridh was best known—to put it gently and collegially—for his thoughtfulness. His colleagues had nicknamed him “Peace at Any Price,” and he was not someone who had become the human face of the Stockholm police department’s rapid action out in the field. There were others who had done that.

  The reason that he had been the “first man on the scene” at the West German embassy was not due to the fact that he normally patrolled in that area and thus, purely statistically, ought to have had at least a decent chance of doing so. He was actually a master at avoiding such things, and especially in spring when there were many of his motorized and considerably more ready colleagues who would take the opportunity for a drive out on Djurgården. There was a different reason.

  The week before the embassy drama he had responded to a simple, rather harmless request over the radio. There was a guard at the Norwegian embassy who had observed a suspicious personal car prowling around the area and wondered, “Was there anyone in the vicinity who would check the vehicle in question?” Because this sounded innocent enough and the car it concerned was only fifty yards ahead of them on Djurgårdsbrunnsvägen in line with the Maritime History Museum, Stridh and his colleague had taken the assignment. They stopped the vehicle and conducted an
ordinary, routine traffic check.

  It was a fairly new, far from inexpensive Mercedes. It was being driven by a young man, about twenty-five, and beside him sat an even younger woman. All papers were completely in order, and the young people in the car were pleasant, a bit giggly and a little nervous, as decent people easily get when stopped by the police. Without his having asked the question, the young woman explained that this was her parents’ car and that they were just out for a drive with no particular destination. Stridh had no further questions. He nodded amiably as he gave back the young man’s driver’s license, and when he and his colleague had driven away he thought about spring and youth and love. Then they drove to the station to take a coffee break, and if it hadn’t been for what happened a few days later, he would certainly have forgotten the entire incident.

  His colleague on the radio had called again. The same guard had observed the same vehicle he had seen a few days before, and he asked if there was possibly a car in the vicinity that could keep an eye out for the vehicle in question and preferably also take a swing past the embassy and talk with the person who had called. Stridh had taken the assignment, and to keep things simple he had driven straight to the embassy without looking for any Mercedeses en route. There were plenty of cars of that make in that particular area.

  At the embassy Stridh had spoken with the guard who had called the police. He was about thirty-five, Norwegian, a nice guy who without asking served coffee and cookies while they were talking. Norway, Norwegians, and the Norwegian embassy did not have a score to settle with anyone, yet the embassy guard had observed the vehicle in question on at least four occasions in as many days. Considering that the Germans were right across the street, after his second sighting he had decided to call the police.