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

by Christoffer Carlsson (Translated by Michael Gallagher)

  ‘The other one.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘The other one, Charlie.’

  Charlie turns the other dial on the machine. The water edges down the transparent tube, moving through it like a snake, and as her lungs are emptied of air, they are filled with fluid. It is hypnotising.

  ‘Stop.’

  He turns both of them off. Charles looks around. They are alone under the low sky. Paul carefully removes the tubes.

  ‘She’s done,’ Paul says. ‘Can you do the other one?’

  ‘No.’

  Charles is on the verge of throwing up, and has to move away, has to get some air. He can’t do this. He wishes that the chloroform was enough, that they hadn’t had to go this far, that Cats Falck had never tried to make contact with him.

  ‘Focus, Charlie,’ Paul hisses behind him.

  Charles turns around. Paul’s voice is pleading:

  ‘Help me.’

  He sits down on his haunches by the machine once more and waits while Paul inserts the tubes into Gräns; and once more he turns the controls on Paul’s command. He avoids looking at the machine.

  Paul pulls the tubes out and inspects them carefully. The necklace is gone from Gräns neck. Paul must have taken it.

  ‘I think I scraped one of them in the throat,’ Paul mutters.

  After coiling up the tubes and lifting the machine into the back seat of the Ford, they help each other to place the women in Gräns’ car. Their bodies are limp and unnaturally heavy. Charles puts his thumb on Falck’s wrist, looking for a pulse. When he finds it, the ticking is weak and irregular.

  Paul pulls the gearstick into neutral, and turns the wheel until the tyres are pointing straight ahead. They close the doors. The interior light turns off. Then they start to push the car away from the quayside.

  ‘This is enough,’ Charles says after a while, out of breath. ‘Surely this is enough.’

  ‘The windows,’ Paul says. ‘We need to take them out. It’ll sink quicker that way.’

  ‘Well smash them, then.’

  ‘That would hardly look like an accident.’

  ‘But driving round the quays with no windows in November, that would look like an accident would it?’

  ‘But …’

  ‘We need to get out of here, Paul.’

  Paul opens the driver’s door and puts it into first, then his eyes scan across the port and its many shadows.

  They put their weight against the boot, and Charles’ soles struggle for traction on the slippery ground. They move a metre, two, three. Picking up speed. Charles isn’t walking anymore, he’s running, with the palms of his hands pushing against the boot, and his arms straight.

  Charles charges forward, as fast as he can.

  ‘Shit,’ Paul pants. ‘They’re sitting wrong.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘This is Gräns’ car.’

  And Falcks is sitting in the driving seat. How the fuck could we miss that — this is not going to look credible, this is not going to work.

  His shoulders are now in searing pain, and Charles is panting from the exertion. The air is coming out like puffs of white smoke, and this is as fast as they’re going to be able to get the car to roll, and they’re close to the edge of the quay now, Charles sees it rushing towards them, and it’s all too late, I’m not really here, and …

  ‘Now.’

  They stop, let go of it. The car carries on. It reaches the quay’s edge, tips forwards — there — and the front end hits the water, a sound so loud that it echoes, and as the car slowly rotates and sinks to the bottom, roof first, Charles’ racing pulse remains constant.

  NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 1980

  The winter was as bitingly cold and white as the summer had been lush, warm, and green. The weather was never as extreme as it was in Bruket, the contrasts were never as powerful anywhere else.

  One morning in late November, Manfred Lundin was convicted of the murder of Ted Lichter and the subsequent mutilation of his body.

  ‘I cannot emphasise enough,’ Paul said in a phone call a few days after the verdict had been delivered, ‘how important it is that you stick to our agreement.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning on anything else.’

  ‘I would feel much more secure if you were working for me, Charlie.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘It’s not about trust.’

  He had started calling him Charlie. At first, Charles had hated it, because it made him feel like a child. Recently he had started to like it.

  ‘I understand,’ Charles said, unsure whether he did or not.

  ‘As it happens, I’ll be passing through Bruket in a few days’ time.’

  ‘Will you now.’

  ‘Almost, anyway. I will be meeting colleagues in Malmö, but for once my schedule has plenty of air in it. We could meet up.’

  ‘Are you trying to recruit me?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Not as anything other than my drinking buddy for an evening. I’ve given up hoping for anything else.’

  Charles and Eva did the pre-Christmas clean-up together, changing tablecloths and curtains. Getting out candelabras. It felt good.

  ‘There we go,’ he said, admiring the newly decorated rooms. ‘Everything’s okay, then.’

  She took two steps towards him, looking at his shoulders. Maybe she was considering touching them.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Getting there, at least.’

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  He didn’t answer, despite the certain knowledge that she meant it.

  When the Lichter case was closed once and for all, he started winding down: working less, spending more time at home. Eva had explicitly asked him to.

  ‘I want to be with you, but for this to work you need to be at home.’

  ‘That’s what I want. I want to be with you.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And it was.

  On the evening of the fourth of December, Eva worked in the shop until closing. Marika was going to sleep over at the house of a classmate, Josefine, who lived over on the other side of Bruket, so Eva was home alone. At least that’s what Charles assumed. He didn’t know, because he wasn’t there. He was sitting at one of the corner tables in Brukets Bar, with Paul.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Paul said as he was getting out of the car to meet Charles on the square.

  ‘In the car. But I always park a little way away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I like walking.’

  The truth was that he didn’t want the car to be seen parked outside the bar. It wouldn’t look good, he thought. Whenever he went to Brukets Bar, he would always park in a clearing tucked away in the woods a little way from the square.

  ‘Well, how are you planning to drink then?’

  ‘I’m not planning to drink.’

  ‘What a great drinking buddy I’ve found,’ he muttered as he locked his car.

  ‘How were you planning to drink? You’re in a car yourself.’

  ‘I’ve got a room at the hotel.’

  Paul ordered a beer from the man behind the bar, the same man who’d stood there when Charles visited Bruket, and met Eva, for the first time.

  ‘He’s not very talkative,’ Paul observed when they sat down.

  ‘He’s been standing there for many years and will more than likely be standing there until the day he dies.’

  ‘You mean that one might not be that keen on talking, if one has that past and those prospects?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  They laughed. He enjoyed Paul’s company, and Paul seemed to enjoy his. They had only met once before, but they might just as well have had countless nights like this behind them.

 
He used to tell himself that it was the sign of a nascent friendship, but friendship can be confusingly like the bond that forms between two people forced to keep a secret.

  ‘You look better, Charlie. With the greatest respect, a lot better than the last time I saw you.’

  ‘I am. The summer was … strange.’

  Paul drank some of his beer and waited for him to go on, but Charles didn’t feel like doing so. He sipped his lukewarm water.

  ‘Same here,’ Paul said. ‘As you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t, but I can imagine.’

  ‘You’d like it at ours,’ said Paul. ‘Not least because these are interesting times we’re living in. Your skills would be very useful.’

  ‘You’re flattering me,’ said Charles.

  ‘Are you quite sure you’re not going to have a beer? You can walk home from here can’t you?’

  ‘In this weather?’

  Paul drank some more beer.

  ‘I see what you mean. Winter down here isn’t like winter in Stockholm. Somehow it’s more like winter up north.’

  When Paul asked the question a little later on, he did so as innocently as if he’d been asking where the gents’ was.

  ‘So how come you were so keen to see Daniel Bredström get done? I was happy to help — that’s not what I mean. Favours given and returned and all that. I’m just curious about the underlying motive.’

  ‘Isn’t handling stolen goods enough?’

  ‘I’ll rephrase the question. Why were you so determined that it wouldn’t be possible to trace it back to you?’

  ‘I told you that then.’

  ‘No.’ Paul smiled. ‘You never did. That’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask me then, three months ago?’

  ‘I didn’t need to know then.’

  ‘But you do now?’

  ‘I’m just curious.’

  Charles could feel the suffocating feeling from that summer — and the darkness of the early autumn — returning, enveloping him.

  ‘Anyway, are you really not having a beer?’ said Paul.

  Thinking about it now, he’s struck by how that was just typical of him — what a narrow perspective he’d had. He’s seduced by the versions concocted in hindsight, the ones shaped by what he now knows about what went on. Signs and pointers only become signs and pointers in the here and now, when he knows. At the time, they were nothing of the sort.

  Time. Time can change everything.

  If there’s one thing he has already learned, it is that.

  Sweden. He had his suspicions back then, almost thirty-five years ago, that something wasn’t right.

  His suspicions were correct, but not in the way he thought.

  Sweden. The great betrayal had its roots in the little one.

  Charles had a beer. He had two. He had a third. Paul started going a bit blurred round the edges.

  Meanwhile, the phone rang on Alvavägen. Eva answered, and it was Marika, who didn’t want to stay over at Josefine’s place anymore. Josefine’s parents couldn’t drive her home — they’d had a bottle of wine between them while the girls were watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

  Marika really wanted to sleep at home.

  Eva said she’d come and get her.

  Charles sat behind the wheel of his car, in the clearing in the woods not far from the square. He couldn’t put his seatbelt on. How had he got so drunk?

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t be driving home, Charlie,’ Paul said as he looked at him. ‘Why don’t you get a cab?’

  ‘There aren’t any out here.’

  ‘I’ll drive you.’

  ‘Sod that.’

  Paul put a hand on Charles’ shoulder.

  ‘But Charlie …’

  ‘Let me go,’ he slurred. ‘I’m going home.’

  He drove through the darkness. The dashboard clock showed 01:35. The road was completely deserted, its surface glittering with frost. His head spun, and he veered into the middle of the road, saw the central line disappear underneath him, steered to the right to get back in lane. He could smell smoke. Somewhere — it could’ve been close by or miles away, he had no idea — someone had a fire going.

  He found himself on one of the unnamed roads, which had taken him a long time to find and an even longer time to actually dare to follow. The road was lined with tall, frozen grass. The speedo hovered around seventy, climbed to a hundred, then down to eighty, up to one-ten. His foot alternated between feeling far too light and way too heavy. There was a strange prickling sensation in his fingertips.

  How much had he had to drink? He couldn’t remember. Was it five beers? It must’ve been more.

  Out of nowhere, a person on the road, in thick winter clothes, leading a pushbike.

  Charles slammed on the brakes. The wheel became light in his hands, steering easy with no resistance, but nothing happened. He glided across the tarmac, off to the right, heading off the carriageway.

  The car’s nose flattened the tall grass nearest the road. It made a harsh, loud rustling sound. That’s the last thing his ears remember. From that point onwards, all that remains is touch and the information his eyes registered:

  The front of the car struck the cyclist’s thigh, and their head smashed into the bonnet. The bike’s frame was crushed.

  Charles wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t. His foot stayed stuck on the pedal, pushing on the brake until his toes went numb.

  He blinked. He thought he recognised the thick winter coat.

  The world stopped, until it was frozen, silent.

  Blood. So much blood, everywhere: in her hair, on his hands, on the coat, the bonnet, and the ground. What had happened? What was she doing here? He couldn’t make sense of anything.

  Someone must have followed him with their lights off, because he saw a car slow down and then stop. A door opened, then slammed shut, footsteps rushed towards him.

  Charles saw his mouth move: Charlie, what have you done?

  ‘I …’ he began, but when he saw Paul’s face above him, he didn’t know how to carry on. ‘I think her neck is broken.’

  He didn’t ask what Paul was doing there, how he’d been able to drive. Charles didn’t ask anything, because he couldn’t.

  Paul’s eyes slid over towards the side of the road, to the girl standing there with her mouth half-open, her glossy eyes glistening in the darkness.

  Marika. Charlie, my God, what have you …

  ‘Eva needs to get to hospital,’ Charles whispered. ‘She can … It …’

  Charlie. Paul put a hand on his shoulder. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. I’m going to help you, but you need to do exactly as I say, do you understand?

  Charles was looking for eye contact, but couldn’t focus. Everything sloped off to the left, and his hands were shaking so violently. His body realised that he’d lost her long before his soul did.

  Just over there is a traffic patrol car. I heard them on the radio, and I followed you to try and warn you. Now listen, Charlie. You have to do exactly as I say.

  You see that tree over there?

  Charles turned his head.

  ‘Yes.’

  Get back in the car.

  ‘I can’t.’

  Charlie. You have to. It’s the only way. Otherwise, I can’t help you.

  ‘But I can’t. I can’t move.’

  Charlie!

  JUNE 2014

  I got myself out of there. It worked.

  The feeling was the same as ever when Tove approached the sign telling you that you are now leaving Bruket.

  The road ahead of her narrowed and then disappeared, as it does on the horizon, only nearer. She’d drive over a cliff if she carried on, and the trees came towards her, becoming walls that threatened to fall, to fall and crush her. The steering wh
eel was burning hot in her hands and her seat started to breathe, or at least got a pulse — it was alive, and now the seat grew and closed in around her shoulders, started to grip her thighs.

  She stopped the car, then forced herself to get out. She wanted to throw up but didn’t. Leo witnessed it, and the fact that it was him made it all feel that much worse. When she got back into the driver’s seat, she did so in order to turn around, as she always did, but she didn’t do that. Instead, she carried on, forwards, and with her heart in her mouth she got the car past the sign, and out of Bruket.

  It felt like she was betraying someone.

  Maybe she was.

  The world is a strange place.

  I must’ve nodded off somewhere south of Jönköping, because I’m woken by a clenched fist banging on my shoulder, and when I gasp I feel a sharp pain in my ribs.

  ‘Stay awake.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

  ‘People who are snoring aren’t usually awake.’

  I massage my shoulder.

  ‘It’s the morphine.’

  ‘Keep reading.’

  I flip open the laptop that’s resting on my lap.

  ‘It’s not that easy to interpret these documents. By the way, what happened back there, when you stopped the car as we were leaving?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It looked like a panic attack.’

  ‘Shut up and read, will you.’

  We overtake a heavy goods vehicle with foreign numberplates. I keep my eyes fixed on it to see where it’s from. The Netherlands.

  I’m worried about what kind of measures Davidsson might deploy now he knows that an unauthorised policeman has been rummaging around in the investigation for over twenty-four hours, and what Sam’s going to say when she finds out what I’ve done, that I’m suspended. When she sees the state of me.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ Davidsson had screamed in Tove’s ear, loud enough that I could hear him, when he called her half an hour ago.

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is absolutely beyond fucking belief.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And a disaster for the inquiry.’

  ‘I know,’ she repeated.