Another Time, Another Life

28 Friday, March 31, 2000

When Johansson arrived back at the office a package was awaiting him.

“You’ve got a package, Boss,” the guard in the reception area said, lifting up an ordinary brown grocery bag on the counter.

“Anything that’s ticking?” Johansson asked routinely.

“Just papers, but they were to be given to you personally, Boss,” said the guard.

“Are they from anyone I know?” said Johansson.

“Came by courier,” said the guard. “Seemed to be a nice guy. Looked like people mostly do.”

“But no one you recognized,” Johansson confirmed, smiling.

“No,” said the guard. “But he said they were worth reading. Then he wished you a nice weekend.”

“That was nice of him,” said Johansson, taking the bag.

In the brown paper grocery bag were two letter-size binders with investigation files from the seventies and eighties, and a large envelope that contained an old-fashioned audiotape of the kind SePo had already stopped using in the early eighties, as well as a one-page summary of the essentials of the Swedish involvement in the occupation of the West German embassy almost twenty-five years ago.

Persson, thought Johansson as he sat leaning back comfortably behind his large desk, no matter that the brief, typewritten summary was unsigned. It was both explanatory and edifying, and although it was accompanied by several hundred pages of investigation materials and a number of tape-recorded conversations, the essentials were clear to Johansson within an hour. Besides, on the audiotapes he had heard the voice of innocence, with its distinctive tone, in two conversations captured on different occasions, and this was not overly common at his place of employment, and especially not when it came to conversations monitored by the secret police.

The first conversation was from early May 1975. A confused, furious, and very young Helena Stein calls Sten Welander at his office at the university, screaming that he had duped and betrayed her, calling him a murderer and a traitor, and threatening to go to the police and report herself, him, and all the others. The latter, by the way, seems to disturb him considerably more than do her moral condemnations of him. He seems most discomposed that she could be “so fucking dense” as to call him on his phone. When he can’t get her to be quiet he finally hangs up, and when she immediately calls back again, no one answers.

The second conversation took place more than three years later, in the autumn of 1978, at a better restaurant in Stockholm. The law school graduate Helena Stein, who has just turned twenty, reads the riot act to Theo Tischler, eleven years her senior. She gives vent to her well-controlled and well-articulated wrath, and a very remorseful Theo Tischler simply cowers and takes it. Considering the secret police’s persistent denials that they had ever been involved in concealed electronic eavesdropping, the high technical quality of the recording is both astonishing and admirable.

I have to talk with someone, thought Johansson, and considering what he needed to discuss there was basically only one person he could turn to, his own general director and highest superior. It’ll have to be Monday, he thought after a quick look at his watch. It was late Friday afternoon, and usually high time to call it a day, but he had people waiting for him, both in the conference room a few doors down the corridor and at home on Söder.

My wife still comes first, thought Johansson, and called her to say that he would be a few hours late and that he hoped she wouldn’t be upset.

“Not if you do the grocery shopping,” said Pia.

It was a reasonable price to pay, thought Johansson as he hung up. In the worst case he could have his driver wait out on the street while he rushed into the Söder food hall and picked up the weekend necessities.

They were running short on time, he thought. In a few hours it would be exactly three weeks and three days until the statute of limitations ran out and the case lost its status as a practical legal matter-and, at least in theory, as the basis for indictments for complicity to murder and various other atrocities. Finally the case files would become something else, source material for research in history and political science. Forget the West German embassy, thought Johansson. Regardless of what had happened there he didn’t intend to put a manure fork in that heap of shit, and in Helena Stein’s case he hoped her entanglement was mainly a matter of youthful indiscretion.

The government offices wanted to have a background check done at the highest security clearance for the designated cabinet minister candidate in ten days latest, and evidently there was such assurance that she would get a green light that the undersecretary in charge of security in the prime minister’s cabinet did not even seem to react when Johansson called him and said that unfortunately-for various practical reasons, heavy workload, events over which one had no control, and so on and so forth-he could not promise to deliver until the very last day.

“I see,” the undersecretary said. “We’ll have to try to live with that.” Then he wished Johansson a pleasant weekend and put down the receiver, despite the fact that normally he could be both inquisitive and demanding.

What are you really up to? Johansson asked himself as he sat down at the narrow end of the conference table. Chasing figments of your imagination? You’re doing your job, he thought, for now it was a matter of liking the situation. You’re doing your job without sneaking a glance upward or downward or to the right or the left, with a clean desk, unsullied by history, with the greatest conceivable competence, in the national interest and in the good spirit of the new era, so you’re sitting here because you intend to do your job.

“Welcome,” said Johansson. “There’s something I wanted to ask you to help me with. I hope I’ve got the whole thing turned around, but in any event I wasn’t going to miss a chance to ruin your weekend.” That sounded pretty good, he thought. Pleasant and democratic, and everyone already sitting around the table waiting suddenly appeared both happy and expectant. What a great guy that Johansson is, thought Johansson.

Not too many, not too few, and only the best, he had told Wiklander before he had left to meet Berg, and he hoped it was that directive and that alone that explained why there were only four people waiting for him and why three of them were women. Besides Wiklander, there were Detective Chief Inspector Anna Holt and Police Inspectors Lisa Mattei and Linda Martinez. Or maybe it was a reflection of the new era, thought Johansson, feeling almost hopeful.

First he gave a brief explanation of why they were sitting there.

“We’ve taken over a security classification from the folks at background checks,” Johansson began. “It concerns an undersecretary in the defense department by the name of Helena Stein. Without knowing for sure, we have reason to believe that the intention is to promote her by appointing her as a member of the government, and so far all is well and good,” said Johansson as he served himself a cup of coffee, apparently without the slightest thought of passing the coffeepot on to any of the others.

“Where was I,” Johansson continued. “Yes… the reason that Stein ended up with us is that our esteemed colleague Wiklander here discovered by pure chance that in her youth Stein featured in the occupation of the West German embassy-as one of the four Swedish citizens who at that time were suspected of complicity. In that connection she is now acquitted and has been eliminated. My predecessor Berg conducted an, as far as we can judge, unobjectionable investigation that shows that in all probability she was unaware of what it was all about and she was possibly exploited as well. She was only sixteen years old at the time, and considering that the statute of limitations on the embassy case will run out in less than a month I have no intention of taking up that matter in this context.”

Nor in any other context for that matter. God preserve us all, he thought.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why we’re sitting here,” said Johansson, smiling amiably at his coworkers. “I hope the reason,” he continued, “is only that I’m starting to get old and tired and occupationally injured and paranoid and have begun seeing ghosts in the light of day, but regardless of all that-and not least considering that I want to be able to sleep at night-before we put a grade A stamp of approval on Ms. Stein, I still want to be sure she’s not carrying any old skeletons in her baggage.”

“You have nothing specific, Boss?” asked Inspector Martinez.

“Not at all,” said Johansson with more conviction than he actually intended to show. There was an unpleasant feeling growing in the back of his head that he intended to keep to himself for the time being. “Wiklander, perhaps you should explain what we’ve been thinking,” said Johansson, nodding at the person who had started the whole thing.

“There were four Swedes identified in connection with the West German embassy occupation,” said Wiklander. “It seems two of them were actively involved, Sten Welander and Kjell Eriksson. The other two, Theo Tischler and the just-named Stein, were probably not, and as far as Stein is concerned it appears, as the boss has already said, quite certain that she wasn’t.” Although God knows where Tischler is concerned, thought Wiklander, who was a real policeman with an old-fashioned view of things. He took the opportunity to pour fresh coffee for himself and of course passed the coffeepot on as soon as he’d done so.

“Two of those involved are dead. One of them, Kjell Eriksson, was murdered in 1989. The case is still unsolved, and I thought we should go over his murder if only for the reason that both Tischler and Welander appear in the investigation. Neither of them is a suspect, however, and anyway Sten Welander died of cancer in 1995. In addition, it so happens,” said Wiklander, nodding at Holt, “that Anna here was involved in that investigation from the beginning, so I thought she could outline the case for you.”

“How nice,” said Johansson with surprise. I had no idea, he thought. Could Holt have been around already at that time? Jarnebring of course… whatever that has to do with it, he thought.

“Oh,” said Holt, smiling hesitantly. “True, I remember Eriksson, because that was my first murder investigation, but I don’t really think it was all that successful.”

“But Stein wasn’t part of the Eriksson investigation,” said Mattei. “Have I got that right or not?”

“No she wasn’t,” said Holt. “Given that the investigation left a lot to be desired, and based on my own memory-it was more than ten years ago-I’m pretty sure about that. Stein was not mentioned at all in the investigation.”

“What business do we have getting into this?” asked Martinez, looking at her top boss with curiosity.

“Yes,” said Johansson, smiling weakly and shaking his head. “Good question… what the hell business do we have getting into this? I really want to emphasize this: This is not about clearing up an old murder, and least of all about whacking our colleagues down in Stockholm on the fingers. It is simply one last check… to be on the safe side, so that we haven’t missed anything. Go ahead, Holt. We’re listening,” Johansson concluded, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers over his stomach.

Given all the years that had passed since Eriksson was murdered, Holt gave a clear, composed, edifying summary of the case. First she briefly recounted the factual circumstances: where, when, and how Kjell Eriksson was murdered. Then she described the victim’s character: unpopular, solitary, almost strangely isolated. The investigation had revealed only two friends-Tischler and Welander-both of whom had watertight alibis, but because this was not about solving a murder mystery she wasn’t going to go any deeper into that aspect.

As far as the motive was concerned, Holt continued, opinions had diverged sharply within the investigation team, and she recounted Bäckström’s perception and her own and Jarnebring’s opposing view of the matter: namely, that the case had to do with Eriksson’s personality, not his possible sexual orientation; that he had been trying to bully someone, extort money, exploit someone.

“You shouldn’t judge your own case,” said Holt, “but Bäckström’s so-called homo lead probably says more about Bäckström than it does about who murdered Eriksson.”

“Motive,” Johansson snorted, holding up both palms in a deprecating gesture. “I don’t understand this constant nagging about motives. It’s completely uninteresting. I can’t remember a single case in which the motive has given us the perpetrator. You need harder goods than motives if you’re going to solve a murder.”

“Your friend Bo Jarnebring told me what you thought about motives in connection with the Eriksson investigation,” said Holt, smiling rather broadly for some reason.

“And a good thing too,” said Johansson. At least one person has listened to me, he thought.

“Just this one time he thought you were wrong,” said Holt, who was still smiling.

“You don’t say,” said Johansson, suddenly sounding guarded. Et tu, Brute, he thought. “Well, what do you think, then?” said Johansson.

“Just this one time I agree with Jarnebring,” said Holt, looking steadily at her top boss.

“You do, do you,” drawled Johansson. What the hell are the police coming to, he thought. She must be at least ten years younger than I am and her practical experience of murder investigations fits on half the fingernail on my little finger, and still she sits there and contradicts me. “It’ll work out, Holt,” said Johansson. “It’ll work out, and what we do now, to be on the safe side, we go through and check the Eriksson case one more time, just to see that we haven’t missed anything… Obviously I also want to have the usual complete rundown on Stein. How you divide that up among yourselves isn’t my concern, but I want it done no later than next Friday evening, which gives you seven days.” So that even I get a little time to think, thought Johansson.

“At the risk of quibbling,” said Holt, “Stein is not part of the Eriksson investigation. On that point I’m certain.”

That’s just great, couldn’t be better, thought Johansson, who saw the chance to conclude the meeting, get out of the office quickly, and leave the rest to his colleagues. If it weren’t for Mattei, who, judging by the hesitant expression on her face, clearly had something on her mind. She seemed to be ruminating, thought Johansson. Or was that just because of her horn-rimmed glasses?

“Mattei,” Johansson asked, “is there something you’re wondering about?”

“Maybe,” said Mattei, “in and of itself it’s a little far-fetched. Maybe…” She was leafing hesitantly in a binder with computer printouts as she pushed her glasses up on her forehead.

“Yes,” said Johansson, exerting himself not to appear impatient. Shoot, man, he thought, but he couldn’t very well say that. Well, he could to Jarnebring and Wiklander, but not to his colleague Mattei.

“Before I got here I did a few searches on Stein,” said Mattei. Instead of just sitting and twiddling my thumbs waiting for my boss, she thought.

“And?” said Johansson. Get to the point, woman, he thought, in which he was evidently not alone, judging by the facial expressions of the others.

“I see in my notes here that Theodor Tischler and Helena Stein are cousins,” said Mattei. “He’s the same Tischler who’s part of the murder investigation of Eriksson.”

“What?” Holt blurted out, and because no one else had said a word, it echoed. “They’re cousins?”

“Yes,” said Mattei. “According to my research they are. Stein’s mother is the sister of Tischler’s father. So Tischler and Stein are cousins. It has to be.”

“Jesus,” Holt moaned, throwing out both arms. “The gang of four… How stupid can you be?”

“Excuse me,” said Johansson, “I’m afraid I don’t really understand.”

“Forget everything I just said,” Holt moaned. “Jesus, I didn’t get it… how stupid can you be?”

“I’m still not getting it,” said Johansson.

“Excuse me, Boss,” said Holt, pulling herself together. “I take back what I said. Stein is part of the Eriksson investigation. I looked at a photo of her myself.”

“I see,” said Johansson. “That’s all well and good, but I still don’t understand-”

“The reason I never considered her is that in the picture she looks ten years old at most,” Holt explained. “But sure, she’s there in the evidence.”

“The gang of four,” said Johansson doubtfully. “Is that something political?” Sweet Jesus, he thought. Please don’t let it be something political.

“No,” said Holt. “Not the Chinese. It’s a reference to characters in a novel by Conan Doyle-you know, Sherlock Holmes.”

“Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh, Abdullah Khan, and Dost Akbar,” said Johansson, who had devoted hundreds of hours of his early youth to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and even now could recite long passages by heart.

“Excuse me,” said Holt. “Now I’m the one who’s not following.”

“Forget about that for now,” said Johansson politely. “The gang of four in the novel by Doyle. Those were their names. But I still don’t understand.”

“Then I’ll explain,” said Holt, and she did.

Holt told about Eriksson’s photo album and the picture she’d found, about the questioning of Tischler and what he’d said about his “delightful little cousin.”

“And that was all,” said Johansson.

“Yes,” said Holt.

“But for crying out loud,” said Johansson, who suddenly felt calmer again. “She was ten years old in the picture, you said-”

“About that,” said Holt.

“If Eriksson was out at Tischler’s summer place, I guess it’s not so strange that he had a picture of it,” said Johansson. “Someone like Tischler must have hundreds of cousins, and if I’ve got it right basically the whole extended family used that summer place.”

“Over sixty of them according to my searches, if you count both full and half cousins,” Mattei interjected after a quick glance at her notes.

“There, you see,” said Johansson, nodding toward Holt. Typical shot in the dark, he thought.

“No, no, no,” said Holt, shaking her head.

“What do you mean no, no, no?” said Johansson, who was starting to feel a trifle irritated.

“She could very well be the one who did it,” said Holt, looking steadily at her top boss. “I hate chance. If she turns up at the West German embassy, then she must have known Eriksson when she was a lot older than ten, and unfortunately we missed that.”

“Did what then?” said Johansson, who was no longer trying to conceal his irritation. “What do you mean you hate chance?”

“That it was Stein who killed Eriksson,” said Holt. “You’re the one who said it, Boss. That we should hate chance.”

“Now let’s take it easy here,” said Johansson. What I might have said is that we should be skeptical of random coincidences, he thought.

“Sure,” said Holt, “and because now she suddenly shows up in the Eriksson investigation, I assume we have to check her out as a potential perpetrator.”

“Sweet Jesus,” said Johansson. “What in the name of heaven is there to indicate that?” And if we’re talking about probability, how often does it happen that women knife someone to death? One time in twenty? Tops, thought Johansson heatedly.

“Nothing,” said Holt. “It’s just that I suddenly have this unpleasant feeling that Stein evidently knew Eriksson and that she may have had something to do with the murder.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Johansson interrupted, now sounding very tired. And two minutes ago you were a hundred percent sure that she didn’t even feature in the investigation. And this is just too awful to be true, he thought sourly.

“It might very well be her,” said Holt. Don’t back down now, Anna, she thought.

“Listen, Holt,” said Johansson, fixing his eyes on his coworker. “And this concerns the rest of you too, for that matter,” he added, locking eyes with them too. “Now let’s take it easy. Before we do anything whatsoever that might cause the least trouble for anyone, and not least for me, we need to call and ask for permission first. Is that understood?”

“Understood,” said Holt, who did not seem the least bit dejected.

As soon as the meeting was finished Johansson took Wiklander with him to his office and asked him to investigate certain things that were to stay between him and Johansson. Wiklander was a male like himself, not from Norrland to be sure but from Värmland, and in this situation that would have to do. Besides, what choice did he have?

“Women have a unique ability to get worked up about the least little thing,” Johansson explained, without naming names.

“Our colleague Holt is one of the best police officers we have,” Wiklander said.

“So you say,” said Johansson curtly. Not you too, he thought, and then he put an end to the conversation and took the elevator down to the garage to drive home.

If this is a background check, then the direction it has taken is somewhat disturbing, thought Johansson as he sat in the car en route to Söder in the dense inner-city traffic. It has to work out, he thought. Where do I stand now? I still like the situation, even if I liked it better just a short while ago than I do now. We needn’t make things unnecessarily complicated. It should be possible to find a fellow who stabbed Eriksson to death. If that really was the problem, he thought. It always worked out, well, it almost always worked out, he corrected himself, so why wouldn’t it work out here? Besides, this wasn’t about solving an old murder for the homicide squad in Stockholm.

He had to admit that he was troubled by what Holt had said about hating chance. It didn’t seem to be simply a matter of chance that among a large number of Tischler’s cousins this particular one had probably been involved with his best friend Welander when she herself was only a child, and that she had shown up in the Eriksson investigation too. That was not good. It was bad enough that she appeared in the investigation on the West German embassy. Enough and more than enough. Damn it all, thought Johansson.

“You seem worried, Boss,” his driver noted, and when Johansson looked up he saw that he was being observed in the rearview mirror. “Is there anything I can help you with, Boss?”

His driver was named Johan-Johansson had forgotten his surname but he wouldn’t forget Johan-and looked like a twenty-years-younger copy of his best friend Bo Jarnebring. When he wasn’t carting Johansson around, Johan worked at SePo’s bodyguard squad. I’m sure there’s a great deal you can do, thought Johansson as he encountered his driver’s narrow, watchful eyes.

“You wouldn’t be able to shoot Holt for me?” said Johansson.

“Holt,” said Johan with surprise. “Do you mean Chief Inspector Holt, Boss?”

“One and the same,” said Johansson.

“What has she done?” asked Johan.

“Talked back,” said Johansson.

“Well, in that case,” said Johan, grinning.

“Let’s forget it,” said Johansson, smiling wryly. “It’s the weekend after all, so I’ll let her live.”

29 Friday evening, March 31, 2000

After an irritated Lars Martin Johansson had marched out of the meeting to have a private talk with Wiklander and then go home to sulk over the weekend, and the others had escaped to their respective offices to try to get something accomplished, Holt stopped by to see Mattei.

Mattei was sitting in front of her computer, pecking with concentration at what would eventually become the supporting structure of the biography of Helena Stein. “Little biography” as it was called in police Swedish, although in this particular instance there was reason to believe it would be rather lengthy.

“Can I help you with anything, Anna?” Mattei asked without taking her gaze from her computer.

“If you could make a copy of what you’ve got,” said Holt.

“Sure,” said Mattei.

“You see, I have an idea,” Holt continued, “that it might-”

“Be easier to find Stein in the Eriksson investigation if you know what you’re looking for,” Mattei interrupted, without taking her gaze from her screen.

“Exactly,” said Holt. Lisa is probably the smartest person in this place, thought Holt.

“If you go and check your e-mail, it’s already there,” said Mattei.

“Thanks,” said Holt. She’s almost a little too smart, she thought.

Wiklander had already ordered the binders on the Kjell Eriksson murder to be brought up from the archives in Stockholm, and Holt didn’t need to think for very long to realize that it was unlikely anyone would miss them. There was nothing that even hinted that anyone had worked on the investigation since she and Jarnebring left it in December 1989.

There were ten letter-sized binders with several thousand pages of text. Mostly it was interviews, file searches, and other computer lists, plus the forensic investigation, crime scene investigation, and various technical reports, which, based on experience and at such a late date, were usually more interesting than anything else. In a context like this ten binders with several thousand pages were almost conspicuously little.

The papers were neatly organized, and it was quite obvious that Gunsan had done it. The traces of the leader of the investigation, Bäckström, primarily consisted of a long list of searches on individuals who came up in connection with various violent crimes directed at homosexual men, and quite certainly it was Gunsan who had made sure that this list also ended up in the right place in the investigation materials.

What an indescribably dreadful person, thought Holt, and she was thinking about her colleague Bäckström.

Because Holt knew that it could be as tricky to find things in binders as in a house search, she started by printing out the information on Stein that Mattei had e-mailed to her.

If you were going to search for something you might as well do it properly-for some reason she happened to think about what Jarnebring had said about checking the curtain rods in Eriksson’s apartment. Because it was Stein she was searching for, it ought to be simpler to find her the more she knew about her, assuming that she was there in the investigation for an important reason and not simply because at the age of ten, through the luck of the draw and ordinary human interaction, she had wound up in Eriksson’s photo album.

Maybe she’s another Mary Bell, thought Holt, smiling to herself.

Helena Stein was born in the autumn of 1958 and graduated from the French School in the spring of 1976, not yet eighteen years of age. Then she matriculated at the university in Uppsala, became a member of the organization of students from Stockholm, and studied law. She earned her degree in three years compared to the usual four and a half, and she had the highest grades in all subjects except two. After that she did her internship at the district court in Stockholm, practiced at an upscale law firm on Östermalm, was hired as an assistant attorney at the same firm, and just over five years after her degree she was accepted as a member of the Bar Association. At twenty-seven years old Stein was the youngest attorney that Holt had ever heard of. Having come this far in Stein’s biography, Holt suddenly realized what she was searching for, and it took her only five minutes to find the papers she hoped would be in the files.

This is almost a little ridiculous, thought Holt. It’s so damn easy as soon as you know what you’re looking for.

In her hand she held three papers that she herself had entered into the investigation in the middle of December over ten years before. It was a program from a SACO conference held in Östermalm in Stockholm on the thirtieth of November 1989, the same day Eriksson was murdered. Between ten o’clock and ten-thirty in the morning attorney Helena Stein had given a presentation on a case she had conducted on SACO’s behalf at the Labor Court in Stockholm. According to the conference program her talk was the third item of the day, right before a fifteen-minute break. A list of participants revealed that one of those sitting in the audience listening to her was bureau director and TCO representative Kjell Eriksson.

Holt had read through the same papers herself when she and Jarnebring had had lunch on the day after Eriksson’s murder, and she was the one who had made sure to conduct the fruitless search in the police department’s files of all the participants, presenters, and conference organizers. But because she had not known who she was looking for, Helena Stein had been invisible to her.

What a strange feeling, thought Holt, weighing the papers in her hand. I wonder if my fingerprints are still there after ten years, she thought.

“How’s it going?” asked Mattei, who had suddenly appeared in the door to her office.

“I’ve found her,” said Holt.

“That conference,” said Mattei.

This is not true, thought Holt.

“Yes,” she said. “How did you know that?”

“An idea I had. That’s why I’m here. I thought I’d give you a tip about what you should be looking for. It struck me suddenly when I was running Eriksson’s biography and the log of what he’d been doing on the day of the murder against Helena Stein’s biography. Conference on labor law issues, then-attorney Stein-if you want I can make a copy of the computer hits I got-I got two hits, one on ‘attorney’ and one on ‘labor law.’ It’s pretty interesting software actually. First you enter the documents you want to search in plain text and then you run them against each other.”

“I believe you,” said Holt, smiling. Lisa is unbelievable, she thought.

“You’re the one who found her,” said Mattei, shrugging her shoulders. In this building that’s the only thing that counts, she thought.

“I’m satisfied,” said Holt. So there, she thought, and the person she was thinking about was her top boss, Lars Martin Johansson, who right now was probably settled on the couch in front of his TV dreaming his way back to the good old days when he was a legend who was never contradicted.

“In any event you’ve connected Stein with Eriksson on the day in question,” said Mattei. “I actually had an idea too.”

“I’m listening,” said Holt.

While Mattei sat and waited for Johansson to show up at the Friday afternoon meeting, she had taken the opportunity to read the two interviews with Eriksson’s closest neighbor, Mrs. Westergren. The reason she had chosen them in particular was simply that after quickly thumbing through the otherwise rather thin binder, she judged them to be the most interesting.

“Those interviews with his buddies were really worthless,” Mattei said. “That Bäckström doesn’t seem quite healthy. He’s trying to direct them the whole time, get them to confirm that Eriksson was homosexual. I don’t understand why he didn’t just question himself?”

Mrs. Westergren, in Mattei’s estimation, had made at least one interesting observation, namely that Eriksson had shown signs of increased alcohol intake during the months preceding his death. That was how she had expressed it: “increased alcohol intake.”

“Personally I hardly ever drink,” said Mattei, “but sometimes when I’m really wound up I have a small one when I come home, mostly to get my head to quiet down. I got the idea that Eriksson increased his alcohol intake because he was nervous about something and that this was happening during the autumn-the same autumn he was murdered.”

“Jarnebring and I thought so too,” said Holt. “Yes, that was the colleague I was working with at that time. The problem was that we couldn’t find anything. One idea we had was that it must have involved his business dealings, but they seemed to be going better than ever.”

“That was probably because you weren’t aware of Eriksson’s involvement in the occupation of the West German embassy,” said Mattei.

“No,” said Holt. “I only found that out today.” Typical for this place, she thought.

“What I was thinking,” said Mattei, as if she were working on it out loud, “is that if I had been involved in that incident, I would probably have been going out of my mind in the autumn of 1989.”

“What do you mean?” asked Holt. “Fourteen years later? Why then? Shouldn’t you have been used to the idea that you would get off?”

“East Germany,” said Mattei emphatically. “East Germany collapsed in November 1989. The Stasi, their secret police, collapsed. The Stasi’s archives were suddenly everyone’s property. Hordes of people like our esteemed boss Johansson poured in from the Western powers and started rooting through their papers. What I mean is simply that if I had been involved with West German terrorists in the mid-seventies, wouldn’t there be a high probability that my name was somewhere in the Stasi’s files? The Stasi and the Red Army Faction and the Baader-Meinhof gang and all the rest were buddies. They helped each other, it has been shown. It’s clear that the Stasi knew who the terrorists were.”

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face,” said Holt. “And if my name was Eriksson, Welander, Tischler, or Stein I would have been really nervous.” Not least if my name was Stein and someone like Eriksson knew something about me that he could exploit, thought Holt. And now you can shove it, old man, she thought, rerunning the conversation she’d had with her boss, the legendary Johansson, only a few hours before.

“That is a possible motive,” said Mattei thoughtfully. “A little speculative, perhaps, but completely possible. They needn’t have been in the Stasi archives-it would have been enough for them to believe that they might be there. For them to be nervous, I mean.”

“But they were there,” said Holt. “Both Johansson and Wiklander have confirmed that.”

“Of course,” Mattei objected, “but they didn’t need to know that for certain. If they simply believed it they would start getting worried.” Anna seems mainly practically oriented, she thought.

“How’s it going, gals?” Martinez asked, after suddenly materializing in the door to Holt’s office. “Now there are three of us, so it’s a girl party. All the boys have gone home to knock back a few beers and stare at the TV.”

“It’ll be ready soon,” said Holt. “Just wait till you hear-”

“Easy, easy,” said Martinez, raising her hand in a gesture meant to hold off further discussion. “I’m completely starved. I was thinking about ordering a little junk food, the sort of thing our male colleagues are always stuffing themselves with in all the detective movies. You know, hamburgers and hot dogs and doughnuts. What do you think?”

“Maybe not hot dogs,” said Mattei. “That’s pure poison. Can’t we have sushi instead? I’m trying to eat as little meat as possible. I can run down and get some sushi.”

“Sushi,” said Martinez. “Real detectives don’t eat sushi.”

“We do,” said Holt. “I want sushi too.”

“Okay then,” said Martinez, shrugging her shoulders. “I’ll get sushi.”

When Martinez returned half an hour later bringing sushi and mineral water, the three of them held their first war summit.

“I think you’re on the right track,” said Martinez after she had listened first to Holt and then to Mattei. “For one thing you’ve managed to connect Stein with Eriksson. For another you’ve produced a plausible motive for Stein to stick the kitchen knife in Eriksson. I hardly think Johansson is going to do the wave when he hears what you’ve come up with,” said Martinez, smiling broadly. “Do you want to know what I’ve been thinking?”

“Yes,” said Holt.

“Yes,” said Mattei.

“All right then,” said Martinez. “I’ve been looking through the technical reports. But you should know I did it without even glancing at Stein. It was before I knew about that conference where she ran into Eriksson. But while I was waiting for all the rice balls you just stuffed yourselves with I happened to keep thinking about her.”

“Yeah,” said Holt.

“Yeah,” echoed Mattei.

“We have to be able to place her in Eriksson’s apartment,” said Martinez. “I think there are two good chances. For one thing there are a few prints that were picked up but couldn’t be identified. A few of them could be the perpetrator’s. They belong to the same person, and both are sort of semi-good if I can put it that way. One is on the kitchen counter and the other on the inside of the cupboard door under the sink where he kept the wastebasket.”

“Sounds good enough,” said Holt. You can’t have everything, she thought, and before her she saw the bloodied Sabatier brand kitchen knife.

“The other thing I was thinking about was that hand towel,” said Martinez. “That’s good too. If the perpetrator threw up in it, it should still be possible to lift DNA from it, because that hasn’t been done. It wasn’t done at the time.”

Helena Stein’s vomit on Eriksson’s hand towel, thought Holt, and suddenly it became so tangible as they sat talking that she felt slightly nauseous.

“Assuming that the hand towel has been preserved in a freezer as it should have been, it’s worth a try,” Martinez said.

“Both the fingerprints and the hand towel are probably down at the tech squad in Stockholm,” said Mattei.

“Then we’ll have to bring them here so our own technicians can look at them,” said Martinez. “Who’ll call Johansson and ask for permission?”

“I can do that,” said Holt, feeling instantly more energetic.

“I guess it will have to be tomorrow anyway,” said Mattei hesitantly. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”

“Sure,” said Holt. “Personally, I was thinking about going home to see the sandman.”

“Me too,” said Mattei. “I got up at six this morning. Fridays are my jogging day.”

“If we were real detectives we would go down to the bar and knock back eight beers, do a little arm wrestling, and bring home a real hunk,” said Martinez. “Either of you ladies in the mood for that?”

Holt and Mattei shook their heads.

“Typical girls,” Martinez sighed. “Shall I take this to mean that we continue to be useful idiots and meet here first thing tomorrow at eight o’clock? Before you fall asleep you can ponder a practical problem, by the way.”

“Which is?” said Holt.

“How we get hold of Helena Stein’s fingerprints and DNA without Johansson having a hissy fit,” said Martinez.

30 Friday evening, March 31, 2000

“You look tired,” said Johansson’s wife.

“I am tired,” said Johansson. “There’s a little too much going on at work right now.”

“Anything you want to talk about?” said his wife, who seemed both energetic and suddenly curious.

Peppy Pia, thought Johansson, smiling unwillingly.

“Do you want me in jail?” he asked.

“Let’s assume,” said his wife as she served herself the last drops from the bottle of red wine, “let’s assume that you told me about your job the way I tell you about everything that happens at my job-the sort of ordinary, harmless stuff you tell each other when you live together-about what so and so said and did and what you’re up to right now-what would happen then? Could you end up in jail?”

“Without a doubt,” said Johansson. Which would have been completely justified considering the rules that applied to him and the papers he’d signed, he thought.

“That doesn’t make sense,” said his wife, shaking her head with astonishment.

“Actually, it’s better that way,” said Johansson, who had already started to feel a little happier. I’m going to forget about that damned Holt, he thought. Your own wife is better looking, smarter, and funnier, he told himself, so stop feeling sorry for yourself because one of your coworkers doesn’t unreservedly agree with you all the time. “It’s a little hard to talk about,” Johansson continued, clearing his throat. “But let me put it like this: There are even situations where I could end up in jail just for answering yes to the question you just asked.”

“That still doesn’t make sense,” said Johansson’s wife. “That’s crazy. Do you get any financial compensation for that? Special bonus for marital silence?”

“I think it’s completely okay if I argue with you,” said Johansson, smiling contentedly. “Just as long as I don’t do it over something that happened at work. Try to imagine the opposite. That we sat here and I babbled about everything to do with my job and it was completely okay for me to do that. That could have terrible consequences. For you personally.”

“Tell me,” said his wife, putting her head to one side with her right hand as support. “Give me an example,” she said, twirling her wineglass.

“You can’t get around me that easily,” said Johansson, smiling. “But okay then-I’ll try to describe what I mean. It’s true that I’m tired. I’m worried too-and I think you’ve already figured out that it has to do with work-so I don’t need to answer either yes or no to that. But if I were to be more specific, it would have consequences for a number of individuals, one of whom might also be you.”

“Enemy agents would carry me off and torture me to get me to tell what you said and then they would murder me,” said his wife, sounding almost expectant as she said it.

“Definitely not,” said Johansson, “but regardless of whether what I told you was true or false-I don’t know myself, because that’s what I’m in the process of finding out and that’s what’s worrying me. But regardless, if I told you, it would completely change the way you saw certain individuals.”

“So it’s someone I know about,” said Johansson’s wife, looking slyly at Johansson. “It’s some celebrity then. Some politician of course. It can’t very well be Carola or Björn Borg.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Johansson with a deprecating smile.

“In a way that’s too bad,” she continued. “Someone like you should really have some kind of use for someone like me.”

“I do,” said Johansson.

“In your work I mean,” his wife clarified. “As you’ve certainly already noticed, I would be a very astute detective.”

“Although perhaps a little too eager for discussions,” said Johansson. Be careful not to say “loose-lipped,” he cautioned himself.

“But that would suit you perfectly,” said his wife, looking at him expectantly.

“What do you mean?” said Johansson.

“You’re not exactly talkative,” his wife declared. “In the beginning you were-the first years-but then you got more and more silent, and since you started this new job, well, mute is maybe a harsh word, but you’re almost mute then…”

“I’ll try to pull myself together,” said Johansson. Almost mute-that doesn’t sound good, he thought.

“Good,” she said, leaning forward and taking his hand. “Start by telling me who this famous politician is.”

“Okay then,” said Johansson, throwing out his hands. “If you make coffee, get me a cognac… fluff up the pillows on the couch, and massage my neck while I watch the news on Channel 4, then I promise to tell you who this is about and what it’s about.”

“Are you sure?” said his wife, looking at him. “Do we have a deal here?”

“Definitely,” said Johansson. “You arrange coffee, cognac, neck massage, and pillow fluffing, and I’ll tell you who it’s about.”

“Okay,” said his wife, “but I want a down payment before I go along with the deal.”

“Dost Akbar,” said Johansson as he lowered his voice and leaned across the kitchen table, “member of a secret society known as the Gang of Four.”

“Nice try,” said Johansson’s wife, “but no deal. I’ve read The Sign of the Four by Conan Doyle too.”

“Maybe you should become a police officer anyway,” said Johansson. “I know-apply to the police academy. You’re never too old to apply to the police academy.” Wasn’t that what they said in those recruiting ads he used to see in the newspapers?

“I’m just fine at the bank. I had enough of the public sector when I worked at the post office,” she said curtly, shaking her head. “I’ll make coffee, you fluff up the pillows, you can get your cognac yourself-have I mentioned you’re drinking too much cognac, by the way?”

“Eat too much, drink too much, exercise too little, talk too little-yeah, that sounds familiar.” Johansson nodded in confirmation. I’ll have to do something about that, by the way, he thought. What if he were to start on Monday, it being the first Monday of a new month? Maybe that would be a good day, because starting over the weekend was inconceivable.

“Good,” said his wife. “Then I won’t nag you. Now let’s celebrate the weekend, and if we have to watch TV then I want the remote control.”

“No flipping,” said Johansson. Don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t flip between channels.

“Exactly,” said his wife, nodding.

“Heavens,” said Johansson contentedly, letting his Norrland dialect break through as he said it. Now let’s observe the Sabbath. Just like a typical weekend evening in the log cabin without liquor, food, and TV, he thought.

“Try and talk to me instead,” said Johansson’s wife, looking at him urgently. “You won’t die from it-I promise.”

Sometimes I miss my solitude, thought Johansson. Not right now, but sometimes. But he couldn’t talk about that in any event.

31 Saturday, April 1, 2000

Holt was already at work by quarter to eight, but she still wasn’t the first to arrive. When she stepped into the corridor she could hear the diligent pecking from Mattei’s keyboard.

“There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen,” Mattei called without turning around.

“Do you think it’s too early to call Johansson?” Holt asked hesitantly.

“Johansson,” said Mattei with surprise. “He’s from Norrland and a hunter, so I’m guessing he’s the type who gets up in the middle of the night.”

Johansson was sitting in the kitchen at home on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan reading the second of the two morning papers. In the past he’d been content with Dagens Nyheter, even if he would have preferred Norrländska Socialdemokraten, where at least they could write comprehensibly and had something important to say, but since taking the new job he suddenly and quite unexpectedly received a free subscription to Svenska Dagbladet, so nowadays he read two morning papers instead of one. He turned down the free subscription of course, and instead he paid for the paper himself.

Clever accountants over at Svenskan’s marketing department, Johansson thought as he scrutinized their stock listings to see how his investments were doing. Just as he was noting that both Skanska and Sandvik stood like solid rocks in a time of change, his phone rang. Holt, thought Johansson.

“Johansson,” he answered. Maybe a little more abrupt than necessary, he thought.

“Anna Holt. I hope I’m not waking you, Boss.” He woke up on the wrong side of the bed, she thought.

“No,” said Johansson. “I assume you’re calling to tell me that you’ve connected Stein with Eriksson.”

“Has Martinez called?” Holt asked with surprise. Must be Linda, she thought, wherever she was hiding herself.

“I’m a cop,” said Johansson, sounding extremely abrupt. “You’re the only one who has called.”

“I see,” said Holt, who had a hard time concealing her surprise. “I was just wondering if-”

“Here’s a little homework assignment for you,” said Johansson, who suddenly sounded considerably more cheerful. “Start by thinking about how often you’ve called me at home before eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, and then about what I said to you yesterday.”

“I think I get it,” said Holt. “Yes, I’ve placed them together on the morning of the day he was murdered.”

“So now you want to get her fingerprints to see if you can place her in his apartment,” Johansson surmised.

“Yes,” said Holt. Now he sounds more like what I’d heard about him, thought Holt. Obviously mornings are the best time to talk with him.

“Where are the prints you want to compare hers to?” asked Johansson.

“At homicide,” said Holt. “On the handle of the kitchen knife, and the best of them were left in Eriksson’s blood.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Johansson. What do I do if they’re Stein’s fingerprints?

“April Fool,” said Holt, sounding rather upbeat herself. “Sorry, Boss, I couldn’t help myself. Kidding aside. On the kitchen counter and on the inside of the door under the sink.”

They’re like children, thought Johansson, but naturally he wouldn’t dream of saying that to a female coworker who was a decade younger than he was. No one’s that dense. Not me in any case, thought Johansson.

“So what’s the problem?” asked Johansson. The kitchen counter and the door under the sink will have to do, he thought.

“Is it okay?” Holt wondered.

“Do like we always do,” said Johansson curtly. “Is Martinez there?”

“She’s on her way in,” said Holt.

“Ask her to arrange it,” said Johansson. “Linda’s a whiz at that sort of thing.” I can tell you, he thought, because that’s why I hired her.

When Holt went into the break room the first person she encountered was Martinez, who was gulping down a large glass of water with audible enjoyment.

“Ahh,” said Martinez, wiping her mouth with the back of her sweater sleeve.

What happened to those eight hours of sleep? thought Holt.

“Sleep well?” asked Holt neutrally as she poured a cup of coffee for herself. “By the way, would you like coffee?”

“Sorry, sorry,” said Martinez, actually looking a bit guilty. “I’m weak, so it was the bar as usual.”

“Was it any good?” asked Holt, handing her a coffee cup.

“It was shiiiit,” Martinez moaned. “Eight beers and no hunks.”

“I spoke with Johansson,” said Holt. “It’s okay for us to get Stein’s prints. Can you arrange it?”

Martinez nodded and already seemed considerably more alert.

“I could do that in my sleep,” she said. “Easy as pie. But you and Mattei have to help me with the practical stuff in the event we’ve got a moving target.”

“No problem,” said Holt. It will be nice to get outside, she thought. It’s the first real spring day too, sun, blue sky, at least fifty degrees out.

Johansson and his wife did not have the same biological clock. This was a mild understatement because he seldom got out of bed later than six o’clock, yet his wife could spend the day there if she had the choice, and in any case she was scarcely approachable before ten on a Saturday morning such as this one.

So he had managed to shower, have breakfast, and read two morning papers in peace and quiet before he tiptoed into their bedroom at nine-thirty. The only thing he saw was a lump under the blanket, a black tuft of hair sticking up under the pillow, which for some reason was covering the face of the person lying there, and a rather small, naked foot sticking out down below.

“Are you asleep, darling?” said Johansson, who didn’t always act like the police officer he was.

“Hmmnuu,” moaned his wife.

“I’ve made breakfast for you,” said Johansson. “Fried ham and pancakes.”

“What?” said his wife, suddenly sounding wide awake.

“April Fool,” said Johansson. “If you move over a little then there’ll be room for me, too,” he said. She’s fallen asleep again, he thought in amazement. This can’t be true.

“Pia… honey,” said Johansson. “It’s amazing weather. What do you think about a long walk on Djurgården?”

“Not right now,” his wife moaned.

They’re like children, Johansson thought affectionately, making room by her side.

First Martinez stopped by their tech squad and organized a beer can, specially emptied for the purpose, which she stored in a sealed plastic bag. Then she made a prank call to Stein at home on a prepaid cell phone that couldn’t be traced, and as soon as Stein answered she excused herself, saying it was a wrong number, ended the call, and took Holt and Mattei with her down to the garage.

“We’ll take my vehicle so we don’t stick out unnecessarily,” said Martinez, opening the door to the driver’s seat of an unbelievably crappy, small, older-model Japanese car of a make unknown to Holt. “Get a move on, ladies, we’re in a hurry,” said Martinez, waving them impatiently into the car.

“Isn’t it best if I drive?” said Holt doubtfully. Eight beers, she remembered.

“Fine with me,” said Martinez, shrugging her shoulders. “You’ll have to sit in back, Lisa,” she decided, giving Mattei a critical glance. “Damn, don’t you look tidy,” she said disapprovingly, shaking her head.

“Excuse me,” said Mattei, guiltily.

“It’s okay,” said Martinez to smooth things over. “No one’s going to believe you’re a cop anyway, and if you have to get out and move around I have some things in the trunk you can borrow.”

Johansson gradually breathed some life into his wife, saw to it that she got a cup of coffee and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and then led her out into the beautiful spring weather. They walked down to Slussen and took the ferry over to Djurgården. Johansson stood in the front and let the sea breeze caress his Norrland cheeks while he hummed an old popular song from Jussi Björling’s repertoire. Then they strolled all the way down Djurgården, continued back along Strandvägen, Nybrokajen, and Skeppsbron, and when they got back to Slussen a few hours later, Johansson was in a terrific mood and suggested a late lunch at the Gondola.

“Awesome,” said his wife, who was influenced by the many young coworkers at the bank where she worked. “I’m dying of hunger.”

And I am a fortunate man, Johansson thought, who had already decided to have both an appetizer and an entrée, since he must have burned tons of calories while he and his wife made their way around half the inner city at a brisk pace.

At the same time Martinez was carrying out her mission with all the accuracy that made her famous, and right before the eyes of Holt and Mattei.

Helena Stein lived on Kommendörsgatan in Östermalm, at the end where it met Karlaplan. When Martinez saw that Stein’s car was parked outside the building where she lived she quickly decided how to proceed.

“Stop here,” she said to Holt. “Then drive down a bit, but stay close enough so you can keep an eye on the outside entrance. I’ll try to get it over with so we don’t have to waste half the day.”

“It’s cool,” said Holt. I was working as a detective before you started at the police academy. Who do you take me for? she thought.

Martinez walked down the street, and as she passed Stein’s car two things happened so fast that neither Holt nor Mattei had time to understand what had taken place.

Suddenly the beer can was on the roof of Stein’s car, and the car alarm was going off.

A minute later a woman in her forties came out of the building. It was apparent that the car alarm had brought her out. After looking up and down the street, she caught sight of the beer can on the roof of her car, shook her head, turned off the electronic alarm, and carefully lifted the beer can off the roof with an ungloved right hand.

“Record time,” said Martinez contentedly from the backseat into which she had crawled half a minute earlier.

Helena Stein, thought Holt. It was a strange feeling seeing her with her own eyes. She was a trim, good-looking woman, forty-two years old, Holt’s own age, and just like Holt she looked younger than she was. Her thick red hair was pinned up in a bun at her neck, and she might have been planning to spend the day outside, because she was dressed in jeans, sturdy walking shoes, a checked shirt, and a jacket that she must have draped over her shoulders when the car alarm lured her out onto the street. She wore good-looking, expensive, discreet clothing, the kind that Holt could only dream of owning. Clearly she was a conscientious citizen too, for instead of simply tossing the beer can away in the gutter she placed it in a trash can at the crosswalk more than twenty yards farther down the street. Then she went back with quick steps and disappeared into the building where she lived. I hope I’m wrong, Holt thought suddenly, and the thought was so unpleasant that she immediately dismissed it. Pull yourself together, Anna, she thought.

“Okay,” said Martinez, “drive around and pick me up at the next intersection, and I’ll bring home the bait.”

She patted Holt on the shoulder before she got out of the car, stopped at the crosswalk, and then, after a quick glance in each direction for cars that weren’t there, crossed the street and disappeared around the corner out of their field of vision.

“Linda is just unbelievable.” Mattei sighed. “She could get a job as a witch.”

Johansson did not get an appetizer, and it was his wife, Pia, who explained why he couldn’t.

“I don’t care how many calories you’ve walked off. It’s completely meaningless if you’re going to stuff yourself with caviar and potato pancakes.”

“No fish, please,” said Johansson, putting his head to one side and trying to look like a little boy from the great forests north of Näsåker in the province of Ångermanland.

“You can have grilled beef and boiled potatoes,” his wife declared from behind a menu. “Doesn’t that sound good?”

“What’s wrong with au gratin potatoes?” said Johansson, sounding whinier than he intended. Other than that they taste so much better? he thought.

“They’re bad for you,” said his wife. “And because I love you so much I want to protect you from dangerous things. We’re very much alike in that regard, you and me,” she declared without raising her eyes from the menu.

“Okay then,” said Johansson manfully. “Grilled beef, boiled potatoes, and a strong beer.”

“What’s wrong with light beer?” his wife objected. “Or plain water for that matter?”

“Don’t contradict me, woman,” said Johansson, “or I’ll order a shot of aquavit too.”

“All right then,” she said. “Personally, I think I’ll have fish. And a glass of white wine.”

“Fine by me,” said Johansson. “Have fish, dear.” You’re a woman, he thought.

When the three investigators returned to the police station, Martinez took her beer can trophy-now bearing Helena Stein’s fingerprints-and disappeared to the tech squad to arrange the remaining practical matters.

Mattei went back to her computer, and Holt sat down in the break room to have another cup of coffee while she pondered how she should proceed. At the same time her thoughts started wandering off again in a direction she didn’t like.

Assume that she’s the one who did it, thought Holt, who had suddenly started having doubts in a situation where she reasonably ought to have been strengthened in her spontaneous conviction. Then we’re going to crush her for the sake of someone like Eriksson. What was it he’d said, that doorman at Eriksson’s office that she and Jarnebring had talked to more than ten years ago? That Eriksson was both the absolute smallest person and the absolute biggest asshole he had ever met. From the little she’d seen of Helena Stein, she didn’t seem to match that description, thought Holt.

Boiled potatoes are actually not that bad, thought Johansson. Not if they are really fresh like the ones he’d just had. True, French new potatoes are not in a league with Swedish ones, but these were completely edible. What did you expect at this time of year, and what did the French know about potatoes anyway?

“There was something I was thinking about,” said Johansson’s wife, looking at him with her spirited dark eyes.

“I’m listening,” said Johansson. So you’ve finally woken up, he thought.

“Is there someone who works with you named Waltin?” she asked.

“Waltin,” said Johansson with surprise. “You mean Claes Waltin? A little dandy who used aftershave and pomade in his hair,” said Johansson. And a real little asshole if you ask me, he thought.

“He was some kind of police superintendent,” said Johansson’s wife.

“A deputy police superintendent,” said Johansson as he shook his head. “No, he’s not around anymore. He disappeared a long time ago. Why are you asking?”

“Nothing special,” said his wife, shaking her head. “I went out with him a few times, but that was long before we met.” So you don’t really need to look that way, she thought.

“No, he’s not around,” said Johansson. “He quit many years ago-I think it was in ’87 or ’88, a year or two after Palme was shot. Now I’m getting curious.” There’s something she’s holding back, he thought.

“Is he still working with the police?” his wife asked.

“No, not really,” said Johansson with surprise. “He’s dead.”

“He’s dead?” she said, suddenly looking rather strange. “What did he die of?”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “It was an odd little story. It happened several years after he quit the police force. I don’t know the details since I heard it only in passing, but it happened sometime in the early nineties-’92, ’93 maybe-four or five years after he quit. They say he drowned on a vacation in Spain. Did you know him well?” Good old retroactive jealousy. Still, she couldn’t have known him that well if she didn’t even know he was dead, thought Johansson.

“Since you’re asking,” said Johansson’s wife. “I saw him four, five times actually. The first time I was out at a restaurant with a girlfriend. Then he called me and asked me to dinner at the same restaurant, and then I remember he got a little kiss in the doorway before we parted. He drove me home in a taxi. He was enormously attentive and polite. Not your typical Swedish man if I may say so. Well… we met a few more times-the last time was at his place. Then I stopped seeing him and he called me about ten times before he gave up.”

“So why did you stop seeing him?” asked Johansson, thinking, Something here doesn’t add up, without really knowing why.

“I found out he wasn’t a good person,” his wife answered, shrugging her shoulders. “So I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore and that was that.”

“So what was wrong with him?” asked Johansson. Apart from the fact that he looked and acted as if he had a spruce twig stuck up his ass, he thought.

“Forget about it now,” said his wife, shrugging her shoulders. You don’t want to know, she thought. “He just wasn’t my type,” she said. “Is that so strange?”

“No,” said Johansson. The same sort of thing has happened to me too, he thought. “That has actually happened to me too,” he said, smiling.

“He drowned, you say,” said his wife, suddenly looking extremely curious. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Sweet Jesus,” said Johansson. “Either you explain or we change the subject, okay? According to what I heard, our former colleague Waltin is said to have drowned during a vacation in Spain. I heard it in passing. I didn’t know the guy. I hardly ever met him. And from the little I saw and heard I didn’t like him. Is that enough?”

“You don’t think he could have been murdered then?” asked Johansson’s wife, looking at him with curiosity.

“Murdered?” said Johansson with surprise. “Why in the name of God should he have been murdered?”

“Well,” said his wife, who didn’t appear particularly disheartened by Johansson’s reaction, “considering his old job and all that.”

Sigh, thought Johansson. It must be all those mysteries she reads, but naturally he couldn’t say that.

“The only motive I can think of is that he must have been careless about paying his tailoring bills, which really didn’t have anything to do with his job,” Johansson said, grinning.

“I know what you mean,” said Johansson’s wife, and she smiled too.

“And what’s that mean then?” said Johansson.

“That it’s high time we change the subject,” said Johansson’s wife.

She’s not only lovely to look at but also fun to talk with-she’s smart too, thought Johansson. As soon as they got home after their little Saturday excursion he called Wiklander and gave him yet another task: to find out what had really happened with former police superintendent Claes Waltin, since he was going to be talking with former colleague Persson about the other things Johansson had asked about.

“Waltin?” said Wiklander, sounding surprised. “That dandy who drowned on Mallorca a while back?”

“That’s the one,” said Johansson. “He quit us a few years after Palme and then he drowned during some vacation in Spain a few years later.”

“Sure, I can do that,” said Wiklander with surprise. “Do you think he has anything to do with this, Boss?”

“Not in the slightest,” said Johansson emphatically. “Why should he?” Just a little private question I have, thought Johansson, and why I’m asking has nothing to do with you.

“Sure,” said Wiklander. “I’ll take care of it.” I wonder what this is really about, he thought.

32 Sunday, April 2, 2000

At eight o’clock on Sunday morning, Holt called her boss Lars Martin Johansson at home to obtain permission to proceed with Helena Stein via the methods she had learned during her more than ten years as a detective-shadowing, wiretapping, and the whole ballet, so something would finally happen. Others could sit and peck at a computer or bury their heads in a pile of binders, like her colleague Lisa Mattei, for example, who loved that sort of thing and was better at it than almost anyone else.

In contrast to the morning before, Johansson didn’t answer until the third ring, and he was if anything even more direct than the first time Holt had called him at home that weekend.

“Good morning, Holt,” Johansson muttered. “How can I help you?”

“I’d like to initiate external surveillance of Stein,” said Holt. I don’t want him to get the idea that I’ve become fond of him, she thought. Calling two mornings in a row is perhaps a bit too much?

“Forget it,” said Johansson politely. “Call me again when you’ve placed her in Eriksson’s apartment. Give me three good reasons, and then I promise to think about it.”

So a wiretap is out of the question, thought Holt.

“And you can also forget about tapping her telephone,” said Johansson, who despite his nonexistent social skills was apparently a mind reader.

“Then I’ll have to say thank you, Boss,” Holt said politely, “and I do hope I haven’t disturbed you on a Sunday morning.” And how would I manage without you and people like you? she thought sourly.

“Forget about that too,” said Johansson. “And a piece of advice: Someone like me doesn’t bite on something like that,” and he hung up.

Oh my, thought Holt. But there isn’t much time.

Martinez too had gotten stuck in the bureaucratic mud. All the technicians who were on duty at SePo’s tech squad were fully occupied with a matter that had suddenly come up, top priority and so secret that they wouldn’t even say when they might be returning to the building on Polhemsgatan.

It wasn’t possible to get hold of on-duty technicians at the police department in Stockholm, though in a way it was simpler with them because no one was even there to answer the phone, much less anyone else who could tell her anything at all.

“Don’t ask me, they’re probably out running around somewhere, as usual,” said an irritated chief inspector at the City squad’s detective unit when Martinez finally got hold of him.

“Thanks for your help,” Martinez said politely, putting down the receiver. Idiot, she thought.

Both Holt and Martinez had to resign themselves to their fate-keeping Mattei company in front of the computers and piles of binders that were neatly arranged in the project room they’d moved into in order to be left alone with their mission. Mattei was happy as a clam and promised to show them some interesting new software after lunch-“Assuming you’re interested of course,” she added. Holt decided to make the best of her circumstances and, for lack of anything better to do, refresh her knowledge of the Eriksson case. What Martinez was actually up to at her computer was less clear, but she mostly seemed to be surfing on the secret police’s own network and taking full advantage of her temporarily expanded access.

Johansson had devoted the day to his wife, Pia, or Peppy Pia as he called her at home when he was in the mood.

The first time he had met her was almost fifteen years ago. He had run into her when he was investigating a mysterious suicide he had been dragged into, an American journalist who supposedly took his own life by jumping out of a sixteenth-floor window. The reason he had started to pay attention to Pia was more private than professional.

He had spoken with her as one of several witnesses, and because she looked the way she did and was the person she was, he immediately became interested in her, considerably more interested than he normally would have been. This was highly unfortunate given the way he had met her. On that point Johansson was very old-fashioned. Women he met in connection with his job, even in a situation like this, which was somewhere in between personal and professional, he did not meet as a man but rather as a police officer.

When he had finally put the case of the dead journalist behind him, not suicide but murder, he looked Pia up again, not as a police officer but as a man. But at the time she’d had something else going on, and what that was he never asked, because he knew anyway. He had hidden Pia far back in his mind among all the other things that certainly could have been significant in his life but for various reasons never were because he had never made up his mind. He had thought about her sometimes when the solitude that he all too gladly resorted to became too tangible. Then he thought about her with a special sense of loss that did not feed on all that had happened but only on the things that hadn’t but perhaps might have.

Several years later, when he had basically stopped thinking about her, he accidentally ran into her in his own grocery store, in the neighborhood where he lived. Luck of the draw, thought Johansson happily, and despite his estimable talents as a detective, for once he had no idea how things really stood.

Less than a month earlier Pia, who often thought about Lars Martin Johansson for more or less the same reasons he thought about her, happened to read a lengthy interview with Johansson in a tabloid, and immediately decided that if anything was going to happen in that area of her life, she was probably the one who would have to take the initiative. It was just a sudden impulse that she followed because over the years she had caught herself thinking about a man she had met only twice in her life. She found out just as quickly where he lived and that, at least in a legal sense, he was as single as could be. After that she figured out where he probably did his grocery shopping, and because she too lived on Söder it wasn’t difficult for her to change to a different store. On the fifth visit, just when she was thinking the whole project was starting to seem a little ridiculous, she had run into an absent-minded Johansson standing in deep contemplation in front of the meat counter. And that’s the way it was.

“What are we doing today?” asked a pleased Johansson as he squeezed grapefruit and oranges for his still half-asleep wife. “What do you think about starting the day with a long walk? The weather is almost as good as yesterday,” he added.

“What do you think about coming back to bed?” Pia proposed. “Then we can think about it while we’re considering something else.”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “Do you want juice now or do you want to wait?” Not a bad idea actually, he thought, and they could always go for a walk later.

“Later,” said Pia, suddenly looking very attentive.

“Good,” said Johansson, reaching out his hand for her slender neck.

After ordering out sushi for the second day in a row, Holt, Martinez, and Mattei devoted the afternoon to their daily war council.

“I’m starting to put together quite a bit on Stein now,” said Mattei, pointing to an impressive pile of computer printouts and other papers. “I almost feel she and I are getting to know each other in some way. This is really exciting.”

“You’ve never thought about writing a novel?” asked Martinez innocently.

“Sure,” said Mattei, nodding thoughtfully. “This is a problem I have when I do this kind of job. I have to downplay the literary element of my work. I don’t know how to explain it, but to me it’s often been the case that a really good novel has more to say about what we’re really like as human beings than the gloomy accounts of people and their lives that we compile here.”

“I’m sure Stein would be delighted to know how much you want to cuddle up with her,” said Martinez, smiling wryly. “If she only knew… imagine how happy she would be. Perhaps you should-”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Holt interrupted, nodding seriously at Mattei. “There are some truths about other people that we can only discover by means of our imagination. The problem is this place where we work, because they don’t much like that sort of thing here; in fact they’re actually scared to death of it.” Prejudices on the other hand, she thought. They’re always nice and safe.

“You must be a fortunate person, Linda,” said Holt for some reason, and then they returned to their respective piles of papers, and it was not until it was time to go home that a friendly male colleague called from the tech squad and said that he was now back in the building and was of course at their immediate disposal.

Martinez got up at once, took her beer can and her basis for comparison, and vanished in the direction of the tech squad. Half an hour later she was back, and when Holt saw her come through the doorway to the room where they were sitting she did not even need to ask how the work had gone.

“Yeeesss,” said Martinez, raising her clenched left fist in a victory gesture from the suburb north of Stockholm where she had grown up. “Those are her fingerprints. Both on the kitchen counter and on the door under the sink.”

It was too late to call Johansson and get yet another dose of cynicism and sarcasm, thought Holt as she looked at the clock.

“What do you think about seven-thirty tomorrow morning?” she asked instead.

“No beer, no hunks, fine with me,” Martinez summarized.

“That suits me fine too,” said Mattei. “I’m actually a morning person.”

Instead of going home to sleep, Holt borrowed an unmarked car and took the route past Helena Stein’s residence on Östermalm. Parked discreetly a little way down the street, she sat in the car for an hour while she kept an eye on the windows in Stein’s apartment. There were lights on in there somewhere in the inner regions, and at one point she saw someone go past behind the curtains in the room that she now knew to be Stein’s living room. But she wasn’t able to see whether it was Helena Stein or someone else.

What are you up to? thought Holt with irritation. Then she drove straight home and went to bed. What kind of a life are you living anyway? she thought as she fell asleep.

33 Monday, April 3, 2000

When Holt reached work on Monday morning she immediately went to see her boss to report on the latest developments. Johansson was not there. According to his cool and correct secretary, the boss might show up after lunch, assuming of course he didn’t have anything else going on. Reaching him on his cell phone was out of the question as well, because he was in important meetings where he could not be disturbed. Johansson’s secretary suggested that perhaps Holt should try speaking with Wiklander instead. And if he wouldn’t do, then she would just have to be patient and wait until Johansson came back.

Wiklander was also conspicuously absent, and because he didn’t have a secretary who refused to say where he was, all that remained were Holt’s closest coworkers, Martinez and Mattei.

“Okay,” said Holt. “The boys are staying out of sight as usual, so what do we do while we’re waiting?”

“I have more than enough of my own work to do,” said Mattei, nodding at the piles of papers towering beside her computer. “But if you want I can help you look for connections between Eriksson and Stein at the time of the murder.”

“Good, Lisa,” said Holt. “If you look for any financial connections-and for God’s sake don’t forget her cousin Tischler-then Linda and I will try to check the phones.”

“Almost eleven years ago,” said Martinez doubtfully, shaking her dark-haired head. “The AXE system wasn’t completely built at that time, and almost nobody had cell phones. I don’t even know how long Telia saves its call lists. Surely not for ten years.”

“We have to at least try,” said Holt. “The lists of Eriksson’s calls are included in the investigation, but if I remember correctly it was like you say, pretty slim. But we have to check again anyway.”

“You do that then since you’re the one who knows the case,” said Martinez, “and I’ll talk with Telia and the other cell phone companies.” It has to be done anyway, she thought, and she might even get the chance to get out and move around.

Chief Inspector Wiklander met with former chief inspector Persson, and it was Johansson who had arranged the contact. The substance of Wiklander’s mission was simple enough. He would interview Persson for informational purposes and make sure that everything Johansson and Persson had talked about that evening when they had brown beans and roast pork-and a drink or two, and as the time passed quite a few-ended up on paper and was read out loud and approved by Persson. Because if Johansson was getting ready for war, he wanted to be well prepared.

The business between them had been taken care of both quickly and painlessly. Considering that Persson looked like an old, red-eyed male elephant who might at any moment drive his tusks through the person he was talking with, he had been both obliging and talkative. Wiklander’s extra assignment remained.

“There was one more thing,” said Wiklander, trying to sound as if he had just happened to think of it. “It was Johansson who asked me,” he added to be on the safe side.

Persson just nodded.

“It’s about your former colleague Claes Waltin. The one who quit a few years after the Palme assassination, when you shut down the so-called external operation.”

Persson nodded again, but without saying anything.

“Johansson was wondering if you had anything interesting to say about why he quit and what happened to him later-they say he drowned,” said Wiklander, and for some reason he felt slightly uneasy when he finally squeezed out the question.

Persson on the other hand reacted in the most unexpected manner. He looked almost delighted, and considering how he usually looked this was a frightening sight for Wiklander.

“I never talk about colleagues,” Persson growled. “I don’t even talk shit about them if I don’t like them, but where that little asshole Waltin is concerned I’ll be glad to. Do you want to know why?”

“Yes, please,” said Wiklander, for he did want to know, and it was one more reason why he was where he was. Besides, Persson wasn’t the type you said no to, regardless of what you wanted personally.

“I never considered him a colleague,” Persson snorted. “Waltin was no policeman; he was an ordinary little gangster dandy with police chief training and good manners. So I hope you have enough tape with you so it doesn’t run out,” said Persson, nodding toward Wiklander’s little tape recorder, which he had set on the table between them.

And then Persson told him about former deputy police superintendent Claes Waltin.

“We actually received the tip from our American friends,” said the colonel. “We get together occasionally and exchange a few common experiences,” he added evasively, “and when we had a session at the beginning of December this case came up. They were the ones who offered it to us actually.”

“There wasn’t anything that caused you to wonder then?” asked Johansson.

“What do you mean?” the colonel counter-questioned.

“A twenty-five-year-old case on which the statute of limitations was due to run out and that no one seems to have given a thought to for decades. Besides, if I’ve understood this correctly, you got tips about a couple of people who have already been dead for many years. Eriksson and Welander, I seem to recall,” said Johansson, despite the fact that he knew quite well who he was talking about.

“So that’s why you think we shared this with you,” said the colonel, smiling. “You can have two old corpses to be forwarded to our dear truth commission. Was that what you were thinking, Johansson?”

“The thought may have occurred to me,” said Johansson, and he smiled too.

“But it wasn’t that way at all,” said the colonel, looking at him with his honest blue eyes. “The fact is, I asked the exact same question you did, and the answer I got was convincing enough.”

“What was that?” said Johansson.

“That there would be more,” said the colonel. “And that we might need Eriksson and Welander for our background analysis, if nothing else. The Americans have devoted a good deal of time to analyzing the data they got when the Germans took possession of the SIRA archive, and among other things they’ve been running it against their own Rosewood material and a few other goodies they’ve collected in boxes over the years. However it was, they seemed pretty convinced that names would be produced of individuals who are still highly interesting. To both you and me,” the colonel concluded.

And if you think they’ve produced these with the help of the SIRA archive then they’ve been holding out on you, thought Johansson, who had no problem whatsoever believing his predecessor Berg’s story of what had gone on when Welander removed himself and his comrades from the Stasi files.

“Did they say anything about who would be included in future deliveries?”

“Young radicals from the seventies who have become established citizens and come up in the world,” said the colonel. “But who perhaps haven’t really made a clean break with their past and who might therefore be interesting both to you and to us. Far more interesting today, by the way, than at the time when they were just marching in a lot of demonstrations and giving you hell,” he added.

Not someone like Tischler, but quite probably Helena Stein, thought Johansson.

“And you don’t think this may be part of a disinformation campaign from their side?” he asked.

“No,” said the colonel. “For the simple reason that there is no reason to carry on with that sort of thing anymore. We’re living in a new era,” said the colonel credulously.

So that’s what we’re doing? The hell we are, thought Johansson.

“Give me a name. Who was it who gave you this information?”

“I’d rather not,” said the colonel, squirming. “And you know why as well as I do.”

“Then I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you again,” said Johansson, who was suddenly reminded of Berg’s old hand, Chief Inspector Persson. If you don’t want to keep company with your former colleague Wennerström of course, thought Johansson.

“Normally it doesn’t work like that,” said the colonel evasively, “but I’ll make an exception because they gave us the go-ahead to share this with you.”

How did the CIA get the idea that they could decide that sort of thing for us? thought Johansson, who could already feel his blood pressure rising.

“As I said, we get together occasionally, and this time it was more of a social event, I guess, it being almost Christmas and all, so we had a nice dinner at the old mess out at Karlberg and listened to a darned interesting lecture that one of their guys gave us. A real old legend in the industry actually, and what he had to tell was both highly informative and highly entertaining. He was the one who came up and asked me after dinner if we were interested, and when I said we were he promised to get back to me. Then one of our regular contacts at their embassy contacted us within just a few days and did a presentation for us. Our analysts were obviously included, so we’re entirely in agreement here, they and I,” said the colonel, nodding. “It was the genuine article we were offered.”

“Has anything else arrived?” asked Johansson. How naive can he be? Or is he pulling my leg? he thought.

“Not yet,” said the colonel, shaking his head, “but there’s nothing strange about that, because even then they said it might take a good while.”

“The legend,” Johansson reminded him, “what was his name?”

“Since you’re the one who’s asking,” sighed the colonel, “Liska. Michael Liska, born in Hungary during the war, fled as a teenager to the U.S.A. after the revolution in 1956. Big burly guy in his sixties. Called the Bear actually, Michael ‘The Bear’ Liska,” said the colonel, nodding with the sincere expression of one who did not need to unburden his heart.

“What a fucking story,” said Wiklander, despite the fact that he almost never swore. Persson had just finished talking about the former police superintendent Claes Waltin.

“I told you he was a fucking jerk,” said Persson. “And if you want a piece of good advice to take with you, by the way,” he added. This Wiklander seems to be a real policeman in any case, thought Persson.

“Yes, please,” said Wiklander. He’s actually quite pleasant once you get to know him, thought Wiklander.

“This job,” said Persson, “be sure to keep your distance, otherwise you’ll go crazy, start seeing ghosts in the light of day.”

“Sure,” said Wiklander. “I’ve already sensed that.” Because I really have, he thought.

“Never forget you’re a policeman,” said Persson, nodding seriously. “Keep your distance from the crooks, don’t make things complicated, and never start compromising with them.”

Johansson’s first task when he returned to work was to call in his head of counterespionage and ask him to find out as soon as possible, preferably immediately, what information the group had about an old CIA agent by the name of Michael “The Bear” Liska.

Then his secretary stepped in to report that Chief Inspector Anna Holt was looking forward to seeing him as soon as possible.

“She can come in now,” said Johansson. War it would be.

“They’re Stein’s fingerprints. Both the one on the kitchen counter and the one on the inside of the door under the sink,” she said laconically. What can you say to that? she thought.

“What do we do now?” asked Holt, looking at her boss inquisitively. “You’re the one who decides after all,” she said, smiling weakly.

“How do you interpret her prints?” asked Johansson. “Even an old man like me can see that she’s been in Eriksson’s apartment, but do you have any idea when her fingerprints ended up there?”

Now you’re sounding like the Johansson I’ve heard about, thought Holt, and then she spoke about the pedantic, demanding Eriksson, about his Polish cleaning woman who certainly had to earn her meager pay, and about the window of opportunity this left for her and Johansson.

“She cleaned every Friday. Eriksson was murdered on a Thursday evening. I have a hard time believing that the kitchen counter was sparkling clean every time the cleaning woman had been there, so we have at the earliest Friday after lunch the week before-when the cleaning woman left the apartment the last time before the murder-and at the latest the same evening Eriksson was murdered, which gives us a little less than a week.”

“Was there anything interesting in the wastebasket?” asked Johansson.

“Not according to the report from the crime scene investigation,” said Holt, shaking her head, “but personally, I’m pretty sure the impression on the inside of the cupboard door ended up there at the same time as the one on the counter.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” said Johansson, nodding. “Too bad there isn’t a date stamp on the impression.” The clouds are gathering over little Ms. Stein’s head, but the lightning bolt has not yet struck her, he thought. “Do we have anything else that might lead us closer?”

“Martinez is checking the phones,” said Holt.

Johansson shook his head doubtfully.

“I think you can forget that,” he said. “We had a similar case a while ago and I’m pretty sure that this is too old for either Telia or Comviq. They were the only cell phone operators in the market at that time, weren’t they? Unless there’s something saved in the investigation about Eriksson?”

“Nada,” said Holt. “I’ve checked that myself. He hardly ever called anyone, and there was almost no one who called him. Stein hasn’t in any event. He didn’t have a cell phone.”

“Money then,” said Johansson.

“Mattei is in the process of checking that part,” said Holt, “but I don’t think we should pin our hopes on that either.”

“I agree with you,” said Johansson, “because even if there had been something like that between Eriksson and Stein, her cousin Tischler would surely have taken care of it.”

“We have a hand towel too,” said Holt, and then she told him about the vomit-stained hand towel that Bäckström of all people had found at the bottom of the laundry basket in Eriksson’s bathroom. “The time-related problem with that is the same as with the fingerprints, I guess, but I’m pretty sure it was Eriksson’s murderer who threw up in it after the act,” Holt continued.

“I agree with you completely,” said Johansson. “We’ll have to try to secure DNA on it.” Vomit is better than fingerprints when it concerns murder, he thought.

“We’ve requested it to be sent up to us from the tech squad in Stockholm,” said Holt, “so I’m guessing it’s already on its way. Vomit is of course even better than fingerprints,” Holt clarified.

“I wonder if I can ask you a favor?” said Johansson. “I’d like to look at the pictures from the crime scene, so if you could give me the materials on the crime scene investigation and the forensic investigation, plus everything else you consider to be of interest, I’ll try to form an impression of how the whole thing played out.”

“Of course,” said Holt. He apparently cares in any event, she thought.

“Well,” said Johansson, smiling and leaning back in the chair, “do you still think Stein did it?”

“Yes,” said Holt, nodding. “Unfortunately we’re moving in that direction.” And it doesn’t feel especially good, she thought.

“And that bothers you,” Johansson said.

“Yes,” said Holt.

“Because she’s a woman?” asked Johansson.

“Maybe,” said Holt, “I don’t know.” Pull yourself together now, Anna, she thought.

“Sometimes it’s hard to like the situation,” said Johansson. “Especially when Eriksson seems to have been such an outstanding little asshole.”

“Where would we be if it was open season on getting rid of assholes?” said Holt. He’s actually rather pleasant, she thought.

“There would be a lot less people,” said Johansson, who seemed amused by the thought. “Now let’s do this,” Johansson continued, sitting up straight in the chair and beginning to count on his fingers. “We like the situation, we don’t make things complicated, we mistrust chance, and to start with we pull out that hand towel. When we’re done with that and everything else,” Johansson continued, holding up the fifth finger on his left hand, “then we turn all our worries over to the prosecutor with a clean conscience.”

“All right by me,” said Holt, smiling involuntarily.

“After all, this isn’t actually a murder investigation we’re working on,” Johansson concluded.

This is going like clockwork, thought Johansson as Wiklander sat down on the chair Holt had just left. “I’m listening,” said Johansson.

Everything that had been discussed between Johansson and Persson over their roast pork and brown beans was now noted in an interview, a copy of which Johansson would receive the next day. In addition Persson extended his greetings to the boss and looked forward to seeing him again in more pleasant circumstances.

“You’ve got a real old-time policeman there,” said Johansson with an extra dollop of Norrland dialect. “So what did he have to say about little Waltin?”

Quite a bit, according to Wiklander, but nothing that was particularly flattering to former deputy police superintendent Claes Waltin.

“Spare me no details,” said Johansson, leaning comfortably back in his chair.

Claes Waltin had as noted already quit the secret police in the spring of 1988 because the so-called external operation, of which he had been the head, had finally been shut down. He was the one who had resigned, but if he hadn’t done so it was most likely that he would have been removed anyway.

“Financial irregularities,” Wiklander summarized. “The auditors were furious with him, but because he was who he was Berg was content that he turned in his resignation and quit.”

“He seems to have been pretty well off,” said Johansson. “If I’ve understood things correctly he had a lot of inherited money?”

A great deal of inherited money, according to what could be determined. As well as an even greater amount whose origin was less clear but could probably be attributed to various shady transactions made during his time with the secret police. Another portion of his wealth he had buried abroad, and no one ever really got a handle on that, but it probably originated from the same sources as the majority of the money that had been found.

“Waltin seems to have been a real gem,” Wiklander summarized.

“And think how well dressed he was,” said Johansson, grinning contentedly.

Not when he died, according to Wiklander. Not even a bathing suit was left on what the Mediterranean birds and fish left behind of the former deputy police superintendent.

“He was on vacation in Mallorca,” said Wiklander. “It was October of 1992. He had checked into a really extravagant luxury hotel that he visited every fall-it’s out on the furthest northern point above Port de Pollenca-and every morning he was there he would take a dip in the Mediterranean before breakfast. But one morning he didn’t come back, and when he was finally found almost fourteen days later, it was only his remains, bumping against the seawall a couple miles away from the hotel.”

“I see,” said Johansson. “Was there anything strange about that?”

“Not according to the Spanish authorities,” Wiklander replied. “It was written off as an ordinary accident. In any case no bullet holes were found in the little that was left of him. Not according to Persson anyway.”

“So what did Berg say,” Johansson wondered.

“Berg was apparently his usual self,” said Wiklander. “He immediately took over the domestic investigation as soon as he found out that Waltin was dead. Among other things he had a really thorough search done at Waltin’s residence. He had a large apartment on Norr Mälarstrand, as well as an old family estate down in Sörmland.”

“And it’s quite certain that those remains were Waltin’s?” asked Johansson, who was meticulous about such things.

“According to Persson they were one hundred percent sure. They had access to his DNA, and when the remains came home to Sweden they compared that DNA with what they already had, so it had been established beyond a doubt that it really was Waltin.”

We’ll all have to try to live with the sorrow, thought Johansson piously.

“So was anything interesting found at his home?” he asked.

“That’s what was so strange,” said Wiklander. “With the exception of some mysterious will that was in his safe-deposit box and which I’ll come back to, more or less nothing was found of a more private nature. There were a lot of expensive paintings and furniture, but nothing more personal.”

“That must have been a downer for Berg,” Johansson chuckled.

“Yes,” said Wiklander. “Among other things Waltin was known as a ladies’ man, so I guess everyone was a little surprised that no traces of that part of his life were found. For a while they had the idea that he’d cleaned up after himself and gone to Mallorca to commit suicide. He had started drinking rather heavily after he quit working with us,” Wiklander added. “According to the colleagues who ran into him in town he was starting to look rather moth-eaten toward the end.”

“Is that what he did?” asked Johansson. “Took his own life I mean?” Nice to hear he was a ladies’ man, he thought, and for some reason it was his own wife he was thinking about.

“I don’t know,” said Wiklander, shrugging his shoulders. “There was never any real clarity on that point, but according to the Spaniards it was a pure accident. They naturally talked with the personnel at the hotel, and according to them he was exactly the same as usual the morning that he drowned.”

“There were no witnesses?” asked Johansson.

“No witnesses,” said Wiklander, shaking his head. “It was mostly Spaniards who stayed at the hotel, and they lounged in bed until late in the morning in contrast to Waltin, who apparently was a morning person. The hotel had its own beach too, discreet and separate from the hoi polloi.”

“I see,” said Johansson. “We’ll have to live with the uncertainty. So what was there with that will?” he wondered.

“A real shocker,” said Wiklander. “It was in his safe deposit box, it was handwritten, and it had been established beyond a doubt that he wrote it himself. You’ll hardly believe it’s true.” Wiklander shook his head.

“What was in it then?” asked Johansson impatiently.

“All the money he had-and there was quite a bit-was to go to a foundation to support research on hypochondria among women, in memory of his old mother, and the foundation would bear her name. The Foundation for Research into Hypochondria in Memory of my Mother, Aino Waltin, and All Other Hypochondriacal Old Hags Who Have Ruined the Lives of Their Children-that was what he wanted it to be called.”

“Sounds nice,” said Johansson, whose mother would soon turn ninety. She had given birth to seven children and got up with the rooster the day after every birth. Dear Mama Elna. It’s high time I called to ask how she’s doing, thought her youngest son Johansson affectionately.

“That was far from the worst.” said Wiklander. “He wrote down a detailed explanation too. He said his mother had apparently promised she would die for as long as he could remember, from basically every conceivable illness to be found in a medical book, and finally he got so tired of the old hag and her unfulfilled promises of an imminent departure that he pushed her off the platform at the Östermalm subway station.”

“That sounds completely insane,” said Johansson. Not even Waltin could have been that crazy, he thought.

“In and of itself, yes,” said Wiklander. “The problem is that the old lady appears to have died in exactly that way, sometime in the late sixties when Waltin himself was about twenty-five years old and studying law at the University of Stockholm.”

“So did he do it?” asked Johansson.

“It was written off as a pure accident,” said Wiklander, “but our colleague Persson was completely convinced that he was the one who killed her. According to Persson she wasn’t the only one either, but he didn’t want to go into who the others were, so I think that was mostly bullshit.”

Amazing story, thought Johansson.

“So what happened with the foundation?” he asked.

“It didn’t happen,” said Wiklander. “The will was declared invalid and the money went to his old father. They hadn’t met since Waltin was a little boy, because the old man had taken his secretary, fled his home, and moved down to Skåne, but he got the money in any event. Whatever he could do with it, because he was pretty well heeled himself, and besides he was already ancient when his son died. The old man is said to have died a year or two ago, just before he turned a hundred.”

“I see,” said Johansson. “This was a rather amazing story.”

“Yes,” said Wiklander. “It’s got just about everything, but what I don’t really get is what this has to do with our case. With Stein, I mean?”

“Nothing at all,” said Johansson. “I promise and assure you that it has nothing whatsoever to do with our case. I was simply curious about what happened to Waltin,” said Johansson.

Should I believe that? thought Wiklander, who was a real policeman and had already forgotten the good advice his predecessor Persson had given him.

When Johansson arrived home that evening, after mature deliberation, and against his oath of secrecy-after all this matter did not bear directly on the security of the realm-he told the whole, sorrowful story of Waltin and his demise to his wife, Pia.

“I knew that something would happen,” said Pia agitatedly. “He was just the type to be murdered.”

Sigh and moan, thought Johansson. Wonder if it can be all the vegetables she eats. For according to his clear understanding, based on common sense and far too much experience, Waltin was exactly the type who would never be murdered.

“I’ve just told you that he drowned,” said Johansson with emphasis on every syllable. “So why do you persist in saying that he must have been murdered?”

“He was the type,” said Johansson’s wife. “I’m quite sure. I can feel it. That’s just how it is.”

“What do you think about sleeping on it?” Johansson suggested, pointedly turning off the light on his nightstand. Another one that’s like a child, he thought, and it was his good fortune that his wife was not a coworker of Anna Holt.

34 Tuesday, April 4, 2000

Holt devoted half of Tuesday to searching for a vanished hand towel, but the only thing the tech squad in Stockholm came up with was yet another copy of the forensic report already in the investigation file confirming the existence of the hand towel in question, and they gave a number of strangely evasive responses when she talked with them on the phone. Meanwhile her colleague Martinez, who had promised to help her, had disappeared.

“Okay,” said Holt when she finally got hold of Martinez, in their own break room of all places. “We’ll have to hop down to Stockholm and question that fuckup Wiijnbladh, who was responsible for the hand towel debacle.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be easy,” said Martinez, who had already investigated the matter.

Wiijnbladh had scarcely been a giant at the time Holt had worked with him on the investigation of the murder of Kjell Göran Eriksson. He was currently a fragment of his former self, and had been working for several years at the Stockholm Police Department’s so-called lost-and-found. The alleged purpose of the job was to hunt for stolen and missing goods, though everyone who knew anything worth knowing also knew that this was one of the agency’s many assignments for warehousing colleagues for whom things had gone badly but who for various reasons could not simply be kicked out.

Mere months after the murder of Kjell Eriksson, Wiijnbladh had suffered an accident at work under peculiar circumstances. One day he had simply fallen apart at work-cramps, vomiting, crazed outbursts-and his terrified colleagues had carted him off to the ER at Karolinska, where he was immediately sent on to intensive care.

At first no one understood a thing. The assembled medical experts stood by scratching their heads, until a senior physician in the department with a good memory recalled a recent, very sad story at the Karolinska Institute about a young medical student who had stolen a bottle of thallium, which he had used to poison his father. From the notes in Wiijnbladh’s medical record it appeared that he worked as a crime technician with the Stockholm police, and the doctor quickly added one and one together and got to two. Because there was no way to talk with Wiijnbladh himself-in plain Swedish he was completely gone, and was wandering back and forth in the borderland between life and death-his doctor called the head of the Stockholm Police Department’s disciplinary unit, whom he knew due to a previous, similar story, and reported his observations directly to him.

The bottle of thallium was found locked up where it should have been at the tech squad, but the quantity it contained was less than what it should have been according to the confiscation report, and the remainder, more than ten grams, was found on the shelf in Wiijnbladh’s locker at work. Someone, most likely Wiijnbladh himself, had poured it into a can that originally held instant coffee.

Considering that a few hundredths of a gram was sufficient to kill, and that even a few microscopic grains on the skin were more than sufficient to make you feel like Wiijnbladh, the potential for harm was frightening and the agitation at the tech squad had been great. They were worried not so much about Wiijnbladh as about what might have happened to other, completely normal colleagues in Chief Inspector Blenke’s valiant battalion.

“But what would he do with ten grams of thallium?” Holt asked with surprise.

“According to a colleague at internal investigations, Wiijnbladh was going to use it to kill his wife,” Martinez explained.

“What?” said Holt. That little twit, she thought. Who knew he had that much backbone?

“Although that problem solved itself-they say she’d already left him before he was discharged from the hospital. I hardly think he’s in any condition to kill her with anything he can swipe from all the old shit he has access to down at the lost-and-found department,” said Martinez. “It’s mostly stolen bicycles and TVs,” she clarified.

“So what happened to the hand towel?” asked Holt.

According to Martinez the hand towel had been lost to forensic science in the general disorder that had broken out in the wake of Wiijnbladh’s sudden bout of ill health. In normal circumstances Wiijnbladh would have placed it in one of the tech squad’s freezers for storage to await any future needs-such as now, for example-or until the case was closed and it could be discarded. But things did not go as usual.

Instead it had remained lying on Wiijnbladh’s work bench, and because it was well packaged it had managed to rot considerably before the odor finally forced its way through the plastic, alarming Wiijnbladh’s colleagues-who by that time were rather sensitive where he was concerned-and one of them took immediate measures.

“Someone simply threw it in the garbage,” said Martinez, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s unclear who, but it was someone who worked there.”

“I see,” said Holt. “Have you spoken with Wiijnbladh?”

“Yes,” said Martinez, “and the reason I didn’t take you along was that you were sitting talking to our beloved boss.”

“So what did Wiijnbladh say?” Holt wondered. Typical, she also thought.

“Not much,” said Martinez, shaking her head. “The guy’s only a remnant. No hair, hardly any teeth left, his whole body shaking like he’s playing maracas. I could hardly hear what he was saying and he didn’t remember any hand towel or any murder of any Eriksson. On the other hand he remembered that he had personally solved hundreds of murders when he was working at the tech squad. He just didn’t remember Eriksson. Then he asked me to say hello to someone named Bäckström. So I promised to do that. Is he someone you know?”

“Depends on what you mean by know,” said Holt, shrugging her shoulders. “He was the one in charge of the Eriksson investigation.”

“Omigod,” said Martinez. “I wondered. So what’s he like?”

“Well,” said Holt, delaying her response. “Like Wiijnbladh-only the other way around-and just as bad.”

“I get it,” said Martinez.

According to Martinez it was still too early for them to throw in the proverbial towel. One of their own technicians had promised to do his best with the report and get back to them as soon as possible, and dear Mattei had had an idea when Martinez told the sorrowful story of the hand towel to her.

“What was that?” said Holt.

“She didn’t say,” said Martinez, “but it must have been something pretty special, because she left the building before lunch. What’s with you anyway? You look strange.”

“I had an idea myself,” said Holt. “It was just something that struck me.” Wonder if he’s alive, she thought.

“Spooky,” said Martinez. “Real, real spooky.”

Mattei returned from her mysterious expedition that same afternoon, with flushed cheeks and a story she simply had to tell.

“Where have you been?” asked Holt.

“I’ve been out surveilling. I didn’t get hold of you because you were sitting in Johansson’s office, but I got the go-ahead from Wiklander.”

“So where have you been?” Holt wondered impatiently. “With the Hell’s Angels in their cozy little clubhouse out in Solna?”

“No, yuck,” said Mattei. “I’ve been with SACO at their main office in Östermalm, and it was just in the nick of time actually.”

As she was reading the report on the hand towel Mattei had gotten an idea.

“The person who vomited in the towel had evidently consumed fish, vegetables, and coffee,” said Mattei.

“Yes, I saw that too,” said Holt.

“And considering that the traces were visible, I realized the meal must have been consumed relatively late in the day,” Mattei explained. “But it would be before the person vomited into the hand towel,” she clarified.

“Yes,” said Holt. Even I realized that, she thought.

“And then I happened to think about that conference,” said Mattei.

Considering that it was an all-day conference, it did not seem entirely unreasonable that at the end of the day those who had worked at the conference-organizers and presenters, for example-might have been offered a meal as thanks for their efforts, even if this was not listed on the printed program that Holt had collected for the investigation more than ten years earlier.

“They did have such a meal, of course, because they always did,” said Mattei. “It was in their own executive dining room, and there were only ten or so participants. Stein was there at the dinner as an invited presenter. And they still have the menu and a list of the participants, since you need those for accounting purposes and you have to save the records for at least ten years according to the regulations. By next week they would have started to clean out the accounts from fiscal year 1989, so I was in the nick of time,” Mattei concluded, catching her breath.

“And fish was served at the dinner they were treated to,” said Holt.

“Of course,” said Mattei. “There was fish as an appetizer-salted West Coast cod on a bed of rucola-and fish and vegetables as an entrée. It was flounder, by the way, with oven-baked root vegetables and lime dressing. Here’s the menu,” said Mattei, handing over a thin plastic folder.

“Fish as an appetizer and fish and vegetables as an entrée,” Holt repeated.

“Yes, it was almost only women at the dinner, so that was probably why,” said Mattei. “It actually sounds really good. And Stein was there, as I said, and she ate.”

“Yes, I heard you say that,” said Holt, “and it-”

“Although on the other hand she declined the snack later,” Mattei interrupted.

“How do you know that?” asked Holt with surprise.

“She’s crossed off the list,” said Mattei. “They had an early dinner at six o’clock,” said Mattei, “and there were eleven different participants listed of which one is attorney Helena Stein. But then cheese and fruit and red wine were served as a kind of evening snack at ten o’clock, and seven of them signed up for that. The others had to go home, I guess to take care of the kids, and one of the seven who signed up was Helena Stein.”

“But then her name is crossed out?” Holt clarified. For her own sake, she wasn’t going to get anything turned around.

“Yes,” said Mattei, “and I think she must have declined at the last minute.”

“I do too,” said Holt slowly.

“She must have been in a hurry if she was going to kill Eriksson at eight o’clock,” Mattei observed in a most unsentimental manner.

Fifteen minutes later Martinez called Holt and reported that her contact at the tech squad had called and wanted to share his findings regarding the hand towel, provided they could come to see him at the tech squad of course.

Nice to get to move a little, thought Holt, who was not accustomed to running investigations from a desk. If anyone had asked her before this strange story got going in earnest, she would certainly have said that solving a case sitting behind a desk was an impossibility. You conquered out in the field-every police officer worth the name knew that. She had never been part of an investigation that had moved with such speed and vigor while she sat in front of her PC or at her desk. We have a breakthrough, and soon we’ll be basking in police department glory. Assuming that Johansson doesn’t decide to take the credit, of course.

“Sit down, girls, and make yourselves at home,” said the colleague at tech, who had both a beer belly and an old-fashioned, courteous manner.

“Thanks,” said Holt, although she actually wanted to say something else.

“Well… let’s see now,” said their technician, pushing up his glasses on his forehead and taking out his copy of the report from the forensic lab, which was now covered with his own notes. “It’s rather amusing to be sitting here with three female colleagues in my office-”

“It’s nice that you think so,” said Holt neutrally, because she was still a chief inspector. She wanted to say something before Martinez could blurt out something less appropriate.

“Yes, considering the conclusions that I’ve drawn regarding the finds that our colleagues in Linköping SCL secured on the hand towel in question,” the colleague continued, looking shrewd.

“I don’t really understand,” said Holt.

“I’ll get to that,” said the colleague with a sober expression. “So we have vegetable and animal oils, esters, vegetable fat in solid form, traces of wax plus three different coloring agents, and in addition…”

“What he means is that the chemical stuff they found on the hand towel comes from an ordinary lipstick,” said Mattei innocently.

The meeting with the colleague from the tech squad had been brief, and in the corridor outside his office Martinez had embraced an embarrassed Mattei and kissed her right on the mouth. Then all three, giggling happily, returned to their project room.

“I had no idea you knew that kind of chemical hocus-pocus too,” said Holt, looking at Mattei. Johansson can eat his heart out, she thought. Little Mattei will soon be doing turns around him.

“I don’t,” Mattei objected. “But I did run it on the computer. There are standard programs for searching chemical finds. This one in particular is a crib sheet I swiped from the FBI.”

“This is completely insane,” said Martinez happily. “Did you see the bastard’s expression? It’s an ordinary lipstick,” Martinez imitated. “I thought our old colleague was going to freak out.”

“Oh well,” Mattei objected. “We shouldn’t be unfair. He actually has pulled out both the color of the lipstick and the most likely brand. Dark cherry red, cerise, high quality, expensive, probably French manufacture, and in any event not American, because their health laws prohibit the use of one of the coloring components. Probably Lancôme bought in France and not intended for export,” Mattei stated with the help of the technician’s handwritten notes.

And regardless of the price, it was hardly something that the blonde Jolanta would use, thought Holt, who to be on the safe side also intended to ask the cleaning lady about it.

“I think it’s high time we have a chat with our esteemed boss,” said Holt. “What do you think about that?”

Holt had to have her conversation with Johansson without the company of her closest coworkers, because both Mattei and Martinez decided they had other, better things to do.

“Shoot,” said Johansson. He leaned back in his chair and nodded encouragingly at his female chief inspector and assistant chief detective, who recounted the status of the investigation in less than five minutes.

“So, that’s the situation,” Holt concluded. And what do we do now? she wondered.

“It’s starting to lean toward our needing to have a talk with Ms. Stein, I’m afraid,” said Johansson.

“Isn’t it a little too early?” Holt objected.

“Will we get much further then?” asked Johansson. “Wouldn’t it be perfect if we could get her to deny that she ever set foot in Eriksson’s apartment?” Regardless of the fact that this is not a murder investigation we’re involved in, he thought, and besides, his best friend Bo Jarnebring and a few hand-picked colleagues of his from homicide in Stockholm could take care of that work. Nothing could be better than to solve this in such a fashion, he thought.

“I understand how you’re thinking,” said Holt. “The risk is that then she’ll suddenly remember that sometime before-but she’s not sure which day it was-she happened to stop by Eriksson’s by pure coincidence. Perhaps because she saw her cousin Tischler and he was the one who suggested it. And I can imagine that he’d be willing to swear to that.”

“Yes,” said Johansson, “but she’s going to think of that explanation sooner or later no matter what, if this gets serious.” And at least then she will have talked with her attorney, he thought.

“You’re looking for an opportunity to be rid of the whole case and send it down to Stockholm,” said Holt. Say that you aren’t, she thought.

“Yes,” said Johansson seriously, “I actually am, because this is starting to look suspiciously like something that shouldn’t be on our table anymore. But I’ve also realized that you really, really want to have a talk with Stein, so I’m willing to discuss the matter.”

“Then I have an idea,” said Holt.

As soon as Holt had left, Johansson told his secretary that under no circumstances did he want to be disturbed. Then he ordered coffee and a much too large bag of Danish pastries from a nearby bakery, and because his wife was traveling for work he had the whole afternoon and evening to himself to go through the crime scene investigation from Eriksson’s apartment and the autopsy report in peace and quiet.

When he got up from his desk a few hours later to stretch his legs, he was completely convinced that he knew what had gone on down to the slightest detail when Kjell Göran Eriksson was murdered almost ten and a half years ago.

Oh shit, thought Lars Martin Johansson, who had never really been able to come to terms with the experience of holding another person’s entire existence in his hands. Maybe I could call Jarnie. After all, he was the one who found Eriksson, he thought, and the mere idea made his mood feel lighter.

“The murder of Kjell Eriksson,” said Johansson. “Do you remember it?”

“I was the one who found him, so I guess I remember a few things,” Jarnebring answered. “Bäckström got to play investigation leader and Wiijnbladh was of course the way he was-so the fact that it went the way it did probably isn’t so strange.”

“A poorly run investigation,” said Johansson, and this was more a statement than a question.

“Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back? Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?” Jarnebring asked. “True, I hoped you might treat me to dinner, but it’s clear… if you’ve cleared up a ten-year-old murder for us I might as well treat myself to a hot dog on the way home.”

“It doesn’t have to be that bad,” said Johansson. “I’ve already reserved a table for us.”

“Sounds good,” said Jarnebring. “My wife is forewarned and I’ve got permission. So there’s only one thing I’m wondering about.”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson.

“Why is SePo suddenly interested in Eriksson? I mean, if you’ve found out that he was spying for the Russians then perhaps you’re a bit late, considering the state of both Eriksson and the Russians.”

“I’ve thought about that as a matter of fact,” said Johansson. “And I can tell you about it, but then I’ll have to ask you to sign a bunch of papers first.”

“Then I think we’ll forget about that,” said Jarnebring, grinning. “Just so we get out of here at some point.”

“Good,” said Johansson. “Then I thought I’d ask you to look at this picture,” he continued, bringing up an image on the overhead projector in his conference room, which showed Kjell Eriksson lying dead on the floor in his own living room.

“Damn, the things you’ve got in this place,” said Jarnebring with involuntary admiration in his voice. “And here I sit, an ordinary, lousy country cop, in my worn-out shoes and my ragged old detective jacket.”

“Which you paid for yourself,” Johansson observed.

“Life isn’t fair,” said Jarnebring, slowly shaking his head. “I recognize the picture. It must be one of Wiijnbladh’s old pictures.”

“Does this agree with your own recollection?” asked Johansson.

It was a picture of Eriksson’s living room that had been taken from the door between the hall and the living room. The couch was located a few yards out from the short wall running toward the kitchen, and the door into the kitchen was diagonally behind. The overturned coffee table was flanked on either side by an antique armchair and an amply proportioned wingback chair. Squeezed between the couch and the coffee table was Eriksson, lying on his stomach in his own blood.

“Yes,” said Jarnebring. “It looks the way I remember it. Are you going to tell me what happened before he ended up there?”

“I thought we could discuss that,” said Johansson.

“I’m listening,” said Jarnebring.

“Eriksson is sitting on the couch having a drink with his back toward the door to the kitchen. He has no idea what’s going to happen before it happens. The perpetrator comes out from the kitchen and stabs him in the back while he’s sitting down. When the perpetrator pulls the knife out of Eriksson’s back, blood gushes out of the wound onto the upper edge of the back of the couch. Those are the stains you see here,” said Johansson, clicking to an enlargement of the couch, showing the top side of the back of the couch and half a dozen closely spattered bloodstains the size of rice grains.

“I don’t recognize this enlargement,” said Jarnebring. “I haven’t seen it before.”

“That’s ’cause our technicians developed it, but the original is Wiijnbladh’s,” said Johansson.

“What are you saying?” Jarnebring sighed. “Why didn’t Wiijnbladh ever do that?”

“If you look at the victim’s left shirt sleeve,” Johansson continued, clicking to the next enlargement, which showed Eriksson lying on his stomach on the floor with his arms along the sides of his body, “then you see that he has blood on the shirt sleeve right above the cuff, approximately where he dragged his shirt sleeve across the wound in his back to feel it.”

“On the other hand I do recall that we talked about this, and for once colleague Bäckström and I were in agreement,” said Jarnebring. “Eriksson didn’t realize at first what had happened, so he dragged his free arm over the place on his back that had just been stabbed-he was holding his toddy glass in his right hand-and when he realized what had happened, he went crazy and started to raise Cain. Did you read the interview with the neighbor lady?”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “But what does he do next?”

“Then he seems to have moved around a bit,” said Jarnebring vaguely.

“Seen from the kitchen, with the eyes of the perpetrator, Eriksson is sitting to the right on the couch when the perpetrator comes into the living room,” Johansson said. “Closest to the kitchen door where the perpetrator comes from.”

“Even I get that,” said Jarnebring. “It’s apparent from the location of the bloodstains on the back of the couch that Eriksson was sitting there when he was stabbed.”

“But nonetheless he first moved to the left between the couch and the coffee table,” said Johansson.

“Are you sure of that?” Jarnebring objected. “That’s not the way he’s lying. He’s lying with his head to the right, facing toward the hall. Personally I get the idea he got up, started to raise Cain, and then just folded over-headlong right where he was sitting-he’d been bleeding like a stuck pig so it must have gone fast.”

“No,” said Johansson, “it probably didn’t go quite that fast, because first he took a few steps to the left between the couch and the coffee table, then he turned and went back the way he came, still moving along between the couch and the coffee table. When he was back to the starting point he fell down, pulling the coffee table over as he dropped, and the toddy glass he had put down on the table fell to the floor.”

“This sounds serious, Lars,” said Jarnebring, grinning. “I’m almost getting the idea you were there when it happened.”

“No, but it’s enough to look at this to realize how he moved,” said Johansson, clicking to an enlargement of the blood traces on the floor. “While he was moving to the left, blood from his wound was splashing on the floor, and he stepped in the blood when he turned in place and moved back to the right.”

“When I look at that, yes,” said Jarnebring, nodding at Johansson’s enlargement. “But when we sat and stared at Wiijnbladh’s original, it just looked like the end of the night shift at Enskede slaughterhouse. A fucking lot of blood everywhere.”

“So why did he move in that way?” asked Johansson.

“The simple explanation is that he was trying to get out of reach of the perpetrator, I guess,” said Jarnebring. “The perpetrator was still standing at the right end of the couch where Eriksson had been sitting when he was stabbed. When Eriksson moved away from the perpetrator, that is, to the left, the perpetrator rounded the coffee table on the other side and Eriksson fled back to the right-and then he fell.”

“I think it was just the opposite,” said Johansson. “True, I’ll buy the location and movements of the perpetrator in the room-on the other side of the coffee table and the armchairs-and first to the left and then back to the right again-but otherwise you’re wrong.”

“Since I’m the one who’s playing the fool here, naturally I wonder what you mean,” said Jarnebring.

“What I mean is that it was Eriksson who was trying to get hold of the perpetrator,” said Johansson. “It was Eriksson who was following the perpetrator, and the perpetrator who was backing up. Not the other way around.”

“The hell it was,” Jarnebring objected. “Not that I met Eriksson while he was alive, but I still got the distinct impression that he was a real little coward.”

“But not this time,” said Johansson, “because he was not physically afraid of this particular perpetrator.”

“I see,” said Jarnebring, smiling broadly. “You’re onto colleague Bäckström’s line, that after all it was a little fairy we’re searching for.”

“No,” said Johansson. “It’s someone else we’re looking for.”

“Someone that Eriksson knew, someone he wasn’t afraid of, but instead someone with whom even Eriksson could feel big and strong,” said Jarnebring.

“Yes,” said Johansson. Unfortunately that’s the way it is, he thought.

“Damn, Lars, say what you want about old unsolved murders, but they’re good for the appetite,” Jarnebring said an hour later as they sat at their usual table at Johansson’s regular place and had just been served a baked sandwich of Parma ham, mozzarella, basil, and tomato as a little prelude to the lamb filet that would come when it was time to get serious.

“Too bad it has to be an ordinary Tuesday,” said Johansson vaguely.

“You’re thinking of a small one,” said Jarnebring.

“What makes you think that?” Johansson asked evasively.

“I’m a cop,” said Jarnebring. “I’ve been a cop my whole adult life-and I’ve known you just as long-and because Pia is out of town anyway and I am free myself, I get the idea that you, in your dark Norrland way, are talking about a little shot, despite the fact that it’s only Tuesday.”

“What the hell should we do?” said Johansson hesitantly. It is only Tuesday after all, he thought.

“Order two good-sized shots and pretend it’s Friday,” Jarnebring decided.

35 Wednesday, April 5, 2000

It was Holt’s suggestion, a sudden idea, a pure hunch that would probably prove to be completely wrong.

“It’s worth trying anyway,” Johansson said, which was why he was sitting with Wiklander in his office early Wednesday morning, refining tactics. Unusually alert and sober besides, despite the previous evening.

“I see you’ve already spoken with our colleague Holt,” said Johansson, nodding toward the little gold pin in the form of a trident that now adorned the lapel of Wiklander’s jacket.

“Old coast commando,” Wiklander nodded, not without pride as it appeared.

“Yes, be happy you don’t have to wear a fake mustache,” said Johansson, who was in the absolute best of moods because he was being let out into the field again. Despite his high rank, and despite all the old rust he was no doubt dragging along with him.

The day before, Holt had suddenly happened to think of Eriksson’s neighbor, the major, about whom she had had her suspicions after she and Jarnebring had interviewed him ten years ago.

“I had the distinct impression he was hiding something from us,” Holt had explained to her boss. “He was a guarded type, very guarded, and he had peepholes in the door and a good view of both the hallway and the stairwell. Because there had been a lot of racket at Eriksson’s the night of the murder, I thought it was more than probable that he had tried to peep out and see what was happening. Possibly he saw the perpetrator when he or she left. At that time I was completely convinced that the person we were searching for was a man,” she clarified. “All of us were, not least Bäckström.”

“Why didn’t the major say so then?” asked Johansson. “About whether he’d seen anything.”

“For several reasons, I think,” said Holt. “First, he clearly seemed to dislike Eriksson. Second, he didn’t like the police. That was probably enough for him to decide to keep his mouth shut. And it may have been much simpler too,” she added.

“What do you mean?” asked Johansson.

“He was extremely anxious to show what an old warrior he was. For a while I almost thought he was going to show us an old bullet wound from the Finnish war he was boasting about. But maybe when he saw something he was just afraid, like anyone else would be, or out of cowardice or laziness he didn’t want to be drawn into something. I’m sure he would rather bite his tongue off than admit to something like that.”

“Yes,” said Johansson, nodding. “But isn’t it still most likely that he didn’t see anything?”

“Yes,” said Holt. “That’s the most likely-that I’m completely wrong.”

“It’s worth trying anyway,” said Johansson. “But why do you want me in particular to do it?” he added. “You should know it’s been a while.” Even if I am flattered that she asked, of course, he thought.

“I think you’re just the right type to pry open that old cuss,” Holt explained.

“Do I look like I might conceivably share his political opinions?” Johansson asked. Think carefully about what you say, Holt, he thought.

“No,” said Holt, looking at Johansson, “but you definitely look like a man with strong opinions.”

“Nice,” said Johansson. And how nice is it on a scale from one to ten, he thought, for he had heard his wife say that.

“He scarcely noticed my presence,” Holt explained. “On the other hand he took note of Jarnebring-who doesn’t,” said Holt, smiling faintly. “But at the same time I think he felt that Jarnebring was maybe a little too simple for him to condescend to take seriously.”

“I think I’m starting to get an idea of the type,” said Johansson.

So now they were sitting there, at home with the major in his apartment on Rådmansgatan.

“The secret police and the second highest in command if I’ve understood this correctly,” said the major, nodding toward Johansson as he set Johansson’s business card down on the desk, behind which he had settled himself. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“It concerns a neighbor of yours, Major Carlgren, a man who was murdered in 1989,” Johansson explained.

“That little shit,” the major said amiably. “Why in the name of heaven should the secret police be concerned about him? You weren’t interested in him when he was still alive.”

“As you’ll understand, Major, I am prevented from going into any details,” said Johansson, looking sternly at the person he was speaking with. “But my colleague Wiklander here and I are following up a tip that we got from our colleagues in the military intelligence service,” Johansson concluded, nodding in the direction of Wiklander and the fish spear on his jacket. In a way that is what we’re doing, thought Johansson, even if this was the last thing the mysterious informant had had in mind when he brought new life to the Eriksson case.

“Coast commandos,” said the major, nodding with approval toward the lapel of Wiklander’s jacket.

“I am of course well acquainted with your military experience, Major,” said Johansson, who had decided in advance to pour it on thick. “By the way, I had a close relative myself who fought on the Finnish side-”

“So what was his name?” the major interrupted, looking guardedly at Johansson.

“His name was Johansson, Petrus Johansson. He was a commando with the rank of corporal when he fell at Tolvajärvi.”

“Was that your father?” asked the major.

“My uncle,” Johansson lied. It was bad enough that it had been his father’s crazy cousin about whom the older generations in the Johansson family still talked an unbelievable lot of shit whenever they got the chance.

“I know who he was,” said the major, nodding. “I never met him but I know who he was. Corporal Petrus Johansson died a hero’s death and you have my sincere sympathy.”

“Thank you,” said Johansson, who was shaken to his core because an eighty-year-old major had just got the idea that Johansson had been born no later than 1940. I’ll have to start dieting, he thought.

“He did not fall in vain,” said the major, “as the developments of recent years have no doubt illustrated clearly.”

“I would understand completely, Major, if you had seen anything, yet you might nonetheless have chosen to let the whole thing be, considering the victim’s past, and considering that the police officers who spoke with you came from the uniformed police with its unfortunately limited insights into security issues. I can reveal this much,” said Johansson, who had decided to fire up the boilers as he was picking up speed anyway, “that the individuals we are searching for are cut from the same cloth as Eriksson himself.”

“What is it you want to know?” asked the major, who looked as if he had just made a decision.

“I am wondering if you saw the man when he left Eriksson’s apartment,” said Johansson.

“What makes you think it was a man?” asked the major, and in that moment Johansson knew he had succeeded, because every word he had said had been chosen with care.

“What do you mean, Major Carlgren?” said Johansson, acting surprised.

“It wasn’t a man,” said the major, shaking his head. “It was a young woman-twenty-five years old perhaps, thirty at most, well-dressed. She was holding a briefcase or something like that pressed against her chest. She seemed rather upset, slammed the door behind her, ran down the stairs, which wasn’t so strange in the circumstances.”

“Do you recall anything more about her appearance?” asked Johansson.

“She was nice looking,” said the major. “Well dressed, neat, I remember I noticed she had a lot of hair-red or maybe more brownish red-not at all that miserable character Eriksson’s type. He was much older. When I heard what had happened I got the idea that he had tried to rape her and that she was only defending herself. If that was the case I hadn’t the slightest intention of helping the police lock her up,” the major concluded, nodding firmly at Johansson. “Not the slightest,” he repeated.

Then they showed pictures to the major. Pictures of twelve different women, of which one was Helena Stein at the age of thirty and another three depicted women of the same age with approximately the same appearance and hair color.

“I recognize that one,” the major snorted, setting a skinny, clawlike index finger on Eriksson’s cleaning woman, Jolanta. “That’s the Polish whore who cleaned under the table for Eriksson.”

“Is there anyone else who seems familiar?” Johansson asked. The old man isn’t completely gone, he thought hopefully.

The major took his sweet time, spreading out all eleven pictures that remained on his desk. He picked up each and every one of them and inspected it carefully. Then he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I remember that she had red or in any case reddish-brown hair, so if she’s here it must be one of them, but unfortunately I can’t say more than that.”

You can’t have everything, thought Johansson philosophically, and for him personally it was all the same, because he had already figured out how the whole thing fit together.

“Then I must truly thank you for your help,” said Johansson.

“Who is it then?” asked the major, nodding toward the pictures on the desk. “Which of them is it?”

“We don’t really know yet.”

“I hope she gets off,” said the major suddenly. “Eriksson was not a good person.”

When Johansson returned to work he immediately called in Holt and told her about his conversation with the major.

“I think it’s high time you met Helena Stein,” said Johansson.

“You’ve abandoned the idea of turning it over to Stockholm?” asked Holt.

“Yes,” said Johansson, sounding more convinced than he actually felt. “There’ll just be a lot of unnecessary talk. We’ll question her for informational purposes about her contacts with Eriksson without explaining why we’re interested in him. If she makes a fool of herself and denies having been in his apartment then we’ll call in the prosecutor so he can decide about taking her away.” It’ll be amusing to see his expression, Johansson thought.

“And otherwise we’ll have to see,” said Holt.

“Unless you have a better suggestion,” said Johansson.

“No,” said Holt.

“Okay then,” said Johansson as he got up, looking at the clock, and smiled to soften the whole thing. “Then you’ll have to excuse me. I have another meeting.”

“Helena Stein,” said Johansson’s boss, the general director, nodding contemplatively. “She’s a very interesting woman.”

“I understand you’ve met her,” said Johansson.

“Oh yes,” the GD confirmed. “She came to the ministry during my time there. True, she has never worked under me, but I’ve met her several times. For a while I saw her on a daily basis when she was working in the prime minister’s office.”

“I’ve never had the pleasure,” said Johansson. “What’s she like?”

“Intelligent, highly intelligent, and an extraordinarily knowledgeable, sharp attorney. And she looks good too, in that slightly icy way. And she neatly balances her radical opinions with a blouse, pleated skirt, and high heels in well-chosen color combinations,” the GD summarized, clearing his throat slightly for some reason as he said the last thing.

“But she’s not someone you’d marry-if you were concerned about domestic tranquility,” said Johansson, who in the company of his boss had no problem whatsoever playing the role of simple man of the people.

“You said it,” said the GD. “Personally I would describe her as very intelligent and at the same time very intellectual. And always ready to stand up for her opinions. Razor-sharp and merciless when she does so. A woman whom the majority of men, especially in our generation, seem to have an extremely difficult time managing.”

“Not an easy match for a simple lad from the country,” Johansson said with enjoyment.

“Definitely not,” said the GD, suddenly sounding rather reserved. “And now I’ve understood that she has problems.”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “Now she has problems. The whole thing is rather complicated and hard to understand, and for once we’re not the ones who’ve made it complicated.”

“It’s just complicated?” asked the GD.

“Yes,” Johansson confirmed. “It’s complicated.”

“Then I suggest you take it very slowly,” said the GD. “I have nothing against appearing ignorant in a one-on-one like this, as long as I can be spared more public shortcomings.”

“It concerns three connected problems. The first regards her involvement in the occupation of the West German embassy almost twenty-five years ago. The second concerns a number of strange turns in connection with our handling of that case, and those start when she was appointed undersecretary two years ago. The third concerns the murder of one of her acquaintances from the time before the West German embassy. And I suggest we wait with that part.”

“Why?” said the GD.

“We need to know a bit more,” said Johansson. “On the other hand we probably will fairly soon, so it won’t be a long wait.”

“The West German embassy,” said the GD drawlingly. “She can’t have been very old then?”

“Sixteen,” said Johansson. “She was young, radical, and involved, but exploited and kept in the dark by her boyfriend, who was almost twice her age.”

“In concrete terms,” said the GD, “what did she do and why did she do it?”

“She helped the Germans with somewhat simple practical matters. Nothing remarkable. Loaned out her father’s car, which her boyfriend, the now deceased Sten Welander, used for transport and reconnaissance missions. She didn’t have a driver’s license herself, and her father had moved abroad at that time and left the car behind so it was easily accessible… Yes… Then she bought food for the terrorists at some point. In addition the Germans stayed for a few days at a summer place that her mother’s family owned.”

“The Tischler family chateau out on Värmdö,” said the GD, who apparently was not completely ignorant.

“Yes,” said Johansson. “But the one who actually took care of that was probably her older cousin Theo.”

“And that was all,” asked the GD.

“Yes,” said Johansson. “That was the whole thing.”

“So why did she do it?” the GD asked curiously. “Did she know what kind of plans the Germans had?”

“No,” said Johansson. “She had no idea about that. She thought it was about helping some radical German students who were wanted at home in Germany to hide from the police. She hadn’t heard a word about any terrorists or any violent actions. It was her boyfriend Welander who got her to believe that.”

“Helped by a combination of youthful ignorance and radical involvement,” the GD added dryly.

“More or less,” said Johansson.

“And we are quite sure about this?” asked the GD. “Both what she did in purely practical terms and why she did it?”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “There’s not the slightest doubt on any of those points.”

“If that’s so,” said the GD while he nodded in the direction of his own ceiling light, “then in Stein’s case this concerns the protection of a criminal. Making a rough estimate, without having checked on this, it must be at least fifteen years since the statute of limitations ran out. Probably twenty years.”

“Something like that,” said Johansson. “Law is not my strong suit.”

“But it is mine,” said the GD, smiling. “Why did we pull the case out of our files two years ago?”

“For several reasons, according to my predecessor, Berg,” said Johansson. “The two who were actively involved, Welander and Eriksson, were both long dead. The statute of limitations had run its course in terms of Stein’s involvement and Tischler’s probably too. Then the truth commission was going to come in, and considering that the West German embassy was a very conspicuous event that is still interesting in terms of politics and the media-I can imagine for example that the German media would have a few ideas about the Swedish part of the drama-among other things there are relatives of the German victims who are still alive-I guess there was simply a desire for peace and quiet.”

“You don’t think there were any reasons other than the ones Berg mentioned?” asked the GD.

“Well,” said Johansson, “I can think of one.”

“Which is what?” asked the GD curiously.

“Eriksson worked for several years as a so-called external collaborator at what was then the security department at the National Police Board. Among other things he was collaborating at the time of the embassy occupation.”

“Oh dear,” said the GD. “That isn’t good.”

“Concern for one’s own ass is seldom particularly rational,” said Johansson, who knew what he was talking about from his own experience.

“Stein then,” asked the GD. “The background check on her when she was going to be made undersecretary dates from around the time when the case was cleaned out of the files. What is the connection there?”

“According to my predecessor, the fact that Stein was approved was primarily the result of a strictly legal assessment.”

“Of course,” said the GD, pursing his narrow lips slightly. “That sounds reasonable, but I have a very hard time believing that Berg would be unaware of the political risk in the event of a leak.”

“I think he judged the risk of a leak from his own department to be basically nonexistent, and besides he solved the problem by informing our common acquaintance the undersecretary-the prime minister’s own security adviser-about Stein’s involvement in the West German embassy.”

“So how did Berg describe it?” asked the GD.

“In factually correct and very conciliatory terms,” said Johansson.

“And considering that she was appointed, the government seems to have taken the same position,” the GD observed.

“Because the information about Stein’s involvement in the West German embassy was given orally by Berg to the undersecretary, I get the impression it also may have stayed with him,” Johansson clarified.

“Is this something you believe or something you know?” asked the GD.

“It’s something that occurred to me,” said Johansson.

“Interesting,” said the GD. “I was struck by the same thought myself.”

“As I’ve gathered from your description and that of others, Stein’s appointment as undersecretary can scarcely have been uncontroversial,” said Johansson.

“No,” said the GD. “Definitely not, and the general perception among those who consider themselves well informed about such issues was that the government wanted to give the military and defense establishment a tweak on the nose. Considering Helena Stein’s personal qualities it was not a bad tweak. She is a creditable opponent, to say the least, and her basic view of defense policy is simple enough to summarize.”

“How so?” asked Johansson.

“The four Ns,” said the GD. “Nonproliferation, neutrality, and no NATO.”

“She can’t be entirely alone in that,” Johansson objected, having entertained a similar viewpoint himself, despite the fact that he was a hunter and had his appearance against him.

“Among her predecessors in the position this has not exactly been the dominant view, however,” the GD said primly. “With Stein it is also the case that as a defense analyst she is far superior to both her sympathizers and her opponents. And it gets really sensitive when we come to the subject of her view of the defense industry and trade in war matériel.”

“How so?” asked Johansson.

“For one thing,” said the GD, “the basic view she and others have expressed is hardly compatible with the fact that we also export or import defense matériel to or from either the U.S., NATO, or other democracies in the West, not just those economically less interesting non-democracies we’ve already blacklisted.”

“Goodness gracious,” said Johansson.

“Yes,” the GD agreed. “At Saab and other similar places they can certainly keep a straight face. In monetary terms it comes to more than thirty billion kronor per year if you count both exports and imports and include the civilian element. You see, it’s not just about JAS planes, submarines, cannons, mines, explosives, and bomb sights. There’s a great deal besides that has economic importance, primarily for civilian production, such as trucks, ventilation systems, electronics, and the packaging of freeze-dried food, one of the most common articles in the military commercial context.”

“But that’s no joke,” said Johansson. “Appointing her undersecretary of defense must be a real blow.” Like being knocked down from behind with an iron bar, he thought.

“Helena Stein is more intelligent than that,” said the GD, who now appeared visibly amused. “She has always been careful to discuss these issues in principled, ideological terms-not least in terms of legal philosophy. She has raised ideas, brought up issues at a high level, pointed out moral, political, legal, and economic consequences of one position or another.”

“I’m sure that didn’t make them any less nervous,” Johansson objected.

“No,” said the GD. “They were completely terrified by the prospect of her appointment. But let’s return to the handling of the West German embassy. I understand that a few months ago certain information was returned to our files about the Swedish involvement in the West German embassy.”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “Reportedly it was because of tips from our American friends, and strangely enough the information specifically concerns Eriksson and Welander, both of whom are dead. On the other hand there was not a word about Tischler and Stein, who are both alive of course.”

“What was it that caused Berg to change his mind?” asked the GD.

“There were several reasons, according to him,” said Johansson. “That on closer consideration he started to doubt his own cleaning of the files-anyone who is dead can’t be affected personally. But mostly it was because he had been promised that more would be coming and he didn’t want to take the risk that significant future information would be left hanging in the air. And if you ask me personally, I think his illness was also a contributing factor.”

“That he might have lost his edge,” said the GD.

“Partly, but also that he had become far too cautious, that he simply didn’t dare turn it down,” said Johansson.

“But you think this is really about something else,” the GD observed.

“Yes,” said Johansson. “I don’t know if I’m starting to get paranoid, but I get the idea that they actually wanted to open a door so they could send us information about Stein. I have a hard time understanding that this would be about anyone other than her, considering the connection to the West German embassy.”

“So what did Berg think about that?” asked the GD.

“That I was wrong,” said Johansson. “The fundamental political prerequisites were now lacking, given that the Russians have retreated.”

“And what do you think about Berg’s view of the matter?” the GD persisted.

“That he’s wrong, and after hearing your description of Stein I’ve only been strengthened in that conviction,” said Johansson.

“But has anything else come in?” asked the GD. “About Stein, I mean, because considering her probable appointment, wouldn’t it be high time?”

“No,” said Johansson. “Nothing yet.” It has been as silent as the grave, he thought.

“And how do you interpret that?” asked the GD, who now appeared both interested and amused.

“Either I’ve got the whole thing turned around,” said Johansson, “or else they don’t know that she’s going to be appointed and they’ve simply missed the opportunity. Or else they do know about it but are still choosing to wait to turn the screw until she’s in her new position.”

“So which of those do you think it is?” asked the GD.

“Alternative number three,” said Johansson. “That they will let her be appointed-see to it that both she and those who appointed her get raised high enough that it would be a pure catastrophe for both her and the government if any harmful information about her past were to come out-and only then will they start to advance their demands about what she and the rest of us ought to do and not do.”

“They don’t sound like nice people, if you’re right,” the GD observed.

“There’s yet another complicating factor in that case,” said Johansson. “We’re talking of course about our American friend, the ultimate bulwark for the democracies of the Western world, a highly esteemed friend raised above all suspicions.”

“You’ve never met her,” the GD said suddenly.

“You mean Stein?” said Johansson.

“Yes,” said the GD.

“No,” said Johansson. “I’ve never met her.” Although I may have to soon, he thought.

“Maybe you ought to do that,” said the GD. “Take a discreet look at our object Helena Stein.”

“Yes, maybe,” said Johansson. A discreet look is never wrong, he thought.

“I’ll arrange it then,” said the GD, who had a hard time concealing his enjoyment. “A discreet look at Undersecretary Helena Stein when she visits the suspected robber in his own den.”

36 Thursday, April 6, 2000

On Thursday the sixth of April, Holt and Wiklander interviewed Undersecretary Helena Stein at the Ministry of Defense. Johansson’s secretary decided on the time and place with Stein’s secretary, and neither had come as a surprise to Johansson, Holt, or Wiklander.

The undersecretary had an extremely busy schedule, but since the secret police were asking, she nonetheless managed to squeeze them in for half an hour between six and six-thirty in the evening. Because the undersecretary was supposed to be at a reception later that night, she proposed that the police come to her and not the other way around. So the two chief inspectors went to the Ministry of Defense offices on Gustaf Adolf Square in Stockholm.

Helena Stein’s secretary conveyed them to the undersecretary’s own conference room, asked whether they wanted coffee or water, which they declined, then asked them to sit and wait. After a quarter of an hour Helena Stein strode into the room where they were sitting. She nodded and smiled, apologized for being late. Holt was completely convinced that Stein had no idea what they wanted to talk with her about.

At worst she thinks something has come up in connection with her background check, thought Holt. Something she’s prepared for, something she knows she can work her way out of. She’s attractive, trim, well dressed, self-confident, and obviously quite intelligent, thought Holt. She could see it in her eyes. Goddamnit, thought Holt.

After the introductory remarks into the tape recorder, a few words from “Interview leader Chief Inspector Anna Holt” to the effect that “Helena Lovisa Stein is being interviewed for informational purposes in connection with an ongoing security matter,” it was finally time to begin.

“We’re here because we want to talk with you about an old acquaintance of yours, one Kjell Göran Eriksson,” said Holt, trying to concentrate on Stein’s reaction.

“Kjell Eriksson,” said Stein. “Must be a million years since I saw him. You mean the Kjell Eriksson who was… well… that awful story from sometime in the late eighties? You want to talk with me about him? I don’t even remember what he looked like.”

You did it, thought Holt. That tenth of a second when your gaze faltered and then the words came tumbling out. You were trying desperately to keep him away from you, to get control over the situation in which you’ve suddenly landed. I know you remember Kjell Eriksson. If nothing else, after the West German embassy you must have spent hundreds of hours of your life thinking about Kjell Eriksson, what he was like, who you are. That can’t have been easy, she thought.

“We’ve reopened the case,” said Holt. “I’m prevented from going into the reasons why.”

“But why in the name of heaven are you asking me about him? I hardly knew him,” said Stein. “A cousin of mine, Theodor Tischler-I don’t know if you know who that is but he was a businessman-worked at a brokerage firm started by his father-he lives abroad now. He was the one who knew him. And… it wasn’t even really him, either, it was his best friend, Sten Welander. He was an academic to start with… worked as a reporter at Swedish Television. He’s dead too actually. Died of cancer five or six years ago.”

“But you have met Eriksson?” Holt asked.

“Yes, of course,” said Stein, clearly surprised by the question. “But that must have been more than twenty years ago. During my radical youth,” she said, smiling faintly. “I met hundreds of people during those years who were working for the same political goals-Sten and Theo and obviously Eriksson too. I think I even remember him being out with Theo at our country place one summer. I can’t have been very old… ten maybe… but I remember. Theo brought him out to the country.”

It’s that photograph you’re suddenly remembering, thought Holt, and you probably still hope that’s the only reason we’re here. And you’re probably thinking that now you’ll have to go on the offensive, she thought.

“You’ll really have to excuse me,” said Stein, “but I am somewhat surprised. Has someone alleged that Eriksson and I were old acquaintances, or what? In that case I can assure you it’s a lie.”

“No,” said Holt, shaking her head. “No one has alleged that. We’re just trying to talk with everyone who knew him.”

“Yes, but that’s just what I’m trying to say,” said Stein, with controlled heat in her voice now. “I didn’t really know Eriksson. I only met him a few times when I was young. I can’t have been older than fifteen or sixteen. Eriksson must have been twice as old as I was then-Sten and Theo’s age-and they were the ones he socialized with.”

Considering that all Eriksson is supposed to have done was get murdered, it’s pretty strange you’re spending so much energy talking about how little you knew him, thought Holt.

“So Eriksson was Sten Welander’s and Theodor Tischler’s acquaintance,” said Holt, who had decided to let Stein think the worst was over.

“Yes,” said Stein, nodding in confirmation. “I know they still saw him up until the time he died. I sometimes talk with Theo and I’m certain he mentioned that to me. We talked about that horrible thing that happened to him, of course. It would be strange otherwise,” said Stein.

Just as strange as that you’re avoiding the word “murdered” despite having worked as an attorney for almost twenty years, thought Holt.

“If you could really make an effort to remember,” Holt continued, “when was the last time you saw Eriksson?”

“As I said,” said Stein, “it must have been twenty-five, thirty years ago. Sometime in the mid-seventies.”

“Well,” said Holt, smiling amiably, “considering we’ve already talked with people who associated with him at the time he was murdered-it was the thirtieth of November 1989, by the way-it seems you’re not the right person to ask.”

“No, I’m really not,” said Stein. “Even at that time it must have been fifteen years since I’d seen him last.”

“Yeah,” said Holt, smiling again. “In that case, my colleague and I apologize for taking up your time.”

“That was all?” asked Stein, suddenly having a hard time concealing her surprise.

“Yes,” said Holt. And now you’re trying desperately to figure out if you said anything wrong, she thought.

“Let me think,” said Stein suddenly. “There is something floating around in the back of my mind.”

“Yes?” said Holt expectantly.

“It suddenly occurs to me there was another time later on that my cousin and I ran into him,” said Stein hesitantly.

“Uh-huh,” said Holt amiably. So this is suddenly occurring to you, she thought, exchanging a glance with Wiklander, who seemed completely oblivious.

“But when was it?” Stein shook her head as though really exerting herself to remember.

“Seventies, eighties?” Holt suggested.

“Definitely the eighties… in the late eighties even, because I remember I was working at the law firm. Theo had invited me to dinner. I had helped him with some legal matter… I don’t remember what. Then he called and invited me to dinner. It was some Italian restaurant-I think it was in Östermalm.”

How close to the truth are you willing to go? wondered Holt.

“Sometime in the late eighties your cousin Theo Tischler invites you to dinner, at an Italian restaurant in Östermalm-and you run into your cousin’s old friend Kjell Eriksson,” Holt summarized. Now’s your chance, she thought.

“Did I say that?” Stein said suddenly. “No, it was like this, we were going to walk home from the restaurant or else take a taxi into town and then continue on foot-Theo likes to party-but when we were walking-I think it was on Karlavägen-Theo pointed out one of the buildings we were going past and said that Kjell lived there-yes, Kjell Eriksson. Then he suggested we ring his doorbell and let him offer us a drink. I guess I wasn’t very amused, but that’s how it was,” said Stein. “Strange I didn’t think of that,” she said, shaking her head.

Undeniably, thought Holt, who just nodded and smiled.

“You said you and your cousin went to Eriksson’s place,” Holt clarified.

“Yes,” said Stein. “We dropped in and I think he offered us wine or something… I think I drank wine, and not that I remember but I’m guessing Theo had whiskey because he always does.” Stein smiled, shaking her head as if the difficulty of recalling her cousin’s alcohol habits was her biggest problem right now.

“How long were you at Eriksson’s?” asked Holt.

“We just dropped in, half an hour, forty-five minutes maybe… at the most,” said Stein.

“You don’t remember more precisely when it was-you said late eighties,” Holt clarified.

“No,” said Stein, suddenly sounding very sure. “Any more precisely than that I don’t remember.”

“Autumn, winter, spring, summer?” Holt suggested.

“Not summer,” said Stein, shaking her head. “Autumn or winter, but that’s just a guess. I think it was winter.”

Sufficiently close, sufficiently far away, thought Holt.

“Of course you could always ask Theo,” Stein suggested. “I’m pretty sure he makes notes of dinners and things like that in his datebook, and he didn’t go out to dinner with me very often. Talk with Theo; maybe he can help you. I’m pretty sure he saves his calendars too… I remember he told me that for him they also functioned as diaries.”

Why is that so important now, wondered Holt. Because if what you’re saying is true, it’s totally uninteresting to us.

“You wouldn’t happen to have his phone number,” asked Holt. Not on you in any event, she thought.

“Not on me,” said Stein. “I have it at home of course. If you want I can arrange for you to get it tomorrow. This evening unfortunately I won’t have time,” she added, looking at her watch to be on the safe side. “I promised to go to a reception in a little while.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Holt, shaking her head. “It’s Eriksson we’re interested in. We thank you for your help and we truly apologize for having bothered you unnecessarily.”

“It’s no problem,” said Stein, smiling. “I was just a little surprised, as I’m sure you understand.”

Scared to death is what you are, thought Holt. Not surprised.

“She is scared,” said Wiklander as they were sitting in the car en route to the office.

“Yep, but she managed,” said Holt.

“She seems to have,” said Wiklander. “If we don’t come up with anything better, of course.”

In the evening Lars Martin Johansson met Undersecretary Helena Stein. True, they didn’t talk with each other or even exchange a glance, but he had an opportunity to observe her at a distance, and for him that was good enough. Helena Stein was standing under the crystal chandelier in the middle of a large room, surrounded by men her own age or older. Well-dressed, successful men, conspicuously many of whom were glistening like roosters in their tailored suits, and unlike him they never seemed to need to pull down the cuffs on their shirts or be content with buttoning only the bottom button of their jacket.

Helena Stein in black dress, black jacket with velvet trim, and multi-stranded pearl necklace, smiling and listening, happy but also serious and very alert. Courted the whole time by the men who came and went. He hadn’t seen the slightest trace of the deep ideological battles over defense policy that his boss had told him about.

Noblesse oblige, thought Johansson. He’d read that in a book, long after he’d left the worn-down front seat he’d shared with his best friend during his time with the Stockholm Police Department’s central detective squad. And if this was what it was like to make your way up in life, he had come a long way, yet he still remained off to one side, watching.

This particular evening he had made his way to the door near the serving area. Basically the only people who had anything to say to him were the waitstaff constantly hurrying past with routine apologies despite the fact that he was the one in the way. One of the ambassador’s many bodyguards gave him a discreet, collegial nod and a faint smile of silent mutual understanding, emanating from the fact that he knew who Johansson was and that he himself was obvious enough in his dark suit, broad shoulders, earpiece, and large hands clasped in the ready position on a level with his crotch.

The only person Johansson really talked with during the evening was his boss, the general director, who came up to him and asked if he was having a nice time. He was having a nice time himself and apologized that he hadn’t thought about arranging an invitation for Johansson earlier. But because here he was now anyway, his boss realized that everything had worked out for the best.

“It’s mostly us Swedes who were invited here tonight. It’s probably meant as a networking opportunity for us and them. And the fact that we’re in the ambassador’s home is another way for them to send a positive signal,” the GD explained.

Exactly, thought Johansson, who would never have dreamed of letting the hoi polloi into his home on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan and completely understood why the American ambassador in Stockholm obviously felt the same way he did.

“Exactly,” said Johansson. The crowd was almost strictly old men, military, executives, and diplomats. What the hell could he say about that? He couldn’t very well say that the whole affair looked just like the political gatherings in the Arab world he saw on CNN. Apart from the differences in clothing, of course, which were strictly a reflection of climate. But he couldn’t very well say that either, even if it was obvious to an old detective like himself.

“Do you want to talk with her?” asked the GD, nodding discreetly toward Helena Stein in the middle of the room.

“No,” said Johansson, smiling. “I came here mostly just to look at her. But if you speak to the ambassador you can say hello and thank him for the invitation. I hope I haven’t caused any practical problems for him and his wife?”

“Not in the slightest,” said the GD. “The ambassador and I are actually old friends. It wasn’t any problem at all.”

A small world, thought Johansson, and after having observed it for another hour he went home to Pia.

“Did you have a nice time?” Pia asked, and as usual her eyes looked like a squirrel’s as soon as she had asked the question.

“So-so,” said Johansson. “Mostly just a lot of strange people.”

37 Friday, April 7, 2000

“I want you to question Bäckström,” said Johansson when he ran into Wiklander in the corridor at work early Friday morning. “I have to run down to Rosenbad for the usual weekly presentation to the government.”

“Bäckström,” said Wiklander, who had a hard time concealing his surprise. “Boss, do you mean-”

“Exactly,” said Johansson, smiling. “It’d be nice to hear what ideas he has about the murder of Eriksson-it was his investigation, after all-so I have what he thinks about it on paper.”

“But what if he wants to know… why we want to know,” said Wiklander hesitantly.

“Say we’ve uncovered a gigantic homosexual conspiracy,” said Johansson. “Or whatever else he might swallow whole. Just don’t offer him any aquavit.”

“I think I get it,” said Wiklander.

So Wiklander questioned Bäckström about the Eriksson case, and what Bäckström said exceeded Johansson’s wildest expectations. Bäckström was his usual self. The only thing that had really changed was that a few months earlier he had left the homicide squad in Stockholm and was now working as a chief inspector at the National Bureau of Investigation’s homicide commission.

“You want to know what I think about the Eriksson case,” said Bäckström, nodding heavily.

“Yes. Perhaps you’re wondering why,” said Wiklander.

“Actually I think I’ve already figured it out,” said Bäckström, nodding even more heavily. “You only have to turn on the TV to realize what’s been going on for a long time now. A person doesn’t need to be working for you to understand.”

So you don’t need to do that, thought Wiklander.

“Queers, queers, queers,” said Bäckström and sighed. “They’ve taken over the whole thing.”

Well, maybe not the late-night cable broadcasts, thought Wiklander, who never watched TV himself but had heard a few things in the break room.

“Eriksson,” he reminded him. “What do you think about it?”

“Typical homosexual murder,” said Bäckström, nodding. “Besides, it was part of a whole series of homo murders-you might not remember them. Some crazy fairy was running around with a big fucking knife hacking down other sausage riders who worked at various porno dives. It was a real samurai sword actually. In total there were five butt princes cut down if I’m not mistaken, and Eriksson was the fourth.”

“None of them seem to have been solved, if I’ve understood the matter correctly,” said Wiklander carefully.

“I should damn well think not,” said Bäckström. “I was trying to convince the bosses to go further, but it was like banging your head against the wall. Although I haven’t let it go. There are certain things I have going now,” he added cryptically.

“Yes,” said Wiklander, nodding in agreement, “I know what you mean.” Bullshit, he thought.

“You see, they aren’t afraid of using brute force,” said Bäckström with emphasis. “They don’t just appear on TV acting like queens. It’s nice to hear that at least someone in this building finally gets what’s going on.”

“Yes,” said Wiklander in agreement. “If you’re ready, then, I thought I’d turn on the tape recorder so we can get a few questions and answers down in print.”

“Always ready,” said Bäckström, nodding confidently.

What will Johansson do with this? thought Wiklander an hour later after Bäckström had left and he was sitting listening to the tape of the interview. Maybe he’ll try to get him admitted to the nuthouse, thought Wiklander hopefully, because he was an optimistic soul. That’s probably it, he thought. Johansson must have blown his stack when he saw what Bäckström had come up with in the Eriksson investigation, and now he’s decided to do something about it, Wiklander surmised.

Johansson had no inkling of Wiklander’s speculations regarding his intentions vis-à-vis colleague Bäckström. He was sitting among fine folk down in Rosenbad at the presentation SePo held every week for representatives of the Ministry of Justice and the government. In Berg’s time it had almost always been Berg himself who represented the secret police, but nowadays the top-level bosses at SePo took turns, and Johansson, who was no great friend of meetings, would usually be there at most a couple of times each month.

The minister of justice was usually the chair, and he always had his director general for legal affairs with him to keep the minutes, which were classified. Sometimes the prime minister’s own security adviser would show up, as he did on this occasion. Not only Johansson but others as well immediately noticed the security adviser’s attendance and were intrigued because none of the issues scheduled at the meeting seemed particularly exciting. Pure routine, no surprises. Mostly status reports on the standard assortment of long-term projects.

Could it be me he wants to talk with? Johansson wondered.

Johansson and the undersecretary had met for the first time fifteen years ago, concerning various papers Johansson had acquired but wanted to relieve himself of as quickly as possible. At that time the undersecretary was the special adviser at the prime minister’s disposal, and he was involved with issues affecting national security including among other things the activities of the secret police.

When his boss was assassinated the undersecretary left Rosenbad. Where he ended up was somewhat unclear-although among those who considered themselves well informed and close to power there was wild speculation. In any event he could not have been sent out into the real cold, because he had come back again quickly and nowadays he was on his third prime minister and things had gone better and better for him. Prime minister number two had retired with a pension and in the best of health, and number three, the undersecretary’s current boss, positively glowed with vitality. This special adviser had the same duties he had always had, with a somewhat more elegant title than before and with a suitably harmless nametag he could show to anyone who wondered what he was really up to.

“Research and future planning on behalf of the government offices,” he would answer on those few occasions when anyone had the chance to ask. “Mostly future planning actually,” he would add, if the person who wondered didn’t give up.

Apparently it was Johansson he wanted to meet, because he scarcely opened his mouth during the meeting for anything but the usual sarcasm, but as soon as it was over he took Johansson aside and requested a conversation in private.

“How’s it going with Stein?” asked the undersecretary. “No problems, I hope?”

“What do you mean?” asked Johansson, looking roughly like his older brother (who dealt in property and cars) did when he preferred not to answer.

“I was thinking about her youthful sin in connection with the West German embassy,” the undersecretary explained.

“Oh yes, that,” said Johansson. “I thought you and Berg had cleared that up two years ago.”

“Yes,” said the undersecretary. “That’s why I’m asking.”

“I completely share Berg’s opinion on that point, and as you know an investigation was done of the matter,” Johansson said. “Quite apart from the fact that she was only a child when it happened, she was almost a victim, exploited by her old fiancé, or whatever you want to call him, who was twice her age.”

“We human beings live different lives,” the undersecretary declared philosophically. “We live one life at one time and another life at another.”

“Not everyone,” said Johansson, thinking of his old parents and all the other relatives from his home district in northern Sweden. They’ve been living the same life the whole time, he thought with feeling.

“I understand what you mean,” said the undersecretary, who was being almost inexplicably sensible. “The kind of person I was thinking of, to be a little more precise, was rather the intellectual, financially independent, urban type… Helena Stein, for example.”

Or you, thought Johansson.

“Sure,” Johansson grunted. “My understanding is that in those circles you can manage a number of different lives.” Because such people seem to have nothing better to do, he thought.

“While the rest of us toil and moil,” sighed the undersecretary. “Take our dear German foreign minister, for example. I’ve met him myself on a number of occasions. He seems completely normal, even pleasant, though that environmental bullshit leaves me cold-and then one day an old picture shows up from some political demonstration during his youth. He’s kicking a policeman who’s lying on the street, and it isn’t at all clear who the real villain is.”

The way you talk, thought Johansson.

“Yes, I’ve seen that too,” said Johansson, nodding curtly. “As far as Stein is concerned, I’ve simply told my coworkers to be extra careful. Neither you nor we and least of all she will be well served if there’s any carelessness in that respect. And you know as well as I do that it takes a hell of a lot of time to do something properly. I’m estimating you’ll get a report in time next week.”

“Sounds good,” said the undersecretary, appearing to be almost satisfied as he leaned back among all the pillows on the large couch. “One other thing, by the way…”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson.

“It would be nice if I had the pleasure of seeing you over a bite of food, when the report does come in,” said the undersecretary. “In my own humble abode, with the resources the house can offer.”

“I’ve heard a good deal about them,” said Johansson, smiling.

“Nothing bad I hope,” said the undersecretary.

“The little I’ve heard sounded good enough,” said Johansson.

“Well all right then,” said the undersecretary. “I’ll ask my secretary to call your secretary and see if they can find a time that suits us both.”

I wonder what he really wants? thought Johansson sitting in the car on the way back to work. It’s all the same anyway, he thought. Because if it’s important enough it will come out sooner or later. And if not, you only risk becoming like your unfortunate predecessor.

“How’d it go with that fuckup Bäckström?” Johansson asked as soon as he stepped into his department’s corridor and caught sight of Wiklander.

“Above all expectations,” said Wiklander. “By the way, did you know he has a position as chief inspector at the crime bureau?”

“But that’s just excellent,” said Johansson, who knew the score when it came to things like that, and had already made note of his impending promotion sometime before Bäckström’s appointment. “With those amazing testimonials he had this can’t have been completely unexpected, and you have to admit there’s something reassuring about a consistent development,” he said.

“I’ve told the others to reserve the afternoon,” said Wiklander, who was not really clear what Johansson meant and in any case did not intend to go deeper into the subject.

“Good,” said Johansson. “Then I’ll see you after lunch.”

The entire afternoon was spent on the meeting with the investigation team. First, Anna Holt reported on where they were in her usual efficient manner.

The attempts to chart the dealings among Stein, Tischler, and Eriksson by means of telephone and financial transactions had not produced any interesting results beyond what was already in the old murder investigation, which was meager enough. On the other hand, a number of conversations between Stein and her cousin Tischler had been logged, which indicated that they’d kept in constant touch with each other. For a rather long time Stein had also had a deposit account at Tischler’s banking firm, but she had closed it when her cousin formally left the family firm several years ago.

“So my proposal is that we discontinue that aspect,” said Holt.

“That’s okay with me,” Johansson agreed. These lines of inquiry were fucking expensive too, he thought. Telia and the other operators start robbing you blind as soon as you want any information from them.

After that Holt touched on Stein’s fingerprints and the forensic analysis of the traces on the lost hand towel. Stein had offered an explanation for how the prints were left in Eriksson’s apartment, and it could not be immediately dismissed, even if Holt and Wiklander were firmly convinced that she had been lying to their faces. Same with the traces of vomit and the lipstick on the hand towel. In both cases they pointed to Stein, but at the same time they didn’t rule out alternative explanations strongly enough to have legal significance.

“And as far as our witness the major is concerned, he can’t point out Stein from among a group of pictures,” Holt stated.

“Do you think there’s any point in questioning Tischler?” asked Johansson, although he already knew the answer.

“Only if we want him to confirm Stein’s version and you want to tip them off that she’s the one we’re interested in,” said Holt.

“And that’s all we have,” Johansson summarized.

“Yup,” said Holt, “and unfortunately it’s not very likely we’ve missed anything either. Not this time,” she added, smiling faintly.

“Okay then,” said Johansson, who sounded unexpectedly cheerful. “Now I want all of you to close your eyes…”

The four in the room exchanged surprised glances but did as he said, even if Martinez looked like she was trying to peek.

“Everyone who is completely convinced that Helena Stein stabbed Kjell Göran Eriksson to death, raise your hand,” said Johansson. After a pause of a few seconds he said, “You can open your eyes now.”

There were five raised hands including his own, and a unified investigation.

“Please put down your hands,” said Johansson, smiling. “The day before yesterday I took the opportunity to go through the tech report and the autopsy report, as well as a few other goodies that Anna alerted me to,” said Johansson, nodding at Holt, “so I’m pretty clear now on how the whole thing went down. If any of you are interested, I can tell you about it,” said Johansson.

“I am,” said Holt before any of the others managed to say the same thing. We’re already sitting on pins and needles, she thought. You don’t need to show off.

“Okay then,” said Johansson. “Then I’ll tell you what happened when Helena Stein stabbed Kjell Göran Eriksson to death.”

And he did, with the help of his pictures, in the same way as he had when he talked through the case with his best friend, Bo Jarnebring. It took about half an hour, and whether what he said was true or false-for some of it he couldn’t have known without having been there, and in any case he couldn’t have known what was going on in the heads of Stein or Eriksson-regardless of that he had mesmerized his audience. When he was finally silent they too sat silently.

Now I understand what Jarnebring and everyone else here was talking about, thought Holt, who had finally experienced the true Lars Martin Johansson. Although naturally she didn’t say that.

“I’m in complete agreement,” said Holt. “That must have been what happened.” At least in the essentials, she thought.

“And that woman is going to get off… It’s just too much,” said Martinez with poorly controlled anger and her police instincts still intact.

“Yes,” said Wiklander with a heat he seldom showed and the ambivalence that naturally ensues when reality is no longer black or white. “This is an extraordinarily gloomy story.”

“It’s probably the sorriest story I’ve heard,” said Mattei, who looked like she might start crying.

And for some reason it was to her that Johansson turned when he began to speak again.

“Yes, of course it is,” said Johansson. “Sometimes it’s a real shame about us humans. And this time it’s a real shame about Helena Stein. Speaking of her,” Johansson continued, smiling at Mattei, “I understand that you, Lisa, have produced quite a bit about Stein. It would be interesting if you’d give us a summary.” But not a novel, thought Johansson, for he tried to avoid that sort of thing.

“I could write a whole novel about Helena Stein actually, but for now I’ll concentrate on two moments in her life: the mid-seventies when the occupation of the West German embassy took place, and the late eighties, when Kjell Göran Eriksson was murdered.”

Sounds good, thought Johansson, but be very careful not to put it in book form and publish it or I will personally see to it that you end up in the slammer.

“Looks like you’ve uncovered a lot of information about her,” said Johansson.

“There’s plenty if you know where to look,” said Mattei, who had a hard time concealing her enthusiasm. “Not least on her political involvement, despite the fact that she seems to have made an effort to keep a low public profile the whole time. For example, I have hundreds of pictures of her published in various books and newspapers, which I’ve gathered from open sources. The first one is a book cover that came out in 1975, but the book isn’t at all about her. She’s not even mentioned by name, which in itself isn’t so strange considering her age. The book is called The New Left and was published in 1975 by Fischer & Co., and there’s Helena Stein on the cover. It’s a news photo the publisher used from a demonstration outside the American embassy in 1973, and Stein is only fifteen years old at the time. She’s standing in front of the barricades waving a placard, dressed in jeans and one of those padded jackets girls wore back then. The last photo I have is the official portrait taken of her when she was appointed undersecretary a few years ago. There she’s dressed in a graphite-colored dress with a dark blue blouse and black pumps. She is extremely attractive. So there are twenty-five years between the first and the last picture, and it gets really amazing when you look at all the pictures of her in chronological order-I’ve put them on a separate CD-ROM in case you want to do that yourselves,” said Mattei with enthusiasm blossoming on her pale cheeks.

“Do you have any more like that?” said Johansson, who himself was passionate about this kind of research. During his most active period as a police officer he used to devote hours to going through photo albums, home videos, and diaries he’d acquired from both crime victims and thugs.

“I have a whole CD filled with film clips of her too. There are news reports and interviews that I downloaded from our various TV channels. Then I have a third disk with the written material and my summary of her biography.”

The weekend is saved, thought Johansson, who was already mentally rubbing his hands.

“The mid-seventies and late eighties,” he reminded her. “What were things like for her then?”

In the fall of 1975 Helena Stein turned seventeen. Just over six months later she would graduate from the French School, which was one year earlier than normal because when she was little she had been an unusually precocious child and had started school a year before her classmates. But as a teenager she seemed completely normal and displayed a sampling of the usual problems of puberty and conflicts with her parents and teachers.

Her father was a pediatrician with his own private practice; her mother was an art historian and worked for the Nordic Museum. Helena had grown up in Östermalm and the French School was the only school she attended. She was an only child, and when she was seven her parents divorced and had other children with their new partners. Gradually she acquired four half siblings. At the time of the divorce Helena chose to remain at home with her father.

In the fall of 1974 her father was appointed as an expert at UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. He temporarily turned his practice over to a colleague, took his new wife and Helena’s two younger half-siblings and moved to New York where they remained for over a year. Helena remained at home in the apartment on Riddargatan, and the contact she had with her mother seemed not to have intensified as a result of her father’s absence. Helena seems to have taken care of herself.

That same autumn she started a relationship with her cousin Theo Tischler’s best friend, Sten Welander. Helena had just turned sixteen; Welander was twenty-seven, the father of two and still married to his first wife. When he finally divorced her in the fall of 1975, he had also broken up with Helena Stein.

Helena Stein seemed to have devoted most of her time during these years to political activism, which led to recurring conflicts with her mother and some of her teachers.

As a young radical Helena initially hopped among various minor leftwing groups until she finally settled on the Swedish Communist Party. Helena Stein was a young Communist and no one in her bourgeois milieu was particularly happy about that, but it was hoped that this phase would soon pass, and that by and by it would be seen as a youthful aberration in the spirit of the time.

In addition she was involved in a number of other radical groups and societies, the Swedish NLF movement of course but also KRUM, which worked for humane treatment of criminals.

“That’s the recurring theme in her life,” Mattei summarized, “her strong political involvement, always to the left.”

“Yeah,” said Johansson with a drawl. “Judging by her upbringing, she sounds like a typical young radical from the happy seventies.”

“No,” said Mattei, shaking her head. “There you’re wrong, Boss. That’s actually a prejudice.”

“I see,” said Johansson, not looking as though he was particularly offended. “How so?”

“It wasn’t the case that the young left of the time was dominated by a few upper-class kids. Those involved were a rather representative selection of the populace,” said Mattei.

“So Stein was an exception,” said Johansson.

“Yes. Her background was unusual within the young left,” said Mattei.

“Her involvement then,” said Johansson, “how genuine was it?” Given her background, thought Johansson.

“I’m completely convinced that her political involvement was genuine,” said Mattei. “Otherwise she never would have thrown herself into it the way she did.”

“You mean the West German embassy,” said Johansson. “Don’t you think that was mostly a desire for adventure? Exciting and romantic, or so she believed. Not at all like what it turned out to be.”

“It’s possible that was part of it,” said Mattei, “but there were other things that might not have been so pleasant for her.”

“Such as?” asked Johansson.

“If I’ve gotten this right, she was pretty badly bullied during her whole time at high school, and the first year she studied law at Uppsala a couple of her male classmates gave her a good beating after a party at the Stockholm student organization,” Mattei said in a serious tone. “According to the police report it was a political discussion that went downhill. If you’re interested in counting her bruises, I’ve placed a copy of the medical examination from Academic Hospital in her background material,” Mattei said.

You’re a lot pluckier than you look, thought Johansson.

“What bastards,” he said. “But after that, where was she in 1989 at the time that she helped Eriksson take down the flag?”

“She was a member of the Social Democratic Party. She became a member as early as 1977, and she still is, as you know. She’s also a member of their women’s caucus and their attorneys group. Belongs to the left wing of the party. Despite her low profile, she is viewed as a very big name.”

“That’s what you see,” said Johansson contentedly, because even he suffered from the unfortunately common weakness of gladly judging others by comparison with himself.

“Excuse me, Boss,” said Mattei amiably. “See what?”

“You see a person who has moved to the right,” said Johansson.

“I guess everyone does when they get older. There are lots of academic dissertations in which that political shift has been analyzed.”

“Nice to hear,” said Johansson. Nice to hear that people are normal, he thought.

“She hasn’t been on the gravy train since she became a Social Democrat in any event,” said Mattei.

“She hasn’t,” said Johansson. Has she had any more beatings, he wondered, but he couldn’t ask that of course. That would be childish.

“She has worked very actively in politics and has a number of responsibilities besides her job as undersecretary,” Mattei continued. “She even served in parliament for a short time in the early nineties, substituting for someone who was sick.”

“But in November 1989 she was working as an attorney?” Johansson asked.

“She got her law degree at Uppsala in 1979, did her internship at the district court, and practiced at a law firm up until 1985, when she became an attorney. She quit in 1991, and since then she has worked more or less full-time in politics and in the government offices since the Social Democrats came back to power in 1994. She’s actually somewhat unusual for a Social Democrat,” said Mattei.

“In what regard?” Johansson asked.

“Well, partly because of her background,” said Mattei. “I guess it’s just like you say, Boss. Helena Stein is an upper-middle-class girl-and I’m sure she’s had to hear plenty about that too. But there are other things.”

“Such as?” said Johansson.

“That she’s viewed as an extraordinarily capable attorney, that she speaks several languages fluently, that it seems to be extremely difficult to find anyone who has worked with her who has anything but good to say about her-”

“Is she married? Does she have children?” Johansson interrupted.

“She was married to a classmate for a few years when she was studying in Uppsala and served at the district court. They divorced in 1981. She has no children. She’s had a few relationships of varying duration over the years, but since she was appointed as undersecretary she seems to have lived alone.”

“Are you quite sure of that?” Johansson asked, and for some reason he was smiling broadly.

“Yes,” said Mattei. “In recent years she has lived alone.”

“Interesting,” said Johansson. “I look forward to going through everything you have compiled once I have some peace and quiet. Is there anything else in particular you think I should look at?”

“That she was appointed as undersecretary in the Ministry of Defense is undeniably interesting,” said Mattei.

“What do you mean?” asked Johansson.

“She’s had a number of opinions over the years about both the military in general and our export of war matériel in particular,” said Mattei. “Not least when she was working in foreign trade. I don’t think the military and the defense lobbyists were particularly happy about her appointment.”

“You don’t say,” said Johansson, suddenly looking as if he was thinking deeply. “A new Maj Britt Theorin perhaps?”

“In an ideological sense I believe that describes her rather well,” said Mattei, “but what her opponents are probably most afraid of is her capacity as an attorney. She seems to be enormously sharp.”

“But nonetheless she becomes undersecretary in the Ministry of Defense,” said Johansson.

“Exactly,” said Mattei, “and the only reasonable interpretation is that the government, or the person or persons in the government who decide this sort of thing, wanted to give the military establishment a tweak on the nose.”

“You don’t say,” said Johansson. I understand what you mean, he thought.

When the meeting was finished, after the usual questions and the usual empty chatter, Johansson wished everyone a pleasant weekend and thanked them for a job well done.

“Go rest up properly, and we’ll meet on Monday to try to make some kind of decision about what we should do,” said Johansson, looking both friendly and bosslike.

Then he took Holt to one side and asked her to compile the essentials and make sure the prosecutor got it all as quickly as possible, no later than the following day.

“Then you can celebrate the weekend too,” said Johansson. “By the way, don’t you have a little boy?”

“Not so little,” said Holt, shrugging her shoulders. “He’s turning seventeen soon.”

“And I’m sure he hates me,” said Johansson, “because I’ve taken his mom away from him.”

“I don’t think so,” said Holt. “If he knew why I haven’t been at home lately you’d probably be his hero.”

“You don’t say,” said Johansson, who just happened to think that it was high time to call his own boy, despite the fact that nowadays the good-for-nothing had a fiancée and a child on the way. “But you must have some guy you have to see,” Johansson continued, having decided to engage in a little personnel care and cultivate his human relations. Since he didn’t have anything better to do.

“No,” said Holt, smiling weakly. “Just like Helena Stein, I’ve been living alone for a while.”

“Go out and get someone then,” said Johansson unsentimentally. “That shouldn’t be so damned hard.”

That evening Bo Jarnebring and his wife had come over to Johansson’s place for dinner. It had been just as pleasant as always, and when their guests had gone his wife had fallen asleep almost immediately with her head on his right arm and his left arm around her body.

Wonder how it’s going for Holt, thought Johansson. Did she sneak out to the pub and hook up with a guy? And then he too had fallen asleep.

38 Monday, April 10, 2000

Johansson devoted the weekend to various activities. Part of the time he spent with his wife. He also went through Mattei’s comprehensive material on undersecretary Helena Stein, and when he was done he was in complete agreement with Mattei. If she ever failed to write a novel she couldn’t blame lack of research material at any rate.

On the subject of the imagination, thought Johansson, it’s probably only when that takes over that even a reasonably good story takes off and the people in it really come to life. What was true and what was false was actually a rather overvalued distinction. Wasn’t it the case that the really great truths, the eternal truths, could only be given life and substance by means of the human imagination?

Johansson felt so uplifted by these and similar musings that he decided to reward himself with yet another glass of red wine before going to bed. That evening his wife had gone to see her best girlfriend, and as she was leaving she’d let him know it would probably be a late night and he didn’t need to sit up waiting for her.

On Monday morning Johansson was still in a good mood, which was excellent because he would be meeting with his department’s chief prosecutor first thing, and he would need all the strength he could summon.

“What do you think?” said Johansson, nodding at the chief prosecutor, who was already squirming in his chair on the other side of Johansson’s large desk.

“There are undeniably a number of unpleasant coincidences,” said the chief prosecutor, who did not appear particularly cheerful.

“There sure are,” said Johansson heartily. As so often happens when against your better judgment you try to make the best of chance, he thought.

“There is no way this constitutes reasonable grounds for suspicion,” said the chief prosecutor deprecatingly, holding up both palms. “Far from it, far from it. I’ve tried to do an ordinary, traditional sifting of evidence, and when I consider the various aspects-both separately and combined-the only reasonable conclusion is that they’re insufficient… clearly insufficient.”

“That’s more or less the same conclusion we’ve drawn,” Johansson agreed.

“That’s probably the only reasonable conclusion you can come to,” said the prosecutor, “and we can’t disregard the fact that there are credible alternative explanations for what might have happened when Eriksson was eliminated. In which there is not the slightest room for any involvement on Stein’s part, I might add.”

“So what are you thinking?” asked Johansson innocently, despite the fact that he had already figured out what the response would be.

“Well,” said the chief prosecutor, “I’m thinking for example of the interview with Chief Inspector Bäckström. He does have a completely different view of the matter, and he was after all responsible for the original investigation.”

“He certainly was,” said Johansson.

“Bäckström is a very experienced, skilled police officer,” said the prosecutor. “One of the real old owls,” he said, nodding with more emphasis than even Johansson would have expected of him.

“A real old owl,” said Johansson heartily. A really thirsty old owl, he thought. “That homosexual lead is definitely promising,” he continued. Assuming that you’re really stupid, and you definitely are, he thought.

“What do you think about a dismissed with prejudice as far as Stein is concerned,” the chief prosecutor said carefully.

“A strong dismissal,” Johansson emphasized.

“And that the investigation your people have done-very meritorious, I want to emphasize-obviously stays up here with us,” the prosecutor decided, already seeming considerably perkier.

“Yes, of course,” said Johansson. “Anything else would be purely defamatory. When do you think you can have the papers ready?” he asked. I’ll talk with my people, he thought.

“When do you want them?” the chief prosecutor.

“Preferably now,” said Johansson. And if you even think about chickening out at the last minute, I’ll kill you with my own bare hands, he thought.

“How about this afternoon?” the prosecutor asked carefully. “I need a few hours to refine some of the wording, but you’ll get a decision this afternoon.”

“This afternoon will be fine,” said Johansson. Refine away, he thought.

“Unfortunately,” said Johansson an hour later as he was sitting with his investigation team, “we got the cold shoulder from the prosecutor. The poor guy was scared to death.”

“Such is life,” said Wiklander philosophically. And I don’t intend to lie awake at night on Eriksson’s account, he thought.

“Yes, it doesn’t seem like Stockholm will straighten out this case,” said Holt. Despite the fact that Bäckström apparently quit, she thought.

“Damn it all,” said Martinez. Fucking cowards, she thought. If this hadn’t been about someone like Stein then the colleagues down in Stockholm probably would have pounded the shit out of her, she thought.

“I think it sounds like the right decision,” said Mattei. Because regardless of what Johansson said about the case last Friday, it needn’t be the case that Stein killed Eriksson. In any event it had not been established beyond a reasonable doubt, she thought.

“Okay then,” said Johansson, nodding. “By the way, on a completely different matter, I want you to close your eyes,” he said, smiling. “Then I want everyone to raise your hand if you think we’ve done all that can be asked of us. Now you can look,” said Johansson.

Three hands out of four, he thought, but because he himself was holding up both of his it was all the same.

“I’m sure you’ll get another chance, Martinez,” said Johansson, nodding. “Thanks for a good job by the way, and that applies to all of you,” he said. And now only the hard part remains, he thought.

After lunch Johansson met two of his colleagues from counterespionage, who gave him a presentation on Michael Liska, born in Pest, Hungary, in 1940 and an American citizen since 1962.

“Allowing for the fact that we don’t have too much on our American friends-for obvious reasons, as you surely understand,” said the police superintendent, who was one of several assistant heads in the department, “we have nonetheless tried to gather together what there is about old Liska. It’s on the disk here,” he said, handing over a computer disk to Johansson. “All we have on him is there, which as I said is not very much.”

Then perhaps, given the way the world is starting to look, it’s high time you find out a little more about him, thought Johansson, but naturally he didn’t say that to them. Someone besides him would have to do that.

“Can you summarize what’s here?” asked Johansson.

“Certainly,” said the police superintendent, and then he did.

According to the police superintendent, Liska had been working for almost thirty years at the CIA, and before that with the naval intelligence service. He was a legend within the CIA and the intelligence agencies of the Western world, and nowadays not even a particularly secret one. Among other things he was said to have played a prominent role in the execution of Operation Rosewood.

“Although in later years he has become more of the agency’s outward face,” the police superintendent explained. “He has made several appearances on American TV, where he sometimes speaks on his employer’s behalf. He’s a very good TV personality, has a good image, and in recent years he has mostly made the circuit giving talks. Much appreciated as a lecturer, he has even done a few appearances here in Sweden. Most recently he was featured at a dinner that the military gave at Karlberg’s castle in December.”

During his period as an active agent, Liska had primarily worked abroad, almost solely in Europe, and concentrating primarily on the countries behind the Iron Curtain, although he had also been active in Scandinavia, including Sweden.

“The guy even seems to speak completely comprehensible Swedish-well, Scandinavian maybe. Altogether he seems to have spent at least a couple of years in Sweden and Norway. All at once he would show up at their embassy out on Djurgården,” said the police superintendent, seeming almost flattered by Liska’s interest in his native land.

“What kind of Swedish contacts did he have?” asked Johansson.

“You mean apart from the regular channels with our own military intelligence service and a few of the real bigwigs in the older generation?” the police superintendent asked. “That part’s on the disk.”

So it’s there, thought Johansson. Several old owls. I really ought to take up bird-watching given my job, he thought.

“Does he have a best buddy here in Sweden I ought to know about?” asked Johansson. Don’t be so damn naïve, he thought.

“Well,” said the police superintendent, smiling, “he does have one friend who is undeniably intriguing.”

“And who’s that?” said Johansson, though he had already guessed the answer.

“And you know him well, too,” said the police superintendent. “The prime minister’s own éminence grise in questions that concern national security-the not entirely unknown former special adviser, nowadays the undersecretary in the government offices.”

Strange that people never refer to him by name, thought Johansson. Is it so damn hard to remember that his name is Nilsson? With the usual spelling, too.

“So Undersecretary Nilsson and CIA agent Liska are best buddies?” asked Johansson.

“Depends on what you mean by best,” the police superintendent said evasively. “I don’t really dare say “best,” but that they’ve known each other forever is common knowledge.”

“And the contacts Mr. Nilsson had with this Liska, of what nature are they?” asked Johansson.

“We assume they have occurred with the blessing and consent of the highest authorities,” said the police superintendent, nodding piously.

“If I may now be a little nitpicky and boring,” said Johansson, “I’m wondering if there is anyone here in the building who during all these years of blessed coexistence has had the good taste, if for no other reason than the sake of good form, to inform the undersecretary of who his American friend’s employer is?” said Johansson. “I’m assuming it doesn’t appear on Liska’s business card.”

“Not the ones we’ve seen in any event,” said the police superintendent, who still seemed happy and upbeat. “I don’t think it’s a secret,” he added. “It’s clear he knows what agency Liska works for.”

“I’m sure he does,” said Johansson. “But that’s not what I’m sitting here pestering you about.”

“You mean whether we in the service have informed him about who Liska is?” asked the police superintendent, who no longer seemed as exhilarated.

“Exactly,” said Johansson. “Have we?” Finally he gets it, he thought.

“No,” said the police superintendent, suddenly seeming rather gloomy.

“Then we should change that ASAP,” said Johansson. “Make sure the documentation is clear so the analysts can make their assessment. Then make a proposal for getting a regular security intelligence report to the undersecretary. And a copy to the minister of justice for his information so they can’t put the blame on each other.”

“When do you want it?” said the police superintendent guardedly.

“It’ll be fine if I get it in a few hours,” said Johansson. So I can go through the disk in the meantime, so there, you little bastard, he thought.

“No one is going to be particularly happy,” said the police superintendent, who didn’t look too happy himself.

“That leaves me cold,” said Johansson. “If we assume, and this is purely an academic question, that Liska hadn’t been working for the CIA, but instead for the former GRU or KGB at a time when these agencies viewed Sweden as part of their own domestic politics, what would have happened to the undersecretary in that case?”

“Yes, but that’s an impossible comparison,” the police superintendent objected. “I think that-”

“Answer the question,” Johansson interrupted. “What would have happened to the undersecretary then?”

“Then naturally he would have ended up in jail,” said the police superintendent.

“Nice that we’re in agreement,” said Johansson.

“I want you to set up three meetings for me,” said Johansson to his secretary.

“As you wish, Boss,” she replied, smiling her cool smile, pen already in hand.

“First, I want to meet the GD within the next few hours at the latest, but in any event before the end of the day,” said Johansson, beginning to count by raising his right index finger. “I need half an hour.”

“Second?” asked his secretary.

“Second,” said Johansson, letting the middle finger on his right hand keep the index finger company, “I want to have a meeting in Rosenbad with our esteemed contact the undersecretary sometime tomorrow. Preferably in the morning.”

“And third…?”

“Third,” said Johansson, but without holding up the middle finger-you didn’t do that to women-“and assuming that I’ve managed to meet the person I just mentioned, I would like to have a meeting with Helena Stein, the undersecretary in the Ministry of Defense. In the evening, just the two of us, and preferably at her home.”

“My goodness,” said his secretary. “I hope it’s nothing like that.”

No, thought Johansson. Unfortunately it’s just the opposite.

39 Tuesday, April 11, 2000

At ten o’clock in the morning Johansson met with the undersecretary in his office at Rosenbad and turned over the security intelligence regarding the American citizen Michael Liska, which the colleagues in counterespionage had produced the day before and which his own general director had approved the same evening.

“I am grateful for the honor that has been bestowed on me,” said the undersecretary, nodding ironically toward the binder of papers he had received but had not even condescended to open. “I will obviously inform my highest superior of your findings.”

“You don’t seem particularly surprised,” Johansson chuckled. He had decided in advance to play along as long as it suited him. And don’t try to pressure me with your distinguished acquaintances, he thought.

“I doubt that anyone here in the building will be particularly surprised by how Liska puts food on the table,” said the undersecretary.

“If you know about more contacts he’s had that we’ve missed, I assume you’ll report them to us,” said Johansson.

“Of course, of course,” sighed the undersecretary. “I had no idea you were so formal, Johansson.”

“I guess you didn’t,” said Johansson, smiling. “Yes, I am very formal,” he continued. “I can be downright frightfully formal in a pinch, and to avoid any misunderstanding I would also like to stress that you should not view me, my superior, or our organization as some kind of free resource for you to dispose of as you choose. That goes against the constitution and I can be terribly sensitive where such things are concerned.”

“Oh boy, that last part almost sounded a little threatening,” said the undersecretary, unperturbed. “Would you like a cup of coffee by the way? I’m in the mood for one anyway.” The undersecretary made an inviting gesture toward cups, coffeepot, and plates on his coffee table. “As you can see I’ve got an ample supply of pastries.”

I see that, thought Johansson, who had already made note of the excess of pastries on the table and immediately decided not to let himself be tempted, not even by a little cognac ring. On the other hand, he thought, those napoleons do look heavenly.

“By the way, how’s it going with Stein?” the undersecretary continued as he poured coffee into Johansson’s cup.

“Not so well,” said Johansson, who had decided that it was high time to turn the screw.

“Not so well,” the undersecretary repeated, actually sounding sincerely surprised. “Is it that old story from the West German embassy that’s still haunting her?”

“No,” said Johansson, shaking his head heavily. “If only it were that good.” And if you’re going to pour coffee for me, I prefer that you do it in my cup, he thought.

“Now I’m getting worried,” said the undersecretary, setting down the coffeepot and looking at Johansson without trying any of his usual grimaces. “As you know, my esteemed boss intends to offer her a position in the government, and if you and your people have a different opinion I’m afraid you’ll have to count on us devoting a good deal of time and effort to scrutinizing your arguments.”

“Has she already been asked?” Johansson said.

“No,” said the undersecretary. “But soon.”

“Tell your boss he has to find someone else,” said Johansson. “If you don’t want to tell him, I can take it up with him directly.”

“Johansson, Johansson,” said the undersecretary deprecatingly. “Now you really have to tell me what this is all about. And I’m assuming that this doesn’t have anything to do with a twenty-five-year-old embassy occupation.”

“No,” said Johansson. “It doesn’t.”

“Well,” said the undersecretary, attempting a smile, “I’m frightfully curious. What in the world has she done? Is she involved in the Palme assassination too?”

“No,” said Johansson curtly as he took a blue plastic folder from his briefcase. “I will gladly tell you what this is about, provided you acknowledge on a paper I have with me that you have had access to this information and that you also sign a special confidentiality agreement on another paper that I also have with me. I have discussed the matter both with the GD and our lead attorney, and the GD told me that if you sign you should be informed, and if you don’t, he is going to personally request a private presentation for your boss.”

“Give me a pen,” said the undersecretary. “Before I die of curiosity.”

“Well,” said the undersecretary as he set aside the pen and pushed the folder with the signed documents back to Johansson.

“Now I’m going to tell you about two partially connected problems we discovered during our background check of Undersecretary Stein,” said Johansson. “Namely, that we have reason to suspect that Liska and his organization, in cooperation with domestic interests within our so-called defense lobby, planned to subject Undersecretary Stein to influence were she to be appointed minister of defense or given a similarly security-related position within the Swedish government.”

“Goodness,” said the undersecretary. “Correct me if I’ve counted wrong, but I come up with at least three objections in a single sentence.”

“A few months ago Liska managed, with the help of a few useful idiots in the military intelligence service, to activate the case that concerns the embassy occupation-which will soon pass the statute of limitations,” Johansson said. “We believe they’ve opened up a portal through which they intend to convey disinformation in order to influence Helena Stein and people like her.” Why do you look so strange? thought Johansson. What happened to your usual trademark sardonic smile?

“Sounds rather daring given the relations between our respective countries,” said the undersecretary. “But I hear what you’re saying,” he continued. “You don’t think you could be a little more precise?”

“Not at the present time,” said Johansson. “We have decided to follow up on what we have and provide the usual updates as we go forward, depending on how the whole thing develops.”

“But that’s just excellent,” said the undersecretary. “Because we are forewarned, we are also forearmed, and if I were Stein I would be the one who was most grateful. In any event she doesn’t need to worry that the Americans will try to yank her chain.”

And not yours either, thought Johansson.

“No, neither the Americans nor anyone else is going to yank her chain,” said Johansson. In any case not in that way, he thought.

“Okay then,” said the undersecretary, who for some reason chose not to question any further what Johansson had just said. “Then I don’t really understand the problem. What obstacle is there to appointing her?”

“Unfortunately it won’t work,” said Johansson.

“What do you mean it won’t work?” said the undersecretary, no longer making any attempt to conceal how irritated he was. “Has she murdered someone, or what?”

“Yes,” said Johansson.

“What?” said the undersecretary.

You definitely did not know that, thought Johansson when he saw the undersecretary’s suddenly wide-open eyes.

Johansson then related what had gone on when Helena Stein stabbed Kjell Göran Eriksson to death almost eleven years ago, basically the same way he had told it to his best friend and to his own investigation team.

After that he gave an account of the measures he had taken, all the way from the prosecutor’s dismissal with prejudice down to all the top-secret classifications he himself had put in place, not least the little scrap of paper he had put into the shredder with his own hands.

“What a completely improbable fucking story,” the undersecretary moaned, shaking his head with dismay.

“Regardless of that,” continued Johansson, who had one more point to clear up before he was finished, “completely regardless of that she represents a risk that we advise your superior in the strongest possible terms not to take,” said Johansson, and he almost felt solemn as he said it. For a simple boy from the country like himself it was almost as though the eagle of history had brushed him with its wing.

“I see exactly what you mean,” said the undersecretary, looking as though he would like to moan audibly.

“For both your sake and mine I would still like to go over the risks we envisage. There are four sources of risk here. The first is leaks within our own closed operation,” said Johansson. “It’s true we’re known with good reason for being taciturn, and compared with all the babbling brooks running around in the open police operation, we’re about as talkative as a concrete wall with no cracks. Still I can’t overlook the risk, even if I judge it to be the least serious in this context.”

“How many at SePo know about Stein?” the undersecretary asked.

“Eight including myself, plus another seven who know parts of it and might possibly figure out the rest themselves.”

“And that’s as secretive as you’ve managed to be,” said the undersecretary crossly.

“As you already know,” said Johansson, grinning. “And with you now, that makes nine.”

“What are the other three risks, besides ourselves?” he asked.

Johansson’s colleagues at the detective squad in Stockholm were another risk. The files on Eriksson would be returned in exactly the condition they were in when they were loaned out and with all conceivable discretion. Regardless, it was still an open murder investigation, and sooner or later-this could definitely not be ruled out-it might end up in competent enough hands that someone would be forced to start being interested in Helena Stein.

“Just imagine if she were the defense minister,” said Johansson. “This would not leak like a sieve. They’d be able to drive her around with a manure spreader.”

“The media,” Johansson continued. “Here in particular, because there is a very unfortunate possibility that a sufficiently thoughtful investigative reporter might piece together the elements of an already famous, very spectacular event-the occupation of the West German embassy-with Eriksson, Tischler, Welander, and Stein. There is also the remarkable circumstance that one of the members of the ‘gang of four’ was suddenly murdered. Not all journalists are idiots,” said Johansson, “far from it, and with the West German embassy in particular it’s probably the case that many of the older journalists were around at the time it happened, and that they had contacts in those circles the four were involved in.”

“That’s enough, that’s more than enough,” said the undersecretary shaking his head in dismay. “But there was something else you were thinking about too. You said four risks… I’ve counted three.”

There were Stein’s own acquaintances and above all Tischler, who knew down to the slightest detail how things stood. Tischler with his big mouth, his uninhibited indiscretion, and his, to say the least, adventurous life. What might happen the day he became angry at “his charming cousin,” or simply let his tongue wag without thinking, or put himself in a position-in relation to the tax authorities, the police, or both-where he might find it expedient to use her as a negotiating tactic.

“Someone like Tischler is a walking bomb, as I’m sure you understand,” said Johansson. “We really ought to have someone like him eliminated immediately,” he added, smiling broadly at the undersecretary.

“No objections,” sighed the undersecretary. “I’ve never liked his type anyway.”

“Well,” said Johansson, leaning back in his armchair, forming his long fingers into a church vault, and observing the undersecretary. “Are we agreed?”

“Yes,” said the undersecretary. “But doesn’t someone still have to talk with Stein?”

So you’ve already talked to her about her becoming a member of the government, thought Johansson.

“You don’t need to say anything, Johansson,” said the undersecretary deprecatingly. “We have the same problem that you do as far as the undesired distribution of information is concerned.”

“I had thought about talking with her anyway,” said Johansson.

“You had?” said the undersecretary with surprise.

“Anything else would be dereliction of duty on my part,” he explained. “It wasn’t that I forgot to mention her, but it’s obvious that in the situation we’re now in, she constitutes the greatest risk.” She might even be cause for your dear boss to have to return to his childhood home in Katrineholm, thought Johansson.

“Thanks,” said the undersecretary. “I understand exactly what you mean.” Anyone at all, but not Göran Persson, he thought.

That evening, before he was to meet Helena Stein, Johansson had dinner with his wife, but because his thoughts were elsewhere not much was said. As soon as he set aside his coffee cup he looked at his watch and nodded at her.

“I have to go,” he said. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“It’s secret, of course,” said his wife, smiling.

“Yes,” said Johansson, sighing.

“Is she good-looking?” she asked.

“I don’t really know,” said Johansson. “I’ve only seen her from a distance and never talked with her. In any event she’s not like you.”

“That’s what you say,” said his wife.

“Yes,” said Johansson. “I say that because no one is.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Then you should take care of yourself.”

“Yes,” said Johansson.

But of course Stein was beautiful and not only at a distance, thought Johansson when he was finally sitting in her living room looking at her. Beautiful in the same way as her clothes or the room they were sitting in. Beautiful in a different way than what had been beautiful to him during his childhood, youth, and adult life-the sort of thing that was both beautiful and accessible to him. Helena Stein seemed to be beautiful in an inaccessible way, and sometimes, in moments of weakness, he was seized by a longing for that kind of beauty, because he really did want to live a different life than the life that was his.

“Would you like coffee?” asked Helena Stein.

“No,” said Johansson. “I’m fine. I won’t be long,” he added, thinking he should try to calm her.

“Something tells me this is not going to be a pleasant conversation,” she said, looking at him seriously.

“No,” said Johansson. “I’m afraid not, but I’ve carefully considered the existing alternatives, and this is what I think is best for everyone involved.” And quite certainly for you, he thought.

“I hear what you’re saying of course,” she said, “but I sense that this is about that time twenty-five years ago when I was a naïve child who thought that I was only helping rescue a few German students from being murdered by the German police.”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “I guess that’s how the whole thing started.”

“And if you think I would have done what I did then if I’d understood what they really intended to do, then I don’t think we really have very much to say to each other,” she continued.

“No,” said Johansson, looking at her seriously. “I have never believed for a moment that you would have cooperated with any such thing.”

Because of course I haven’t, he thought. Not since he had gone over Berg’s and Persson’s investigation and spent the weekend reading Mattei’s description of Helena Stein’s life.

“How many people know about this story?” asked Johansson.

“The ones who were inside the embassy, of course. Four of them seem to still be alive-and they’ve probably been out of prison for many years now. The first one was let out in 1993. Because I met only two of them, on one occasion, a brief occasion, and one of them is dead, I’ve never been worried about them. I don’t even think the ones who are left remember me. How would they even recognize me? I looked like a child at that time-I was a child.”

“Then there was your cousin, Theo Tischler, Welander, Eriksson,” said Johansson.

“Yes,” said Helena Stein, smiling bitterly. “Two are dead and one is my cousin. The older brother I never had but always wanted.”

“Have you told anyone else?” asked Johansson.

“Yes,” said Stein, and suddenly there was a glimmer in her eyes. “I’ve told two other men. One of them was a man I had a relationship with, and as soon as I told him he left me. I don’t think he’s told anyone, if you’re wondering about that. I actually think he would be the last person to talk about something like that, simply out of concern for himself.”

“So who was the other man?” asked Johansson.

“Two years ago, before I got my current job, I found out in a roundabout way that you people at SePo were interested in this story and I asked a friend-not a close friend, but a person I rely on and who knows a good deal about these kinds of things-I asked if it might not be best to simply talk about what had happened. Tell the whole story straight out and let the world decide whether I was fit to serve the country.”

“What advice did he give you?” asked Johansson.

“He almost got upset,” said Helena Stein. “It was almost like he’d been involved himself. He advised me firmly against it. According to him, the time wasn’t ripe for that sort of thing, and I could forget about my new job as undersecretary-that it was inconceivable that I would be permitted to continue working in the government offices. So I followed his advice. Was that stupid of me?”

“Perhaps,” said Johansson. “I don’t know. I think that’s something only you can answer. But because I know who gave you that advice, there’s one thing you should probably know,” he continued. “In case you were to turn to the undersecretary again for advice.”

Then Johansson told her about the suspicions currently harbored by the secret police that there were advanced preparations “by a foreign power and domestic interests close to this same power” to exert pressure on her in the event that she was given any position worth the trouble. And that it was highly probable that one of those who had helped make the intrusion possible was the very person she had asked for advice.

“Are you completely sure about all this?” Stein asked, looking doubtfully at Johansson.

“Yes,” said Johansson. “As sure as you can be in this business.”

“Good Lord,” said Stein, shaking her head indignantly. “How do you put up with yourself? With the job you have?”

“It’s my job,” said Johansson. “I knew before I took it that it wouldn’t be easy.” Although I never imagined this, he thought.

“Fine then,” said Stein. “What do I have to worry about? I have people like you and your colleagues to protect me from people that in my stupidity I thought I could rely on.”

“There’s one more problem,” said Johansson. For there is something that can’t be put off any longer, he thought.

“Imagine that,” said Helena Stein. “I suspected as much.”

“It concerns Kjell Göran Eriksson, whom you also got to know over thirty years ago,” said Johansson.

“I’d already figured that out,” said Stein, looking hard at Johansson. “He’s the only truly evil person I’ve met in my entire life, including both of those insane Germans who later made their way into the embassy. Compared to Kjell Eriksson they were almost respectable. At least they were driven by political conviction.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson, gently raising his hand in a forestalling gesture. “But before you say anything else there are actually a few things I have to remind you of, and which I presume you as an attorney are familiar with. I’m a police officer,” Johansson continued, “so if people say certain things to me I can be forced to do certain things regardless of whether I want to or not. Therefore I thought I should inform you that we have concluded the investigation of your possible involvement in the murder of Kjell Eriksson. The prosecutor is of the firm opinion that you have nothing to do with his death, and the case has been dismissed. That is his firm, legally grounded opinion. And, true, I’m not much of an attorney, but I share his opinion as far as the law is concerned.”

“And in your actual role-you are a police officer, aren’t you?” asked Stein. “What is your opinion as a police officer?”

“Let me put it like this,” said Johansson. “The only possibility of getting you indicted and convicted of Kjell Eriksson’s murder, or even reporting you on reasonable grounds for suspicion, would be if you decided to confess. I know that as a police officer, because it’s as a police officer that I’ve inspected the existing material on the murder of Eriksson. But what I think about it, and this is my purely private opinion, is completely uninteresting.”

“Not to me,” said Stein, shaking her head firmly. “I really would like to hear what you believe about my involvement in the murder of Kjell Eriksson. And considering that this is about me-and only me, really-I would be very grateful if you would tell me. Strictly privately, and I can assure you that I would not dream of using anything against you, if that’s what worries you. And note that I clearly trust you, despite the fact that we’ve never met before.”

“Personally, I’m not the least bit worried,” said Johansson, shaking his head. “You’re not that type.” And we have actually met once, at a distance, he thought. I saw you but you didn’t see me, and that’s the difference between us.

“Okay then,” said Stein. “I want to hear what you think.”

“On one condition,” said Johansson. “That you just listen. I don’t want you to say anything.”

“I promise to be completely silent,” said Helena Stein. “I’m used to listening to men,” she added with an ironic grimace.

And I to women, thought Johansson. Or at least to one woman in particular, he thought.

Okay then, thought Johansson, and then he told Helena Stein what had happened when she murdered Kjell Göran Eriksson.

“Because you’re asking now, I think it probably was you who stuck the knife in him,” said Johansson, and his Norrland dialect immediately became more apparent as he spoke. “But it was not a murder, and if you had only pulled yourself together and called the police yourself, I am completely convinced that no one would have convicted you of anything more than assault and manslaughter. If the knife wound hadn’t been where it was, I even think you would have had a good chance of getting off completely by maintaining that you administered it in self-defense when he tried to attack you or rape you.”

“But that wouldn’t have been true,” Helena Stein interrupted. “Because he didn’t-he was completely incapable of any sexual feelings whatsoever-”

“Sweet Jesus, woman,” Johansson said very slowly and very clearly. “I thought we agreed that I would talk and you would listen. This is for your own sake.”

“Forgive me,” said Helena Stein and she suddenly looked just as desperate as she had sounded on the almost twenty-five-year-old audio surveillance tape Johansson had listened to a few days before.

“If I were to begin with the act itself,” Johansson continued, “it occurs about eight o’clock. Eriksson is sitting on the couch in his living room, spewing out his usual foulness. He has sent you out to the kitchen to cut up fresh lemon slices for his gin and tonic. He has probably already suggested that you can be his new, unpaid maid, so he can save on the Polish woman who’s been cleaning under the table for him. And as you’re standing with your lemon slices and his tonic on the threshold between the kitchen and the living room, where he sits with his back to you, waving his glass demandingly without even condescending to turn toward you when he’s talking to you, you suddenly discover that you’re still holding his kitchen knife in your hand, and without even consciously making a decision you simply take a step forward and stick it in his back.”

Helena Stein kept her promise. She did not say a word. She simply sat up straight in her chair, without leaning against the back and without looking at him. No expression on her face or even a shift in her eyes, very present and yet very far away.

“When you’ve done that you back a step out of the room still holding the knife in your hand and you hardly know what’s happened, for it took only a fraction of a second, and Eriksson seems to have barely reacted. He turns around and looks at you with surprise, then he runs his left arm up along his back toward the place where it’s starting to hurt, and when he sees all the blood he has on his left shirt sleeve he sets down the glass he’s been holding in his right hand and gets up and suddenly he’s completely furious and starts to yell.

“Then he tries to get hold of you,” Johansson continued, “and you back straight out toward the window in the living room, because maybe you have the idea that you might be able to get help by calling out to the street, but Eriksson gets tangled up in his own furniture. After following you a few steps to the left he turns in place and takes another few steps back, yelling at you the whole time. Then suddenly-just like that-he collapses between the couch and the coffee table, which turns over, and the glasses and bottles land on the floor. And now he’s lying there-and he’s not screaming anymore. He’s only moaning faintly and he’s hardly moving, but a lot of blood is running out of the wound on his back and out of his mouth. And then you run back into the kitchen, throw the knife in the wastebasket, rush into the bathroom, lock the door, and vomit into a hand towel you grab…

“That’s how it went, more or less,” said Johansson, nodding.

“May I say something now?” asked Helena Stein, but without looking at Johansson.

“Sure,” said Johansson. “Just think about what you’re saying.”

“So why would I have done that?” she asked.

“You had run into him earlier in the day. You probably hadn’t even seen him since the embassy takeover almost fifteen years earlier, but suddenly he was simply sitting there in the audience listening to your lecture. And when you saw him it was like seeing an evil apparition from another time. You were already nervous. East Germany had just fallen apart, and you were constantly worried about what people like me might find in the Stasi files when we finally had the chance to snoop through them. And when Eriksson came up to you after your lecture he didn’t exactly do anything to calm your fears on that score. More likely he tried to get you to think that your whole life was now in his hands. And maybe he also said something to the effect that he was the only one who would get off on the strength of his contacts, once the police finally came knocking on your doors.”

“That’s what he said to Theo-long before,” said Stein.

“Careful now,” Johansson warned.

“So what did I do afterward?” asked Helena Stein. “Yes, I promise to be careful,” she said, and now suddenly she looked at him again.

“You tried to collect yourself as best you could, cleaned up as well as you could, went through his desk and took a binder with you that he probably had been boasting about earlier in the evening-and that mostly contained a lot of nonsense and his own notes, if you want to know what I think personally-because unlike you I’ve never seen all that shit he had locked up in his safe-deposit box, mostly for his own sake, so that he could convince you what a remarkable person he was. The following months you weren’t doing so well yourself… You told Theo what had happened, naturally-if he hadn’t already figured it out on his own-and obviously he promised that regardless of anything else he would see to it that nothing bad happened to you and that in the worst case you would simply disappear to some tropical island as far away as you could get. But apart from that, well, you were desperate, probably thought about committing suicide. On several occasions I’m convinced you stood with phone in hand and were about to call the police so that it would finally be over, but then time passed, and nothing happened, and now we’re sitting here,” said Johansson, sighing.

“Why are you telling me this?” asked Helena Stein.

“For several reasons,” said Johansson. “Because I think that if someone offered you a new job within the government, you should be given the chance right now to avoid the risk by choosing to do something else. I brought these with me, by the way,” said Johansson, taking out the bag with two CD-ROMs containing extracts from Mattei’s research that he had carefully edited himself.

“What’s that?” said Stein.

“Scenes from your life,” said Johansson. “When I look at them, I get the distinct impression that you don’t lack alternatives. If you were to decide to live a different life now, of course,” said Johansson, looking steadily at her.

“What I don’t really understand,” said Stein, “is why you’re telling me this. Why are you doing this?”

“Oh well,” said Johansson. “If I don’t remember wrong, it was actually you who asked me.”

“You came here to tell me,” she said. “I’m quite sure of that, and I’ve listened to you. I haven’t said anything about what you’ve said that can cause you any problems.”

“I’m not the one who has problems,” said Johansson, “and I didn’t come here to play God.”

“Why did you come here then?” she asked.

“Two reasons, as I see it,” said Johansson. “It has happened that I’ve been wrong, and I guess I wanted to assure myself that this time I wasn’t.”

“I don’t understand,” said Stein. “I haven’t said a word about what I think about your story.”

“No,” said Johansson, “and I was actually the one who asked you not to. Let me put it like this: I guess I’ve figured it out anyway. Maybe I saw it in your eyes?”

“The other reason then,” said Stein without looking at him.

“Justice,” said Johansson. “I think what has already happened is good enough. What happens now, you decide yourself.”

“Do you want me to thank you?” said Helena Stein, and the bitterness in her voice suddenly came through.

“Why should you thank me?” said Johansson. “If the prosecutor had decided to report you on reasonable grounds for suspicion, we would have turned the case back over to the Stockholm police and let them take care of the formalities. And I’m convinced they wouldn’t have gotten very far. Just as I’m convinced that you would have had to run the media gauntlet anyway. So it was solely for that reason I did it this way. How could we have done anything else? The prosecutor chose to write off your case, and with that it’s closed for me and my colleagues too. We’re not the ones you need to be worried about now; there are completely different interests and different individuals. And if anyone asks me, you and I have never met. For the one simple reason that that’s the way I’m expected to answer such a question, and, if I may be personal now, I don’t have the slightest problem with that.”

“I understand what you mean,” said Helena Stein.

“I’m convinced of that,” said Johansson. “And for me it’s only about justice.”

And then he left, walked to Östermalm subway station, and took the subway home to Söder. To another, and better, life, thought Johansson as he strode into the hall to his and Pia’s apartment. A new time, and a better life.