“When were you thinking?” said Johansson. Sounds serious, he thought.
“Tomorrow evening if you have time. I have a few things to arrange beforehand. Thought about inviting you to a little dinner out in the country. I’ve got a little cottage down in Sörmland. It’s less than an hour south of town. Down by Gnesta.”
“I thought you’d bought a house in Spain,” said Johansson.
“Did that too,” said Persson. “Sold it after a couple years. The only thing you can do down there is drink and play golf. I don’t play golf and I prefer to drink at home.”
“Wise,” said Johansson. “What time were you thinking?”
“Come around seven,” said Persson. “Then we’ll have time to take a sauna before we eat. Actually thought about serving fresh perch. If you eat fish? Otherwise we can have something else.”
“Perch is good,” said Johansson. Almost as good as whitefish, he thought.
“You don’t even need to bring any aquavit along,” said Persson. “For once I’ve got some at home. There’s only one thing you need.”
“What’s that?” said Johansson.
“Directions,” said Persson. “Do you have the work GPS with you?”
“Always,” said Johansson. Anything else would be dereliction of duty, he thought.
“Give me the number, then I’ll send over the coordinates,” said Persson.
“You can text them straight to my cell,” said Johansson.
These are different times now, thought Johansson as he hung up. Wonder what he wants? he thought.
Red cottage with white corner posts, one large and one small outbuilding, a lake fifty yards south of the house. Dock with a sauna down by the lake. Persson met him in blue pants and sweater and a becoming suntan.
“Welcome, Lars. I see you have your henchman with you,” he said, nodding at Johansson’s service vehicle and his driver who was in the front seat talking on his cell phone.
“Considering the aquavit with the perch,” said Johansson. “He’s probably sitting there telling his wife how I’ve ruined his evening.”
“Wise,” said Persson. “We may need a few hours given that we’re going to sauna, talk, and eat.”
“I’ll send him home,” said Johansson. “There must be taxis even out here in the wilderness.”
“Wise,” Persson repeated. “You see, I need to talk to you face-to-face.”
Wonder what he wants? thought Johansson.
A well-fired sauna. A lake that you could cool off in. Just jump right out from the dock down into the water that was still forty-eight degrees, even though it was well into October. A string bag with beer placed to cool in the lake.
“You didn’t get that suntan here at home,” said Johansson once they were sitting on the sauna platform, each with a beer in hand. Not at this season, even if the summers are getting more and more tropical.
“I took a week,” said Persson, wiping the beer foam from his lip.
“Greece, Spain, Turkey?” Johansson suggested.
“Mallorca,” said Persson. “There was something I was forced to do.”
“Mallorca,” said Johansson. How was it he hadn’t already sensed it as he got out of the car?
“Fine this time of year,” said Persson. “The best time, actually. Warm without being hot. Cool at night so you can sleep.”
“Curious coincidence,” said Johansson. “I actually sent a couple of my co-workers down to Palma as recently as Monday of last week.”
“I know,” said Persson. “Holt and Mattei, who are supposed to try to find Hedberg.”
“So you know that,” said Johansson. Although I guess I sensed that too, he thought.
“You can bring them home,” said Persson. “It’s already been arranged.”
“Tell me,” said Johansson. What’s happening? he thought.
In Canal de Menorca outside Cap de Formentor, early in the morning the same day
So the boat was called Esperanza. That means “hope” in Spanish. Hope for a successful future or in any case a future over which you yourself have control. Esperanza was given her name fourteen years earlier. It was the boat’s owner, skipper, and only crew member who had christened her, and considering what was about to happen to him and his craft, he could not have chosen a worse name.
98
There wasn’t that much to tell, according to Persson. Twelve hours earlier, at eight o’clock local time on north Mallorca, which by the way was the same time as here at home, he had solved the problem of Kjell Göran Hedberg by blowing him and his boat into the air.
“Approximately fifteen nautical miles outside the harbor in Puerto Pollensa, if you know where that is.”
“I know where that is,” said Johansson. “That’s about where Claes Waltin happened to drown.” Is he joking? he thought.
“Oh well,” said Persson. “It was Hedberg who drowned him. Although it was a good ways farther into the bay.”
“How long have you known where he was?” said Johansson.
“Since I did the house search at Waltin’s home and realized who he’d been involved with. For quite a few years after Hedberg had to quit us, Waltin used him as an external operator.”
“I’ve realized that,” said Johansson. “I also think I’ve realized why Hedberg was forced to kill him.”
“Waltin was going downhill,” said Persson and nodded. “He was drinking too much, talking too much, associating with the wrong people. Waltin was a security risk, and Hedberg did not intend to serve a life sentence because of him.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson. “So how long has Hedberg been on north Mallorca?”
Basically the last twenty years, according to Persson. Most recently he’d been living in a little house up in the mountains north of Pollensa. A gatekeeper’s cottage he got to live in for free, in exchange for guarding a house for a wealthy English couple who had a large estate in the vicinity and were almost never there. He also had a car that he leased. A small fishing boat that he owned and had built in the spring of 1993. A boat that he took tourists out in. To swim, sunbathe, fish, and dive.
“So how did you find him?”
No great art, according to Persson. Not considering all the traces of Hedberg he’d found in the house search at Waltin’s. When he went down to Mallorca ten days ago he already knew everything he needed to know. About his boat, for example.
“As soon as I found out he had a butane tank on the boat, I decided what I would do. The bastard had installed one of those stainless steel gas grills up on deck, and those crazy Spaniards placed the butane tank under the deck and ran a fucking lot of cables back and forth. Couldn’t be better.”
“Explain it in layman’s terms,” said Johansson. He had never unscrewed the detonator from a rusty four-hundred-pound mine, he thought. He didn’t even know if you dared lick the snot from your upper lip while you were doing it.
He had arranged the practical details late in the evening before the morning when it happened. Right before he called Johansson at home and invited him to dinner, by the way. He made sure that Hedberg was at a safe distance. Used ordinary dynamite from Nitro Nobel. Three pitiful small charges, and he needed to use only a couple of ounces of this classic Swedish product. One hollow charge under the deck to split the butane tank open. Two on the gas lines that were run inside the cabin bulkhead. He was done in half an hour. He even had time to relieve pressure on the lines from the tank.
“Butane is odorless, as you know,” said Persson, indicating a toast with his beer can.
“So when he started the engine up it exploded,” said Johansson.
“Who the hell do you take me for, Johansson?” said Persson. “I’m not a fucking mass murderer. First I made sure he was out in open water so there were no innocent people in the vicinity. I followed him in my own boat.”
To ensure this humanitarian aspect, Persson made use of a regular cell phone as the trigger mechanism. It was a prepaid cell he had bought on M
allorca. Paid cash and it couldn’t be traced. With a pre-set delay besides.
“As I’m sure you understand I was fucking tired of that bastard considering all the grief he’s caused in the past thirty years. You know that better than anyone, by the way. So I decided to send a final greeting to mess with him.”
Once Hedberg was out in open water Persson first called him on his own cell phone. As soon as Hedberg picked it up and answered, he called the cell phone that triggered the explosives a few seconds later.
“How did you get the number to his cell phone?” said Johansson.
“Already had it,” said Persson. “It was the cell phone he used for running his boat charters. An ordinary Nokia. With the same old signal they all have, which means you start reaching in your pocket as soon as anyone in the area gets a call.”
“So did he answer?” asked Johansson.
“Sure,” said Persson. “I was in my boat a short distance away looking at him through the binoculars. Although he didn’t answer by name.”
“So what did he say?”
“Sí,” said Persson and chuckled.
“And you,” said Johansson. “What did you say?”
At first he thought about sending him one last greeting from his colleagues, but after closer thought he refrained.
“Who the hell wants to be a colleague of someone like that? So instead I asked him to say hello to the audience. ‘Say hello to the audience, Hedberg,’ I said. You should have seen how fucking surprised he was. Especially when another phone started ringing with the same ringtone as soon as I started talking to him. I even had time to wave at the bastard.
“Yes, and so then the boat blew up. First three short cracks when the charges went, and then a big fucking ball of fire when the butane burned off. I saw the bastard as he flew away. At least thirty feet up in the air. Saw one of his legs fly off in a different direction. If you ask me, I think it was the stainless steel cover on the grill that took off and sawed off his stump. His boat went straight down. It was fifteen hundred feet deep in the channel.”
“I see, I see,” said Johansson. “So what did you do then? Flew home to Sweden to have grilled perch with an old colleague?”
“No, the hell I did,” said Persson. “It’s not over yet. More is coming. Do you want another beer, by the way?”
“Thanks, this is fine,” said Johansson. “I have some left,” he explained, showing the can so as not to be impolite.
“So what happened then?” he repeated.
Persson had maneuvered closer to the wreckage to be able to see better. Stayed there a few minutes to check the situation while it finished burning.
“As I’m lying there looking, the bastard suddenly pops up right by the side of my boat. Sooty and burned, and gasping like a fish. Bleeding like hell. But he was alive. Strangely enough.
“‘Help me, help me,’ he said, extending his hand toward me. ‘Sure,’ I said and handed him my fist. Then I took a piece of pipe I had in my tackle box, to kill off the rougher morsels you can get down there, in case you’re wondering, and then I banged him on the head a few times. I guess that was all. He sank like a stone, and I sent the piece of pipe along as a reminder.”
“And then,” said Johansson.
“Then I took the boat back to the hotel. I was staying in a little pension across from the charter pier where he had his boat. Checked out. Got in the car to go to his house up in the mountains and do a little discreet house search.”
“So did you find anything?” said Johansson.
“No,” said Persson. “There wasn’t time. The area was already crawling with Spanish officers, so I continued straight to the airport in Palma and took the flight home. Landed at Skavsta just a few hours ago. But if you ask me I think he basically just had a bed to sleep in. Hedberg was not as careless as Waltin, so I don’t think we need to worry about that detail.”
“So you were down there at the same time as Holt and Mattei,” said Johansson.
“I was actually there first, if you want to quibble. A fucking piece of luck it was, by the way. If I hadn’t been there he would have gotten away from us. If we’d missed him now, we never would have seen a trace of him again.”
“What makes you think that?” said Johansson. What the hell is he sitting there saying? he thought.
“He was warned by one of your so-called colleagues,” said Persson, shrugging his shoulders. “What do you say to a piece of perch, by the way?”
In the deep channel outside Cap de Formentor on north Mallorca in the morning the day before
Finally it had happened anyway. What he thought would never happen. Instead of sheering ninety degrees port and setting course toward the woman in the big house down by the beach in Cala Sant Vicente, he continued right out into the deep channel. Entered a new course on his GPS navigator at the same time as he congratulated himself that Esperanza always had her fuel tanks filled. Enough diesel to take him three hundred nautical miles to Corsica, where there were many like him and at least one he trusted unconditionally. Who could give him a refuge for the remainder of his life.
Not like the woman, who said she was from the U.S. and was renting the large house on the beach in Cala Sant Vicente. Who talked about her wealthy husband whom she never saw. Who was twenty years younger than him, with her long dark hair, her white teeth, her large, pendulous breasts and the promise in her eyes. The one who had approached him only a week ago when he was scrubbing the deck on Esperanza to make her fine before autumn, when the vacation season was now finally over. The one who asked him if he spoke English, if he knew any good places where she could dive. If perhaps he, or someone else, could help her?
The woman who could actually dive as well as he could and who had shown that the very first time she went with him out to sea. The woman he was supposed to have picked up at the large house in less than an hour. The woman who must have betrayed him, despite the promise in her eyes. Because there was no other explanation. Because Ignacio Ballester had come to see him early in the morning. Told him what his nephew had said and chose to warn him instead of betraying him.
He only had time to take with him the essentials and the small bag that was always packed. Completely sufficient, because there was nothing in that cottage that could say anything about him or the life he had lived since that Friday evening at the intersection of Tunnelgatan and Sveavägen more than twenty years ago. He had left his car because it was safest that way, and what would he do with it now? Ignacio drove him down to the harbor and Esperanza. Shook his hand and wished him luck at sea. There was no alternative, and that was why Esperanza was berthed there. A beautiful little boat, but also an insurance policy and a constant reminder.
Security, freedom, and at a low price. Simply yet another day and night at sea.
99
Grilled perch, butter and lemon, boiled potatoes, beer and a cold shot of aquavit. It couldn’t have been better in all its simplicity, but despite that Johansson had problems with his appetite.
“Which one of my people was it who warned him?” asked Johansson as soon as he’d taken the first bite.
“You must have asked the Spanish colleagues to assign some local talent to protect the little ladies you sent down. One of them happened to be the nephew of the man who owned the shipyard where Hedberg built his boat. He suddenly realized that your co-workers were searching for one of his uncle’s old customers. Called his uncle and let his mouth run. Then his uncle went to Hedberg and warned him. It’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened, but I guess I don’t need to tell you that.”
“No,” said Johansson. “You don’t need to.”
“You’re eating poorly, Lars,” said Persson. “Why aren’t you eating? Here I’ve been standing at the stove and exerting myself.”
“What the hell do you want?” said Johansson. “It never occurred to you that I’ll take you up to Stockholm and put you in jail?”
“No, never,” said Persson with a smile. “For what, if
I may ask?”
“For what you just told me,” said Johansson.
“No,” said Persson, shaking his head. “That thought has never occurred to me. And if you do that anyway, I will have no idea what you’re talking about. That’s one of the advantages of sitting in a sauna when you’re going to talk about such things. Not a lot of clothes where people can hide microphones and other garbage. Cheers, by the way.”
“Cheers,” said Johansson, emptying his full shot glass.
“Although I have every sympathy that you’re a little moved,” said Persson. “Who wouldn’t be after such a cock-and-bull story. But as soon as you get a little perspective on it you’re going to thank me.”
“Thank you,” said Johansson. “For what? Because you killed Hedberg?”
“Because I solved a problem for us. For you and me and everyone else like you and me. For my only friend, Erik, not least. If it hadn’t been for his sake I might even have let the bastard live.”
“You must have had help,” said Johansson. Because you’re already sitting here you can hardly have flown commercial, considering what you were up to this morning, he thought.
“I would never dream of talking about such things,” said Persson. “A good fellow takes care of himself. How the hell would it look if people like you and me didn’t dare stand up for one another?”
When Johansson was in the taxi on the way home a few hours later his red cell phone rang. The cell to which only his closest associates had the number.
“Yes,” said Johansson, who never answered with his name when the red phone rang. Holt, he thought.
“Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you for hours.” Holt did not sound happy.
“Had a few things to take care of,” said Johansson. “So I turned off the cell.”
“We’ve found Kjell Göran Hedberg,” said Holt. “We think so, at least. We’re pretty sure it’s him.”
“What the hell are you saying?” said Johansson. “Tell me. I’m listening.”
Free Falling, As If in a Dream Page 54