‘Did you?’
‘He’d blown his own head off.’
‘That’s why I drink.’
Up close, the stench of alcohol emanating from his pores is unmistakeable.
‘Whisky, is it?’
‘Bourbon. I like the softness.’
A new silence, less charged than the one before.
‘I haven’t been a policeman that long,’ he mumbles. ‘Maybe I won’t be doing it for much longer, either. So I don’t know. But there’s something about this job. Something fucked up. Isn’t there?’
‘Yes.’ I hesitate. ‘Is the version of events in the report correct?’
‘Yes. It is.’
I hadn’t planned to ask him. He looks down at his hands.
‘We were standing on our spot. He walked into view. We watched him from there. In that tunnel, or viaduct or whatever you call it, something flashed. And so on. I aimed low, but he must’ve moved or something, maybe he dropped his lighter and bent down to pick it up? Maybe he crouched down when I fired the warning shot. I don’t know. No one else saw either, apparently. Not that particular detail.’
We can hear each other breathing, and Grim in front of us.
‘I’m not saying this as an excuse, or even an explanation, but … everything that day felt so unreal. There was a terrorist in our midst. He was about to strike at Medborgarplatsen or Central Station, maybe the Galleria. It wasn’t a matter of if but when and where. Preventing it, saving lives, was my responsibility. Ours. All these people, bodies … it’s a crazy burden to put on anybody.’
I say nothing.
‘Do you hate me?’ he asks.
I had convinced myself that if I ever met him, I’d be compelled to violence, that my body would demand it. It would be unavoidable, and, according to old-fashioned morals, justifiable. An eye for an eye is an awful maxim, and its appeal is always greatest for those closest to the victim.
But hate him?
A year or so ago, I would’ve. I was different then. I think about Markus Waltersson, and his sister. I see him dying before my eyes.
‘Not yet,’ is the only thing I can say that doesn’t feel like a lie.
Then I get to my feet and leave the room.
53
HQ, Tuesday morning. The buzz in the corridor, a machine spluttering into life as it fills another cup with coffee, a toilet flushing, ancient fluorescent tubes humming on the ceiling in the first few seconds after you flick the switch. Sleep deprivation has made my hearing more sensitive and the sounds sharp and threatening.
The rumour is already circulating. A police officer killed himself last night. With his own weapon, left a right mess. It was down to private stuff, apparently, but that doesn’t make it any less gory. No, they’re not done yet, the technicians are still there.
Sam’s coming back today. I should’ve gone home last night, should’ve tidied up. Should’ve given the cat some food.
Birck arrives at my door with a water bottle in his hand, closes it behind him before slumping into the empty chair opposite me. He looks to have had about the same amount of sleep as I have. Not only that, he smells bad. I don’t think this has ever happened before. Feels almost pleasant.
‘I’ve just been sitting down, trying to think,’ he says. ‘Unfortunately, it was on a barstool.’
His eyelids flicker, and he crosses his legs.
‘What were you thinking about?’ I ask.
‘Reyes. Sköld. Wester and SGS.’
‘Did you get anywhere?’
‘No.’ Birck unscrews the cap from the bottle. ‘But maybe I am, gradually. In the meantime …’
He smiles joylessly and gulps down some water.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘In the meantime, we’ll get on with it.’
‘What’s up with you, by the way? You look like you’ve slept less than I have.’
‘I met Nikola Abrahamsson.’
It takes a second for Birck to work out who I’m talking about.
‘How did that go?’
‘Well, I suppose.’ I hesitate. ‘Grim’s operation is today, and Sam’s coming home.’
‘Is she?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Good,’ he says. ‘That’s good. Bit much, though, right?’
‘Yes.’
Birck continues drinking water but asks no more questions. Instead, we get to work. First Jon Wester, the man whose harried face was captured by Reyes’ camera a month before the murder.
There are eyes on us. Everything we’re doing is being watched, by someone. Somebody in IT has been instructed, or persuaded, to monitor what we’re doing behind our computer screens. Unfortunately, that’s precisely where we’re going to have to do our work. Much of the material survives only in electronic form. We proceed with caution.
‘What year was he born?’ I ask.
‘1964,’ Birck says, blinking wearily at the screen. ‘Childhood in Södertälje, joins the cadets in 1987, patrolling our streets by 1990. He’s twenty-six at that point, and he continues his training alongside work. After three years, he ends up with the Drug Squad, before moving on to a special group closely modelled on the successful Huddinge Group.’ Birck squints. ‘Strange. But I think I’ve heard about that.’
‘Where does he end up after that?’
‘No fucking idea.’
He clicks and clicks some more.
‘Haven’t you got the other database open there somewhere?’ I ask.
‘No. I can see that he leaves Central in 2006 for Solna. Then …’ More clicking. ‘Yes, here we go. In 2007, he’s recruited by NPA to establish what will become SGS. With Carl Hallingström, among others. He remains there until the Squad is disbanded in the first half of 2011, which would seem to be the last trace of the guy within the force.’
He then abandons his earlier career path, and, following a two-month break, Wester establishes his own consultancy business in August 2011. Since then he has acted as an advisor and project manager within the private security industry: G4S, Securitas, Lansec Security, Falck — all are or have been Jon Wester’s clients. He lives on Timotejgatan on Södermalm, not far from Skanstull.
The public never get to know his face during his time as a cop; he never cuts through the media noise that way. He’s often mentioned in connection with the Squad’s latest raid or arrest — sometimes a quote might appear, a picture very rarely.
Via Lansec Security’s homepage, we manage to source a photo of Wester taken at the beginning of the year. At a conference, shaking hands with somebody. Smiling.
Jon Wester is a man with certain appeal, an angular face, its form accentuated by his shaven head, where only a shadow of stubble covers his scalp. He’s wearing a black blazer in the picture, over a light-blue shirt with the top button undone. His black-rimmed geometric glasses look expensive.
‘He looks nice, don’t you think?’ I say.
‘Göran Lindberg looked perfectly charming in pictures, too.’
As the day progresses, an updated version of the rumour begins to circulate: It was down to a suspension. Apparently, the guy had been in SGS. Details sketchy.
‘Do you think it was him?’ says Birck. ‘In her apartment, on the night of the murder. Do you think that was Wester?’
‘At the very least, he’s been there before,’ I say, as I study Jon Wester’s face, trying to imagine him with a knife in his hand, stabbing Angelica Reyes to death.
In the clip, Wester seems driven by lust or power, maybe both, or perhaps they’re actually one and the same, yet he seemed in control, cold. Would he take such a risk? If necessary. I remember Patrik Sköld’s words, I don’t know if it was him or whether someone did it for him, and try to work out which scenario is the more likely. Impossible. You can’t deduce that much from looking at someone’s face.
‘I think someone did
it for him.’
‘Me, too,’ says Birck. ‘Sköld?’
‘He’s dead, though.’
‘Exactly. There’s no better way of getting off.’
‘In that case, why would he act the way he did?’ I say.
‘Whistleblowing, you mean?’
‘Yes, for example.’
‘That could be it. He blew the whistle, then regretted doing so when he realised what a storm he’d unleashed. Could see only one way out.’
That stops me in my tracks. It hadn’t even occurred to me.
‘I don’t know,’ Birck continues. ‘It’ll become clear, if time is on our side. Shall we keep going?’
SGS was launched on the first of January 2008, with Jon Wester in operational charge.
The first prosecutions began in April that same year. Firearms offences, drug offences, threatening behaviour. SGS-led investigations. They worked, resulting in guilty verdicts. The perpetrators were young men from deprived urban estates, and an analysis of their links revealed that all had strategic positions within Stockholm’s criminal networks.
Right from the outset, SGS attacked crucial nodes. They knew who they were looking for, thanks to their informants.
‘Impressive,’ Birck declares.
We decide to skirt around the actual case files to begin with. They’ve been sanitised, they’re clean. The keys could well be elsewhere, in other materials: meeting notes, bulletins, agendas. Those documents could contain something left behind unintentionally.
‘Their vehicle fleet,’ says Birck. ‘There must be lists, user records. If we assume that it is the murderer who calls Miro Djukic — the third customer — a police radio was heard in the background during their conversation. If we can trust his account, I mean, but he’d know that sound, so I think we can. I can’t see any reason for him to lie, either. It could be the car that Sköld had, as we thought, but it might be one of the other SGS cars? I hadn’t thought of that before, had you?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘There you go. Whichever car it was, if we can tie it to the scene, and put someone behind the wheel, then the case is basically done and dusted.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘It is, though. In theory, it’s almost banal in its simplicity. It’s in reality that it all turns to shit.’
54
An operation targeting a suspected arms smuggler on the Fittja estate is preceded by weeks of careful planning. It’s spring 2009, and this is one of over a hundred cases that year.
They lay groundwork for recruiting informants, sift through surveillance notes, train and rehearse raids, produce sociograms plotting the city’s criminal networks. The prostitutes are there, around the edges, including Angelica, who features as a user and the final link in a supply chain that SGS are deciphering step by step. She’s one of those to obtain items from the shipment, which according to SGS has its origins in Thailand.
In the intranet archive, the documents are not in any kind of order, one from 2008 next to one from 2011, a memo explaining extra surveillance activity in Husby followed by meeting notes detailing administrative resources.
‘They never bothered to sort them when it was disbanded. When they got to the archive, they just scanned the lot and got on with their lives,’ says Birck. ‘Hardly something you can blame them for?’
The archive has no search function; you have to go through each document manually. I sit there for most of the day getting nowhere.
The choice of words in these documents is often revealing. During meetings, recruitment is discussed and phrases like freethinking and our cause keep cropping up. We’re looking for someone who supports our cause. Preferably not a freethinking type. Even when SGS is subject to criticism or when the group’s relationship with the wider world is discussed, the vocabulary is striking. The criticism comes from the other side.
The other side.
The thin blue line is a thread, woven through everything. They’re convinced that they are a force for good, making society a better place.
And they are a force for good. There’s no doubt about it, but you do have to remind yourself of that. The number of potential victims of crime who’ve been spared violence or threats of violence, who have not had to endure break-ins to their homes or cars, the number of parents who haven’t had to worry about what might happen to their kids on the way home from school — before long, you’re talking about an awful lot of people.
The documents start to form an image of the past. I go outside for a cigarette, return to the present. I think about Patrik Sköld’s dead face, the blood on the wall behind him. A thin blue line, giving way. I wonder how the blood spattered after the shot under the bridge, whether Grim’s blood hit the ground or the wall. I haven’t checked.
Sköld. I need to concentrate. Sköld left Fridhemsplan on the third of December. I saw him. I think he went to Hallingström and told him that he wasn’t going to keep quiet anymore. That he believed Wester was involved in the murder of Angelica Reyes. That’s what he wanted to say to us the whole time. That’s why he was suspended.
Perhaps that made Wester keep a close eye on him, directly or indirectly. Wester hasn’t been a serving officer for several years, but the likes of him often have lackeys prepared to run their errands. In which case, Sköld was probably being followed when we met up with him on Apelbergsgatan the following evening.
Is that how we ended up being watched?
When I get back inside, Birck is sitting there flipping through a list of some kind. He seems less than impressed. I tell him what I’m thinking.
‘Probably,’ he says when I go quiet. ‘But can it be proved?’
‘What do you reckon?’
‘When I got in today,’ Birck says, ‘I was certain that some bastard had been here during the night and had a snoop around. This case, all this secrecy, is making me paranoid.’
I know exactly what he means. I pull the notes he’s been looking at towards me.
‘What’s this?’
‘The section’s vehicles. Not all of them, but the ones I’ve managed to link to them so far. Some of them appear to be their own duty vehicles, others they seem to borrow or just use occasionally.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing, thus far.’
That would’ve been too much to hope for.
‘What bothers me most,’ I say. ‘Is that I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for. Which bits are pulling us in the right direction, and which ones are dead ends. There doesn’t seem to be anything linking Wester with Angelica.’
‘That’ll come,’ he says. ‘When we’re getting close to something, we’ll notice.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m thinking about Patrik Sköld.’ Birck, now apparently full of beans again, returns to the list of vehicles. ‘When we’re getting close to something hot, then they’re going to try and stop us.’
On the table, there’s a photo of Angelica. An old one, which can’t have been taken much more than a year after me and Grim met her at the bus stop. I study the picture, and the words she wrote in the margin of her diary suddenly come back to me, don’t be like the rest of them, darling. Without really knowing why, I feel a burning sensation in my eyes.
55
The electric Advent candle in the window is on. I see it shining above me from the pavement; that’s how I know that she’s back.
I’ve made my way home quickly. From a distance, I’m sure it must’ve looked like I was in a hurry. But when I catch sight of the candlestick shining warm and clear and I know she’s waiting up there, I feel the need to go slower.
I don’t know why. Am I scared?
In the hall, Sam’s bag, open but not unpacked. She’s on the sofa, with a mug of coffee in her hands, watching an old Gilmore Girls on TV.
‘Hi,’ I say.
I am scared.
Sam stares at me for a long time.
‘You need a shave.’
She puts the mug down. I sit down next to her. She touches me, rests her head on my shoulder.
‘I know you’ve been outside the gallery,’ she mumbles into my shirt.
‘Sorry. I wanted to … see you.’
‘I know.’ She takes a deep breath and puts, finally, her hand on mine. ‘But I’m home now.’
Later, much later, it feels — but can’t be since the same Gilmore Girls episode is still playing, she turns towards me in bed and says:
‘If you lie to me again, I will leave you.’
Then she doesn’t say any more.
The next morning, we have breakfast early, listen to the news. We’ve got some time before we have to separate for the day, and we spend it moving candlesticks around. It feels so natural, somehow.
We discuss where they should be, whether we want a Christmas tree, if we should get the box of decorations from the basement. The mundaneness makes me feel safe. She’s in her dressing gown, standing there with an illuminated Christmas star in one hand and a mug of steaming coffee in the other.
‘That’s a good spot, isn’t it?’ she says, admiring the star that’s now hanging in the kitchen window. ‘Lovely there.’
‘I thought it was nice by the balcony, where I’d put it.’
‘We only go out there to smoke.’
‘So?’
She mutters and shakes her head at me.
We put it up in the bedroom, where we both agree it doesn’t really fit in but at least we agree.
‘This is what relationships are about,’ Sam says. ‘Compromise. No one’s happy.’
Then she laughs. So do I.
‘You mustn’t go thinking everything’s okay,’ she says, buttoning her shirt in front of the mirror, ready for a day’s work.
‘I don’t. But we have to be able to talk to each other.’
‘Exactly.’ She looks at me for ages. ‘What’s up?’
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