Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend: a Leo Junker case

by Christoffer Carlsson (Translated by Michael Gallagher)

  ‘Halla— … Jesus, that’s fucking miles away. What are you doing there?’

  ‘Have you heard about Levin?’

  The tapping stops.

  ‘Yes,’ Birck says, softer now, his voice heavier. ‘I heard. My condolences.’

  ‘He just moved down here in spring. I think I … I just wanted to see him, I think.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Shot in the head.’

  Silence. The newsreader announces that Midsummer will be a rainy affair in the main cities.

  ‘Not much to see, in that case,’ Birck says. ‘Is that why you changed your leave? So you could go there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You do know that this isn’t good for you?’

  Another silence between us. The news makes way for television commercials, and an excitable male voice tells us about some place where we can buy a set of garden furniture for only 399 crowns. The heat in the room is making me dizzy; I’m blinking.

  ‘Was that all you wanted?’ Birck asks.

  ‘I would like to ask you a favour, or two. Firstly … don’t tell Morovi about this.’

  ‘That depends what this is.’

  ‘Gabriel,’ I plead.

  ‘What do I say if she asks?’

  ‘She knows I’m on leave. I just don’t want her to know that I’m here.’

  Birck sighs.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And then …’ I close my eyes. ‘I need to ask you to sort out a phone charger for Grim. I’ll give you the money …’

  ‘What?’ He sounds genuinely shocked. ‘What the fuck, Leo … ?’

  ‘Wait. In exchange, I want him to tell you about Levin’s visits to St Göran’s. I think he used to visit one of the residents, possibly a woman named Marika Alderin.’

  Birck is silent for some time.

  ‘You’ve been making deals with him.’

  ‘That’s the nature of our relationship nowadays.’

  ‘He tried to kill you. He tried to kill Sam.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How can … ?’

  ‘I know, okay? It’s fucked up, but I really want to know.’

  ‘The bastard has got a phone, apparently. You call him.’

  ‘I can’t do this by phone.’

  Birck sighs again. I can see him, his tired eyes, in front of me. Rustling: he’s tearing a page from a notepad. A pen clicks once, twice.

  ‘What did you say her name was?’

  ‘Marika Alderin.’ I spell it out. ‘But it might not have been her he was visiting, that’s just … a hunch. Don’t give Grim the name to begin with, because then he’ll definitely say yes, whether it’s true or not. See if he comes up with it himself.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t?’

  ‘Try and improvise.’

  ‘I’m not about to go and improvise with John Grimberg.’

  I can’t say I blame him.

  Birck clicks the pen again. He might be spinning it in his hand, because he soon drops it and swears.

  ‘Who is this woman?’ he asks.

  ‘Levin’s daughter.’

  A long pause.

  ‘Whoa.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Did you know?’ he asks. ‘That he had a daughter?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think anyone did. They found a photo of her down here, that’s how people found out. And it’s that — the fact he kept her a secret — that might be significant.’

  ‘I’m not an idiot. I get that.’

  I give him the phone’s make and model. Birck says nothing, but makes a note of it. The sound of pen on paper somehow makes me homesick.

  Kit jumps up onto the table and paws the crime scene photos, studying them as if they hold some secret.

  ‘Happy Midsummer, then, I suppose,’ says Birck.

  In my memories, I feel older than I do now. There, as though veiled in smoke, I can see myself one late autumn many years ago, doing my first shifts on the Violent Crime Unit and meeting Levin for the first time.

  I’ve been given a desk in the corner of the open-plan office, and I’m sitting there feeling lost when he appears beside me: tall, gangly, head shaved even back then, and round, black-rimmed glasses on his beak of a nose, which projects out over his narrow mouth.

  ‘The rookie.’ He pulls his hand out of his trouser pocket. Big smile. ‘Charles Levin.’

  ‘Leo Junker.’

  ‘We never met during the recruitment process, I prefer not to get involved. At least, not formally.’

  He looks around, spots a stool by one of the nearby desks, and sits down, crossing one leg over the other.

  ‘You’re from Violent Crime, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Before that?’

  ‘Vice. I was only there a few months though after coming off the beat.’

  ‘Did you like it there?’

  ‘On the beat? Not especially.’

  This makes him laugh.

  ‘I remember that I enjoyed my time in uniform. I was at District One, as it was back then.’

  His presence. I noticed straightaway that there was something about his presence. The room moved in time with Levin and could make him invisible on his say so, just putting him in the spotlight as and when it was necessary.

  ‘How old are you, Leo?’

  ‘Twenty-eight.’

  ‘And I’m over sixty,’ he says pensively. ‘That’s old, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well it’s older than twenty-eight, yes.’

  He laughs again, loud and harsh.

  ‘You’re right, there. I couldn’t help noticing a slight smell of cigarettes around you. What brand do you smoke?’

  ‘Chesterfield.’

  He raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Really?’

  I pull the pack from my inside pocket and show it to him.

  ‘My old boss used to smoke Chesterfields,’ Levin says, his eyes following the packet. ‘Officially, I am no longer a smoker, since it’s deemed unsuitable for someone in a leading role within the force to be one. They say our capacity to lead by example would be undermined. Whatever that means.’

  I open the packet, pull out a cigarette, and hold it out towards him, hiding it under my hand.

  ‘This cigarette reminds me of a joke my old boss used to tell,’ Levin says, as we both stand huddled by one of the neighbouring buildings, each with a cigarette between our fingers.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s not a funny joke.’

  ‘Now you have to tell it.’

  He takes a last drag.

  ‘Do you know who Erich Honecker was?’

  ‘A politician in the old East Germany?’

  ‘He was East German leader throughout the Seventies and Eighties. One morning, Honecker is on the balcony doing his exercises, when all of a sudden the sun starts talking to him, “Good morning, Herr Honecker!” Honecker, shocked, tells his comrades about this in a meeting a few hours later. He takes a few comrades home with him at lunch, and when they are all there, on his balcony, the sun talks to him again: “Good day, Herr Honecker!” For the rest of the day, they’re all stunned, and can’t stop talking about the miracle they have witnessed. When Honecker arrives home that evening, the sun is about to slip beneath the horizon, yet this time is as mute as a fish. “Sun,” Honecker shouts, “you greeted me this morning, and at lunchtime, why are you silent now it’s evening?” He soon hears a mocking laugh coming from the sun. “You can kiss my arse, Honecker. I’m in the West now.”’

  He goes quiet and looks at me.

  ‘Was it funny back then?’ I ask.

  ‘For some, like my old boss, it probably was.’

  ‘He can’t have had many friends.’

  ‘Oh, he did. But that
wasn’t down to his sense of humour.’

  As we get closer to the entrance, he asks if I want to hear another.

  ‘It’s shorter,’ he adds.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘There are three types of people. People that tell jokes, people that collect jokes, and people who work at SEPO, who collect people that tell jokes.’

  I sit down on one of the chairs in the meeting room, wipe the sweat from my forehead again, and wonder how long it will be before they realise that I’m not from NCS. Strictly speaking, I’m committing a serious crime.

  Out in the corridor, someone is sneezing angrily, and then a fat man comes into the meeting room, belly first, and with a handkerchief in one hand. He wipes his nose before using it to wipe his brow.

  ‘Leo Junker.’ I stand up. ‘Down from Stockholm.’

  ‘Ola Davidsson,’ he grunts, before noticing something behind me. ‘Jesus.’

  The cat is busy investigating one of the sealed bags. My cheeks turn bright red.

  ‘I had to bring him with me.’ I lift him down from the table, and close the door.

  ‘I would have had to wait otherwise.’

  ‘What’s its name?’

  ‘Kit.’

  ‘Like the car in Knight Rider?’

  ‘Erm, yeah. If you like. Or as in Kit … Kat.’

  Davidsson bends down, puts his hands on his knees, and summons something that looks a bit like a smile.

  ‘Hello, Kit.’

  The cat stares at him, expressionless, before stroking up against his fat calves, which makes him chuckle. Davidsson then stands up straight and waves his chubby hand at me.

  ‘Sit down somewhere.’

  We each slump into a chair.

  ‘You must hate Midsummer,’ Davidsson says. ‘Coming down today, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t really have anything to celebrate.’

  ‘Come down to the sportsground later, if you get sick of the case notes. That’s where the party is.’ Davidsson pulls a packet of Tic Tacs from his pocket, shakes four into his hand, and pops them on his tongue. ‘There aren’t that many of us here. Just me; Tove, who you’ve met; and a few lads on the beat. We have requested reinforcements, too, another fifteen people from the big cities. They’re the ones who are going to do the heavy lifting on the investigation, along with you. I should think they’ve gone home by now. It’s the absolute worst time of year for this sort of thing, worse than New Year’s Eve or Christmas.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, looking at the whiteboard. ‘I know. What do you think he was doing down here?’

  ‘Levin? Well, obviously we don’t know, but at a guess he was probably working on old cases.’

  ‘Cases? Which cases?’

  Davidsson’s surprise makes him look like a real policeman for the first time.

  ‘The unsolved investigations. Didn’t Tove mention them?’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  Davidsson furrows his brow and coughs. Then he sneezes. Then he coughs again.

  He leans over the table, looking through papers that are lying in a messy pile, but perhaps there is some kind of system, because before long he pulls out a folder.

  ‘Here they are. They were in files, at the bottom of a packing box, along with books and photographs.’

  I flip through the paperwork, police documents from old investigations: a fatal stabbing on one of the capital-deprived estates from 1997, a rape in Enskede from 2001, an attempted murder in central Stockholm from 2005, and the murder on John Ericssonsgatan on Kungsholmen from 2010. The only one I recall is the last one, since I was working on the Violent Crime Unit under Levin.

  ‘This attempted murder in town,’ I say, turning towards Davidsson, who is attempting to type something into his phone, with some difficulty. ‘Where are the rest of the documents? These are just the notes.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Davidsson looks up. ‘That’s what’s so strange about it. There was nothing else.’

  ‘Serious violent crime, unsolved cases. That’s what he was working on?’

  ‘Perhaps. We don’t actually know what he was doing here. We were sort of hoping you might help us work that out.’

  I put the papers down, and think about Levin’s memoirs. I want to know what was in them.

  ‘Of course,’ I mumble. ‘I don’t understand why she didn’t mention this. Your colleague.’

  ‘She’s a tricky one, Waltersson.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That she’s a tricky one.’

  ‘Not that — what’s her surname?’

  ‘Waltersson.’ Davidsson raises an eyebrow and folds his arms. ‘Why?’

  I strain to keep my hands steady.

  ‘I recognise the name.’

  ‘She’s from around here — I think her mum lives here in Bruket. I don’t know anything about her dad. I think maybe he worked at the plant, but where he went after it shut down I couldn’t tell you. And then she had a brother …’

  Markus.

  ‘Markus,’ Davidsson continues. ‘He was in the force, too. Weird, isn’t it, stuff like that between siblings?’

  ‘He died,’ I say, weakly.

  ‘He worked in Stockholm. He got shot by a colleague, on Gotland.’

  I get up from the chair and go over to the window. The room is starting to tilt, and I have to hold onto the table so as not to lose my balance.

  I knew he had a sister, didn’t I?

  My hands are shaking, and I fish out the tube of Halcion. Only one left. One. Oh shit.

  It’s May, one year ago. I’m standing in the harbour in Visby. A little boat comes gliding through the darkness, loaded with what we believe is a consignment of weapons. They are going to change hands. Something goes wrong. I blink. With my burning-hot pistol in my hands, I approach the darkness between two heavy shipping containers. He’s lying there, Markus Waltersson, and he’s bleeding to death.

  ‘Is that everything?’ Davidsson asks from behind me.

  He doesn’t know that it was me. Despite the acres of coverage the Gotland affair was given in the weeks after Waltersson’s death, Davidsson doesn’t know me from Adam. Maybe it’s the same for most people I meet. Maybe I’m just imagining everyone looking at me, and that they’re talking about me behind my back.

  ‘Yes. That’s everything.’

  ‘Happy Midsummer,’ he says, before standing up and walking out.

  MARCH 1971

  The first of March 1971. The second time Charles met Eva, he went home with her. He called the number she’d written down for him. Before he did, though, he spent a long time in one of the telephone cubicles at the conference centre, studying the angular, uneven digits on the note, numbers written by someone who’d spent their school days doing more important things than homework.

  It struck him that she didn’t seem surprised. Maybe women like Eva cease to be surprised by men, even by the age of twenty-one.

  ‘Are you going to skive off?’ was the only thing she asked him, and Charles felt his cheeks getting warm.

  That’s something he remembers about Eva, the way she could make that’ll be eighteen fifty, please sound so suggestive that it sent blushing teenagers rushing home to wash their ears — before coming back to the convenience store to hear her say it again.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘For once.’

  ‘When was the last time you did something like this?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Charles said. ‘Don’t remember when I last had reason to.’

  The line went quiet, a silence that made Charles worry that he’d said too much.

  ‘See you later then,’ she said.

  He sneaked out of the conference during a coffee break. He took his own car, and he saw Bruket in daylight for the first time. Towering chimneys on the horizon and white-grey pi
llars of smoke reaching for the sky.

  The car park by the square was quite small. He headed for the shop, which occupied the bottom floor of an old dark-brown wooden building. It had a handful of trolleys parked in a bay, and a simple till. The door opened, and Eva smiled at Charles as she came out.

  ‘So where do you want to go?’ she asked.

  He looked around.

  ‘Where is there to go?’

  She laughed, and pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear.

  ‘Good question. There’s a little bakery not far away. It’s quite nice, if you don’t mind stewed coffee.’

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ Charles said. ‘I’m used to it.’

  That was something people were always asking him about — being a policeman. And he wasn’t the only one. Most of his colleagues, and indeed Charles himself, would often try to make the most of it in the bars and clubs down Birger Jarlsgatan. It often worked, because they didn’t know what being a policeman actually involved.

  Eva didn’t ask about that at all. She wanted to know what music Charles listened to, whether he took sugar in his coffee, whether he preferred paintings or photographs on his walls, when he fell in love for the first time and if he was an only child or had siblings, whether he was the type of person who liked rugs around the house.

  ‘Type of person?’ Charles said, taking a gulp of the stewed coffee. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Whether you use rugs or not,’ she said, ‘it says something about you. A certain kind of people have rugs.’

  ‘And what are they like?’

  She looked down at her cup as she tried to find the right word.

  ‘They’re sort of … organised. Proper, you know, tidy and well groomed. If you’ve got the time and money to buy rugs, then you must be. I imagine they are the same people that go into shoe shops and ask for sensible shoes.’

  She said the word sensible as though it came from some foreign culture.

  ‘I don’t have any rugs,’ said Charles.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ She smiled. ‘Me neither.’

  Dusk arrived, and the colours inside the bakery changed hue in a way that was quite pleasant. She lived on Alvavägen, five minutes from Bruket’s little centre. Eva didn’t have a car — she preferred to walk or ride her bike, even in the winter, so they went in his car.