Free Falling, As If in a Dream

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

  “Yes, boss. That Bäckström. Yes, boss. That Thulin. Yes, boss.”

  “Go down and tell the little fatso to behave properly,” said Johansson and sighed.

  87

  She was a woman who seemed to live a quiet life. With one living relative. A brother who, according to what he reported to the Swedish authorities, had moved to Spain twenty-four years ago and was now living at a residential hotel in Sitges, south of Barcelona. He had kept that address for ten years or so, but when he last renewed his Swedish passport seven years ago he had apparently moved to 189 Calle Asunción, in Palma de Mallorca. Two Spanish addresses in twenty-four years. That was all.

  I hope he’s still living there, thought Lewin, who had spent all of his adult life in the same apartment at Gärdet.

  Then he filled out all the papers needed for Europol to request that the Spanish police make a discreet address check on him, in addition to searching for Kjell Göran Hedberg in all the other registries to which they had access. Obviously he had also put a check mark in the box that dealt with individuals with a “suspected connection to terrorism.”

  That may put some urgency even into the Spanish colleagues, thought Jan Lewin, though he was normally not the least bit prejudiced. It’s nice that you don’t need to put things in envelopes and lick stamps anymore, he thought as he e-mailed his request to the officer at the national bureau who took care of the practical aspects and conveniently enough sat three doors down on the same corridor.

  “Do you have a moment, boss?” asked Johansson’s secretary as she knocked lightly on his open door.

  “Sit down, damn it,” Johansson hissed, waving toward the TV that was in one corner of the room.

  SWAT team, Parliament Building, what’s happening? she thought.

  “What is going on?” she asked.

  “Bäckström,” said Johansson. “The little fathead has apparently gone completely crazy. Barricaded himself in the Christian Democrats’ office and has taken that pharisee Alf Thulin hostage. I’ve sent the boys from the SWAT team to talk some sense into the bastard.”

  The SWAT team did as they had been taught to do when they were going to talk sense into someone like Bäckström. Someone who was suspected of being both armed and dangerous. In this case an extremely unusual police officer who unfortunately had access to the same service weapons as all his normal colleagues. The same Bäckström who regrettably—and literally—was standing in the way of the team’s response itself.

  First the door fell on him when they broke it down. Then the shock grenade that they threw in exploded only a foot or two from his head. Then four of them threw themselves over him and put both hand and foot restraints on him. All within the course of about ten seconds. The response leader had of course timed the operation.

  When Bäckström was carried out on a stretcher and lifted into the ambulance, he was both unconscious and equipped with the necessary shackles. Ready for further transport to the psychiatric ER at Huddinge hospital and accompanied to be on the safe side by an escort from the same SWAT force that had nearly killed him.

  During the following twenty-four hours a dozen of his bosses with the Stockholm police would devote the majority of their time to discussing how dangerous he really was. Because opinions diverged, finally they called his previous boss, Lars Martin Johansson, and asked for his assessment.

  “A short, fat bastard who spouts nonsense all the time,” Johansson summarized.

  “Do you assess Bäckström as constituting a danger to the life and safety of others, boss?” asked the psychologist Johansson was talking with.

  “Bäckström,” Johansson snorted. “Are you kidding me?” Dr. Fridolin, he thought. What kind of fucking name is that?

  But they got no farther than that.

  88

  On Friday morning Johansson called in Anna Holt and informed her that she and Lisa Mattei would be traveling to Mallorca on Monday morning. He had already organized a discreet link to the local police colleagues. All resources would be placed at their disposal. No stone would be left unturned.

  Johansson even made sure the Spanish police would be responsible for the investigators’ security during their stay. Not only the usual services provided to colleagues. Their contact person was a Spanish police superintendent about his age, who was acting head of the detective squad in Palma and an excellent fellow, according to one of his friends who was Spain’s own Johansson. Among real Spanish constables he was called El Pastor, “the Pastor.” Not because he was particularly God-fearing but mostly because he looked the part. A tall man with a stern, clerical exterior who could get even the most hardened offender to open up and cry his heart out on his bony shoulders.

  “Mallorca,” said Holt. An address seven years old that Hedberg himself had provided, she thought. The same Hedberg who probably had very strong reasons to keep away from the police.

  “We have to start somewhere,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders. “Besides, I’m pretty sure that’s where he is.”

  “How can you be so sure?” asked Holt.

  “A feeling,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders.

  “A feeling?”

  “Yes,” said Johansson. “You know, the sort of feeling you get sometimes, which means that some of us can see around corners.

  “That’s where the bastard is hiding out,” he continued. “I feel it in my marrow. So now it’s a matter of hiding in the bushes and not scaring him off.”

  “The prosecutor,” said Holt. “I assume you’ve reached an understanding with the prosecutor?”

  “Of course,” said Johansson. “You’re going to get all the papers within an hour. Signed and ready. Talk with the cashier if you need money. I get the idea the girls leave early on Fridays. If they’ve already left I can arrange it for you,” he added generously and tapped the pocket with his wallet in it.

  “You’ve talked with the prosecutor,” said Holt. “With the prosecutor in the Palme investigation?”

  “Are you crazy, Anna?” said Johansson. “I’ve talked with our own prosecutor. The one I always use. He’s completely informed about my line of reasoning.”

  “So what is that?”

  “That there are reasonable grounds to suspect that it was Hedberg who murdered Jorma Kalevi Orjala. That so-called hit-and-run accident, if you recall. In reality it was probably the case that Hedberg simply got a witness out of the way. One more witness. Just like he did that time when he robbed the post office on Dalagatan.”

  “Are you joking?” said Holt. “A case that was written off in May of 1986.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having a few papers with you,” said Johansson. “As far as age goes it’s fresher than Palme anyway. Besides, we have actually opened it up again. The colleagues at the group for cold cases took it over from Stockholm yesterday. High time they get something they can chew on.”

  “But, Lars—”

  “Listen now, Anna,” Johansson interrupted. “Sure. I understand exactly what you intend to say. Forget about Jorma Kalevi. I want Hedberg back here. I want him home in peace and quiet, and I don’t give a damn how it happens, purely formally. Try to be a little practical, for once. Are we agreed?”

  “No,” said Anna Holt. “But I understand what you mean.” Besides, you’re the one who decides, she thought.

  89

  That same Friday morning Bäckström woke up in a bed in the psych ward at Huddinge hospital. A friendly minded fellow patient, who was only suffering from low-level compulsive thoughts at the moment and even had permission to visit the hospital store, sneaked the morning papers to him and asked for an autograph considering that Bäckström was on the front page of both Metro and Svenskan. Not by name, true, but still.

  On the other hand Dagens Nyheter had been more restrained and even left an opening for alternative explanations. There it was said that a police officer on sick leave had contacted “a well-known member of parliament to make complaints against the National Bureau of Cr
iminal Investigation’s way of running the Palme investigation,” but what happened beyond that was extremely unclear. According to the same newspaper’s reliable sources, it had never been a question of a “hostage situation.” The member of parliament in question had not submitted a police report and could not be reached for comment. The police response on the other hand was reported to both the Stockholm police department for internal investigations and to the ombudsman at the Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Chancellor of Justice.

  By afternoon Bäckström had already been moved to the neurology department, where first his round head and bruised body had been stuffed into a torpedo tube of an X-ray machine. Then he got boiled cod with egg sauce, elderberry juice, and rhubarb pie. Before he fell asleep he had to stuff almost half a dozen tablets of various colors into himself, and when he woke up the following morning one of the Stockholm police department’s human resources consultants was sitting beside his bed, observing him with a worried expression.

  “How’s it going, Bäckström?” asked the consultant, patting him on the arm.

  “What’s happening?” Bäckström wheezed. “Is there war?”

  “It’s over now, Bäckström,” said the consultant, patting him a little more to be on the safe side.

  “Now if you just take it easy and rest up, everything’s going to work out fine.”

  “That’s what you say,” said Bäckström. What the hell is he saying? he thought.

  “You’re soon going to meet your very own support person,” said the consultant. “The police chief himself has assigned Dr. Fridolin to that task. You know, the one you met at the gender sensitivity course where you had your stroke. Fridolf Fridolin, you know.”

  “Little Frippy,” said Bäckström. What the hell is wrong with an ordinary shot to the back of the neck?

  “It’s going to work out, Bäckström,” the consultant assured him. “Now just take it easy and—”

  “I want to talk with the union,” Bäckström interrupted. “Besides, I demand to be guarded so those fucking SWAT terrorists can’t make another attempt to kill me. Just none of my colleagues. Bring over some reliable half-apes from Securitas.”

  On Monday he had been discharged and could go home. Fridolin, who had been at his side faithfully the whole weekend, drove him and even accompanied him up to his cozy pad.

  “I’ll see to it that someone from home services comes and cleans for you, Eve,” said Fridolin with a faint smile as soon as he stepped inside the door and was confronted with the Bäckströmian home sweet home.

  “Sit down, Little Frippy,” said Bäckström, pointing to his couch. “We’re going to have a serious talk, you and me.”

  Then Bäckström gave the good doctor his memorandum about the conspiracy behind the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. Complete with crime analysis, profiles of the four perpetrators, and possible motives. In addition, he produced a copy of the crime report against Waltin for his efforts with the candlestick on Walpurgis Eve, 1968.

  “But this is terrible, Eve,” said a shaken Fridolin when he finished reading half an hour later. “This is even worse than that movie by Oliver Stone about the assassination of Kennedy. We have to see to it immediately that you get security protection, so they don’t—”

  “Calm down, Little Frippy,” said Bäckström, raising his hand like a traffic cop. “We shouldn’t get ourselves excited unnecessarily and just rush off. Get me a beer from the fridge, then I’ll explain how we should set the whole thing up. Get one for yourself too, if you want,” he added, because he felt that he was starting to return to his old friendly, generous self.

  Wednesday, October 10.

  Outside Cap de Formentor in Canal de Menorca

  “O blessedness to be young in morning light at sea,” thinks the young count Malte Moritz von Putbus on his journey to the West Indies with the three-masted barque Speranza. We are traveling in a novel by Sven Delblanc, and the journey takes place the same year Gustav III was murdered at the Opera masquerade in Stockholm. The protagonist of the book is Malte Moritz, called Mignon by his friends. Young, idealistic, yearning for freedom, and still he has not discovered that Speranza carries a load of slaves. Much less has he given a thought to the fact that a hard fate can also put the freest man in fetters or completely destroy him. What the solitary man on board Esperanza thinks and feels more than two hundred years later we do not know. There is little to suggest that he is much like Malte Moritz as an individual, but seen from a distance, and in the morning light at sea, there is still much to suggest that he, at least at this moment, thinks and feels the same way. The calm breathing of the sea, the rustling of the waves against the stern, the sun smoke that encompasses him, the salt-drenched breeze that cools body and head. Then the rudder, controlled by his will and resting in his hands. At any time at all he can change course or completely redirect it. Security, freedom, “O blessedness…”

  90

  Ten days earlier, Monday, October 1.

  Headquarters of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation on Kungsholmen in Stockholm

  On Monday the first of October, Anna Holt and Lisa Mattei traveled to Mallorca to try to find Kjell Göran Hedberg, and Lars Martin Johansson showed a new side of himself. And did so in a wordy, roundabout way.

  During the time Lars Martin Johansson had been a detective in the field he had also—quite literally—put his mitts on numerous murderers and violent criminals. The majority by sending letters or calling them and asking them to appear at the police station for a little talk. A few scattered times he and his associate Jarnebring had made home visits without asking for permission first. Normally he and his best friend were enough, and during his entire active duty neither of them ever needed to reach for his service weapon. One time, “means one time,” Johansson clarified, there was a “crazy Yugoslav” who had “behaved a little stupidly” and started wrestling with Jarnebring, who in turn solved the problem with the classic police chokehold, “you know the one that was prohibited thirty years ago,” while Johansson put the handcuffs on him.

  “He was mostly sorry, the wretch,” said Johansson. “Who wouldn’t be if you killed your best friend because you got everything turned around?”

  It had always been like that. It was still that way, in all essentials, and it would be in the future as well if Johansson had his way. Every drawn service weapon, every siren turned on, all harsh words, even every hasty, unplanned movement, was nothing other than an expression of police shortcomings that fortunately and almost never belonged to reality. Possibly with one exception. A former colleague whose name was Kjell Göran Hedberg.

  “So be careful, ladies, and call home if anything happens,” said Johansson.

  “Above all,” he said, raising an extra warning finger, “don’t come up with any risky moves. Hedberg is a malignant bastard. If he shows up and starts making a fuss, shoot him.”

  “Are you saying we should take our service weapons along?” said Holt.

  “You can always arrange that on-site,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders. “You can’t drag along that kind of shit on an airplane, especially these days when you can’t even take a bottle of aftershave or a can of liverwurst. It’s probably better if you fix that when you get there. I’ve already notified them about that, by the way.”

  Then he gave them a real bear hug. Put his arms around their shoulders and squeezed. The right one around Mattei and the left around Holt, and no particular ulterior motives were involved.

  Lewin would stay in Stockholm to put order into all the papers. What Johansson would do was less clear. Look after his own business, presumably, and in other words everything was exactly as usual.

  “He’s actually kind of sweet,” said Mattei as soon as their plane lifted off from Arlanda. “Johansson, that is.”

  “Oh well,” said Holt. “Not only.”

  “He smells good too,” said Mattei, who didn’t seem to be listening. “He smells like safety in some way. Clean clo
thes, aftershave—he smells like a real old-fashioned guy in fact.”

  “Lisa,” said Holt, looking at her.

  “Yes?”

  “Give it up now,” said Holt.

  “Okay,” said Mattei, taking out her pocket computer. If you’re going to be that way, she thought.

  91

  Their Spanish guardian angel, El Pastor, was obviously a man who took his assignment with the greatest seriousness. As soon as their plane landed and taxied up to the gate, he was standing there, right outside the door to the plane, and when he caught sight of Holt and Mattei he nodded to them and took them aside to the little electric airport vehicle that was waiting.

  A tall, skinny man in his sixties with jet-black hair, friendly, watchful eyes, and not the least like the Fernandel character who haunted Holt’s fantasies. A few feet behind him stood his two assistants, half his age, who would apparently take care of the practicalities. They were several inches shorter, considerably broader, with narrow, expressionless eyes and hands crossed over their jeans-clad crotches.

  Not like Hans and Fritz—the Katzenjammer Kids—more like Hans and Hans, and the only thing missing was the writing on their foreheads that clearly stated what they did, so you didn’t confuse them with a couple of professional Mediterranean hit men.

  Holt and Mattei did not see any trace of Spanish indifference either. Fifteen minutes later they were already in an unmarked police car en route from the airport to their hotel in central Palma.

  “I assume that first you’ll want to check in,” said El Pastor, smiling courteously.

  “Then I thought I would suggest a visit to my office where we can discuss your needs. After that, a simple dinner at a nearby restaurant that I often frequent myself, and where quite excellent seafood is served. Assuming you ladies don’t have other wishes, of course?”

  Holt immediately accepted the terms. Find Hedberg, she thought. Work on your tan along the way. That’s how it will be.