The Thin Blue Line

by Christoffer Carlsson

  ‘If it is him,’ I say, ‘then at least we’ve got a few million extra pairs of eyes around the country.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Morovi opens the door to her office. ‘That’s what I’m worried about. What if it isn’t him? Or if he’s one of ten?’

  Not more than a minute later comes the news that the police tip line has collapsed under the volume of calls. Since SEPO haven’t specified whether a particular place, such as a certain city or area, faces a higher threat than elsewhere, the country goes crazy. The suspect has been seen in Malmö, Lund, Falkenberg, Jönköping, Uddevalla, Gothenburg, Falsterbo, Örebro, and another dozen or so Swedish towns and cities, from the South Coast to the Northern Border.

  ‘He’s a speedy little bugger,’ Birck remarks as we rendezvous by his car down in the garage.

  ‘You’re crap at sarcasm.’

  ‘I really am not.’

  We glide out from underground, onto the streets of Kungsholmen. Our mission is to track down various figures well known to us along the Red Line and wave the picture of the suspect in their faces. We are to ask them if they’ve had any contact with him. The thinking behind that: Islamist terrorists have, in the past, tended to recruit members among the young, gang-joining men from marginalised urban estates.

  ‘It’s not often I feel overqualified,’ says Birck, ‘but I fucking do now. Wave a picture around. We’re not Missing People.’

  There just aren’t enough officers to cover everything. Everyone has been posted to other duties. Sweden is like a police state; patrols have even been issued with heavy weapons.

  ‘Angelica Reyes,’ says Birck. ‘John Grimberg. Ludwig Sarac. Patrik Sköld. What a shower.’

  We soon find ourselves joining the rear of a great long train of cars.

  ‘Queues?’ Birck mumbles and checks his watch. ‘Now? What the fuck is going on?’

  ‘People are driving today. They’re avoiding public transport.’

  Birck turns his head and attempts to change lane.

  ‘What a fucking place,’ he mutters.

  The police radio crackles. I turn it up. A male voice stating his call sign. He sounds shaken:

  ‘We’re a Södermalm unit, posted in to, er, we’re standing, we’re supposed to be standing underneath the bridge by Central Station,’ he manages. ‘We’re part of the outer ring monitoring the station. But we’ve just had an incident here, a …’

  ‘Hello?’ says the operator. ‘What’s happened?’

  The man returns.

  ‘I think I just shot John Grimberg.’

  PART II

  The Whistleblower

  Stockholm

  December 2015

  33

  The ghosts.

  Ghosts everywhere. Jesus, the streets are full of them. Those who walked here before me are waiting in the wings. I’ll see them when I get round the next corner.

  Not there, the next one.

  They’re here, somewhere. I can feel them. I move at their pace.

  Around me, the darkness crackles. The city’s neon glitters on the wet tarmac. I am carrying my emptiness inside me. Rain falls.

  34

  The Audi on Fridhemsgatan isn’t parked illegally. The driver has, however, done a poor job of squeezing in between an old Range Rover and a Škoda.

  ‘That’s what caught our attention,’ Leifby says, adjusting his grip on his umbrella. ‘It was parked at an angle, with the front end pointing right out into road.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Larsson takes a step towards Leifby, attempting to get out of the rain. ‘We felt that it could pose a danger to other road users.’

  Dan Larsson and Per Leifby are beat officers from Huddinge. They’re as lazy as anything and experts in the art of seeing and hearing as little as possible. What they’re doing downtown is a mystery — it’s not as if there’s less going on than in Huddinge.

  Leifby steps away from his partner.

  ‘Two of us can’t stand under one umbrella.’

  ‘It’s my umbrella,’ says Larsson, following Leifby.

  ‘It’s ours.’

  Larsson looks at me, the fresh mustard stain on his uniform almost glowing.

  ‘How much have you had to drink, Junker?’

  ‘I haven’t touched a drop.’

  ‘You look a bit rough,’ Leifby chimes in agreement.

  My ears pricked up when they radioed in details of a badly parked white Audi, but it was only when the radio crackled again that I set off.

  ‘This bugger looks to have false numberplates,’ Larsson’s nasal dialect could be heard saying. ‘OSK 853 is a false reg.’

  I only heard it by chance. I was standing next to a patrol car outside HQ, asking whether they could give me a lift home. I was too tired to walk. I hadn’t been drinking.

  Now the tiredness has been blown away.

  OSK 853 is the registration on the vehicle being used by Patrik Sköld.

  The car is an Audi A3, 2009 model. It looks fairly well looked-after, as though the owner had the good taste to wash it regularly, thus avoiding any deep scratches to the paintwork.

  ‘Give me one of your torches.’

  ‘Give him yours,’ says Leifby.

  ‘I got a new one yesterday.’ Larsson puts a guarding hand over the torch on his belt. ‘Give him yours instead, it’s older.’

  ‘Fuck it,’ I say.

  ‘Can’t we …’

  ‘No. Leave it alone.’

  I pull out my phone and activate its stark, white light. When I turn it towards the driver’s side, it dazzles, reflecting off the glass. Despite that, I can just make it out — the police radio mounted inside.

  In my head, it makes the sound Miro Djukic heard when speaking to Angelica’s third customer on the night of the murder, the twelfth of October 2010.

  Our surroundings consist of six- and seven-storey buildings; the hum of Fridhemsplan is like a thick rug. It’s evening, the third of December. Everything’s cold and ruined, but the windows are lit up with Christmas stars and Advent candlesticks, like remnants of a time when the world was a lighter, warmer place.

  Like memories, like ghosts.

  ‘We did a search on the chassis number,’ Leifby says, pulling a notepad from his breast pocket. ‘The car hasn’t been reported stolen. The correct reg is PVV 219. It’s registered to a Patrik Sköld, of Stockholm.’

  ‘Where in Stockholm?’

  Larsson clears his throat and looks over at his colleague.

  ‘We haven’t quite got that far yet.’

  ‘Haven’t you been standing here for the last half-hour?’

  ‘Yeah, but …’

  ‘Yeah, but what?’

  Larsson glances at the hotdog stand on the far side of Fridhemsgatan. His slight movement causes the umbrella to tip. Rain drips down Leifby’s neck.

  ‘We had to get ourselves something to eat,’ Larsson admits.

  ‘We had the car under supervision at all times, though,’ Leifby asserts, moving closer to his partner again.

  ‘You went and ate in the middle of your shift, without notifying the station?’

  ‘You called, didn’t you?’ says Leifby, looking at Larsson.

  ‘I thought you called.’

  ‘You said that you were going to.’

  Leifby side-eyes Larsson, who shrugs.

  ‘Get out of here,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, perhaps we should do that,’ Larsson mumbles, before lolloping off alongside his colleague, under the umbrella.

  I head a little way away myself, stop on a corner to get my phone out.

  ‘It’s here,’ I say when the call connects. ‘The car from Västmannagatan. There’s a police radio in it.’

  ‘OSK 853?’ says Birck.

  ‘Patrik Sköld’s car,’ I confirm. ‘The car
from Västmannagatan is here. Complete with police radio. Can you … ?’

  ‘I’m in a meeting.’

  ‘Now? It’s eleven at night.’

  ‘Ask someone else.’

  ‘Someone else?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Aha. Got ya.’

  I hang up without saying another word.

  It’s been like this for days.

  35

  The man who pulled the trigger is a Nikola Abrahamsson. Born 1991, grew up in Jakobsberg, in active service for a year and four months when it happened.

  According to the report written by his superiors afterwards, based on conversations with those involved, Abrahamsson and his partner, Viveka Cehaic, had been among those posted to the bridge by Central Station to keep the place under surveillance.

  Abrahamsson hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours, while for Cehaic it was nudging forty. They were ordered to stay on the streets. On the nineteenth of November, three-quarters of the force beat their personal bests for overtime worked.

  A man was seen walking towards the bridge, from the direction of City Hall. His head was hunched down between tense shoulders, hands in his pockets. He bore a likeness to a character who’d run into Abrahamsson and Cehaic on Södermalm a day or so before. That might’ve been why Cehaic recognised him.

  ‘Christ, it’s him,’ she said, digging an elbow into Abrahamsson’s side.

  ‘Who?’ said Abrahamsson.

  ‘Police!’ Cehaic shouted. ‘Stop!’

  Cehaic ran towards the man, who turned and hurried back towards City Hall. Abrahamsson was already holding his firearm.

  The man was wearing baggy jeans and a thick coat, and had a hood pulled up over his head. From behind, it could’ve been anyone.

  Abrahamsson fired a warning shot. It whipped through the air with a crack. People around started screaming.

  The man disappeared into the shadows under the bridge.

  Something flashed. Could’ve been a firearm, a knife, or a detonator for the bomb vest he might’ve been wearing under the thick coat.

  Abrahamsson took aim and fired towards what he hoped was the man’s thigh. The man collapsed there under the bridge. He didn’t scream, which was worrying.

  ‘Shit,’ Cehaic said once she’d made her way over.

  Blood was flowing around the man’s head. There was something in his hand. Not a firearm, not a knife, nor a detonator. It was a lighter. On the ground close by, a cigarette, unlit.

  In the background, someone screamed.

  Abrahamsson’s shot forced its way into Grim’s skull and came to a stop somewhere above his right ear, sending him into the coma he’s been in ever since. It’s been two weeks. Grim is in Karolinska Hospital, his condition stable but unchanged. He’s guarded around the clock by two constables. I’m there pretty much every day.

  Almost nothing is as normal.

  Abrahamsson’s shot made Birck tell Morovi. There was no other way out, according to him. It felt like a betrayal, and I wanted to punch him, but I didn’t. Deep down somewhere, I understood. I still protested though:

  ‘I told you. I gave it to you as it was.’

  ‘Yes, because you didn’t have a choice. Because it would’ve been impossible to carry on hiding it. That’s what gets me — the fact that you did it for that reason, not because it was what every reasonable person ought to do in that situation.’

  ‘Friendship’s not always about right and wrong.’

  ‘Friendship,’ Birck repeated. ‘This is exactly what I’m talking about — this isn’t about work for you. You expose both you and me, and Grimberg, to significant risk by acting the way you do. That’s why I have to do this.’

  In the middle of it all, I laughed.

  ‘You can’t claim to be doing this for my sake?’

  ‘Partly.’

  Then he went, and I was left alone.

  I was put on sick leave for five days. That was it, then I had to go back. When I got back to HQ, I was still swaddled in the shock, I think; sudden noises or movements could easily put me off my stride.

  Ghosts, apparitions.

  Shadows everywhere, shadows after me.

  I was summoned to Morovi, who was sitting behind her desk staring at her hands.

  ‘So you wanted to look at Angelica Reyes’ murder because John Grimberg asked you to,’ she said, without looking up. ‘John Grimberg, the escaped inmate from St Göran’s. Put away for murder and attempted murder. Your alleged friend. Who tried to kill Sam. How many people know about this?’

  ‘You and Gabriel. And Grim.’

  ‘No one else?’

  ‘No.’

  Morovi lifted her gaze. In the room next door, someone turned their radio on, and I could hear music through the walls, muffled and melodic.

  I stood there blaming Birck for having grassed. I blamed myself for lying. I blamed Grim for having come back: this is his own fault, if he’d stayed away it would never … Most of all, I blamed Nikola Abrahamsson, and I was scared what I might do to him if we were to meet.

  ‘Why,’ she said calmly, without folding her arms across her chest, without so much as adjusting her position, ‘didn’t you say anything to me?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Aiding and abetting. That’s the offence you’ve committed. If you had said something, I would’ve been able to help you.’ Then: ‘Are you quite sure that no one else knows?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You need to be completely certain, Leo.’

  ‘I am. And … sorry. I do apologise for what has … I didn’t know how to … He is, or rather he was my best friend.’

  ‘No point saying sorry.’ She returned to her computer. I could see it in her face, the rage. ‘It doesn’t mean anything anymore. I just don’t believe you.’

  I headed for the door.

  ‘Listen, Leo,’ her voice came from behind me.

  I turned around.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That some officer from the former SGS was after Angelica Reyes?’

  I tried to think.

  ‘I think so.’

  She nodded sharply. I kept walking.

  ‘Leo?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve protected you until now. I’m going to keep doing it, because I haven’t got the resources to suspend you. But …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When all this is over, I’ll be filing a report.’

  36

  Yet she’s still the one I turn to, standing on that corner watching the Audi, after Birck knocked me back. Morovi knows about the investigation, and she’s seen everything we’ve managed to get hold of. She’s the one who has to make the call.

  ‘OSK 853,’ Morovi repeats with a yawn. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. It was Larsson and Leifby who saw it.’

  ‘Larsson and Leifby? How the hell …’

  ‘I don’t know. The real registration is PVV 219. The car belongs to Patrik Sköld.’

  ‘The Patrik Sköld? Where is it?’

  ‘On Fridhemsgatan, but it would be good to know where it heads to after that.’

  ‘Why aren’t you calling Gabriel?’

  ‘I did. He said no.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He told me to call someone else.’

  In a marginally softer tone, she tells me:

  ‘You know I haven’t got any spare bodies. If you’re going to check that car out, you’ll have to do it yourself, at least until tomorrow morning.’

  She hangs up.

  When I blink, lights flash behind my eyelids and I can see Grim in front of me, his empty eyes staring up at the bridge deck above, his rib cage rising and falling unnaturally quickly, almost pulsating, as he gas
ps for air. Blood is flowing all around him.

  Shadows everywhere, apparitions. The streets are full of ghosts. There’s also something else about that gunshot that doesn’t sit right, something besides anxiety and rage. Something deeper, I don’t know what.

  OSK 853. PVV 219.

  Why would a cop drive around with false plates? On a car that isn’t even stolen?

  I call Birck again.

  ‘Could you at least do a check on a car for me?’

  ‘No.’ He breathes out deeply. ‘Leo, I …’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Are you sure about doing this?’ he asks.

  ‘What else am I going to do?’

  ‘Go home. Have a shower. Have something to eat. Save your relationship. Don’t lie.’ A pause. ‘And ring, if anything comes up.’

  ‘Ring if anything comes up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s what I’m doing.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, quietly, then hangs up.

  While I stand there, looking over at the other side of the road, I make another call and listen to the rings as I wait.

  ‘Looks like I’ll be out tonight,’ I say. ‘I wanted to say that, in case you … in case you come home.’

  ‘I understand,’ says Sam.

  ‘No, it’s not like that. I’m not there.’

  ‘But you’re up to something that has to do with him.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Those are the only times you don’t come home.’

  I want to say something, but I don’t know what.

  ‘You’re not even there,’ I say. ‘You’re —’

  ‘Bye,’ she cuts in, and the line goes dead.

  I had to tell her about Grim. I had no choice, and she knew it.

  ‘This is fucked,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue what to say. Can you at least look at me?’

  My eyes looked up to meet her stare. It was cold and clear.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And you told me after you’d told Gabriel, and after your boss found out. You couldn’t even tell me first, not until you … not until you had no choice. That’s so incredibly fucking selfish of you, Leo. How the hell can we …’