Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

CHAPTER I

Free falling, as in a dream

Stockholm in November

It was Charlie, age thirteen, who saved the life of Vindel, age fifty-five. At least that’s how Vindel described it at the preliminary police hearing.

“If Charlie hadn’t looked up and pulled me to the side, that damn thing would’ve hit me right in the skull and I wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

It was a peculiar story right from the start, for three main reasons.

First, Charlie was thought to be deaf in both ears. Not least by Vindel himself, who was convinced that the only things Charlie understood nowadays were eye contact, sign language, and physical touch. It’s true that Vindel talked with him more than ever, but that’s only to be expected when someone you liked grew old and slowed down, and Vindel had always been kind to Charlie. Just what you would expect.

Second, it is a long-established axiom in Western physics that a free-falling body precedes the sound that said body produces by friction against the surrounding atmosphere. Thus, according to said physics, there would have been no noticeable sound whatsoever.

Third, and this was the most remarkable. If Charlie had heard something, noticed the danger, pulled Vindel aside, and thereby saved his life… why didn’t he hear the sound of the victim’s left shoe, which, only a few seconds later, struck him right in the neck and killed him on the spot?

[FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22]

Between 19:56 and 20:01 hours on Friday the twenty-second of November, three calls were routed via emergency number 90 000 to the command center of the Stockholm Police.

The first came from a retired lawyer who had seen the entire incident in detail from his balcony at Valhallavägen 38. The lawyer introduced himself by name and title and appeared not the least bit upset. His story was wordy and systematically outlined. Factually, it was completely off the wall.

In summary, the premise was that a lunatic dressed in a long black coat and a ski cap with earflaps had just shot down a poor dog owner and his dog. Now the lunatic was running around in circles, shouting incoherently; the reason that the lawyer found himself out on his balcony with the temperature below freezing was that his wife suffered from asthma and cigarette smoke had an unpleasant tendency to cling to the curtains: “If you are wondering about that, sergeant?”

The second call came from the taxi switchboard. One of their drivers had picked up an older woman at Valhallavägen 46, and as he held open the door to help his passenger into the backseat, he noticed from the corner of his eye “a poor fellow who fell down from the roof of that tall building where all the students live.” The driver was forty-five years old and had come to Sweden from Turkey twenty years earlier. He had seen worse things as a child and had learned early on that there is a time and a place for everything; that is why he called the switchboard on the radio, told what he had seen, and asked them to call the police, while he drove the old woman to her daughter, who lived on a farm outside of Märsta. It was a good fare and life went on.

Phone call number three came from a man who, judging by his voice, seemed to be middle-aged. He refused to say what his name was and where he was calling from, but he sounded exhilarated in a way that indicated that he had ingested some stimulating substance. In addition he had some good advice. “Now one of those crazy students has jumped off the roof again. Don’t forget to bring a few buckets along when you come to pick him up.”

At the command center everything was running along tracks laid down long ago. When the on-duty operator sent out an area alert on the radio, she had already lowered the priority of the verbose lawyer and raised that of the taxi driver and the exhilarated man with the good advice about buckets; she omitted the shooting, the dog, and the buckets.

Her message was that a person had fallen or jumped from the student dormitory called Rosehip on Körsbärsvägen and landed on the walkway above the parking lot across the street from the intersection of Valhallavägen and Frejgatan. A lifeless body would be found at the scene and a distraught male, dressed in a black coat and a peaked cap, wandering around in the vicinity. Was there a patrol car in the area that could take care of the whole thing?

There was one, only a hundred yards farther down Valhallavägen. It belonged to the Östermalm precinct-VD 2-and at the moment the alarm went out over the radio, the car was stopping in front of the hot-dog stand at the driveway to the Roslagstull hospital. In the car were two of the Stockholm Police Department’s finest. In the driver’s seat sat police officer in training Oredsson, age twenty-four. He was blond, blue-eyed, and broad-shouldered. He was doing his last round as a trainee and in a month he would become a police officer. A conviction also burned in Oredsson’s soul that, once he joined the police force, the struggle against the steadily increasing crime rate would enter a decisive phase in which good would come out the victor.

In the passenger seat beside him sat his immediate superior, police assistant Stridh, who was almost twice Oredsson’s age and went by the name Peace at Any Price among his older colleagues. Ever since they started their beat two hours ago his thoughts had focused exclusively on the plump sausage with mashed potatoes, cucumber-and-shrimp salad, mustard, and ketchup that would provide at least temporary relief from his miserable existence. Now he could smell it, but in the struggle over the microphone that was placed between him and Oredsson he had, of course, lost.

“Two thirty-five here. We’re listening,” answered Oredsson. Energetic and alert as always.

…

Approximately at the same time as the retired lawyer contacted the female radio operator at the police department’s command center, police superintendent Lars M. Johansson (“M” for Martin), head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, stepped out through the entryway of his residence on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan in Södermalm. Johansson disappeared down the street with brisk steps and in an excellent mood, en route to his first date with a woman who he knew was lovely to look at and in all likelihood nice to talk with as well. This would take place in a neighborhood restaurant nearby with food both excellent and reasonably priced. Outside it was a cold and starry evening without the least fleck of snow on the streets and sidewalks; all in all an almost ideal combination for a person who wanted to keep his head clear, his spirits high, and his feet dry.

Lars Martin Johansson was a solitary man. In the legal sense he had been so since the day almost ten years ago when his first, and so far only, wife left him, took their two children with her, and moved in with a new man, to a new life in a new house. In a spiritual sense he had been solitary his entire life, in spite of the fact that he’d grown up with six siblings and two parents who had met more than fifty years ago, were still married to each other, and would remain so until death did them part. In Johansson’s case, loneliness was not something inherited. It wasn’t security, intimacy, and companionship that he lacked when he was growing up. Those had been there to excess and were still to be had, if that was what he wanted, but when as an adult he started to ransack his consciousness for happy memories from his childhood, the only ones he found were times when he’d been left entirely in peace. When he stood alone on the stage, the only actor in the piece, by himself.

It would be quite an understatement to maintain that Johansson felt at home in his solitude. According to conventional models of human coexistence, it was considerably worse than that. Solitude was the necessary prerequisite for Johansson to function, in the ordinary human sense of shaping the days into a respectable life or in the purely professional sense of acquitting oneself well before other people without consideration for family and friends and feelings in the most general sense. In that respect, his wife’s having left him and taken the children with her made existence almost ideal.

Two years after the divorce his then seven-year-old daughter had given him an LP record, A Single Man by Elton John, for Christmas. Apart from feeling his heart wrench as he read the words on the cover, he saw evidence of unusual human insight for someone her age. As an adult she would either become very strong and independent or else run the risk of being crushed under her own insight.

What disturbed the whole equation-this secure, controlled, predictable life-was his interest in women: their scent, their soft skin, the hollow in the neck between the hairline and the slender throat. It sought him out in dreams at night when he couldn’t defend himself other than by rolling the sheets into a sweaty cord in the middle of the bed; it sought him out in broad daylight; awake, sober, and clearheaded, he would twist his neck out of its socket for a regal posture and a pair of tanned legs he would never see again.

Now a specific example of this interest of his was sitting half an arm’s length away at the same table in a neighborhood restaurant where excellent food was served at a very reasonable price. He had met her two days earlier when he gave a lecture to a group of police chiefs with a legal education on the operation of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Now she was eating her pasta with shellfish and mushrooms with evident enjoyment, which made him happy. It was a good sign. If a woman poked at her food, it was a bad indication of something other than food.

The first time they talked to each other was at the break between the two hours of his lecture. About the obvious tedium of staying at a hotel in Stockholm when your life, home, and friends were in Sundsvall. Then to the point.

“If you don’t have anything better to do on Friday evening, there’s a very good restaurant in my neighborhood.” Johansson nodded, looking down into his white plastic coffee cup. His Norrland dialect was somewhat more marked than usual.

“I thought you’d never dare ask. Where, when, and how?”

Now she was sitting there, half an arm’s length away.

I really ought to say something about my solitude, thought Johansson. Warn her, in case I become really fond of her and she of me.

“Pasta, olive oil, basil, tomato, shellfish, and a little mushroom. What’s wrong with potato pancakes and fried bacon? I was brought up on that kind of thing.”

Johansson nodded and laid down his fork. “I think you know. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

She had set aside her fork and looked rather charmed.

Okay, thought Johansson. Shook his head and tilted his wineglass.

“I don’t have the faintest idea. I’m a simple country boy. Tell me about it.”

Seven minutes past eight, only two minutes after they’d responded to the alarm, Stridh and Oredsson arrived at the scene. Oredsson had driven in on the walkway that ran above the parking lot parallel to Valhallavägen, and before he stopped the car he turned on the searchlights. A few yards in front of the car sat an older man in a peaked cap and dark coat. He was rocking his upper body; in his arms he was hugging a dog that looked like a small German shepherd. He didn’t seem to have even noticed their arrival. Some ten yards farther away, exactly at the border between the walkway and the grassy area leading to the nearby wall of the building, lay a lifeless body. Around the head a pool of blood with a radius of close to half a yard shone like melted pewter in the beam of the headlights.

“I can check if he’s alive.” Oredsson looked inquiringly at Stridh while he was undoing his seat belt.

“If you think it’s unpleasant I can do it.” Stridh nodded with a certain emphasis. He was still the boss.

Oredsson shook his head and opened the car door.

“It’s okay. I’ve seen much worse, actually.”

Stridh contented himself with nodding. Didn’t ask where a twenty-four-year-old police trainee might have picked up such experience.

It must have been somewhere. When he reported to the command center a few minutes later he was concise and clear and his voice didn’t sound the least bit shaken. At the scene was a dead male, therefore an ambulance was not needed. Judging by the extensive injuries and the position of the body it appeared most probable that the male in question had fallen or jumped from one of the upper floors in the adjacent apartment building, a high-rise of at least twenty stories that contained student apartments and for unclear reasons was named the Rosehip. There was a witness at the scene, an older man who had been out walking his dog. His colleague Stridh had just spoken with him. It would be great if they could send someone from the after-hours unit plus a technician. Meanwhile, Oredsson would set up the cordon around the dead body, but no other reinforcements were required, in any event not at the present time.

“Yes. That’s the situation,” concluded Oredsson. I’m not going to bother saying anything about the mutt being dead too, he thought.

Police Inspector Bäckström was sitting in the break room at the after-hours unit, staring at the TV; up until now everything had gone well. For a Friday evening it had been unusually calm, and when the riot squad had carried in a street brawler half an hour earlier, Bäckström had seen what was coming and managed to sneak into the restroom. One of his colleagues would have to take care of that piece of crap. A gook, of course, and just as messy as those types always were.

Normally Bäckström worked with the homicide squad, but because he was always in financial straits, he was forced to work a great deal of overtime. True, only fools slaved at the after-hours unit on a Friday evening, but three days before payday he had no choice. Everything had gone fine-up until now, that is, when the chief inspector on duty stood in the door looking just as surly as usual while staring urgently at Bäckström.

“I’ve got a corpse for you, Bäckström. Seems to be lying on the walkway below that student skyscraper above the parking lot at Valhallavägen and Frejgatan. I’ve talked with Wiijnbladh at tech. You can ride with him.”

Bäckström lightened up a little and nodded. A do-it-yourselfer, he thought. One of those student reds who jumped because he didn’t get his welfare on time. I’ve still got a good chance to finish my shift before the bars close.

…

It took a good long while before Bäckström and Wiijnbladh showed up-a do-it-yourselfer wasn’t going to run away from you, and an extra cup of coffee was never a bad thing-but neither Stridh nor Oredsson had been idle. Oredsson had cordoned off the area around the place where the body was lying. At the criminal technology course at school he’d learned that police officers almost always cordoned off too small an area, so he’d used a little extra and the blue-and-white-striped barricade tape was neatly stretched between suitable light posts and trees. A few curiosity seekers had arrived while he was doing that, but after a quick look at the dead body all of them had turned and gone away. He had of course not touched the body. He’d learned that in the same course.

In the meantime Stridh consoled Vindel. After some coaxing he had persuaded him to sit in the backseat of the car, allowing him to bring the dog with him. They had also helped wrap the mutt in Stridh’s own blanket, which he always brought with him on long nighttime work shifts, for reasons that he shared with no one. There was a plastic sheet in the car that was usually spread out in the backseat when they transported drunks, but that was nothing you would wrap a dead body in, especially not in sight of a near relation.

“His name is Charlie,” Vindel explained with tears in his eyes. “He’s a Pomeranian, although I think there’s a little foxhound in him too. He turned thirteen last summer but he’s a frisky rascal.”

Vindel snuffled and fell silent while Stridh squeezed his shoulder. After that he began his initial questioning.

“Vindel” was not his real name. He was just called that. His name was Gustav Adolf Nilsson; he was born in 1930 and had come to Stockholm in 1973 to go to a retraining course at AMS-an unemployed construction worker from Norrland and that’s the way it remained, for he never got a new job.

“It was my buddies at the course,” Vindel explained. “You see, I was born and raised in those parts and we talked quite a lot about how it was at home. So then it became Vindel. As in the Vindel River, you know?”

Stridh nodded. He knew.

Vindel explained that he and Charlie lived nearby, two floors above the courtyard at Surbrunnsgatan 4. After they’d eaten their dinner and before it was time to watch the evening news on TV, they would take their usual evening walk. They always took the same route. First across Valhallavägen at the intersection with Surbrunnsgatan, then the walkway parallel to Valhallavägen down to Roslagstull, where they would turn and walk home again. If it was nice weather, however, they might walk farther.

On the slope below the Rosehip dormitory Charlie had one of his favorite trees, so that’s where they would take their first lengthy stop.

“It’s important that they have time to nose around properly,” Vindel explained. “For a dog that’s like reading the newspaper.”

Just as they were standing there and Charlie was reading his newspaper, Charlie had suddenly raised his head and looked straight up along the façade of the building. Suddenly Vindel was thrown backward with a powerful jerk of the leash.

“I was just about knocked to the ground. If Charlie hadn’t looked up and pulled me to the side, that damn thing would’ve hit me right in the skull and I wouldn’t be sitting here now.” Vindel nodded emphatically.

“Do you believe that he heard some sound that he reacted to?” Stridh made a mark in his notebook.

“Naw.” Vindel shook his head with even greater emphasis. “He’s completely deaf in both ears. It must have been that sixth sense they have. Certain Pomeranians have it. A sixth sense.”

Stridh nodded but said nothing.

If Charlie had had a sixth sense, it had in any case failed immediately afterward, when the victim’s downward-falling left shoe struck him in the neck and killed him on the spot.

“This is too terrible,” Vindel said, and he started snuffling again. “We’re standing there, Charlie and I, looking at the damn thing, and suddenly his shoe comes falling.”

“It came right after the body?” Stridh asked.

“Naw, not really. We stood there and watched. It took a good while.”

“A minute, two minutes?”

“Naw. Not a minute, it didn’t take that long, but it probably took ten, twenty seconds in all. It took that long.”

“Ten to twenty seconds, you say. You don’t think it could have been even shorter?”

“Well. I’m sure maybe it feels longer when you’re standing like that, but probably it took quite a few seconds.”

Vindel snuffled audibly and blew his nose in his hand.

…

While Stridh was talking with Vindel, Oredsson took the opportunity to use his blue eyes. He discovered the shoe immediately; it was lying only a few yards from the body and probably belonged to the victim, as he was missing a left shoe and the right shoe, which was still on his foot, was suspiciously like the one lying on the incline. For a moment he considered fetching a plastic bag from the car and placing the shoe in it, of course at the same spot and in the same position where it was now lying, but he abandoned that thought. In the course on criminal technology, nothing in particular had been said about the handling of shoes, but because he assumed that it should be handled like a clue in general, he let it lie where it was. There was nothing in either the weather conditions or the surrounding environment to justify a departure from the golden rule in the form of so-called special clue-securing measures.

So be it, thought Oredsson, and felt quite pleased with his decision. He would go with the golden rule about touching as few things as possible and leaving the search to the technicians.

Instead he proceeded to inspect the façade along an imagined vertical line from the place where the body had landed straight up the building. Somewhere on the fifteenth or sixteenth floor-the building foundation was on a slope, which made him uncertain how best to calculate-a window appeared to be standing open despite the cold. Approximately fifty yards’ vertical drop, thought Oredsson-who was the best shot in his class and a crackerjack at judging distance-which agreed rather well with the deplorable condition of the corpse. Oredsson looked at his watch. A good half hour had elapsed since the command center promised to send the after-hours unit and technician. What are they up to? thought Oredsson with irritation.

Bäckström was small, fat, and crude, while Wiijnbladh was small, slender, and dapper, and together they complemented each other splendidly. They were also happy working together. Bäckström thought that Wiijnbladh was a cowardly half fairy-you didn’t even need to raise your voice, he still did what he was told. Wiijnbladh, in turn, viewed Bäckström as mentally challenged and bad-tempered-a pure dream to work with for anyone who preferred having complete control of the situation. Because they were both solidly incompetent, no disagreements arose either on factual or other professional grounds, and to sum up, they made a real radar unit.

Exactly one hour after they received the assignment, they were on the walkway below the Rosehip, although in all fairness it should be noted that at this time of day it takes almost ten minutes to drive from the police station on Kungsholmen to the parking lot right in front of the intersection of Valhallavägen and Frejgatan, where they had chosen to position their car.

“What the hell is this?” said Bäckström, tugging crossly at the barricade tape in front of the corpse. “Have we landed in some damn war or what?” He fixed his eyes on both his uniformed colleagues.

“It’s a barricade tape,” Oredsson answered calmly. His blue and strangely pale eyes scrutinized Bäckström. He stood motionless with legs wide apart and with his burly arms hanging by his sides. “There’s a whole roll in the car if you need more.”

My God, what a sick bastard, thought Bäckström. That’s not a policeman; he looks like he’s acting in some old Nazi movie. What gives? Are they letting them into the corps nowadays? He decided to quickly change the subject.

“There was supposed to be a witness here. Where the hell has he taken off to?” He glared crossly at the two in uniform.

“I drove him home half an hour ago,” answered the older, considerably fatter clod, who was standing next to the younger Nazi type. “He was in a bit of shock and wanted to go home; I’ve already talked with him. I have the name and address if you want to question him again.”

“It’ll work out; it’ll work out,” said Wiijnbladh diplomatically. “Without getting ahead of ourselves, I think this looks suspiciously like a suicide. Did you gentlemen know, by the way, that there are twenty suicides for every murder in this city?”

Judging by the shaking of their heads, they didn’t seem to be aware of that fact, nor particularly interested in pursuing the matter further.

“There’s a window standing wide open on the fifteenth or possibly the sixteenth floor, depending on how you calculate.” Oredsson pointed up toward the façade of the building. “It’s been standing open since we got here. Despite the cold.”

“But that sounds just great,” answered Wiijnbladh with genuine warmth in his voice. “My good men, let’s take a look at the corpse. Maybe if we’re lucky he has something in his pockets. Hurry down and get my camera.” Wiijnbladh nodded encouragingly toward Oredsson. “It’s in the backseat. Bring the bag from the trunk too.”

Oredsson nodded without answering. In due course we’ll take care of your type, he thought, but for the time being I’m only a simple soldier and it’s a matter of placing yourself in the ranks without being noticed. But in due course…

Something doesn’t add up, thought Johansson. He had talked about Italian food, about a recent long trip to Southeast Asia, and in answer to a direct question, he had told her about his growing up in Norrland. He had done so in a quiet and humorous way, and for anyone who could read between the lines it was obvious that Lars Martin Johansson was educated, talented, and pleasant, successful, with money in the bank, and-most important of all-unmarried and unattached as well as highly capable in the purely physical relations between man and woman.

His dinner guest seemed both pleased and interested, the signals she gave were clear enough, but still something didn’t add up. She had responded by sharing her own background: daughter of an attorney in Östersund, mother a housewife, one older and one younger sister, studied law in Uppsala, practiced for a time with the prosecutor’s office, became interested in police work and applied to police chief training. For anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear with it was quite obvious that she was beautiful and educated, talented and pleasant, and certainly a very agreeable partner in the purely physical relations between woman and man.

You’ve got a guy, thought Johansson, and the reason you don’t want to talk about it is that you’re a bit too well-brought-up, a bit too conventional, and a bit too inclined to bet on the sure thing. You could imagine a discreet affair, but if you should venture beyond that, you’d first want to be sure you were going to get more out of it in the end than you already have.

Johansson could certainly imagine a discreet affair-he had even carried out one or two-but when it concerned female police officers there were obvious complications. Almost all female police officers went out with male police officers, and because there were ten men to every woman within the corps, the pressure from the demand side was both huge and insatiable. Johansson’s oldest brother was a property owner and car dealer. He was rich, shrewd, uneducated, and crude and could see right through both friends and foes. Once Johansson had teased him about his beautiful blonde secretary. Well? What was the real story?

“Let me give you some good advice.” His older brother looked at him seriously. “You should never shit where you eat.”

High time for a so-called table-turning, thought Johansson. Such a tactic might work even on hardened criminals, so there was really no reason why it shouldn’t work on a female interim police superintendent from Sundsvall as well.

“A completely different matter,” said Johansson with a relaxed smile. “How’s it going with your guy nowadays? I haven’t seen him for a long time.”

She took it well. Concealed her surprise nicely, with the help of the wineglass. Looked at him and smiled with a little worried wrinkle on her forehead.

“I’m sure things are going well with him. I didn’t know that you knew each other.”

“Did he get that job he applied for?” countered Johansson, who wanted to quickly feel solid ground under his feet.

“Do you mean as assistant county police chief?” No more wrinkle.

Johansson nodded.

“He started last summer. He’s as happy as a fish in water. I don’t know if that’s due to the distance between Växjö and Sundsvall… I can’t really say that it has exactly contributed to developing our relationship, but perhaps that was the idea.” Now she smiled again.

“We don’t know each other that well.” Johansson raised his glass. How can you stay with that idiot? he thought.

…

On the walkway below the dormitory Bäckström and Wiijnbladh speedily and vigorously began their investigation of the cause of death. First Wiijnbladh flashed off a few photos toward the dead body and as soon as he lowered the camera and started mumbling something inaudibly into a little pocket tape recorder, Bäckström started rooting through the corpse’s clothing. This was quickly done. The body was dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and over that a dark-gray V-neck pullover, on the right foot a sock and a powerful bootlike shoe, on the left foot only a sock. In the right side pocket of the jeans Bäckström found a wallet. He looked through the contents while he smacked his lips with delight.

“Come here, boys, and see.” Bäckström waved toward Stridh and Oredsson. “I believe we have an investigative breakthrough in the making.”

Bäckström held up a plastic ID card with photo.

“John P. Krassner… b period… that probably means ‘borned’… July fifteen one thousand nine hundred fifty-three,” Bäckström read in bad English. John P. Krassner, born July 15, 1953, he translated with satisfaction. “Obviously some damn American who decided to close up shop. Some damn professional student who lost his way in all those books.”

Stridh and Oredsson contented themselves with nodding neutrally, but Bäckström didn’t give up. He leaned forward and held up the ID card against the head of the body. Clearly it was the head that had taken the first impact against the ground. It appeared to have been crushed diagonally from above, from the crown toward the chin; face and hair were covered with dried blood, the face pressed together and the facial features impossible to make out. Bäckström grinned delightedly.

“What do you say, boys? I’d say they’re as alike as two peas.”

Stridh made a grimace of displeasure but said nothing. Oredsson stared at Bäckström without changing expression. Swine, he thought.

“Okay.” Bäckström straightened up and looked at his watch. Already 9:30, he thought. Now it was crucial to put the machinery in motion. “If you boys see to it that we get the corpse on its way to the coroner’s office, then Wiijnbladh and I will take a look at that apartment.”

“What do we do with the shoe?” wondered Oredsson.

“Put it in a bag and send it with the body,” Wiijnbladh said before Bäckström had time to say anything and create unnecessary problems. “And since you’ll be talking with the dispatcher anyway… see to it that they send someone here from the street department who’ll clean up.”

“Exactly,” Bäckström agreed. “It looks like hell. And you”-he looked at Oredsson-“don’t forget to take that fucking barricade with you.”

“Sure,” Oredsson said, and nodded. One day I’m going to get you in town for drunkenness, he thought. And when you start messing around and whining that you’re a policeman I’ll stuff a whole roll of tape up your rear end. “Goes without saying.” Oredsson smiled, and nodded at Bäckström, “Remove the barricade. I got it, sir.”

That guy is not all there, thought Bäckström. God help you if you were an average citizen and met up with that idiot.

According to the bulletin board in the lobby, the room behind the open window was on the sixteenth floor: one of eight student rooms along the same corridor and with a common kitchen. In spite of the fact that it was Friday evening, the command center managed to get hold of the building superintendent, who was sitting in his little office in an adjacent building only a hundred yards from there. He sighed-it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened-and promised to show up in a jiffy. Five minutes later he was opening the corridor door to the area where the room was. He pointed at the door in question and gave the key to Wiijnbladh.

“You’ll get along fine without me, won’t you?” he asked rhetorically. “I want the key back when you’re through.”

It was Wiijnbladh who opened. Inside the door was a coat closet and to the right a bathroom with a shower. Straight ahead a smaller room where the only window was wide open. Altogether it might amount to at the most sixty square feet.

“You may as well talk to his neighbors while I take a few pictures.” Wiijnbladh looked inquiringly at Bäckström.

Bäckström nodded in agreement. This suited him fine. It was cold as an Eskimo’s asshole in there and damned if he was going to get pneumonia on account of a crazy window jumper.

While Wiijnbladh took his pictures Bäckström’s luck continued to hold. He looked in the kitchen-empty-and, to be on the safe side, in the refrigerator. Nothing appeared especially tempting, however, and the milk cartons, plastic-wrapped cucumbers, and various cans with contents unknown were all labeled with the names of students. My God, what pigs, thought Bäckström. Not even a beer or a soda for a thirsty policeman. He knocked and tried all the doors. They were locked, and if there was anyone home, he or she clearly didn’t intend to open the door in any event. Luck was still on his side.

The room was small, untidy, and sparsely furnished, with the standard assortment of worn-out furniture: a bed, a nightstand, a wall-mounted bed lamp, in the opposite corner a simple reading chair with a floor lamp, toward the window wall a bookshelf, and on the other side of the window a desk and a chair.

“Damn, what a cozy place he has,” said Bäckström.

People who didn’t work, students for example, shouldn’t have food or a roof over their head, but if necessary he could tolerate this. The present occupant didn’t seem to have settled in for a long stay, and he didn’t seem to be especially orderly. The personal effects were few: a suitcase, a few clothes, some books with titles in English. On the unmade bed was a short quilted jacket, under the bed a pair of well-worn shoes. It was no opium den, but if the person who was living here didn’t pull himself together it would soon be a lot like one.

The desk was the most organized. There were papers and envelopes, pens, paper clips, an eraser, and a few cassettes with colored ribbon for the handy little portable electric typewriter that was placed in the middle of the desk. In addition a paper with a text in English was sitting in the typewriter cylinder, only a half dozen lines but revealing enough for a pro like Wiijnbladh.

“If I were to summarize,” Wiijnbladh began with a contented expression, “I think probably all we have seen speaks for a suicide. If you see the window there,” Wiijnbladh pointed toward the now-closed window, where the broken window catch lay on the floor below, “you see that he has broken the catch loose. Otherwise it can only be opened a few inches. If you want to air out or something.”

Bäckström nodded contentedly. Wiijnbladh was certainly a long-winded bastard, but this sounded like music to his ears.

“Yes, and then you have the message he left in the typewriter. It’s in English and I would definitely say that it exudes a great weariness with life, a sort of…”

Wiijnbladh looked for words, but since his knowledge of English was limited, to put it mildly, it wasn’t all that easy.

“Yes, a typical suicide note, quite simply.” Wiijnbladh nodded with extra emphasis.

Bäckström nodded too. They were in the same boat, after all, so he could grant him that. “Yes, then we mustn’t forget the front door. It was locked from inside,” he said.

“Certainly.” Wiijnbladh nodded. With a common, patented catch, he thought. How stupid can you really be?

“Okay then. I think we’re about done here.” Bäckström looked at his watch. It was only a quarter past ten, and if he hurried back to the after-hours unit he should even have time to call the old man with the dog who’d seen him jump-that little extra concluding detail that was the mark of a completely unobjectionable investigation-and soon he’d be sitting in the bar, enjoying a well-earned beer.

Johansson and his companion had left the restaurant in the good spirits that naturally arise when certain not entirely simple decisions have been postponed while at the same time possibilities for choice still remain. They walked together to her hotel down by Slussen, and Johansson wasn’t hard to convince when she suggested a last beer in the hotel bar.

“The course ends in a week. Any chance you’ll show up then?” The tensions had relaxed. She sat leaning forward. She smiled and lightly drew her nails over the back of Johansson’s right hand. She herself had narrow, strong hands.

Johansson shook his head regretfully.

“In a week I’ll be sitting on a plane to the U.S. I’m going to meet a lot of people from Interpol and the FBI.” Johansson gave a faint sigh. Sometimes I wonder if there’s someone up there who’s actively out to get me, or if I’m just bad at planning.

She sighed too. “You certainly are leading a boring life. I’m going to a course in Härnösand with our civilian employees. It’s going to be really exciting.” Now she smiled again.

Johansson saw the opportunity and laced his hand into hers. Just lightly, though, very lightly. Skin touching skin. No pressure.

“I’m going to buy something nice for you as a Christmas present. Something we don’t have here.”

“A solid gold sheriff’s badge?” She giggled and squeezed his hand harder.

“Yes,” said Johansson. “Or perhaps one of those blue baseball caps that say FBI.”

Bäckström was still at the after-hours unit despite the fact that it was half an hour past midnight, and he was sour as vinegar. Wiijnbladh and he had sealed the door to the do-it-yourselfer’s room before ten-thirty, and by dawn next day the whole sorry story would be lying on the desk of the officer in charge at Östermalm. Real policemen like him and Wiijnbladh shouldn’t be involved with this kind of shit. The peasant police in the local precincts could deal with it.

Everything had gone like a charm, and they were just about to close the door to the corridor when that damn black guy had shown up together with some Swedish student whore with purple lipstick, and you didn’t have to be a policeman to figure out what the two of them had in mind. He’d also been obstinate in some incoherent African English. He refused to move and wanted to know what the hell they were doing in his corridor. Bäckström’s only thought was to bypass the piece of shit and take the elevator down, although he really ought to have called for a patrol car with two types like Oredsson in it, but naturally the coward Wiijnbladh got involved. He had shown his ID and started negotiating with the gook in his own lousy English. Then the whore had interfered too, partly in Swedish and partly in English, and the misery had broken loose in earnest. He couldn’t have taken his own life, he was a really fine guy, not the least bit depressed, blah blah blah.

Finally Bäckström had been forced to crack down. He’d told them to call on Monday, and to be on the safe side he’d given them the name and extension of a colleague in the bureau who was almost always on sick leave this time of year because of his severe alcohol problem. They were finally able to drive away after a quarter hour of his life had gone down the toilet.

When at last he sat down behind his desk to tie up all the loose threads in this sorry story, it was time for the next lunatic. That fat clod Stridh clearly had his work orders turned upside down and had submitted an interrogation with the witness. Two closely spaced typewritten pages, for something you could be done with in ten lines, and completely incomprehensible throughout. According to the witness, the early retired Gustav Adolf Nilsson, it was clearly not he but his mutt who had heard that lunatic Krassner jump out the window. The same mutt who, despite his good hearing, had been killed by a mysteriously falling shoe.

What do you mean, early-retired? thought Bäckström. Social Swedish for a drunk who didn’t want to pay his way, but was still able to cheat the pants off some naïve socialist bastard at the unemployment office. Up yours, thought Bäckström as he dialed Vindel’s home number.

A quarter of an hour later the whole thing was signed, sealed, and delivered, as always when a real pro was at work. Bäckström pulled the report from the cylinder of the typewriter and made corrections with his ballpoint pen while he read the brief, clarifying text, in which, by the way, there was not the least trace of an as yet unburied dog.

“Upon questioning by telephone the witness Nilsson states the following in summary. Circa 19:50 the witness found himself below the student dormitory the Rosehip on Körsbärsvägen. The witness states that at that point he became aware of a sound from one of the upper stories of the building. When he looked up he observed the body of a male person who had jumped out of a window, fallen straight down along the façade of the building, and struck the ground only a few yards from the place where the witness was standing. The witness has had this questioning read to him by telephone and has approved it.”

The last was a complete lie, but because Nilsson was hardly the type who recorded his telephone conversations with the police, no damage was done. In addition, the old fart had sounded completely confused when Bäckström was talking with him. He ought to be grateful that someone helped him put the pieces in place, thought Bäckström, while he put the papers into a plastic sleeve and applied a handwritten slip of paper for the officer in charge at Östermalm.

Bäckström looked at the clock. Five past one but still there was no great hurry. There was even time to carry out a little idea he’d had while he wrote out the interview with Nilsson. A stitch in time, thought Bäckström, as he folded up his overcoat and hid it in an empty binder that he’d found on the bookshelf. Bäckström took the binder under his arm and the plastic sleeve in his other hand, sneaked out to reception, and placed the plastic sleeve farthest down in the pile in the Östermalm police in-box. After that he stuck his head in through the door to the on-duty chief inspector’s office.

“It’s about that suicide you sent me out on.” Bäckström nodded toward the binder, which he was carrying under his arm.

“Are there any problems?” The on-duty chief inspector wrinkled his brow.

“No. It’s completely clear that it’s a suicide, but it concerns an American citizen and that can be sensitive, you know. There are a few things I was thinking about checking in the register.”

“What’s the problem?” The on-duty chief inspector looked inquiringly at him, but the wrinkle in his brow was gone.

“I was thinking about overtime. I should have gone off duty more than an hour ago.”

“It’s okay. Put down whatever time it takes.”

I’ll be damned, thought the on-duty chief inspector, looking after Bäckström’s quickly vanishing backside. Of all the chiselers. Maybe he’s gotten religion, he thought, but at the same moment the phone rang and he had other things to think about.

Finally free, thought Bäckström as he slipped out through the gate to Kungsholmsgatan and set out toward the bar. He tossed the empty binder into the nearest garbage can.

…

At midnight Lars Martin Johansson was already in his bed on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan, listening to the bells ring in Maria Church. A nice-looking woman, he thought. She was nice to talk with too, although a police officer, of course. Wonder if she’s married to that idiot in Växjö or if they only live together? You can’t have it all, thought Johansson and sighed. Or can you? Perhaps you can have it all? This new thought cheered him up markedly. Tomorrow was a new day, he thought, and then perhaps he would have it all? Johansson stretched out his arm and turned out the bed lamp, lay on his right side with his arm under the pillow, and within a few minutes he was sleeping as soundly as he always did.

Vindel was standing in the parlor. He’d lifted Charlie’s basket up onto the oak table by the window. He stroked the soft fur and Charlie lay as quietly as if he were sleeping. Tomorrow he would arrange the funeral. Time will tell, thought Vindel, although just now it didn’t feel so merry. He wiped away a tear with the back of his hand. Best to open the window a little, he thought. Pomeranians don’t like it when it gets too warm.

Police Assistant Stridh had gone home directly after his shift. Made himself a substantial and nutritious sandwich, topped with a well-considered mixture of the goodies to be found in his generously supplied refrigerator. Plus a cold beer. Now he was lying on the sofa in his living room, reading Winston Churchill’s biography of his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough. It was in four volumes and almost three thousand pages long, but because he didn’t need to be at work before Monday afternoon he had all the time in the world. A great man, thought Stridh, in contrast to that mustache-wearing lunatic who tried to set the whole world on fire and would just about have succeeded if it hadn’t been for old Winston. Strange that he wasn’t a bachelor, thought Stridh, while he made himself comfortable on the couch and looked up the place in the second volume where he’d stopped reading the last time he’d gone off duty.

…

His young colleague Oredsson had changed into workout clothes after his shift and gone straight down to the gym in the cellar. There the lights were always off this time of day; lifting weights after completed service had become like a purifying bath for him. It helped him to arrange all the new impressions and experiences into a larger context. He’d understood from the first day that it was foreigners who were responsible for almost all crimes being committed in today’s Sweden, but how could the problem itself be solved? Just sending them home, which would have been the simplest, was unthinkable in the current political climate. But what should be done instead, and how could they achieve a political climate in which necessary changes would even become possible? That was worth thinking about, thought Oredsson, and discussing with trusted colleagues. Because he had also understood on that first day that he was not alone.

At home in his bedroom Wiijnbladh lay and masturbated while he thought about what his wife had been doing that night. He’d figured out several years ago that she wasn’t out with her girlfriends. Then he’d borrowed a service car and followed her. She had gone straight home to a recently divorced colleague out in Älvsjö, and because the lights in his apartment were turned out almost immediately you didn’t need to be a policeman to understand that this wasn’t a first visit. He had remained sitting there half the night in the cold car while he stared at the black windows and thoughts were coursing like tracers in his head. Then he’d driven home, never said a word on the subject, and never showed by his expression what he knew and thought.

He didn’t know where and with whom she was tonight. She wasn’t with his colleague in Älvsjö in any event, for he’d hanged himself half a year ago, and it was Wiijnbladh who’d had the exquisite pleasure of cutting him down from the pipe in the ceiling of the laundry room where he’d secured the rope. A heavy duty, even for the hardened investigators on the tech squad. But necessary, and Wiijnbladh had volunteered.

How could something that started so well end so damn badly? thought Bäckström, staring drunkenly down into the beer glass that he’d succeeded in grabbing hold of at the bar while the rightful owner was out on the dance floor. He’d gone to a place with good prospects down on Kungsgatan that was mostly frequented by police and an assortment of firemen, security guards, and ambulance drivers. Plus a hellish lot of hospital orderlies, and for a scarred champion like himself the competition hardly seemed overwhelming.

Everything had started perfectly too. He had run into a younger officer from the bureau in Farsta who wanted to get onto the homicide squad at any price and had also gotten the idea that Bäckström was the right man to arrange the matter. Two paltry beers he’d paid for, that stingy bastard, so he could forget that business with homicide. Then he’d encountered a fat Finnish woman he’d screwed last summer. She was working as a bedpan changer at Sabbatsberg hospital and lived in a filthy three-room apartment far out in hell somewhere in the southern suburbs. Single mother of course; he could still feel the LEGO pieces crunching under the soles of his feet when he slipped out the following morning. She clearly also had a faulty memory, for despite the previous visit, he had succeeded in borrowing a twenty from her. He also got a wet kiss on the cheek, but now even she had taken off. The only people remaining in the almost empty place were a bunch of drunks plus a worn-down hag who’d fallen asleep on a couch.

What a fucking society, what fucking people, and what a fucking life they’re living, thought Bäckström. The only thing you could hope for was a really juicy murder so you got something substantial to bite into.

[SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23]

Police Inspector Bo Jarnebring of the Stockholm Police Department’s central surveillance squad was not one to work on a Saturday if he had the choice, but for the past fourteen days such an option had been considerably reduced: He’d started a new job as chief inspector and head of the local detective unit with the Östermalm police. It was a temporary appointment, to be sure, and, he hoped, only for a short time, but everyone around him had nonetheless been greatly surprised. Jarnebring was generally known as the direct opposite of a careerist; he always spit upward and seldom missed an opportunity to chew out both bosses and semi-bosses. In addition, his work as a detective was perhaps the most important part of his identity. He had worked with the central surveillance squad for more than fifteen years, and he held an unquestioned conviction that, as far as his life as a policeman was concerned, he couldn’t imagine anything better than to live and die that way.

A month ago he and a number of colleagues within the surveillance operation had taken the Finland ferry to Helsinki for a work conference. These meetings had long been a tradition and a necessary, recurring element of the planning that must take place, even within so-called surveillance, all the bohemian and impressionistic aspects of the occupation aside.

As always, it had been pleasant. Nothing but known quantities and guys you could trust. In the morning criminals old and new had been discussed, the usual heroic stories had been told, after which the proceedings were interrupted for a generously ample lunch, something which of course had been taken into account when the afternoon program had been determined. Among the invitees was the head of the detective unit of the Östermalm police, who would recount a few varied experiences from the local surveillance operation. He was a white man, a funny S.O.B., and despite the fact that he had departed from the true doctrine he was still an old detective in heart and soul. As the first item on the program after lunch he was absolutely perfect. He was a very entertaining lecturer, and afterward you could never remember a word he’d said. What the whole thing was about was actually something else: getting to meet friends and colleagues under somewhat more easygoing conditions, and perhaps having the opportunity during the evening to discuss something other than old crooks.

This time, unfortunately, things had really gone south. In the wee hours the elite few who were still standing on two feet had gathered in the conference leaders’ cabin for a last round, and to make a long and nowadays thoroughly hushed-up story short, Jarnebring had torn the Achilles tendon of the chief of the Östermalm police detective unit. For the latter was not only an entertaining lecturer; he was also known as a strongman and past master at both arm-wrestling and Indian wrestling. Jarnebring was the last one standing, the same Jarnebring who twenty-five years earlier used to run the second leg of the short relay in the Finnish Games and had made it a habit never to give up.

The official version was somewhat different: During the day’s concluding remarks, one of the lecturers unfortunately happened to twist his ankle when he stood to summarize the discussion up at the blackboard. Everyone had of course been completely sober, but because the rough sea had been annoying at times, misfortune nonetheless managed to rear its ugly head. A typical injury in the line of duty, therefore, which was some consolation at least if you were forced to go around in a cast for a few months.

Jarnebring was a man who lived by simple and obvious rules. Discretion was a matter of honor. If you got involved in something, you made a point of cleaning up after yourself, and when it really counted was when your buddies were involved. Therefore, for the past fourteen days, he had been filling in as head of the local detective unit with the Östermalm police and that was that.

Unfortunately, however, this had affected his life. His most recent girlfriend, who worked as a uniformed police officer at Norrmalm, had left early in the morning on a sudden call to duty, so he could forget that type of activity. Exercising was not an option either, for you did that sort of thing while on duty, and as an old elite athlete he knew the value of holding yourself to a carefully determined exercise schedule. Paying a call on his plaster-casted colleague in misfortune was also out of the question. He had taken his wife along and gone to a health resort in Värmland in order to rehabilitate himself in earnest, at the department’s expense.

After he showered, had breakfast, and leafed through the morning paper, it was still only nine o’clock, and ahead of him stretched an entirely free day, long as a marathon and hardly enticing for an old sprinter like Jarnebring. At that point he decided to call his best friend and former colleague, Police Superintendent Lars Martin Johansson, at the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. This decision had demanded a good deal of inner persuasion, for the last time they had met there had been a serious falling-out. Over a trifle, at that, a Yugoslav thug whom Jarnebring and his colleagues, with considerable effort and slightly unconventional methods, had finally succeeded in placing in the criminal detention center where he ought to have been from the very beginning. No big deal in itself, but Johansson, who had shown disturbing signs of wavering conviction since he’d left the field campaign against criminality to take it easy behind a series of ever-larger desks, had gone completely crazy, bawled him out, and marched off in the middle of a nice dinner.

One time doesn’t count, and I’m not one to dwell on the past, thought Jarnebring generously while he dialed his old friend and colleague’s home number. But no one answered, and before Jarnebring realized it, he was suddenly striding through the doors to the reception area at the Östermalm police station on Tulegatan. He nodded toward the officer in uniform who was sitting behind the counter and in turn nodded back.

“How’s it going?” asked Jarnebring. “Anything happened?”

The officer shook his head while he checked off his list. “A few car prowls, fistfights, and property damage at some bar over on Birger Jarlsgatan, an executive on Karlavägen who beat up his wife, although homicide should have taken care of that of course, yes.” He leafed through his papers. “Then we have a suicide too. Some crazy American who jumped from that student dormitory up on Valhallavägen.”

“American, from the U.S.?”

The officer in uniform nodded in confirmation.

“American citizen. Born in ’53, I believe. The papers are in your box. I got them from the after-hours unit this morning.”

Olle Hultman, thought Jarnebring and brightened up. It’ll soon be Christmas, after all.

Johansson had already been at work for more than an hour when Jarnebring phoned him at home. Christmas was drawing near, soon he would be changing jobs, and both old and new needed to be in order before then. I’m living in a time of change, he thought while he leafed through the pile of papers on his desk. First he had cleared up the final planning of his trip. This was something he was looking forward to. Flight from Stockholm to New York, direct connection to Washington, D.C., and after that pickup by car for transport to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Five-day-long conference on the most up-to-date methods in the struggle against the steadily increasing crime rate-that’s what it said in the program, anyway-and then back to New York, where he had the weekend free. Johansson was already rubbing his hands with delight. He liked New York. He’d been there once before. Undeniably certain differences compared to both Näsåker and Stockholm, but just right for a person who was trying to expand his awareness.

After that he started writing a statement in connection with the investigation of a triple murder in Stockholm’s southern suburbs just over a year before. The investigators and technicians of the Stockholm police had unfortunately missed two of the corpses. The third was lying in the building elevator, so they had found that one, but because the elevator was rather small the perpetrator had dumped the other two in the elevator shaft, and unfortunately it was the building superintendent who had found them a few days later. To make matters worse, the police department ombudsman got wind of the matter and for once he was so well informed that there was reason to suspect that a fifth columnist was running loose like a mad dog, striking wildly around himself in his own flock. He hadn’t been found either.

“It’s probably someone who feels he’s been passed over,” Wiijnbladh had suggested as they were having coffee at the technical squad, and all the officers had nodded in agreement. Even that idiot Olsson, who got the position as assistant head of the squad that Wiijnbladh should have had. If there had been any justice in this world.

The ombudsman had in turn requested a statement from the National Police Board: Could this be considered consistent with professional police work?

The chief of national police was a highly placed attorney with a background in government, and he didn’t know a thing about police work; nor did anyone around him, for that matter.

“Perhaps we should ask Johansson,” suggested the chief of national police. “They say he was something of a legend during his time at the bureau.” No one in the group had raised any objections whatsoever.

The chief of national police was delighted with Johansson. Not only was he a “real policeman,” he looked like a real policeman, and even spoke with a Norrland accent. In addition he was completely understandable both when he spoke and when he wrote. A remarkable man, the chief of national police had thought on more than one occasion. He even seemed… well… educated.

Johansson was completely unaware of these bureaucratic considerations as he plowed his way with a groan through the files that the Stockholm Police Department had handed over: a balancing act between the frying pan of collegiality and the fire of professionalism. Maybe I could make a joke of it, thought Johansson. The three victims were Turks, as was the perpetrator; what it concerned was what was summarized in police-speak as a showdown in narcotics circles. Turks, as was well known, tended to be small, dark, and hard to discover, especially in an elevator shaft. Here was an excellent occasion, after ten years’ absence, once again to share a front seat with Jarnebring and meet his other old comrades from surveillance. Johansson sighed, clasped his hands behind his head, and tipped his chair back. I have to weigh every word with the utmost care here, he thought.

Olle Hultman was an old detective, of course. What else would you expect? A detective of the really old school who not only knew every crook by name and number but also every tattoo on their needle-marked arms. When Jarnebring was new to surveillance, Olle Hultman had become his mentor, and the generally accepted opinion was that Hultman would live and die with his squad.

“When he’s been kicked out after retirement he’ll sit in the park outside the police station and feed the pigeons, and within half a year he’ll be dead,” his boss declared in confidence to Jarnebring. “So take the opportunity and learn. People like Olle don’t grow on trees.”

But his boss had been wrong. Completely wrong. Olle Hultman had taken the first opportunity for retirement at fifty-nine and immediately started working in the porter’s office at the American embassy. There he had soon made himself indispensable in matters both large and small; for several years now he had been the informal head of the embassy’s so-called cigar-and-delicatessen department. Regardless of what annoyances might afflict embassy personnel and American citizens on Swedish soil, Olle Hultman was the Right Man to deal with them. Olle knew absolutely everyone and everyone liked him. All police officers did of course, but in addition he had strategic contacts all the way from the coast guard and customs through the tax and enforcement authorities and down to the street department’s meter maids.

This time she’d come home at three-thirty in the morning and it took a good while before she came into the bedroom and crept into bed. Wiijnbladh pretended to sleep; by and by he must have done so for real. He woke up by eight o’clock and despite the lack of sleep he felt completely clear in the head. His wife slept deeply. She snored a little and had drooled on the pillow. I ought to kill her, thought Wiijnbladh, silently collecting his clothes. He slipped out into the living room and got dressed. He decided to go to work, despite the fact that it was still many hours before he needed to head for his after-hours shift.

At approximately the time that Wiijnbladh woke up, Stridh set aside his book, adjusted himself on the couch, and fell asleep. In spite of the fact that he looked like King Oscar II he felt like a prince. In his dreams he intended to visit Blenheim Palace, wander through the high, light halls, stop for a while in the room where Winston had been born, and then have a nourishing lunch at a nearby pub.

Jarnebring had called Hultman’s pager and within a minute Hultman had phoned back. After another minute Jarnebring had told him what it was about: dead American citizen, white, born in ’53, and according to as of yet unconfirmed reports, possibly active as a journalist; a press pass had been found among his belongings. According to the after-hours unit it was a suicide, but he had nevertheless decided to take a look at the matter himself, and if Hultman wanted to come along that would be just fine. Services and counter-services, thought Jarnebring.

“You suspect something fishy?” asked Hultman.

“No,” answered Jarnebring, “but I have nothing better to do.”

“I’ll gladly tag along,” Hultman said warmly. “You should know that sometimes I wish I were back. I suggest we take my car, in case he has things that I can drive to the embassy. I can be there in ten minutes.”

“See you outside,” said Jarnebring and hung up. He got up, flexed his broad shoulders, took the holster with his service weapon, and snapped it securely to his left thigh. There now, he thought, grinning contentedly.

Bäckström woke up at roughly the time when he should have been at work. He had felt better. The bedroom reeked of sweat and old binges, and when he tested his breath against the palm of his hand he realized that the situation was critical. I’ve got to shower, thought Bäckström, in spite of the fact that only homos showered more than once a week: tooth-brushing, gargling, throat lozenges, at least one pack in his pocket. At work the same nondenominational preacher/chief inspector that he’d been forced to schmooze with the night before was waiting, and Bäckström was not one to take unnecessary risks. What the hell do they want? he thought while the water sprinkled over his white body. Here you work the whole night and what do you get for that? At the same moment the phone rang. It was the preacher calling. His voice sounded acid and he wondered if something had happened.

“Nothing other than that I worked until five in the morning and happened to oversleep,” an offended Bäckström replied. “But now I’m on my way.”

How stupid can you get? he thought smugly. The dolt had even begged pardon.

Now it was just a matter of finding a pair of clean underwear. The ones he’d had on yesterday didn’t smell too confidence-inspiring. Bäckström poked around in the pile of dirty laundry and finally found a pair that didn’t seem to be coming direct from the cheese shop. This is going to work out, he thought. As always when a real pro is at work.

It was true that Jarnebring looked like a badass, talked like a badass, and all too often behaved like a badass, but as a policeman he didn’t leave much to be desired. He was quick, shrewd, efficient, and had the predator’s nose for human weakness. Together with Hultman he made one half of an odd couple. Jarnebring was large and burly, dressed in a winter coat that extended below the waist in order to conceal his service weapon, blue jeans, and shoes with rubber soles that gave a sure footing if he needed to run after someone. Hultman was small and slim, looked younger than his sixty-four years, wore a single-breasted gray suit with a vest and a blue topcoat against the November wind.

While they stood observing the place where Krassner had hit the ground, an older woman stopped on the gravel walk below.

“Are you from the police?” she asked. Jarnebring noticed with a certain enjoyment that it was Hultman who’d received the question.

“Yes,” said Hultman with a competent funeral director’s ingratiating smile. “We’re in the process of investigating a death. But it’s nothing you need to worry yourself about.”

The old lady shook her head mournfully.

“I heard from a neighbor that it was one of those poor students who jumped out the window. It’s just all so sad, isn’t it? Young people.”

Now Jarnebring nodded in the same way as his old mentor. The lady shook her head, smiled weakly, and went on.

In total it had taken them four hours, from the time Hultman picked Jarnebring up outside the Östermalm police station until he dropped him off at the same place; during that time they had accomplished a great deal. First they had visited the place where Krassner had died. After that they had looked in his apartment and spoken with a couple of the students who were living on the same corridor. No one they spoke with had known him especially well. He had only lived there, on a sublease, for a little more than a month and hadn’t appeared to be particularly interested in associating with anyone. In addition he had been considerably older than the others on the corridor. The one they had talked with the most was a South African student who had expressed strong doubt that Krassner had taken his own life, but when Jarnebring pressed him he hadn’t been able to explain why. It was more a feeling that he had.

They had devoted most of their time to searching through Krassner’s apartment. Between the bathroom cabinet and the wall Jarnebring found a plastic bag with five marijuana cigarettes-not the first time in that particular spot-which Bäckström and Wiijnbladh had obviously missed, but otherwise there was nothing sensational to report. Most of the time had been spent gathering together Krassner’s personal belongings and dividing them into two piles. One pile Hultman could take with him to the embassy to send home to Krassner’s relatives in the United States and a significantly smaller pile that Jarnebring needed to retain until the investigation was complete. In the first and larger pile were mostly clothes and in the second, smaller pile mostly personal papers. Hultman had done this before. Jarnebring wrote the confiscation report while Hultman divided the respective piles and dictated what went where. Jarnebring had not had any objections.

After the visit to the apartment they had gone to the home of the witness, Gustav Adolf Nilsson, who lived on Surbrunnsgatan right in the vicinity. Both Jarnebring and Hultman had met Nilsson previously while on duty, but because Nilsson didn’t appear to remember them, they didn’t mention it. Nilsson, or Vindel, as he preferred to be called, had been depressed but at the same time relieved. He had succeeded in arranging a place for his dog at the animal cemetery, and a few of the neighbors would be present at the burial.

“I’ve set him on the balcony for the time being,” said Vindel, nodding toward the balcony door. “Pomeranians don’t like it if it gets too hot,” he added in explanation.

The rest had been purely routine. First they had driven out to the embassy and dropped off those of Krassner’s effects that were not needed for the investigation. True, the police station was closer, but because Jarnebring had accepted with pleasure a guided tour of the embassy, he would have to be dropped off afterward in reverse order. Thus, almost exactly four hours after Hultman had picked him up outside the Östermalm police station, they were back at the same spot.

Hultman stopped. Turned off the motor and smiled amiably toward Jarnebring.

“Scotch or bourbon?” he asked.

“Can’t you get a mixed case?” Jarnebring asked in return. “My lady isn’t too thrilled about whiskey and it’s almost Christmas.”

“No problem. A mixed case. A completely different matter,” Hultman looked at Jarnebring and smiled paternally. “Are you doing anything in particular this evening?”

Jarnebring shook his head.

“You don’t happen to have a suit with a white shirt and a tie?”

Jarnebring nodded. He knew what was coming.

“Then I thought to ask if I might have the pleasure of treating you to a nice dinner.”

“Certainly.” Jarnebring smiled. “Should I bring along a couple of young ladies? Mine is on assignment, of course, but she has a couple of colleagues who are really something.”

“Old memories.” Hultman nodded, mostly to himself, it seemed. “First we talk about old memories, and then you tell me what has happened since I quit while we have a really good dinner. What you do after that doesn’t concern me, as long as you take care of yourself.”

Johansson sat the whole day and worked on his statement about the two missed murder victims. He wasn’t done until about seven-thinking, that is; the actual writing of his viewpoints would have to wait until tomorrow. After that he took a taxi home, prepared a simple meal, and spent the rest of the evening watching TV. At midnight he was sleeping deeply, on his right side with his right arm tucked under the pillow.

Hultman had kept his promise. They started eating at seven-thirty and it was not until just before midnight that Hultman looked at his watch and took out his gold card. They said goodbye on the street outside the restaurant with mutual marks of respect and promises to see each other again soon. After that Hultman went home while Jarnebring wandered further out into the Stockholm night.

…

Stridh woke up just in time for the morning news on the radio. After that he had hash with eggs and red beets and two beers. Now he was lying on the couch again and it was time to start on volume three. Finally, he thought, making himself comfortable, finally time to study the political intrigues in early-eighteenth-century Holland that preceded the battle of Blenheim.

Wiijnbladh’s day had been a day of personal suffering, as was often the case. First he had pondered various ways to put his wife to death, but because none of them was painful enough and certain enough-after all, he couldn’t assume that Bäckström and his colleagues would be in charge of the investigation-it had only granted him minor relief. When he’d finally pulled himself together and driven home, a note from his wife stuck to the mirror in the hall reported that she’d gone to visit her sister in Sollentuna. Wonder what they talk about? thought Wiijnbladh with a shiver.

Bäckström had had a good day, even if it had appeared threatening at the start when his boss foisted a wife-abuse case off on him. What do you mean, wife abuse? thought Bäckström. Every policeman worth his badge knew that these were only drunken hags who wanted nothing better than to have their drunken husbands beat them up. All women liked a little whipping (Bäckström knew that from personal experience), but certain specimens persisted in spicing up marital coexistence by running off now and then to Mister Policeman to complain. They should have a damn good beating instead, thought Bäckström while he steered his service car to the victim’s residence. Strangely enough she lived on fashionable Karlavägen, which had made him sufficiently curious to show up for questioning at the residence.

What a hell of an apartment, thought Bäckström when he had finally sunk down into the victim’s sofa. There was no shortage of dough here, and most likely she was trying to squeeze her man for even more and he’d quite simply taken a swing at her, but without a doubt the case offered certain openings. She didn’t look too bad either, thought Bäckström. Certainly over forty, but she had big knockers and could surely get good speed going on her little mouse if a real pro like Bäckström was at the stick.

“Yes, Mrs. Östergren,” said Bäckström gently. “If you would be so kind as to tell me what happened. You can take your time and try to take it from the beginning, even if it feels terribly difficult just now.”

Mrs. Östergren nodded and snuffled. I do believe, God help me, that I’m sitting here making myself horny, thought Bäckström contentedly with his head slightly to one side.

“There there, Mrs. Östergren,” he said consolingly. “This is going to work out. I’ll see to it personally. Soon we’re going to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” he added. When I’m looking into your pussy, you fucking sow, he thought.

Three hours later Bäckström was sitting at the after-hours unit, writing out his report. If our friend the executive doesn’t get locked up for this then he never will be, thought Bäckström. His dear old lady had gotten both Bäckström’s work and home numbers, so that part the dear spouse didn’t need to think about. If she just rises to the bait I’ll be greasing up her snout, thought Bäckström, and he pulled the last piece of paper from the typewriter. High time for a beer or two, he added to himself, looking at the clock while making the most necessary corrections with his ballpoint pen.

Oredsson had spent the day with ten or so of his closest cohorts, all of them officers with the uniformed police, of course. Three were actually women but completely okay despite that fact. One of his friends had gotten the use of an abandoned hut from an older relative, and there they had practiced breaking in and freeing hostages (blank ammunition, of course) and then they’d barbecued and finished a couple cases of beer while they chatted about this and that.

“This sort of thing should be cleared up before it happens,” explained Mikkelson, who worked with the riot squad and knew what he was talking about. “It’s nothing that needs to be fussed about when it’s already happened.”

A white man, thought Oredsson, and in the evening they would be meeting again, go out on the town, and show the colors.

A spot with better prospects than this probably doesn’t exist, thought Jarnebring contentedly, looking around the large bar. He had found a dive on Kungsgatan where mostly police and a few firemen, security guards, and other assorted folks went, plus at least a few battalions of female nursing personnel. He’d gotten results right away. Two female officers from the police cavalry, at least one of whom seemed firmly determined to ride down his on-duty girlfriend.

“You’re looking nice,” she said approvingly. “I’ve never seen you in a suit before, but it looks good on you.”

“Business,” said Jarnebring and shrugged his broad shoulders apologetically. “I’m at Östermalm now, so the American embassy invited me to dinner. Think about that, ladies, when you’re galloping around out on Djurgården. See to it that you behave yourselves.” Jarnebring gave them a quarter of a wolfish grin.

“And if we don’t do that?”

Damn she’s good-looking, thought Jarnebring. The night has hardly begun and I’m already home.

Jarnebring increased the power to half a wolfish grin. Leaned over and whispered in her ear. She giggled but her friend suddenly looked wary. A possible leak there, thought Jarnebring, and how do I seal it?

When Bäckström came in he was in an excellent mood. En route to the bar he had already planned the first gentlemen’s dinner for his colleagues in homicide in his new apartment on Karlavägen. They’re going to shit their pants, those fucking paupers, thought Bäckström delightedly while he slipped past the coat check. He had left his coat at work on Kungsholmsgatan. Who the hell wants to pay for something like that? thought Bäckström, staring at the coat checker. Fucking loan shark.

Because he was completely broke, not a fucking kopeck in his pockets, he had immediately started scouting around for a suitable victim that he could borrow a little from, but the pickings looked thin. On the other hand it was booming like hell out on the dance floor and there was a good pull from the bar; plenty of abandoned bottles and glasses. Bäckström made an evasive maneuver behind a burly type in a suit who was standing with his back to him chatting with a couple of blondes that he had a vague memory he’d seen somewhere. Some damn security guard who’s been at daddy’s funeral and wants to show off that he has a suit, thought Bäckström as his fat fingers wrapped themselves around an almost full half liter of strong beer. There it is, thought Bäckström. Carefully pulled the beer toward him and turned around, back against back. A sure trick that always worked. He sighed silently with pleasure and raised his well-earned malt.

Suddenly the suit reached out a hand, big as a hairy Christmas ham with fingers on top of it, and grabbed hold of his beer.

“Watch out, you bastard, I’m a cop,” Bäckström threatened, and at the same moment he saw that it was Jarnebring. Has that bastard started sneaking around in disguise? thought Bäckström. He knew perfectly well who Jarnebring was. All policemen knew that. Only a month ago the fucking psychopath had torn the leg of an older colleague from Östermalm in order to get at his job. Wonder how many people he’s beaten to death? thought Bäckström, and suddenly it felt as if he had a large black hole in his chest approximately where his heart used to be.

Jarnebring sipped his regained beer, smiled his wolfish grin, and nodded toward the mirror wall behind the rows of bottles standing on the bar.

“Do you see that mirror? I’ve been watching you since you came in.”

Bäckström had a good reply on the tip of his tongue but for some reason that was never really clear to him he refrained from it and contented himself with nodding.

“I think you should go home,” Jarnebring continued. “You seem a bit overworked.” Jarnebring exchanged a glance with the bartender, who nodded, eyeing Bäckström.

“Go home and sleep,” said the bartender. “And listen, I believe this place will get along fine without you. Just so you know.”

Bäckström shrugged his shoulders, turned on his heels, and left. Actually he had only intended to make an evasive maneuver, but that damn gorilla standing in the doorway clearly had an eye on him. He smiled broadly toward Bäckström, held the front door with an exaggerated bow, and showed the way out with a sweeping right arm.

“Thank you for joining us, police inspector.”

I’m going to kill you bastards, thought Bäckström.

Oredsson and his comrades had been sitting at a table only a few yards from the bar and they had seen the whole thing. Wonder if he thinks like we do? thought Oredsson. Everything I’ve heard about him seems to add up, and we work at the same place. He felt the excitement growing in his chest.

When Bäckström came out on Kungsgatan it was snowing. Large white flakes floating like moist reminders, unclear of what, from the great infinity up there. Suddenly he started weeping. Hell. He was weeping like a little bastard, like a fucking hag. Bastards, he thought. I’m going to kill those bastards.

“I’m going to kill you bastards,” Bäckström roared straight out toward the empty street and a passing taxi. What fucking people, what a fucking society, and what a fucking life they’re living, he thought.

[SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24]

Johansson devoted Sunday to writing out his statement on the two missed murder victims. He weighed every word with utmost care, and as such things took their sweet time, it was already seven o’clock in the evening when he returned to his apartment. After that he prepared a simple meal, read a book in English about the international narcotics trade, and at midnight he was sleeping deeply, according to already long-established routine.

You’re starting to get old, thought Jarnebring gloomily as he leafed through the papers on John P. Krassner’s death. The night before, everything had gone without a hitch. They hadn’t even had to dance with each other, but instead had sat at a table in the quietest corner available, while her friend excused herself and slipped away with a well-known local stud from the Södermalm riot squad. Then he had gone home with her. They had walked the whole way in spite of the fact that she lived way up at Gärdet, and when they were finally standing in her doorway there was only one decision he needed to make.

She smiled at him but in her eyes there was another, more evaluating expression.

“Well,” she said, giggling. “What do we do? Will you come up and have a cup of tea? Are you going home? Or do you want more time to think it over?”

First he had considered using having to work the next day as an excuse. Instead he shook his head.

“I’m going home,” answered Jarnebring. “It may be that I’ve got a big hole in my head, but considering… well, I’m sure you know… so I guess I’ll go home.”

She had had difficulty concealing her surprise. Then she had shrugged her shoulders, smiled at him, leaned over, and given him a kiss right on the mouth.

“Suit yourself,” she said and disappeared through the doorway.

You’re a coward, thought Jarnebring as he was walking down the street. Or else you’re starting to get old. That thought, however, was so unpleasant that he immediately dismissed it.

Now he was sitting here, behind a desk where he didn’t need to be. Like a male counterpart to Busy Lizzie-and as a chief inspector and boss he didn’t even get overtime. I’m starting to get like Johansson, thought Jarnebring, leafing further in his papers. There are three possibilities, he thought: murder, suicide, or accident.

It seemed extremely unlikely that this was an accident. Krassner was five feet eight inches tall; the window was relatively high up on the wall and well above Krassner’s waist. Besides, it was equipped with a catch, which meant that it could only be opened a few inches. The same window catch that someone had broken loose with force, and the break marks in the wood seemed brand new. It even smelled of wood in the holes from the pulled-out screws. Assume that he’d had a sudden, compulsive need for a breath of fresh air, broken the catch, and leaned out. Even then he shouldn’t have tipped over and fallen out. Forget that, thought Jarnebring, crossing out the third alternative.

Murder or suicide remained. What argued for murder? Nothing, thought Jarnebring. No signs of trespass, no signs of struggle, no known, visible, or even plausible motive, no murder weapon, hardly even any opportunity. What kind of murderer went into a student room and, without a sound or a trace, murdered the person who was living there? Eight small rooms with thin walls crowded along a common corridor, and a potential murderer could scarcely control the fact that Krassner was the only one there when the whole thing happened. You can just forget murder, thought Jarnebring with a slight feeling of regret that he couldn’t help, occupationally injured as he was.

That left suicide, thought Jarnebring, and what argued for that? Everything we’re aware of, he thought, and it’s not our fault that we don’t know too much about Krassner himself. A vacuum that, by the way, Hultman would be filling for him rather soon. He harbored no doubts on that point. Alone in the room, depressed or on a sudden gloomy impulse, he writes a suicide note-that was still the way it had to be interpreted-breaks the window catch, takes a deep breath, and jumps. There were certainly better ways, not least considering those who would have to clean up afterward, but not for Krassner, not this time. No pills had been found that he might have ingested, no knife or other sharp object that would have worked against wrists or neck, no rope to hang himself with, not even a place where he could have fastened the noose. Definitely no firearm.

Suicide, thought Jarnebring and nodded, and now it was only a matter of straightening out three remaining question marks. The first regarded Krassner as an individual. Who was he and what was he actually doing here? Hultman and the embassy will take care of that, and I’ll chew my service revolver if they come up with anything that makes a mess of things for me, thought Jarnebring.

The second concerned Vindel’s testimony about the victim’s mysterious left shoe, which had come tumbling down a good while after Krassner himself and unfortunately killed Vindel’s best friend. An admittedly old Pomeranian, thought Jarnebring, and even if this was punishable, there was no suspect that could be held responsible.

The distance in time from the moment the victim hit the ground to the time his left shoe did was the question they had talked about most when they questioned Vindel. It was a matter of less than a minute, less than half a minute, but it wasn’t a matter of a mere few seconds and Vindel was quite certain on that point.

“Yes, first I just stood there staring. I was in shock, of course, and it took a few seconds for sure, and it’s not really so strange if it seemed longer to me.” Vindel cleared his throat, sighed, and tried again. “Yes. Then I stood there looking at the guy who fell, and it was not a pretty sight, I can assure you, officers. I’ve only seen something like that once before and it was a good many years ago. A buddy of mine at work who fell down from a bridge span and landed in the cargo hold of a working tug anchored in the river under us. It was up at Älvkarleby. We were doing some maintenance work.”

Vindel sighed again and nodded.

“Ten seconds. Say it took ten seconds before Charlie got the shoe on his head.” Vindel snuffled and his eyes became moist.

When they’d left Vindel and were en route to the embassy they’d discussed the mysterious shoe. Hultman had also come up with an explanation that wasn’t too bad.

“Do you recall that crazy who jumped from his private plane and landed in a flower bed out in Hässelby?” asked Hultman.

Jarnebring remembered him, with a wry smile besides, occupationally injured as he was.

“The guy who was buck naked when he landed,” Jarnebring said, nodding.

“I seem to recall that he had one sock on,” said Hultman. “He had those knee-length ones with garters. I seem to recall that he was some kind of executive.”

Jarnebring nodded again. That was right. He too had made note of the garter.

“All of his clothes peeled off on the way down from the draft.”

“On that occasion it was a fall of six hundred yards,” said Hultman, “before all his clothes were pulled off. This time we’re talking about fifty yards. Fifty yards ought to be enough to pull off a shoe, shouldn’t it?”

“I think so too,” said Jarnebring, nodding in agreement. “But how do we explain the difference in time? I’ve only seen the shoes in pictures, but they seem to be sturdy things, boots almost. Ought to fall just as fast as a body. If they hadn’t hit… Jarnebring was thinking out loud but Hultman was there first.

“For example, a window ledge or something else on the way down,” Hultman concluded.

“Not at all unlikely,” said Jarnebring.

“Highly probable, if you ask me,” said Hultman.

The third question mark remained. There were four witnesses to the occurrence itself; four known witnesses. First Vindel, then the three who had contacted the command center, and as far as the time was concerned they were of one voice and were quite certainly correct. About four minutes before eight in the evening Krassner had begun his fall, and scarcely four seconds later he hit the ground. Think if you were able to fall free for the time it took to run a hundred yards, thought Jarnebring. That would give the others something to chew on.

In addition there was a fifth witness. A student from South Africa who was living on the same corridor as Krassner. Some time about six-thirty in the evening he had greeted Krassner as the latter was on his way out. They hadn’t spoken with each other, only said hello. Dressed in outdoor clothes, Krassner had then disappeared through the door to the elevators, while the student himself had gone into his room. Half an hour later-approximately-the witness had left the corridor. He was going to meet a girl at seven o’clock at a student restaurant that was in an adjacent building and he was leaving at the last moment.

“Unfortunately I often arrive late, even if it’s someone I like,” he had added with an apologetic smile.

Once out on the street he had almost run into Krassner, who was on his way into the building again. Dressed in the same outdoor clothes, according to the witness’s recollection. Krassner had said hello, shaken his head, and said something in English about a bad memory being good if you wanted to keep your legs in good shape. “A bad memory keeps your legs in good shape.”

“He smiled at me and didn’t appear at all like he was going to rush up and take his own life,” the witness had concluded, and that observation was also his point.

Jarnebring sighed. He goes out at six-thirty. Comes rushing back a half hour later, and less than an hour after that he decides to jump out the window. What is going on? thought Jarnebring, looking out his own window. At least it had stopped snowing, temperature several degrees above freezing, slushy and slippery. An impulse? “No, to hell with this. No more beers at the bar for me. High time I scurry home and jump out the window.” And he’d been happy too, if that black guy was to be believed, thought Jarnebring gloomily. What if I were to phone Lidman? He was a professor, after all, and had written some sort of dissertation about what went on in the heads of all do-it-yourselfers. Jarnebring had heard him give a lecture about his findings, and regardless of the subject he had never listened to such an elated lecturer. Lidman had bubbled with enthusiasm, and the pictures he had shown had been a bit much even for the hardened policemen who made up his audience.

Jarnebring looked up Lidman’s number, phoned him, talked with him for close to half an hour, of which the last five minutes were spent getting him to stop, but when he was finally able to put down the receiver he was in almost as high spirits as Lidman himself. So it wasn’t any more difficult than that, thought Jarnebring contentedly. A rather classic behavior in someone who is just about to take his own life; the only thing that bothered him now was that that wretched Bäckström had come to the same conclusion as himself. Albeit in his own case it had been preceded by thorough and competent police work. How the hell can someone like that become a police officer? thought Jarnebring. Whatever, he thought. Now it was high time to drive home and meet the little lady and perhaps he ought to go by way of Åhléns department store and buy a pound of shrimp and some other foreplay goodies. Jarnebring looked like a badass, talked like a badass, and all too often behaved like a badass, but as a policeman he didn’t leave much to be desired. He was quick, shrewd, efficient, and had the predator’s nose for human weakness. When he left the Östermalm police quarters on Tulegatan, on the afternoon of Sunday, November 24, he was in a really good mood. Suicide, he thought, and just in time for Christmas he would cash out a well-earned mixed case from his old buddy Hultman.

[MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25]

When Lars Martin Johansson’s secretary arrived at work at the National Police Board at eight o’clock on Monday morning her boss had already been sitting behind his desk for more than an hour, and he was in an excellent mood.

“I have a statement here,” Johansson said, handing over a plastic folder with papers. “Three things: I want you to read it, see to it that it’s comprehensible, and print it out. Any questions?”

His secretary took the papers, smiled coolly, and shook her head.

“Personally I’m going to go swimming,” said Johansson cheerfully.

He must have met someone new, thought his secretary.

Johansson found running for exercise difficult. What bothered him was not the physical activity itself but simply the fact that he couldn’t think while he ran: a pure waste of time, in other words. On the other hand, he thought very well while walking-this applied to brisk walks as well-and he did his very best thinking while swimming. Besides, things were so practically arranged in the large police station on Kungsholmen that they had their own pool.

Johansson was an excellent swimmer. He had learned it early in a simple and unsentimental way. The summer when he was five years old his oldest brother, who was fifteen, had taken little Lars Martin with him to the laundry pier down at the river, thrown him into the water, and from the pier given him the necessary instructions.

“You shouldn’t flounder so damn much, try and swim like Tarzan.”

Tarzan was the family’s elkhound and a past master of dog-paddling, clearly better than Johnny Weissmuller, and before the week was over, Lars Martin was swimming almost as well as the mutt.

“I’ll be damned, you’re a real man of talent,” his big brother concluded proudly. “Now you’ll learn how to swim like people.”

After an hour in the pool, plus five minutes in the shower and twenty in the sauna, an alert and rosy Lars Martin Johansson returned to his office. His good mood didn’t get any worse from the fact that his secretary had done exactly what he’d asked her to do.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” said Johansson, “and you know what I mean. May I treat you to lunch as a thank-you?”

He’s met someone new, thought his secretary, smiling and nodding.

The lunch had been excellent; what else was to be expected on a day like this? Johansson had fried bacon with potato pancakes and uncooked lingonberries, and when he ordered a large glass of cold milk with his meal, his secretary looked at him almost lovingly. Discreetly, of course, but still; as usual, she pecked at her vegetables and boiled fish.

“There has to be milk,” explained Johansson. “Although it’s important that it’s cold. I saw some lunatic on TV who maintained that it took away the vitamins in the lingonberries, but he’s got that turned around.”

“I’ve decided,” she said. “I’m going with you to the personnel bureau.”

“Good,” said Johansson and raised his milk glass in a toast. “It’s a kick upward for me and I’ll see to it that there’ll be something for you too.”

And a kick away from the police job, he thought. But he didn’t say that. Instead they toasted with milk and mineral water.

“Now we’ll have coffee,” said Johansson with a Norrland accent. He leaned forward and looked at her with fake seriousness. “Boiled coffee.”

In the afternoon Johansson was visited by the head of the personnel bureau whom he would succeed in a little more than a month. It was an informal visit; the head of the personnel bureau didn’t really want anything in particular, just to complain in general terms and perhaps get a cup of coffee while he did so.

“Would you like a cookie with your coffee?” asked Johansson amiably, but he only shook his head. Tired, worn out, and kind, thought Johansson, and now they’re going to get rid of you.

“I need some advice,” the head of the personnel bureau said. “You’ve worked in Stockholm for many years. Do you know an officer named Koskinen?”

The one called Koskenkorva, thought Johansson, and nodded. “He’s drunk himself to death?” Johansson suggested sensitively.

“If only it were that good,” the head of the personnel bureau said with a loud moan. “No, he’s been appointed head of the command center, and now we’ve received six complaints of which one is anonymous, signed by a group of some type that calls itself the Still Functioning Uniformed Police in Stockholm. It’s twenty-two pages long and contains a detailed account of Chief Inspector Koskinen’s performance as on-duty commander at Norrmalm. If what’s there is true, it’s horrifying.”

“I’m sure it’s true,” said Johansson.

“At the same time the union at Norrmalm supports him wholeheartedly and his bosses have given him among the best evaluations I’ve ever seen during my years in this office.”

“Obviously,” said Johansson. “How else would they get rid of him?” That’s why they’re called traveling testimonials, he thought, but he didn’t say that.

“What advice do you have?” The head of the personnel office looked at him almost imploringly.

“None,” said Johansson cheerfully. “There is none. There isn’t meant to be.”

How naïve can you be? thought Johansson while he picked out shirts at the men’s department at NK. His impending trip demanded certain additions to his wardrobe, and besides, an old acquaintance who was head of security for the largest of the city’s three commercial banks had invited him to dinner that evening. But it wasn’t this business that occupied his thoughts. The Koskinen problem will solve itself according to classic Darwinist police principles, he thought. Either he drinks himself to death, puts a bullet in his head, or gets so bad that he quite simply can’t go on working. On the other hand, that he would flat out be fired was less likely. As a rule there was always some colleague in the vicinity who could pull the ass of someone like that out of the fire in a pinch, and if not, then it usually wasn’t very important. What might that be? What might happen here? thought Johansson while he hesitated between a dark blue shirt and one that was a somewhat lighter blue.

“I’ll take both,” said Johansson, and the sales clerk nodded officiously.

In the evening he had dinner with his acquaintance, an ex-police officer but nowadays head of security at the large bank. Now he was moving up, chief of staff and member of the company board, and needed a successor.

“I have an offer, Lars,” he said amiably while he twirled his wineglass between his fingers. “One of those that you can’t say no to.”

Johansson could.

“I’m a policeman,” said Johansson. “The reason that I became a policeman was that I dreamed of putting crooks in the can. What I’m doing now is something different, to be sure, but I know it’s only temporary.”

His acquaintance had looked surprised.

“Think it over,” he said.

Jarnebring had been up to his ears in work all morning-that was how he himself summarized the whole thing. First the customary morning prayers with his coworkers in the local detective unit where they had gone over the current cases in the precinct. After that he’d planned a special effort against car break-ins, which had recently increased substantially. He had arranged a lookout where his detectives could sit to avoid freezing, which was never good for the actual surveillance, and he had borrowed equipment from the narcotics squad: cameras, extra-powerful telescopes, and better communications equipment. Now the crooks would get it in the neck.

After a quick lunch in the building he turned off his phone and turned on the red “busy” lamp on the door. Now he was going to finish up the investigation of the cause of Krassner’s death. Suicide, thought Jarnebring emphatically, and called the forensic medicine office in Solna to hear how it had gone. It had gone very well, answered the responsible forensic doctor, who had already finished the autopsy early that morning.

There were no injuries to the body that appeared to have occurred in anything other than a natural manner.

“Natural manner?” said Jarnebring inquiringly.

“As in when you dive fifty yards straight down to the street,” answered the doctor and giggled.

He was from Yugoslavia; he had the nickname Esprit de Corpse and was known as something of a joker, as long as the joke wasn’t on him.

“The head crushed, thirty other fractures. We human beings cannot fly.”

How true, how true, thought Jarnebring and sighed silently.

“What do we do with the clothes?” asked Esprit. “I still have his shoes and clothes here.”

Lazy asses, thought Jarnebring; he was thinking of his colleagues on the technical squad.

“Didn’t the techs take them with them, when they took the prints?” he asked.

“They forgot the clothes,” said Esprit. “They got a call.”

“I’ll send a car,” said Jarnebring, and he started to put down the receiver.

“Excellent. You’ll get a preliminary statement. Suicide. We human beings cannot fly.”

“Thanks,” said Jarnebring, and hung up.

It was Oredsson and Stridh who got the task of fetching Krassner’s clothes and shoes at the forensic medicine office in Solna for removal to the head of the bureau at their own precinct. Stridh remained sitting in the car while Oredsson took care of the practical details. Actually he did offer, thought Stridh while observing the entrance to the forensic medicine office. Such is the way of all flesh, he thought gloomily. It was also Oredsson who took the elevator up to turn over the two bags to Jarnebring when they’d returned to the station. He offered, thought Stridh gloomily while he remained sitting in the car down in the garage, brooding.

Where have I seen him before? thought Jarnebring, looking at the husky young police officer standing in the door to his room. He was on the phone and waved him in with his free left hand.

“Can I call you back?” said Jarnebring and hung up.

“Yes?” he said and looked inquiringly at his visitor.

“It’s these clothes that you asked us to pick up at the forensic medicine office, chief. The guy who jumped from the student dormitory last Friday.”

“Put them on the chair there,” said Jarnebring and started dialing the number of the person he’d just been talking with.

“I was thinking about those shoes.” Oredsson held out the smaller bag.

“Yes?” said Jarnebring. A pair of strong, bootlike shoes in a transparent, sealed plastic bag.

“I don’t know,” his visitor said hesitantly, “but these aren’t normal shoes.”

“Not normal shoes?” Jarnebring put the receiver down on its cradle and leaned back in his chair while he inspected young Oredsson. “You mean that this is a pair of unusual shoes?”

“Yes. If you look at this magazine, chief.” His visitor held out a thick magazine with a colorful cover toward Jarnebring at the same moment as the phone rang again.

“Put it on the chair,” said Jarnebring and took the receiver. “Jarnebring,” he answered curtly and waved out Oredsson with a left hand that brooked no contradictions. The people they let in these days, he thought, irritated.

“The police superintendent is out and about,” answered Johansson’s secretary with her usual cool voice. “He had some urgent business he had to take care of. No, he’s not coming back today. He can be reached tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. Yes, I promise to tell him that you called.” She put back the receiver and made a note on a message pad. “Detective Chief Inspector Bo Jarnebring phoned. He wants you to call him back as soon as possible. Important, and you have the number.” She looked at the clock, 3:33, and wrote the time and date on the slip of paper. Jarnebring, she thought. How could he have become a chief inspector?

Jarnebring’s face was slightly red around the cheeks and earlobes. This was due to the fact that he was very surprised, and he was almost never surprised. He was often furious, but he regarded surprise as a form of enjoyment for children and intellectuals. On the table before him sat a transparent plastic bag with the seal torn open; in it was a strong, bootlike right shoe. To the side of the bag was a left shoe and closest to him on top of the desk was an open illustrated magazine which actually ought not to be found in a police station. In addition, a key that looked as though it went to a safe-deposit box or a safe, along with a small slip of paper containing two lines of handwritten text. Jarnebring stared at the slip of paper. What the hell is this? he thought. It must be some bastard who’s fooling with me. With us, he corrected himself.

[TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26]

Johansson woke up late. At the time he was rolling up the window shade in his bedroom he would usually already be on his way to work. Outside a pale morning sun was shining against a blue sky and the thermometer on the windowsill showed a few degrees above freezing. Excellent, thought Johansson, and high time to start living like a human being. First shower, then breakfast and morning paper, and after that an invigorating walk to the office. The same office that allowed you to succeed even if you did a good job, like himself, for example. Bureau head, he thought contentedly. If I start acting willful, I’ll get traveling testimonials and become chief of the national police by summer.

…

Johansson had set a new record on the route from his residence on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan when he entered the National Police Board on Polhemsgatan. Must be the swimming, thought Johansson with surprise and checked his watch one more time as he came into his secretary’s office. Same cool smile, he thought as she handed over the day’s mail and various other things. Nothing that seemed threatening, however.

“The chief of the national police has let it be known that he is very satisfied with your statement,” she said.

Obviously, thought Johansson.

“There’s an Inspector Bo Jarnebring who has called several times,” she continued. “He phoned yesterday afternoon and he’s called twice already this morning. It sounded very urgent.”

Jarnebring, thought Johansson with mixed feelings. Still his best friend, although things hadn’t gone too well last time.

“Phone him, and I’ll take the call,” said Johansson. Boss’s privilege, he thought as he sat down behind his desk.

“Long time no see,” said Jarnebring. He sounded unexpectedly cheerful. His voice is almost exhilarated, thought Johansson with surprise.

“Yes, perhaps we should meet,” said Johansson.

“Exactly,” said Jarnebring.

“When did you have in mind?” Johansson asked, taking a quick glance at the calendar on his desk. Just as well to clear the air, he thought.

“In fifteen minutes in my office,” said Jarnebring. “I can ask one of the boys to drive you if you want a change of pace and a ride in a police car instead of a taxi.”

“Has something happened?” asked Johansson with surprise.

“Frankly speaking I don’t really know,” answered Jarnebring. “I hope you can help me on that. So if the police superintendent will be so kind as to convey himself here I’ll put the coffee on in the meantime.”

Someone or something must have touched his heart when he saw his best friend coming toward him in the corridor, and the bear hug he got instead of a handshake didn’t make things better.

“We’ll go into my office,” said Jarnebring with a wolfish grin. “I don’t want the personnel to see me if I start blubbering.”

“You’ve grown, Lars,” said Jarnebring, looking at his visitor. “You’re starting to get real superintendent muscles. If that button on your suit coat should pop loose and hit me in the skull, Bäckström and those other geniuses in homicide will suspect you of murder.”

Johansson set his coffee cup aside and smiled more neutrally than he’d actually intended.

“Okay, Bo,” he said. “Let’s skip the bull, as the Americans say. Tell me now. Before you burst.”

Jarnebring nodded and took a thin case folder from the pile on his desk.

“John P. Krassner. Jonathan Paul Krassner, born in fifty-three, American citizen, according to as yet unconfirmed sources some sort of freelance journalist from Albany in the state of New York, said to be a few hours north of the city with the same name.” Jarnebring took a fresh look at his papers. “Came to Sweden six weeks ago.”

“I see,” said Johansson with surprise. And what does this have to do with me? he thought.

Jarnebring leaned forward over the desk, supported on his burly arms, while he looked at Johansson.

“How do you know him?” he asked.

What’s the point? thought Johansson.

“Not the faintest idea,” said Johansson. “No one that I know, as far as I know no one I’ve met, and I don’t even recall having heard the name. How would it be if you-”

“Easy, Lars.” Jarnebring smiled and raised his hand with a defensive gesture. “Forget it, and before you get as mad as last time I suggest you lean back, listen to me, and we’ll help each other out.”

“Why is that?” said Johansson as he made himself comfortable in the chair.

“This is going to take all of five minutes,” said Jarnebring, “but I actually need your help.”

“Okay,” said Johansson. “Tell me.”

…

“Approximately five minutes before eight last Friday evening the aforementioned Krassner fell from his room on the sixteenth floor in that student skyscraper up on Valhallavägen. He was subleasing it-it seems some international housing agency for students arranged it. Got the name of it in my papers. Anyway,” said Jarnebring and looked at the ceiling while trying to collect his thoughts.

“Murder, suicide, accident,” said Johansson. “What’s the problem?”

“Most likely suicide,” said Jarnebring. “Among other things he left behind a letter. Tech called this morning and let it be known that his prints are on the letter. Right where they should be if he’d written it himself.”

“You mean the corpse’s fingerprints,” said Johansson. “You mean that the corpse’s prints are where they ought to be, but how do you know that the corpse’s prints are his?”

“They’re his prints,” said Jarnebring. “I already got that on the fax from the embassy yesterday.”

“They had Krassner’s fingerprints? Does he have a record?”

Jarnebring shook his head.

“No, but they seem to have taken prints on almost everyone over in the States. They’d taken his when he was working extra at check-in at some airport. They haven’t said a peep about whether or not he might have some criminal past. Seems to have been a completely ordinary gloomy bastard.”

“Suicide,” repeated Johansson. “What’s the problem?”

Jarnebring shrugged his shoulders.

“If there is one,” he said. “For one thing I don’t know who he is, although I’ve asked the embassy to help me with that. They promised to talk with the police where he was living and find out if they knew him.”

“Okay,” said Johansson.

“Then he seems to have been running in and out where he was living.”

Jarnebring quickly recounted Krassner’s movements and his own conversation with Professor Lidman.

“Lidman says that this isn’t at all uncommon. Goes around happy and energetic and smiles at everyone he meets-smiling depression I guess it’s called. And then just bang, no, that’s enough now, now I’m going to take my life. Can be quite irrational at the same time as they seem completely normal.”

“I’ll buy that,” said Johansson, who’d had a cousin who had left his youngest daughter’s birthday party in the best spirits to go out to the garage and hang himself.

“And then there’s a shoe,” said Jarnebring and recounted his and Hultman’s theories without mentioning the latter by name.

“Seems highly plausible,” said Johansson. “I’m in agreement with you, suicide.”

He glanced furtively at his watch. The shoe bumped against a window ledge or a balcony railing or perhaps even a birdhouse that some biology student has nailed up outside his little window, thought Johansson and smiled.

“Sure,” said Jarnebring. “Up until yesterday afternoon when that damn shoe started haunting me again.” He nodded at Johansson and seemed both serious and sincerely concerned.

“How so?” said Johansson.

“Have you ever seen this rag here?” replied Jarnebring, handing over the August issue of the American monthly magazine Soldier of Fortune.

“Soldier of Fortune,” said Johansson, making a grimace at the camouflage-wearing characters rushing across the cover against heavy gunfire. “Isn’t that one of those American neo-Nazi rags?”

“Yes,” said Jarnebring. “It was one of the younger officers in the department here who tipped me off. There was a whole pile in their break room. Soldier of Fortune, The Minuteman, Guns & Ammo, The Survivalist,” he explained. “That kind of American extreme right-wing rag aimed at gun nuts and old Klan members and the type who just want to go out and make war in general, not exactly socialist rags, if you know what I mean.”

No, thought Johansson, for how would that sort of thing wind up in a break room in a Swedish police station?

“Contains a ton of advertisements for weapons and survival gear and what you should know if the Russkies come, on how you become a mercenary and how you can fuck with the police and how you evade taxes. Yes, every kind of shit imaginable,” concluded Jarnebring.

“Where does the shoe come in?” asked Johansson judiciously.

“If you look in the ad section, page eighty-nine. There’s an ad for a company which is called StreetSmart, shortened SS.”

Johansson had already found the ad in question; it offered all the necessities for the person who wanted to survive in the “jungle where we humans are forced to live.” For reasons that, considering the context, didn’t appear particularly murky, the ad had the same typeface as the two “S”s that the German Nazi Schutzstaffel had worn on their uniform lapels.

“I still don’t understand,” Johansson persisted.

“The damn shoe,” said Jarnebring, holding out a strong left boot of brown leather with a high upper. He looked almost cheerful. “The same damn shoe that the mutt took on the head, although surely that must have been a coincidence,” he thought out loud.

Jarnebring pressed his thumb against the sole, and at the same time he tugged hard with his right hand against the sturdy heel. Out fell a metal-colored key, and after that floated a small scrap of paper the size of a business card.

“Open sesame,” said Jarnebring with a satisfied smile. “Shoe of the well-known brand StreetSmart with a hollow heel.

“The key appears to be for a safe-deposit box or some type of safe, most likely back in the States,” Jarnebring continued, holding it up. “The embassy is working on that too, so I’m taking it easy.”

“I see,” said Johansson. What should he say? He’d heard and seen worse. “What was in the other shoe?”

Jarnebring shook his head.

“That one was empty,” he said. “I’m guessing that he was right-handed.”

Johansson nodded. That seems plausible, he thought.

“Don’t you want to know what was on the paper?” Jarnebring looked at him expectantly.

Johansson showed a poker face and shrugged his shoulders. Jarnebring pushed the paper over and Johansson read the two lines of handwritten text.

An honest Swedish Cop. Police Superintendent Lars M. Johansson Wolmar Yxkulls Gata 7 A, 116 50 Stockholm.

Johansson looked at the paper again. He was holding it carefully by the edges between the nails of his thumb and index finger, from old habit. Although this time it appeared to be unnecessary. Judging by the gray-black specks, someone had already dusted it for fingerprints.

Like a calling card, thought Johansson, about five by eight centimeters. Folded in the middle.

He looked at Jarnebring, who wore the same expression that his children used to have when they were little and it was Christmas Eve.

“It’s someone trying to pull our legs,” said Johansson. “My leg,” he corrected.

“I thought so too. At first I thought so. Now I’m pretty sure it’s Krassner who wrote what’s there.”

“Tell me,” said Johansson, leaning back in his chair. At the same time he couldn’t help sneaking a glance at the little scrap of paper.

At first, Jarnebring had thought along the same lines as Johansson. When, after duly efficient investigations, he found out that the same police trainee, Oredsson, who had fetched Krassner’s shoes and clothes and left them in his office had also been one half of the “first patrol car on the scene,” as well as the half that had placed the aforementioned shoe in its plastic bag, sealed the bag, and sent it with the hearse to the forensic-medicine office, the matter was signed, sealed, and delivered. I’ll boil that bastard for glue, thought Jarnebring, and ten minutes later Oredsson and Stridh were each sitting on a chair in the corridor outside Jarnebring’s office, and it was Oredsson who got to come in first.

Calamity, thought Stridh gloomily, glancing at the closed door. Wonder if he intends to kill him, he thought. He’d heard a great deal about Jarnebring over the years, so that seemed highly likely, although no particular sounds had been heard from the other side of the door. Karate expert, thought Stridh, becoming even gloomier. One of those silent executioners.

…

Jarnebring had grilled Oredsson for a quarter of an hour, without mentioning the contents of the heel. Oredsson was red, sweaty, and before long, truly frightened. One thing was certain. He didn’t have a clue what Jarnebring was talking about. I have listened to the voice of innocence, thought Jarnebring with surprise, sent Oredsson out, and asked him to take Stridh with him, obviously without either explanations or apologies.

“Then I called Rosengren,” said Jarnebring.

“Rosengren,” said Johansson. “Isn’t he retired? He must be almost a hundred.”

“Discretion a point of honor,” said Jarnebring briefly. “I don’t trust those bastards who work in tech,” he explained. “Babble and gossip and leak like sieves. Besides, Rosengren is the best I’ve met. And he’s not a hundred, he’s seventy-five. And he can keep his mouth shut.”

“But how did you get into the tech squad?” asked Johansson with surprise. “The paper’s been dusted. For prints.”

“I can tell you’ve never been home with Rosengren. He doesn’t live in an apartment, he lives in a crime tech laboratory. The old guy makes a mint doing investigations for private clients. The whole range from employees who’ve left fingerprints on the company jam jar to letters from husbands who’ve found themselves a little beaver on the side.”

“I thought he was a handwriting expert,” said Johansson.

“He’s that too, the best,” said Jarnebring with a nod that brooked no contradictions, “and he can dust off a normal fingerprint in his sleep. I took Krassner’s fingerprints along and various handwritten notes that I found among his papers.”

“And?” said Johansson.

“Those are Krassner’s prints, only his, and they’re sitting in the right place, where they should be.”

“Handwriting?” wondered Johansson.

“Also Krassner’s, typically American.”

Johansson looked at the paper one more time and nodded. He understood what Jarnebring meant; the way his title, the numbers, the address were written.

“Krassner seems to have liked you,” said Jarnebring, grinning. “You have no idea why he did?”

“Not the foggiest.” Johansson shook his head. “Might one be allowed to read that letter he wrote?”

“Obviously,” said Jarnebring generously and handed over a white A4 paper in a plastic sleeve. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Did Krassner know Swedish?” asked Johansson with surprise when he saw the typewritten text.

“Nada,” said Jarnebring, shaking his head. “That’s a translation. I haven’t gotten the original back from the tech yet. I got the information on the prints by phone. Fucking lazy asses,” snorted Jarnebring. “Why didn’t they take his clothes along when they were there already checking out the prints?”

“Who did the translation?” asked Johansson.

“Hultman,” said Jarnebring.

“Hultman? Our Hultman?” asked Johansson.

“Yes,” said Jarnebring, “and he’s even more fiendish in English than you are, so you can be completely at ease.”

I am, thought Johansson, and read the short text.

I have lived my life caught between the longing of summer and the cold of winter. As a young man I used to think that when summer comes I would fall in love with someone, someone I would love a lot, and then, that’s when I would start living my life for real. But by the time I had accomplished all those things I had to do before, summer was already gone and all that remained was the winter cold. And that, that was not the life that I had hoped for.

Strange, thought Johansson. Exactly like those poems I used to write when I was young and I burned when I got older.

“Seems to have been the sensitive type,” said Jarnebring.

“He seems to have had good judgment, though, when it comes to Swedish policemen,” said Johansson and got up from his chair with a jerk. “How about having dinner tonight?”

“Gladly,” said Jarnebring. “If you promise not to start throwing the china.”

“Seven-thirty at my neighborhood restaurant,” said Johansson. “I’ll pick up the check so you can relax.”

…

“So this is where you drag all your women,” said Jarnebring, when at the appointed time they were seated at Johansson’s usual table in his favorite restaurant.

“Actually there aren’t that many,” said Johansson.

“So they have Italian chow here,” said Jarnebring, glancing furtively at the menu on the large slate board. He didn’t seem entirely enthusiastic.

“Yeah,” said Johansson, “and you actually ought to try it sometime, but since you’re the one eating with me, I’ve made some special arrangements. You’re going to get barbecued entrecôte with au gratin potatoes and a dessert that I know you’ll appreciate. On the other hand, you don’t get any herring as a starter, that went beyond the restaurant owner’s threshold of pain, but instead a very fine marinated lox. Perfect with aquavit, by the way.”

“I thought they’d never heard of aquavit at a dive like this,” said Jarnebring.

“I come here,” said Johansson, “and I’ve done so since they opened, so they’ve heard of aquavit. I brought a couple of my own aquavit glasses here too, those crystal ones with a tall base that you’ve drunk out of at my place. I inherited a couple dozen from my great-aunt, have I told you about her?” he asked.

In spite of the fact that he’d surely done so more than once, Jarnebring nodded at him to continue.

“She’s one person you should’ve met, Bo,” continued Johansson, “for she was in a class of her own. She ran the hotel in Kramfors back in the ration-book days, so those hold seven and a half centiliters, half a ration in the good old days.” First-rate stuff in that old lady, thought Johansson.

Jarnebring shook his head. He seemed almost a bit taken.

“Lars, my friend, do you know what you are? In heart and soul?”

Johansson shook his head.

“You aren’t some damn bureaucrat at the National Police Board, are you, police superintendent? In heart and soul you’re a Norrland landowning farmer, one of those shrewd bastards with mile-wide forests and a sawmill down by the river. If you’d just been born a hundred years earlier you’d have been drinking with Zorn and the lads down at the Opera Bar, not with a simple constable.”

Make it the Golden Peace, Rydbergs, or Berns, and you’re not talking about me but rather about my grandfather, or my big brother if you disregard the time period, thought Johansson. Besides, you’re wrong about me, but he didn’t say any of that.

“Gentlemen,” interrupted the restaurant owner with a slight throat-clearing and a deep bow. “Marinated lox according to the house recipe.”

He placed the plates before them; large slices of salmon cut on the diagonal, pink with streaks of white, lemon on the side, a splash of olive oil, and a few sprigs of fresh herbs.

“Drinks, gentlemen.” One of his assistants held out a tray with two large beers and two brimming-full shot glasses, which he placed with an expert hand before their place settings, first Jarnebring, then Johansson. Then he took a step back and bowed slightly.

“I wish you gentlemen bon appétit.”

Jarnebring nodded at Johansson and grasped the glass in his right hand.

“Skoal, chief!”

“Completely okay,” said Jarnebring after finishing the appetizer and two large shots from Aunt Jenny’s glass. He had, however, put the vegetables and lemon wedge into the ashtray before he tackled the lox. After that they talked about the old days. Since they were best friends it was both natural and necessary to start before their careers had separated them. While Johansson had climbed higher, Jarnebring had stayed put. It had been years since they shared the same worn-out front seat in a police car and drank the same bitter coffee in the break room at surveillance, and because they could only meet in their free time nowadays, they talked mostly about the time that they had worked together.

The theme was always the same: Things were much better before, at surveillance, at homicide, much better within the police department, to put it simply; even the crooks were understandable in the good old days.

“Do you remember Murder-Otto?” asked Jarnebring. “And the Sheriff?”

“And Dahlgren and Mattson,” continued Johansson nostalgically. “And Little Gösta and Splinter and the Gook and the Knife. Bongos, do you remember Bongos, and Åström and Sally? Do you remember Sally, the one that the uniformed police always arrested first when we’d done a raid? The one we called Chief Inspector Toivonen and looked like an ordinary drunk from Karelia who’d missed the boat back.”

These were all police legends and old bosses who had either closed up shop or disappeared from the story with the help of the general retirement system, but none of their younger colleagues had ever seen them sitting in the park behind the police station feeding pigeons.

“Sour old bastards,” said Jarnebring, “but damn capable police officers.”

“They knew what was good and bad and what was right and wrong, and then they could sort out what was important from pure nonsense,” said Johansson, who was feeling more than slightly affected by Aunt Jenny’s measures and tried to keep the conversation on a respectable level. On a Tuesday, thought Johansson. I can’t get plastered in the middle of the week even if he’s my best friend and things went south last time we met and…

“Eva-Lena,” interrupted Jarnebring. “Do you remember Eva-Lena?”

“Eva-Lena?” Johansson, who was of the opinion that the police profession should be practiced by men, because ninety-nine percent of the time it concerned other men, but of course he would not dream of uttering a word of that, rooted feverishly among his old police memories.

“Eva-Lena, that broad who became head of the narc squad, the first female detective chief inspector in Stockholm. In the whole country, I believe. A light-haired, thin gal, a bit too thin, perhaps, but still rather tasty, swore like a tugboat captain. You remember her, don’t you?”

Johansson suddenly remembered. He had been loaned out to narcotics from surveillance in an emergency and the first night he had missed a routine tailing. Muffed it, to put it simply, because the thief was cleverer than him, because his wife had just left him, because he hadn’t slept since it happened, and because his children used to phone every time he tried to sleep, and because they immediately started bawling before he had time to say anything, and because their mother managed to hang up before… All the same, he’d muffed it and the following morning he got his new boss’s view on the matter.

“How the hell do you explain this?” she began.

Personal problems, thought Johansson. He had learned at school that that’s what you should say, but as soon as he started working he realized that that was pure nonsense, so he didn’t say it.

“He was better than me,” said Johansson. One to nothing for me, he thought, for he had seen how surprised she was.

“He was better than you? But isn’t just about everyone? Isn’t that so? I’ve heard that you’re a fucking piece of trash. That’s what my boys say. Surveillance sent us a fucking piece of trash to yank our chains.”

And someone ought to wash your mouth out with soap, thought Johansson, but he didn’t say that either.

“Almost no one is better than me,” said Johansson with an obvious Norrland accent while at the same time looking her straight in the eyes. To her credit it should be said that she hadn’t backed down, just stared back, but she had still lost because she was the one who had said something first.

“Okay,” she said. “You’ll get another chance. See to it that you’re here at seven o’clock.”

Instead he’d gone to his chief, one of those old legends. Johansson had chosen the easy way out.

“She’s badmouthing us here at surveillance,” said Johansson. “She’s badmouthing us and you too, and I won’t put up with that.” He added a little extra Norrland drawl at the end.

“Damn sow,” said the chief, who was already red under the eyes. “Damn pushy dyke.” He started to dial the number of his best friend, who was an old wrestler just like him and the head of the entire detective department, “and you,” he nodded at Johansson, “stay with me, lad. It’s those damn socialist bastards,” he explained. “You’ve got to be a socialist bastard in order to arrive at something so stupid as recruiting old ladies to the police.” He chuckled, leaned back in his chair, and nodded at Johansson that he could leave. Lapp bastard, he thought affectionately as Johansson left.

…

“Her I do remember,” said Johansson. “She was good,” he continued, “really good, almost as good as you and me.”

So she tried to sound like you and me, and behave like you and me and all the other boys, and one day she was simply gone, he thought.

“What happened to her?” asked Johansson, despite the fact that he knew the answer.

Jarnebring shrugged his broad shoulders.

“She disappeared, she quit, nobody knows,” said Jarnebring.

How the hell can you recruit women to the police? he thought, but because Johansson was after all a superintendent and as such more than halfway into politics he didn’t say that.

“Skoal,” said Jarnebring, raising his glass. “Skoal to all the boys in surveillance and skoal to the good old days.”

Who poured more aquavit? thought Johansson, a little confused. Someone must have, for Aunt Jenny’s glasses were full to the brim.

“Gustav Adolf Nilsson,” said Jarnebring, smiling. They had taken a break in the middle of the entrée, Johansson was drinking wine while Jarnebring abstained to continue instead with beer, and a little extra on the side in Aunt Jenny’s glass, and the whole thing was just great. “Gustav Adolf Nilsson, born in thirty,” repeated Jarnebring.

“Your witness,” said Johansson. “The one with the mutt who got the shoe in the head,” he continued. Strange story, thought Johansson. Pure detective mystery.

“Vindel,” continued Jarnebring. “Do you remember him, almost ten years ago? When we were working on that robbery over at Odenplan and the double murder where I’ll be damned if it wasn’t our colleague at the secret police who was the perp. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “I remember Vindel.” That other thing he’d tried to forget. “Was he the drunk who knew the victim?”

“Not today,” said Jarnebring. “The same Gustav Adolf Nilsson,” continued Jarnebring delightedly. “Alias Vindel. And both you and I are bigger drunks than he is today.”

“I would have thought he’d drunk himself to death a good while ago,” said Johansson with surprise. “The way he looked back then.”

“No way, José,” said Jarnebring, shaking his head delightedly. “Six months later he got an inheritance from his oldest sister, the only remaining relative. She had married a Pentecostalist who was a hardware wholesaler and twice her age. Vindel’s brother-in-law,” Jarnebring clarified, “but because he’d tricked Vindel out of half his parental home as soon as he’d sunk his claws into his sister, they didn’t exactly get together every day. Then the old bastard kicked the bucket, the Pentecostalist that is, and ten years later when it was time for the widow to go, she left the entire inheritance to Vindel. In spite of the fact that he hadn’t heard from her in twenty years. A case of bad conscience, I suppose, the old hag.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Johansson with genuine feeling behind his words.

“Sure,” said Jarnebring. “I thought I recognized him when we were over at his place, talking about his dead dog, but it was Hultman who connected the dots when we drove away from there.”

So Hultman was along, thought Johansson, but he didn’t say that.

“Not so strange,” continued Jarnebring, “for he looked like a damn athlete compared with when you and I saw him, and that must be almost ten years ago. Skinny, sinewy, Norrland athletic type, a real gray panther. Piles of dough from his sister and not a drop after the inheritance. He’s supposed to have said something to the effect that if you had as much money as he did you were simply obligated to quit drinking. He just went on the wagon and said farewell to all of his drinking buddies, from that day on. He’s still living in his old pad on Surbrunnsgatan, although now the building has been turned into condominiums, and then Vindel acquired the neighboring pad as well. Knocked out the wall and added on, treasurer of the association and loaded as a bank vault.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Johansson. “Vindel, that old lush.”

“Sure,” said Jarnebring. “I forgot to tell you that when you came up, ’cause all I was thinking about was that damn shoe. What a fucking story, pure detective mystery.” Jarnebring’s entire upper body was shaking with delight and because he was leaning forward over the table it could be felt in the whole place.

“Yes, I still don’t have the foggiest,” said Johansson. “As far as I know I’ve never met that Krassner.”

A shoe with a hollow heel, in the hollow heel a key to a safe-deposit box in the United States, and so far so good. If it hadn’t been for that slip of paper, thought Johansson. The paper with his name and address, despite the fact that he wasn’t in the phone book, despite the fact that extremely few people outside of his family and his closest circle of friends knew where he lived. Despite the fact that his secretary, and anyone else at his office, for that matter, would never dream of giving out his home address.

“A mystery, quite simply,” said Johansson gloomily, and that was exactly what he thought. A damn mystery.

“At first I thought it was the guys in the uniformed police who wanted to mess with you,” said Jarnebring.

I thought so too, thought Johansson, and nodded while he poured the last drops from the wine bottle. I should have stuck to beer like Jarnie, he thought. The same Jarnie who furthermore had replenished Aunt Jenny’s glass twice but still appeared capable of an arrest or two, which of course was more than one might expect of him. They might as well write a traveling testimonial for me, he thought and immediately felt cheered at the thought.

“Where was I?” said Jarnebring, taking a large gulp from his beer glass. “Yes, the guys at the uniformed police, the ones you were giving such a hard time a few months ago.”

In his capacity as head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Johansson had led an internal investigation of a unit of the Stockholm riot squad. He had proceeded harshly and they had even had to sit in the pokey a while, but now it appeared that everything was returning to normal. Released from jail, back on the job although without a police van (at least for the time being), and with an indictment in Stockholm district court that would certainly run out in the sand.

“Damn crooks,” said Johansson from the depths of his heart. “How the hell can they let people like that into the corps?”

“Sure,” said Jarnebring, “I’m with you, and just say the word if you want to go outside and have it out with those fucking bastards, but as far as the shoe is concerned they’re innocent. They don’t know a thing about it.”

“I agree with you,” said Johansson, nodding down into his wineglass.

“It’s Krassner’s shoe. And for reasons unknown, he’s written down your address and put it into the heel of the shoe. Where the hell did my dessert go, by the way?”

Pure detective mystery, thought Johansson, trying to make eye contact with his friend the restaurant owner. An honest cop, he thought.

“I was thinking about that letter,” said Johansson.

Jarnebring nodded. They had finished off the dessert and were working on coffee and cognac. Johansson was having it mostly for show, but after half a bottle of Ramlösa mineral water he felt significantly more alert.

“Yes,” said Jarnebring, who didn’t appear to notice how much he drank.

“It was an electric typewriter, you said. Did you check the ink cartridge-one of those color-ribbon cassettes, if I understood you correctly?”

“What the hell, Lars,” said Jarnebring. “I am actually a policeman. Yes, I’ve checked the cartridge, and the only thing on the ribbon is just what’s written in the letter. Who the hell do you think I am?” said Jarnebring, taking a large gulp from his brandy snifter at the same time that he gave his friend the familiar wolfish grin.

“The wastebasket…” said Johansson.

“And the wastebasket,” interrupted Jarnebring. “The only thing in the wastebasket was the package the cartridge came in. As I said.”

“But you said that the piece of shit has been here for a month and a half,” persisted Johansson. “What’s he been doing that whole time? He must have been doing something?”

“I guess he’s been brooding about life and the future,” said Jarnebring, shrugging his shoulders. “Apart from that, he doesn’t seem to have covered much ground. I guess he had other things on his mind.”

“For more than a month,” said Johansson with obvious doubt in his voice.

“Just over six and a half weeks,” said Jarnebring. “I’ve checked the date. He arrived from New York at Arlanda on Sunday, the sixth of October. Jumped on Friday, the twenty-second of November.”

“Those books in his room,” said Johansson. “What were they about?”

“Various things,” said Jarnebring, grinning for reasons that Johansson could not readily understand. “There were some paperback mysteries in English; he seems to have read those at least, for they were fairly dog-eared. Yes,” Jarnebring searched his memory, “then there were quite a few books about Sweden and Swedish history and politics, all of them in English. Sweden the Middle Way, The Paradise of Social Democracy. I’ve got a list in my report if you’re interested.”

Not particularly, thought Johansson.

“Damn it, Lars.” Jarnebring leaned forward across the table and put his right hand on Johansson’s arm. “Relax. There’s bound to be some simple and obvious explanation.”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson; at the same time he couldn’t help smiling.

“Let’s suppose this,” said his best friend. “Some semi-radical nitwit from the States comes here for various unclear reasons and has the exact same opinions that everyone else of his ilk has. One evening he’s at the bar and meets our own talents who think like he does and they stand there shooting the breeze and feeling at home and talking about the sort of thing that unites all those types, regardless of where they come from.”

“And what would that be?” asked Johansson.

“That people like you and me are real shitheads. Policemen. The biggest shitheads around.”

“I know what you mean,” said Johansson. He had heard it from one of his own children.

“Excellent,” said Jarnebring, “and at that point it’s one of our own leftist loonies who remembers that he or she-most likely it’s a broad, come to think of it-has read in the paper that there are actually exceptions even among the worst of the worst.”

“I see,” said Johansson.

“And so she starts to tell about what she’s read in the paper about you and your crusade against our colleagues at the Stockholm riot squad on account of that old drunk that they possibly beat to death, and Krassner gets completely hot in his trousers and decides that, by God, I’ll make sure to take that boy with me into eternity. And he proceeds to write down your name and puts it in his secret little shoe. Damn romantic,” snorted Jarnebring, “and if you don’t intend to foot the bill for drinks, I’ll get two with my own money. What would you like?”

“Let me think,” said Johansson, whose thoughts were going in a different direction than gin and tonic.

“Okay,” said Jarnebring. “Do you remember that editorial in Mini-Pravda, our beloved evening paper, the day after you put those guys in the can? Half a page. Do you remember that?”

“I have a vague memory now that you mention it,” Johansson lied; he could recall the editorial in detail.

“I seem to remember that the headline was ‘An Honorable Cop,’ ” said Jarnebring.

“Now that you mention it,” said Johansson evasively.

“Exactly,” said Jarnebring. “Me and the other guys almost laughed ourselves silly. Lars Martin Johansson, a completely ordinary constable, one of us, allowing for the fact that a lot of water has run under the bridge since we shared the front seat and the same lookouts, you could swear he’s well on his way to becoming a government minister. The only one in Swedish police history to get a positive mention in that rag. And a real policeman besides, not one of the kind you run into nowadays.”

“Was it that bad?” said Johansson, and the discomfort he felt was genuine.

“Cut it out,” said Jarnebring. “It’s cool. I guess we know you. What about that drink, by the way?”

“I’ll take care of that in a moment,” said Johansson, signaling to his friend the restaurant owner.

But how did she or he know my home address? he thought.

[WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27]

The night before had been a late one. Jarnebring had gone home with him and they had stayed up drinking and talking until one o’clock. Then Johansson looked at the clock and declared that he for one had had enough and that if Jarnebring was considering staying he could choose between the couch in the living room and the one in the study. Jarnebring thanked him for the invitation, called a taxi, and went home. He was rather in the mood and she had been unusually affectionate lately. I guess she’s heard all that talk about my good morals, thought Jarnebring contentedly as he journeyed through the night.

Johansson woke at six as usual, got up, took two aspirin and a large glass of water before he set the clock for eight and went back to sleep again. He had to be at a conference out on Lidingö at ten o’clock, and because he wasn’t a speaker but a member of the audience, he didn’t have anything in particular to be concerned about. Except for that annoying little slip of paper.

Now he was sitting where he should be according to the calendar on his desk, but as one speaker followed another at the podium, his thoughts were going their own way, and every time they came back to that slip of paper.

My address, thought Johansson, for he could not let go of that thought. How did he get hold of my address? I’m not in the phone book. I don’t give it out at work, and no one in my family or among my friends would do so either. On the other hand, it would be no big deal to get hold of it for someone who really wanted to. But why would Krassner have his name and address? Johansson had a good memory for both names and people and their appearances and various dealings, as you should have if you’re an old detective; he had truly ransacked his memory these past twenty-four hours. No Krassner, thought Johansson.

Assume that Jarnebring was on the right track. That Krassner was an ordinary scatterbrain, the type who liked to be a little important and secretive and could even imagine gadding about in shoes with hollow heels. Hollow heels. Johansson shook his head. Of all the thousands of crooks he’d run into during his years as a policeman, he couldn’t recall any who’d had shoes with hollow heels. On the other hand there were several who hadn’t had any shoes at all. Dope, thought Johansson. There were sure to be one or two who had chosen to store the goods that way. A tall tale was even circulating in the building about a black guy who was extremely tall to start with, who had tried to bring in a pound of heroin through customs at Arlanda in a pair of knee-high, crocodile-leather platform boots. He didn’t know if it was true, and that wasn’t the point anyway, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to talk with one of the boys in narcotics? How can I do that? thought Johansson gloomily, and if he knew Jarnebring it had already been done. Wonder what we’ll get for lunch, he thought, looking at his watch.

Jarnebring was not the type to surrender unnecessarily to brooding. Krassner was a closed chapter. It only remained for him to write up the case and put it in the files. He would do that as soon as Hultman called to report on what the American police had come up with regarding Krassner, and he was already convinced that this would not essentially change anything. Suicide, concluded Jarnebring, and after that he’d devoted the morning to practical matters and the afternoon to physical training. What he was going to do after work was his own business.

Good news, thought Wiijnbladh. If police-station gossip was true, it was evidently the acting head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Lars Martin Johansson, who had written the statement about the officers who had missed the two corpses in the elevator shaft. The type who gladly steps over the bodies of his colleagues, thought Wiijnbladh, and he would scarcely miss that dilettante Olsson when he let the ax fall. True, Olsson had not been at the scene of the crime, he’d been somewhere else, which only further underscored his negligence and general incompetence, but he was still the chief of the group at the tech squad where the officers were working. The job that rightly should have been mine, thought Wiijnbladh, and yet it was clearly not too late. Now it was a matter of making an extra effort before the celebration of the chief’s sixtieth birthday. I’m of course in charge of both the collection and the party, thought Wiijnbladh contentedly.

…

On Monday morning Bäckström had returned to his usual job as murder investigator on the homicide squad, and with him he had an as good as completely investigated case of wife abuse. Normally he wouldn’t have touched shit like that with a pair of tongs. The homicide squad had yielded to political pressure from a lot of red-stockings and leftist pansies and established a special investigative group for violence against women, to which the closet fags and dykes in the corps had of course applied. Violence against women? thought Bäckström. A bunch of drunken hags who both needed and wanted a little regular ass-whipping. The problem was just this case: a pile of dough and boobs like melons and the drunk she was married to was still sitting in stir. Bäckström himself had seen to that.

First he had thought about playing the good cop and simply asking his immediate superior to let him finish up the case himself. For one thing, the investigation was as good as done, and for another, there were no fresh murders that required his efforts. Just piles of old, unsolved shit that no normal person could bear to poke into, but the problem was more complicated than that. Bäckström’s boss was an old idiot, six foot six and 280 pounds who completely lacked a fuse. When Bäckström saw him on Monday he had been monumentally hungover, and only a suicidal person with impaired vision would have asked the question, so Bäckström decided to lie low and not say a peep about the matter. All he needed was a couple of extra follow-up sessions with the poor victim. He was already halfway there, he’d heard it in her voice when he was talking with her on the phone. In the worst case he could always change the date on the interviews.

Jarnebring wasn’t what he seemed to be, thought Oredsson, and when he talked with his older comrades he also understood why. Jarnebring was clearly an old colleague and best friend of that fifth columnist Johansson, who was head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Too bad, thought Oredsson. If you’re going to tackle crime in earnest it’s important to have people like Jarnebring on the right side.

…

When Stridh came home he turned on the TV to watch the evening news, but it was the same old pile of misery so he turned it off again. It never ends, thought Stridh; the only bright spot was that he would soon be off again.

[THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28]

Hultman was not one to hesitate to pull the trigger, thought Jarnebring with delight, and the Americans weren’t either. When he checked his mailbox after morning prayers he found a fax from the American embassy. A record of an interrogation carried out by the police in Albany, New York, a few short official lines from the legal attaché at the embassy, as well as a handwritten letter from Hultman that summarized the essentials: Ten years ago Krassner had tried to take his own life by jumping from the balcony of the house where he was living. The local police had pulled out an old investigation of the incident. His girlfriend at that time had also been questioned, and to make a long story short, she could confirm everything that Jarnebring had suspected right from the start. Krassner was, to say the least, a complicated person. Krassner had tried to take his life before, and in the same way as now.

As a suicide attempt it was not much to write home about. Krassner had suffered a concussion and a broken leg. This time you were more successful, thought Jarnebring; he decided to finish up the investigation of the cause of death as soon as he received the final statement from the forensic doctor. Suicide, thought Jarnebring once again, and the simplest thing would be to just forget that annoying little slip of paper with his best friend’s name on it. Perhaps that ridiculous shoe with the hollow heel too, thought Jarnebring. He could, of course, have found the safe-deposit box key somewhere else, and the very simplest thing was just to include it along with everything else in the confiscation report. I’m not going to write a spy novel, thought Jarnebring, so that might as well stay between Lars Martin and me.

Johansson was bewildered and felt a growing irritation. First he’d tried to create some order in his head by seeing to it that he was fully occupied. Until lunch he had quickly and efficiently cleared away all old annoyances and the usual trifles, which could just as well have remained dormant for good, and after lunch he had started to inspect an old proposal for reorganization of the operation at the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which even the person who had proposed it didn’t have the energy to care about anymore… and then he called Jarnebring.

“Okay,” said Jarnebring. “Come over and we’ll talk.”

Jarnebring had told him about the message from the embassy, but that didn’t seem to make an impression on his best friend. Nor did the fact that in his investigation he had decided not to mention the obnoxious little scrap of paper and the shoe with the hollow heel. Johansson hadn’t even heard that, it seemed.

“Okay,” said Jarnebring, with a slight resignation in his voice. “How can I help you?”

“You had a photo of Krassner,” said Johansson. “Could I borrow it?”

Jarnebring grinned and shrugged his shoulders.

“Who were you thinking of questioning?”

Johansson also shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ve been going over this in my head until I’m about to go crazy. I wasn’t thinking of questioning anyone.”

“Just snooping around a little?”

Johansson smiled reluctantly and Jarnebring chuckled.

“Put your ear to the rails?”

“More or less,” said Johansson.

“I think you’re barking up the wrong tree,” said Jarnebring. “You’re that type, but okay. Anything else I can help you with?”

“The letter,” said Johansson. “Think I could borrow that letter he wrote?”

“I meant to put the original in his file, of course, but if you can get by with a copy? Sure,” said Jarnebring.

“A copy would work fine,” said Johansson.

Jarnebring grinned and nodded; apparently he was psychic, for both Krassner’s photo and a photocopy of his letter were already in the plastic folder that he took out and handed over to Johansson.

“Anything else you need?” asked Jarnebring, leaning back in his desk chair with his fingers clasped behind his head.

“No, such as?”

Jarnebring shook his head, acting concerned.

“I’m worried about you, Lars,” he said. “Not because you’re getting unnecessarily worked up over this lunatic-you’ve always been the type, so that doesn’t worry me-but you do seem a bit rusty. What do you think about these?”

Jarnebring took a different plastic folder out of his desk drawer and handed it to Johansson. In it were ten or so photos of men approximately Krassner’s age and appearance.

Johansson smiled unwillingly.

“I wasn’t thinking about questioning anyone,” he said. “That’s your job.”

“No, certainly,” said Jarnebring, “but suppose you change your mind and get it into your head to do it anyway. Would be sad if the person you’re talking with didn’t have any pictures to choose from.” He sighed. “You’re worrying yourself unnecessarily,” he continued. “I want the photo array back, by the way.”

“Of course,” said Johansson. “There was one more thing.” A thought had just occurred to him. “That ink cartridge for the typewriter, do you still have it?”

“It’s one of those plastic cartridges,” said Jarnebring, “for a Panasonic brand electric typewriter. The only thing it was used for was to write out that letter you got a copy of. I’ve checked the cartridge against the letter myself. I can assure you, Lars, that every single damn stroke on the ink cartridge, every single correction which has been made on the correction tape, I’ve checked off on the letter.”

Jarnebring looked expectantly at Johansson, who made a deprecating gesture with his hands.

“I’ll pull back,” said Johansson. “Sweet Jesus,” he said and smiled wryly. “I’m crawling in the dust.”

Jarnebring appeared not to have heard the last. “True, I’m only a simple police inspector,” he said, “and if it hadn’t been for one colleague who insisted that we Indian-wrestle, there wouldn’t have been any need for me even to warm this chair.”

Johansson smiled and nodded. The reason for Jarnebring’s sudden promotion was already part of police history as recounted among those who could trust each other.

“One thing I learned early on,” continued Jarnebring, and it sounded as if he was thinking out loud. “This was even before you and I ran into each other.”

Johansson nodded. “Go on.”

“Well,” said Jarnebring. “If you must do something that takes a little time, then see to it for Christ’s sake that you do it properly, otherwise you might as well not bother at all. It took me a good hour to check off the letter against the ink cartridge and correction tape.”

“Quickly done at that,” said Johansson approvingly.

“Sure,” said Jarnebring, grinning broadly. “Which actually might have been due to the fact that old man Rosengren helped me.”

Seated in his car down in the parking garage, Johansson took the plastic folder with the letter and the photo of Krassner out of his briefcase. On the back of the photo Jarnebring had attached the irritating little scrap of paper with a paper clip. It was wrapped in plastic but Johansson could still see that it was the original.

Bo, he thought.

[FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29]

Now the shit has hit the fan in earnest, thought Bäckström, when the chief of homicide’s secretary buzzed him on his intercom and said that the chief wanted to see him immediately. That damn sow, thought Bäckström. She’s knifed me in the back and what the hell am I going to come up with now?

The day before he’d set up a meeting with the crime victim on Karlavägen. They were to meet at her home and Bäckström had set the time at six o’clock in the evening. A quick questioning, a little heartwarming idle chatter, and then straight to the little red beet. So I can treat you to a trip you’ve never made before, thought Bäckström contentedly.

When he actually got there and rang her doorbell, no one opened. Bäckström rang and rang and finally he peeked through the mail slot to see if anything had happened. The only thing that happened was that her neighbor stuck his ugly snout out of the door and asked if there was anything he could help him with. Sour, skinny, bald old bastard, Bäckström diagnosed, while he considered whether he should stick his badge right in his kisser or simply request that he go to hell. But before he managed to do either, the old bastard had shrieked at him to get away from there or else he would call the police.

Because he didn’t have any desire to stand in the stairwell negotiating with one of those Nazis from the uniformed police-for some reason he’d started thinking about that idiot Oredsson-he had carried out an orderly retreat and trotted down to a nearby Chinese restaurant, where he placed himself in the bar to be able to think better. In the ball, thought Bäckström, grinning.

“Rarge beer, rarge stlong beer,” he said to the saffron monkey in the bar, but the humorless bastard didn’t even crack a smile.

After a few more beers he trotted out and scouted around her building a little. The lights were off in all the windows.

Bäckström found a new bar, downed a few more beers, and finally called her from a pay phone. No answer, and after a number of rings the answering machine came on and he hung up.

Then things had just rolled on by themselves, or so it seemed. Next bar, two more beers, another attempt at the pay phone, and suddenly he’d been standing outside the usual old dive on Kungsgatan. First he’d taken a cautious peek through the window. That fucking whore who worked at Saab-the one he’d screwed last summer-was sitting in the half-empty bar, lacing her fingers together with some fucking homo watchman. Bäckström decided to go in.

“It’s full,” said the half-ape who stood in the doorway, grinning.

“What do you mean, full?” said Bäckström.

“It’s always full here,” said the half-ape and grinned even wider. “Besides, you seem to have had a few too many already.”

A few too many, thought Bäckström. Don’t try and get familiar with me or I’ll kill you. But he didn’t say that. He just left. Finally he made it home, squeezed the last drops out of one of the bottles he had bought on payday, then called her again. No answer, so he left a message on her answering machine. And what the hell was it I said then? he thought as he walked into the chief’s office.

The head of the homicide squad was named Lindberg. A few years earlier he had succeeded one of the legends of the Stockholm police, and because everyone on the squad was sick and tired of legends, a few of the old hands had a chat with the union, and that’s how Lindberg had become the boss, and the good thing about him was that he had no clue at all about anything whatsoever. A little fat, incompetent old bastard, thought Bäckström, and if you fixed it that you were the last one to speak with him, then you were living in the best of all worlds.

The problem was Lindberg’s own chief. He had succeeded in pressing himself down into Lindberg’s visitor’s armchair and already looked as if he were going to have a stroke. His name was Danielsson, Chief Inspector Danielsson according to the service register, but in the building he was generally known as Jack Daniels, which was easier to remember. Jack Daniels, thought Bäckström, nodding heartily while he sat down on an empty chair nearest the door to have his escape route secured should things get hot. Strange that you haven’t drunk yourself to death.

“You wanted to speak with me, chief,” said Bäckström.

“Yes, yes,” said Lindberg defensively. “It’s about that woman on Karlavägen, that Mrs. Östergren who was abused by her husband. Her attorney has contacted us and-”

“Have you quit homicide?” interrupted his chief.

“What do you mean?” said Bäckström.

“Now tell it like it is,” said Jack Daniels. “You’d planned to talk your way into a little fling with that upper-class whore on Karlavägen. The one who tried to get her man put away.”

“Oh well, oh well,” said Lindberg conciliatorily. “Now let’s not quarrel just because… because of this plaintiff. We all know how difficult they can be in these kinds of cases. Yes, Danielsson, you of all people ought to know that,” he added, glancing nervously at his guest in the armchair.

How the hell could you know anything about that, Danielsson thought morosely, for you’ve never investigated a crime, have you? But he didn’t say that.

“You horny bastard,” he said instead, giving Bäckström the evil eye.

Lucky not to have been born yesterday, thought Bäckström half an hour later when he had returned to his office. It was just as he had thought. That fucking whore had used him and tried to knife him in the back, but that was her mistake, thought Bäckström. That sort of thing didn’t work with an old pro, however hard she tried. Clearly she had turned over the tape from her answering machine to her lawyer, who in turn had given it to Lindberg, whereupon his boozer of a boss had insisted that they listen to it, in spite of the fact that he and Lindberg were already in agreement that the homos in the violence-against-women group should take over the case.

But that was where you shit all over yourself, thought Bäckström, for it was at that point that he’d come up with his stroke of genius.

First they had played the tape from the answering machine, and maybe it sounded a little weird, as it well might when you’re worried and call someone late at night. But Bäckström had kept his cool.

“What’s the problem?” said Bäckström. “She’s the one who insisted on being questioned in her own home, because she couldn’t bear to go to the police station. And it’s clear that I got worried when she didn’t open the door.”

“So you called her,” said Jack Daniels softly.

“Yes,” said Bäckström. “I obviously didn’t have reasonable grounds for anything else, even if for a while I did fear the worst.”

“At one-thirty in the morning?” said Jack Daniels.

“That must be wrong,” said Bäckström. “It was much earlier than that.” I’m guessing there isn’t any clock on those things, he thought.

“You were so fucking loaded you can hardly hear what you’re saying,” interrupted Jack Daniels.

“Drunk,” Bäckström burst out indignantly. “I was cold sober and standing there, brushing my teeth. I was about to go to bed. It was just past ten, I guess. I was standing there brushing my teeth, and that’s no doubt why it sounds a little unclear.” Ingenious, thought Bäckström.

“Yes, yes,” said Lindberg, raising his hands like some fucking Pentecostal preacher. “Then I believe we’re clear on this matter.”

Say what you will about Bäckström, thought Lindberg’s immediate supervisor, Chief Inspector Danielsson, but he’s a shrewd bastard. Lazy and incompetent, but shrewd! He was horny too, the fat little devil-quite a mystery how he managed it, lush that he was. I must have a little nip myself, he thought, glancing at the binder on his bookshelf where he had hidden the office bottle. He looked at the clock. Not before twelve, he thought gloomily, and besides, he’d forgotten to buy throat lozenges. Wonder where he came up with that bit about brushing his teeth, he thought.

How come Danielsson is called Jack Daniels? Bäckström pondered. Simple. Easy to remember. How do you kill a Jack Daniels? Assume that I invite him home for dinner, buy a little herring and meatballs for the sake of appearances and a shitload of aquavit. A whole fucking case and three or four cases of strong beer. Which he gets to pour into himself until he chokes and then I help him with the last gulps. Too uncertain, decided Bäckström, and it sounds fucking expensive. Besides, it was Friday and high time to slip away for the usual business errands outside the building.

Vindel is from Norrland, thought Johansson, old dog owner and teetotaler. So he gets up early. Johansson looked at the clock and decided to talk with Vindel before he went to the office. Why should I do that? he thought, suddenly despondent as he stood on the street, waiting for his taxi.

His analysis had been correct anyway, thought Johansson as he sat in Vindel’s parlor with a cup of coffee before him. Dark, old-fashioned furniture, large Oriental carpet on the floor, wall clock above the sofa, and so clean it sparkled. Johansson had already made note of the large framed portrait on the sideboard over by the window. Silver frame with ornaments.

“That’s Charlie,” said Vindel and sighed. “He reached thirteen before he died.”

“I like Pomeranians too,” said Johansson, which was perhaps not completely true, as both his father and his brothers had always kept Norwegian elkhounds and he had never objected to their choice.

“You hunt, of course,” Vindel declared.

“Yeah,” said Johansson, and his Norrland dialect was apparent.

“Home on the farm,” said Vindel, and this was more a statement than a question.

“Yeah,” said Johansson. “Both of my parents are still alive, although my dad is starting to get a little frail.”

“You’ve done well,” said Vindel, glancing at Johansson’s business card, which he had placed before him on the table. “Police superintendent, that’s not cat shit.”

“Yeah,” said Johansson. “I’ve done well.”

“For me things almost went to hell for awhile,” said Vindel.

“Your health failed you?” asked Johansson, despite the fact that he knew. Vindel shook his head.

“Booze,” he said. “The greatest depravity that he-down-there ever sent us poor wretches up here. But I broke out of those chains of his and there are others besides me who can testify to the fact that it was at the last minute.”

Me among them, thought Johansson and nodded, but he didn’t say anything. Vindel took a cookie from the plate and suddenly smiled at Johansson.

“It’s nice when things go well for us Norrlanders,” he said. “We’ve always pulled our weight, I can tell you, but how many Norrlanders are there in the government? Stockholmers and Scanians, they’re a dime a dozen, but Norrlanders?” Vindel sighed and shook his head. “Although when the wind starts to blow, then we come in handy.”

So true, so true, thought Johansson, and what am I doing here, really?

…

Johansson had shown him the pictures anyway. The picture of Krassner and nine of the others that he had gotten from Jarnebring. Vindel only shook his head.

“He wasn’t in any condition for me to recognize him,” said Vindel, “and it’s true I’ve lived here since I came to Stockholm, but I don’t recall any of them.” He nodded toward Johansson’s photographs and shook his head.

“Which of them is it?” asked Vindel.

“That one,” said Johansson, pointing to the photo of Krassner.

“I’ve never seen him,” said Vindel. “Has he done something, or…?” he asked. “More than been the death of Charlie, I mean.”

“Not as far as we know,” said Johansson.

“I heard he was American,” said Vindel. “Your colleagues who were here over the weekend said so. There was a big husky one, a real mountain of a guy, and then he had a little dapper one with him who looked like an executive. In all fairness, though, they were both nice, I have no complaints about either of them.”

I should hope not, thought Johansson.

“There’s one thing I was thinking about,” said Vindel as they stood in the entryway saying goodbye.

“Yes,” said Johansson.

“I told my neighbor, Mrs. Carlander, fine lady, widow, although she’ll soon be eighty of course…”

“Yes,” said Johansson.

“Yes, I told her that he was an American.”

“Yes,” said Johansson.

“Yes, she must have seen them when they stood there talking at the place where he was killed. Your colleagues, that is.”

“Yes,” said Johansson as he stepped out through the door. High time to get back to work, he thought.

“She’d heard about Charlie; that’s why we came to talk about it and when I told her that they’d said that he was an American.”

You haven’t started tippling again, have you? thought Johansson, feeling ashamed at the thought. “Absolutely no problem,” he said. “It’s no secret, and I’d like to say thank you for the treat.”

“You’re welcome,” said Vindel and nodded after Johansson, who was disappearing down the stairwell.

“I think she’d spoken with some American when she was at the post office,” explained Vindel to Johansson’s back.

“Excuse me?” said Johansson, turning around.

“It was him,” said Mrs. Carlander, pointing at the photo of Krassner. “I heard right away that he was an American but also that he spoke with a distinct upstate New York accent. My husband was head of sales for SKF in the U.S. and we lived there for quite a few years,” Mrs. Carlander explained.

This can’t be true, thought Lars Martin Johansson.

“Tell me,” he said.

“It must have been a little over a month ago,” said Mrs. Carlander. She wasn’t sure of the day, but toward the end of every month she would always gather together all the bills that needed to be paid and go to the post office with them, so it must have been just around then. Besides, it was then that her husband’s pension check was deposited in her account, so she didn’t need to worry about making overdrafts from the bank and annoyances like that.

No doubt, thought Johansson, looking around at the tastefully decorated apartment. Mrs. Carlander has the means to get by.

“I could just write it out on my postal account and put it in the mail,” she continued, “but I think there are so many newfangled things and I feel more secure going to the post office where there’s always someone to ask if need be. And besides, they’re so nice, the people who work there, especially the manager. She’s charming.”

Johansson nodded.

“Where is the post office?”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Carlander. “It’s our own post office, as we usually say, we older folks who live here in the neighborhood. It’s that little post office on Körsbärsvägen. Right on the corner before the student dormitory, but on the other side of the street of course,” she explained. “Besides, the walk there is just about right.”

Johansson nodded. He had a vague recollection of having walked or driven past it at some point.

“And naturally they’re going to close it,” said Mrs. Carlander, with a noticeable irritation at the ravages of time.

“I see,” said Johansson.

“Well,” said Mrs. Carlander. “So we’ve started to organize a protest among us older people in the neighborhood. The politicians can’t just take all local service away from us.”

They certainly can, thought Johansson, but he didn’t say that.

“It must have been in the morning,” continued Mrs. Carlander. “That I was there, that is. There are very few people there in the morning, and of course you want to stand in line as little as possible.”

“That’s for sure,” said Johansson. “Who wants to stand in line?”

“That’s why I recall it so well,” said Mrs. Carlander. “I became extremely irritated at him.”

On the morning about a month earlier when Mrs. Carlander visited the post office on Körsbärsvägen, the premises had been mostly empty when she entered. There was only one man, speaking English with the cashier at the only window that was open.

“I heard right away that he was an American,” said Mrs. Carlander. “My husband and I lived there for almost ten years. SKF had an office in Manhattan at that time and we lived less than an hour north, on the Hudson River outside a charming little town called Montrose. Gerhard commuted on weekdays, morning and evening, and I took care of our children. Now they’re grown up and have children of their own.”

Johansson nodded. He had gathered as much from the framed family pictures on her little desk.

“Where was I?” Mrs. Carlander smiled absently but then she picked up the thread again and there was a twinkle in her gray eyes. “That’s what was amusing, suddenly I recognized his, well, accent. New England, although to be exact it’s not really New England.”

“So you, Mrs. Carlander, became irritated at him,” Johansson reminded her.

“He was going to send some letter and the cashier’s English no doubt could have been better-I actually became a little irritated at her too, and for a moment I thought about butting in and offering to help out by translating, but you don’t want to meddle either.”

No, thought Johansson. You’re not the type. He nodded encouragingly.

“But finally I became thoroughly irritated in any event, for he didn’t give up and it’s a little hard for me to stand for longer periods, but just as I was about to say something the manager came and took over. Charming young woman, you should meet her, although that is a strange title they’ve given her. Postmaster. What’s wrong with postmistress? After all, you say equestrienne, for example. It’s not logical.”

If she’s married to one then it’s completely okay, thought Johansson, and I’ll reserve judgment on that thing about horses, but he didn’t say that.

“Do you recall what kind of problem there was with that letter?” asked Johansson.

Mrs. Carlander shook her head slowly.

“No,” she said hesitantly. “But if there were any I’m convinced the manager would have solved them for him.”

“You don’t recall her name?” asked Johansson.

“Name, name,” said Mrs. Carlander vaguely. “Her first name is Pia, that much I know. But what her last name is, I know that I know but sometimes I get those, well, it’s as if things just fall out of my memory. The other day I forgot the word for ‘navel.’ I was talking with one of my grandchildren on the phone and it was completely gone. She must have thought Grandma had gone crazy, poor thing.”

“It’ll be okay,” said Johansson confidently. “We police find out things like that.” Peppy Pia, he thought.

“I think so too,” said Mrs. Carlander with conviction. “I’m quite certain you are going to take notice of her, superintendent. She has that kind of appearance that you fellows take notice of, if I may say so.”

Time to say goodbye, thought Johansson and smiled in her direction.

“Yes, Mrs. Carlander, I must say thank you…”

“You won’t say what he’s done? Is it narcotics and those kinds of horrors?”

Johansson shook his head and smiled soothingly.

“No, not as far as we know,” he said. “He isn’t suspected of any crime.”

“No,” said Mrs. Carlander, and she didn’t sound entirely convinced.

“No,” repeated Johansson. “We’re just trying to find out who he was.”

Mrs. Carlander nodded again but she still didn’t seem entirely convinced.

Mrs. Carlander was completely correct. Pia had the kind of appearance that fellows take notice of: dark hair cut short, blue eyes, large breasts, and a narrow waist. Her last name was Hedin. There’s nothing wrong with her legs either, thought Johansson, but because they were standing on either side of the counter it wasn’t particularly easy to make sure of that.

Johansson had stated his name and given her his business card. He had also noted that she became more surprised when she looked at it than was warranted by his name and title alone. Then she smiled amiably at him and nodded inquiringly.

“What can I help you with?”

Johansson handed over the photo of Krassner.

“I understand you were speaking with this person about a month ago. He wanted help sending a letter.”

She took the photo in her hand and Johansson saw that she recognized the face in the picture. Then she smiled amiably again and nodded toward his business card, which she had placed on the counter.

“You don’t have an ID or anything,” she asked. “I don’t want to seem awkward, but we do have our rules as well.”

Careless of me, thought Johansson, and wondered how many courses in corporate security she’d gone to. He smiled apologetically and held out his police ID. In contrast to almost everyone else, she looked at it carefully. Then she smiled again and Johansson understood that Mrs. Carlander was a woman who knew men better than most women half her age.

“That’s right,” she said. “I recognize him and I was the one who helped him send the letter to you.”

What the hell is she saying? thought Johansson, and apparently Pia Hedin was just as observant as he was, for she just smiled and nodded toward the back of the post office.

“Perhaps we should sit down in my office,” she suggested. “So we can talk without being disturbed.”

Nice legs, thought Johansson as he followed her into her office, at least one consolation in this mess.

More than a month ago, Krassner had come into the post office on Körsbärsvägen and sent a letter to the Stockholm 4 post office on Folkungagatan on the south end, poste restante, for Police Superintendent Lars Martin Johansson. She had helped him herself but she didn’t go into the reasons why she’d done so.

“It was a rather strange request. We almost never get any poste restante here, and the ones we do get come as a rule from abroad. As you no doubt know, police superintendent…”

“Call me Lars,” said Johansson, and received a smile and a nod as a reward.

“When a poste restante is sent to one of our offices, it remains there for a month-thirty days, to be exact-and then it goes back to the sender. Provided that the addressee hasn’t picked it up, of course.”

If he had my address, thought Johansson, why in the name of heaven didn’t he send it directly home to me instead of to the post office-although he did send it to the post office I usually go to.

“I’m thinking,” said Johansson, smiling his most charming smile. “I had no idea that I’d received a letter poste restante.”

“I figured that out a little more than a week ago,” said Pia Hedin. “When we got it back here.”

Finally, thought Johansson. Soon the truth will emerge, but before that we’ll take everything in the right order. Calmly and methodically.

“There are naturally no obstacles to sending local mailings poste restante, but it’s not common. That I can guarantee. I recall that I offered to try to find out your address so that it would be sure to get through.”

“What did he say to that?” asked Johansson.

“He explained that you’d agreed to do it this way.”

I see, thought Johansson. He said that.

“Yes.” She nodded and smiled again. “It’s clear that I started a little at the addressee’s title, your title-it was actually a little bit exciting.”

“What did you think?” said Johansson. What a smile she has, he thought.

“That it was some kind of secret tip. I mean, he didn’t seem like he was on drugs or strange in any way. He even wanted to show his ID to me, but I said that wasn’t necessary. I understood of course that there was no dope in the letter. It was an ordinary letter. Not even especially thick, and of course I could feel that there was only paper in it. Yes. What did I think? I probably thought it was exciting. A little secret agent movie like that.”

She seems rather charmed, thought Johansson.

“Okay,” he said. “You wouldn’t be able to fetch it so I can look at it?”

“Won’t work.” She smiled and shook her head. “Unfortunately.”

What do you mean won’t work? thought Johansson.

“He had requested particular forwarding from here, so I’ve already sent it to that address. It actually left here yesterday.”

This is, so help me God, not true, thought Johansson, and he groaned internally.

“Why did he do that?” asked Johansson.

“I explained how it worked with poste restante and that the letter would come back here in about a month, and then he said that if he hadn’t picked it up within a week he wanted me to forward it to an address in the U.S. He explained that he was living at the student dormitory right across the street but that he was planning to go home in a month, approximately. He didn’t know exactly which day he would leave, and he didn’t want it to remain sitting here with us and he didn’t want it sent to the student dormitory because he was just living there temporarily. And because we don’t want a lot of letters sitting around here either, making a mess, I did as he requested, a little special service like that.” She smiled and nodded.

“Where have you sent it?” said Johansson.

“To the address in the U.S. that he gave me, and actually I thought that was a little strange too.”

“How so?”

“Well, as I said, he explained that he was only here temporarily and that he was living at the dormitory right across the street and that he would probably be going home in a month. So if we were to get the letter sent back, we could hold it here for a week and then forward it to him if he hadn’t picked it up by then.”

“Yes,” said Johansson inquiringly. “What’s strange about that?”

“He wanted it forwarded to a different person,” she explained. “A woman, so I thought that was probably more of that secret stuff that I shouldn’t butt into, but I have both her name and address. I have a copy of the forwarding information that you can look at if it’s of any help.”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “Gladly.”

Sarah J. Weissman, read Johansson, 222 Aiken Avenue, Rensselaer, NY 12144 U.S.A. Yes, yes, yes, thought Johansson. And so who is she?

“I actually checked the address,” she said. “I mean, you do get a bit curious.”

It shows in your eyes. You think this is a lot more fun than I do, Johansson thought gloomily.

“And?” he asked.

“Yes, the zip code fits the address. I haven’t checked if the addressee is there. I don’t really know if we can do that, but the rest checks out. Rensselaer is north of New York.”

Upstate New York, thought Johansson, and that much adds up.

“You seem worried, superintendent,” she said. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

If the eyes are indeed the mirror of the soul, thought Johansson, you seem sufficiently talented in any case. The question is whether you are sufficiently tight-lipped.

“Perhaps,” said Johansson.

“Try,” she said. “Sometimes you actually have to try trusting your fellow humans.”

“Are you the type of person who can… keep her mouth shut?” asked Johansson, and he immediately thought that perhaps he ought to have put that differently.

“Yes,” she said and nodded emphatically. “I am.”

“Good,” said Johansson. “The problem is in brief the following. I’ve never met this Krassner. I didn’t even know that he existed. True, I’m head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation”-a brief period of happiness, thought Johansson-“but,” he continued, “Krassner isn’t one of our informants, and if he were, it wouldn’t be handled in this way.

“Explain to me,” Johansson went on, “why someone sends something poste restante to a police officer they’ve never met without saying that they’ve done so. The chance that he will get what’s been sent ought to be about nil.”

“Certainly,” she said. “But there’s another thing that I don’t understand.”

Johansson nodded to her to continue.

“How you found out about it anyway. I mean, you show up here with me. How did you find out about it?”

You’re not stupid, thought Johansson, and what do I say now without saying too much?

“By pure coincidence,” he said. “Why does he send something to me in such a way that he must be almost certain that I will never receive it or even find out about it?” he continued by way of diversion.

“Wouldn’t the simplest way be for you to ask him? And if he’s already gone home and it’s terribly important I suppose you could ask the American police for help. I mean, the police have some kind of international cooperation, don’t they? Even we have within the postal service, and sometimes it actually works really well.”

Now she smiled again and seemed visibly charmed.

Groan, thought Johansson. Just so she doesn’t think I’m a complete idiot.

“The problem is that I can’t do that,” he said. And don’t start harping about why, he thought.

“Are you that policeman that there was so much about in the papers a few months ago?” she asked.

Johansson nodded.

“Perhaps he’s heard people talking about you in particular,” she said. “There was pure adulation in several newspapers, and that isn’t so common when it comes to policemen, is it? Does he understand Swedish?”

“I don’t believe he does,” said Johansson. “Although I’m not completely sure. It’s possible of course he might have spoken with someone. Who spoke Swedish, I mean.” She’s thinking the same way as Jarnebring, he thought. No resemblance in other respects.

“Think if it’s like this,” she said, suddenly sounding eager. “Suppose he’s up to something secret or something dangerous, and so he wants to get himself a kind of insurance, as it were. I’ve read that in mysteries many times. People who leave all their secret papers with people they can trust, lawyers and journalists and in secret safe-deposit boxes. Like a type of insurance if something should happen to them.” Johansson had been struck by the same thought five minutes earlier. There was just one hitch.

“There’s just one hitch,” he said. “How would I have found out about it?”

“You’re sitting here,” she said, “so you’ve clearly found out about it.”

“True,” said Johansson, “but I still have no idea what it’s about.”

“Exactly,” she said and sounded even more eager. “And you shouldn’t, either. As long as nothing has happened, you shouldn’t know a thing. He never needed his insurance. You wouldn’t even be sitting here if it weren’t for a pure coincidence. You’ve said that yourself.”

Johansson nodded and tried to look as if he was doing so because of what she had said. Then he smiled.

“You’ve never thought about becoming a police officer?” he asked.

“No, never,” she said, smiling back.

“I’d like to thank you very much for your help,” said Johansson.

“It was nothing,” she said, and there was no mistaking that she was charmed. “Get in touch if you happen to get stuck again.”

Don’t tempt me, he thought, and suddenly he felt rather miserable.

What a mess, thought Johansson. What is this really all about? First he stopped at the Östermalm police station and gave back Jarnebring’s identification photos. Jarnebring wasn’t in, which saved both time and explanations. After that he went to the office and now he was sitting behind his desk submerged in thought. What is it that connects me with the now deceased John Krassner and the hopefully still existing Sarah Weissman? Krassner and Weissman, Americans of whom generally speaking he knew no more than that the first was dead and that he’d probably taken his own life by jumping out the window of his student apartment. And what do you really know about yourself? thought Johansson gloomily. If you really stop to think about it? Wiklander, thought Johansson.

“Can you get hold of Wiklander,” said Johansson to his secretary on the intercom, despite the fact that she was only sitting on the other side of the wall five yards away from him. Don’t feel like running around today, he thought.

Wiklander was thin and dark, tall and trim and ten years younger than Johansson. He worked on the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s own surveillance squad and was an extraordinarily competent policeman. If it would ever be necessary to put a face on discretion-which was highly unlikely, as that would be contrary to the very idea-then Wiklander was a likely candidate. Now he was standing in Johansson’s office, sniffing the air like a foxhound moments before you pull off the leash.

“What can I do for you, chief?” asked Wiklander.

“Find out a telephone number and check if the address matches up,” said Johansson and handed over a handwritten slip of paper.

“Sarah Weissman,” said Wiklander. “Check the address and find out her telephone number. Of course,” he said and almost sounded a little offended. “Nothing else?”

“Well, yes,” said Johansson, “so you don’t need to have that sour look. I want you to do it without a soul finding out about it.”

“You mean our dear colleagues,” said Wiklander, who was of course no numbskull.

“Exactly,” said Johansson. “In a global sense, even. And preferably no one else either.”

“Sure,” said Wiklander. “If she has a telephone number, you’ll get it.”

“Excellent,” said Johansson.

Fifteen minutes later Wiklander was back with the requested telephone number. It was written on the same piece of paper he had received from Johansson, and if he knew Wiklander it was also the only relevant thing in writing.

“That was quick,” said Johansson.

“So-so,” said Wiklander modestly. “It’s her number and it goes with the address.”

“Tell me,” said Johansson with curiosity. “How’d you go about it?” He held up his watch with an inquiring smile.

“I forget,” said Wiklander. “Don’t really know what you’re talking about.”

It would be simplest to call her. Johansson was staring gloomily at his slip of paper. What time is it there now? he thought. He checked his watch. Almost twelve here makes almost six there. That wouldn’t come off too well, maybe, he thought. And tomorrow he was going to the United States.

The world is really full of strange coincidences, thought Johansson, with a heavy sigh.

Johansson hadn’t called her. On the other hand, Jarnebring had called him at home that evening.

He sounded in high spirits and wondered how the investigations had gone.

“How many do you want us to arrest and do we need to request assistance from the riot squad?” he asked, chuckling into the receiver.

“No need,” said Johansson. “I went by and talked with Vindel but that led nowhere.”

“What do you know,” said Jarnebring, faking astonishment. “That led nowhere?”

“It occurred to me that perhaps he’d run into him. That Vindel had seen Krassner before because they both moved around in the same area. Just a wild chance,” said Johansson, sighing.

“You didn’t find out a thing, in other words.”

“Not a thing,” lied Johansson.

“No need to be so hangdog,” said Jarnebring. “There don’t seem to be very many people who knew our man Krassner.”

“No?” said Johansson. “What do you mean?”

“I spoke with the embassy this afternoon, well, with Hultman, that is, and Krassner doesn’t seem to have any relatives.”

“Aha,” said Johansson. What do you mean? he thought.

“Yes, Hultman was a little worried because they must have someone to send his things to.”

Not my problem, thought Johansson.

“And the only person the folks there could get hold of was evidently some old girlfriend. But according to her it had been ten years since the breakup between her and Krassner. According to Hultman.”

Old girlfriend, thought Johansson; at the same time the well-known alarm bells started to sound inside him.

“I don’t understand,” said Johansson. “Has Hultman talked with Krassner’s old girlfriend?”

“Are you drunk, Johansson?” asked Jarnebring politely.

“Stone sober,” said Johansson. “A little tired, perhaps.”

“I understand,” said Jarnebring pedagogically. “Our American colleagues who tried to find out who Krassner was have spoken with an old girlfriend of his. By the way, I’ve received a copy of their interview with her. First she says that it was about ten years ago or so that she broke up with him-”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “I’m listening.”

“Stop interrupting, then,” said Jarnebring. “Where was I?”

“Old girlfriend who broke up ten years ago.”

“Exactly,” said Jarnebring with the emphasis of someone who has just found a lost thread. “And second, she doesn’t appear to have been one of his most ardent admirers.”

“Maybe that’s why she broke up with him,” said Johansson.

“For sure,” said Jarnebring, “but Krassner seems to have missed that, for he’s listed her as his nearest relation, and in addition a will has been found where he leaves everything to her. I reserve judgment on what that may be, but I bet my old police helmet that we’re hardly talking in the billions.”

“Does she have a name?” asked Johansson innocently.

“Sarah something. I have it at work.”

Sarah J. Weissman, thought Johansson but kept his mouth shut.

“I see,” said Johansson. “Yes, frankly speaking I’m damn tired of this story.”

“Nice to hear,” said Jarnebring. “And you…

“Yes,” said Johansson.

“Have a nice trip and take care of yourself over there. That’s why I called, actually.”

“Thanks,” said Johansson. “Take care of yourself too.”

This gets stranger and stranger, he thought as he put down the receiver.

[SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30]

On Saturday the thirtieth of November Lars Martin Johansson took an early morning plane to New York. As travel companions he had two chief inspectors from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Exceptional police officers and nice fellows.

Fuck you, Krassner, and fuck you, Weissman, thought Johansson. Because now I’m going to have a good time and maybe even learn something new that might prove useful.

“I’m thinking of having a shot with lunch,” said Johansson, smiling wryly.

His colleague from the bureau’s narcotics squad nodded thoughtfully.

“The same thought actually occurred to me too.”

Their colleague from the Interpol section nodded as well.

“Remarkable,” he said. “I was just thinking the exact same thing. Life can be really strange sometimes.”