Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime

by Leif Gw Persson

  “So who was it?” said Johansson.

  “You know what,” said Persson. “From what I’ve heard over the years, you are said to be the absolute shrewdest person ever to set foot in our beloved police station on Kungsholmen, so I think it will be more than enough if you get the same tip that I got. Just to keep an old retiree from getting dragged into your investigation. And besides, you can get it straight from the horse’s own mouth.”

  “You’re the one who figured out who it was?” asked Johansson.

  “Of course,” said Persson self-assuredly. “Although it wasn’t some inner inspiration. That has never happened to me so far,” Persson chuckled.

  “You got a tip,” said Johansson. That hasn’t ever happened to me either, he thought.

  “I found a memo from a colleague that wound up in the wrong binder. It was as simple as that,” said Persson, grinning contentedly. “Talk to our colleague Stridh. You know that lazy ass who worked in the patrol cars. He’s still there, isn’t he?”

  “Stridh,” said Johansson. “Do you mean Peace at Any Price?” He’s pulling my leg, thought Johansson.

  “The very same,” said Persson. “Although he himself probably hasn’t understood how things really stood, if you ask me. No sir,” Persson continued. “Now let’s have a good time and have a little whiskey. I have a fine old bottle in the pantry out in the kitchen. I got it from my lady friend the last time I had a birthday, so there’s no need to panic. Tell me about your new wife, by the way. I’ve heard that she is one outstandingly fine-looking lady.”

  “Sure, she’s good-looking,” said Johansson, “she is that.” And she’s nice too, he thought. Stridh, he thought. Could that fuckup Stridh have figured out what both he and Wiklander, and his best friend Bo Jarnebring too for that matter, had missed?

  26

  March 2000

  It was Wiklander who, on orders from Johansson, went to question Stridh at home about the fourth man. It had been a late one for Johansson the night before—many old memories to be aired—yet there must be limits to what liberties a top-level boss like Johansson could take. Working out in the field was all well and good, and eating roast pork and brown beans at home with a former colleague was probably fine, but conducting an interview with yet another colleague the very next morning was a little too much. Besides, in Johansson’s case he had hundreds of coworkers available, and Wiklander was certainly better suited for the task than anyone else.

  Stridh was home, of course. Within the corps he was known for being something of a comp time equivalent to soccer’s Diego Maradona, so it was obvious that he would be home on a Friday when even a child could figure out that there was likely to be a lot of police work over the weekend.

  “You’re probably wondering why I want to talk with you,” said Wiklander collegially when the introductory preludes were over and the mandatory coffee was on the kitchen table.

  “I have my suspicions,” said Stridh.

  “You do,” said Wiklander.

  “Yes,” said Stridh. “I’ve worked more than thirty years as a cop, and all that time I’ve had a visit from SePo only once before—that was Persson—that big fat guy, you know—and that was more than ten years ago, so I’m guessing you’re here for the same reason. West German embassy?”

  “Yes,” said Wiklander. “I want to talk with you about your observations in connection with the events at the West German embassy in April of 1975. Unfortunately I can’t go into why and you can’t tell anyone that we’ve even seen each other either—much less had this conversation—but I’m sure you already know all that,” Wiklander concluded, softening the whole thing by nodding and smiling.

  “Yes,” said Stridh. “I’ve been around awhile so I do know that. As I’m sure you’re also aware, I wrote a few pages about the matter, it was the day after—let’s see, that would be the twenty-fifth of April 1975. I assume you’ve read them?”

  “Unfortunately not,” said Wiklander, who had decided to save time and put his cards on the table as far as possible. “Your papers seem to have disappeared in one of our archives.” You could put it that way, he thought.

  “Yes, that’s really strange,” said Stridh. “The very idea of an archive is that it should be a way to ensure that that sort of thing doesn’t happen, but sometimes you almost wonder if it isn’t the other way around. I have a certain interest in history,” said Stridh. “To be completely honest, it’s probably my major interest in life.”

  “You wrote a memo,” Wiklander reminded him. Pull yourself together, old man, he thought.

  “I even made a copy of it,” said Stridh smugly, “so in this case I can actually help you repair the damage … as regards the failure in the archiving,” Stridh clarified. “This is perhaps not completely in accordance with the rules, of course,” he continued, “but considering it’s for a good cause … Besides, I had the idea that maybe I had been involved in a historic event and because history is my big interest—”

  “That’s just great,” Wiklander interrupted, smiling amiably. “But perhaps you should start by telling me a little about the background, and then … we can look at the papers later.”

  “Sure,” said Stridh. “I’m happy to do that.”

  Then Stridh talked about the mysterious car that he had stopped. About his conversation with the doorman at the Norwegian embassy and the purely general speculations he’d had before, during, and after what had happened on Thursday the twenty-fourth of April 1975. Not unexpectedly, he took his sweet time doing so.

  “That was a dreadful story,” Stridh declared. “I remember I was thinking about what Churchill said to his countrymen during the war. The Germans probably should have taken that to heart a little more than they did.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Wiklander, who happened to think of his old history teacher from secondary school at home in Karlstad. Stridh could be a brother to old Nightcap, thought Wiklander.

  “Well, if you believed the newspapers, the colleagues at Sec—or SePo, as it seems to be called these days—warned them that something was up,” Stridh clarified.

  “I was thinking about what you said about Churchill,” Wiklander reminded him. Just as confused as old Nightcap, thought Wiklander. They must be twins or at least spiritual brothers.

  “Yes, him, yes,” said Stridh, nodding. “What I was thinking about was how he said that ‘he who is forewarned is also forearmed.’ ‘He who is forewarned is also forearmed,’ ” Stridh quoted solemnly. “I think that what happened to the Germans shows—if nothing else—what can happen if we don’t learn from history. Or what do you think?”

  “Well … yes,” agreed Wiklander. “Maybe we should look at those notes you wrote.” And preferably before summer gets here, he thought.

  In its essentials, the memo Stridh had prepared was exemplary. One might have opinions about the organization, use of language, and his typing skills, but if you disregarded that and directed yourself to the police-related meat and potatoes, it was basically unobjectionable.

  He had noted the license number of the car he had stopped as well as the time and place. He had looked up the car himself in the vehicle registry. A large 1973 Mercedes that was registered to a pediatrician in private practice by the name of Rolf Stein whose address at that time was on Riddargatan in the Östermalm neighborhood.

  The driver’s name he had evidently committed to memory well enough that the following day he managed to find him in the driver’s license registry. His name was Sten Welander, and he was born in 1947 and got his driver’s license in 1965.

  All this was good enough, but Stridh had done more than that; he had made a serious attempt to identify the younger female passenger Welander had with him. According to Stridh “the young woman in question was probably one Helena Lovisa Stein, known as Helena, whose registered address was the same as the above-named Stein, Rolf. Helena Stein, born on September 10, 1958, was the daughter of the above-mentioned Stein, Rolf.”

  “Perhaps you’re w
ondering why I think that?” Stridh asked.

  “Wonder what?” said Wiklander, who was starting to experience a certain lack of concentration.

  “That the girl in the car was the same as a certain Helena Stein,” Stridh clarified. “Perhaps you’re wondering why I think that?”

  “Yes,” said Wiklander, nodding energetically. “How did you come to that conclusion?” I’ve got to pull myself together, he thought. I’m the one who’s doing the questioning.

  “Well,” said Stridh, clearing his throat, “as I told you, she mentioned something—when I stopped their car—about it being her parents’ car, or else she said that it was her father’s car—but it was one of the two—so that was my starting point, and then—”

  “So you looked her up in the census,” Wiklander quickly interrupted.

  “Exactly,” said Stridh, actually looking a bit disappointed.

  “But that’s just great,” Wiklander said sincerely. “I’m very grateful for your assistance.”

  “As you see in my memo I tried to make a description of her features,” Stridh added, “so my suggestion is that you try to retrieve a school photo or something of her from that time and compare it. But I’m actually rather sure—Stein had only one daughter and it was Helena. Extremely cute girl actually. I have a very good memory for faces, so if you produce a photo of her you’re welcome to come back.”

  “I thank you for that offer,” said Wiklander evasively, and he had already stood up. Come back here? God help me, he thought.

  • • •

  When Wiklander finally returned to the relative safety and peace of his desk he pondered the conceivable “fourth man.” Wiklander had no great problem with the fact that “he” would probably prove to be a young woman. Many of the most active members of the European terrorist movements at that time had been women.

  On the other hand she was far too young even for that, Wiklander thought. Sixteen years old when the embassy drama took place, or sixteen and a half if you were to be exact the way little children always were when stating their age. Regardless of which, she was too young in a strictly criminological sense, and the only reasonable explanation must be that she had been dragged into something she didn’t completely understand, for in that case it was more of an advantage the younger you were, he thought. A radical, politically involved sixteen-year-old? Sounded both probable and correct. A sixteen-year-old who could have taken an active part in the most spectacular political attack in Swedish postwar history and the cold-blooded murder of two people? Forget it, thought Wiklander, who had a daughter the same age himself. She must have been taken in.

  In the simplest version of events, she was involved with and had been exploited by a boyfriend almost twice her age. A twenty-eight-year-old academic and TV reporter who was involved with a sixteen-year-old doctor’s daughter from a good family during the liberated seventies? It could happen—but there were still limits, Wiklander thought as he filled in his list of questions for internal surveillance. It’ll work out, thought Wiklander, who felt secure in his conviction that regardless of what the explanation was, his coworkers would dig it out for him.

  Wiklander devoted the rest of the afternoon to routine tasks mostly related to things other than the West German embassy. After an hour his assistant head detective called on the phone to report that she and her colleague had just retrieved a photo of Helena Stein from the photo studio that in the seventies had taken pictures for the French School on Döbelnsgatan in central Stockholm.

  “Excellent,” Wiklander grunted, returning to his quickly receding pile of papers. This is going like a dance, he thought.

  After another half hour the same detective phoned and reported that Helena Stein was now identified as the “fourth man.” A photo identification had been conducted at Stridh’s kitchen table at home, and he had immediately and without hesitation pointed her out from among a dozen different photos depicting her classmates, which had been obtained from the same photographer.

  “Brilliant,” said Wiklander. We’re going like gangbusters now, he thought.

  Only fifteen minutes later there was a knock on his door, despite the fact that the red light was on.

  “Come in,” Wiklander called.

  In the door stood yet another of his many female coworkers, this one from their own group for internal surveillance. Despite the fact that she looked like a little girl in an old Swedish folk ballad, she was a detective inspector whose name was Lisa Mattei. Her mother was a detective chief inspector with the personal protection squad of the secret police, thirty years older and far from the female ideal of the folk ballad.

  “This is about this Stein,” said Mattei.

  “Yes,” said Wiklander energetically. “Are you through with her?”

  “Depends on what you mean by through,” said Mattei, raising her slender shoulders in a gesture of indifference. “In any event, she seems interesting enough,” she said, handing a computer printout to Wiklander. “Read the top lines and you’ll see what I mean.”

  This can’t be true, Wiklander thought as he read. Then he set the paper down on his desk and looked at his coworker.

  “Do you know whether the boss is here?” he asked.

  “Which one do you mean?” Mattei said, looking rather impertinent.

  “Johansson,” said Wiklander. No messing around now, he thought.

  “He just came in,” said Mattei. “I’m guessing he’s sitting in his office having Danish pastries. On several previous occasions I’ve noted remnants on the lapel of his jacket that indicate such activities.”

  It’s always something, Wiklander thought, but naturally he didn’t say that.

  “Not a word,” he said. “Not a word to anyone.”

  • • •

  It was true that Johansson also had a red lamp beside the door to his office, but it was almost never lit. This was because if you wanted to go into his office, you first had to pass the office where his secretary sat, and there was no red lamp in the world that could compare with her.

  “Is the boss in?” said Wiklander to Johansson’s secretary, nodding to be on the safe side at the closed door behind her back.

  “Yes,” the secretary said coolly. “But he’s occupied and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “It’s like this, you see,” said Wiklander, looking as if he meant it besides, “I have to see him immediately.”

  “Has the enemy landed on our coasts?” the secretary asked, giving Wiklander a very cool glance as she tapped on the keyboard in front of her.

  “Something along those lines,” said Wiklander, nodding.

  “Then it’s okay to go in,” the secretary said, gesturing toward the closed door behind her back at the same time as a discreet click of the lock could be heard.

  Johansson was sitting in the chair behind his large desk, drinking coffee and munching on a sizeable Danish pastry.

  “Sit yourself down,” said Johansson jovially, pointing toward one of his three visitors chairs. “What can I help you with? Unfortunately you can’t have any Danish because I just took the last one, but I’m sure I can arrange coffee.”

  “It’s fine,” said Wiklander, hoping he didn’t sound the way he felt.

  “You seem harried,” Johansson asserted. “Do we have a problem?”

  “Depends on what you mean by problem,” said Wiklander, sounding rather evasive. Is it a problem if all hell’s broken loose? he thought.

  “We’ve identified the fourth man,” said Wiklander. Best to take this in an orderly sequence, he thought.

  “But that’s just great,” said Johansson. What’s the problem? he wondered.

  “The fourth man is a woman born in 1958,” Wiklander continued. “And we’re quite sure about that,” said Johansson. Forty-two years old, an excellent age for a woman, he thought; he himself had a wife who was only a few years older.

  “As certain as we can be,” said Wiklander.

  “What’s the problem then?” asked Johans
son. Sixteen, seventeen years old at the time of the West German embassy, a bit on the young side, thought Johansson.

  “This,” said Wiklander, handing over the same computer printout he had received five minutes earlier.

  “So what’s this?” said Johansson, not making the slightest motion to reach out for the paper.

  “I asked one of the gals in our internal surveillance squad to do a complete search on her, but when she started on it our internal warning system came on, because the colleagues who do background checks are already in the middle of a complete workup on her.”

  “So why are they doing that?” Johansson asked.

  “The woman in question is named Helena Stein and she’s an undersecretary in the defense department,” said Wiklander. “She’s an attorney, and before she became an undersecretary in the defense department she worked for a number of years in the prime minister’s office and at the ministry of foreign trade on issues dealing with our manufacture and export of war matériel. She took her current job in the defense department two years ago. A background check was made on her then as well, and she seems to have passed without any problems. All undersecretaries have a high security clearance as you no doubt know, Boss—and in her particular case it’s even higher than the majority of other undersecretaries. Maybe that isn’t so strange considering her job,” Wiklander concluded.

  “I should damn well think I know who Stein is,” said Johansson, looking almost amused. In his case it would have been dereliction of duty not to know the name of the undersecretary in the defense department, and that she had apparently disappeared from their files at roughly the same time she was appointed undersecretary did not of course make the matter any less interesting, he thought.

  “But that’s not the problem,” said Wiklander.

  “So what is it?” asked Johansson. This is getting better and better, he thought.