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

by Christoffer Carlsson (Translated by Michael Gallagher)

  DAVIDSSON: And what was he doing?

  BREDSTRÖM: He had one of those, what do you call them, a little trolley for moving packing boxes around.

  DAVIDSSON: A sack truck?

  BREDSTRÖM: That’s it. That’s what you call them. He had a box on it.

  DAVIDSSON: In the kitchen?

  BREDSTRÖM: No, the living room.

  DAVIDSSON: Could you see what was in the box?

  BREDSTRÖM: No.

  DAVIDSSON: And no sign of Levin?

  BREDSTRÖM: No.

  DAVIDSSON: What else did you see?

  BREDSTRÖM: That was it. I could see that there was something going on in there that I should keep well out of. Even being seen in the area, in a stolen car, when I’d bumped into him earlier that day — it wouldn’t look good. Considering where I am now, I was obviously right about that. So I sat in the car and got out of there.

  DAVIDSSON: Let’s say that this is true, Daniel. Why then did we find the car in question burned out near the graveyard?

  BREDSTRÖM: I wanted to get shot of it. It’d already been up at my place for far too long, and the longer a car is in your vicinity, the more difficult it is to slip away. No one wanted to buy the thing, and even less so when it had been close to all that. I could see that myself, right. And the car was the only thing putting me on Alvavägen, so I thought I’d be just as well getting rid of it. I’ve got no plans to do any more time, especially not for something I haven’t done.

  DAVIDSSON: Well, if that was so important to you, why did you leave the false plates on the car?

  BREDSTRÖM: I didn’t think of it until I torched the car, and then it was too late, wasn’t it?

  DAVIDSSON: If this is true —

  BREDSTRÖM: It is true.

  DAVIDSSON: Yes, I realise you’re going to insist that it is. But why the hell didn’t you mention this to begin with, Daniel? [long pause] Is it not the case that someone beat you to it, Daniel? Weren’t you planning to do exactly the same thing as the man in there, if I’m going to believe you, had done?

  BREDSTRÖM: [long pause] I don’t know.

  DAVIDSSON: You don’t know?

  BREDSTRÖM: I don’t know what would’ve happened if he’d been there on his own and I’d gone in. It would’ve depended on him, not me, put it that way.

  DAVIDSSON: This man that you claim to have seen, wou—

  BREDSTRÖM: I’m not just saying it. I saw him, clear as day. If you showed me a picture, I’d recognise him. And let me tell you, if I do ever see him again, I’ll give him a pat on the back and buy him a beer for what he did.

  Tove has never liked it, this city. Something about it makes you feel small and insignificant. She remembers it from her time as a trainee, how you could never be yourself here. Markus could, but not her.

  She checks the time: she’s got eight minutes left to wait. Itchy fingers. Eight minutes — not going to happen.

  She still hasn’t decided how she’s going to allow this, her meeting with Leo Junker, to end. She thinks about her mum, who right now has no idea that they are separated by more than 500 kilometres, who doesn’t even know that Leo’s been in Bruket. Tove should’ve called her.

  Seven minutes left. She checks her weapon, gets out of the car, and crosses the street. She stands by the entrance and checks that the stone is still there and that the door hasn’t closed, smokes a cigarette.

  Her phone rings. Davidsson. Fuck. Not now. Tove’s about to press reject, but just at that moment she’s overcome by a feeling of uncertainty and she changes her mind.

  ‘Hello?’

  Davidsson sighs, loudly.

  ‘It’s probably not him. It’s not Bredström. He might have been planning to do it, but I don’t think it was him that actually did it.’

  ‘Eh?’

  A half-slurring Davidsson drawls through his account of his second interview with Bredström. Tove can see Davidsson in her mind’s eye, sitting there at home in his easy chair with the footrest out, and a glass of strong brandy or whisky on the table next to him, resigned to the unfathomable stupidity of the world at large.

  She smokes the cigarette to the nub and then drops it to the ground.

  ‘Bredström says he saw Fredrik Oskarsson fiddling with his garden furniture. He actually says he saw Oskarsson folding his parasol. How the fuck would Bredström get that right unless he’d actually been there?’

  ‘And then when he returns, he sees someone else in the house, is that right?’ Tove says.

  ‘A man with blood spattered on his sleeve, standing loading a box onto a sack truck,’ says Davidsson. ‘He claims. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know, but I did get this funny feeling in my belly when he said that. Bredström left, so where the man in the house went from there he doesn’t know. And who the fuck this guy is, I have no idea. Bredström also says that he’s seen a car parked up in the clearing in the woods, but it was that far away that he’s only seen the headlights. That is a car very close to the scene, at the time of the murder, but a car that we know jack shit about other than that. If Bredström is telling the truth, who the hell is that sitting inside it?’

  Tove looks at her watch. Four minutes left. She can feel it in her fingers. Something is happening.

  ‘Bredström could be lying, of course,’ Davidsson slurs. ‘He probably is. But I don’t know. I just got the feeling that he was telling the truth.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I need …’

  She doesn’t finish the sentence, hangs up instead.

  And then, the verification: the gunshot. It rips a hole in the silence.

  The air, there’s something funny about the air: at first, it’s full of that clinical smell that you only get in hospitals. Then it fills with something else, a warm, rich scent, like grass in summer.

  ‘I don’t mean any offence,’ Goffman says with his back to me as I enter the apartment, ‘but you certainly look rather haggard. Please take your shoes off. The rug you’re standing on is handmade, and cost more than your flat.’

  He says it with such perspicuity that I obey without a second thought and clumsily step out of my shoes.

  I walk through the hall and find him in the kitchen. He’s standing by the cooker, and is slowly stirring the contents of a saucepan with a beautiful, elegant spoon. That’s where the funny smell is coming from.

  Goffman is wearing a pair of black jeans and a grey-and-white-checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’s tanned and broad-shouldered, so tall that he seems to be hunched over the stove. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in anything other than a suit.

  ‘How did you know it was me?’ I say.

  ‘I didn’t. I suspected.’

  I stand in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe. It feels good, unburdening.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘He was your mentor and your friend, after all. And he was my colleague and comrade once, long ago.’ His gaze falls onto my T-shirt. ‘Garfield.’ He cocks his head to one side. ‘You’ve cat to be kitten me right meow.’ He chuckles. ‘I get it. Very funny.’

  ‘It’s not my T-shirt.’

  He turns around and glances out the kitchen window, which faces the street.

  ‘Did you come alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Does my joints good, apparently. At least, that’s what my doctor would have me believe, but each time I see him he seems more and more like a charlatan.’ He opens one of the cupboards over the sink, takes out a mug, and fills it. ‘Are you sure you won’t have some? You look like you could do with it.’

  ‘I have to ask you,’ I say, and wobble against the doorframe.

  Goffman raises his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes?’
/>   I get my balance back.

  ‘You know why I’m here. So you know what it is I want to know.’

  Goffman puts the saucepan on the hob, turns off the ring, and pulls out one of the drawers, gets out a teaspoon and plops it into the mug, stirring slowly in a circular motion. My eyes follow his hands. Goffman’s fingers are long and bony. I remember that about him, that he had fingers like a skilful pickpocket and that you need to keep your eyes on them.

  ‘You want to know where I was on the evening of the eighteenth of June.’

  ‘Between half-past nine and half-past ten.’

  I hear how heavy my breathing is. Inside my pocket, I’m clutching the knife so hard that it’s hurting the palm of my hand.

  The ceiling light is on, but the light it casts is weak and warm, which gives Goffman bags under his eyes.

  ‘I was with a good friend of mine. Her name is Susanna. We had dinner at Sturecompagniet, in the city centre, and we got the bill just before ten. I remember that, because I looked at the receipt and noticed the time. Then we walked down Sturegatan towards Valhallavägen, and along it for a bit. I don’t recall exactly which way we walked, but we ended up here, anyway.’

  ‘Have you still got that receipt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does Susanna have a mobile phone?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘I would like you to call her.’

  ‘But of course.’ He picks up the steaming teacup from the worktop with two hands, takes a cautious sip. ‘Come out to the living room. That’s where my phone is.’

  ‘You first.’

  ‘Sure.’

  I back out of the kitchen, towards the hall. The room tilts under my feet. I need to keep my feet further apart, otherwise I’m going to fall over. I need to stay upright.

  The morphine made me cocky, but it’s leaving my system now. Fuck, what if it is him? What do I do then? The only thing I’ve got to defend myself with is a knife.

  ‘You say that you just want to talk, and I’m happy to do so, but I can tell from your manner that you have your suspicions. It’s not the first time someone has suspected me, and that, presumably, is why I’m not more upset. But I would still appreciate it if you could be a little more polite. You are in an innocent man’s home, and, quite frankly, you have no right to behave like this. Besides,’ he adds, raising one of his narrow eyebrows. ‘Aren’t you on leave?’

  ‘Where have you heard that?’

  Goffman chuckles as he walks past me, tea in hand.

  ‘I’m sixty-six years old, Leo. I don’t always remember who said what.’

  Goffman’s living room is spacious and airy, the walls covered in expensive-looking art. In one corner is a little desk with a computer on it, next to a Juliet balcony. By the desk is an old black bag, like a sports holdall but made of leather, the sort of thing that men in old films have with them when they travel. The floor is covered with a large ivory-coloured rug, and a three-piece lounge suite stands on half of it. On the coffee table — glass and dark metal — is a mobile phone. Goffman sinks into the sofa, puts the cup on the table, and picks up the phone.

  ‘Right, let’s see,’ he says. ‘Have a seat, Leo.’

  ‘I’m happy standing.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ he says with a pained expression. ‘In your state. But fine, stand.’ He puts the phone to his ear and checks the time on his watch. ‘She’s not going to be happy. I’m going to wake her up.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, the doubt gnawing away at me. I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s growing with every passing second. ‘To have to do this,’ I spell out.

  He looks down at the nearest cushion. I need to sit down. Everything is spinning.

  ‘I understand that you nee— … Yes, hello, Susanna, it’s Paul. Hello. I understand that … Yes, I know.’

  It’s not him either, I think to myself. Goffman didn’t do it. He’s too composed, too well coordinated. Who the fuck was it then? I flop into the armchair.

  Bredström. Yes, it has to be him. It’s almost always about love, or retribution. I must remember to ask Goffman about him. Maybe he knows.

  ‘I know I’m disturbing you,’ he repeats, adjusting the cushion slightly, ‘but I have a young man here who would very much like to talk to you. He just wants to confirm a detail. It’s about Charles. No, it … It won’t take long. Here he is.’

  Goffman leans over the table, holding the phone out towards me.

  ‘Please, go ahead.’

  When I stand up from the armchair, my neck is pounding and my ribcage is straining as if it were about to burst.

  ‘Thank you,’ I groan, take the phone from him, and slump back into the armchair. ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’

  I wait. Look at the phone, then at Goffman.

  ‘There’s nobody there.’

  His fingers. I took my eyes off his fingers. The cushion, I think to myself. It was under the cushion. In his right hand, the revolver is silent and black.

  ‘Did you really come alone tonight, Leo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ he says.

  Then he shoots me in the chest.

  Tove puts the phone to her ear, waits for the operator to answer. Her hand is shaking.

  ‘My name is Tove Waltersson. I am a police officer, and someone is shooting at my colleague, at Blanchegatan 14.’

  ‘Someone is shooting at a police officer — is that right?’

  ‘At Blanchegatan 14, Östermalm.’

  ‘Which floor, did you say?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘We have …’ The seconds ticking by are so long. ‘… a car five minutes away.’

  The operator asks her to stay on the line until they get there. Tove hangs up and wraps her fingers around the gun’s handle, hugging the wall as she slowly climbs the stairs up to the first floor, reading the surnames on the letterboxes before continuing up the stairs towards the second.

  Somewhere above her, a door opens. It closes again, gently. Someone pushes in a key, and locks it.

  The second floor is empty and quiet; Tove carries on to the third.

  The lift doors slide shut in her peripheral vision. The lock clicks. She rushes over, holding her breath.

  There. He looks at himself in the lift’s mirrored wall and makes brief eye contact with Tove. An old man, she thinks to herself, older than her father, with clear eyes and sharp features.

  The lift disappears into its shaft — fuck — and she flings herself down the steps, breathless and weak at the knees.

  Below her, the lift stops with a heavy, whirring puff, and the doors open. The sound of his footsteps is drowned out by the clacking of her own, and when Tove gets her first sight of the ground floor the front door is open and then she sees him disappearing out through it with a bag in one hand, and something black and shiny in the other.

  Out on the street, surrounded by long shadows and tall buildings. He walks quickly but calmly along the deserted pavement. He might have convinced himself that he has already managed to escape and now just needs to blend in.

  Tove tries to see which way he is heading, and whether he has a car waiting for him. He glances over his shoulder, and Tove raises her weapon and shouts. All that does is get him to stop walking — instead, he bolts across the road, and runs in amongst the trees and shrubs on the edge of the park.

  Tessinparken is a park comprising mainly open spaces, all grass, small footpaths, and cycle lanes, but with lush clumps of trees and bushes here and there, and a playground enclosed by a low fence at its northern end. It is a place that makes you feel a bit uneasy, without really knowing why.

  Tove can’t see him anymore, and stops and listens, but she can’t hear his footsteps, just her own heavy breathin
g. She moves slowly between the trees at the park’s edge, hugging the line of the rough old trunks and smelling the leaves in the crowns above.

  She forces herself to relax, drop her shoulders, and, as she does — there — a rustling in front of her, and she sees him, no more than a silhouette. He has extricated himself from the shadow of the trees and is running across the grass with the bag in his hand, heading towards the playground.

  Tove fires a warning shot. The sound booms across the park, bouncing off nearby buildings and activating the fear inside her.

  She pauses again, a little way out on the grass, takes a deep breath, and raises her weapon. Low down, she tells herself. Hit low down.

  As she squeezes the trigger, her pulse is throbbing in her fingertip, and everything instantly goes very, very quiet.

  She is firing for effect.

  Ahead of her, his right arm flies upwards.

  The bag. Tove hit the bag.

  He lets go of it, dumping it in the grass.

  Tove stumbles as she chases him, hitting the ground and breaking her fall with the palms of her hands. The weapon falls from her grasp.

  She gets up again. The shot is still ringing in her ears, still lingering in her arms. She runs past the bag. The bullet has torn a little round mouth in the leather, and Tove avoids thinking about what might have happened up in the flat, whether Leo has been shot, and, in that case, whether he’s still alive.

  He has cleared the fence around the playground, and disappears between the swings and the small wooden playhouses, which are low and colourful.

  A flash in front of her, and a bang rips through the park. She reacts without thinking, ducks down, and is about to take shelter behind one of the playhouses, but it’s too late.

  She’d been expecting this, a punishment — her reward for having left Bruket.

  What she hadn’t expected was that touch would be faster than hearing. In the tiny ember of time that passes before the sound of the second shot, Tove feels the upper part of her left arm explode.

  Blood. There’s blood in my mouth.

  She spits. Must’ve bitten herself somewhere, her lip or her tongue. She doesn’t know and can’t feel anything, either.