A hundred times more worrisome. At least, thought Lars Martin Johansson, even though math had been far from his favorite subject in school. Even though we’re only talking about two crazy policemen who never should have been policemen, he thought.
After the concluding debate they were invited to dinner at Rosenbad, where the government had made its own dining room available to them.
“So what did you think about my young successor?” asked the special adviser.
“Interesting person,” said Johansson, who always tried to avoid quarrels when he accepted an invitation. “What does a young man like that occupy himself with?” When he’s not talking shit in general terms, he thought.
“Military signals intelligence,” said the special adviser. “But only because you’re the one who’s asking, Johansson,” he added, holding his index finger up to his moist lips. “That’s the young man responsible for the realm’s connection with the American intelligence service. You know, all those eyes and ears high up there in the blue that see and hear everything we’re up to.”
“Yes, it’s quite amazing,” said Johansson. “Quite amazing,” he repeated. To be putting something like that in the hands of someone like our crazy lecturer, he thought.
“Yes, it really is,” the special adviser concurred, smiling happily. “And this they have the gall to call satellites.”
After dinner was over the special adviser took Johansson aside once again to speak with him in private.
“By the way, what did you think about the wines?” he began. “For once really decent, even in this simple context, if you ask me.”
“From your own cellar?” Johansson wondered.
“Not so, not so at all. A little haul that one of my co-workers made. Hidden away in a closet down at Harpsund. Someone forgot them, certainly. A regular little warehouse, actually, that we took the opportunity to walk off with.”
“Is that really true?” said Johansson. “Or is it like with those deer in that park in Oxford?”
“Completely true,” the special adviser assured him, nodding eagerly. “The previous owner seems to have left in some haste. By the way, have you thought about what truth is, Johansson? Really thought about it, I mean.”
“Yes,” said Johansson. My whole life, he thought.
“When an important truth is revealed to you,” said the special adviser, who had now become so excited that he was tugging on the sleeve of Johansson’s jacket, “when an important truth is revealed to you…you can be affected much more painfully than when you reveal a great lie. Truth touches you much, much more than a lie. When you truly see it before you, you fall freely, as if in a dream. As in one of those unpleasant dreams, you know. When you suddenly plummet, fall headlong straight down into a darkness that never ends, and it is so terrible that when you finally wake up it feels as if your chest could explode. When it can take several minutes before you are sure whether you’re really alive or dead. Have you ever had a dream like that?”
“Never,” said Johansson. “But once when I was a little boy they took out my tonsils and that was the first time I had anesthetic. With ether, actually, and the odor still sits in my nose. I remember that I fell like that. It wasn’t particularly nice.”
“But never in a dream,” said the special adviser. “You’ve never done that in a dream? Completely exposed, lost and beyond all help?”
“Never in a dream,” said Johansson.
“You are a fortunate man, Johansson,” sighed the special adviser. “You’re also happily married to a woman who is said to be beautiful, wise, and good.”
Is he trying to tell me something? thought Johansson.
75
That same night Johansson had a hard time falling asleep. Not because he’d been dreaming, but because he’d suddenly been reminded of his childhood. Reminded of the time when he was eleven years old and had a cold the whole autumn. His worried father at last drove him all the way to the general hospital in Kramfors to have his tonsils removed.
A fresh memory, fifty years later. How he had to take off all his clothes and was handed over to them, in a white nightshirt from the county council. How they strapped him in an ordinary dental chair. How they bound his arms and legs with leather straps. How they bound his head tight. How they pried open his mouth. Two grown-ups with masks over their faces and holes for their eyes. Then they pressed the rag with ether over his nose and mouth. How he tried to tear himself loose before they suffocated him. The pungent odor of ether. Much more acrid than the gasoline, diesel, or even chlorine that he knew from life on the farm.
How everything turned black before his eyes, how his head roared, how everything around him started spinning, how he himself fell headfirst straight down into the darkness, and how the last thing he thought about was his dad, Evert, who had not been allowed to come in with him, even though he had held him by the hand all the way up to the door.
76
Marja Ruotsalainen lived in a small apartment in Tyresö, a few miles southeast of central Stockholm. Considering the life she’d lived, she appeared to have managed well. A skinny little woman with a lot of henna-colored hair, who smoked constantly and only stopped when her hacking cough prevented her.
She did not seem particularly happy to see them. But she hadn’t called them “fucking pigs,” and she didn’t tell them to go to hell. She even offered them a crooked smile when they sat down at her kitchen table.
“Girl cops,” said Marja. “So what have you gals been up to the past twenty years?”
She did not offer them coffee. That sort of thing mostly happened in crime novels, but in reality people like her almost never offered police officers coffee. Nothing else either, for that matter. On the other hand she softened and started talking.
She and her boyfriend at the time had been at the Chinese restaurant on Drottninggatan that evening when the prime minister was murdered. She was living at his place. Hiding with him. She had been on the lam for several months. It was Friday evening and she was almost climbing the walls. Had to go out into town. Get out and move around so she could breathe, even though there were more suitable areas than downtown Stockholm where someone like her could go.
She was also the one who had recognized the plainclothes policeman who was already in the restaurant. Recognized him from ten years before, when she was only seventeen and she and another of her boyfriends twice her age had been arrested in a dope pad out in Tensta.
“A real fucking fascist. The type that twisted your arms up behind your back, called you a whore, and stayed standing in the doorway staring while the dyke jailers told you to take off all your clothes,” Marja Ruotsalainen summarized.
Preserved as a bad memory. A year later she had seen him again, when she had yet another boyfriend twice her age. It was outside the Parliament Building, and the nameless policeman and one of the same sort got out of a big black Volvo and held open the door for a well-known politician they then escorted into the building.
“They just radiated SePo,” said Ruotsalainen. “Might as well have had it printed on their foreheads. How clueless can you be?”
“That politician,” said Holt. “You don’t remember what his name was?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It must have been one of those conservatives. May have been in the summer of seventy-seven. When I got busted in Solna that time it was seventy-six. I remember that.”
“Why do you remember that?” asked Mattei.
“Because it was my seventeenth birthday,” said Marja. “Talk about a birthday present.”
The nameless policeman from the restaurant she remembered. He had been sitting there when they came in. The time was about nine-thirty. He left after an hour or so. The rest she had figured out later when she read about the murder of Olof Palme.
“He pretty well matched that physical description. Dark, good condition, forty-ish. About six foot one. Dark jacket. I remember that, because he had it on in the restaurant. On the other hand I don’t r
emember what kind of pants he had on. I guess I didn’t think about it.”
Then they showed her pictures. Ten portrait photos of police officers taken twenty to thirty years earlier. The originals had been on their police IDs. One of them was of Kjell Göran Hedberg and was taken the same summer he was supposed to have accompanied an unknown politician into the Parliament Building.
“Not the foggiest,” said Ruotsalainen. “They look like blueberries, the whole pile. How the hell do you tell one blueberry from another?”
“What do you think about this then?” asked Mattei, pushing a typewritten page over to her. A list of ten names of male police officers, the majority of which she gathered from the national bureau’s personnel list, and one of them was named Kjell Göran Hedberg.
Pettersson, Salminen, Trost, Kovac, Östh, Johansson, Hedberg, Eriksson, Berg, Kronstedt. Ten names, and the surnames were not in alphabetical order.
“I recognize Östh,” said Ruotsalainen. “That was another one of those Solna detectives. Also a fucking creep, but what his first name was I don’t remember.”
“Take all the time you need,” said Holt. “We’re in no hurry.”
“Me neither,” said Ruotsalainen. “These days I have all the time in the world. Before it was a lot of running around.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not the foggiest. They’re all cops, I suppose, so I’m sure I’ve met them too.”
“After the arrest out in Solna in 1976 you and your guy at the time were convicted of narcotics crimes. It happened in Solna district court in April of 1976. I have the conviction here,” said Mattei, pushing a plastic sleeve over to Ruotsalainen. “What you said, that you were seventeen when you were arrested. That adds up; it says so in the conviction. Before you look at it I want you to think one more time about the name of that policeman who testified against you back then.”
“Is this one of those psych things you learned at the police academy?” asked Ruotsalainen.
“Think now, Marja,” said Mattei. “Think about that policeman who testified against you. Look at the list of names in front of you.”
“Kjell Göran Hedberg,” said Ruotsalainen suddenly. “That was his name. Damn, girlfriend. You’re a fucking magician.
“That name,” she continued. “I remember it. When that Nazi was sitting up there on the stand about to lie through his oath before he stepped on it for real. I, Kjell Göran Hedberg, do promise and assure…Guess whether I remember. How many people do you think there are who call me Marja Lovisa Ruotsalainen? Not even my mom.”
Before they left they talked with her about her then boyfriend, Jorma Kalevi Orjala, who had been struck by a hit-and-run driver and drowned in the Karlberg Canal a few months after the murder of the prime minister.
“Cully,” said Ruotsalainen and sighed. “He was a real fucking crazy, he was. Although I doubt that’s why you came here.”
“No,” said Holt, who did not like lying, even to someone like Marja Ruotsalainen. “But we’ve read the investigation. According to the report, it was most likely a so-called hit-and-run accident. Someone hit him from behind with a car. He was thrown over the edge of the pier and down into the water where he happened to drown.”
“Happened to,” Ruotsalainen snorted. “Cully wasn’t the sort that things ‘happened to.’ He was murdered. You must have realized that anyway?”
“In that case we’ve come for his sake too,” said Holt, looking at her seriously. “So who do you think murdered him?”
“I wish I could say it was that fucking Hedberg,” said Ruotsalainen. “But I don’t really think so. There were a fucking lot of people who wanted to kill Cully. That evening, for example, he was at home with a girlfriend of mine, drinking and screwing her. He needed to I guess, and I was sitting in jail,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Do you have any names?” said Mattei. “For example, what was the name of your girlfriend that Cully visited? Maybe you have some idea who may have run him over?”
“Course I have,” said Ruotsalainen. “The problem is that they’re all dead. Cully’s dead, my girlfriend is dead. Her guy at the time, who possibly ran over Cully after he came staggering out of his girl’s pad, is dead too. You should have been here twenty years ago. Why weren’t you, by the way?”
“Good question,” said Anna Holt as they sat in the car on the way to the police building. “Why didn’t we hold that interview twenty years ago?”
“I couldn’t hold any interviews at that time,” said Mattei. “I was only eleven when Palme died. It was Mom who did the interrogating at home with us. I used to sit on the edge of my bed in my room, and Mom squatted down in front of me and held my hand. Besides, that colleague of ours did make an attempt. To be fair,” said Mattei, nodding emphatically.
“Although he wasn’t as sharp as we are,” said Holt. “So he can just go to hell. An ordinary fucking pig.”
“Guys,” said Mattei, shrugging her shoulders. “There’s only one thing you need them for.”
What has happened to little Lisa? thought Holt. Is she becoming a grown woman?
“But not Johan, exactly,” said Holt.
“No, not him,” said Mattei. “He’s actually good for several things. You can talk with him, and he’s really good at cleaning and cooking too.”
“Can he see around corners too?” asked Holt for some reason.
“No,” said Mattei and sighed. “Only Johansson can.”
Not quite yet, perhaps, thought Holt.
77
The day after the meeting at the Turing Society Johansson decided to figure out who had dissuaded private banker Theo Tischler from investing his personal money in the pursuit of Olof Palme’s murderer. It was just a sudden impulse, and as so often before he immediately gave in to it. Whatever this might be good for, really, he thought as he called the woman he wanted to talk with.
“I would like to speak with attorney Helena Stein,” said Johansson as soon as her secretary answered.
“Who may I say is calling?” asked the secretary.
“My name is Lars Martin Johansson,” said Johansson.
“What does this concern?” asked the secretary.
“We know each other,” said Johansson. “Say hello to her and ask if I can meet her. Preferably immediately.”
“One moment,” said the secretary.
Know each other, thought Johansson. That’s one way to put it. To be exact he’d spoken with her only once before. Just over seven years ago, when he was operations head of the secret police and responsible for carrying out a background check, because then undersecretary Helena Stein was going to be appointed minister of defense. At the time he discovered that she had a history that threatened to catch up with her after twenty-five years and would definitely put an end to her political career. He regretted having made this discovery and then congratulated himself for having rescued her from a fate that would have been considerably worse than that. In another time, when both she and he had been living another life.
“The attorney says it will be fine in half an hour, at her office,” the secretary reported.
“Thanks,” said Johansson, hanging up.
The office was on Sibyllegatan in Östermalm. A large, old-fashioned apartment with considerable space between the wall panels and the ceiling frieze. Painstakingly remodeled as a law office, which judging by the nameplate on the door she shared with three associates. A very stylish woman received him. She even managed to nod amiably and smile while being forced to mobilize all her strength to do so.
“Let me say one thing before we start,” said Johansson as soon as he sat down in the chair in front of her desk. “My visit with you here today has nothing whatsoever to do with that story we talked about the last time we met. So you can put your mind at rest.”
“So it shows that clearly,” said Helena Stein. Then she smiled again and this time it was for real.
“I need your help,” said Johansson.
“I’ll be ha
ppy to help you if I can,” said Helena Stein.
Then Johansson told her about his errand. Obviously without going into what it was really about. About why her cousin, the private banker Theo Tischler, decided not to give money to support Hans Holmér’s private investigation of the Kurds’ involvement in the murder of Olof Palme. Had Theo Tischler possibly consulted with her? A high-ranking member of the Social Democratic Party. A senior official with close ties to the government. It would be easy enough for someone like Stein to figure out what he was really looking for, thought Johansson as soon as he stopped talking.
“Holmér,” said Stein, shaking her head with surprise. “When would this have been?”
“In the spring of 1987,” said Johansson. A few months after he was fired, he thought.
“No,” said Helena Stein. “If Theo says that, then he remembers wrong. It was much later that he came to me and wanted to talk about it. Many years after Hans Holmér disappeared from the Palme investigation. In the spring of 1987 there was no reason to ask me for advice about such things. I was an ordinary, newly hatched attorney who was working at a law firm. I’ve heard gossip about that in the family, that Holmér wanted money from Theo, but that the whole thing ran into the sand like so many of Theo’s impulses and ideas.”
“Do you remember when that was? When he asked you for advice?”
“Much later,” said Stein. “Must have been in the late nineties. I was undersecretary, that I remember. At a guess, 1999. Just a year or so before you and I met, by the way.”
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