“Waltin took care of the practical details. The target was an American journalist who was living there on a sublease. I had reason to believe that the operator he made use of was Kjell Göran Hedberg.”
“Friday the twenty-second of November,” said Mattei. “That’s the day Kennedy was shot.”
“Twenty-two years earlier,” said Johansson. “This is probably one of those rare, chance coincidences.”
“So what went wrong?” asked Holt.
“The journalist suddenly showed up. Surprised Hedberg. Hedberg killed him. Feigned a suicide by writing a farewell letter and throwing him out the window from the twentieth floor.”
“This can’t be true,” said Mattei. “My first, real serial murderer. At least three murders on at least three different occasions. If he also shot Palme he’s leading by a wide margin.”
“Glad I can make you happy, Lisa,” said Johansson. “But this particular bastard is not exactly fun to deal with.”
“You must have met him,” said Lewin. “How would you describe him?”
“I ran into him numerous times in service in the good old days. What’s he like? Psychopath, ice-cold, shrewd, rational, dangerous. Everything you want. When I was operations head for the closed operation I entertained myself by reading his personal file. It was not fun reading. Someone like him should never have become a police officer. Nor is it so simple as being an ordinary sex murderer or a sadist. Hedberg has a distinctly practical nature. If a lightbulb burns out you put in a new one, and most of us can manage that. If a person threatens Hedberg’s existence, he does away with him. In the same simple, obvious way as the rest of us change lightbulbs. So the part where he supposedly gets a kick out of killing someone I think you can forget. This is considerably worse than that.”
“Is there any psychological evaluation of him?” asked Holt.
“All the usual stuff that everyone who started at SePo was subject to at that time. Where they obviously only have good things to say. To start with at least. Very good self-control, very high stress thresholds, constructive, rational, highly effective. After what happened in 1977, on the other hand, changes were made. The big boss at the time, Berg, had a very extensive psychiatric assessment done on Hedberg. Everyone sitting here surely knows what I think about such things, but for once I was inclined to agree with the doctor.”
“What did he conclude?” said Mattei.
“That Hedberg was an evil psychopath with almost unlimited self-confidence. Someone who saw himself as an Übermensch. Totally incapable of deeper, emotional attachments to other people. With a very great, purely physical capacity besides.”
“Everyone has their weak points. Even someone like that,” said Holt.
“I think so too,” said Johansson. “Hedberg had at least one, if you ask me.”
“What was that?” said Holt.
“He was crazy for women,” said Johansson. “That sort of thing costs. Sooner or later,” he said.
“So this is the bastard we’re looking for,” said Anna Holt, when Johansson was finished half an hour later.
“I think so,” said Johansson, while smiling and nodding at Lisa Mattei.
“What do you want us to do with him?” said Holt.
“Find him,” said Johansson. “So I can boil him for glue.” At long last, it was high time, and not an hour to lose, he thought.
“One more thing,” said Holt.
“Yes?”
“Pictures of Hedberg. Do we have any good pictures of him?”
“Who do you take me for, Anna?” said Johansson. “I’m hoping that CIS e-mailed a whole photo album to you an hour ago. Thirty pictures of Hedberg, half a dozen of his parents, and about as many of his sister.”
“Thanks,” said Holt.
“You know what they say, Anna,” said Johansson. “A picture says more than a thousand words.”
There was a total of thirty-one pictures of Kjell Göran Hedberg, twenty-five of which had evidently been taken without his knowledge sometime in the late seventies or early eighties. They were typical police surveillance photos taken outdoors by means of a motor camera and telephoto lens. Hedberg going into a bar in the company of an unknown woman. Hedberg coming out of his residence. Hedberg getting into his car. Hedberg getting out of the same car in the police building garage. A 1977 Mercedes, Hedberg wearing a jacket with wide lapels, pants without cuffs but with flared legs, a white shirt with a long collar. A wide tie. A Hedberg of his time.
The photographer was naturally unidentified. Johansson and Jarnebring, in their futile pursuit of a colleague they suspected of a crime that would get him life imprisonment? Or a worried Erik Berg, who wanted to keep an eye on a conceivable security risk in his immediate vicinity?
Holt was captivated by one of them. An ordinary passport photo taken in the spring of 1982 when Hedberg was going to renew his police ID from the secret police, but instead decided to resign only a month later.
Kjell Göran Hedberg: somewhat thin face, regular features, straight nose, pronounced chin and jawline, short dark hair, dark and deeply inset eyes. Eyes that said nothing whatsoever either to the photographer or to a possible observer; eyes that appeared unaware of, or rather completely uninterested in the fact that they had just been photographed: unrevealing, sufficient unto themselves.
He looks good, thought Holt. You could clearly see that, and she would have thought that even if he’d tried to conceal his face by pretending to blow his nose. As on the evening of February 28, 1986, when he encountered Madeleine Nilsson on the stairs from Malmskillnadsgatan down to Kungsgatan.
73
After the meeting Lisa Mattei stayed behind while Holt and Lewin returned to what they were doing. There was not an hour to lose and everything essential remained to be done.
“You wanted to talk with me,” said Johansson.
“The search,” said Mattei, handing her boss a plastic sleeve containing ten pages.
“The search?”
“The search you asked me to do, boss. On that little society of law students,” she clarified.
“Oh, that,” said Johansson. “Well?”
“All of them were in the Palme registry. Sjöberg, Thulin, and Tischler. Although not Waltin, of course, but we found him ourselves.”
“A leopard never changes its spots,” Johansson observed for some reason as he weighed the plastic sleeve in his hand.
“Would you like a quick summary, boss?”
“Gladly,” said Johansson. Anything that will save time, as long as it doesn’t have to do with the case, he thought.
Sjöberg was interviewed for informational purposes because of the so-called Indian arms affair. He had nothing to add and was eliminated from the investigation early on. Besides, he had been dead for almost fifteen years.
“So we don’t need that one,” said Johansson and nodded.
“Thulin was there as one of the Good Guys. Substituted as prosecutor in the investigation on a couple of occasions. Served as an expert in one of the review commissions and as a political appointee on another.”
“I know,” said Johansson. “I’ve met him. I recall that he sat there the whole time harping on about Christer Pettersson. Real stuck-up little toad. Very stupid. It’s a big, fucking mystery.”
“What do you mean, boss?”
“How any woman would want to be involved with someone like that,” Johansson clarified. “He seems to have won that fucking trophy they awarded to each other.”
“That particular aspect doesn’t appear in my papers,” said Mattei. You too, my Johansson, she thought.
“Bragging, if you ask me,” said Johansson. “We can forget Thulin. Next.”
“Tischler,” said Mattei. “At least three tips have come in about him, from the circle of so-called private investigators who allege he was involved in some way in a larger conspiracy to murder Olof Palme.”
“How so? Involved?” That windbag, he thought. If it had only been that good.
“There are assertions that he supposedly offered the first investigation leader, Hans Holmér, a lot of money to follow up his Kurd track,” Mattei explained. “Not because he believed in it, but rather to set up a little smoke screen to protect the real perpetrators.”
“Forget it,” said Johansson. “If Tischler had been part of a conspiracy, he and everyone else involved would have been in jail within twenty-four hours. You couldn’t find a better guarantee for that than mister private banker’s own mouth. Besides, did he ever give any money to Holmér?”
“No. According to what Tischler himself says, that came from information he received from individuals he knew. Within the social democratic movement. Besides, he’s said to have spoken with individuals close to the government. All would have advised him against it. The Kurds had nothing to do with the murder.”
“Did he mention any names?” said Johansson for some reason. “Of the people he talked to, I mean.”
“No,” said Mattei, shaking her head. “Individuals within the Social Democratic Party. Individuals close to the Social Democratic administration. Considering the time frame, it must have been during Ingvar Carlsson’s stint as prime minister.”
“But no names,” said Johansson, nodding thoughtfully. “No names.” Although personally I could think of at least one, he thought.
“Waltin,” said Johansson. “He’s the one this is about. Sjöberg, Thulin, and Tischler I think we can forget.”
“I think like you do, boss,” said Mattei and nodded. “It’s a bit odd, at the same time, that all four would still be in the investigation.”
“It’s a small country,” said Johansson. “Much too small,” he repeated. Not least for someone like our murder victim, he thought.
“One more thing,” said Johansson, just as Mattei was about to leave.
“Yes,” she said and stopped.
“That thing with Hedberg,” said Johansson. “You should get a big gold star for that. What bothers me is that I didn’t think of him myself. I should have, you see, and that bothers me.”
“Maybe you’re starting to get old, boss,” said Mattei.
“Yes,” said Johansson. “Even I’ve gotten older.” No matter how unbelievable that may seem, he thought.
74
The same evening Johansson met the special adviser at a seminar of the Turing Society. Though he had more important stuff he ought to take care of, because things had finally started to move after more than twenty years. Or more than thirty, perhaps, depending on how you calculated.
High time, thought Johansson. High time that a real police officer finally got to see the light at the end of the tunnel. In other respects the tunnel was completely different from the one the walking catastrophe who was in charge of the Palme investigation to start with had raved about. A completely different light too, he thought. A sharp white glare that struck him and people like him right in the eyes, without their being able to turn away or even blink.
The Turing Society was named for Alan Turing. Mathematician and code breaker during the Second World War. A great mathematician and the greatest of all code breakers.
Initially, it had mostly been an illustrious society where his Swedish colleagues, other mathematicians, statisticians, and linguists who had a past within the military intelligence organization were given occasion for both edifying conversation and a decent meal. They would meet quarterly to listen to lectures, hold seminars, or simply socialize. At the obligatory Christmas dinner, the first Sunday in December. At the exclusive gentlemen’s club Stora Sällskapet in Stockholm, Christmas buffet, tails, academic vestments. Numerous shots and bottles of red wine. No one and nothing was lacking.
It was the special adviser who had invited Johansson. First when they had run into each other in Rosenbad. When they had bumped into each other at a reception at the American embassy a few days later, he had repeated his invitation.
The special adviser had been chairman of the Turing Society for many years, and during his tenure the society had taken in a new influx of members. Not only pure academics, but also the sort who mostly worked with military intelligence operations. Even an esteemed politician or two who took pleasure in talking about problems that ordinary people were not supposed to discuss.
“The subject of the evening really ought to entice someone like you,” the special adviser tempted him. “We’re going to talk about a particular aspect of the Palme assassination.”
“The Kurd track or Christer Pettersson?” said Johansson.
“Not really,” said the special adviser. “A purely academic discussion. The main speakers are going to start by presenting an analysis of the consequences of the various so-called tracks. If it turned out to be one way and not another. What political and economic consequences that would have, over and above the purely legal ones.”
“Will there be many people there who were involved in the investigations?” asked Johansson, who had not the slightest desire to meet a certain female prosecutor in Stockholm.
“Are you joking, Johansson?” said the special adviser. “This is an educated society. That’s why I’m so eager for you to come.”
“I have quite a bit to do,” said Johansson.
“For my sake, Johansson. For my sake.”
“I’ll come,” said Johansson.
“Excellent,” said the special adviser, beaming like the sun. “Then you’ll also have the pleasure of meeting my successor. He’s going to give the introductory address.”
He was not particularly like the man he would apparently succeed. A tall, bony academic, half the age of the special adviser, with thick blond hair that stuck out in all directions and eyeglasses he constantly moved between the tip of his nose and his hairline.
He spoke slowly and clearly, chose his words with care, and took pains with both pauses and punctuation. Almost as if he were reading from a written text, while he also made a strangely absent impression.
Another one of the guys with a lot of letters in his poor head, thought Johansson in his judgmental way.
At the same time the speaker’s message had been simple and clear. The advantage of the solitary madman who murdered a prime minister was that, in a social sense, he was primarily free of consequences. A man such as, for example, Christer Pettersson. What remained was the loss of a significant politician—controversial, to be sure—but otherwise nothing, and society would cope. As is known, even loss passes.
“Time heals all wounds,” the evening’s introductory speaker observed. He pushed his glasses onto his forehead and turned the page.
Despite the evening’s purely academic orientation, the opening speaker had nonetheless granted himself a slight digression. Christer Pettersson also offered another essential advantage, not to be overlooked, because any critical thinker who was familiar with this case could not but conclude that he really was the one who murdered the prime minister.
“In a purely intellectual sense the Palme assassination is solved,” he explained to his audience. “What remains to consider is thus not the collective trauma resulting from the unsolved murder, but rather the individual trauma that ensues from the fact that different recipients of this purely factual message have different bases for understanding how matters really stand.”
What remains is to convince numbskulls like Holt, Lewin, Mattei, and me, thought Johansson.
The Kurd track and other similar descriptions of the event had limited consequences for Swedish politics and Swedish society. The geographic, cultural, and political distance between ordinary Swedes and types such as, for example, Kurdish terrorists made it possible to discuss the problem in terms of “us” and “them.” Formulating a clear “dichotomy” where “we” were primarily all the ordinary, decent people while “they” in all essentials were only a kind of strange collective from a very distant part of the world. There would be certain limited effects on the general view of immigrants, refugee policy, and related issues. Increased resources to various agencies of social control, ob
viously. Calculated in budget terms, problems in the magnitude of several hundred million each. “In total at the most one billion per year, in the ongoing budget. Measures which in addition lend themselves to being handled within the already established bureaucratic structure.”
Nice to hear that we don’t need to come up with anything new, thought Johansson.
But then it quickly got worse. From an ordinary sneeze to a bout of influenza. What remained was more or less the choice between plague and cholera. Far-reaching political and social effects, social costs in the billions, collective mistrust of politicians and social institutions, loss of large portions of Sweden’s credibility abroad. Suddenly a Sweden that had been reduced to an ordinary banana monarchy in the pile of African and Central American republics where heads of state, governments, and ministers were replaced without the least thought of political choices. And without triggering more than a yawn in the UN Security Council.
Whether the assassination did in fact concern a political conspiracy of the sort that befell Gustav III, or what was summarized in Swedish debate under the designation “the police track,” was according to the speaker’s considered opinion “a toss-up.”
Because this comparison surely astonished many in the audience, he also wanted to take the opportunity to further clarify himself.
“In the society in which we live today, the police constitute a social foundation accorded the same respect as, for example, uncorrupted and democratically controlled political organs such as parliament and the government. The police today have a far greater significance than the military in Swedish society. We also live in a world in which security is discussed in police terms; although the means we use are still traditionally military. The point of view, the arguments underpinning it have their basis in a police mind-set, and focus has been moved from war to terrorism. The traditional military balance of terror between nations and blocs of nations is now history. Calculated in terms of damage, and compared with, for example, the so-called Kurd track, with the police track we are talking about social damages that are in the magnitude of a couple of powers of ten higher, and in which the majority of the loss comes from the outside world’s depreciation of Sweden’s democratic credibility,” the introductory speaker concluded, adjusting his glasses down to the tip of his nose and inspecting his pensive audience.
Free Falling, As If in a Dream Page 45