Free Falling, As If in a Dream

First he intended to clean up after himself. As soon as he got rid of the body he intended to clean up after himself. Starting with his hotel room. Get his keys. Take the plane to Stockholm. Clean up his apartment on Norr Mälarstrand and his big house in the country. In the best case he could get back anything that rightfully belonged to him.

There was never time for any cleanup. As so often before when he planned things, the unexpected upset his calculations.

When he showed up at the hotel the next morning the police had already been there. A regular marked car was parked by the hotel entrance. Two uniformed Spanish officers standing in reception, talking with the staff. The main key that was in his pocket, that he’d had to pay so dearly for, could no longer be used. He got rid of it. Threw it in the water when he turned in the boat he had rented. Traveling to Sweden was out of the question.

What remained was the hope that there wasn’t anything to clean up. He laid low. Changed residence, waited, hid for months like a rabbit in its new hole. It was also then that he decided to have Esperanza built. As an extra insurance policy he could use to protect himself against the unexpected.

But nothing had happened. There hadn’t been anything he needed to clean up. If there had been he would have noticed it. Then things would have happened. All that had happened was that year was added to year, and soon it would be over for good, and worldly justice could no longer reach him. He had never had any reason to trouble himself about divine justice. On the contrary, it seemed to have been on his side all along, if you wanted to believe in such things.

Esperanza was no longer simply a boat, an insurance policy, and a reminder. It had also become a contribution to his livelihood, and it was Ignacio Ballester who had suggested it. Why not earn some extra money from all the charter tourists? Everyone who wanted to swim, fish, and dive. He knew the area, he knew the waters. He was an experienced sailor too, good diver, and capable fisherman. What would be simpler than putting out his card among all the others on the bulletin board down by the charter pier in Puerto Pollensa? Day tours, swimming, fishing, diving. Easy money and no tax authorities to torment anyone smart enough to give out only a cell phone number on the printed card.

Think of all the good-looking women he could meet, said Ignacio, winking at him. A man like him. In his prime and with a beautiful boat like Esperanza. All the beautiful women, practically naked, dressed for swimming and diving. And then the sun, the warm sea. Security, freedom, perhaps love too. Love. There was never anything wrong with a little love, was there?

71

Wednesday, September 26 and exactly two weeks left until October 10.

Headquarters of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation on Kungsholmen in Stockholm

Half an hour before the usual Wednesday meeting would begin, Lisa Mattei’s mother stepped into Johansson’s office. She closed the door behind her, sat down in the visitor’s chair, and fixed her eyes on Lars Martin Johansson.

“No time for frills,” said Johansson. “You’re more beautiful than ever, Linda. Although that’s probably not something any of your sallow colleagues have dared say to you.”

“No time for bullshit either, Lars,” said Linda Mattei. “Quick question. What are you up to with my daughter?”

“Nothing,” said Johansson, shaking his head. “True, she’s just as gorgeous as her mother, but as I’m sure you know, I’ve been a happily married man for many years.”

“She’s asking a lot of strange questions,” said Linda Mattei. “I’m getting worried about her.”

“I don’t think you need to be,” said Johansson. “If you ask me I’m convinced things will go very well for her. Things are already going well for her, and she can go as far as she wants. I’m sure she will too.”

“Last week she wanted me to reveal the identity of one of my former colleagues. Is that something you’ve asked her to do?”

“Actually, no,” said Johansson. “She came up with that all on her own, and I’m very grateful that she did.”

“So it’s not something that you’re behind,” said Linda Mattei.

“I helped her of course when she asked.”

“You helped her?”

“Kjell Göran Hedberg,” said Johansson. “How could I have ever forgotten someone like him?”

“So you knew,” said Linda Mattei.

“It struck me suddenly when your gorgeous daughter was kind enough to describe him to me. The bureau in Solna in the seventies. Then bodyguard at SePo. Quit in 1982. Kjell Göran Hedberg. Same Hedberg who never should have become a policeman.”

“Did you know he was called the Perfume Man? After that horrid German eau de cologne Kölnisch Wasser 4711 that my husband used to give me as a present,” said Linda Mattei.

“Not a clue,” said Johansson. “Must have been before my time. That wasn’t what you were wearing those far too few times when I had the pleasure,” said Johansson.

“Come, come now,” said Linda Mattei. “You’ve never heard the story about the Perfume Man?”

“No,” said Johansson. “Tell me.”

Hedberg had started with SePo in the summer of 1976. He had been recruited from the detective division at the Solna police and was one of three who had been brought over from Solna and placed in SePo’s bodyguard squad. First training, then service as a bodyguard. In addition, a service code to protect his identity from the outside world.

“He got the code 4711,” said Linda Mattei. “There were no ulterior motives in that. At least not as far as I know. It was simply the code that was available, I guess. After a while he discovered that his colleagues were calling him the Perfume Man. After that German eau de cologne. He came to me and complained. I was office manager at the squad back then.”

“I can barely contain myself,” said Johansson.

“I told him not to be so damned childish,” said Linda Mattei. “If any of his little classmates were being mean to him, he could always tattle on them to the teacher who would take them by the ear. Because he was evidently not man enough to rise above such childishness.”

“So what did he say?” said Johansson.

“He slunk off,” said Linda Mattei. “Didn’t come back the whole time I was sitting at the counter, and that was at least a couple of years.”

“He must have been occupied with other things,” said Johansson. “First running off to rob the post office on Dalagatan and then killing two witnesses who happened to recognize him.”

“I’ve heard that story before,” said Linda Mattei. “Show me an indictment or even a preliminary investigation, then I promise to listen to you.”

“Forget about that now,” said Johansson. “Continue.”

“My successor was evidently more sensitive than I was. It was Björn Söderström, whom you no doubt know. The one who later became head of the whole squad. In any event he liberated Perfume Man from his suffering. Gave him a new service code and saw to it that 4711 became inactive. For the same reasons you avoid having DIK on the license plate on your car.”

“What would a real man do with a license plate like that?” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders.

“No, maybe not you. But certainly one or two of your brethren,” said Linda Mattei.

“That particular code I’m talking about, 4711 that is, has actually never been used since then. Not since the autumn of 1977 as far as I know. Although the story was well known, and that was certainly why our personnel department sent the reply they did.”

“Although Hedberg was still there. Even after having robbed the post office and eliminated two witnesses,” said Johansson.

“He was allowed to stay. Though he had left the bodyguards by 1978. For one thing, there was a lot of talk about what you just mentioned. For another, the boss at the time, it was Berg as I’m sure you remember, transferred him. Internal service for almost four years before he resigned.”

“I’ve thought a good deal about that,” said Johansson. “Why did Berg let him stay?”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t out of consideration for Hedberg,” said Linda Mattei.

“I understand exactly,” said Johansson. “If it was concern for your daughter that got you to look me up, then you don’t need to worry yourself in the slightest.”

“Good,” said Linda Mattei, getting up. “And if you were to get tired of your young wife you know who you can call.”

All these women who love you, thought Lars Martin Johansson. In his conference room there were probably two more who were longing to meet him.

Not both however, as it appeared. When he showed up Anna Holt looked pointedly at the clock, even though he was only fifteen minutes late. Lisa on the other hand was energetic and happy as always, while Jan Lewin seemed almost absent. Although he was a guy of course. Not much of a guy, to be sure, thought Johansson, but who cared about such things?

“Read this,” he said, giving them copies of the summary he had devoted the entire evening to while his wife sulked and finally disappeared to go to the movies with a girlfriend. Not with her husband, even though he had promised her.

“Kjell Göran Hedberg,” said Holt. “Where have I heard that name?”

“Read,” said Johansson.

72

Kjell Göran Hedberg was born on the fifteenth of August 1944, in Vaxholm parish due north of Stockholm. His father worked as a harbor pilot. He was stationed in Sandhamn and lived in Vaxholm, when he wasn’t out piloting vessels through the Stockholm archipelago. He and his family lived in a single-family house. Hedberg’s mother was a housewife. Besides Kjell, the Hedbergs had a daughter three years younger named Birgitta.

If Kjell Hedberg was still alive, and there was nothing to indicate that he wasn’t, he would have turned sixty-three just over a month ago. If he was the one who shot the country’s prime minister, he would have been forty-one when he did it. Tall enough besides. When he applied to the police academy almost forty years before he had been six foot one. According to the information in his passport, now seven years old, these days he was slightly shorter.

“Age takes its toll even on someone like that,” Johansson observed.

After finishing nine years of comprehensive school, Hedberg worked for a few years as a carpenter’s apprentice at a small shipyard in Vaxholm while he studied at evening school and earned a high school diploma. When he turned eighteen he did his military service with the coast commandos in Vaxholm. He trained as an attack diver and mustered out with the highest grades in all subjects. As soon as he was a legal adult he applied to the police academy and was admitted the following year. He was then twenty years old and the year was 1965.

Once he was through with his year of police training, he ended up with the police in Stockholm as a trainee. He was promoted to assistant one year later, and after a total of ten years he applied for a position as a detective inspector with the police in Solna.

Hedberg got the position. Not only did he have good recommendations. He was also the kind of colleague everyone spoke well of. Someone who could be relied on when things suddenly heated up. Someone who always volunteered. Despite his youth, Hedberg was a real constable. The year was 1975 and he had just turned thirty-one.

After only a year at the bureau in Solna the secret police had been in touch. Spoke with Hedberg’s boss. Spoke with Hedberg himself. Sent their usual recruiters there. Interviewed Hedberg, brought him to the mandatory test week at their training camp, somewhere in Sweden. Asked if he wanted to start with them. Got an affirmative reply. Took care of all the papers and got the go-ahead from his police chief and Hedberg himself.

Hedberg was placed with SePo’s bodyguard squad. He was the Solna police department’s best marksman. He was in perfect physical shape. Single, no children. There was nothing that would prevent him from living life as a policeman to the fullest. He looked good. Was careful about his appearance. Dressed well. Was courteous and well-mannered. Had everything required of someone who would be watching over the potentates of the realm, and in the worst case would take the bullet meant for the person he was protecting.

So far all was well known and well substantiated. What happened next was at best mere slander in the big police building on Kungsholmen. At worst it was true, even though Hedberg during his entire active time as a police officer had never been named as a suspect for the crimes he was supposed to have been guilty of.

Johansson’s memo was about Hedberg’s life up to the point when the wicked rumors had taken over. The boss pointed out that he had done it himself, that it was concise and a model of brevity, and that despite his advanced age he still managed to hit the right keys on his computer.

“So read and enjoy, because the rest I intend to do verbally,” said Johansson. “You’ll understand why immediately, and I don’t need to even explain why this has to stay in this room. For the time being, at least. If it’s as I think, there’ll be some changes coming soon. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Johansson.

“On Friday, May 13, 1977, Hedberg robbed the post office at Dalagatan 13,” said Johansson. “His assignment was to guard the then minister of justice during the day. The minister of justice wanted to take the opportunity to visit his favorite hooker a few blocks from there. Hedberg got leave for a couple of hours and passed the time by robbing the post office. Got away with almost three hundred thousand in cash. A lot of money at that time, when a detective inspector like myself earned five thousand a month, before taxes and including all the overtime you accumulated.”

“I’m sure I’ve heard that story a hundred times,” said Holt. “Is it really true?”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “How do I know? Well, I know. I was the one who found him, you see.”

Then it got even worse. During the ensuing months Hedberg did away with two witnesses to the robbery by murdering them. The first was a young man whom he ran over with his car when the man was crossing the street outside the subway station at the Skogskyrkogården cemetery just south of Stockholm. That case had been written off as a tragic traffic accident-the victim had been high and more or less threw himself in front of Hedberg’s car. The second was a completely ordinary murder. An elderly man and social outcast had his neck broken and was dumped in the same cemetery on December 24, 1977.

“On Christmas Eve,” said Lisa Mattei, her eyes widening.

The suspicions against Hedberg could never be proved. What decided the whole thing was that the minister of justice gave him an alibi for the time when he was supposed to have robbed the post office on Dalagatan, and with that all the evidence collapsed like a house of cards.

“The whole thing ended with him being taken out of outside service,” said Johansson. “He got to sit at SePo and shuffle papers. He sat there for four years before he resigned. Where he went then is unclear. According to the little there is, he’s supposed to have moved to Spain a year later. That was in the fall of 1983. At the same time I have reason to believe he continued working for SePo during the following years. As a so-called external operator.”

According to Johansson there was more to it than that. The only one who seemed to have made use of this particular external operator was then police chief superintendent Claes Waltin. It is probable that he had employed Hedberg in a mission that went wrong. A secret house search of a student apartment on Körsbärsvägen in Stockholm, Friday the twenty-second of November 1985.

“Waltin took care of the practical details. The target was an American journalist who was living there on a sublease. I had reason to believe that the operator he made use of was Kjell Göran Hedberg.”

“Friday the twenty-second of November,” said Mattei. “That’s the day Kennedy was shot.”

“Twenty-two years earlier,” said Johansson. “This is probably one of those rare, chance coincidences.”

“So what went wrong?” asked Holt.

“The journalist suddenly showed up. Surprised Hedberg. Hedberg killed him. Feigned a suicide by writing a farewell letter and throwing him out the window from the twentieth floor.”

“This can’t be true,” said Mattei. “My first, real serial murderer. At least three murders on at least three different occasions. If he also shot Palme he’s leading by a wide margin.”

“Glad I can make you happy, Lisa,” said Johansson. “But this particular bastard is not exactly fun to deal with.”

“You must have met him,” said Lewin. “How would you describe him?”

“I ran into him numerous times in service in the good old days. What’s he like? Psychopath, ice-cold, shrewd, rational, dangerous. Everything you want. When I was operations head for the closed operation I entertained myself by reading his personal file. It was not fun reading. Someone like him should never have become a police officer. Nor is it so simple as being an ordinary sex murderer or a sadist. Hedberg has a distinctly practical nature. If a lightbulb burns out you put in a new one, and most of us can manage that. If a person threatens Hedberg’s existence, he does away with him. In the same simple, obvious way as the rest of us change lightbulbs. So the part where he supposedly gets a kick out of killing someone I think you can forget. This is considerably worse than that.”

“Is there any psychological evaluation of him?” asked Holt.

“All the usual stuff that everyone who started at SePo was subject to at that time. Where they obviously only have good things to say. To start with at least. Very good self-control, very high stress thresholds, constructive, rational, highly effective. After what happened in 1977, on the other hand, changes were made. The big boss at the time, Berg, had a very extensive psychiatric assessment done on Hedberg. Everyone sitting here surely knows what I think about such things, but for once I was inclined to agree with the doctor.”

“What did he conclude?” said Mattei.

“That Hedberg was an evil psychopath with almost unlimited self-confidence. Someone who saw himself as an Übermensch. Totally incapable of deeper, emotional attachments to other people. With a very great, purely physical capacity besides.”

“Everyone has their weak points. Even someone like that,” said Holt.

“I think so too,” said Johansson. “Hedberg had at least one, if you ask me.”

“What was that?” said Holt.

“He was crazy for women,” said Johansson. “That sort of thing costs. Sooner or later,” he said.

“So this is the bastard we’re looking for,” said Anna Holt, when Johansson was finished half an hour later.

“I think so,” said Johansson, while smiling and nodding at Lisa Mattei.

“What do you want us to do with him?” said Holt.

“Find him,” said Johansson. “So I can boil him for glue.” At long last, it was high time, and not an hour to lose, he thought.

“One more thing,” said Holt.

“Yes?”

“Pictures of Hedberg. Do we have any good pictures of him?”

“Who do you take me for, Anna?” said Johansson. “I’m hoping that CIS e-mailed a whole photo album to you an hour ago. Thirty pictures of Hedberg, half a dozen of his parents, and about as many of his sister.”

“Thanks,” said Holt.

“You know what they say, Anna,” said Johansson. “A picture says more than a thousand words.”

There was a total of thirty-one pictures of Kjell Göran Hedberg, twenty-five of which had evidently been taken without his knowledge sometime in the late seventies or early eighties. They were typical police surveillance photos taken outdoors by means of a motor camera and telephoto lens. Hedberg going into a bar in the company of an unknown woman. Hedberg coming out of his residence. Hedberg getting into his car. Hedberg getting out of the same car in the police building garage. A 1977 Mercedes, Hedberg wearing a jacket with wide lapels, pants without cuffs but with flared legs, a white shirt with a long collar. A wide tie. A Hedberg of his time.

The photographer was naturally unidentified. Johansson and Jarnebring, in their futile pursuit of a colleague they suspected of a crime that would get him life imprisonment? Or a worried Erik Berg, who wanted to keep an eye on a conceivable security risk in his immediate vicinity?

Holt was captivated by one of them. An ordinary passport photo taken in the spring of 1982 when Hedberg was going to renew his police ID from the secret police, but instead decided to resign only a month later.

Kjell Göran Hedberg: somewhat thin face, regular features, straight nose, pronounced chin and jawline, short dark hair, dark and deeply inset eyes. Eyes that said nothing whatsoever either to the photographer or to a possible observer; eyes that appeared unaware of, or rather completely uninterested in the fact that they had just been photographed: unrevealing, sufficient unto themselves.

He looks good, thought Holt. You could clearly see that, and she would have thought that even if he’d tried to conceal his face by pretending to blow his nose. As on the evening of February 28, 1986, when he encountered Madeleine Nilsson on the stairs from Malmskillnadsgatan down to Kungsgatan.

73

After the meeting Lisa Mattei stayed behind while Holt and Lewin returned to what they were doing. There was not an hour to lose and everything essential remained to be done.

“You wanted to talk with me,” said Johansson.

“The search,” said Mattei, handing her boss a plastic sleeve containing ten pages.

“The search?”

“The search you asked me to do, boss. On that little society of law students,” she clarified.

“Oh, that,” said Johansson. “Well?”

“All of them were in the Palme registry. Sjöberg, Thulin, and Tischler. Although not Waltin, of course, but we found him ourselves.”

“A leopard never changes its spots,” Johansson observed for some reason as he weighed the plastic sleeve in his hand.

“Would you like a quick summary, boss?”

“Gladly,” said Johansson. Anything that will save time, as long as it doesn’t have to do with the case, he thought.

Sjöberg was interviewed for informational purposes because of the so-called Indian arms affair. He had nothing to add and was eliminated from the investigation early on. Besides, he had been dead for almost fifteen years.

“So we don’t need that one,” said Johansson and nodded.

“Thulin was there as one of the Good Guys. Substituted as prosecutor in the investigation on a couple of occasions. Served as an expert in one of the review commissions and as a political appointee on another.”

“I know,” said Johansson. “I’ve met him. I recall that he sat there the whole time harping on about Christer Pettersson. Real stuck-up little toad. Very stupid. It’s a big, fucking mystery.”

“What do you mean, boss?”

“How any woman would want to be involved with someone like that,” Johansson clarified. “He seems to have won that fucking trophy they awarded to each other.”

“That particular aspect doesn’t appear in my papers,” said Mattei. You too, my Johansson, she thought.

“Bragging, if you ask me,” said Johansson. “We can forget Thulin. Next.”

“Tischler,” said Mattei. “At least three tips have come in about him, from the circle of so-called private investigators who allege he was involved in some way in a larger conspiracy to murder Olof Palme.”

“How so? Involved?” That windbag, he thought. If it had only been that good.

“There are assertions that he supposedly offered the first investigation leader, Hans Holmér, a lot of money to follow up his Kurd track,” Mattei explained. “Not because he believed in it, but rather to set up a little smoke screen to protect the real perpetrators.”

“Forget it,” said Johansson. “If Tischler had been part of a conspiracy, he and everyone else involved would have been in jail within twenty-four hours. You couldn’t find a better guarantee for that than mister private banker’s own mouth. Besides, did he ever give any money to Holmér?”

“No. According to what Tischler himself says, that came from information he received from individuals he knew. Within the social democratic movement. Besides, he’s said to have spoken with individuals close to the government. All would have advised him against it. The Kurds had nothing to do with the murder.”

“Did he mention any names?” said Johansson for some reason. “Of the people he talked to, I mean.”

“No,” said Mattei, shaking her head. “Individuals within the Social Democratic Party. Individuals close to the Social Democratic administration. Considering the time frame, it must have been during Ingvar Carlsson’s stint as prime minister.”

“But no names,” said Johansson, nodding thoughtfully. “No names.” Although personally I could think of at least one, he thought.

“Waltin,” said Johansson. “He’s the one this is about. Sjöberg, Thulin, and Tischler I think we can forget.”

“I think like you do, boss,” said Mattei and nodded. “It’s a bit odd, at the same time, that all four would still be in the investigation.”

“It’s a small country,” said Johansson. “Much too small,” he repeated. Not least for someone like our murder victim, he thought.

“One more thing,” said Johansson, just as Mattei was about to leave.

“Yes,” she said and stopped.

“That thing with Hedberg,” said Johansson. “You should get a big gold star for that. What bothers me is that I didn’t think of him myself. I should have, you see, and that bothers me.”

“Maybe you’re starting to get old, boss,” said Mattei.

“Yes,” said Johansson. “Even I’ve gotten older.” No matter how unbelievable that may seem, he thought.

74

The same evening Johansson met the special adviser at a seminar of the Turing Society. Though he had more important stuff he ought to take care of, because things had finally started to move after more than twenty years. Or more than thirty, perhaps, depending on how you calculated.

High time, thought Johansson. High time that a real police officer finally got to see the light at the end of the tunnel. In other respects the tunnel was completely different from the one the walking catastrophe who was in charge of the Palme investigation to start with had raved about. A completely different light too, he thought. A sharp white glare that struck him and people like him right in the eyes, without their being able to turn away or even blink.

The Turing Society was named for Alan Turing. Mathematician and code breaker during the Second World War. A great mathematician and the greatest of all code breakers.

Initially, it had mostly been an illustrious society where his Swedish colleagues, other mathematicians, statisticians, and linguists who had a past within the military intelligence organization were given occasion for both edifying conversation and a decent meal. They would meet quarterly to listen to lectures, hold seminars, or simply socialize. At the obligatory Christmas dinner, the first Sunday in December. At the exclusive gentlemen’s club Stora Sällskapet in Stockholm, Christmas buffet, tails, academic vestments. Numerous shots and bottles of red wine. No one and nothing was lacking.

It was the special adviser who had invited Johansson. First when they had run into each other in Rosenbad. When they had bumped into each other at a reception at the American embassy a few days later, he had repeated his invitation.

The special adviser had been chairman of the Turing Society for many years, and during his tenure the society had taken in a new influx of members. Not only pure academics, but also the sort who mostly worked with military intelligence operations. Even an esteemed politician or two who took pleasure in talking about problems that ordinary people were not supposed to discuss.

“The subject of the evening really ought to entice someone like you,” the special adviser tempted him. “We’re going to talk about a particular aspect of the Palme assassination.”

“The Kurd track or Christer Pettersson?” said Johansson.

“Not really,” said the special adviser. “A purely academic discussion. The main speakers are going to start by presenting an analysis of the consequences of the various so-called tracks. If it turned out to be one way and not another. What political and economic consequences that would have, over and above the purely legal ones.”

“Will there be many people there who were involved in the investigations?” asked Johansson, who had not the slightest desire to meet a certain female prosecutor in Stockholm.

“Are you joking, Johansson?” said the special adviser. “This is an educated society. That’s why I’m so eager for you to come.”

“I have quite a bit to do,” said Johansson.

“For my sake, Johansson. For my sake.”

“I’ll come,” said Johansson.

“Excellent,” said the special adviser, beaming like the sun. “Then you’ll also have the pleasure of meeting my successor. He’s going to give the introductory address.”

He was not particularly like the man he would apparently succeed. A tall, bony academic, half the age of the special adviser, with thick blond hair that stuck out in all directions and eyeglasses he constantly moved between the tip of his nose and his hairline.

He spoke slowly and clearly, chose his words with care, and took pains with both pauses and punctuation. Almost as if he were reading from a written text, while he also made a strangely absent impression.

Another one of the guys with a lot of letters in his poor head, thought Johansson in his judgmental way.

At the same time the speaker’s message had been simple and clear. The advantage of the solitary madman who murdered a prime minister was that, in a social sense, he was primarily free of consequences. A man such as, for example, Christer Pettersson. What remained was the loss of a significant politician-controversial, to be sure-but otherwise nothing, and society would cope. As is known, even loss passes.

“Time heals all wounds,” the evening’s introductory speaker observed. He pushed his glasses onto his forehead and turned the page.

Despite the evening’s purely academic orientation, the opening speaker had nonetheless granted himself a slight digression. Christer Pettersson also offered another essential advantage, not to be overlooked, because any critical thinker who was familiar with this case could not but conclude that he really was the one who murdered the prime minister.

“In a purely intellectual sense the Palme assassination is solved,” he explained to his audience. “What remains to consider is thus not the collective trauma resulting from the unsolved murder, but rather the individual trauma that ensues from the fact that different recipients of this purely factual message have different bases for understanding how matters really stand.”

What remains is to convince numbskulls like Holt, Lewin, Mattei, and me, thought Johansson.

The Kurd track and other similar descriptions of the event had limited consequences for Swedish politics and Swedish society. The geographic, cultural, and political distance between ordinary Swedes and types such as, for example, Kurdish terrorists made it possible to discuss the problem in terms of “us” and “them.” Formulating a clear “dichotomy” where “we” were primarily all the ordinary, decent people while “they” in all essentials were only a kind of strange collective from a very distant part of the world. There would be certain limited effects on the general view of immigrants, refugee policy, and related issues. Increased resources to various agencies of social control, obviously. Calculated in budget terms, problems in the magnitude of several hundred million each. “In total at the most one billion per year, in the ongoing budget. Measures which in addition lend themselves to being handled within the already established bureaucratic structure.”

Nice to hear that we don’t need to come up with anything new, thought Johansson.

But then it quickly got worse. From an ordinary sneeze to a bout of influenza. What remained was more or less the choice between plague and cholera. Far-reaching political and social effects, social costs in the billions, collective mistrust of politicians and social institutions, loss of large portions of Sweden’s credibility abroad. Suddenly a Sweden that had been reduced to an ordinary banana monarchy in the pile of African and Central American republics where heads of state, governments, and ministers were replaced without the least thought of political choices. And without triggering more than a yawn in the UN Security Council.

Whether the assassination did in fact concern a political conspiracy of the sort that befell Gustav III, or what was summarized in Swedish debate under the designation “the police track,” was according to the speaker’s considered opinion “a toss-up.”

Because this comparison surely astonished many in the audience, he also wanted to take the opportunity to further clarify himself.

“In the society in which we live today, the police constitute a social foundation accorded the same respect as, for example, uncorrupted and democratically controlled political organs such as parliament and the government. The police today have a far greater significance than the military in Swedish society. We also live in a world in which security is discussed in police terms; although the means we use are still traditionally military. The point of view, the arguments underpinning it have their basis in a police mind-set, and focus has been moved from war to terrorism. The traditional military balance of terror between nations and blocs of nations is now history. Calculated in terms of damage, and compared with, for example, the so-called Kurd track, with the police track we are talking about social damages that are in the magnitude of a couple of powers of ten higher, and in which the majority of the loss comes from the outside world’s depreciation of Sweden’s democratic credibility,” the introductory speaker concluded, adjusting his glasses down to the tip of his nose and inspecting his pensive audience.

A hundred times more worrisome. At least, thought Lars Martin Johansson, even though math had been far from his favorite subject in school. Even though we’re only talking about two crazy policemen who never should have been policemen, he thought.

After the concluding debate they were invited to dinner at Rosenbad, where the government had made its own dining room available to them.

“So what did you think about my young successor?” asked the special adviser.

“Interesting person,” said Johansson, who always tried to avoid quarrels when he accepted an invitation. “What does a young man like that occupy himself with?” When he’s not talking shit in general terms, he thought.

“Military signals intelligence,” said the special adviser. “But only because you’re the one who’s asking, Johansson,” he added, holding his index finger up to his moist lips. “That’s the young man responsible for the realm’s connection with the American intelligence service. You know, all those eyes and ears high up there in the blue that see and hear everything we’re up to.”

“Yes, it’s quite amazing,” said Johansson. “Quite amazing,” he repeated. To be putting something like that in the hands of someone like our crazy lecturer, he thought.

“Yes, it really is,” the special adviser concurred, smiling happily. “And this they have the gall to call satellites.”

After dinner was over the special adviser took Johansson aside once again to speak with him in private.

“By the way, what did you think about the wines?” he began. “For once really decent, even in this simple context, if you ask me.”

“From your own cellar?” Johansson wondered.

“Not so, not so at all. A little haul that one of my co-workers made. Hidden away in a closet down at Harpsund. Someone forgot them, certainly. A regular little warehouse, actually, that we took the opportunity to walk off with.”

“Is that really true?” said Johansson. “Or is it like with those deer in that park in Oxford?”

“Completely true,” the special adviser assured him, nodding eagerly. “The previous owner seems to have left in some haste. By the way, have you thought about what truth is, Johansson? Really thought about it, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Johansson. My whole life, he thought.

“When an important truth is revealed to you,” said the special adviser, who had now become so excited that he was tugging on the sleeve of Johansson’s jacket, “when an important truth is revealed to you…you can be affected much more painfully than when you reveal a great lie. Truth touches you much, much more than a lie. When you truly see it before you, you fall freely, as if in a dream. As in one of those unpleasant dreams, you know. When you suddenly plummet, fall headlong straight down into a darkness that never ends, and it is so terrible that when you finally wake up it feels as if your chest could explode. When it can take several minutes before you are sure whether you’re really alive or dead. Have you ever had a dream like that?”

“Never,” said Johansson. “But once when I was a little boy they took out my tonsils and that was the first time I had anesthetic. With ether, actually, and the odor still sits in my nose. I remember that I fell like that. It wasn’t particularly nice.”

“But never in a dream,” said the special adviser. “You’ve never done that in a dream? Completely exposed, lost and beyond all help?”

“Never in a dream,” said Johansson.

“You are a fortunate man, Johansson,” sighed the special adviser. “You’re also happily married to a woman who is said to be beautiful, wise, and good.”

Is he trying to tell me something? thought Johansson.

75

That same night Johansson had a hard time falling asleep. Not because he’d been dreaming, but because he’d suddenly been reminded of his childhood. Reminded of the time when he was eleven years old and had a cold the whole autumn. His worried father at last drove him all the way to the general hospital in Kramfors to have his tonsils removed.

A fresh memory, fifty years later. How he had to take off all his clothes and was handed over to them, in a white nightshirt from the county council. How they strapped him in an ordinary dental chair. How they bound his arms and legs with leather straps. How they bound his head tight. How they pried open his mouth. Two grown-ups with masks over their faces and holes for their eyes. Then they pressed the rag with ether over his nose and mouth. How he tried to tear himself loose before they suffocated him. The pungent odor of ether. Much more acrid than the gasoline, diesel, or even chlorine that he knew from life on the farm.

How everything turned black before his eyes, how his head roared, how everything around him started spinning, how he himself fell headfirst straight down into the darkness, and how the last thing he thought about was his dad, Evert, who had not been allowed to come in with him, even though he had held him by the hand all the way up to the door.

76

Marja Ruotsalainen lived in a small apartment in Tyresö, a few miles southeast of central Stockholm. Considering the life she’d lived, she appeared to have managed well. A skinny little woman with a lot of henna-colored hair, who smoked constantly and only stopped when her hacking cough prevented her.

She did not seem particularly happy to see them. But she hadn’t called them “fucking pigs,” and she didn’t tell them to go to hell. She even offered them a crooked smile when they sat down at her kitchen table.

“Girl cops,” said Marja. “So what have you gals been up to the past twenty years?”

She did not offer them coffee. That sort of thing mostly happened in crime novels, but in reality people like her almost never offered police officers coffee. Nothing else either, for that matter. On the other hand she softened and started talking.

She and her boyfriend at the time had been at the Chinese restaurant on Drottninggatan that evening when the prime minister was murdered. She was living at his place. Hiding with him. She had been on the lam for several months. It was Friday evening and she was almost climbing the walls. Had to go out into town. Get out and move around so she could breathe, even though there were more suitable areas than downtown Stockholm where someone like her could go.

She was also the one who had recognized the plainclothes policeman who was already in the restaurant. Recognized him from ten years before, when she was only seventeen and she and another of her boyfriends twice her age had been arrested in a dope pad out in Tensta.

“A real fucking fascist. The type that twisted your arms up behind your back, called you a whore, and stayed standing in the doorway staring while the dyke jailers told you to take off all your clothes,” Marja Ruotsalainen summarized.

Preserved as a bad memory. A year later she had seen him again, when she had yet another boyfriend twice her age. It was outside the Parliament Building, and the nameless policeman and one of the same sort got out of a big black Volvo and held open the door for a well-known politician they then escorted into the building.

“They just radiated SePo,” said Ruotsalainen. “Might as well have had it printed on their foreheads. How clueless can you be?”

“That politician,” said Holt. “You don’t remember what his name was?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It must have been one of those conservatives. May have been in the summer of seventy-seven. When I got busted in Solna that time it was seventy-six. I remember that.”

“Why do you remember that?” asked Mattei.

“Because it was my seventeenth birthday,” said Marja. “Talk about a birthday present.”

The nameless policeman from the restaurant she remembered. He had been sitting there when they came in. The time was about nine-thirty. He left after an hour or so. The rest she had figured out later when she read about the murder of Olof Palme.

“He pretty well matched that physical description. Dark, good condition, forty-ish. About six foot one. Dark jacket. I remember that, because he had it on in the restaurant. On the other hand I don’t remember what kind of pants he had on. I guess I didn’t think about it.”

Then they showed her pictures. Ten portrait photos of police officers taken twenty to thirty years earlier. The originals had been on their police IDs. One of them was of Kjell Göran Hedberg and was taken the same summer he was supposed to have accompanied an unknown politician into the Parliament Building.

“Not the foggiest,” said Ruotsalainen. “They look like blueberries, the whole pile. How the hell do you tell one blueberry from another?”

“What do you think about this then?” asked Mattei, pushing a typewritten page over to her. A list of ten names of male police officers, the majority of which she gathered from the national bureau’s personnel list, and one of them was named Kjell Göran Hedberg.

Pettersson, Salminen, Trost, Kovac, Östh, Johansson, Hedberg, Eriksson, Berg, Kronstedt. Ten names, and the surnames were not in alphabetical order.

“I recognize Östh,” said Ruotsalainen. “That was another one of those Solna detectives. Also a fucking creep, but what his first name was I don’t remember.”

“Take all the time you need,” said Holt. “We’re in no hurry.”

“Me neither,” said Ruotsalainen. “These days I have all the time in the world. Before it was a lot of running around.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not the foggiest. They’re all cops, I suppose, so I’m sure I’ve met them too.”

“After the arrest out in Solna in 1976 you and your guy at the time were convicted of narcotics crimes. It happened in Solna district court in April of 1976. I have the conviction here,” said Mattei, pushing a plastic sleeve over to Ruotsalainen. “What you said, that you were seventeen when you were arrested. That adds up; it says so in the conviction. Before you look at it I want you to think one more time about the name of that policeman who testified against you back then.”

“Is this one of those psych things you learned at the police academy?” asked Ruotsalainen.

“Think now, Marja,” said Mattei. “Think about that policeman who testified against you. Look at the list of names in front of you.”

“Kjell Göran Hedberg,” said Ruotsalainen suddenly. “That was his name. Damn, girlfriend. You’re a fucking magician.

“That name,” she continued. “I remember it. When that Nazi was sitting up there on the stand about to lie through his oath before he stepped on it for real. I, Kjell Göran Hedberg, do promise and assure…Guess whether I remember. How many people do you think there are who call me Marja Lovisa Ruotsalainen? Not even my mom.”

Before they left they talked with her about her then boyfriend, Jorma Kalevi Orjala, who had been struck by a hit-and-run driver and drowned in the Karlberg Canal a few months after the murder of the prime minister.

“Cully,” said Ruotsalainen and sighed. “He was a real fucking crazy, he was. Although I doubt that’s why you came here.”

“No,” said Holt, who did not like lying, even to someone like Marja Ruotsalainen. “But we’ve read the investigation. According to the report, it was most likely a so-called hit-and-run accident. Someone hit him from behind with a car. He was thrown over the edge of the pier and down into the water where he happened to drown.”

“Happened to,” Ruotsalainen snorted. “Cully wasn’t the sort that things ‘happened to.’ He was murdered. You must have realized that anyway?”

“In that case we’ve come for his sake too,” said Holt, looking at her seriously. “So who do you think murdered him?”

“I wish I could say it was that fucking Hedberg,” said Ruotsalainen. “But I don’t really think so. There were a fucking lot of people who wanted to kill Cully. That evening, for example, he was at home with a girlfriend of mine, drinking and screwing her. He needed to I guess, and I was sitting in jail,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

“Do you have any names?” said Mattei. “For example, what was the name of your girlfriend that Cully visited? Maybe you have some idea who may have run him over?”

“Course I have,” said Ruotsalainen. “The problem is that they’re all dead. Cully’s dead, my girlfriend is dead. Her guy at the time, who possibly ran over Cully after he came staggering out of his girl’s pad, is dead too. You should have been here twenty years ago. Why weren’t you, by the way?”

“Good question,” said Anna Holt as they sat in the car on the way to the police building. “Why didn’t we hold that interview twenty years ago?”

“I couldn’t hold any interviews at that time,” said Mattei. “I was only eleven when Palme died. It was Mom who did the interrogating at home with us. I used to sit on the edge of my bed in my room, and Mom squatted down in front of me and held my hand. Besides, that colleague of ours did make an attempt. To be fair,” said Mattei, nodding emphatically.

“Although he wasn’t as sharp as we are,” said Holt. “So he can just go to hell. An ordinary fucking pig.”

“Guys,” said Mattei, shrugging her shoulders. “There’s only one thing you need them for.”

What has happened to little Lisa? thought Holt. Is she becoming a grown woman?

“But not Johan, exactly,” said Holt.

“No, not him,” said Mattei. “He’s actually good for several things. You can talk with him, and he’s really good at cleaning and cooking too.”

“Can he see around corners too?” asked Holt for some reason.

“No,” said Mattei and sighed. “Only Johansson can.”

Not quite yet, perhaps, thought Holt.

77

The day after the meeting at the Turing Society Johansson decided to figure out who had dissuaded private banker Theo Tischler from investing his personal money in the pursuit of Olof Palme’s murderer. It was just a sudden impulse, and as so often before he immediately gave in to it. Whatever this might be good for, really, he thought as he called the woman he wanted to talk with.

“I would like to speak with attorney Helena Stein,” said Johansson as soon as her secretary answered.

“Who may I say is calling?” asked the secretary.

“My name is Lars Martin Johansson,” said Johansson.

“What does this concern?” asked the secretary.

“We know each other,” said Johansson. “Say hello to her and ask if I can meet her. Preferably immediately.”

“One moment,” said the secretary.

Know each other, thought Johansson. That’s one way to put it. To be exact he’d spoken with her only once before. Just over seven years ago, when he was operations head of the secret police and responsible for carrying out a background check, because then undersecretary Helena Stein was going to be appointed minister of defense. At the time he discovered that she had a history that threatened to catch up with her after twenty-five years and would definitely put an end to her political career. He regretted having made this discovery and then congratulated himself for having rescued her from a fate that would have been considerably worse than that. In another time, when both she and he had been living another life.

“The attorney says it will be fine in half an hour, at her office,” the secretary reported.

“Thanks,” said Johansson, hanging up.

The office was on Sibyllegatan in Östermalm. A large, old-fashioned apartment with considerable space between the wall panels and the ceiling frieze. Painstakingly remodeled as a law office, which judging by the nameplate on the door she shared with three associates. A very stylish woman received him. She even managed to nod amiably and smile while being forced to mobilize all her strength to do so.

“Let me say one thing before we start,” said Johansson as soon as he sat down in the chair in front of her desk. “My visit with you here today has nothing whatsoever to do with that story we talked about the last time we met. So you can put your mind at rest.”

“So it shows that clearly,” said Helena Stein. Then she smiled again and this time it was for real.

“I need your help,” said Johansson.

“I’ll be happy to help you if I can,” said Helena Stein.

Then Johansson told her about his errand. Obviously without going into what it was really about. About why her cousin, the private banker Theo Tischler, decided not to give money to support Hans Holmér’s private investigation of the Kurds’ involvement in the murder of Olof Palme. Had Theo Tischler possibly consulted with her? A high-ranking member of the Social Democratic Party. A senior official with close ties to the government. It would be easy enough for someone like Stein to figure out what he was really looking for, thought Johansson as soon as he stopped talking.

“Holmér,” said Stein, shaking her head with surprise. “When would this have been?”

“In the spring of 1987,” said Johansson. A few months after he was fired, he thought.

“No,” said Helena Stein. “If Theo says that, then he remembers wrong. It was much later that he came to me and wanted to talk about it. Many years after Hans Holmér disappeared from the Palme investigation. In the spring of 1987 there was no reason to ask me for advice about such things. I was an ordinary, newly hatched attorney who was working at a law firm. I’ve heard gossip about that in the family, that Holmér wanted money from Theo, but that the whole thing ran into the sand like so many of Theo’s impulses and ideas.”

“Do you remember when that was? When he asked you for advice?”

“Much later,” said Stein. “Must have been in the late nineties. I was undersecretary, that I remember. At a guess, 1999. Just a year or so before you and I met, by the way.”

“I’ve forgotten that time,” said Johansson. “Tell me. What did your cousin want? What advice did you give him?”

“He and one of his many friends, a very remarkable man by the way and one of the richest in this country, much richer than Theo, had apparently decided to let so-called market forces work to try to put some order into the Palme investigation, given that our public judicial authorities had so sadly failed. Neither of them was a Social Democrat exactly, to put it mildly, but that thing with the murder of Palme, and perhaps even more the police fiasco, they both took very much to heart. So what do you do in the world where Theo and his good friend live? You invest a billion, buy up the best there is in individuals, equipment, knowledge, and contacts and set about solving the problem. It’s no more difficult than that.”

“This friend,” said Johansson. “Theo’s good friend. He doesn’t have a name?”

“Yes,” said Helena Stein. “I’m sure you’ve already figured out who I’m talking about. The problem is that he’s been dead for several years. Another problem is that I liked him very much. He was one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met and in a positive sense. So I don’t know. I get the feeling I’ve gossiped enough about him already.”

“Jan Stenbeck,” said Johansson. Sweden’s answer to Howard Hughes, he thought.

“Jan Hugo,” said Helena Stein with a streak of melancholy in her cool smile. “Who else, by the way, in the Sweden we’re living in? But it was actually not the case that it was my advice he and Theo wanted. What could I have contributed where the murder of Olof Palme was concerned? In a purely factual sense, I mean.”

“So what did he want from you?” said Johansson.

“They wanted to make contact with my lover at the time. Or boyfriend, as someone like that is called nowadays, regardless of age and emotional heat.”

“So what did they want from him?” asked Johansson, who had already figured out his name.

“They wanted him to start working for them. Lead their private investigation. With basically unlimited resources, because he was the best they could possibly imagine.”

“But personally he preferred to remain in the vicinity of the prime minister,” said Johansson. So at least that got said, he thought.

“Yes, and because you know him I’m sure you can imagine how he formulated the matter.”

“No. Tell me,” said Johansson, sounding more amused than he intended.

“If I can be very brief, he wasn’t particularly happy about Theo. I want to think he said that if he did have the power that all ignoramuses ascribed to him, then for starters he wouldn’t have hesitated a minute to ensure that the authorities had my cousin Theo executed. With a dull, rusty broadax.”

“I’ve heard tell of that broadax,” said Johansson. “Just to see if I’ve understood this correctly. I already knew that Theo Tischler is your cousin. That you had a relationship with our own Richelieu was news to me. I didn’t know you knew Jan Stenbeck either.”

“People like us know one another. It’s no more complicated than that,” Helena Stein observed with a slight inclination of her slender neck.

“Though it never came to anything,” she continued, shaking her head. “He talked with Jan and told him that he should hang on to his money. That this particular investment was a complete waste. He obviously refused to speak with Theo. He had no problem talking with Jan Stenbeck. They’d probably known each other forever and had numerous interests in common, which weren’t limited to food and drink.”

“He dissuaded Stenbeck,” Johansson reminded her. “Why did he do that? Why was it a complete waste?”

“Because the murder of Olof Palme was already solved,” said Helena Stein. “He already knew who the perpetrators were and why they had the prime minister assassinated. Out of concern for Sweden’s interests it was best for all of us that we continue living in uncertainty.”

“Did he say that to you?” said Johansson with surprise. Wonder just what he’d been stuffing himself with that time? he thought.

“Not to me,” said Helena Stein, shaking her head. “He would never dream of doing that. On the other hand he said it to his good friend Jan. To my good friend too, for that matter. My very good friend, to be precise. He in turn told me only a month or so before he died. On the other hand what that would have been about in factual terms he didn’t know. So when he in turn talked with Theo back then, he just said that he was tired of the whole idea. Not a word about why.”

“No,” said Johansson. We didn’t have such luck, he thought.

“If it really is like that, what happened was probably best. That he didn’t talk with Theo, because then all the rest of us would have read about it in Expressen the following day, I mean. Theo is not exactly discreet. Or do you think I’m attaching too much significance to my personal experience?”

“Not really,” said Johansson with more emphasis than he intended, because his thoughts were already elsewhere. How do you go about holding an interview with a legendary Swedish multibillionaire who died five years ago? thought Lars Martin Johansson. Trying to question the special adviser was inconceivable. Regardless of whether he was alive or dead, and especially if there was anything to what Helena Stein had just said.

Though it can hardly have been out of concern for the completely inconsequential Christer Pettersson that he gave such advice to Jan Hugo Stenbeck, thought Johansson as he sat in the taxi on the way back to his office.

78

Hedberg’s parents were dead. He had never been married. Had no children. None that were in the records, at any rate. What remained was his younger sister. Birgitta Hedberg, age sixty. Also single with no children. Lived in a condominium with three rooms and a kitchen on Andersvägen in Solna. The same apartment in which Hedberg had lived previously, before he reported that he had moved out of Sweden.

It’ll have to do, thought Jan Lewin, for he had to start somewhere.

Hedberg’s sister had worked as a secretary at a large construction firm until four years ago when she took early retirement after a car accident. As she drove her boss to a conference in Södermanland her car had been rear-ended; she suffered whiplash and became unable to work. The general pension system took over and gave her early retirement. Her employer and the insurance company added another couple million in damages for her suffering, and this was possibly the main reason that her assessed net worth came to over five million kronor in bank deposits, interest-bearing bonds, and fund shares.

Although perhaps not, thought Jan Lewin. Even before the insurance money was disbursed, she had reported assets of just under three million, and with the salary she had been drawing this seemed like quite a bit to Lewin.

A frugal life, good investments, a rich lover, or perhaps simply an older brother she helped by taking care of his money, thought Jan Lewin. The same brother who according to Johansson was supposed to have robbed the post office on Dalagatan in May of 1977 of 295,000 kronor. Five years’ salary before tax for a detective inspector at that time. Lewin knew that as well as Johansson, because he had been working at the homicide squad when it happened and even remembered the case. Over thirty years later, this corresponded to almost two million, still five years’ salary before tax for a detective inspector, thought Lewin, making a note of it.

If it’s the case that she’s acting as the bank for her brother, then they must have contact with each other, thought Lewin. Even if it isn’t, she may be communicating with him anyway, he thought, even though sibling affection was unknown territory for someone like him.

Then he proceeded to fill out all the forms that were needed so he could make the usual checks on her in the registries that were at the disposal of the police, and he concluded that part by requesting a telephone check on her. So far everything had been routine, and there was still the more creative aspect to tackle before it was time to go home.

First he found a picture of her. Fortunately it was a current one, taken when she renewed her passport in February earlier that year. It showed a dark-haired woman in her sixties with her hair pulled back in a tight bun, regular facial features, straight nose, prominent jawline and chin, dark, vigilant eyes. Looks good, thought Jan Lewin. If it weren’t for that austere, vigilant expression. Wrong, he thought. She looks mean.

Passport, foreign travels, credit cards, travel bureaus. Start with the credit cards, and if that doesn’t produce anything, then check the travel bureaus in the area where she lives, wrote Jan Lewin.

Whiplash injury, disability pension, home help, complaints? Talk with home services, Lewin noted. If she’s the way she seems in the picture, they’ll probably remember her, he thought.

Then he wrote out his usual to-do list on his computer, for otherwise he wouldn’t have been Jan Lewin. For the same reason he read it three times, added to it, deleted, changed and changed back again, before with a deep sigh he was finally ready to send it to Johansson. Then he shook his head meditatively once again. It was the fifteenth and final point that worried him, “Question Birgitta Hedberg?” It feels completely wrong, thought Jan Lewin.

First he deleted the question mark and then, after further pondering, the entire short sentence. Finally he replaced it with a new one. “Suggest that we wait as long as possible before questioning Hedberg’s sister,” wrote Lewin. Breathing deeply, he nodded and pushed the send button as the last official action of another day of all the days that made up his life.

Wise, thought Johansson ten minutes later when he was sitting in front of his computer reading what Lewin had written. Not only wise but necessary, he thought, if there was something in what Helena Stein had told him. Then he called in half a dozen of his most taciturn co-workers and gave them some quick instructions.

“Questions,” said Johansson, letting his gaze sweep over the group.

They all shook their heads, three had already stood up, and colleague Rogersson had even managed to open the door on his way out.

“Good,” said Johansson. “Get going.”

Then he asked his secretary to immediately contact his counterpart with the Spanish national police, Guardia Civil, at their headquarters in Madrid. His Spanish colleague called back within fifteen minutes. Johansson told him in a suitably roundabout way about his errand and was promised all the help that matters of that nature required. Or more, if that were to prove necessary.

Never bad to have a few contacts, thought Johansson as he hung up and for some reason happened to think about the back room in that pleasant bar in Lyons. The bar where he and other really big owls sometimes had the privilege of being nighthawks together.

All the strategic planning had taken him only a little more than an hour. Obviously without having said a word about it to Lewin, Mattei, and least of all to Holt, because he now found himself in a situation where the one hand shouldn’t know what the other hand was up to. That was well and good, as long as he alone was guiding both.

Further information will be given on a need to know basis, thought Johansson contentedly. As he leaned back in his chair for some reason the one person he was thinking about was Anna Holt.

79

Lisa Mattei also looked at the pictures of Hedberg and his family that Johansson had distributed, and true to her systematic disposition she started with the ones who were already dead. Master pilot Einar Göran Hedberg, born in 1906, died in 1971 at the age of sixty-five. Then his wife, Ingrid Cecilia, born in 1924. She was eighteen years younger than the man she married the same year she gave birth to his son. Died in 1964, at the age of only forty.

He doesn’t look nice, thought Mattei as she considered the Hedbergs’ wedding picture. Einar Hedberg dressed in the ship pilot uniform, standing at an angle behind his wife, broad-shouldered, more than a head taller than she was. He would have looked good if it hadn’t been for the vigilant expression, the absence of a smile, his military posture and body language.

His wife, Cecilia. That was apparently what she was called. Small, dainty, cute, anxiously smiling at the camera. Gaze directed a little to the right, and her husband’s hand heavily protective as it rested on her shoulder.

Wonder what he did to her? thought Lisa Mattei.

Einar Hedberg seemed to have been a man accustomed to ruling over other people’s lives, who not only piloted shipping vessels past shoals, reefs, and islets through narrow passages in the Stockholm archipelago. His obituary in Norrtelje Tidning mentioned his natural leadership qualities, his firmness of principle, and his considerable nautical and maritime knowledge. His “prematurely departed wife” had “stood faithfully by his side” in life, and if he was now mourned and missed in death, it did not appear so from his obituary notice. Einar Hedberg had “two surviving adult children,” and there was nothing more than that.

Wonder what he did to them, thought Lisa Mattei.

Regardless of what the master pilot did to his two children, judging by Johansson’s pictures things seemed to have turned out differently. If he had done anything, that is, thought the meticulous Lisa Mattei, aware as she was that pictures could be just as treacherous as words.

Among the ones she got from Johansson, four class photos from the comprehensive school in Vaxholm were included. Big brother Kjell Göran with teacher and schoolmates when he started first grade, and the same arrangement right before he left ninth grade and finished his studies. Corresponding pictures of his little sister, Birgitta, who went to the same school. There was a striking physical family resemblance between the siblings, especially if you knew what the parents looked like, but their similarities also ended there. It was their attitude to the outside world and the camera that set them apart.

The seven-year-old Kjell Göran Hedberg was a sturdy little thing who calmly observed the photographer. In contrast to the majority of his classmates, he did not smile. He observed what was happening, and what he saw did not seem to bother him in the least. His sister did not smile either, but because she seemed to have inherited their father’s vigilant eyes, she looked almost suspicious.

The same slightly curly, dark hair, same brown eyes and harmonious facial features. Kjell Göran with his hair neatly parted on the side despite the curls. Sister Birgitta with a bow in her hair. The same neat clothes to which their mother, Cecilia, must have devoted considerable effort as she sat in front of the sewing basket in the parlor or in the laundry room down in the basement. But quite different expressions. Big brother ready to meet the world on his own terms, even though he was only seven years old and a handsbreadth tall. His little sister, always ready to defend herself against the same world, regardless of what it might be willing to offer her.

Nine years later little seemed to have changed. A sixteen-year-old Kjell Göran in the center of the picture. As tall as the tallest of his male classmates, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and his arms crossed over his chest. With the help of a comb and Brylcreem, the slightly curly hair was replaced with a wavy black Elvis hairstyle, according to the custom of the time. The gaze was the same-calm, observant-but because he now permitted himself a slight smile he almost seemed amusedly indulgent about what was happening. Not so his sister. The long hair arranged in a ponytail, no bow anymore, but although in an objective sense she ought to have been the cutest of all the girls in her class, she could only offer the camera the same suspicious, dark eyes.

He must have treated them quite differently, thought Lisa Mattei.

80

School transcripts, thought Lisa Mattei as she closed the file of pictures of Kjell Göran Hedberg and his relatives. I have to see his transcript, she thought, and only five minutes later she was sitting with Police Superintendent Wiklander, head of the bureau’s CIS squad, and in ordinary cases also her immediate superior.

“Transcripts? You want to see Hedberg’s transcripts,” Wiklander repeated, nodding at Mattei. “A strange coincidence,” he observed, nodding again.

“What do you mean, coincidence?”

“A few days ago when our esteemed boss and I were discussing what data we should pull about Hedberg, for some reason he mentioned his transcripts.”

“I see, he did.”

“Yes. I remember that he said something along the lines of that perhaps it’s best to pull his transcripts too. Not because he thought they seemed particularly interesting, in context, but mostly not to make you sad when you came and asked about them. And he probably did it because he really can see around corners.”

“So that’s what he said,” said Mattei.

“Exactly that,” said Wiklander. He sighed contentedly and handed over a thin plastic sleeve of papers. “Dear Hedberg doesn’t seem to have been a typical intellectual. More like an ordinary, practical minded nobody, so perhaps you shouldn’t expect a communion of souls.”

“Thanks,” said Mattei, getting up.

“No problem,” said Wiklander, shrugging his shoulders. “Before you run off I have a message for you too. From Johansson.”

“I’m listening,” said Mattei.

“That you’re not allowed to talk with Hedberg’s teachers, old classmates, or anyone whatsoever who can even be suspected of having known him. Not under any condition.”

“That’s what he said?”

“Exactly that,” said Wiklander. “So drop any thought of that. Otherwise you’ll have the devil to pay. Direct quote from our top boss. His orders. To be on the safe side, mine too.”

“I hear you,” said Mattei, nodded curtly and left.

From an educational standpoint Kjell Göran Hedberg belonged to a long lost generation. During the nine years he went to school in Vaxholm, he got grades after every completed semester-nine years and eighteen semesters. Grades on a seven-degree scale, where a capital A summarized total success and a C complete failure, which to be on the safe side were supplemented by statistics that showed how everyone in the same class as Hedberg had done.

He was a typically mediocre student who was awarded B or Ba in almost all subjects. With the exception of history, metalworking/woodworking, and gymnastics including games and sports, the master pilot’s son remained safely anchored within the class’s median during his entire school career.

Already in his fourth year Hedberg got an AB in history, and along with two classmates shared the honorable first place. Two years later he had been raised to a small a, or “passed with distinction,” which he then retained for the rest of his schooling. On the other hand, he lost first place. Statistics on the class’s final grades showed that one of his classmates got a capital A, and that he was one of three who got a lowercase a.

I’ll bet the others were girls, thought Lisa Mattei.

In metalworking and woodworking he was one of the better in the class and had an average of AB during his last three years in school. The same AB that gave him an honorable shared second place in woodshop and a shared ninth place overall. Of the first six places in the class, there were five needleworkers, divided into two capital and three small a’s, but only one pitiful woodworker.

Wonder which ones they might have been, thought Mattei.

In gymnastics including games and sports Hedberg had been best in class throughout his time in school. With one strange exception that happened when he was in eighth grade. Already in fourth grade he had been the only one to earn a small a, and starting in grade five he had a capital A. With one exception. In the fall semester of eighth grade he dropped to a small a, which made him one of four. In the spring semester he got an AB and slipped down to a shared eighth place in a class with a total of twenty-four pupils. Then he found his way again. He received a capital A in the fall semester in ninth grade, and the only one with that grade when he finished the nine-year comprehensive school in Vaxholm in June of 1960.

Problems with puberty or something else, thought Lisa Mattei, and five minutes later she had already decided. She simply had to talk with Hedberg’s old teacher. Regardless of Johansson, Wiklander, the devil, and all the other brethren who despite their worthless statistics tried to oppress her and her sisters.

Hedberg’s teacher was named Ossian Grahn and he appeared in the class photo with Kjell Göran Hedberg and his classmates. A short man in his thirties with cheerful eyes and unruly blond hair. After fifteen minutes of the usual tapping on the computer, Lisa Mattei also knew most of what she needed to know about him.

Former secondary school teacher Ossian Grahn was born in 1930 and retired in 1995. He had been a widower for five years, with two grown children, lived in a single-family house on Båtmansvägen in Vaxholm, and was in the phone book with name, title, address, and number. A search on the Internet yielded a hundred hits besides and showed that Ossian seemed to be a very active retiree. Not only in the retirees’ association in Vaxholm, where he had been on the board for many years, but also because of his intellectual interests. Interests that in the last five years alone had left traces in the form of three published writings. A book with the title Boatmen and Peasants in Southern Roslagen, where he was the sole author. An article in a larger work on Vaxholm’s fortress. Another article, “Ancient Monuments in Roslagen,” published as an offprint by the local historical society in collaboration with the municipality of Norrtälje.

He also answered the phone on the second ring.

In front of her Lisa Mattei saw a small, energetic retiree with cheerful eyes and unruly blond hair, which meant that playing with anything other than open cards was inconceivable.

“My name is Lisa Mattei,” said Mattei. “I’m a police officer and work at the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Stockholm. I need to talk with you.”

“Now I’m really curious,” Grahn replied, sounding just as cheerful as his photo promised. “When did you have in mind?”

“Preferably right away,” said Lisa Mattei.

“Shall we say in an hour?” said Grahn. “Because I’m assuming you drive a car and work in that ugly big brown building on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. The one you always see on TV as soon as some poor soul gets in trouble.”

Lisa Mattei gathered up the papers she thought she would need with the class photo from 1960 at the top of the pile, borrowed a service vehicle, drove to Vaxholm, and met former secondary schoolteacher Ossian Grahn. He was seventy-seven, but judging by his eyes not a day older than in Mattei’s almost fifty-year-old photo. The same Ossian Grahn who won her heart as soon as they sat down in his tidy living room and he served her the first cup of coffee.

“A question out of curiosity,” said Grahn. “Is this Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei or Doctor of Philosophy Lisa Mattei who does me this honor? I looked you up on the Internet, in case you’re wondering.”

“Good question,” said Mattei. “I actually think you’re having a visit from both.”

Then Mattei took out the class photo from 1960. The same photo that aroused Dr. Mattei’s curiosity and made her want to ask certain questions. For reasons that inspector Mattei unfortunately was prevented from going into more closely, but which essentially concerned one of his pupils in the graduating class at Vaxholm school in 1960.

“I brought the class photo with me,” said Lisa Mattei, giving it to him.

“There’s one thing you should know, Lisa,” said Ossian Grahn. “I was a teacher for over forty years. I have had thousands of pupils over the years. As far as this class is concerned I want to recall that I was their classroom teacher for three years, in grades seven, eight, and nine. I had them in Swedish and history, and one more reason I remember that is that the same autumn I started working at Norra Latin in Stockholm. It was there I got my first permanent position as an assistant principal.”

“Do you remember any of the ones in the picture?” asked Mattei.

“Two,” said Ossian Grahn. “And I sincerely hope it’s not Gertrud who’s the reason I’ve had a visit from Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei.”

Gertrud stood in the back row to the left. Cute and well-dressed with long dark hair hanging over her shoulders. A shy smile toward the camera, fifteen years old but judging by her eyes considerably more mature than that. A father who owned the ICA grocery store in the middle of town and a mother who was a teacher and colleague of Ossian Grahn. She was one pupil among the thousands he had taught during a long life as a teacher.

“One of the best pupils I’ve ever had,” Ossian Grahn observed. “If we’re talking about such simple accomplishments as those that can be summarized in so-called grades,” he added.

“More then,” said Mattei.

“Gertrud is a very remarkable individual,” said Grahn. “She’s something as rare as a very charming person. She is educated, she is talented, and she is both kind and decent to others. She’s good-looking too. Always has been, by the way. I’ve known her since she was a little girl.”

“Do you still see her?”

“She’s a doctor. Head of the district medical center here in Vaxholm,” said Grahn. “Until a few years ago she worked at Karolinska in Stockholm, but then her new husband got sick and took early retirement and she moved back here. They actually live just a few blocks away. In her parents’ old house, by the way. We usually say hi to each other a few times a week. Her name is now Rosenberg. Since she remarried. Her new husband also worked as a doctor. Although now he’s on a disability pension, as I said.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about Gertrud,” said Lisa Mattei. “Who was the other one who-”

“Let me guess,” said Ossian Grahn. “You’ve come here to talk about Kjell? About Kjell Hedberg.”

“Why do you think that? Why do you remember him?”

“Usually there are two kinds of pupils that someone like me remembers. On the one hand those like Gertrud, whom you always remember with joy, and there are not all that many of them, you should know. Yes, and then there are your problem children. And unfortunately there are usually quite a few more of them. Ordinary rowdy kids, although some of them can be really charming, and, unfortunately, there is the occasional little gangster. But the great majority of them were only the kind you really felt sorry for.”

“Hedberg was a rowdy kid?” asked Mattei. Let’s start there, she thought, because it was the last thing she could imagine.

“If it had only been that good,” said Grahn, shaking his unruly light hair.

“It was worse than that?” said Mattei. Now this is starting to resemble something, she thought.

“I hope he was unique,” said Grahn, squirming uneasily in his chair.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Kjell Hedberg is actually the only pupil, during my entire life as a teacher, that I was afraid of. Even though he never misbehaved. Not in my class in any event. Even though I was his homeroom teacher and even though I was twice his age. There was something about his eyes and his body language, his way of looking at you, that could be terrifying, to put it bluntly. As soon as something didn’t suit him.”

“Now I’m the one who’s getting curious,” said Mattei. “You have to explain.”

“I don’t think it’s as simple as that he was an evil person. No fifteen-year-old is evil in that way. I think they only get that way later in life.”

“So what was it?”

“I think he didn’t understand the difference between good and bad,” said Grahn. “The only thing that meant anything in Kjell’s world was how he perceived you and whether he thought you were against him. It was probably my good luck that I instructed him in his favorite subject, history.”

“He was interested in history?”

“Yes, in the way the very worst sorts are. He could rattle off lists of monarchs like running water even if you woke him up in the middle of the night. He knew the time and place of every battle, and his view of history was frankly deplorable. It was only about major personalities. Alexander the Great, Hannibal and Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, Napoleon and Hitler. Great men who determined the fate of the world and in passing, so to speak, gave content and meaning to the lives of the rest of us ordinary mortals. I remember when we were reading about Gustav III. He came up to me after a lecture and told me that he was convinced that Gustav III was homosexual. He already knew that Gustav V had been. His father, the master pilot, told him that. About the old king who tried to rape his chauffeur, who drove into the ditch and nearly killed them both. Who had a curve in the road south of Stockholm named after him…I tried to reassure him by pointing out that they were not even related to each other.”

“So how did he take that?”

“He had some long explanation about this being due to the inbreeding in our royal family. He knew they weren’t related, naturally. It was about some kind of genetic depletion, and that one reason Gustav III had been shot was that it had been discovered that he was homosexual.”

“But he still got a small a as a final grade.”

“Yes, he did,” Ossian Grahn observed and sighed. “It was mostly that he knew those lists of monarchs and all the dates, and then I guess I was cowardly, to put it simply.”

“His grades in gymnastics,” said Mattei. “Something happened there when he was in eighth grade. Is that something you remember?”

“Yes,” sighed Ossian Grahn. “I was his homeroom teacher, so I got more than my allotted share of that story. From Kjell, his father the pilot, and his gymnastics teacher.”

“So what happened?”

“When Kjell started eighth grade he got a new teacher, and already in the first class they were quarreling like two roosters in a henhouse that’s too small.”

“Why?”

“If you ask me I think it was because they were too much alike. Not that I know much about gymnastics and sports and such, but Kjell probably deserved the grades he always got. Considering his age he was unbelievably agile and strong. Best in school in soccer, handball, and ice hockey. Not to mention running and swimming and everything else.”

“Was there anything in particular that happened?”

“I think the whole thing started when our school team was playing soccer against the team from Vallentuna. It was at the start of the fall semester. Kjell’s new gymnastics teacher was the coach, and in some situation things must have heated up between them. One thing led to another, and in the first half his teacher told him to leave the field and sent in one of his teammates instead. Kjell seems to have gone straight to the dressing room, showered, changed, and hitchhiked home to Vaxholm. That’s the way it was. Constant controversies.”

“But the last year in school he was back on track again,” Mattei observed. “I noticed he got his capital A back in the fall semester. Were they finally on good terms?”

“No,” said Ossian Grahn, shaking his head. “He got a new teacher he got along with better.”

“So what happened to the other one?”

“He was forced to quit,” said Ossian Grahn.

“Quit? Why?”

“Only a few days before the fall semester was to begin he was in a serious car accident. He lived a few miles north of Vaxholm, out by Österåker, and one morning when he was driving to school to attend a meeting, where the teaching staff was getting ready for the start of the semester, he was in an accident. Drove into the ditch. It could have been really bad. Severe concussion and a number of broken bones. He was in the hospital for several months and he never came back to us.”

“So what happened?”

“He seems to have lost a front wheel,” said Ossian Grahn. “True, he drove like a maniac, but there was a lot of talk.”

“About Kjell Hedberg?”

“Not as far as I recall,” said Ossian Grahn, shaking his head. “He was only sixteen years old. It was the usual gossip about infidelity and jealousy, here and there. There was a lot of that out here in the country, you know. At the same time I have the definite impression that the police here wrote it off as an ordinary accident. That he is supposed to have been careless when he changed the tires on his car. Didn’t tighten the lug nuts properly. You know what,” said Ossian Grahn, looking seriously at Mattei, “perhaps you should talk with Gertrud, since you’re here anyway. I’ll give you her number.”

“With Gertrud Rosenberg? About the car accident?”

“No,” said Ossian Grahn, shaking his head. “If it were only that good.”

81

The devil can stick it up his you-know-what, thought a contented Lisa Mattei as she drove onto the highway toward Stockholm three hours later. At the same moment her cell phone rang.

“My office in half an hour,” said Johansson, sounding like he meant it.

“You have to give me at least an hour, boss,” said Mattei. Goodness, she thought.

“For Christ’s sake, it doesn’t take an hour to drive from Vaxholm,” said Johansson.

Goodness, goodness, thought Mattei.

“There’s a lot of traffic, actually, and driving is not exactly my strong suit,” Mattei lied.

“My office,” said Johansson. “As soon as you set foot in the building go straight to my office,” he repeated, whereupon he hung up without further ado.

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, thought Mattei, giving it a little extra gas to manage what she intended to do before she met her top boss.

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him furious, she thought a little more than an hour later when she sat down in the visitor’s chair in front of his large desk.

“How did you know I was out in Vaxholm, boss?” she asked.

“Our colleague Wiklander happened to see you down in the garage. Don’t come in here and say you don’t know we have GPS and tracking equipment nowadays in almost all our vehicles. I know to the last inch what you’ve been up to.”

Didn’t think of that, thought Mattei, shaking her head strenuously to stop the attack of the giggles she felt was on its way.

“You’ve been parked for over five hours outside Båtmansvägen 3 in Vaxholm, and I assume it’s pure chance that Kjell Göran Hedberg’s old homeroom teacher-that light-haired little bastard who looks like his pupils in that photo I was stupid enough to send you-has lived at the same address his whole life.”

“I actually had no idea about that,” said Lisa Mattei. That he’d lived there his whole life, that is.

“Forget about that now,” said Johansson, glaring at her acidly. “Despite what both I and Wiklander said to you, you’ve been sitting chatting with him for hours. Despite the most obvious risk of a leak. What do you know about him and Hedberg? Maybe they’ve been involved since they met in junior high?”

“I don’t think they’ve spoken to each other, actually. Not since Hedberg finished school.”

“No,” said Johansson. “And why do you think that?”

“I talked with one of Hedberg’s classmates too. She was pretty convinced it was that way.”

“You did what?” said Johansson, looking at her in amazement. She’s sitting here fucking with me, he thought.

“I talked with one of his classmates,” Mattei repeated. “She lived right in the vicinity, so I left my car and walked to her house. In case Wiklander wonders,” she clarified.

“I hope,” said Johansson. “I hope…that you have an extremely good explanation,” he repeated, leaning heavily on his elbows.

“It’s actually better than that,” said Lisa Mattei.

“Lisa, Lisa,” sighed Johansson half an hour later. “What am I going to do with you?”

“I was hoping for another gold star,” said Lisa Mattei. “A giant one,” she clarified.

82

The following morning the transcript of the interview with district physician Gertrud Rosenberg, born in 1945, was on Johansson’s large desk.

The interview had been held in her home in Vaxholm. The interview leader was Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei. It was recorded on tape and already approved by the woman she had interviewed the day before. It took less than an hour to conduct, according to the times listed on the report. It was introduced with a brief summary by Mattei and concluded with her conveying to Gertrud Rosenberg a so-called disclosure prohibition.

Gertrud Rosenberg states by way of introduction and in summary in part the following.

She was a classmate of Kjell Göran Hedberg from the seventh to ninth grades in the comprehensive school in Vaxholm, from September 1957 until the beginning of June 1960. After completion of public school, Gertrud began at the high school in Djursholm. There she got her diploma in natural sciences with a biology major in May of 1963, after which she was admitted to the medical school at Karolinska Institute in September of the same year. In connection with this she also, about six months later, moved to a student apartment in Östermalm in Stockholm. Gertrud got her MD degree and was certified as a physician in June of 1970.

According to what she states, Kjell Göran Hedberg started as an apprentice at a small shipyard and boat builder in Vaxholm when he finished school in the summer of 1960. Because they were neighbors in Vaxholm, up to the middle of the sixties, they ran into each other regularly when they were in town, seeing mutual friends, etc. She has not had any closer association with Hedberg, however, neither during their time in school nor later. At the same time they have never been enemies and always talked with each other the few times they happened to meet.

During the following years they met more seldom. She knows however that he started at the police academy in the mid-sixties and became a policeman a few years later. It was her parents who told her that. Sometime in the early seventies, when she was working at the emergency room at Södersjukhuset, she saw Hedberg and an associate of his who were then working as patrol officers in Stockholm. On the occasion in question they brought in an intoxicated individual who had been knifed. On the same occasion they also had a cup of coffee together and exchanged phone numbers. The reason for the latter was that she and her husband at the time were thinking about buying a sailboat and she took the opportunity to ask Hedberg for advice because she knew he had worked at shipyards before and had some contacts in the boat business. No renewed contact on account of this was made, however.

Thereafter it was almost ten years before she encountered Kjell Göran Hedberg again. On a summer evening sometime in the late seventies when she and her husband at the time visited the hotel in Vaxholm to have dinner. Hedberg was there for the same reason, together with a woman she was surely introduced to but whose name she does not recall. On the other hand she remembers that he mentioned then that he was working at SePo.

The last time she met Kjell Göran Hedberg was about eleven o’clock in the evening, on Friday the twenty-eighth of February 1986, on Sveavägen in Stockholm.

LISA MATTEI:

Tell me about the last time you saw Kjell Göran Hedberg. In as much detail as possible.

GERTRUD ROSENBERG:

As I said to you earlier it was the same evening that Palme was shot. On that point I’m quite certain. I and the person I was with were walking on Sveavägen heading north. We’d had dinner at a restaurant by Kungsträdgården. We had booked a room at a hotel by Tegnérlunden. There were a lot of people walking in the opposite direction. The movie theaters had just closed, which was probably why. Considering that we were actually both married to other people plus he was my boss, we chose to turn off to the left onto Adolf Fredriks Kyrkogata where there weren’t so many people. So as not to run into anyone we knew. It was right then that I saw Kjell. At the intersection between Sveavägen and Adolf Fredriks Kyrkogata. Right by the hot dog stand that’s there. On the same side of the street as the church and the cemetery. Just as we’d turned onto the cross street, he entered the crosswalk headed in the direction of Kungsgatan. So I saw him from the side at an angle at a distance of five or six yards, and as I already told you I have excellent vision in both eyes.

LISA MATTEI:

And the time was…

GERTRUD ROSENBERG:

Well past eleven. You see, we left the restaurant right after eleven, that I remember. Say it took perhaps fifteen minutes to walk to where we saw him. The weather was terrible so we were walking fast. We were in love, too, so I guess we were in a hurry to get back to our hotel room.

LISA MATTEI:

A quarter past eleven?

GERTRUD ROSENBERG:

Yes. A quarter past eleven. Not earlier.

LISA MATTEI:

You’re certain it was Kjell Hedberg you saw?

GERTRUD ROSENBERG:

Spontaneously, yes. I was even about to say hi to him. At the same moment it struck me that perhaps that wasn’t so suitable, considering that he had actually met my husband. Although you should know that I hesitated, went back and forth. Quite a while, then I decided that I’d only seen someone who looked like Kjell. Considering what happened, that is.

LISA MATTEI:

Did he see you?

GERTRUD ROSENBERG:

I really don’t think so. He was walking fast. Seemed to have his attention directed at the other side of the street. Sveavägen that is.

LISA MATTEI:

At the same time as he’s walking straight ahead? In the opposite direction, toward Kungsgatan and at a brisk pace?

GERTRUD ROSENBERG:

Yes. It was the way he walked too. Typical Kjell. He was like that. Good condition, goal-oriented, always had his eyes open. The clothes were also Kjell, in some way. A practical, somewhat longer jacket. Dark winter model. Dark gray pants, not jeans, certainly proper shoes on his feet even though I didn’t think about that. Nicely and practically dressed. That was Kjell to a T if I may say so…

“She’s out getting a little on the side?” asked Johansson, looking up from the papers he had in his hand and at Mattei.

“Yes,” said Mattei. “She and her boss. For a month by then. Married to other people. She was living on Kungsholmen with her husband and two children. He was living in Östermalm with his wife. Fifteen years older than her, so his kids had left the nest. Officially he was at a conference in Denmark. His wife was probably at home. Our witness, on the other hand, was a grass widow. Her husband had taken the children and gone to the mountains during sports week.”

“So why didn’t they go to her place?”

“I asked her that. She didn’t want to. Thought there was a boundary there.”

“Yes, I suppose there is,” sighed Johansson. “So instead they go to Hotel Tegnér up by Tegnérlunden.”

“Which I guess we should be happy about,” Mattei observed.

“Why?” wondered Johansson.

“I haven’t had time to tell you yet, but I found the hotel booking this morning. It was in one of those old boxes that Jan always sighs about. One of a couple of thousand hotel reservations that were never processed. Gertrud Lindberg, that’s her maiden name, had reserved a double room for one night. Did it the day before, by phone. Gives her parents’ address in Vaxholm.”

“Who would have ever thought of her if they had rooted through those piles of papers?” sighed Johansson. “So why did she wait so long before she got in touch with us?” said Johansson. “Before she contacted our dear colleagues if I were to put it correctly.”

“It’s in the interview,” said Lisa Mattei.

“I know,” sighed Johansson. “Help an old man.”

“The reason she didn’t make contact immediately was not that she’d been ‘getting a little on the side.’ That’s not the decisive reason, and there I actually believe her,” said Mattei.

“So what’s the reason?”

“That she didn’t think she had anything to add. At that point in time she didn’t have the slightest thought that Kjell Hedberg could have been involved in the murder. She didn’t see the Palmes. No Christer Pettersson character either. Or anything else that was shady or strange. She didn’t hear any shots. It was a Friday evening after payday, lots of people out in town to amuse themselves. Apparently also an old schoolmate of hers. Perhaps on his way to a secret mistress?”

“Not a peep about the historical moment?”

“Yes, actually. In the summer of 1986 she met her old teacher Ossian at a barbeque at her parents’ house in Vaxholm. They sat down and talked and like so many others they naturally got around to the Palme assassination. Then she told him what she had seen.”

“That she’d been out getting a little on the side and missed the Palme murder by a couple of minutes?”

“Yes. She and Ossian seem to talk about most everything. By then she’d also left her husband.”

“You’ve also checked that?”

“Yes. Ossian tells the same story.”

“Then she would also have mentioned Kjell Göran Hedberg?”

“Yes, although mostly as an amusing story. That it almost seemed like a class reunion there on Sveavägen.”

“But it was not until the spring of 1989 that she made contact with the police,” said Johansson.

“Yes, it’s a pretty amazing story,” said Mattei. “I’ve checked it too, and everything she says agrees with our own records.”

“I can hardly contain myself,” said Johansson, leaning back in his chair and lacing his hands over his belly.

First there’s the thirty-three-year-old who was arrested fourteen days after the murder, and in that situation it did not even occur to their witness that Kjell Göran Hedberg had anything to do with the murder of the prime minister. Then there was the summer and fall of 1986 when “everyone knows it’s the Kurds who murdered Palme.” Obviously not a thought about him then either.

Not until a year later did she start to think about it. The Kurds were ruled out by that time. Instead the police track had come onto the agenda in earnest. For various reasons she decided not to make contact. She was no longer so certain that it was her old classmate she had seen. Two years had already passed since the murder, and why hadn’t she made contact previously, in that case? To get help and support she talked with her old boss, and lover, about it.

“He did the wave, of course,” said Johansson.

“According to our witness he asked if she meant to kill him. Personally he did not have the slightest memory that they had run into one of her old classmates. How could he have? He was in Denmark at a conference when Palme was murdered.”

“And now the bastard is dead,” Johansson guessed.

“Died in 1997. Heart attack. Checked.” Mattei nodded. Dead a long time like most of the others, she thought.

“But in March of 1989 she got in touch with the investigation,” said Johansson.

“Yes. But not to give a tip about Hedberg, but to report that she had not seen Christer Pettersson when Palme was shot.”

“That she hadn’t seen Christer Pettersson. She calls the Palme investigation to say that she hasn’t seen Christer Pettersson?” This is getting better and better, thought Johansson.

Christer Pettersson has been in jail for several months, suspected of the murder of Olof Palme. At that point “everyone who knows anything worth knowing” also knows that he’s the actual perpetrator. To eliminate the slightest doubt about the matter, the Palme investigation nonetheless puts out an appeal to that great detective, the general public. They say they are interested in speaking with “everyone who was in the area in question at the time in question.” Regardless of whether they’d seen anything or not. Even if they hadn’t seen anything, it might be just as interesting to the police as an eyewitness to the murder itself.

Because Gertrud Rosenberg has seen neither the Palmes nor Christer Pettersson-or even anyone who is the least bit like Christer Pettersson-she decides to unburden her heart and talk. She calls the telephone number she saw in the newspaper. Talks for almost ten minutes with one of the investigators in the Palme group. Tells what she hasn’t seen, without saying a word about her old classmate. Her information ends up immediately in one of the many binders full of so-called crazy tips.

“I have a copy if you want to see it, boss,” said Mattei. “It’s a regular surveillance tip. Handwritten.”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson, shaking his head dejectedly.

“Okay,” said Lisa Mattei. “This is what our colleague wrote. I quote. Informant states that she has not observed Christer Pettersson. In addition she states that she has not observed the Palmes either or made any other observations of interest at the time in question. End quote.”

“Wasn’t that the kind of witness they were looking for? Sounds like an almost ideal witness,” said Johansson.

“The colleague who received it doesn’t seem as enthused as you, boss.”

“So what does he think?”

“Quote. Bag lady. Says she’s a doctor. End quote.”

“So she ends up in the loony binder.”

“Yes, although a more judicious colleague apparently entered her as a witness in one of the computerized registries. That’s where I found her.”

“And then?” asked Johansson.

“Then she never made contact again,” said Lisa Mattei. “I understand her. She gives a very vivid description of that conversation.”

“Conclusion,” said Johansson, looking urgently at Mattei.

“She links Hedberg to the scene of the crime in immediate connection to the time. Probably right before he crosses Sveavägen and positions himself and waits for Olof and Lisbeth at the corner of Tunnelgatan and Sveavägen.”

“I think so too,” said Johansson. “Besides, she’s a doctor, not some ordinary dope fiend who has reason to hate Hedberg.”

“Yes,” said Lisa Mattei. Not an ordinary drug addict, she thought.

“Do you know what one of the foremost signs of a bad boss is?” said Johansson suddenly.

“No,” said Mattei. Now it’s coming, she thought.

“That he has favorites,” said Johansson.

“So there won’t be any more gold stars,” said Mattei.

“Between us I guess there will be,” said Johansson. “If you promise not to tell anyone.”

“I promise,” said Mattei.

“And never do it again.”

“I promise.”

83

Despite his convalescence, Bäckström had not been idle. Now a crisis situation prevailed, and in a crisis situation “danger in delay” always applied. Every real constable knew that, and Bäckström knew it better than all the rest. Once he had been close to missing an open goal, just because he hesitated a little unnecessarily. True, it had worked out in the end. Obviously-what else was to be expected when Bäckström was at the rudder? He didn’t intend to risk it this time, regardless of what the good doctor was harping on about. That he’d suffered a heart attack, minor stroke, or in the worst case both. What can you expect from someone who makes a living by dealing with a lot of malingerers? thought Bäckström.

First he talked with his relative at the police union. He was still sitting like a kind of spider in the police web, gathering in all the information that his members picked up as they were running around town. It was reasonable that someone like him ought to have a few things to say about Palme and his sex life. Even though he hadn’t been one of their associates.

“Palme,” said his relative. “How the hell would I know that? He wasn’t a cop.”

“Our colleagues, then. They must have talked a lot of shit about Palme, didn’t they?”

“You’re calling to ask if our colleagues talked a lot of shit about Palme. Are you joking with me? Are you sick or what? You’re wondering about the guy’s sex life? I guess he was just like everyone else.”

“It seems to be considerably worse than that,” said Bäckström.

“I suppose he took the opportunity,” said his relative. “Who the hell hasn’t? Must be a real shooting gallery if you were in his position.”

“See what you can find,” said Bäckström. You incompetent union bigwig bastard, he thought, slamming down the receiver.

Then he connected to the Internet. This bottomless source of knowledge and cause for rejoicing. Pretty soon he’d also found quite a bit that was both heavy and serious. First a lot of information about a famous female singer his murder victim was supposed to have been involved with. A lady who didn’t appear to be one to play around with, if you believed what you read about her on the Internet.

Then he found a crazy artist hag who apparently supported herself by taking nude pictures of herself that she then dabbed paint on and sold for big money. She had written an entire book about her rich love life, and most of it was apparently about Palme. At least according to the newspaper articles about the book.

Surely just the tip of the iceberg, thought Bäckström. The guy must have been sex crazy. And on the very next search he hit gold. Pure gold. A vein as thick as his own index finger.

Two journalists had written a revealing exposé a few years earlier. It was about the Brothel Madam and the major brothel scandal that shook the establishment in Stockholm in the mid-seventies. One of her most frequent customers was apparently the prime minister at the time, who moreover had the nerve to flagrantly exploit two underage prostitutes. One who had just turned fifteen and one who was only thirteen.

The net is closing in, thought Bäckström, and at the same moment his phone rang.

“Bäckström,” said Bäckström with a suitable damper on his voice because the Eagle of History had just flown past and touched its wing to his forehead.

It was his relative at the union. He had dug around a little and for practical reasons started in the break room at work. There an old colleague who had worked with the uniformed police in Stockholm in the seventies told him that Palme had evidently been involved back then with Lauren Bacall.

“You know, that dame who was married to Humphrey Bogart,” the relative explained.

“So how certain is that?” asked Bäckström. “That old lady must be a hundred?” At least, he thought.

Quite certain, according to his relative. Bacall had visited Stockholm and stayed at the Grand Hotel. Late at night she had a visit from the prime minister.

“So how certain is that?” Bäckström persisted. A hundred years old, he thought. He jumped from teenagers to hundred-year-olds? Must have been crazy perverse, thought Bäckström.

Quite certain, according to the colleague his cousin had talked with. You see, he’d been responsible for security during the celebrity visit and had personally seen to smuggling the prime minister in through the hotel staff entrance, to be as discreet as possible.

Definitely crazy perverse, thought Bäckström.

After that Bäckström proceeded to external surveillance, which he initiated with a visit to private banker Theo Tischler. Bäckström had met Tischler in connection with an old case he’d been in charge of. True, that was almost twenty years ago, but their meeting at that time had ended in the best manner and Tischler still remembered him.

“Sit yourself down, Bäckström,” said Tischler, pointing to the large rococo armchair where he usually placed his visitors. “What can I help you with?”

Danger in delay, thought Bäckström, and chose to get right to the point.

“Friends of Cunt,” said Bäckström. “Tell me about it.”

“No foreplay, just right to it,” said Tischler, smiling. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” said Bäckström. “Everything that may be of interest,” he clarified.

“Sure,” said Tischler. Then he told him. Just like he always did, and often without even having been asked.

“That little pathological liar Claes Waltin was expelled. He brought the society’s name into disrepute, so I was forced to kick him out.”

“So how did he do that?” asked Bäckström, even though he already knew. “Did he beat up the ladies he hit on?”

“No, hell no, it was worse than that. He had a prick the size of Jiminy Cricket’s,” said Tischler. “What the hell do you think the ladies thought about that? What the hell would they think about the rest of us in the society? So he was thrown out on his ears. Clearly I couldn’t associate with someone like that. Do you know what my buddies called me, by the way? When I was in the Sea Scouts?”

“No,” said Bäckström.

Then Tischler told him about the Donkey, and even though Bäckström had asked to know everything, he was forced to stop Tischler an hour later.

“I think I have a clear picture,” said Bäckström.

“Impossible,” said Tischler. “Then you must have seen it.”

“This Thulin,” said Bäckström by way of diversion. “Do you have anything interesting about him?”

“You mean the Apostle of Aquavit,” said Tischler. “Back then he drank like a Russian, and when he was loaded he started raving about his strong faith in God. Though now he has become a fine fellow.”

“I’ve understood that,” said Bäckström. “There seems to have been a trophy too,” he said, looking slyly at his interview victim.

“Trophy? What could that have been?”

“One of those prize trophies that you awarded to the one who hit on the most ladies. Cuntmaster of the Year I think you called it.”

“No,” said Tischler, shaking his head. “What would we do with something like that? I guess we didn’t need a trophy. I was always the one who won. Why should I award an expensive trophy to myself? All the bar tabs I had to pay were enough.”

He got no further than that, and as soon as he was outside on the street again he hailed a taxi. On the way home he made a detour to the usual greasy spoon because his empty stomach was echoing seriously.

High time to put a little something in my craw, thought Bäckström, ordering a sausage with red beets and fried eggs, double pilsner and an ample shot, for the sake of his digestion. Then one thing led to another, and when he finally got home to his cozy pad he lay down on the couch in front of the TV and started flipping between all the new and interesting channels he’d acquired.

Everything has its time, said Bäckström, like the philosopher he was, and the internal surveillance on the members of the Friends of Cunt Society could profitably be put off until the morrow.

84

Bäckström was used to having to toil like a dog. Strictly speaking he’d done it his whole life as a policeman, even though he seldom got any reward for his efforts. Mostly shit, actually, from all his envious, feeble-minded colleagues. During the last week it had been worse than that. He had been tossed between external and internal detective work. Forced to sneak around in the basement of the police building and then at the next moment sit for hours in front of his computer, hold discreet meetings out in town where he had to carry on whispered conversations and pick up the tab; he was even forced to visit the archive at Swedish Radio to get a copy of an old TV program in which one of his suspects was standing in a gravel pit in Sörmland shooting wildly in all directions with a Magnum revolver.

He had exploited all his contacts, convinced, persuaded, threatened, begged, and pleaded. Called in services and return favors and was even forced to bribe an unusually corrupt colleague with a bottle of his best malt whiskey.

On Wednesday evening it was finally done, and as he stood there with his Magnum Opus in hand-the bundle of papers still wafting their agreeable aroma from his computer printer-it was as if some force, even stronger than himself, touched his great heart.

“The murder of Olof Palme. Crime analysis, perpetrator profiles, and possible motives. Memorandum prepared on September 26 by Detective Chief Inspector Evert Bäckström,” Bäckström read out loud.

Finally done, thought Bäckström. And if he’d only been able to take care of the whole thing from the very beginning, all of the nation’s innocent citizens would not have needed to hover in uncertainty for more than twenty years.

A conspiracy with four members. He had been clear about this early on, as soon as he got on the trail of that secret society. True to his systematic disposition it was also there that he started. By mapping out the roles that the various perpetrators had played. That Claes Waltin was the brain behind the murder was apparent. A high-ranking policeman with SePo who had full knowledge of what the murder victim was involved in. Who had been able to more or less plan the deed in every detail.

Once that part was finished, the others had been allowed to do their bit. Prosecutor and member of parliament Alf Thulin, who had full insight into what the Palme investigators were doing the whole time, could even manage them for long periods and take necessary misleading or evasive maneuvers as needed. That was also where the wealthy Theo Tischler came into the picture, to put out smoke screens and also dole out a lot of money as needed to the first investigation leader so that he could continue chasing the life out of a lot of crazy Kurds. Then he too had been fired.

Which left the well-known business attorney Sven Erik Sjöberg. What had been his task when Palme was murdered?

According to reliable witness reports from the crime scene, which were also supported by various technical investigations, the perpetrator who shot Palme was definitely at least six foot one.

Claes Waltin was too short. Only five foot eight, apart from everything else that burdened a legal queen like him. Theo Tischler was even shorter, five foot seven, the same height as the victim. Squarely built and bald besides. It was even worse with Thulin, who according to the information in his passport could almost be described as a tall, stately dwarf at all of five foot five.

Sven Erik Sjöberg remained. A giant at five foot ten compared with the rest of the society, and both physically fit and powerful besides. Remarkably like the man that the witnesses described, and though he’d been dead for almost fifteen years, it was here that Bäckström made the first thrust. As always his intuition led him in the right direction.

Sjöberg had evidently been a diligent society brother and club joiner. Not just as a young law student in Friends of Cunt, for that was only a modest beginning. The introduction to a long career in social life that extended from the local Conservative association in Danderyd to the Employers Association in Uppland, the Friends of the Countryside Association, the Shareholders Association, the Taxpayers Association, the Association Against Employee Funds, the gentlemen’s society Stora Sällskapet, Lilla Sällskapet, the New Society, Society for a Free Sweden, Rotary…And so on, and so on. All the way to the Swedish Hunters Union, the “Sneseglarna” sailing society, the Polar Bears winter swimming club, and the Magnum Boys shooting association.

The Magnum Boys, thought Bäckström, licking his lips, and by the next day he knew everything worth knowing about this illustrious confederation. Fifty-some men, marksmen, gun collectors, hunters who met regularly at a gravel pit in Huddinge, where they then passed the time by shooting at cardboard figures and empty gasoline cans with Magnum revolvers and automatic weapons.

When Bäckström read through their annual report for fiscal year 1990 he also found an item that reported that the vice chairman, Sven Sjöberg, had evidently made an appearance as the guest of honor in the noteworthy TV program The Boys at Fagerhult in October that fall. The very next day Bäckström acquired a copy of the program from the TV archive, and it was then that he ran across yet another vein of purest gold. Thick as his thumb this time.

After that there had been dinner, and it was then that the decisive piece fell into place. Sjöberg was invited to appear on the TV program not only in his capacity as a hunter, marksman, and society brother. In reality he was there to discuss the Bofors arms deal with India. In his capacity as member of the board of directors and the company’s attorney for many years.

There was no doubt that you should buy your cannons from Bofors, if you asked Sjöberg, and if you had such a product to offer bribes were wholly unnecessary. Not much more had been said either; instead they proceeded to make a toast to the deal and discuss more essential things, such as how best to kill innocent animals.

In light of this new information Bäckström revised his previous analysis of motives. Not just sex, although there seemed to be strong bonds that united the perpetrators with their victim. Besides, he had found evidence for the second classic motive. Money. Lots of money, which Bofors paid out in bribes to both Indians and others. Not least to the murder victim, if you were to rely on the dozens of allegations in that direction that Bäckström had found on the Internet.

Sex and money. Perpetrators and victim who had a common past. A victim who had been murdered because he had a falling out with the others. With the brain Waltin, the mole Thulin, the financier Tischler, and the marksman Sjöberg.

The same Sjöberg who regrettably had died almost fifteen years ago and therefore could not be questioned. A completely natural death as it appeared. At the Santa’s Elves Association annual Christmas dinner he rose to give the customary thank-you speech and started by opening his mouth, which he’d done his whole life. But instead of beginning to talk one more time he suddenly had a stroke, collapsed like an empty sack, taking a grilled pig’s head with him in his fall, and died on the spot.

After a long period of illness. Jeez, Louise, thought Bäckström, who’d read his obituary in Svenska Dagbladet but was not as easily fooled as all the others.

85

It was time to move from words to action and confront the two perpetrators who were still alive, thought Bäckström as soon as he was done with his restorative Thursday breakfast of pancakes with fried ham, applesauce, toast with extra-salty butter, a big cup of strong coffee, and a gulp of Jägermeister to top it off. Then he ordered a taxi and rode down to the Parliament Building. Upon entering the reception area he handed a business card to the security guard and asked to see member of parliament Alf Thulin, on a matter that was both urgent and sensitive.

“Do you have an appointment, Inspector?” asked the security guard.

“Unfortunately there wasn’t time for that,” said Bäckström. “Win or lose, I took a chance and came here.” Now suck on that, you little desk jockey, he thought.

It was a win, obviously. As always when he tugged hard on the reins. Five minutes later he was on the couch with the Apostle of Aquavit. Nowadays a fine, respected fellow, so it was crucial to be careful with the knife as you drew it against the whetstone. At least to start with, he thought.

“You wanted to see me, Inspector,” said member of parliament Thulin, forming his short, thin fingers into a little church arch.

“I’ll get right to the point,” said Bäckström. “Even if my business is somewhat delicate.”

“Be my guest. I’m listening,” said the member of parliament, making an inviting gesture with his right hand.

“Friends of Cunt,” said Bäckström, sticking out his round head toward the one being questioned to inspire added respect. “Isn’t it high time you unburdened yourself on this point? Let’s start there.” Then we’ll take the rest as we go along, thought Bäckström, who’d done more interrogations than most.

“Excuse me,” said the member of parliament, looking at Bäckström with astonishment.

“I’m talking about the Friends of Cunt. A little society of comrades of which you were a member during your happy student days. I’m sure you remember it.”

“I don’t recall that we’ve dropped formalities,” said the member of parliament, glancing at the closed door to his office for some reason.

Okay, thought Bäckström. If you’re going to be that way. “Stop fooling around now, Thulin,” said Bäckström, giving him the classic police stare. “I want you to tell me. Be my guest, Thulin. I’m listening. Or would you prefer that I call you the Apostle of Aquavit and take you with me to the confessional up at police headquarters?”

“Excuse me a moment, Inspector,” said the member of parliament, smiling wanly. “I’m afraid I have to wash my hands. I’ll be right back.”

“Sure,” said Bäckström. Before you wet your undies, he thought, and if he’d ever seen an interrogation victim who was soon going to be as docile as a sacrificial lamb, it was the Apostle of Aquavit.

Damn, he’s taking a long time, thought Bäckström as he looked at the clock ten minutes later. Wonder if the bastard shit his pants? Best to check, he thought. He got up and reached for the door to see where he’d gone.

Locked. What the hell is going on? thought Bäckström, trying the door one more time to be on the safe side. Still locked.

What the hell is happening? thought Bäckström again fifteen minutes later. Dead silence on the other side of the door. From time to time he was able to perceive extremely faint sounds, even though he stood with his ear pressed against the door, and there had been a lot of running around in the corridor when he arrived. Stealthy footsteps, something heavy being dragged along the floor. Now there’s some real shit going on, thought Bäckström, for suddenly it was so silent you could hear how silent it was. Damn it anyway, thought Bäckström. I should have brought little Sigge with me, he thought, feeling inside his jacket to be on the safe side. Empty. Who the hell would drag around a shoulder holster and a lot of scrap iron when you were only going to tongue-lash a dwarf? he thought.

That was also more or less the last thing he remembered when he finally awoke the following morning and gradually realized that he was still alive. Despite everything. Despite the Friends of Cunt, who evidently had tentacles that reached all the way to the top of police administration. Who evidently only needed to pick up the phone so the Lapp bastard up at the bureau could sic his own death patrol on Bäckström.

86

“How’s it going?” said Johansson as soon as Lewin came into his office.

“It’s rolling along slowly,” said Lewin, nodding inquisitively at Johansson’s visitor’s chair before he sat down.

“Is he alive?” asked Johansson.

“I think so,” Lewin replied. “I get that feeling, at least,” he added with a cautious throat clearing. “In any event we don’t have anything that indicates the opposite.”

“His sister then? Runs out to the bar all the time and drinks champagne with all the interest on her accounts.”

“She seems to live a very quiet life,” said Lewin, shaking his head. “Judging by the records from her home phone she seems to socialize mostly with an old co-worker and a few neighbors in the area where she lives. Plus she’s secretary of her condominium association. Not really any extensive socializing. She makes at most a few calls a day. I haven’t located any cell phone. She doesn’t have an account with any Swedish provider. But she does have a computer and an Internet account with Telia.”

“She probably has one of those prepaid cell phones, like all the other crooks. A leopard never changes its spots,” said Johansson as a police siren started sounding in the pocket of his jacket. “Excuse me,” he said, fishing out his red cell phone.

“Yes,” said Johansson as he always had the habit of doing when he answered the phone.

“You don’t say,” he continued. “Come here on the double so we can set out the shooting line.

“I see then,” said Johansson, nodding. “Now you’ll have to excuse me, Jan. I’ve got something else on the program, but I promise to be in touch.”

Wonder what’s happening? thought Lewin as he stepped out into the corridor from Johansson’s office and was almost run over by the head of the national SWAT force and two of his bald-headed co-workers, on their way in at a fast march.

“What’s happening?” said Johansson without nodding at his visitor’s chair. Full battle regalia and grim faces. What the hell is happening? he thought.

“We seem to have a hostage situation down at the Parliament Building,” said the SWAT chief. “At the office of the Christian Democrats. One perpetrator. Probably armed and dangerous.”

“Do we know who he is?” said Johansson.

“The boys who are at the scene say it’s Bäckström,” said the SWAT chief. “Bäckström from lost-and-found. That fat little bastard. He seems to have taken one individual hostage and barricaded himself in his office. It’s that Thulin. Do you know who I mean, Chief?”

“Bäckström, I know who that is,” said Johansson. “Thulin? Are we talking about that sanctimonious bastard who’s always on TV harping about all the wicked people he runs into all the time? Former prosecutor Alf Thulin?”

“Yes, boss. That Bäckström. Yes, boss. That Thulin. Yes, boss.”

“Go down and tell the little fatso to behave properly,” said Johansson and sighed.

87

She was a woman who seemed to live a quiet life. With one living relative. A brother who, according to what he reported to the Swedish authorities, had moved to Spain twenty-four years ago and was now living at a residential hotel in Sitges, south of Barcelona. He had kept that address for ten years or so, but when he last renewed his Swedish passport seven years ago he had apparently moved to 189 Calle Asunción, in Palma de Mallorca. Two Spanish addresses in twenty-four years. That was all.

I hope he’s still living there, thought Lewin, who had spent all of his adult life in the same apartment at Gärdet.

Then he filled out all the papers needed for Europol to request that the Spanish police make a discreet address check on him, in addition to searching for Kjell Göran Hedberg in all the other registries to which they had access. Obviously he had also put a check mark in the box that dealt with individuals with a “suspected connection to terrorism.”

That may put some urgency even into the Spanish colleagues, thought Jan Lewin, though he was normally not the least bit prejudiced. It’s nice that you don’t need to put things in envelopes and lick stamps anymore, he thought as he e-mailed his request to the officer at the national bureau who took care of the practical aspects and conveniently enough sat three doors down on the same corridor.

“Do you have a moment, boss?” asked Johansson’s secretary as she knocked lightly on his open door.

“Sit down, damn it,” Johansson hissed, waving toward the TV that was in one corner of the room.

SWAT team, Parliament Building, what’s happening? she thought.

“What is going on?” she asked.

“Bäckström,” said Johansson. “The little fathead has apparently gone completely crazy. Barricaded himself in the Christian Democrats’ office and has taken that pharisee Alf Thulin hostage. I’ve sent the boys from the SWAT team to talk some sense into the bastard.”

The SWAT team did as they had been taught to do when they were going to talk sense into someone like Bäckström. Someone who was suspected of being both armed and dangerous. In this case an extremely unusual police officer who unfortunately had access to the same service weapons as all his normal colleagues. The same Bäckström who regrettably-and literally-was standing in the way of the team’s response itself.

First the door fell on him when they broke it down. Then the shock grenade that they threw in exploded only a foot or two from his head. Then four of them threw themselves over him and put both hand and foot restraints on him. All within the course of about ten seconds. The response leader had of course timed the operation.

When Bäckström was carried out on a stretcher and lifted into the ambulance, he was both unconscious and equipped with the necessary shackles. Ready for further transport to the psychiatric ER at Huddinge hospital and accompanied to be on the safe side by an escort from the same SWAT force that had nearly killed him.

During the following twenty-four hours a dozen of his bosses with the Stockholm police would devote the majority of their time to discussing how dangerous he really was. Because opinions diverged, finally they called his previous boss, Lars Martin Johansson, and asked for his assessment.

“A short, fat bastard who spouts nonsense all the time,” Johansson summarized.

“Do you assess Bäckström as constituting a danger to the life and safety of others, boss?” asked the psychologist Johansson was talking with.

“Bäckström,” Johansson snorted. “Are you kidding me?” Dr. Fridolin, he thought. What kind of fucking name is that?

But they got no farther than that.

88

On Friday morning Johansson called in Anna Holt and informed her that she and Lisa Mattei would be traveling to Mallorca on Monday morning. He had already organized a discreet link to the local police colleagues. All resources would be placed at their disposal. No stone would be left unturned.

Johansson even made sure the Spanish police would be responsible for the investigators’ security during their stay. Not only the usual services provided to colleagues. Their contact person was a Spanish police superintendent about his age, who was acting head of the detective squad in Palma and an excellent fellow, according to one of his friends who was Spain’s own Johansson. Among real Spanish constables he was called El Pastor, “the Pastor.” Not because he was particularly God-fearing but mostly because he looked the part. A tall man with a stern, clerical exterior who could get even the most hardened offender to open up and cry his heart out on his bony shoulders.

“Mallorca,” said Holt. An address seven years old that Hedberg himself had provided, she thought. The same Hedberg who probably had very strong reasons to keep away from the police.

“We have to start somewhere,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders. “Besides, I’m pretty sure that’s where he is.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Holt.

“A feeling,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders.

“A feeling?”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “You know, the sort of feeling you get sometimes, which means that some of us can see around corners.

“That’s where the bastard is hiding out,” he continued. “I feel it in my marrow. So now it’s a matter of hiding in the bushes and not scaring him off.”

“The prosecutor,” said Holt. “I assume you’ve reached an understanding with the prosecutor?”

“Of course,” said Johansson. “You’re going to get all the papers within an hour. Signed and ready. Talk with the cashier if you need money. I get the idea the girls leave early on Fridays. If they’ve already left I can arrange it for you,” he added generously and tapped the pocket with his wallet in it.

“You’ve talked with the prosecutor,” said Holt. “With the prosecutor in the Palme investigation?”

“Are you crazy, Anna?” said Johansson. “I’ve talked with our own prosecutor. The one I always use. He’s completely informed about my line of reasoning.”

“So what is that?”

“That there are reasonable grounds to suspect that it was Hedberg who murdered Jorma Kalevi Orjala. That so-called hit-and-run accident, if you recall. In reality it was probably the case that Hedberg simply got a witness out of the way. One more witness. Just like he did that time when he robbed the post office on Dalagatan.”

“Are you joking?” said Holt. “A case that was written off in May of 1986.”

“There’s nothing wrong with having a few papers with you,” said Johansson. “As far as age goes it’s fresher than Palme anyway. Besides, we have actually opened it up again. The colleagues at the group for cold cases took it over from Stockholm yesterday. High time they get something they can chew on.”

“But, Lars-”

“Listen now, Anna,” Johansson interrupted. “Sure. I understand exactly what you intend to say. Forget about Jorma Kalevi. I want Hedberg back here. I want him home in peace and quiet, and I don’t give a damn how it happens, purely formally. Try to be a little practical, for once. Are we agreed?”

“No,” said Anna Holt. “But I understand what you mean.” Besides, you’re the one who decides, she thought.

89

That same Friday morning Bäckström woke up in a bed in the psych ward at Huddinge hospital. A friendly minded fellow patient, who was only suffering from low-level compulsive thoughts at the moment and even had permission to visit the hospital store, sneaked the morning papers to him and asked for an autograph considering that Bäckström was on the front page of both Metro and Svenskan. Not by name, true, but still.

On the other hand Dagens Nyheter had been more restrained and even left an opening for alternative explanations. There it was said that a police officer on sick leave had contacted “a well-known member of parliament to make complaints against the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s way of running the Palme investigation,” but what happened beyond that was extremely unclear. According to the same newspaper’s reliable sources, it had never been a question of a “hostage situation.” The member of parliament in question had not submitted a police report and could not be reached for comment. The police response on the other hand was reported to both the Stockholm police department for internal investigations and to the ombudsman at the Ministry of Justice and the Office of the Chancellor of Justice.

By afternoon Bäckström had already been moved to the neurology department, where first his round head and bruised body had been stuffed into a torpedo tube of an X-ray machine. Then he got boiled cod with egg sauce, elderberry juice, and rhubarb pie. Before he fell asleep he had to stuff almost half a dozen tablets of various colors into himself, and when he woke up the following morning one of the Stockholm police department’s human resources consultants was sitting beside his bed, observing him with a worried expression.

“How’s it going, Bäckström?” asked the consultant, patting him on the arm.

“What’s happening?” Bäckström wheezed. “Is there war?”

“It’s over now, Bäckström,” said the consultant, patting him a little more to be on the safe side.

“Now if you just take it easy and rest up, everything’s going to work out fine.”

“That’s what you say,” said Bäckström. What the hell is he saying? he thought.

“You’re soon going to meet your very own support person,” said the consultant. “The police chief himself has assigned Dr. Fridolin to that task. You know, the one you met at the gender sensitivity course where you had your stroke. Fridolf Fridolin, you know.”

“Little Frippy,” said Bäckström. What the hell is wrong with an ordinary shot to the back of the neck?

“It’s going to work out, Bäckström,” the consultant assured him. “Now just take it easy and-”

“I want to talk with the union,” Bäckström interrupted. “Besides, I demand to be guarded so those fucking SWAT terrorists can’t make another attempt to kill me. Just none of my colleagues. Bring over some reliable half-apes from Securitas.”

On Monday he had been discharged and could go home. Fridolin, who had been at his side faithfully the whole weekend, drove him and even accompanied him up to his cozy pad.

“I’ll see to it that someone from home services comes and cleans for you, Eve,” said Fridolin with a faint smile as soon as he stepped inside the door and was confronted with the Bäckströmian home sweet home.

“Sit down, Little Frippy,” said Bäckström, pointing to his couch. “We’re going to have a serious talk, you and me.”

Then Bäckström gave the good doctor his memorandum about the conspiracy behind the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. Complete with crime analysis, profiles of the four perpetrators, and possible motives. In addition, he produced a copy of the crime report against Waltin for his efforts with the candlestick on Walpurgis Eve, 1968.

“But this is terrible, Eve,” said a shaken Fridolin when he finished reading half an hour later. “This is even worse than that movie by Oliver Stone about the assassination of Kennedy. We have to see to it immediately that you get security protection, so they don’t-”

“Calm down, Little Frippy,” said Bäckström, raising his hand like a traffic cop. “We shouldn’t get ourselves excited unnecessarily and just rush off. Get me a beer from the fridge, then I’ll explain how we should set the whole thing up. Get one for yourself too, if you want,” he added, because he felt that he was starting to return to his old friendly, generous self.