Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

CHAPTER XX

For a great and noble cause

Stockholm, February 28-March 1

Taking a taxi to Old Town was out of the question. Regardless of the fact that he was short on time, it would have to be the subway. Running to catch the train was out of the question too, so he’d missed the first, and when he finally arrived at Old Town it was eight-thirty and he’d already decided to give up the whole project and take a swing into town and do something else instead. He could always toss the antiquity that Waltin had slipped him into Strömmen, for it was hardly something he wanted to carry around with him, much less leave at the coat check if he went to a bar.

It’ll have to be a brisk walk, thought Hedberg, and when he strode out of the subway the first thing he saw was them, walking straight toward him from the alley. Almost a hundred yards, and they hadn’t seen him, in any event, so he turned on his heels and went back up onto the platform. A rather risk-free long shot, for if they were going to the movies it was probably at Hötorget or Rådmansgatan, and if it should turn out that he was wrong then he would have to live with that too.

The alley would have been perfect, he thought, but now it was the way it was and then there were other conditions that applied: keeping his distance and hoping for luck. So he jumped onto the train that had just come in, even though he knew they wouldn’t make it. He rode past the central station, but at Hötorget he got off and positioned himself on the platform, pretending to read the newspaper while he was waiting. He had a fool’s good luck, for when the next train pulled in there were enough passengers where they were sitting that he would be able to melt into the crowd.

Being in the same car was naturally out of the question. Instead he took a chance again, got into another one, and was among the first to get off at Rådmansgatan. Because he’d devoted hundreds of hours to shadowing people he wasn’t the type to follow them if he had the choice. He went out onto the street ahead of them, and as soon as he was certain that they were going to the Grand Cinema he went into the lobby and placed himself in the ticket line for a film that plenty of people would see but not them. Wrong film for people like them, and as soon as he was sure which film they would see instead he left. He already knew when their movie would end, for he’d got that from the poster in the lobby, so he didn’t even need to slink past a well-stocked newsstand to check it in a newspaper. And he obviously never even considered asking the cashier.

He didn’t consider hanging around outside the cinema for two hours, either. That it was bitterly cold was uninteresting, for his job was to keep his distance and minimize risk, and the price of that was that he had to take a chance. So again he took a chance. Took the chance that they would watch the movie to the end, for people like that usually did; took the chance that they would then head home; and took the chance that they would take the subway, for they usually did that too.

If he really was going to shoot someone, he didn’t intend to do it on an empty stomach. He hadn’t eaten a thing all day. So he slipped into a Chinese restaurant on Drottninggatan, with just enough people, just drunk enough and occupied with themselves, and no coat check where he needed to hang his jacket. Then he ate and read the newspaper in peace and quiet. Paid cash, gave a respectable tip, and left the place with enough time, not too early and not too late. And exactly like the first time, when he saw them it was at a distance of a little less than a hundred yards, and they were walking at a brisk pace straight toward him.

Unfortunately they were walking on the wrong side of the street. On the west side of the street along Adolf Fredrik’s cemetery and in the direction of Kungsgatan, a lot of people were moving in both directions and there was no question of getting anything accomplished there. He had just decided to hurry down into the subway, ride ahead of them to Old Town, and wait for them in the alley where he’d seen them the first time, when he had a fool’s luck again. For suddenly they crossed Sveavägen and walked up to a shop window, and on that side of the street there was hardly a soul. It’s almost enough to give you religion, thought Hedberg, crossing and positioning himself on the same side of the street at the corner of Tunnelgatan.

This is too good to be true, he thought. A dark little cross street with construction trailers and narrow passageways and a number of escape routes to choose from, right close by. If it had been his to choose, this was exactly where he would have arranged to encounter them. For what he intended to do there was no place better, and for them there was no place worse. So he waited for them while he pretended to look in the shop window, and when they were passing him he just walked up behind them, pulled the revolver from the right pocket of his jacket, cocking the trigger with the same motion, placed his left hand on the traitor’s shoulder, and fired a loud and almost point-blank shot right down the edge of his collar.

His legs just folded up and he fell headlong to the street on his face. Dead, thought Hedberg, for he knew from experience, even though he’d never shot a man in his entire life.

And at the next second he backed up a step in order to get a better firing line, cocked the trigger with his thumb since the weapon was sluggish, aimed at the same place on the upper-class whore that the traitor had been married to, and fired again. She sank down on her knees with a sagging head and eyes that didn’t seem to see. And presumably she must have twisted at the very moment that he fired, just when the flare from the muzzle blinded him, because he hit her in the lung and not in the spinal column where he’d aimed.

He was content to look at her for a few seconds, for in a minute at the most she would be dead, and in any event by then he intended to be somewhere else. Then he turned and because it was icy and slippery he ran straddle-legged and jogged along the stone border between the street and the sidewalk, and as he ran toward the stairs up to Döbelnsgatan he put the revolver back in his jacket pocket.

For a great and noble cause, he thought, and he couldn’t have said it better himself.

When he came up onto Döbelnsgatan he stopped running, crossed the street at a normal pace, and continued straight along down the hill. At Regeringsgatan he turned right and took the stairs down to Kungsgatan, and as he was walking down toward Stureplan and the subway and saw all the people around him he knew that the flock gave him all the protection he needed and that he’d already gotten away. When he stepped into the apartment at Gärdet the time was only ten minutes to twelve. He took off his shoes and all his clothes and put them in an ordinary black plastic garbage bag, on top of which he set the revolver, and then he carried the sack out to the kitchen and placed it next to the refrigerator.

After that he showered and washed his hair, and when he’d rinsed off all the lather he did the same thing over again, letting the hot water run the whole time. Only after that had he gone to bed. He hadn’t thought about anything in particular, and he fell asleep almost immediately.

The next morning he took a taxi to the airport bus and the airport bus to Arlanda, and if there were policemen out chasing a murderer they weren’t at Arlanda, in any event. For once his plane took off on time, and when he landed in Palma it was almost seventy degrees, and for the first time since he’d moved there it felt like coming home.