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

by Christoffer Carlsson (Translated by Michael Gallagher)

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘No one. That was nothing.’

  ‘You come down here, get stuck in to an investigation which you have absolutely fuck all to do with, and then you refuse to tell me — and I’m actually on the case, remember — what you’re up to?’

  Leo sits still in the seat, blinking, breathing, grimacing in pain, blinking, and trying to breathe again.

  ‘If you don’t tell me what you’re playing at,’ Tove says, ‘I’m going to report you for gross misdemeanour.’

  As she’s saying the words, her enjoyment is increasing: at the fact that she, finally, has power over him. Leo turns his head slowly, and raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Haven’t you done that already?’

  She stares at him.

  ‘I understand,’ he says then, and suddenly he looks remarkably tiny.

  She ought to get out of the car and drive, drive off and leave Leo here. But at the same time, she needs him. The case belongs to her and Davidsson, for another twenty-four hours at least, and despite the clock ticking and the conclusion to the case being about to slip from their grasp, they are closer now. Leo might know things that she doesn’t know about Levin, things you wouldn’t give a second thought to because they seem pretty mundane, but then turn out to be absolutely crucial when seen in a new light.

  The problem is, she might lose it.

  The problem is, she might attack him again.

  ‘I asked my colleague in Stockholm to go to St Göran’s,’ he says. ‘Marika Alderin is a resident, sectioned years ago. I know that Levin used to visit her.’ He looks at the phone, swipes a finger across the screen. ‘My colleague hadn’t been there yet.’

  ‘If it’s right, what they say in the sound file, she doesn’t even seem aware.’

  A car passes by, one that she doesn’t recognise. Tove watches it into the distance, and he notices.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Journalists. They’ve started gathering outside the station. Speaking of which.’ She looks at her phone. ‘I should get down there.’

  ‘Where’s Davidsson?’

  ‘Last I heard, he was going to go and talk to an old acquaintance who apparently knew something about Eva Levin. I’d say he’d be done by now.’

  She shuts the computer, pulls out the USB stick, and puts it in her pocket, slides the laptop into her bag.

  ‘What was in the text files?’ he asks.

  ‘I haven’t had time to have a good look at it yet, but it looks like a mixture of things, some seemed to be scans of old documents, and photographs. I’m going to go through it now, after the meeting. I didn’t have time to …’ She hesitates. ‘I wanted to talk to you first, about the sound file.’

  ‘I understand,’ Leo says.

  ‘You’ll have to leave your car. If you can make your way over to mine then you can come along.’ She opens the passenger door. ‘Don’t expect any help.’

  As they roll down the trunk road past the petrol station, they end up behind a spluttering tractor, driven by an old man with a cap on his head and the sun on his back. The sweat glimmers on his neck.

  ‘They were lucky,’ says Tove, ‘that you did actually fuck things up on Gotland.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They could just seize on it and ride on the wave.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The stuff in the recording,’ she says slowly. ‘That you were supposed to be their scapegoat — it doesn’t change anything for me. You do get that, right? You’re still the one who shot him. If it wasn’t for you, he’d still be alive.’

  ‘I thought you were going to kill me.’

  The words hit Tove harder than she’d expected.

  ‘So did I, to begin with.’ I need to know, she thinks. I need to find out. ‘Do you ever even think about it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘About Markus.’

  ‘Almost every day.’

  ‘Don’t lie.’

  ‘I didn’t think it would be possible to live with it. I mean, I never thought I’d be able to function like an ordinary human being, doing everyday things like going to work and talking to people about the weather and where they’re going on holiday and all that shit. I never thought I’d be able to. And for about nine months, I couldn’t. After that, it started becoming manageable. But I haven’t … I’m not quite standing on my own two feet.’

  ‘You mean you’re popping pills?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because they allow me to function.’

  They approach the square.

  ‘I suggest that you resist, next time — If I hit you again, that you defend yourself. Otherwise, I don’t know what might happen.’

  He is silent for a long time.

  ‘I don’t know if I want to.’

  ‘If you want to do what? Resist?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You really are sick in the head.’

  ‘You know that I didn’t … It was a mistake. I panicked.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any fucking excuses.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I was sent to Visby a few days before the bust. We suspected that the sellers would be arriving in the harbour by boat, and that the buyers would be in cars. I investigated the area, memorised the routes in and out of the harbour, for cars and for pedestrians. I started feeling shaken and unsure, I didn’t know why, but something was wrong. When we got word that things weren’t right, I got even more disorientated and … My life at the time was such a mess. I’d split up with my girlfriend, we had … Life was fucking hard. On the night of the bust, I was standing pressed up against one of the buildings in the harbour to give myself a good view. A motorboat arrived, no lights. The boat moored, and shadows started rushing around it, stressed. They unloaded crates. A big jeep pulled up, someone opened the boot. The buyers met the sellers. The buyers wanted to see the contents of the cargo …’

  ‘I know all this. I’ve read about it.’

  The buyers were one of the estate gangs from Stockholm. The sellers were one of the major crime syndicates. The cargo did not contain any weapons, just old newspapers and plastic toys.

  ‘Who was planning to rip who off was never really established,’ Leo went on, slowly. ‘Lots of people thought that Stockholm police had teamed up with one of the men in the syndicate and persuaded him to switch the contents. There were, according to Levin, things that pointed to that. But it was never cleared up. At that exact moment, when the buyers realised they were going to get ripped off, an enormous searchlight came on. The SWAT team,’ he adds, and looks at Tove.

  She stops by the square.

  ‘I don’t know who fired the first shot, but it wasn’t the police,’ he says. ‘Probably the buyers. Suddenly everyone had a weapon in their hands. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen anything like it. Several people were injured, including police, and I remember … I remember coming out of the shadows where I’d been hiding. Like I said, I must have panicked. I fired a shot at what I thought was one of the sellers who had just tried to hit, maybe even succeeded in hitting, one of the SWAT team. I couldn’t just stand there. I had to do something. But I was in no fit state. I was too unstable.’

  He stops talking. Tove has her hands on the wheel. The engine is ticking over. The cat’s cage is visible in a corner of the rear-view mirror. The sun overhead is strong.

  ‘I know that you didn’t do it deliberately,’ she says. ‘I know that it wasn’t just black and white, what happened. Do you think I’m that stupid, that I wouldn’t understand that?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘Let me finish.’ Her voice is trembling from the strain. ‘I know it’s not that simple, but I need to believe that it is. Do you see? I need to see my brother’s death in those terms, because otherwise I haven’t got a
fucking clue how I’m supposed to keep functioning. Alright? Drinking doesn’t help, working doesn’t help, and I’ve got nothing, no friends or anything. All I’ve got … The only thing I can do is tell myself that my brother died because somebody wanted to harm him, not that it was just a fucking mistake.’

  I’m exposing myself, she thinks. Way too much. God, I could really do with a large whisky. A large whisky in a dark room — a quiet, cool room. In the silence, she can hear her mother’s voice, and within that, her grief. It’s been a hell of a long year without Markus.

  ‘I understand,’ Leo says.

  Tove turns off the engine, but they stay sitting there next to each other, in silence, staring at the pale wall in front of them.

  ‘I’m going to have to go up,’ Tove says. ‘Davidsson’s waiting.’

  Leo pushes his tongue across his lip, licking blood from the wound.

  ‘He mentioned you and Markus, what had happened,’ he says then. ‘Davidsson, when I met him yesterday. I don’t think he knows it was me that did it, though. He didn’t seem to recognise me, or even place my name.’

  ‘Davidsson has the good taste not to give a shit about anything other than what’s going on in Bruket. That’ll be why. Are you coming up?’

  ‘I, er … I don’t think I can walk on my own. I’ll probably faint.’

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Davidsson’s jaw drops when he sees me.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I just need to sit down.’

  We head into the meeting room. I collapse into a chair and put Kit’s cage down.

  ‘But what happened to you? As if it wasn’t bad enough that the journalists are onto what’s happened, do I have to deal with this as well?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And by the way, who’s leaked Levin’s name?’

  ‘Do they know it was him?’ Tove asks when no one answers.

  ‘Well, if they don’t, they must be bloody good at guessing,’ Davidsson growls.

  ‘It isn’t that hard to find out who was living in the house,’ I say, but Davidsson’s not listening, he’s busy shouting at Åhlund in a hoarse voice, asking him to bring the first-aid kit.

  If possible, Davidsson’s cold sounds even worse than yesterday.

  ‘I fell over and banged my head,’ I manage.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Up at the old glass-factory buildings. I was there having a look — I’d only been told about them. I went onto the site and then got into one of the buildings, up a staircase that I should’ve stayed well away from.’

  Davidsson squints.

  ‘And you landed on your face?’

  ‘Not the first time that’s happened.’

  I try to smile at the absurdity of it all, and shake my head, but that makes something black appear in my peripheral vision, so I stop.

  My mouth won’t stop bleeding. I’ve stopped wiping the blood away; now I’m swallowing it instead. Soon I’ll have had so much that I’m going to get nauseous.

  Levin’s voice. Hearing it through the little laptop speakers, so familiar yet so different, has shaken me up. I was right. I was placed in Visby, and it was down to him. I played right into their hands, though, and allowed them to get away with it. Otherwise, the strategy would have failed, sooner or later.

  I’ve wondered about it for so long, and managed to convince myself that whatever the truth of it, just knowing would be a relief, perhaps even a help.

  I don’t feel anything like that.

  I don’t feel anything at all.

  Or do I? I don’t know — the physical pain makes thinking about anything else difficult. Maybe I really don’t feel anything, but then again maybe this could be the beginning of the end of it.

  Åhlund arrives with a big green bag emblazoned with a white cross.

  ‘Bandage him up,’ Davidsson says. ‘Then he needs to get to a hospital.’

  Åhlund looks hesitantly back and forth between me and Davidsson.

  ‘I’m not a nurse.’

  ‘I can do it myself,’ I say.

  Davidsson scoffs.

  ‘You can’t even move your left arm.’

  ‘It’s because of my ribs. My arm is okay.’

  ‘Just do it,’ Davidsson tells Åhlund. ‘We’re in a hurry.’

  Tove, who’s sat down on a chair and has been quietly studying Kit’s movements inside his cage, looks surprised.

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Needless to say, I appreciate your assistance in the inquiry, and I am grateful for the esteemed visit from the capital. I’m sure it’s great that there’ll be more of them here tomorrow or on Monday, but this is more than likely to have been solved by then.’

  ‘Solved?’

  Åhlund examines me in silence. He has experienced hands.

  ‘I trained to be an ambulance driver,’ he mumbles. ‘Two terms, until I got into the police training programme in Växjö. So I don’t really know what I’m doing, but almost.’

  This feels reassuring.

  ‘Solved,’ Davidsson affirms with a cough. ‘More than likely. We have gathered new information this morning. Information that has led us to a suspect.’

  He closes the meeting room door.

  OCTOBER 1984

  ‘There. There she is. See that?’

  Paul turns off the radio, forcing Fleetwood Mac into silence. The sound of the rain on the windscreen grows louder.

  ‘I see her.’

  The woman in the dark-green jacket emerges from the supermarket entrance. She is huddled against the rain, and zips the jacket up before continuing.

  ‘She lives over here, Barnängsgatan 40. This is where she came yesterday, after she’d talked to you at Central Station.’

  He turns the ignition, starts the engine.

  ‘I don’t know if this is such a good idea,’ says Charles.

  ‘Me neither.’ Paul indicates left, looks over his shoulder. ‘But it would be nice to know what she knows, and, more importantly, how she knows.’

  Being shaken isn’t part of Paul’s character, but something’s up. There’s an awful lot at stake: the consignment is ready. The payoff is within reach. Now Charles can feel the cash’s throbbing pulse; it’s influencing them. Being so close to it changes their perception. Paul’s eyes betray both a greed and a fear that everything might mess up — that they will be exposed.

  A fucking journalist. Damn it.

  ‘This will work itself out,’ says Paul.

  ‘I think she knows,’ Charles whispers.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Charles closes his eyes, just for a second.

  ‘Nothing.’

  I am not really here.

  They roll down Nackagatan, at Södermalm’s eastern edge. The smell is the same as anywhere else in Stockholm, exhaust fumes and cooking fat. A boy peddling for all he’s worth zips past on a BMX, and Charles watches him, wonders where he’s heading, whether he’s skiving.

  The boy turns southwards, onto Barnängsgatan. Paul and Charles turn right, northbound towards the apartment blocks. She disappears behind a porch marked with a four and a zero.

  ‘Maureen Cathryn Harriet Falck,’ says Paul. ‘Her given name is Cathryn, but apparently people call her Cats — thirty-one years old, born in Enskede on the eleventh of July 1953. She works at SVT as a reporter for the Rapport news bulletin. That sounds impressive, and I’m sure she’d like to present herself as an investigative journalist, but from what I understand she’s more of a dogsbody, does little snippets here and there. She’s recently moved from being a production assistant to being a reporter. So she’s not exactly a hotshot. No husband, no kids — lives alone.’

  They pass the address and park up outside a shop, a bit further up Barnängsgatan.

  ‘She lives on the fourth floor.’ He looks at Ch
arles. ‘Do you want an umbrella?’

  Charles shakes his head and opens the door.

  ‘Hey,’ Paul says, and puts his hand on Charles’ arm.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Careful now.’

  The steps echo around the stairwell behind him. He looks at her door, at the letterbox with her name and NO JUNK MAIL PLEASE handwritten on a bit of lined paper. The doorbell is dark brown and old, and before he puts his thumb to the button he puts on his gloves.

  The sound of the bell is sharp and grating, and Charles takes a step back so as to be visible through the spyhole, waits.

  ‘Who is it?’ comes her voice from inside.

  ‘It’s me,’ says Charles. ‘Frank. We spoke on the phone.’ Silence. ‘I thought we could talk.’

  ‘How do you know where I live?’

  ‘We could help each other out.’

  He looks around. Her door is just one of four on this landing.

  Nothing. Charles sighs and turns to leave, not really intending to do so, but it probably looks convincing, and that’s when the lock clicks.

  The flat is small, with low ceilings. Two chairs and a table are squeezed into a narrow kitchen; straight ahead is a combined bed-sitting room. That, and a toilet, is it.

  She hesitates. She’s tanned, has recently been abroad.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asks.

  The very thought of it makes Charles’ stomach turn. He has no recollection of when he last ate.

  He forces a smile.

  ‘Coffee would be great.’

  ‘Right,’ he says, and drinks some of the strong coffee. The mug is white, with SVERIGES TELEVISION written on it in dark blue. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Your name is Frank Möller,’ she says, and lets go of the mug’s handle, straightens out the little tablecloth.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you work at SEPO.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Operations Department.’

  ‘Is that a question?’

  ‘I just want to know if I’ve got it right.’

  ‘So far, so good.’ Charles gulps down some more coffee. I can’t drink anymore — I’ll be sick. He smiles and puts the mug to one side. ‘How do you know who I am?’