Already in his fourth year Hedberg got an AB in history, and along with two classmates shared the honorable first place. Two years later he had been raised to a small a, or “passed with distinction,” which he then retained for the rest of his schooling. On the other hand, he lost first place. Statistics on the class’s final grades showed that one of his classmates got a capital A, and that he was one of three who got a lowercase a.
I’ll bet the others were girls, thought Lisa Mattei.
In metalworking and woodworking he was one of the better in the class and had an average of AB during his last three years in school. The same AB that gave him an honorable shared second place in woodshop and a shared ninth place overall. Of the first six places in the class, there were five needleworkers, divided into two capital and three small a’s, but only one pitiful woodworker.
Wonder which ones they might have been, thought Mattei.
In gymnastics including games and sports Hedberg had been best in class throughout his time in school. With one strange exception that happened when he was in eighth grade. Already in fourth grade he had been the only one to earn a small a, and starting in grade five he had a capital A. With one exception. In the fall semester of eighth grade he dropped to a small a, which made him one of four. In the spring semester he got an AB and slipped down to a shared eighth place in a class with a total of twenty-four pupils. Then he found his way again. He received a capital A in the fall semester in ninth grade, and the only one with that grade when he finished the nine-year comprehensive school in Vaxholm in June of 1960.
Problems with puberty or something else, thought Lisa Mattei, and five minutes later she had already decided. She simply had to talk with Hedberg’s old teacher. Regardless of Johansson, Wiklander, the devil, and all the other brethren who despite their worthless statistics tried to oppress her and her sisters.
Hedberg’s teacher was named Ossian Grahn and he appeared in the class photo with Kjell Göran Hedberg and his classmates. A short man in his thirties with cheerful eyes and unruly blond hair. After fifteen minutes of the usual tapping on the computer, Lisa Mattei also knew most of what she needed to know about him.
Former secondary school teacher Ossian Grahn was born in 1930 and retired in 1995. He had been a widower for five years, with two grown children, lived in a single-family house on Båtmansvägen in Vaxholm, and was in the phone book with name, title, address, and number. A search on the Internet yielded a hundred hits besides and showed that Ossian seemed to be a very active retiree. Not only in the retirees’ association in Vaxholm, where he had been on the board for many years, but also because of his intellectual interests. Interests that in the last five years alone had left traces in the form of three published writings. A book with the title Boatmen and Peasants in Southern Roslagen, where he was the sole author. An article in a larger work on Vaxholm’s fortress. Another article, “Ancient Monuments in Roslagen,” published as an offprint by the local historical society in collaboration with the municipality of Norrtälje.
He also answered the phone on the second ring.
In front of her Lisa Mattei saw a small, energetic retiree with cheerful eyes and unruly blond hair, which meant that playing with anything other than open cards was inconceivable.
“My name is Lisa Mattei,” said Mattei. “I’m a police officer and work at the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Stockholm. I need to talk with you.”
“Now I’m really curious,” Grahn replied, sounding just as cheerful as his photo promised. “When did you have in mind?”
“Preferably right away,” said Lisa Mattei.
“Shall we say in an hour?” said Grahn. “Because I’m assuming you drive a car and work in that ugly big brown building on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. The one you always see on TV as soon as some poor soul gets in trouble.”
Lisa Mattei gathered up the papers she thought she would need with the class photo from 1960 at the top of the pile, borrowed a service vehicle, drove to Vaxholm, and met former secondary schoolteacher Ossian Grahn. He was seventy-seven, but judging by his eyes not a day older than in Mattei’s almost fifty-year-old photo. The same Ossian Grahn who won her heart as soon as they sat down in his tidy living room and he served her the first cup of coffee.
“A question out of curiosity,” said Grahn. “Is this Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei or Doctor of Philosophy Lisa Mattei who does me this honor? I looked you up on the Internet, in case you’re wondering.”
“Good question,” said Mattei. “I actually think you’re having a visit from both.”
Then Mattei took out the class photo from 1960. The same photo that aroused Dr. Mattei’s curiosity and made her want to ask certain questions. For reasons that inspector Mattei unfortunately was prevented from going into more closely, but which essentially concerned one of his pupils in the graduating class at Vaxholm school in 1960.
“I brought the class photo with me,” said Lisa Mattei, giving it to him.
“There’s one thing you should know, Lisa,” said Ossian Grahn. “I was a teacher for over forty years. I have had thousands of pupils over the years. As far as this class is concerned I want to recall that I was their classroom teacher for three years, in grades seven, eight, and nine. I had them in Swedish and history, and one more reason I remember that is that the same autumn I started working at Norra Latin in Stockholm. It was there I got my first permanent position as an assistant principal.”
“Do you remember any of the ones in the picture?” asked Mattei.
“Two,” said Ossian Grahn. “And I sincerely hope it’s not Gertrud who’s the reason I’ve had a visit from Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei.”
Gertrud stood in the back row to the left. Cute and well-dressed with long dark hair hanging over her shoulders. A shy smile toward the camera, fifteen years old but judging by her eyes considerably more mature than that. A father who owned the ICA grocery store in the middle of town and a mother who was a teacher and colleague of Ossian Grahn. She was one pupil among the thousands he had taught during a long life as a teacher.
“One of the best pupils I’ve ever had,” Ossian Grahn observed. “If we’re talking about such simple accomplishments as those that can be summarized in so-called grades,” he added.
“More then,” said Mattei.
“Gertrud is a very remarkable individual,” said Grahn. “She’s something as rare as a very charming person. She is educated, she is talented, and she is both kind and decent to others. She’s good-looking too. Always has been, by the way. I’ve known her since she was a little girl.”
“Do you still see her?”
“She’s a doctor. Head of the district medical center here in Vaxholm,” said Grahn. “Until a few years ago she worked at Karolinska in Stockholm, but then her new husband got sick and took early retirement and she moved back here. They actually live just a few blocks away. In her parents’ old house, by the way. We usually say hi to each other a few times a week. Her name is now Rosenberg. Since she remarried. Her new husband also worked as a doctor. Although now he’s on a disability pension, as I said.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about Gertrud,” said Lisa Mattei. “Who was the other one who—”
“Let me guess,” said Ossian Grahn. “You’ve come here to talk about Kjell? About Kjell Hedberg.”
“Why do you think that? Why do you remember him?”
“Usually there are two kinds of pupils that someone like me remembers. On the one hand those like Gertrud, whom you always remember with joy, and there are not all that many of them, you should know. Yes, and then there are your problem children. And unfortunately there are usually quite a few more of them. Ordinary rowdy kids, although some of them can be really charming, and, unfortunately, there is the occasional little gangster. But the great majority of them were only the kind you really felt sorry for.”
“Hedberg was a rowdy kid?” asked Mattei. Let’s start there, she thought, because it was the last thing she could imagine.<
br />
“If it had only been that good,” said Grahn, shaking his unruly light hair.
“It was worse than that?” said Mattei. Now this is starting to resemble something, she thought.
“I hope he was unique,” said Grahn, squirming uneasily in his chair.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Kjell Hedberg is actually the only pupil, during my entire life as a teacher, that I was afraid of. Even though he never misbehaved. Not in my class in any event. Even though I was his homeroom teacher and even though I was twice his age. There was something about his eyes and his body language, his way of looking at you, that could be terrifying, to put it bluntly. As soon as something didn’t suit him.”
“Now I’m the one who’s getting curious,” said Mattei. “You have to explain.”
“I don’t think it’s as simple as that he was an evil person. No fifteen-year-old is evil in that way. I think they only get that way later in life.”
“So what was it?”
“I think he didn’t understand the difference between good and bad,” said Grahn. “The only thing that meant anything in Kjell’s world was how he perceived you and whether he thought you were against him. It was probably my good luck that I instructed him in his favorite subject, history.”
“He was interested in history?”
“Yes, in the way the very worst sorts are. He could rattle off lists of monarchs like running water even if you woke him up in the middle of the night. He knew the time and place of every battle, and his view of history was frankly deplorable. It was only about major personalities. Alexander the Great, Hannibal and Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, Napoleon and Hitler. Great men who determined the fate of the world and in passing, so to speak, gave content and meaning to the lives of the rest of us ordinary mortals. I remember when we were reading about Gustav III. He came up to me after a lecture and told me that he was convinced that Gustav III was homosexual. He already knew that Gustav V had been. His father, the master pilot, told him that. About the old king who tried to rape his chauffeur, who drove into the ditch and nearly killed them both. Who had a curve in the road south of Stockholm named after him…I tried to reassure him by pointing out that they were not even related to each other.”
“So how did he take that?”
“He had some long explanation about this being due to the inbreeding in our royal family. He knew they weren’t related, naturally. It was about some kind of genetic depletion, and that one reason Gustav III had been shot was that it had been discovered that he was homosexual.”
“But he still got a small a as a final grade.”
“Yes, he did,” Ossian Grahn observed and sighed. “It was mostly that he knew those lists of monarchs and all the dates, and then I guess I was cowardly, to put it simply.”
“His grades in gymnastics,” said Mattei. “Something happened there when he was in eighth grade. Is that something you remember?”
“Yes,” sighed Ossian Grahn. “I was his homeroom teacher, so I got more than my allotted share of that story. From Kjell, his father the pilot, and his gymnastics teacher.”
“So what happened?”
“When Kjell started eighth grade he got a new teacher, and already in the first class they were quarreling like two roosters in a henhouse that’s too small.”
“Why?”
“If you ask me I think it was because they were too much alike. Not that I know much about gymnastics and sports and such, but Kjell probably deserved the grades he always got. Considering his age he was unbelievably agile and strong. Best in school in soccer, handball, and ice hockey. Not to mention running and swimming and everything else.”
“Was there anything in particular that happened?”
“I think the whole thing started when our school team was playing soccer against the team from Vallentuna. It was at the start of the fall semester. Kjell’s new gymnastics teacher was the coach, and in some situation things must have heated up between them. One thing led to another, and in the first half his teacher told him to leave the field and sent in one of his teammates instead. Kjell seems to have gone straight to the dressing room, showered, changed, and hitchhiked home to Vaxholm. That’s the way it was. Constant controversies.”
“But the last year in school he was back on track again,” Mattei observed. “I noticed he got his capital A back in the fall semester. Were they finally on good terms?”
“No,” said Ossian Grahn, shaking his head. “He got a new teacher he got along with better.”
“So what happened to the other one?”
“He was forced to quit,” said Ossian Grahn.
“Quit? Why?”
“Only a few days before the fall semester was to begin he was in a serious car accident. He lived a few miles north of Vaxholm, out by Österåker, and one morning when he was driving to school to attend a meeting, where the teaching staff was getting ready for the start of the semester, he was in an accident. Drove into the ditch. It could have been really bad. Severe concussion and a number of broken bones. He was in the hospital for several months and he never came back to us.”
“So what happened?”
“He seems to have lost a front wheel,” said Ossian Grahn. “True, he drove like a maniac, but there was a lot of talk.”
“About Kjell Hedberg?”
“Not as far as I recall,” said Ossian Grahn, shaking his head. “He was only sixteen years old. It was the usual gossip about infidelity and jealousy, here and there. There was a lot of that out here in the country, you know. At the same time I have the definite impression that the police here wrote it off as an ordinary accident. That he is supposed to have been careless when he changed the tires on his car. Didn’t tighten the lug nuts properly. You know what,” said Ossian Grahn, looking seriously at Mattei, “perhaps you should talk with Gertrud, since you’re here anyway. I’ll give you her number.”
“With Gertrud Rosenberg? About the car accident?”
“No,” said Ossian Grahn, shaking his head. “If it were only that good.”
81
The devil can stick it up his you-know-what, thought a contented Lisa Mattei as she drove onto the highway toward Stockholm three hours later. At the same moment her cell phone rang.
“My office in half an hour,” said Johansson, sounding like he meant it.
“You have to give me at least an hour, boss,” said Mattei. Goodness, she thought.
“For Christ’s sake, it doesn’t take an hour to drive from Vaxholm,” said Johansson.
Goodness, goodness, thought Mattei.
“There’s a lot of traffic, actually, and driving is not exactly my strong suit,” Mattei lied.
“My office,” said Johansson. “As soon as you set foot in the building go straight to my office,” he repeated, whereupon he hung up without further ado.
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, thought Mattei, giving it a little extra gas to manage what she intended to do before she met her top boss.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him furious, she thought a little more than an hour later when she sat down in the visitor’s chair in front of his large desk.
“How did you know I was out in Vaxholm, boss?” she asked.
“Our colleague Wiklander happened to see you down in the garage. Don’t come in here and say you don’t know we have GPS and tracking equipment nowadays in almost all our vehicles. I know to the last inch what you’ve been up to.”
Didn’t think of that, thought Mattei, shaking her head strenuously to stop the attack of the giggles she felt was on its way.
“You’ve been parked for over five hours outside Båtmansvägen 3 in Vaxholm, and I assume it’s pure chance that Kjell Göran Hedberg’s old homeroom teacher—that light-haired little bastard who looks like his pupils in that photo I was stupid enough to send you—has lived at the same address his whole life.”
“I actually had no idea about that,” said Lisa Mattei. That he’d lived there hi
s whole life, that is.
“Forget about that now,” said Johansson, glaring at her acidly. “Despite what both I and Wiklander said to you, you’ve been sitting chatting with him for hours. Despite the most obvious risk of a leak. What do you know about him and Hedberg? Maybe they’ve been involved since they met in junior high?”
“I don’t think they’ve spoken to each other, actually. Not since Hedberg finished school.”
“No,” said Johansson. “And why do you think that?”
“I talked with one of Hedberg’s classmates too. She was pretty convinced it was that way.”
“You did what?” said Johansson, looking at her in amazement. She’s sitting here fucking with me, he thought.
“I talked with one of his classmates,” Mattei repeated. “She lived right in the vicinity, so I left my car and walked to her house. In case Wiklander wonders,” she clarified.
“I hope,” said Johansson. “I hope…that you have an extremely good explanation,” he repeated, leaning heavily on his elbows.
“It’s actually better than that,” said Lisa Mattei.
“Lisa, Lisa,” sighed Johansson half an hour later. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I was hoping for another gold star,” said Lisa Mattei. “A giant one,” she clarified.
82
The following morning the transcript of the interview with district physician Gertrud Rosenberg, born in 1945, was on Johansson’s large desk.
The interview had been held in her home in Vaxholm. The interview leader was Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei. It was recorded on tape and already approved by the woman she had interviewed the day before. It took less than an hour to conduct, according to the times listed on the report. It was introduced with a brief summary by Mattei and concluded with her conveying to Gertrud Rosenberg a so-called disclosure prohibition.
Free Falling, As If in a Dream Page 48