Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime

by Leif Gw Persson

“You don’t say,” said Johansson. How time flies. It actually is more than thirty years now, he thought.

  “If I don’t remember wrong, you couldn’t have something like the secret police in a democratic, lawful police organization. It was absolutely unthinkable, and if anyone had asked you at that time if you could imagine working as a spook, I know exactly what would have happened.”

  “What?” asked Johansson, despite the fact that he already knew the answer.

  “The person in question would have been socked on the jaw,” said Jarnebring, not mincing words.

  “Oh well,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders.

  “And because you’ve never been particularly good at such things, I would have had to jump in and help you, too,” Jarnebring declared.

  “Sure,” Johansson agreed. “I’m sure I would have been counting on that.”

  “But now you’ll be head of the whole thing,” said Jarnebring. “What’s happened?”

  “These are new times now,” said Johansson. New and I hope better times, he thought.

  “I don’t believe that for a moment,” said Jarnebring. “Possibly these are different times.”

  22

  Autumn 1999

  Of course Johansson spoke with his wife before he decided to change course in his police life. Ten years earlier, after almost fifteen years as a divorced man—or a single man or a bachelor or whatever you want to call it—he had proposed to her after an emotionally charged week of basically uninterrupted togetherness. In that way he had settled accounts with the solitude he had come to consider a natural part of both his individuality and his existence. Disregarding the fact that he might still miss that solitude when their togetherness became too much or when he simply felt like being by himself for a while.

  She had said yes despite the fact that he couldn’t offer her a new job but only his heart, and because Lars Martin Johansson was a person who knew how to distinguish between great and small he had subsequently devoted himself to his “marital community”—that was how he looked at it—with great seriousness and considerable energy. It hadn’t been easy, not all the time, but who ever said we humans should have it easy? We make a choice, and important choices have major consequences, thought Johansson. Like now.

  “What do you think, dear?” asked Johansson.

  “What do you think?” Johansson’s wife countered in that way he sometimes had a hard time with. “I’m not the one who’s going to be a secret agent,” she added, smiling in that other way he had never had any problem with whatsoever.

  “If he had asked me twenty years ago I would have thrown him out,” said Johansson, whatever that had to do with it, given that the question had been asked a few days ago.

  “Do you think we need a secret police force?” his wife asked, looking at him with curiosity.

  “It’s clear we need a secret police force,” said Johansson with a conviction that didn’t feel quite genuine. For we do need it, don’t we? he thought. Of course we need SePo, don’t we?

  “Okay then,” said his wife, shrugging her shoulders. “Because we need a secret police force and you’re an excellent police officer—and a respectable person who lives a respectable life, at least since you met me—then I guess the only answer is yes.”

  Why does she look so amused? thought Johansson. I don’t understand women. They’re not like us, he thought.

  “You’re not pulling my leg?”

  “Would I ever pull your leg?” his wife teased. “What does Bo say, by the way?”

  “Jarnebring,” said Johansson with surprise. “Why do you wonder that? I don’t care what he thinks about it.”

  “Aye, aye, aye,” said his wife, shaking her head at the same time that she seemed highly amused. “Little Bosse doesn’t want to play with his best buddy anymore.”

  “He says I’m too old,” said Johansson curtly. There she goes again, he thought.

  “Do you know something?” His wife looked at him.

  Johansson just shook his head. Best to bide your time a little, he thought.

  “Do you remember that old comic strip about those two rascals, Knoll and Tott?”

  “Yes,” said Johansson hesitantly.

  “That’s you and Bo,” she said. “You’re just like Knoll and Tott. Or were their names Pigge and Gnidde?”

  “I don’t remember,” said Johansson. Women are definitely not like us, he thought. “On a different note,” Johansson continued, suddenly feeling the need to change the subject. “Forget about that for now. What do you want to do this evening? Dinner? A movie? Or …” Johansson moved his shoulders in a manner that was clear enough.

  “First I think we should go out to eat—we have to celebrate your new job. Then maybe we can go to a movie—there’s actually one I want to see. And then … a little … or what? Was that what you said? You’re shy too. Do you know that? Yes, maybe … we’ll see.”

  “Good,” said Johansson, getting up quickly. “That’s what we’ll do then. I just have to shower first.” How beautiful she is, he thought, and then he leaned over and placed his hand on her slender neck. She had a hollow there, right at the hairline, that seemed made for his right thumb.

  “Go shower now,” said his wife, releasing herself from his grip. “I have to start powdering my nose if we’re going to make it to the movie too.”

  Wonder what kind of film it is? thought Johansson as he stood in the shower. Say what you want about her taste in films, it wasn’t much like his own and at the most recent one he had been on the verge of falling asleep in the middle. Shouldn’t I get to decide which film? he thought suddenly. This celebration is for me, isn’t it?

  23

  March 2000

  The cleaning out of the Swedish secret police archives, before the truth seekers from the nation’s academic institutions were let onto the premises, became one of the most extensive operations in the history of the organization, and a good illustration of the fact that the fruits of persistent police work could be an end in themselves. Disregarding the fact that the reason for the original efforts and the motivation behind the later measures were diametrically opposed

  Obviously not all of what was filed could be cleaned out—or even a significant portion of it—because to do so would scarcely have contributed to the improvement of the secret police’s reputation. At the same time, certain individuals must by necessity be rescued from the eyes of the review commission. Primarily this concerned the most important informants used over the years. All in all there were thousands of individuals who appeared under various aliases, cover names, and code designations, and who were almost always found in more than one file, and who in practice were almost impossible to clean out.

  It was Chief Inspector Wiklander who found the first big dust bunny. Wiklander was head of the detective group that was part of Johansson’s new “free resource,” the combined investigation and detective squad that was intended to become his primary weapon in the struggle against those who most urgently and unexpectedly threatened the security of the realm. Johansson had become acquainted with Wiklander during his time as acting head of the National Crime Bureau, and as soon as Johansson settled down in his new chair as boss he had contacted him. Wiklander was one of the best policemen Johansson had encountered during his long career. Almost as competent as he himself had been at the same age, and just as taciturn. After less than a month on Johansson’s team, Wiklander had requested a special meeting with his top boss.

  “Do you remember the West German embassy, Boss?” asked Wiklander.

  “Sit down,” said Johansson, nodding toward his visitor’s chair. Do I remember the West German embassy? he thought, and the feelings that suddenly arose were mixed to say the least.

  The reason that Wiklander had started looking into the occupation of the West German embassy on the twenty-fourth of April 1975 was mostly a coincidence. In one of the secret police’s many incident files the embassy occupation was entered as two murders; both the military a
ttaché and the trade attaché had been murdered. Because the statute of limitations on murder was twenty-five years and it was already the end of March in the year 2000, the crimes associated with the embassy occupation had turned up on the special computerized review list of serious crimes that would soon be free of judicial consequences and relegated to the national archives. “The final twitch” was the expression used in the building to refer to those cases on the list of impending nullification.

  “I wasn’t there personally, I was still in school, but I remember that my buddies and I were glued to the TV,” said Wiklander, smiling and shaking his head.

  Me too, thought Johansson with sorrow in his heart, but he didn’t intend to talk about why he felt that way, not with Wiklander in any event.

  “I’m listening,” he said instead, leaning back in his chair.

  The reason the embassy drama was still on the list of crimes not yet past the statute of limitations was that there were certain questions remaining. It was thus still an open case. True, no one seemed to have given a thought to it during the past more than twenty years, but the filing of an incident did not always bear any logical connection with the work that was put into it.

  “The reason it’s still there is that we’re pretty sure the Germans inside the embassy must have had help from people on the outside,” Wiklander clarified.

  “Sure,” said Johansson dryly. “You didn’t need to be Einstein to figure that out.”

  “No,” said Wiklander. “I realized it when I was watching it on TV. Even though I was still in school.”

  Right man in the right place, thought Johansson contentedly, nodding at him to continue.

  Thus it was mostly out of personal curiosity that Wiklander had ordered the old binders from the archive. Among the first things he noticed were the traces of Bureau Chief Berg’s sanitary efforts a few years earlier.

  “First,” said Wiklander, counting on his long, bony fingers, “there have been suspects noted in the files. Second, they were removed during a review that was done by Chief Inspector Persson a little more than two years ago. Persson—wasn’t he the one who was Berg’s confidant?” And a man who was uniquely perverse, thought Wiklander, who had met Persson and was far from as ignorant about what was going on as he tried to pretend to be.

  Bureau Chief Berg and his right hand, Chief Inspector Persson, they were real policemen, thought Johansson with warmth, and now both were out of the building. Persson had retired a year before Berg turned things over to Johansson.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Johansson. “Were they Swedes? The accomplices, that is,” he clarified. He at least had thought as much twenty-five years ago as he sat on the couch in front of the TV in the company of his two runny-nosed children. Despite the fact that he had only been a single observer high up in the grandstand.

  “I think so, but I don’t know for sure,” said Wiklander, shaking his head. “As I said, they’re cleaned out of the file and I intended to come back to this. On the other hand I’m fairly certain there must have been four of them.”

  “You don’t say,” said Johansson. “How can you be so sure of that?”

  Wiklander’s suspicions were based on a combination of three factors. For one thing, the same entry appeared in several different registers, which gave a sufficiently clever person with access to all the registers a chance to trace at least some of the erasures that had been made in the register. Obviously—and this was the second factor—assuming that the one who did the cleaning was not as shrewd or careful as the one who checked the cleaning. The third thing was the use of a certain standard format for personnel notations in one of the registers of operatives for the secret police.

  “It’s this standard format in one of our registers of operatives that makes me pretty certain it must concern four different individuals,” Wiklander explained. “I don’t know how much you know about computers, Boss,” he added hesitantly.

  “Enough,” said Johansson curtly. “I’m listening.” Who do you take me for? he thought.

  The connections hadn’t exactly been easy to explain. Wiklander was compelled to run through them twice before Johansson was quite certain he understood how the whole thing stood.

  “I’m a hundred percent sure that these four people must have wound up in the current register of operatives,” said Wiklander. “Everyone who’s entered in there has the same format. Simply put it’s a matter of a standardized page for each individual, and it’s the same for everyone regardless of how much information there is about the various individuals in other registers or in their personnel files, if there are any. The link is made the same way for everyone with a reference code of ten characters.”

  “But they can’t be so fucking dense that every individual who’s registered or removed is loaded as a separate entry,” said Johansson with a hint of indignation.

  “No … not really,” Wiklander replied, shaking his head. That would have been almost criminal, he thought.

  “But you’ve figured out anyway that just four individuals have been cleaned out,” said Johansson. “Four forms in a standard format, each of which contains one individual?”

  “Yes,” said Wiklander, seeming not entirely displeased with himself.

  Around this time two years earlier there had been some rather energetic cleaning in the relevant register of operatives. The various cleaning persons even had to be put on a waiting list while the computer operators executed their orders and the quantity of characters stored in the computer was reduced at the same tempo as the orders were taken care of. Because each order was signed both by the person who requested it and the person who carried it out, it had been no great challenge for Wiklander to find Chief Inspector Persson and his business on the day in question. Not to mention the colleagues ahead of and behind him on the list of secret police officers in need of cleaning.

  “This is where they messed up,” said Wiklander. “The character count in the computer is recorded consecutively. So to put it briefly, it’s possible to see how many characters colleague Persson alone had ordered removed. And because I know the number of characters on each form—down to a few dozen—he must have cleaned out exactly four individuals who had been entered in the register because they were included in the event file for the West German embassy.”

  “Sloppy damn computer nerds,” said Johansson gloomily. “I hope you stuck the pointer into them.”

  “Yes,” said Wiklander. “They were very grateful for the help.”

  I can believe it, thought Johansson sourly. What the hell choice did they have?

  “Four individuals have been cleaned out—that much is clear—but we have no idea who they were?”

  “No,” said Wiklander. “That we don’t know.”

  “It can’t have been one of those little elves who were going to take revenge for the West German embassy by kidnapping Anna-Greta Leijon,” Johansson speculated. “If I remember correctly there were at least thirty individuals in jail at various times. Both Swedes and foreigners as I recall. Do any of them seem to have ended up in parliament a few years later?”

  “Kröcher and his comrades,” said Wiklander, shaking his head. “No, it can’t have been any of them. As far as the member of parliament is concerned, his name is Juan Fonseca. He was completely innocent, by the way. Got damages as a consolation.”

  “You’re quite certain,” said Johansson, looking questioningly at his visitor. Damages my ass, he thought. In certain regards Johansson was an extremely old-fashioned policeman.

  “Quite sure,” said Wiklander. “For one thing they’ve been checked out this way and that, and for another they’re still in our registers. There are thousands of pages about them, so there’s enough for a whole raft of dissertations. They come into the story later, after the West German embassy—to take revenge on Anna-Greta Leijon, who was the minister of labor, in charge of immigration issues and the cabinet minister responsible for terrorist legislation. She was the one who in a formal sense made
the deportation decision about the German terrorists.”

  Forget the law, thought Johansson, who was well aware that to carry out real police work in a crisis situation, you couldn’t run around with a statute book under your arm.

  “So we have four individuals who’ve been cleaned out,” he summarized. “We don’t have a clue who they are, despite the fact that this seems to concern one of the most serious crimes that has been handled in this department. Pretty strange,” Johansson concluded.

  “Yes,” said Wiklander. “Although that’s not even the strangest thing.”

  “Then what is?” asked Johansson, looking guardedly at his visitor.

  What was most strange according to Wiklander was that only a few months ago, right before Johansson took over from Berg, two names had suddenly appeared in the file on the West German embassy. What’s more, they were Swedish citizens who were supposed to have helped the terrorists in the embassy in their planning and preparations before the occupation, and who in a formal judicial sense were guilty, among other things, of being accomplices to two murders, some ten cases of kidnapping, destruction constituting a public danger or sabotage, as well as a few other goodies.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Johansson. More than enough for life imprisonment, he thought judiciously.

  “Yes,” said Wiklander. “Not exactly a recommendation.”

  “So what are their names?” said Johansson. I’m still a policeman, he thought.

  “They’re both dead, actually,” answered Wiklander. “One was a TV journalist who was rather well known in his day—we’re talking the late seventies and eighties. His name was Sten Welander, born in 1947. He died of cancer five years ago.”

  “I have a faint memory,” said Johansson. A skinny fanatical type with designer stubble and all the opinions that were correct at the time. They were all like that anyway, regardless of when, he thought.

  “The other one worked at the Central Bureau of Statistics over on Karlavägen as some kind of official … assistant director … nothing remarkable … Eriksson, Kjell Göran, born 1944.”