Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART I
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
PART II
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
PART III
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
THE LEO JUNKER SERIES
THE THIN BLUE LINE
CHRISTOFFER CARLSSON has a PhD in criminology, and is a university lecturer in the subject. He has written five crime novels, including the bestselling The Invisible Man from Salem and the Young Adult noir October is the Coldest Month.
Scribe Publications
18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia
2 John Street, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom
Originally published in Swedish as Den Tunna Blå Linjen by Piratförlagets 2017
Published by agreement with Pontas Literary & Film Agency
First published in English by Scribe 2018
Copyright © Christoffer Carlsson 2017
Translation copyright © Michael Gallagher 2018
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted.
9781925322897 (Australian edition)
9781911617211 (UK edition)
9781925693041 (e-book)
CiP data records for this title are available from the National Library
of Australia and the British Library.
scribepublications.com.au
scribepublications.co.uk
For my parents
PART I
The Friend Who Went Up in Smoke
Stockholm
November 2015
1
A letter arrives in the post.
The envelope is white, postcard-sized, and postmarked Stockholm. My name and address are written in anonymous block capitals in black ink.
It’s lunchtime, and for once I happen to be at home when it gets pushed through the letterbox along with the rest of the day’s post. I’m about to head back to work, so I just pick it up, slip it in my pocket, and leave.
Then I forget all about it.
Sitting in the passenger seat next to Gabriel Birck, my hand finds its way into my inside pocket, and there it is, crumpled and creased after having spent a few hours inside my clothes.
Birck squints as he leans forward.
‘Here comes another one.’
I leave the letter in my pocket and reach for the camera, put my eye to the viewfinder, and take two photos of the woman approaching the entrance. Outside, the hum of Stockholm surrounds us, but it’s quiet in here, save for the sporadic crackling of the police radio.
‘Can’t we listen to normal radio?’ I ask.
‘I prefer it like this.’
‘But …’
‘No. This is my car.’ He looks pissed off. ‘Fucking hell, what a waste of time this is. If time is money, we must be paying up big right now.’
He’s probably right.
Restructuring within Swedish Police has been going on for almost a year. Everything’s supposed to be more efficient, but instead no one has any idea what anyone else is doing — what’s termed ‘a crisis’. Officers are shuffled back and forth between divisions, and no one ever achieves anything. Chiefs are engaged in constant struggle to fill the gaps, yet the directives from above are said to be so vague that they don’t even know what their budgets are.
I can’t remember things ever being this bad. Clear-up rates are falling, resentment is rising, and all the money that was ploughed into the reorganisation seems to have disappeared.
‘Every day feels like a fucking holiday,’ Birck goes on, and it’s true.
That’s why we find ourselves close to the large square of Odenplan, having been seconded out to Surveillance. They were short of people to cover the night shift. Our task is to record anyone arriving or leaving Västmannagatan 66 between eight p.m. and three a.m. According to the duty officer, the address is being used to fence stolen goods, but the Anti-Theft Unit haven’t been able to prove it.
Birck puts his hand on the door handle.
‘I need a piss. Call me if anything happens.’
It’s twenty-five past eight, it’s November, and it’s cold. As Birck crosses the street to use the toilets over at Hotel Oden, his breath looks like puffs of thin white smoke. He hunkers down against the cold and turns up the collar on his winter coat. The rain that fell a few hours ago has left the roads with a glistening sheen of moisture. In the distance, the neon signs around Odenplan are just visible, pools of light in all this blackness. A bus sweeps across Karlbergsvägen, but silhouettes are all I can make out, no faces.
It’s been a long year for the police, and a long year for me. I forced myself off the pills, despite being convinced for a long time that it was impossible.
That was three hundred and seventy days ago today. It feels like more.
I took it a minute, an hour, at a time. Days felt like weeks, which felt like months, and I started to feel older than I was. When there’s nowhere to escape to, you age quickly.
I reach for the letter again, inspect it from all angles, then rip the envelope open with my front-door key.
It contains a photograph printed on thin paper, folded in two. That’s it.
The photo feels slippery and cool between my fingers; it depicts a dark-haired woman with a thin face and large, almond-shaped eyes. She’s wearing a dark-green waist-length jacket, a black shirt, and equally black drainpipe trousers. She’s waiting on a street corner — impossible to determine which — and is staring out at the road as if waiting for someone.
On the back of the photograph, a handwritten telephone number and two words:
Help me
I get my mobile out, dial the number, and press the phone to my ear. No answer. I hang up,
and open the phone’s web browser, do a search for the number: no hits.
It’s not unheard of for people to just mess the police around, often for no good reason at all, so I’m used to it. One thing about this is confusing, though. I recognise the woman.
As Birck emerges from the hotel, I fold up the photo and put it in the envelope before slipping it back into my inside pocket.
The police radio crackles: someone has found a dead man’s body in a flat on Karlbergsvägen, a kilometre from where we’re sitting. My first thought is to head over there, to get out of this if nothing else, but we’d have to clear it with Surveillance first. And if we did find our way to the body, we’d only have to turn around and come back, because someone else would’ve got there first.
A man stops outside Västmannagatan 66, then enters the building. Dutifully, we take our photos. Monday the second of November will be remembered for nothing whatsoever.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text. It’s from the number I just called, the one on the back of the photo.
Tomorrow, 10pm
That, and an address in Södermalm, is all.
who is this? I reply. and why didn’t you answer?
‘Who’s that?’ says Birck.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘You look weird.’
‘It’s nothing.’
Sitting in that car, the hours drag by.
I think about the dead man in the flat on Karlbergsvägen. The city just lost another soul, but Stockholm stopped caring a long time ago.
2
It’s been a year and a half since my old boss, Charles Levin, died. My tablets have been taken from me. John Grimberg, who was my best friend long ago, is missing.
The emptiness inside me keeps growing. I’m still working as a detective at the Violent Crime Unit in central Stockholm, but it’s hard to stay in the same place, and the same role, when everything else has changed. I know I need something to take the place of the tablets; addictions don’t disappear just like that. More often than not they’ll mutate: former drunks become workaholics, clean junkies become gambling addicts, flat-broke casino punters turn to booze. For those who do actually manage to get free, it’s easy to lose their way.
Freedom. A strange word, when you think about it.
I wake from a nap brought on by the fruitless Surveillance night shift. Darkness has once again enveloped the city, and it’s getting on for half-nine. I grab my coat and scarf. I’ve looked at the photo a few times during the course of the day, as well as studying the handwriting and the envelope it was sent in.
I walk to Kungsholmstorg. The southbound bus snorts its way towards me through the cold. I get on, taking a seat on my own right at the back, where I can feel the warmth and the vibration from the engine. As we sweep along the Södermalm waterfront, I can almost make out the frozen silhouettes of the Gröna Lund amusement park on the far side.
I get off at Tjärhovsplan and check the address in the text message, then peel off onto Tjärhovsgatan, where I find the entrance and try the door. It’s locked, and it’s as black as the bottom of a well in there. All I can see is a spindly spiral staircase winding its way upwards.
A man appears from the shadows. He’s wearing dark clothes and a cap when he steps out of the entrance.
‘Leo,’ the man says and calmly takes hold of my arm. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Come with me.’
Then something flashes in his hand: a little knife, with the blade pointing towards me.
‘Grim,’ I say.
3
I must have crossed over to the other side. Him touching me feels unreal. Like he’s a ghost.
‘So?’ Grim says. ‘What do you think?’
‘If it wasn’t for your voice, I would never have recognised you.’
This is how he makes his living: helping people to disappear and giving them new identities. He disappeared himself, over a year ago.
The hair peeking out from under his cap is no longer blond but dark brown, and his blue eyes are now brown. Yes, it is him, but he’s put on weight, his face is puffier and his cheekbones are less defined than they used to be. He looks a bit swollen — ill, almost.
He’s wearing a pair of baggy jeans and a thick, dark-brown jacket over a knitted jumper — the kind of thing you imagine dockers might wear. The clothes fit badly, as if they weren’t his.
‘Are you going to hurt me?’
‘I’m not going to do you any harm. That was the first thing I said.’
‘Can I trust you on that?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I have no idea anymore.’
That makes him laugh.
‘Well I can hardly blame you.’
Grim had always been my best friend. A friend who had then tried to kill me. Things like that tie people together, whether they like it or not.
I change the subject. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Nowhere, really. It’s just safer, meeting like this.’
‘Safer?’
‘We can turn right here.’
We leave Tjärhovsgatan and head up towards Katarina Church. Illuminated and whitewashed, it shines brightly in the November night.
‘I need your help,’ says Grim.
‘With what?’
‘You got my letter, right?’
‘Well I wouldn’t be here otherwise.’
An elderly man makes his way down the hill with the aid of his walking stick. His gut is the size of a beach ball, stretching the fabric of his coat taut. He grunts his way towards us.
‘You saw who the woman in the picture was,’ he continues, quietly, once the man has gone past us.
‘Yes.’
‘I need to know who did it.’
‘Why?’
‘That would take a long time to explain.’
‘Well make a start then.’
‘Not tonight. We haven’t got time.’
Some distance away, perhaps down on Medborgarplatsen, someone’s setting off fireworks. They explode against the black sky, the sound muffled and satisfying.
We get to the church. Close by, you can hear the bustle and hum of the bars along Mosebacke.
‘I don’t know who did it,’ I say. ‘Nobody does. Why is that so important?’
Grim, more impatient now, insists:
‘Can you help me or not?’
‘This isn’t okay — contacting me out of the blue after a year and a half, then asking me about something like this without telling me why!’ Suddenly I can feel my insides burning with rage. I don’t know where it came from. ‘It’s an insult.’
‘I will explain, but you can start by having another look at the investigation. That’s all I ask.’
‘That’s asking too much.’
He stops.
‘I’ll be in touch again soon.’
‘Grim,’ I say, in a harsher tone than I intended. ‘What’s going on? How long have you been back?’
‘A week or so. I’ll be able to tell you more soon. Listen.’
‘Yes?’
‘Thanks for coming. It’s good to see you.’
Right there, for a split-second, his mask slips, and I recognise him.
Another firework whistles skywards and explodes somewhere over Götgatan. I stand watching it for a second before I turn to Grim, but he’s disappeared, swallowed up by the ground as if he’d never been there at all.
4
I stay close in to the stone frontages of Södermalm’s old buildings as I walk, then place my hand flat against one of them. Somehow it’s as if I can feel the stones’ age against my skin. The city fills my view. Another firework explodes in the distance.
Grim’s been missing for a year and a half. I’ve learnt to live without him, without the need for him, and without the threat I still felt
I was under when he was around.
And then he turns up.
I’m standing outside that entrance on Tjärhovsgatan again. This is where he appeared from, out of the darkness. Is he holed up in this building? I cross the road and lift my gaze upwards to study the windows in the facade. In a few of them, the lights are on, but the vast majority are in darkness.
I wait, but he doesn’t show up. Maybe he’s already there, inside the building, or perhaps this place has no significance whatsoever. That might be exactly why he chose it, so that I won’t have a relevant address to link him to, should I decide not to do as he says.
If I chose to betray him. That’s what it feels like, weirdly enough.
I flop onto a seat on the metro.
The woman in the picture. That’s why he got in touch. Not to let me know he was okay, not because he wanted to meet me. He contacted me because he needed me. That’s all people are to Grim. Tools.
I pull out the photo. She’s oblivious to the picture being taken; there’s something quite natural about the whole scene. It’s as if the camera has captured her in an instant where she seems to be at one with her world, serene. She is very beautiful.
I know who she is. It was awful, what happened. Everyone thought so. Tragic.
She’s been dead for over five years, and a connection with Grim would never have occurred to me.
Is there a connection? What did he actually say?
It’s not until I get off at Fridhemsplan that it strikes me. Aiding and abetting a criminal. That’s what I’m making myself guilty of, as of now, if I keep this to myself — a serious crime, although not uncommon among police officers. A lot of the time it can be explained away, but almost as often it ends up with officers being convicted — destroying their careers. What the fuck am I going to say to Birck? Or Morovi?
And Sam? Well … what am I going to say to Sam?
I stop at a 7-Eleven to get some ice cream and cigarettes. Then I head home to Alströmergatan and take the lift to the third floor.
Whichever way you look at it, the faded apartment on Chapmansgatan was a loner’s place. I was pleased to see the back of it. The two-bedroom place on Alströmergatan has been ours — mine and Sam’s — for six months. The windows are huge, and the lighting’s always warm. The parquet floors creak underfoot, and the fireplace radiates a gentle wood smell. Occasionally, when Sam and I are both off work, we go to auctions together to buy antiques. We’re gradually furnishing our first home together. It feels good, feels right.
The Thin Blue Line Page 1