Free Falling, As If in a Dream

by Free Falling, As If in a Dream (retail) (epub)

“Waltin,” said Johansson. “What do you think about Waltin?”

  “Waltin,” Persson repeated, looking at Johansson and shaking his head. “Now I’m almost getting worried about you.”

  “Why is that?” asked Johansson.

  Waltin was a dandy, conceited, incompetent. He was also cowardly. Someone like that never could have shot Palme. Besides, he didn’t match the description of the perpetrator. Anyone at all but not Waltin, and not to salvage his reputation. Waltin was certainly capable of coming up with almost anything that had to do with financial irregularities and everything else under the sun where he could make a pile at no risk to himself. At the secret police there had also been a lot of whispering in the corridors about Waltin’s interest in women and the peculiar expressions this allegedly could take.

  “Sure,” said Persson. “I’m sure he beat up a lady or two. Several, even. He was the type who did that sort of thing. Did he shoot Palme? Never in my life. Why not? He wasn’t the type. He was completely the wrong type for that sort of thing,” said Persson.

  “He doesn’t need to have shot him,” Johansson objected. “That’s not what I’m saying, and so far we’re in agreement. That doesn’t rule out that he might have been involved in some other way.”

  “Now I’m almost getting a little worried about you, Lars,” said Persson, shaking his head. “Is he supposed to have been part of a conspiracy, do you mean?”

  “For example,” said Johansson.

  “He was too cowardly for that,” said Persson. “Besides, he was too lazy to bother planning. Waltin was the type who took the easy way out. Preferably along with others who traveled the same way. Fine folk, with a silver spoon in their mouth since they opened their eyes. Who could that little snob have known who could have done something like that for him?”

  “Don’t know,” said Johansson. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  “If it’s other police officers you mean, then you’re out on a limb,” said Persson. “None of us would have managed that sort of thing or even picked up someone like Waltin with tongs. Not us. Besides, there’s something you should know. The colleagues who worked for the bodyguards at that time, they actually liked Olof Palme. I don’t think they had any intention of voting for him. But they liked him as a person. Even though he could be pretty troublesome as a surveillance object.”

  “So who do you think shot Palme?” asked Johansson.

  “Someone like Christer Pettersson,” said Persson. “Some crazy, violence-prone devil who didn’t care about the consequences. Took the chance when he got it. Someone a little more orderly than Pettersson, perhaps. There must be thousands of people like that. All the idiots with a closet full of firearms that we policemen gave them a license for.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson.

  “Nice to hear,” said Persson. “Do you want a good piece of advice along with it?”

  “Advice from a wise man is always welcome,” said Johansson.

  “It’s enough if you listen to an old man who’s been around even longer than you,” said Persson as he served them the last drops from the bottle of cognac Johansson had brought along.

  “I’m listening,” said Johansson and nodded.

  “Drop the thing with Palme,” said Persson with feeling. “That case was lost to us more than twenty years ago.”

  “Sure. If I could choose I would like to boil the bastard who did it for glue,” said Johansson.

  “Who wouldn’t,” said Persson. “The problem with us policemen is that we can’t do that sort of thing, and in this case we don’t even know who to put in the gluepot.”

  Drop it, thought Johansson an hour later as he sat in the taxi on his way home to Söder. If you just stop thinking about it, then at least you’ve gotten something done, he thought.

  61

  Claes Waltin’s police biography was starting to get content and form. From the birth certificate to the certificate of death. From the announcement in Svenska Dagbladet and the picture of little Claes and his parents to the two investigations into his death by the Spanish and Swedish police that marked the end of his earthly life.

  He had not been a shining light at school, as his father Robert Waltin had maintained. More like a rascal. The best schools but mediocre grades throughout. Except in behavior and neatness. He already had low marks for conduct in the second grade.

  Only eight years old and even though he was going to private school. I wonder what kind of trouble he got himself into? thought Lisa Mattei.

  During his time in the military he changed in an astonishing way. Waltin did his military service with the Norrland dragoons in Umeå, serving in an elite company, the army’s mounted riflemen. When he mustered out as a sergeant after fifteen months it was with the highest marks in all subjects. Then everything returned to normal. It took him eight years to finish his law degree instead of the usual four.

  Didn’t Palme finish his degree in two? thought Lisa Mattei.

  Waltin seemed to have had many things to occupy his time besides studies. Club activities, for one thing. As soon as he’d enrolled at the law school in Stockholm he became a member of the Conservative Law Students. He left them after only one year and asked to have his reasons added to the minutes. In short, the society was much too radical for his taste.

  Along with a few like-minded students, he founded a new society, a breakaway faction that called itself Young Law Students for a Free Sweden. Complete with capital letters and everything, but as a society it was already dormant after three months.

  In contrast, the small circle of four young law student friends who formed the Friends of Cunt Society were considerably more persevering than that. The society was established in September 1966, at the start of the fall semester, and remained active the rest of the decade.

  Waltin appeared to have been a very active member. He was the society’s “Treasurer” and “Wine Cellar Manager.” He won the title of “Cuntmaster of the Year” in both 1966 and 1968. He was expelled in 1969 for reasons that had left no traces in the minutes and which, almost forty years later, it took the extremely competent detective inspector Lisa Mattei a couple of days to figure out. Without the help of one of the former members of the society, now in the Swedish parliament as a representative of the Christian Democrats and an esteemed member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Administration of Justice.

  Mattei asked Johansson for permission to interview the member of parliament but got a point-blank no in reply.

  “I’m getting worried about you, Lisa, when you talk like that,” Johansson answered, fixing his eyes on her. “Why do you want to talk with him? I assume you’re aware he worked as a chief prosecutor before he wound up in parliament.”

  “To get some sense of Waltin’s personality, his background. I think it’s extremely interesting,” Mattei objected. “I can imagine—”

  “That’s pure nonsense,” Johansson interrupted. “A few snotnosed kids and upper-class students in the sixties who totally lacked judgment. What relevance does that have for your case? Forty years later. Why do you think Palme was murdered? Do you think it was an attempted rape that got out of hand, or what?”

  “No,” said Lisa Mattei. “I don’t think that. But I do believe interviewing his old friend may give us something about Waltin as a person. Besides, it was barely twenty years later that Palme was murdered. This society was founded in the fall of 1966 and Palme was shot at the end of February 1986.”

  “Forget it,” said Johansson, shaking his head and pointing with his whole hand toward the door to his office. “Don’t contradict me,” he said sternly as she got up and left.

  Mattei had not forgotten. Johansson’s way of treating her was a guarantee of the exact opposite. Quite apart from whether the issue was relevant or not. Besides, she’d had help from Waltin’s father, without his being aware of it as he sat and bragged about his son’s fine friends from high school and university, and about the one who was the finest of t
hem all, the banker, financier, billionaire Theodor “Theo” Tischler.

  May be worth trying, thought Lisa Mattei, and already an hour after the conversation with Johansson she had gotten hold of Tischler by phone and arranged a meeting the next day at his office on Nybroplan without asking Johansson for permission.

  As an informant he was unbeatable and improbable. A little square bald man with wide red suspenders and very attentive eyes, who inspected her nonchalantly from the other side of his gigantic desk. The man who gave Tourette’s syndrome a face, thought Lisa Mattei while the tape recorder in the breast pocket of her jacket whirred for all it was worth.

  “Claes Waltin,” said Tischler. “What has that pathological liar come up with this time?”

  “I assume you know he died a number of years ago,” said Mattei.

  “That’s no obstacle to someone like him,” Tischler observed, and within five seconds he brought up the Friends of Cunt Society.

  Tischler had not had any contact whatsoever with Waltin since the spring of 1969, when Waltin had spread a malicious rumor about Tischler among the women who constituted the society’s foremost recruiting base: female nursing students from Sophiahemmet, the Red Cross, and Karolinska.

  “It was there of course we got the most meat on the bone,” said Tischler. “If it had been today I would have sued him because he tried to mislead the market. I had a miserable time before I could get back in the game.”

  “So what did he say?” asked Lisa Mattei.

  “That I had a prick the size of Jiminy Cricket’s,” said Tischler, grinning.

  Was there any truth to that? thought Mattei as she shook her blond head regretfully.

  “Now you’re wondering of course whether there was any truth to that,” Tischler continued.

  No truth at all, according to the informant. Just a wicked tongue; Waltin had done everything to prevent the future banker from becoming the rightful winner of the Cuntmaster trophy. Which was why Tischler had ganged up with the society’s two other members and pooled their already considerable economic muscles to bring about the fall of the slimy rumor-spreader Waltin.

  “A lie from beginning to end,” said Tischler. “If you don’t believe me I’ll give you the names of a few of my old friends from the Sea Scouts, so they can tell you what I was called back then.

  “All the scout leaders at that time were old queers and pedophiles, so we little boys were always forced to swim naked when we were at camp. That was when my buddies nicknamed me the Donkey,” Tischler clarified.

  “The donkey?” asked Mattei.

  “I’ve been accused of many things but never of having been stupid,” Tischler observed. “It wasn’t the upper part of the donkey, by the way,” he said, nodding in the direction of his crotch, which was hidden by his desk.

  Was Waltin a sexual sadist?

  Of course, according to Tischler. Yet another reason that he was expelled. Waltin hated cunt, hence his insatiable sexual appetite and the expressions that it took.

  “He damaged the society’s name and good reputation,” said Tischler. “Clearly we couldn’t have someone like that.”

  Was there anything else worth recounting about Waltin? Other than that he was a sadist?

  For the next hour Tischler told in proper order about how Claes Waltin poisoned a dog, made himself guilty of arson, stole things from Tischler’s childhood home, was caught in the act of masturbating with a picture of Tischler’s own mother. Manufactured a revolver in shop class and already the next day shot a classmate in the rear end with the same weapon. Only a sampling from secondary school and high school, according to Tischler. Mattei was welcome to hear as much as she liked, if she could bear listening.

  When Waltin first poisoned a dog and then burned down the dog owner’s cottage, he was fifteen years old.

  “Waltin’s crazy mother owned a large estate outside Strängnäs. We used to go there sometimes, a few schoolmates, when we wanted to relax. Drink beer, play some good tunes, and squeeze the breasts of the local talent. Mother Waltin was always completely gone so things couldn’t have been better. There were a couple of retirees living in an isolated cottage near there that Claes got worked up about. Among other things because they had a dog that ran loose, but mostly because they lived in such ugly poverty, so to speak. So he decided to change that.”

  “What did he do?” asked Mattei.

  “First he treated the poor dog to rat poison wrapped in steak that their retarded housekeeper bought for little Claes at the Östermalm market. The dog ate, went home, lay down on the porch, and died. The problem was that his owners didn’t understand a thing. They got another dog. So Claes was forced to take new measures. He snuck over there and set fire to their house while they were asleep. Fortunately they got out in time, but the house and all their possessions burned up. Then they moved.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Mattei. Because I’m guessing you weren’t there, she thought.

  “He bragged about it at school,” said Tischler. “At first I didn’t believe him, but the next time I was down there I could see what had happened. Only the chimney was left on the shack. I already knew the pooch was dead.”

  Two years earlier Tischler and his family had themselves been the victim of classmate Claes Waltin and his unrestrained criminal tendencies.

  “Presumably he’d stolen a key to our apartment when he was visiting me and decapitating my tin soldiers. One weekend when we were in the country he came in and stole a few things. Among other things he swiped a nude picture of my mother from a photo album. My dad had photographed her, when mom was swimming nude, and obviously the photo was private.”

  “But you continued to associate with him anyway,” said Mattei.

  “I caught him a year or two later in the dressing room in the gym, beating off over the photo of my dear mother. Before that we hadn’t discovered anything. He seems to have taken wine and a little jewelry besides. But nothing that my parents missed.”

  “So what did you do? When you caught him.”

  “I hit him. Took back the photo. Smuggled it back into the photo album. Dad hadn’t even missed it. That was a year or so before they separated. Claes asked for forgiveness. Told a long story about how horrible his mother was and that he loved my mother and so on.”

  “So you forgave him?”

  “I’ve always been a very nice man,” Tischler observed with a contented sigh. “Much too nice, perhaps. Everyone loved my mother, so I forgave him.”

  The thing with the revolver and the schoolmate who was shot in the ass hadn’t damaged their friendship either. Besides, Tischler himself had been involved.

  Waltin bought a starter gun in a sporting goods store. He widened the barrel in shop class and transformed it into a .22 caliber revolver. They stole small-bore ammunition from Tischler’s dad, who was a Sunday hunter when he wasn’t seeing all his women.

  “I kept watch down in the shop room while Claes stood there and drilled,” said Tischler. “On the other hand I wouldn’t have believed he’d use it to shoot one of our classmates in the butt.”

  “So why did he do that?”

  “The victim was a real character,” said Tischler. “He’s still a real character, by the way. In class we called him Ass Herman, Nils Hermansson. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s the guy who swindles people out of their money by offering so-called ethical funds. Listen to me, little lady. Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, casinos, and whorehouses have always given the best rate of return. Both in the long and the short term, so watch out for those characters. We wanted to scare him after school. The coward ran away. Claes fired one shot in his butt. I think he was aiming at it. Nisse Hermansson has always had a big ass and a small head.”

  “So what happened to him?” asked Mattei.

  “We actually helped him pick out the bullet. I guess we were curious too. Took the opportunity to take a closer look since we had the chance anyway. As I said he was called Ass Herman when we were in school. We pull
ed him into the school restroom and took a few emergency measures. Wasn’t so bad actually. He was wearing a long jacket and thick pants because it was winter. The bullet had gone in less than an inch. He was bleeding a bit, but it was actually no more than that. Fortunately Claes’s revolver was not as remarkable as he’d hoped. Nisse kept his mouth shut for once. Mostly complained about his coat and his pants, but we solved that for him. I had to go through Dad’s pockets one more time. Once I found seven thousand-kronor bills he’d forgotten in the breast pocket of a tuxedo when he was out on a binge. A lot of money at that time.”

  Just an innocent boyish prank, thought Mattei.

  “So there you have a small sampling. Say the word if you want more. There’s as much as you like,” Tischler concluded.

  “I think I’m content for now,” said Mattei, looking at the clock to be on the safe side.

  “The trophy,” said Tischler. “How could I forget that? Before you go you really do have to look at our old trophy.”

  Tischler had taken the trophy with him when the Friends of Cunt Society eventually dissolved. He was completely within his rights, because he had been the society’s financial backbone. Most of them were done with their degrees and would go on in life. Rumor-spreader Claes Waltin was already expelled.

  It was a silver-plated trophy about twelve inches tall. Crowned at the top by the figure of a naked woman who was not the least bit indecent, more like the image of chasteness.

  “An ordinary sports trophy. Girls swimming, if I were to guess. Claes bought it at Sporrongs, but they refused to make the engraving, so I had to arrange that with the help of an old goldsmith I knew. He used to put together a lot of knickknacks on the sly for my old man’s various secretaries.”

  Wise of Sporrongs, thought Lisa Mattei when she read the text. At the top the name of the society in elegant capital letters: Friends of Cunt Society. Beneath that the name of the member who was “Cuntmaster of the Year”: first Claes Waltin 1966. Then Alf Thulin, nowadays a conservative member of parliament and former chief prosecutor, whom she didn’t have permission to talk to. He had won the title in 1967. Then Claes Waltin again in 1968. The man she was now talking to without asking Johansson for permission, in 1969. A long-dead business attorney, Sven Erik Sjöberg, in 1970.