‘It’s better to get the car leaking coolant or something. Less complicated, more effective.’
‘That, and other, similar methods are better in that regard,’ says Charles. ‘But they also look a lot more like sabotage, which absolutely must be avoided.’
‘What am I going to do the tyres with then? I’m not about to use my own fucking knife.’
‘No, you won’t.’ Paul slides his hand into his trouser pocket and produces a little knife. ‘Use this.’
‘You’re going to have to get there half an hour earlier,’ says Charles. ‘And then wait for your opening when no one’s around.’
‘I get five thousand for that?’
‘Five thousand now, another five thousand afterwards. Deal?’
Savolainen licks his lips and holds out his hand, and Paul puts the knife in it. Savolainen tests the weapon, expertly folds out the blade and pushes it carefully against his forearm. A little drop of blood squeezes through the skin.
Savolainen puts the knife away. Paul smiles. Savolainen’s index finger heads back into the bag.
MAY–JULY 1980
‘She’s not well, Charles,’ said Eva. ‘You can see that, surely?’
‘I don’t see what the problem is. She’s just a bit cranky, that’s all.’
‘She’s not like the others — haven’t you noticed? She’s much quieter, until she gets angry. Then she gets furious.’
Marika was quieter than others, until the tantrums came. They weren’t longer than a few moments, always followed by her falling into a bubble where she would remain for an hour or two before pulling herself up. That was all there was to it.
They sat in the kitchen, staring at the shards of shattered porcelain on the floor. A short while later, when they stood outside her room and opened the door slightly, she was sitting staring blankly at the wall, with her knees under her chin and her arms wrapped around her legs.
‘It’s okay,’ Charles said.
‘That doesn’t become any truer just because you keep repeating it,’ Eva said and then left.
Something’s changed, he thought to himself as he watched his wife heading for the kitchen to cook dinner. She never touches me anymore. I don’t touch her, either.
He spent a little while trying to work out when it had started and why it had happened. A little while, no longer, because things were different now.
Charles had turned thirty-three, and a murder investigation had landed on his desk: a man had disappeared in suspicious circumstances, and when his body was recovered it was a couple of teenagers who had found it.
Or, strictly speaking, part of it.
They had been drinking beer by the little river that runs through the outskirts of town. Old oak trees rose high above the water, and their heavy branches leant over to touch its shining surface. When one of the teenagers went off for a piss, he noticed something odd about the network of branches, then realised what it was. He was pissing on a human arm.
It belonged to a man, but to begin with that was all they could say for sure. It wasn’t possible to say whether the murderer had dismembered the body, or whether it had had a run-in with the sharp propeller of a motorboat. Before long, his other remains surfaced close to the site of the first find: a thigh, a leg, a ribcage, and a head. It wasn’t until then, when they saw the bullet hole in his forehead, that they were able to determine the cause of death, as well as the victim’s identity. His name was Ted Lichter, and the case became known as the Lichter case.
It was a tough investigation. They found no trace of the perpetrator; they were understaffed, lacked experience in investigating this type of crime, and were also forced to grapple with countless leaks to the media.
The case was opened on that balmy evening in May when the boys found one of Lichter’s arms. At that point, the victim had been reported missing for ten days. He was thirty-two years old and lived in a condemned apartment block near the town centre. They found nothing in the flat that could lead them to whoever had taken his life — all Charles took with him was a sense of just how far a person can sink without even reaching the bottom.
Lichter was a heroin addict and made a living selling sex, primarily to men.
May turned into June. Reinforcements were sent down from Stockholm. Charles’ desk was gradually filled with documents from the preliminary investigation, until they overflowed and ended up on the floor. Somewhere, under all that, his typewriter was waiting, but he hadn’t seen it in days, maybe even weeks. He stopped watching the clock, didn’t make a note of what time he got in or when he went home. The more listless and demoralised the Lichter investigation became, the more determined he was not to let go of it.
The central point in his life had shifted. From having been the home, with Eva and Marika, it was now split between his office and the car journeys to and from his parking space outside the police station. This dislocation, much as he didn’t want to admit it, brought a sense of relief.
Charles dropped his daughter off at school every morning, and the car journey between their home and the low-slung buildings near the sports ground gave them a little time together. He would try and talk to her, but she never said more than the odd word, for the most part just sitting, staring out of the windscreen and watching the world go by with an indecipherable expression.
She had turned eight just after the Lichter investigation got underway, and had had a party, a party which Charles had managed to make it home for only by the skin of his teeth, and even then it was thanks to his colleague who disturbed his reading of the case notes by asking if today wasn’t the day he was supposed to finish early to buy balloons and a chocolate cake.
‘I made it,’ Charles said when he saw Marika sitting in the living room surrounded by her classmates. ‘Daddy made it.’
Marika looked at her hands. Eva smiled, but it never made it to her eyes.
A lot of the time, he would get home so late that Marika had gone to bed and Eva would be sitting waiting on the sofa — she always stayed up until he came home, no matter how tired she was. As soon as he came through the door, she would stand up, say hello, give him a hug, and then go straight to the bathroom and get ready for bed.
Charles would sit in the darkness, alone in front of the telly, with a beer, waiting for the alcohol to make him so dozy that he could no longer keep his head upright. He often woke up on the sofa the following morning, woken by the sound of Eva stacking crockery in the kitchen. Charles had started to think that she did it on purpose, that it was supposed to wake him up.
They still had sex. He needed it, and convinced himself that she did, too.
They would often do it in the morning, before Marika woke up — in the kitchen, or on the sofa or the bathroom floor. These were silent agreements: she would move closer to him or vice versa, and it didn’t take more than for her to close her hand or her lips around him, or to guide his face to her neck or breasts, to get him rock hard. He thought it surprising that Eva still had that effect on him. It was always over far more quickly than either of them wanted.
‘It’s the only time you’re really here,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he replied.
Eight years, he thought. We had eight good years. Will we get any more?
He wanted to say sorry, but couldn’t.
He had heard all about them, policemen who had been consumed by their jobs and then watched as everything else fell apart, without doing anything about it, and Charles had promised himself and Eva that it would never happen to them. He also recalled how the question — is it happening now? — had popped into his mind one sunny morning in July, the first day of his summer leave, yet he still got in the car to go and take a new witness statement about Lichter.
Charles laughed at that, firstly because is it happening now? was an absurd question, and then, when he realised that the answer was yes, because he could do nothing ab
out it.
OCTOBER 1984
It was a day to remember.
The car tailing the lorry heading south with the goods has to stop, close to Södertälje. The reason: puncture, rear left tyre. Operatives Larsson and Johansson are inside, and they make a forlorn call-out on the radio before changing the tyre. In the meantime, the lorry disappears into the autumn gloom.
They have repeatedly described the vehicle’s appearance and registration to their colleagues, which is completely futile since the car is deliberately nondescript and the driver switches the numberplates at a service area en route to Malmö.
When a deflated Larsson and Johansson return northwards and are summoned to the Director, they are unsure of what might have caused the puncture, although both seem to remember seeing shards of glass in the car park.
‘It is lucky,’ the Director hisses across his desk at Charles and Paul, ‘that this has been an invisible operation from the start. Otherwise I would have been forced to fire the whole Bureau staff, myself included.’ He has a glass of brandy in his hand. It’s eleven a.m. ‘Is that even possible? Can you fire yourself? I’ve never fucking known anything like it. So much money. So many resources. Larsson and Johansson, like Kristiansson and fucking Kvant.’
‘We know that the lorry was heading south,’ Paul says. ‘We’re guessing that they went to Gothenburg, to get the boat over …’
‘I know.’ The Director’s voice is trembling. ‘I know. Maybe England, right? Maybe even Norway. Or perhaps the lorry drove down to Malmö, onto a ferry, and then through Denmark. Or West Germany. Whichever it is, we’ve lost them.’
Paul blinks.
‘That’s correct.’
The Director examines his glass.
He flings it at the wall. The shards fall to the floor and the brandy splatters. One drop lands on Charles’ lip; another hits his cheek.
‘Gentlemen,’ the Resident says with a smile. ‘Comrades. I must congratulate you. Berlin sends her warmest regards.’
With Johann Kraus, it’s never East Berlin. That would be tacit recognition of West Berlin as a city, which in turn would give legitimacy to the forces on the other side of the wall. The East German way is always to operate in denial. In times like these, this might be more important than ever.
This time, he’s sitting in the front seat, next to Paul. He’s clutching a briefcase. Charles is sitting behind them with a headache and a blue holdall. He could do with a stiff drink, but has to wait so that it doesn’t get out of control.
‘Everything went swimmingly, I understand,’ says Kraus.
‘That would be our assessment,’ says Paul.
They roll off slowly, leaving Lärkstaden. Kraus hands the briefcase over to Charles, who opens it and runs his fingertips over the notes. Everything is so familiar, as though it’s only been a matter of days since the last deal was concluded. In fact, it’s been over a year.
‘Half now,’ Kraus says without looking at Charles. ‘Half in just over a month’s time.’
Charles opens the holdall.
‘There was one snag, was there not?’ Kraus says, staring straight out of the windscreen. ‘Heffler mentioned a journalist.’ When neither of them respond, he goes on: ‘I am rather hurt, I must say, by the fact that I have to be the one to bring this up.’
‘The reason being that we still aren’t sure exactly what it is she knows,’ says Paul.
‘That is what I am afraid of.’
‘We are in the process of finding out.’
‘That is all I ask, as you are aware. That, and then that you take appropriate measures once you have concluded your investigations.’ In the darkness, Kraus’s profile is as sharp as the cutting edge of a knife. ‘The rabbit warren is deep, far deeper than you think. You know the intended purpose of our VAX machines, and you know about The Firm’s long fingers. Dear ASEA — the electrical-engineering giant — have been supplying us with isostatic presses for four years now. We manage the deals separately, but, since they depend upon each other, there are still some common elements. If you find yourself standing far down enough in the rabbit warren, the links become apparent. This journalist is in danger, in the most inappropriate way, of searching far too deep. There are names down there. Anyone who finds their way down there cannot return to the surface.’
None of them say anything. The cool, dry notes rustle in Charles’ hands as he transfers them to the bag.
‘I understand,’ says Paul.
‘I am not, of course, asking you to do anything drastic. Such a thing would never occur to me.’
‘Of course not.’
‘If, however …’
‘I understand,’ says Paul, again.
JULY 1980
The breakthrough in the Lichter investigation came in the shape of a witness who had been too scared to contact them earlier. He called the station late one Saturday in July and insisted on talking to Charles. The constable who’d taken the call then contacted Charles and passed on the telephone number, which Charles then rang from home. The man did not say who he was but claimed to have information about Ted Lichter. He just gave a time and place where he wanted to meet, and hung up.
So Charles was left standing with the receiver in his hand and a fluttering in his chest, the sort you get when you know that something’s about to happen.
When Monday came around, the first day of his summer leave, Charles went and got into his car, despite having promised Marika that they were going to eat breakfast and watch telly together. Eva walked to the door with him, didn’t say a word.
‘You,’ Charles said when they met. ‘I wasn’t expecting this.’
They sat in Charles’ car, up on the hill from where you could see the houses, the church tower, even the bridge over the little river that wound its way down towards the coast.
The man sitting next to him was a councillor, married with two children, and was a pretty well-known figure in the town.
‘I’ve been thinking this over for a long time,’ he said. ‘Ever since I realised that it was him.’
‘That it was Lichter?’
‘Yes. But I haven’t … I’m putting so much on the line.’
‘I’m not going to force you to make an official statement. It might not even be necessary. If you give me information that helps me get on — that might be enough.’
‘I feel like I have to. It isn’t right, going around knowing, or at least suspecting, what might be behind something like this, and not saying anything.’
He looked at Charles with an expression that seemed to be looking for reassurance.
‘I agree.’
‘I’ve read about you in the papers,’ he went on. ‘You seem like a decent bloke.’
‘I do my best,’ said Charles.
The councillor laughed.
‘Same here, in the end. Maybe that’s all you can ask of yourself.’
About two years earlier, he had dared, for the first time, to do something about the urges that were tormenting him. That wasn’t Ted Lichter, but since then he had met several men, including Ted Lichter. Met was the word he used.
At first his relationship with Lichter had been impersonal, or at least as impersonal as things can be when it’s a matter of having sex in return for payment.
‘The last time we met was just a few days before he disappeared. By then, we’d moved on to a bit of small talk, both before and after, however you might put it. He’d seen me in the newspaper, he said, when I’d been at the opening of the new swimming pool. That’s what I’d been afraid of all along, that something like that might happen. He could see that in my face, which wasn’t difficult — in fact, I think it was pretty obvious, if you know what I mean? He calmed me down though, laughed, told me he was used to these kinds of situations. I asked what he meant, which is when …’ He shook his head. ‘Ted told me a very strange story.’
‘I have no evidence of that. It might be out there if anyone goes looking for it, but I didn’t want to get involved. I can’t see why he would lie about it. There was no point.’
Charles waited, wanted to smoke a cigarette, but the councillor was no smoker, he knew that, so he abstained.
‘He told me that he’d met a man — a politician who had been here on a visit alongside a former government minister — who requested his services. That was the beginning of March, and it all took place in the same hotel where he and I used to go, but in one of the more luxurious rooms.’
‘Who was the politician?’
The man stayed quiet for a long time.
‘I’m guessing that you will work it out, and so I am merely saving you a bit of time by telling you, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yes.’
The councillor took a deep breath, and held it, for ages.
‘Ulrik Bondesson. It’s not a name that rings bells with the man in the street, granted, but during Palme’s time in office he was at Defence, as one of Foreign Minister Paulsson’s closest aides.’
Bondesson. Paulsson. Palme.
Unexpected names.
‘After the act itself, the phone rang in Bondesson’s room. At this point, Lichter was in the shower — Bondesson could hardly shoo him out before answering. What came next was a conversation in German. Since Lichter was in the shower, he only heard half of it and, oh yes, Lichter was Swedish of course, but his grandparents came from Hamburg, so he could speak German, or at least understand it. That was one part of his brain not yet addled by the drugs.’
As he said the words, a sadness fell over the councillor’s face. Charles wrote Bondesson’s name in his notebook and waited.
Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend: a Leo Junker case Page 19