Free Falling, As If in a Dream

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

  When the coffee was finished Martinez was given additional instructions for the rest of the day. Then Birgitta Hedberg went to the bathroom and left her handbag behind on the kitchen counter.

  As soon as she shut the door, Martinez fished the red cell phone out of the bag. She entered the number Wiklander had given her, and then ended the call the moment after she’d made contact with the recipient. Deleted the call from the phone’s memory. Put it back in the handbag and proceeded to clean away the traces of their little kaffeklatsch.

  Hope the old bag gets life, thought Linda Martinez, even though she had no idea why Birgitta’s cell phone number seemed to have almost decisive importance for her top boss.

  Fifteen minutes before Jan Lewin meant to go home for the day, Wiklander stepped into his office and his contented smile was answer enough to the question Lewin had had in mind for the past week.

  “The fifteenth of August at zero eight zero two hours Birgitta Hedberg made a call outside the country from her prepaid cell phone to a Spanish prepaid cell phone. The same time there as here,” Wiklander clarified. “The last cell tower that forwarded the call is on north Mallorca. A little over a mile from a little town called Puerto Pollensa. The call went on for seventeen minutes. You have both numbers and all the rest of it in your e-mail.”

  “I’ll call Holt immediately,” said Lewin.

  “Do that,” said Wiklander.

  93

  On Friday morning the fifth of October, Holt, Mattei, and their Spanish colleagues finally detected a sign of life from Kjell Göran Hedberg. True, it was seven months old, but compared with what they’d had before this was fresh produce. It was irritating that the tip had been there all along. Not at the detective squad in Palma, but instead with the so-called terrorist squad at Guardia Civil’s headquarters in Madrid.

  In early March Hedberg had rented a car at the Hertz office at the airport in Málaga. It was the day after his sister had arrived there on vacation and checked into a hotel in the vicinity. Three days later he called Hertz and reported that the car had been stolen. They asked him to come to their main office in central Málaga. There a theft report had been filled out. A photocopy of Hedberg’s passport had been made and he told the little he knew.

  In the evening he had left the vehicle at the parking spot outside the hotel where he was staying. When he came out in the morning it was gone. That was all, and if they wanted to discuss it further they could reach him at his residence at 189 Calle Asunción in Palma de Mallorca.

  In the tourist country of Spain thousands of rental cars were stolen every year, and for many years such crimes had been routine matters in the pile. Something that the car rental company, the police, and the insurance company handled without involving the person who rented the car. In later years this had changed. Domestic and international terrorism was the cataylst. The Basque separatists in ETA, the Islamist terrorist bombing at the railroad in Madrid where two hundred Spaniards had lost their lives.

  Rental cars that were stolen, and especially those that were rented by foreign nationals, suddenly became interesting as a so-called pre-incident crime, one of several stages in the preparations for a terrorist attack. The registry that had been built up to sort out both stolen rental cars and those who had rented them already included tens of thousands of vehicles and individuals.

  One week earlier, Friday the twenty-eighth of September, the terrorist squad in Madrid had received an inquiry from their counterparts with the intelligence department at the Swedish National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. A fast-track inquiry because their own top boss had already been in contact and given orders that everything that came from that Swedish agency should be handled with the highest priority. For the time being at least.

  The basis for their questions was also nicely detailed. They were interested in the female Swedish citizen Birgitta Hedberg, age sixty, and her brother, Kjell Göran Hedberg, three years older. Birgitta Hedberg was said to have been in south Spain between the third and the tenth of March, where she stayed at the Aragon Hotel outside Marbella. On the other hand, where her brother was to be found was unknown, but at the same time his whereabouts were extremely interesting.

  They found Birgitta Hedberg immediately. Inquiries at the scene indicated that she had stayed at “the hotel in question during the week in question.” The computers in Madrid had already found her brother the following day in the registry of stolen rental cars. On the other hand he had not stayed at the Aragon Hotel in Marbella, as he had stated in his theft report to Hertz. There was no registration in his name in any event, and if he had shared a room with his sister, this must have happened in secret and in an ordinary twin bed. Considering that the car was picked up at the airport in Málaga, it was also strange to say the least that the man who rented it could not be found in the lists of flight passengers. Neither from Palma nor from any other destination on the day in question.

  His home address in Palma did not seem to tally either. On Thursday the case had therefore been sent on to the colleagues in Palma with a request for help. Considering the sender, it crossed El Pastor’s desk right before he was to go home to prepare for the evening’s dinner with his delightful Swedish colleagues. Suddenly there he was, the man he had been looking for in vain for more than a week, and not because he’d asked the ones whose help he had requested but because they were asking him. As sometimes happens when the one hand isn’t clear about what the other hand is up to.

  First El Pastor had given free rein to his Spanish temperament. Called his counterpart in Madrid and told him what he thought. Then he unleashed the remainder of his frustration on his incompetent co-workers.

  As soon as he’d regained his balance he had Holt and Mattei picked up from their hotel, conveyed them to yet another seafood restaurant by the blue sea, and did not say a word about what had happened the whole evening. Why ruin an otherwise pleasant evening with that kind of thing? thought El Pastor, looking deep into Anna Holt’s eyes as he raised his glass. What an amazing woman, he thought. As beautiful as a young gypsy from Seville, in Bizet’s opera.

  The following morning Hans and Hans drove back to the boarding house on Calle Asunción. Took the man in reception aside and in Holt’s and Mattei’s absence had a serious talk with him. It hadn’t helped. He still shook his head and refused to acknowledge any Kjell Göran Hedberg.

  “Nada,” said Hans and Hans with a joint shrug of the shoulders when they returned to the office in the afternoon to give a report to the dark Swede.

  “Nada,” Holt repeated with a faint smile just as her cell phone rang.

  “Hi, Anna,” said Lewin. “How’s the weather?”

  “Excellent,” Holt replied. “Are you thinking about packing your bathing trunks and coming down for the weekend?” You might be challenged to a duel by El Pastor, she thought.

  “If it were only that good,” said Lewin and sighed. “We’ve found her number now. She has made only one call, as it appears. The fifteenth of August this year. Hedberg’s birthday, as I’m sure you recall, and you have all the information in your e-mail. The call went via a tower that’s a few miles from a town called Puerto Pollensa on north Mallorca, but I don’t know exactly where that town is located. Probably simplest if you ask one of our Spanish colleagues.”

  “Can you wait a second, Jan?” said Holt, setting down her cell phone on her desk and turning around in the office where she was sitting. I knew it, she thought. I knew it. He’s been here the whole time.

  “Puerto Pollensa,” said Holt. “Is that anywhere near here?”

  “It’s sixty-five miles north. Takes about an hour, depending on the traffic,” answered Pedro Rovira, who spoke considerably better English than the other colleague, Pablo Ballester.

  94

  Bäckström had almost immediately seen about instilling some manners and style into his so-called support person Little Frippy. He was even getting sort of fond of the bastard, though he looked like a painful animal experiment and s
ounded like a bad book.

  Reminds me a little of Egon, after all, thought Bäckström. Though not as taciturn, of course.

  Egon was his dear goldfish, which an unusually malevolent colleague unfortunately had taken the opportunity to put to death when Bäckström was out in the countryside on a murder investigation. Then the colleague got rid of the body by flushing it down Bäckström’s toilet. Although that fate probably won’t befall Little Frippy, I hope, thought Bäckström. Because he—as stated—was starting to get attached to him.

  After only a few days Little Frippy had asked Bäckström to stop calling him Little Frippy.

  “Okay then,” said Bäckström. “If you’ll stop calling me Eve, I promise that your name will be Fridolin in the future.”

  “I thought you were called Eve,” said Little Frippy with surprise. “Don’t all your buddies call you Eve?”

  “I lied. I’ve never had any buddies,” said Bäckström. He shook his head and knocked back a little good malt.

  “That’s sad,” said Fridolin, sipping his beer and sounding like he meant what he said.

  “Do you want some good advice, Fridolin? From a wise man.”

  Fridolin nodded.

  “Whatever you do, don’t ever get yourself any buddies. You see, in this fucking world you can’t rely on a single fucking person.”

  With that the ice had been broken, and together with his now faithful squire Bäckström discussed how they would get his message out to the general public, whom all the shady powers that be had kept in the dark for more than twenty years.

  Fridolin got straight to the point and suggested that he should speak with the provincial police chief in Stockholm. He “had her ear” and was pretty sure he could arrange a meeting in which Bäckström could make a presentation about the truth behind the Palme murder.

  Nice to hear it’s not a more vital body part, thought Bäckström.

  “What’s the point of that?” he asked.

  According to Fridolin it was well worth trying. There were three good reasons. People like Waltin and his companions were at the top of Ms. Police Chief’s own political agenda. Fridolin had—as stated—her ear, and besides it was an open secret that she was being considered as the next national police commissioner.

  “Okay then,” said Bäckström. If it’s war, then so be it, he thought.

  95

  Puerto Pollensa on north Mallorca. They already knew this on Friday afternoon, and the fact that the cell tower that had finally conveyed the birthday call to Kjell Göran Hedberg was only a few miles from the place where former chief superintendent Claes Waltin had been found drowned fifteen years earlier had not surprised Anna Holt and Lisa Mattei in the least.

  Nor El Pastor, as it appeared.

  “I remember that a high-ranking colleague of yours from the Swedish secret police drowned up there many years ago,” he said for some reason when he, Holt, and Mattei were having lunch on Saturday.

  “Yes,” said Holt. “Yes,” she repeated, with a broader than usual smile.

  “I understand,” El Pastor replied, bowing his head slightly. “It’s very important to move ahead carefully,” he said. “I have a feeling he’s still there. Right in the vicinity, and soon we’ll arrest him.”

  Though not on Sunday. Not on Monday and not on Tuesday. Even though the activity around them increased by a hundred percent and even though neither Holt nor Mattei understood a word of anything their Spanish colleagues said to one another.

  “Patience.” El Pastor consoled them when he had them driven home that Tuesday evening. “Patience, my ladies.”

  At six o’clock the next morning he called Holt at her hotel, and because she had long been prepared she was already wide awake when she answered on the second ring.

  “We’ve found him,” said El Pastor. “Right now he’s at home asleep in his residence. If you want to be present at the arrest I can pick you up in fifteen minutes.”

  “We’ll see you in reception,” said Holt, rushing to the shower.

  Mattei was already waiting when Holt came down. At about the same time the police car braked outside the hotel entrance.

  “Have you thought about one thing, Anna?” said Mattei, looking at her watch.

  “What’s that?” said Holt, heading for the entrance.

  “Today is Wednesday the tenth of October. Only eight weeks since we were rolling our eyes at Johansson and all his strange ideas.”

  “No,” said Holt. “I hadn’t thought about that. Right now we have other things to think about.”

  96

  Driving to Puerto Pollensa was out of the question. Not even with flashing lights and a siren and even though at this time of the morning the trip took less than an hour.

  Only half a mile north of the hotel their car drove right out onto the beach, where a helicopter was waiting.

  El Pastor had of course helped them into the cabin, made sure their seats were okay and that they were properly secured in them. They were joined by El Pastor, Rovira, Ballester, and another three colleagues from the detective squad in Palma. Filled with the seriousness of the moment and equipped to meet it. Protective vests, automatic weapons, silent, closed faces.

  El Pastor helped Anna put on her vest, offered her a holster with a pistol, which she fastened to her belt with a metal clip. Lisa Mattei had to help herself and in addition declined the weapon that their colleague Rovira tried to slip her.

  “Okay, Lisa,” said Rovira. “As long as you keep behind me. Promise?” he asked with a broad smile.

  “Promise,” said Mattei, smiling back. God, how exciting, she thought. Just like everything Johansson had warned them about. Besides the fact that they were with the Spanish colleagues who were known to keep their hands closer to the trigger than did all her co-workers at home.

  Two minutes later they had company in the darkness above. The lights from another helicopter that positioned itself right alongside them. Also from the Guardia Civil and the largest model.

  “Our SWAT force,” El Pastor explained. “Two groups of six men. We’ll have him soon,” he said, patting Holt on the hand. “We’ll land in fifteen minutes, and we plan to make a forced entry into his house in no more than forty minutes, quarter past seven at the latest,” he clarified, indicating with his watch.

  “Is he still there?” asked Holt, who felt a certain unease. Not least considering what Johansson had said when he said goodbye to them.

  “To be sure,” said El Pastor, nodding.

  Then he told them. Late yesterday evening they got the decisive tip from one of their local informants. Only a few hours ago they had found the house where he lived. Hedberg lived in a small gatekeeper’s cottage on a large estate, apparently owned by a wealthy English couple who were seldom there. The estate was well isolated from the rest of the settlement up in the mountains, six miles southwest of Puerto Pollensa. Hedberg could live there for free in exchange for keeping an eye on the property, and apparently he had been living there for the past two years. What he was occupied with otherwise was still unclear.

  “Enjoying the good life, perhaps,” said El Pastor, smiling and shrugging his shoulders.

  “I talked with my colleagues up there only half an hour ago,” he continued. “Just after they located his house. The light above the outside door is on. The shades in the bedroom are pulled down. His car is parked in the yard outside. He has no watchdog to warn him. He’s sleeping, and there’s not a chance in the world he can escape.”

  In the end it still turned out just as Johansson had feared, thought Anna Holt half an hour later. She was squatting behind some bushes only fifty yards from the little gatekeeper’s yellow-pink limestone cottage where it was hoped that Kjell Göran Hedberg was getting his beauty sleep. Everything indicated that. Silent and peaceful. The light on above the outside door. The car in the yard. The shades pulled down. Just like El Pastor said.

  The twelve colleagues from the Spanish SWAT team silently approached from all directions.
Shadows of black, impossible to make out in the darkness that surrounded them. Black overalls, boots that went up to their thighs, helmets, bulletproof vests, automatic weapons. Then suddenly completely quiet.

  “Now,” whispered El Pastor where he squatted by Holt’s side, and at the same moment all hell broke loose.

  The whole thing was over in ten seconds. The sound of the outside door being knocked down as all three windows were smashed. The four shock grenades that were thrown in. The blasts, the flashes of light and the roars from those who came after. Then silence again, and for some reason Holt happened to think of Bäckström.

  After half a minute the response leader came out the door, now sagging to one side. Taking off his helmet, he rubbed his hand over his stubby hair and shrugged his shoulders regretfully.

  “Nada,” he said to El Pastor and shook his head.

  97

  Late on Tuesday evening the ninth of October Johansson got an unexpected call at home in his residence on Söder. It was Persson, and this was the first time he had ever called Johansson at home.

  “Persson,” said Johansson. “Nice to hear from you. All’s well, I hope.” He’s hard to hear, he thought. Poor reception. Must be all the cell phone traffic out in Solna that Wiklander keeps on harping about.

  “Feeling great,” Persson confirmed. “I’m not even calling to borrow money. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”