Free Falling, As If in a Dream

Just before seven o’clock in the morning Esperanza left her usual place at the charter pier in the harbor. A beautiful little boat with a beautiful name.

1

Eight weeks earlier, Wednesday, August 15.

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

“Olof Palme,” said the chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Lars Martin Johansson. “Are you familiar with that name, ladies and gentlemen?”

For some reason he seemed almost joyful as he said it. Just back from vacation with a becoming suntan, red suspenders, and linen shirt with no tie as a lighthearted signal of the transition from relaxation to responsibility. He leaned forward in his seat at the short end of the conference table, letting his gaze wander across the four others gathered around the same table.

The joy seemed to be his alone. Doubtful looks were exchanged among three of the four-Police Superintendent Anna Holt, Detective Chief Inspector Jan Lewin, and Detective Chief Inspector Lisa Mattei-while the fourth in the group, Chief Inspector Yngve Flykt, who was head of the Palme group, seemed if anything embarrassed by the question and tried to compensate by looking politely preoccupied.

“Olof Palme,” Johansson repeated, his voice now sounding more urgent. “Does that ring any bells?”

The one who finally answered was Lisa Mattei, the youngest of the group, but long accustomed to the role of best in class. First she glanced at the head of the Palme investigation, who only nodded and looked tired, then she looked down at her notepad, which incidentally was free of any notes or the doodling with which she usually filled it, whatever was being discussed. Then in two sentences she summarized Olof Palme’s political career, and in four sentences his end.

“Olof Palme,” said Mattei. “Social Democrat and Sweden’s most well-known politician during the postwar period. Prime minister for two terms, from 1969 to 1976 and from 1982 to 1986. Was murdered at the intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan in central Stockholm twenty-one years, five months, and fourteen days ago. It was Friday the twenty-eighth of February 1986, twenty minutes past eleven. He was shot from behind with one shot and appears to have died almost immediately. I was eleven years old when it happened, so I’m afraid I don’t have much more to contribute,” Mattei concluded.

“Don’t say that,” said Johansson with a Norrland drawl. “Our victim was the prime minister and a fine fellow, and how common is this kind of crime victim at this sort of place? True, I’m only the head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, but I’m also an orderly person and extremely allergic to unsolved cases,” he continued. “I take them personally, if you’re wondering why you’re here.”

No one had wondered about that. No one seemed particularly enthusiastic either. Regardless, the whole thing started as it almost always does, with a few police officers sitting around a table, talking about a case. No flashing lights, no sirens, and definitely no drawn service revolvers. Although when the crime happened, over twenty years ago, it had started with flashing lights, sirens, and drawn service revolvers. Nothing had helped. The case had ended badly.

Johansson elaborated on his ideas about what ought to be done, the motive for doing it, and how it should all be arranged in practical terms. As so often before, he also relied on his personal experience without the slightest trace of either genuine or false modesty.

“In my personal experience, when a case has come to a standstill so to speak, it’s often worth calling in some new folks who can look at the case with fresh eyes. It’s easy to overlook things,” said Johansson.

“I hear you,” Anna Holt answered, sounding more sarcastic than she intended. “But if you’ll excuse-”

“Sure,” Johansson interrupted. “Just let me finish my sentence first.”

“I’m listening,” said Holt. I never learn, she thought.

“When you’re starting to get up in years like me, unfortunately the risk increases that you don’t remember what you meant to say, if you get interrupted, that is,” Johansson explained. “Where was I now?” he continued.

“How you intended to organize the whole thing, boss,” Mattei interjected. “Our investigation, that is,” she clarified.

“Thanks, Lisa,” said Johansson. “Thanks for helping an old man.”

How does he do it? thought Holt. Even with Lisa of all people?

According to Johansson it was not a question of forming a new Palme investigation, and the investigators who were already in the Palme group-several of whom had spent almost their entire active time as detectives there-would of course retain sole responsibility.

“So I want to make that clear from the start, Yngve,” said Johansson, nodding at the head of the Palme group, who still seemed more worried than relieved.

“No way,” said Johansson. “You can forget any such ideas. I’ve imagined something a lot simpler and more informal. What I want simply is a second opinion. Not a new investigation. Just a second opinion from a few wise officers who can look at the case with fresh eyes.

“I want you to go through the investigation,” he continued. “Is there anything we haven’t done that we should have done? Is there anything in the material itself that we’ve missed and that’s worth looking into? That can still be looked into? If so, I want to know about it, and it’s no more difficult than that.”

Regardless of his hopes on the last point, the following hour was devoted to discussing objections from three of the four others in the room. The only one who didn’t say anything was Lisa Mattei, but when their meeting was over, her notepad was as full of scribbling as always. Partly with what her colleagues had said. Partly with her usual doodling regardless of what was being said.

First up was Chief Inspector Jan Lewin, who after some introductory, cautious throat clearing quickly zeroed in on Johansson’s fundamental motive, namely the need for fresh eyes. The idea as such was excellent. He himself had advocated it often enough. Not least during his time as head of the group that dealt with so-called cold cases. But for that very reason he thought he was particularly poorly suited for this case.

During the initial year of the investigation-while Lewin was working at the homicide squad in Stockholm-he had primary responsibility for the collection of significant portions of the material evidence. Not until the investigation was taken over by the national bureau did he return to his old assignment at the homicide squad in Stockholm. Several years later he moved over to the national bureau, and once there he had also helped on the Palme investigation for a few brief periods with the registration and review of new leads that had come in.

“I don’t know if you remember, boss, but the investigation leader, Hans Holmér, the police chief in Stockholm at that time, collected large quantities of information that perhaps didn’t have anything directly to do with the murder itself but might prove to be of value.” Lewin nodded at Lisa Mattei, who had been only a little girl in those days.

“I remember the police chief at that time,” said Johansson. Of unblessed memory, he thought. “Though most of what he found I’ve managed to repress. What was it that landed on your desk, Lewin?”

At best, quite a bit of questionable value, according to Lewin.

“All hotel registrations in the Stockholm area around the time of the murder. All arrivals into and departures from the country that could be substantiated with the usual passport and border checks, all parking violations in greater Stockholm around the time of the crime, all speeding violations and other traffic offenses in the whole country the day of the murder, the day before and the day after, all other crimes and arrests in the Stockholm area at the time of the crime. We took in everything from drunkenness and domestic disturbances to all ordinary crimes reported during the twenty-four-hour period in question. We also collected accident reports. Plus all suicides and strange causes of death that happened both before and after the murder. I know when I left the investigation they were still working on that part. As you know, it added up to quite a bit. Hundreds of pounds of paper, thousands of pages actually, and I’m only talking about what came in during my time.”

“The broad, unbiased effort,” Johansson observed.

“Yes, that’s what it’s called,” said Lewin. “Sometimes it works, but this time almost all of it remained unprocessed. There simply wasn’t time to do anything. I sat and skimmed through what came in, and I had my hands full just with what first jumped out at me. Ninety percent of the paperwork was basically put right back in the boxes where it had been from the start.”

“Give me some examples,” said Johansson. “What things jumped out at you, Lewin?”

“I remember four different suicides,” said Lewin. “The first took place only a few hours after the murder of the prime minister. I remember it in detail, because when I got the papers on my desk I actually felt some of those old vibrations you feel when things are starting to heat up.” Lewin shook his head thoughtfully.

“The man who committed suicide had hung himself in the rec room of his house. A guard who took early retirement who lived on Ekerö a few miles outside Stockholm. He was the neighbor of a police officer, so I got the tip through him. He also had a license for a handgun, to top it off a revolver that might very well have matched what we knew about the murder weapon at that time. He was generally considered strange by those who knew him. Antisocial, divorced for several years, problems with alcohol, the usual stuff. In brief, he seemed pretty good, but he had an alibi for the evening of the murder. For one thing, he’d quarreled with some neighbors who were out with their dog at about ten o’clock. Then he called his ex-wife from his home phone, a total of three times if I remember correctly, and carried on with her about the same time as Palme was shot. I had no problem ruling him out. We found his revolver in the house search. It was test fired, even though we already knew it was the wrong caliber.”

“And the others?” Johansson was looking almost greedily at his colleague.

“No,” said Lewin, “at the risk of disappointing you, and I was pretty careful about these cases. I remember when the media started making a row about the so-called police track, that it was some of our fellow officers who murdered Palme, I went into the material on my own and checked for that specifically-all the parking violations and other traffic offenses where the vehicle or the perpetrator could be connected to our colleagues, whether or not they were on duty.”

“But that didn’t produce anything either,” said Johansson.

“No,” said Lewin. “Other than some pretty imaginative explanations of why a particular officer shouldn’t have to pay his parking tickets or why his car ended up in such a strange place.”

“Exactly,” said Johansson. “The same old women problems if you ask me. Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be interesting for you to take another look at your old boxes? Now when you’ve got some perspective, I mean. I can’t help sensing that you don’t seem completely uncomfortable with the job. And you could take a look at all the rest, once you’re at it anyway, I mean.”

“With some reservations about fresh eyes,” said Lewin, sounding more positive than he intended. “Well, maybe so. The basic idea is good enough.”

Coward, thought Anna Holt, who didn’t intend to let Johansson get off that easily.

“With all due respect, boss, even though I also believe the part about fresh eyes, and even though I’ve never been anywhere near this investigation, I really don’t believe in the idea,” said Holt. Now it’s said, she thought.

“I’m listening, Anna,” said Johansson, with the same expression in his eyes he’d learned from his first elkhound. The gaze that naturally ensues from undivided positive attention. As when he and the dog took a break in the hunt, when he told him to sit nicely, just before he gave him a slice of sausage from the lunch sack. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that I can’t imagine a more thrashed-out case in Swedish police history. Investigated over and over again in every conceivable and inconceivable respect. Without technical evidence worth the name. With witnesses who were pumped dry twenty years ago, most of whom are now probably either dead or in no shape to be talked with. Where the only suspect worth the name, I’m thinking of Christer Pettersson, obviously, was convicted in Stockholm District Court almost twenty years ago, only to be released by Svea Court of Appeal six months later. The same Pettersson they tried to indict again ten years ago, but the prosecutor couldn’t even get a new trial. The same Pettersson who died a few years ago. As if everything that happened before wasn’t more than enough to close the investigation against him.”

“You’re making me think of that classic skit, Anna. I think it won a prize as the world’s best TV sketch. That Monty Python thing about the dead parrot,” said Johansson. “Wasn’t it a Norwegian blue? Wasn’t that what it was called? The parrot that is.

“‘This parrot is dead.’ You know that scene where the upset customer is in the pet shop and slams the dead parrot on the counter,” Johansson explained as he slammed his desktop to illustrate.

“Sure,” said Holt. “If you like. This investigation is dead. Just as dead as Monty Python’s parrot.”

“Maybe it’s just a little tired,” said Johansson. “Isn’t that what the shop owner says-the one who sold the customer the parrot, when the customer comes in to complain? ‘He’s not dead, just a little tired.’”

Don’t try that with me, thought Holt. Giving in was the last thing she intended to do, regardless of all the smoke screens and easy-to-see-through jokes from her boss.

“The Palme investigation has not come to a standstill,” Holt repeated. “The Palme investigation has been thrashed to death. It’s not a cold case; it’s not even an ice-cold case. The Palme investigation is dead.”

“You don’t need to get upset, Holt. I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson, who suddenly didn’t sound the least bit nice and friendly anymore. “Personally I think it’s maybe just a little tired. And maybe it should be looked at with fresh eyes. That you proceed from the basic police ground rule that always applies when you’re involved in such things.”

“Like the situation,” said Holt, who knew Johansson after a number of years and cases.

“Exactly,” said Johansson, smiling again. “Nice to know we’re in agreement, Anna.”

Last up was Chief Inspector Yngve Flykt, head of the Palme group. If he’d had anything to say about it, this meeting never would have happened. Personally he was a man of peace, and what he’d heard about his top boss, not least that he was capable of thinking up all kinds of things to happen to co-workers who didn’t do what he said, made him irretrievably lost from the start.

With all due respect for his boss, and being both happy and grateful for the boss’s clear and definite opinion that any changes in a well-established, functioning organization were not even an issue, with respect for all this and everything else that in haste he might have forgotten, he would still, however, and obviously with all good intentions, like to point out a few practical problems, which his colleague Lewin had already touched on.

“What are you talking about?” interrupted Johansson.

“Our case files,” said the head of the Palme investigation, looking almost imploringly at Johansson. “It’s no ordinary body of material even for a very big case. I don’t know if you’ve been down and looked at it, but it’s a colossal amount of material. Gigantic. As perhaps you know, it takes up six whole cubicles in the corridor where we’re located. We’ve already taken down five partitions, and soon it’ll be time for the next one. There are binders and boxes from floor to ceiling.”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson, forming his long fingers into an arch and leaning back in his chair. Flykt, thought Johansson. It must be congenital.

“From what my colleagues and I have understood, it’s actually the largest amount of investigative material in world police history. It’s supposed to be even larger than the pre-investigation material on the Kennedy assassination and the investigation of the attack on the jumbo jet over Lockerbie in Scotland.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Johansson interrupted. “What’s the problem? A lot of it must be entered on computers by now.”

“Obviously, and there’s more and more every day, but it’s not something you just sit down and browse through. We’re talking about roughly a million pages. Most are transcripts of interviews, and there are thousands of those that are tens of pages and sometimes longer. In round numbers, a hundred thousand different documents stored in almost a thousand binders. Not to mention all the boxes where we’ve stored the things you can’t keep in binders. There was an expert in the latest government commission who calculated that even then, and this must have been two years ago, it would have required ten years of full-time work for a qualified investigator simply to scan through the material. If you ask me, I think it would take even longer, and new information is coming in all the time.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson, making a slightly dismissive gesture with his right hand. “But some type of sorting out must still be possible, no? If I’m not mistaken, there are tens of thousands of pages of the usual crazy tips. Couldn’t those be set aside?”

“I’m afraid that’s not enough,” Flykt objected. “There are a lot more crazy tips than that. The problem with them too, and you know this as well as I do, boss, is that some may appear convincing to start with. I saw a newspaper interview a while ago with our own professor here at the National Police Board where he maintained that if we suddenly solved the Palme assassination and knew what had happened, it would prove that ninety-nine percent of the whole case file was irrelevant, and that almost everything we’d collected had been directly misleading. For once we were in complete agreement, he and I.”

“That’s a pity,” said Johansson. “To hear that you’re in agreement with such a person, I mean. What I’m trying to say is simply that of course there must be a way to sort the material. For some clever colleagues with fresh eyes. Personally I’ve gotten by well enough over the years with the event description, the most important eyewitnesses, that is, the technical investigation and the forensic report,” Johansson said, counting on his fingers as he spoke, smiling as he held up three of them.

“Besides,” he continued, “there must be a nice summary or two in this case that explains the usual where, when, and how. Even the officers in the uniformed police seem to have understood who the victim was a few minutes after the crime.”

“That’s correct.” Flykt nodded and seemed almost relieved, as if suddenly he was on firmer ground. “Our own perpetrator profile group produced both an analysis of the crime and a profile of the perpetrator in collaboration with the FBI. Besides that there were several other analyses made by external experts that we turned to. Both of the crime itself in its main features and of various details. For example, the murder weapon and the two bullets that were secured at the crime scene. We got quite a bit actually.”

“Of course,” said Johansson, throwing out his hands with the secure conviction of a Bible-thumper from his provincial childhood. “So what are we waiting for?”

As soon as Johansson released his hold on the head of the Palme group, everyone in the room started carefully inching their chairs back, but Johansson ignored their hopes.

“I realize you’re eager to get going, ladies and gentlemen,” said Johansson with a crooked smile, “but before we part company there’s one thing I want to emphasize. A word of warning on the way.” He nodded emphatically and looked at them in turn with a stern expression.

“You must not say a word about this. You may talk with each other as needed in order to do what you should. If for the same reason you need to talk with anyone else, you must first obtain my permission to do so.”

“What do I say to my co-workers?” The head of the Palme group did not look happy. “I mean-”

“Nothing,” Johansson interrupted. “If anyone wonders about anything, you can send him or her to me. You should understand that better than anyone,” he added. “What a hell the media has created for the Palme investigation all these years. I don’t want a lot of other officers running around talking nonsense. How do you think the media gets hold of all the shit they write about? The last thing I want to read in the newspaper when I open my eyes in the morning is that I’ve appointed a new investigation of the assassination of Olof Palme.”

“Which is precisely why I think providing a little information to the people in my group would be good. To avoid a lot of unnecessary talk, I mean.” Flykt looked almost imploring as he said this. “One solution would be to say that we’ve asked Holt, Lewin, and Mattei to look over the case indexing. I mean that sort of work goes on all the time and is often done by colleagues outside the group. Or perhaps it’s a purely administrative overview.”

“Like I said,” said Johansson, “not a word. Send all the curiosity seekers to me so I can slake their thirst for knowledge, and if they’re not satisfied I’m sure I can arrange other duties for them. All of us in this room will meet in a week. Same time, same place. Any questions?”

No one had any questions, and as they were leaving Johansson first nodded curtly at Flykt. Then he smiled broadly at Lisa Mattei, asked for a copy of her typed-up meeting notes, and told her to take care of herself. Holt he completely ignored, and as they left he took Lewin aside.

“There’s one thing that disturbs me about this case,” said Johansson.

“That it may have been wrongly conceived from the start,” Lewin replied, who had been around before and heard Johansson expound on the same text on more than one occasion.

“Exactly,” Johansson agreed. “A lone madman who by pure chance runs into a completely unprotected prime minister and just happens to have a revolver the size of a suckling pig in his pocket. That’s what most people seem to believe, including the majority of our dear colleagues. So-a quiet question from a man in mature middle age: Just how common is that?”

“I understand what you mean,” said Lewin.

“Good,” said Johansson. “Then I’ll see you in a week, and if you happen to get hold of the bastard before that please let me know.”

2

After the meeting with Johansson, Anna Holt returned to her office at the national liaison office where she’d been working as a superintendent for over a year. She was careful to close the door before sitting down at her desk and exhaling deeply three times. Then she swore loudly and fervently on the theme of adult boys forty pounds overweight with red suspenders and the dual role of country boy comedian and head of the country’s National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. That gave her some relief, but not as much as she’d hoped, so when Lisa Mattei knocked on her door half an hour later she was still in a bad mood.

“How’s it going, Anna?” said Mattei. “You seem a little down.”

“What do you think?” interrupted Anna.

“Don’t get hung up on Johansson,” Mattei said for some reason. “Johansson is who he is, but he’s also actually Johansson. I’ve talked with Flykt, so we can jump right in. He’ll arrange it so we have our own access cards.”

“It’s time to embrace the situation,” said Holt. “High time to resurrect a dead parrot.”

“Exactly,” said Mattei. “You know yourself there’s more than one way to skin a cat, as Lars Martin would say.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” said Holt, sighing and getting up. So now we’re suddenly on a first-name basis with the world’s best Johansson, she thought. Lisa of all people.

Lewin had also returned to his desk. There he sat for a good quarter of an hour, criticizing himself for once again ending up in a situation that he could have avoided. Together with his top boss, Lars Martin Johansson, besides, with whom he tried not to have any contact otherwise.

The man who can see around corners, thought Lewin mournfully. That was how many officers always described him, especially when they had a few shots under their belt. The legend Lars Martin Johansson from north Ådalen in the province of Ångermanland. Policeman and hunter, with the same view of both justice and hunting, regardless of whether he took it out on people or on innocent animals. Johansson with his large nose and uncanny ability to sniff out the faintest scent of human weakness. With his jovial image and human warmth that he could switch on and off as he pleased. Shrewd, hard, and merciless as soon as it mattered, as soon as his prey came within reach and was worth the trouble.

Then he had a twinge of conscience. Johansson was in spite of it all a fellow officer, his boss besides, and who was he to judge a fellow human being he’d never had close contact with and really didn’t know that well?

High time to embrace the situation, Lewin thought. He picked up his desk phone and entered Flykt’s direct number.

“Welcome to the holy of holies,” said Flykt, nodding at the mountain of papers that surrounded Lewin, Holt, and Mattei. Binders and boxes lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Stacks of boxes arranged in neat rows out on the floor. A room of over two hundred square feet that already seemed too small.

“Well, Jan, I know you’ve been here before,” Flykt continued, turning to Lewin, “but for you, Anna and Lisa, this may be the first time?”

“I’ve been here on a guided tour,” said Holt. “True, it was a few years ago, but the piles don’t look any smaller.” If Johansson has been here he’s either blind or crazy, she thought.

“A question,” said Holt to Flykt. “Has Johansson seen this material? At our meeting this morning I got the feeling he hadn’t.”

“I thought so too,” said Flykt, “but a little while ago one of my colleagues here at the group said that evidently the boss stopped by before his vacation. Although I was out so I missed that visit. I also suspect he’s gone through the parts of the material that are with SePo. I remember we got a request for additional information while he was head of operations there. Though perhaps you know better than I do, because you’ve worked there. And we shouldn’t forget that he’s been called in as an adviser to all the government commissions that reviewed how we more humble police officers have conducted ourselves over the years. If you ask me Johansson probably knows more than most of us.”

“God moves in mysterious ways,” Holt answered.

“So true, so true,” Flykt agreed with a smile. “Any questions, anyone?” For some reason he looked at Mattei.

Oy, thought Lisa Mattei, who had a hard time taking her eyes off all the papers. Working with this stuff must be like climbing a mountain. And I’m afraid of heights.

“It’s my first time here,” she said. “It will be interesting to see what you’ve collected.” Like climbing a mountain, she thought again as she let her gaze wander over the rows of binders.

“Yes, it has turned into quite a lot over the years, and there’s still a new binder every week. Mostly so-called crazy tips if you ask me,” said Flykt. “So I guess the least I can do is wish you luck,” he continued. “If you do happen to find something that my colleagues and I have missed, no one will be happier than we will be.”

Sounds like a pretty risk-free promise, thought Holt, who just smiled and nodded.

Unfortunately the age of miracles is probably past, thought Lewin, which of course he didn’t say.

And I’m scared of heights, thought Mattei, but that was not something she intended to tell her colleagues, not even Anna.

Lars Martin Johansson was in a great mood. He was satisfied in general terms and even more so with himself. He was most satisfied that he’d finally decided to do something about the police misfortune that went by the name of the Palme investigation. For more than twenty years the case had been the responsibility of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, for a few years ultimately his own, and it was about time for something to happen. During the last decade, after the last failure with the now deceased “Palme assassin” Christer Pettersson, the group that worked on the case had mostly been engaged in other things.

Identifying the Swedish victims of the tsunami catastrophe in Thailand demanded all their resources for more than a year. After that similar assignments had literally poured in to the Palme investigators. Swedish citizens who were abroad and subjected to political attacks, natural disasters and accidents. The little now being done about the Palme assassination mainly consisted of tending the circle of private investigators, conspiracy theorists, and those whom the police called, regardless of gender, bag ladies. All those who wanted to help and have complete knowledge of what he and his officers might contribute besides. We can’t have it that way, naturally, because then we might as well shut down the whole damn thing, thought Johansson. Then he’d made his decision.

As soon as Flykt left, Holt proposed that they withdraw for some private deliberations. But not in the Palme room-the mountain of papers all around them filled her with physical displeasure, although she didn’t say so of course. Instead perhaps they could go someplace where they could sit more comfortably. No one had any objections. First they got coffee, then they went into an empty conference room and closed the door.

“All right,” said Holt. “So here we are. And it’s time we start embracing the situation, considering what’s waiting. The good news is that if we divide up the material, at least there’ll be less to read.”

“In that case I suggest I take care of the incident itself,” said Lewin. “What Johansson mentioned, with the witness statements from the crime scene, the technical investigation, and the forensic report. At least I thought I could start there.”

“I have no objections whatsoever,” said Holt. “Here’s your chance, Lisa,” she continued. “Is there any particular piece you’re longing for? Now that you’ve got the chance.”

“I don’t know enough about the case,” said Mattei. “I need to get a better overview. All those tracks, or working hypotheses to be correct, that I’ve heard about since I became a police officer. You know-Kurdish terrorists and lone madmen and mysterious arms deals and our colleagues, the so-called police track.”

“Excellent,” said Holt. “I don’t think you’ll have a shortage of reading material.” One of us at least likes the situation, she thought.

“What about you, Anna?” asked Lewin, cautiously clearing his throat.

“I thought I’d supervise and divide the work between you and Lisa,” said Holt.

“Kidding aside,” she continued, “I think I’ll focus on Christer Pettersson. Regardless of what Johansson thinks about my fresh eyes, and even though I don’t know any more about the case than what I’ve read in the newspapers and heard ad nauseam at work, I’ve always thought it was Christer Pettersson who shot Olof Palme. I still think so if anyone’s wondering, but because it has happened before that I’ve been wrong, I’m willing to make a fresh attempt.”

“I see,” said Lewin, nodding. “Then that’s how we’ll do it. To start with at least.”

“Sounds good,” Mattei confirmed, getting up.

“Yes,” said Holt. “Do we have any choice?” Then she sighed audibly and shook her head, despite the promise that Johansson had forced out of her.

3

Satisfied with himself and the decision he’d made, even though it was the first day after vacation, Johansson decided to leave early and work at home. His secretary thought this sounded excellent, not least considering the beautiful summer weather. She would gladly have done the same if she’d had the opportunity to choose or even express a wish in that direction.

“Sounds wise, boss,” she agreed. “Considering the weather, I mean. Is there anything else I need to know?”

“I’m to be reached only in an emergency. Plus the usual, you know,” said Johansson.

“That I should take care of myself,” said his secretary.

“Exactly. You have to promise to take care of yourself.”

“I promise,” she answered. “Although this evening I hadn’t planned any major adventures. Thought about watering the flower boxes on the balcony when I get home, if that’s all right?”

“Sounds like an excellent idea,” said her boss, whose thoughts already seemed to be elsewhere. “Just so you don’t fall over the railing.”

“I promise,” she said. What could happen to me? she thought as he vanished out the door. I’m fifty years old, single with no children, my only girlfriend on vacation with her new boyfriend, and I don’t even have a cat I can pet.

Johansson walked the whole way home along the city’s wharfs in the pleasant summer breeze that passed over the waters of Mälaren and cooled his Norrland body. An American in Paris, Johansson thought for some reason, and then he started wondering about himself along the same lines. A simple boy from the country, from Näsåker and red Ådalen in north Ångermanland, who had traveled to the royal capital forty years ago to start at the police academy in Solna. Who’d taken his fate in his own hands and borne it on strong arms, who’d done it well and patrolled his way to the top of the police pyramid. A simple boy from the country who was now approaching the end of the journey and would retire about the same time as the murder of the country’s prime minister would pass the statute of limitations. What would be a better finale than clearing up this case before he said goodbye?

In these and equally pleasant musings he walked the whole way along Norr Mälarstrand, Riddarholmen, and up on the heights of Söder. There he made a detour by way of the indoor market to shop for various delicacies for the summer dinner with which he intended to surprise his wife when she came home from her job at the bank. A few goodies, mostly fish, seafood, and vegetables, but still two well-filled bags that he carried home to the apartment on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan.

The rest of the afternoon he was diligently busy as a cook. Because the weather was right, he set the table on their new balcony facing the courtyard; it had been finished just before they went on vacation and could not be inaugurated until now. He made a salad of fresh salmon, avocado, and mild arugula, cut fresh tuna in nice thick slices, placed chopped herbs on top, and put everything back in the fridge until it was time.

Then he scrubbed carrots and potatoes, put them in separate saucepans, and poured in water. He checked the temperature of the dry German Riesling he planned to serve as the main wine. After a brief inner deliberation he also put a bottle of champagne on ice in a table-cooler. Both he and his wife preferred it really cold.

Then he did everything else from the fresh asparagus with whipped butter, to the cheese tray, to the concluding raspberries. Everything in the right order, of course, and while he was still at it he rewarded himself with a cold Czech pilsner. When his wife called and said she’d just left work and would be home in fifteen minutes, he put the saucepans on the stove and made a toast to himself.

Cheers, Lars, thought the head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Lars Martin Johansson, raising his glass. In all likelihood there’s not a soul on the planet who can say anything other than that you are one outstanding, well-stocked SOB.

“God,” Pia Johansson exclaimed as soon as she stepped into the hall and set her handbag down on the hall table. “I’m so hungry I could devour a boiled puppy. With the fur on.”

“That probably won’t be necessary,” Johansson answered. He bent forward, placed his right hand around her slender throat, his thumb against the hollow in her neck, letting his left hand rest lightly against her right cheek, breathing in her scent while he let his lips brush her hairline.

“What do you say we eat first?” asked Pia.

“Of course,” said Johansson. “Otherwise I would’ve wrestled you to the floor right away.”

“God, this is good.” Pia sighed two hours later when they had arrived at the raspberries and a more frostbitten Riesling that Johansson had up his sleeve for just this purpose. “If I were forty years younger I would have belched.”

“Impossible,” said Johansson. “Only small children belch. And Chinese,” he added. “It’s supposed to be a tradition they have in China to say thanks for the food.”

“You’re lucky I’m the only one listening. Okay then, if I were forty-five years younger, then I would have belched.”

“Children belch; men snore, fart in secret, even let out real juicy ones if they’re alone or feel comfortable with who they’re with. Women do nothing of the sort.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea.” Johansson shook his head. “What do you think about a cup of coffee, by the way?”

“Of course,” Pia agreed. “Though first I meant to say thanks for this princely meal.”

“Just a simple banquet,” said Johansson modestly. “Necessary nourishment for our solitary earthly wandering.”

“I’m almost getting a little nervous,” she continued. “You’re not up to something, are you?”

“Not really,” said Johansson. “I simply wanted to ingratiate myself in general terms with the woman in my life.”

“You don’t need to borrow money?”

“Borrow money,” Johansson snorted. “A free man doesn’t borrow money.”

“Okay then,” said Pia. “Then I’ll take a double espresso with hot milk.”

“Good choice,” Johansson agreed. “Personally I was thinking about having a small cognac to help my digestion.”

“Not for me,” said Pia. “Considering tomorrow. There’s a lot to do after vacation.” But mostly because I’m a woman, she thought.

“Personally I was thinking about taking it very easy tomorrow,” said Johansson. I am the boss after all, he thought.

Tomorrow can wait, thought Johansson as he loaded up the espresso machine and poured a short one to help his digestion. I’m a fortunate man, and some days are better than others.

After dinner was over they sat on the couch in Johansson’s study. Johansson turned on the TV and looked at the late news. But everything was quiet, and given that his red cell phone had been silent the whole evening, his concluding message at the meeting had evidently done the trick. Not a peep about a prime minister assassinated long ago. In the midst of all this Pia fell asleep on the couch with her head on his lap. Without making a sound and while he stroked her forehead. You sleep like a child in any event, he thought. Motionless, soundless, now and then just a light trembling of the eyelids. Change of plans, and just as well considering all the food and wine, and what do I do now?

His wife solved the problem for him. Suddenly she sat up with a jerk, looked at the clock, and shook her head.

“Good Lord,” said Pia. “Already eleven. Now I’m going to bed. Don’t stay up too late. Tomorrow’s a work day.”

“I promise,” said Johansson. Tomorrow can wait, he thought, reaching for the TV guide.

First he sat surfing between the twelve or more movie channels to which he now had access. Most of the films he’d seen before, and the ones he hadn’t didn’t seem worth the trouble. Mostly a lot of nonsense about serial killers who had the good taste to stay away from his desk anyway, and in the midst of this he suddenly had an idea.

In the Palme room were binders, folders, and boxes that covered all the existing wall space and a good share of the floor. In Johansson’s large study there were books from floor to ceiling. Books about everything under the sun, assuming it was something that interested him. What didn’t interest him he would take up to the attic or give away. True, the Palme room was twice the size of Johansson’s study, but the difference in letters and words was less than that. Books, books, books…videocassettes, DVDs and CDs plus numerous good old-fashioned LPs. But mostly books, almost all books. Books he’d read and appreciated and could imagine reading again. Books he needed to learn about things and to be able to think better. Books he loved literally because their physical existence showed that for a long time he had become the master of his own life and that he had made the most of himself. All these books he’d missed so deeply while growing up on the farm outside Näsåker that the absence sometimes gnawed at his chest. But never a mountain he was forced to climb.

In Johansson’s childhood home there had been few books. The life they lived left little room for reading. In the parlor there was a bookcase with old Bibles, hymnbooks, farming guides, and the devotional tracts that were a natural part of the region’s cultural heritage and considered remarkable enough to have bound. But not much else.

In his father’s study-the farm office-there were thick catalogs for everything under the sun having to do with work. From manufacturers of tractors, farm and forest machinery, to sellers of guns and ammunition, fishing tackle, screws, nails, tar, paint and varnish, bolts and lumber, motor saws, tools, seed, breeding animals and other lighter goods that were part of life on the farm, and could be shipped through the postal service, paid for COD with the deal concluded by a handshake with the mail carrier.

In his older brothers’ room were numerous worn-out volumes of Rekord magazine, Se and Lektyr, carelessly stacked on their one rickety bookshelf. Besides very different publications in which a picture said more than a thousand words, and which they preferred to hide under their mattresses.

The latter publications were obviously lacking in his sister’s room. Instead there were Anne of Green Gables, Pollyanna, The Children from Frostmo Mountain, and everything else on the same theme that shaped little girls into conscientious young women and good mothers.

Not so for Johansson, who even as a little boy read as if he were possessed. Who somehow learned to read the year before he started grade school. Little Lars Martin, whose love of reading deeply worried his kindly father and was the reason that his older brothers teased him and gave him a licking whenever they caught him with a thick book without any pictures.

It started with crime. Ture Sventon, Agaton Sax, Master Detective Blomkvist, and Sherlock Holmes, the greatest of them all. He was forced to hide in toolsheds, carriage houses, and outhouses so he could harvest the fruits of such reading in peace. Not until he was big enough to defend himself could he visit his own room, his own reading lamp, and the relative lack of disturbance this calling required.

He continued with adventure in the most general terms, from another time and reality than his own, and for just that reason he could give his imagination free rein. All the adventures of Biggles, the solidarity of the three musketeers, and the solitude of Robinson Crusoe. Around the World in 80 Days and Gulliver’s Travels. He traveled in time and space, in free flight between reality and imagination, and as far away as the public library in Näsåker could issue the ticket. The happiest of all the journeys a person could undertake if anyone had thought to ask little Lars Martin.

When he was nine, his father put him in the car and took him on another journey, an eighteen-mile trip to the district doctor. High time, imminent danger, and his youngest son was wearing his eyes out reading books like a veritable madman. Because little Lars seemed completely normal in all other respects, his father couldn’t rule out that something in his head had gotten stuck. Like a gramophone record with a skip in it, if you were to ask a layman.

“So it’s not that he’s strange or anything,” his father, Evert, told the doctor, when he’d shut the door, leaving the little patient in the waiting room outside.

“No, it’s nothing like that if you ask me. He’s easy enough to deal with, likes fishing, and he’s a real crackerjack with the air rifle I gave him for Christmas. It’s this reading stuff. He’s in a conspiracy with the library lady down in the village and his teacher, and as soon as I take my eye off the kid he’s dragging home sacks of books that they pile on him. I’m worried his eyes are going straight to hell.”

The doctor investigated the matter. Shone a light in the eyes, ears, and nose of Lars Martin Johansson, nine years old. Squeezed him on the head and hit him on the knee with a little hammer, and so far all seemed well and good. Then the boy had to read the bottom line of letters on the chart on the wall. First with both eyes and then with his hand in front of first the left, then the right eye, and no big deal there.

“The kid’s as healthy as a jay,” the doctor summarized after his patient returned to the waiting room.

“But you don’t think he needs glasses? There must be some help,” Evert persisted.

“About as much as a hawk, if you ask me,” said the doctor.

“But what about all the reading? The boy seems possessed. You didn’t find anything wrong in his head?”

“I guess he likes to read. Some people do,” said the district medical officer, sighing for some reason. “The worst thing that can happen is that he’ll become a country doctor,” he observed and sighed again.

Then Evert and his youngest son drove home to the farm and never talked about the matter again. Ten years later Lars Martin went to Stockholm to become a cop and so that he would be able to read in peace. Mostly about crime as it turned out, mostly gathered from reality, less often from the world of imagination. A considerable detour it might seem, but not all journeys are simple, and there are often more routes than one that lead to the journey’s end.

After some rooting in his shelves, Johansson at last found the book he was looking for. Volume seven, on the Gustavian period, of Carl Grimberg’s classic work on Swedish history: The Marvelous Destiny of the Swedish People. A beautiful little book that could be sensuously weighed in the hands, first edition, leather bound, gold tooling on the spine.

This is what the computer wizards have missed, despite all the networks and search engines, thought Johansson contentedly as he poured the last drops of wine from dinner into his glass, made himself comfortable on the couch, and started reading about the assassination of Gustav III and the times in which he lived. It was as close as he could get to his own murder victim and a comparable Swedish crime case, he thought.

The reading had taken an hour, most of it he already knew, and then he took out paper and pen to make notes while he thought.

The masked ball at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm on March 16, 1792. A circle of perpetrators in the victim’s vicinity who hated him and what he stood for. Aristocrats, courtiers, members of the king’s own guard. A circle of perpetrators whose opportunity was served up on a silver platter. With a personal invitation and far enough in advance to make the most of it. A circle of perpetrators who were expected to wear masks even before they set to work.

A circle of perpetrators who had access to firearms. Johansson smiled wryly as he made a note of this. One of them was motivated enough to approach the victim, draw his weapon, aim, and fire. Motive, opportunity, and means, Johansson summarized the same way his colleagues at that earlier time must have done.

A victim who was hated by many-aristocrats, military officers, rich citizens. Fine people, in brief, who held power in their swords, their moneybags, their history, and feared that an absolute monarch would take it away from them for good. A victim who was loved by many. By poets and artists, for the shimmer they maintained was a result of King Gustaf’s reign, and for them in particular on good economic grounds, thought Johansson.

The fact that large segments of the peasantry also seemed to have liked their king was not as easy to understand. Plagued as they were by constant wars that drove the finances of the realm to the bottom, and suffering all the everyday misery of crop failure, starvation, epidemics, and common diseases. People must not have known any better, thought the farmer’s son Johansson, sighing.

Hated by many, loved by many, but with no room for many feelings in between. What more can one ask of a so-called motive, Johansson summarized as he brushed his teeth in front of the bathroom mirror after a day of hard work, an excellent meal he’d made himself, and a little reading purely for the sake of enjoyment. At best I’ve learned something too, he thought.

Ten minutes later he was asleep. With a smile on his lips but otherwise exactly as usual. On his back with his hands clasped over his chest, with manly snoring, secure in his own body, free from dreams. Or in any case the kind of dreams he would remember, even vaguely, when he woke up the next morning.

Most often it was Lars Martin Johansson who fell asleep last and woke up first, but for once his wife had evidently gotten up before him. It was the faint aroma of coffee that alarmed his sensitive nose and woke him. Although it was only seven o’clock it was still a few hours late compared to his usual routine. His wife, Pia, had already had time to set out breakfast-“I’ve labored like a beast to start paying you back for dinner last night”-and in passing she alerted him to the morning paper with an innocent smile.

“You’re in the newspaper, by the way,” said Pia as she poured coffee for him. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“About what?” asked Johansson as he splashed warm milk in his coffee cup.

“That you’ve appointed a new Palme investigation.”

What the hell are you saying, woman? thought Johansson, who would never dream of saying that out loud. Not to his beloved wife and after almost twenty years of marriage. The fact that all days hadn’t been good weighed easily against the fact that many had been good enough and several far better than anyone had the right to ask for, even from his wife.

“What is that you’re saying, dear?” said Johansson. What the hell is it she’s saying? he thought.

“Read it yourself,” said Pia, handing over the copy of Dagens Nyheter that for some reason she had chosen to set on the floor next to her own chair.

“Sweet Jesus,” Johansson moaned, glaring at the unflattering picture of himself on the front page of the country’s largest morning paper.

“High time if you ask me,” said his wife. “A new Palme investigation, I mean,” she clarified. “Though maybe you should make sure they get a better picture of you. You’ve actually lost quite a bit of weight since they took that one.”

4

When Johansson had finished his breakfast, he showered then dressed with care. No linen shirt open at the collar, no red suspenders. Instead a gray suit, white shirt with discreet tie, black polished shoes: the necessary armor for someone like him when it was time to take the field. Then he went to the kitchen, folded up the newspaper, stuck it in his jacket pocket, and went to work. He hadn’t read the article. Didn’t need to, because a quick glance was enough for him to know what was in it.

Once at work he greeted his secretary amiably, waved the newspaper deprecatingly, went into his office and closed the door. Only then did he read through, carefully and with pen in hand, what was the day’s major media event. That the head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation had appointed a “new, secret investigation of the assassination of Olof Palme.” Was I right or was I right? thought Johansson, sighing because everything in it confirmed his misgivings.

Even the picture. A few years old with a Lars Martin Johansson forty pounds heavier glaring at the camera. Obviously such a character could not be reached for comment; instead the newspaper’s two anonymous sources had been allowed to carry on freely and tell about all their sufferings. Inadequate resources, unsympathetic bosses, and now their jobs had been taken from them.

The fat, mean boss who takes out his own shortcomings on his poor, innocent employees, thought Lars Martin Johansson.

“Seems like we have a lot to get to work on,” said Johansson to his secretary as soon as she sat down on the opposite side of his big desk.

“There are a number of persons who have called wanting to talk with you,” she replied with an expression as innocent as his wife’s.

“So what was on their minds?”

“Something they read in the newspaper,” answered his secretary. “About a new secret investigation of the assassination of Olof Palme you supposedly set up yesterday.”

“So who are they? Who called, I mean.”

“Basically everyone, it seems,” answered his secretary as her eyes searched the paper she held in her hand.

“Give me a few names,” said Johansson.

“Well, Flykt of course. He’s already been here twice. He wanted to see you personally to work out any misunderstandings that might result from what’s in the article.”

“Imagine that,” said Johansson. “I had no idea Flykt was working at Dagens Nyheter. Tell the SOB he can wait,” said Johansson.

“Yes, perhaps not word for word,” answered his secretary. “Because in that case it’s best if you say it yourself. I’ll let him know you’ll call him during the day and that you want him to be in his office.”

“Excellent,” said Johansson, because he knew that Flykt preferred to end his workday early, especially on days like this when the weather promised to be excellent for playing golf. “Make sure he remains here in the building until I call him.”

“I understand exactly what you mean,” said his secretary, who knew her boss and right now did not envy Inspector Yngve Flykt with the Palme group.

“So who are the others?” Johansson repeated.

“Basically everyone, as I said. Everyone from the media at least, because they’re calling like crazy, so I’m forwarding them to our own press department. But if we start here in the building, we have the chief of national police who contacted us through our communications director, you know, the new one. The police chief is on a visit to the police in Haparanda. Our director general also called and wondered if there’s something she needs to know about or can help with. I promised to relay that. Then Anna Holt called and asked if there’s anything new that she and her colleagues ought to know about. Your best friend called too, if you haven’t had a falling out again, of course.”

“Jarnebring,” said Johansson. “Did Bo call? What did he want?”

“Yes,” said his secretary. “What did he want? Well, he wanted to talk with you. Said he’d read the morning paper and he was worried about you.”

“Word for word, please,” said Johansson.

“Okay,” she sighed. “He wondered if you’d had a stroke. If he could help you with anything, and that you should call him as soon as you had the time.”

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

“The chief prosecutor in Stockholm called. Twice already. She’s very anxious to talk with you. If I remember correctly she’s the head of the preliminary Palme investigation, so it may very well have something to do with that case.”

“That’s what you think,” said Johansson. “Okay then. Let’s do this. Call that skinny woman at the prosecutor’s office and say that if she still wants to talk with me that’s fine of course. Otherwise you can just inform her that she shouldn’t believe all the shit she reads in the papers. I can meet with our own media gnomes in fifteen minutes, and that can be here in my office. The others can wait until I contact them. Was there anything else?”

“We can start with this,” his secretary agreed.

First in and first out on Johansson’s phone was the female chief prosecutor in Stockholm. The head of the preliminary investigation and in a formal sense the highest-ranking person responsible for the investigation of the assassination of the prime minister, if one were to be precise and look at the formalities more than the circumstances. Why would anyone do that? Johansson’s role in this context was more modest and consisted of supplying her with the police resources she thought she needed to carry out her assignment. He was obviously well aware of all this, and before he made his decision to go forward he had thought many hours about how he would handle this issue. How he would see to it that something was done and that those who did it got peace and quiet around them while they were doing it. The high risk of leaks decided the matter. That’s how he’d thought, and everything else could advantageously wait until later, but then it hadn’t turned out the way he’d hoped and now it was high time to regroup.

“I see in Dagens Nyheter that you’ve appointed a new Palme investigation,” the chief prosecutor began in a well-controlled, suspiciously courteous tone of voice. “What I’m wondering about is simply-”

“Yes, I saw that too,” Johansson interrupted gently. “What fucking nutcases! Where do they get all this from?”

“Excuse me?”

“Slow news day,” said Johansson. “Pure fantasies. Typical slow news day story. Although at that rag it’s like they have slow news days all year long.”

“So I should interpret this as meaning that you haven’t appointed a new investigation or gone in and made any changes to the investigation that I’m actually leading?”

She was not as controlled now. Not as courteous. It is high time to put a stop to it, thought Johansson.

“How would that look?” said Johansson with a resentful face, even though he was alone in his office. “I think you know that even better than I do. You’re the head of the Palme investigation. Besides, between the two of us you’re the one who’s the lawyer, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Then I really don’t understand a thing.”

“Me neither,” Johansson agreed with emphasis. “As I’m sure you know, all the case files have been packed up in boxes for years, and it was only a few months ago that we were able to make room for all of them and put them on the shelves again. You do know about that?”

“Of course,” she said. “I was the one who made that decision, in consultation with Flykt and the others in the group.”

“Exactly,” Johansson agreed. “But then they’ve been on me about that. They said they need even more room, and if the rest of us who work here aren’t going to end up on the street because we have no place to put our rear ends, then I thought it was high time to take a look at the case indexing. Find a better, more modern system, simply. Maybe transfer it onto those little diskettes, you know, and move all the papers to the basement. Or some of them, at least. It was Flykt, by the way, who pointed that out to me. I thought it was an excellent idea, and so I asked a few of my younger officers to see if they had any good ideas. Modern computer processing and data storage, and all that, you know, which old geezers like me have completely missed despite all the courses we have to take.”

“Lewin then?” asked the chief prosecutor, who still did not sound completely convinced. “True, he’s not ancient, but describing him as a younger colleague is still a stretch.”

“He knows the material from before, and the people who work for you seem to be busy with other things,” Johansson clarified. You must have talked with someone here in the building, thought Johansson. In the article there wasn’t a word about Lewin. At the bureau there are more than seven hundred police officers, but only one with that surname, and it’s lucky for you you’re not sitting in an interrogation with me, he thought.

“Obviously it would be out of line for me to intervene in your administrative procedures,” the prosecutor agreed.

“No, how would that look?” said Johansson, sounding as happy as someone who hadn’t heard what he just said.

The rest went like a dance where Johansson was leading. For the sake of a good cause he set aside five whole minutes for the usual courtesies and concluded the conversation by expressing the hope that they would meet again soon for social activities. For a long time Johansson and his wife had talked about inviting the chief prosecutor and her husband to dinner. Eat and drink well, and as far as the media was concerned she wasn’t the least bit worried. He would take care of the media himself because it was his table, and no one else’s, they’d had the bad taste to shit on.

“You have to wonder where they get all this from,” sighed Johansson, shaking his head to further his point, even though he was still all alone in his office.

Then he had a meeting with the national police chief’s information director and his own information department to firm up the media strategy. According to Johansson it was very simple. He had not formed a new Palme investigation. He had not even made the slightest change in the investigation that had been ongoing for the last twenty years. In other words the Palme investigation wasn’t his responsibility but rather the leader of the preliminary investigation’s responsibility, and as they knew she was chief prosecutor in Stockholm.

“What this is about,” said Johansson as he leaned forward, supporting his elbows on the table, “is that I’ve asked three investigators here at the bureau who have particular experience in how to handle large quantities of preliminary investigation material according to the latest methods-computer technology goes forward with giant leaps, to say the least, and you youngsters know that better than I do, by the way-how we could store the material so that the Palme group can work with it without our needing to build an extra floor here in the building. It was Flykt’s idea by the way, if anyone’s wondering.”

“Yes, I realized that the case files have been packed up in boxes for years,” said the information director with a sly expression.

“Exactly,” Johansson agreed. “We can’t have it that way. The stuff has to be easily accessible for the people in the group so they can work with it. Otherwise we might just as well carry it down to the basement and close the case.” Clever boy, he thought.

“What do we do with the media?” asked his own information manager.

“Usual press release. I want to see it before it goes out. I’m sure the police chief wants to see it too,” said Johansson, checking with a glance in the direction of the police chief’s information director.

“What do we do about TV?” his colleague at the bureau wondered. “Should I set a time for interviews this afternoon here with you, boss?”

“So they can sit in their fucking studios and cut and paste the tape as they like? Definitely not,” said Johansson, letting his own media manager taste the old police gaze he’d learned from his best friend Bo Jarnebring. “If they’re still interested, I can be available for a live broadcast this evening, on channels one, two, and four. Just me, no one else, and above all no so-called experts.” I’ll have to keep an eye on you, he thought.

Flykt can wait, thought Johansson two hours later after he’d cleared the papers off his desk, had lunch at a Japanese restaurant in the vicinity of police headquarters, and was starting to feel that he was regaining a firm grip on the rudder of his own boat. On the other hand perhaps I should have a conversation with little Anna, he thought. True, she can be annoyingly pigheaded, but you can count on her saying what she thinks.

Five minutes later “little Anna,” that is, Police Superintendent Anna Holt, forty-seven, was sitting in the visitor’s chair in his office.

“How’s it going?” said Johansson with a friendly smile and interested blue eyes.

“You mean with our overview of the data processing of the Palme material,” said Holt acidly. No “boss” this time, she thought. They were alone in the room, had known each other well for many years, and to be honest she wasn’t in the mood for it.

“Exactly,” said Johansson. “Have you found the bastard who did it?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about me, Lisa, or Lewin,” Holt replied. “True, the media have been chasing us like madmen, but none of us has talked with any of them. We won’t either.”

“So you know that?” said Johansson.

“Yes,” said Holt.

Then it’s probably that way, thought Johansson. Holt was not one to lie. It was probably so bad that she didn’t even know how to. And Mattei was, well, Mattei. And Lewin? That coward didn’t talk with a living soul unless he was forced to.

“On the other hand there are two other things that perhaps you ought to think about,” said Holt.

“I’m listening,” said Johansson, leaning back in his chair.

“First,” said Holt, “I think the whole idea is crazy. How can three pairs of so-called fresh eyes find anything new of value when hundreds of our colleagues haven’t, in more than twenty years? You can’t really mean in complete seriousness that everyone who has worked with the Palme case for all these years is a nutcase, featherbrain, blind bat, nitwit, and glowworm, to use a few of your own favorite epithets.”

“No, not all,” Johansson agreed. Favorite epithet, he thought. Anna’s starting to become an educated woman. Must be the association with little Mattei, the string bean who got her PhD a few years ago. True, she wrote an incomprehensible dissertation on what a shame it is about women being killed by their boyfriends, but in any case it was good for tossing into the jaws of hungry media vultures when needed, he thought.

“The material is gigantic,” said Holt. “It’s a mountain, not a regular haystack where there might be a needle. Regardless of whether it’s there, we’re not going to find it. Although I’m sure you already know that.”

“Sure,” said Johansson. “So that means we really have to like the situation. The other thing you were talking about? What’s that?”

“Okay,” said Holt. “Assume that we do it anyway. Assume that we find something decisive that could give us a breakthrough in the investigation. Then I would say that you’re going to have major problems with a number of people in your vicinity. Considering that you’ve actually been lying to their faces. Not to mention the media. I went past our information department before lunch and happened to see a draft of your press release. I don’t understand how you dare.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson, whose thoughts already seemed elsewhere.

“I learned something from my father,” he continued.

“Yes?”

“When I was a little boy at home on the farm, Dad had a visit from an insurance agent who wanted to sell him a policy on a forest parcel he’d just bought. It was an iffy location if the wind was strong, and windfalls and trees with their tops lopped off aren’t good business. The problem was that the insurance cost more than he’d paid for the parcel. So that wasn’t a good deal either. Do you know what my old man said?”

Here we go again, she thought. One-way trip fifty years back in time. From the Palme investigation, a current, very concrete problem, to yet another of Johansson’s childhood memories.

“No,” said Holt. How could I know? I guess that’s the point, she thought.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Johansson. “That’s what he said. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ So there was no insurance, but on the other hand when he cut down the forest after twenty years there was a tidy profit. You don’t seriously believe I would be a social outcast if-granted, against all odds-we could put some order into this story? The only risk I run in that case is that they’d erect a monument to me outside the entryway down on Polhemsgatan.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Holt.

“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders.

5

Chief Inspector Flykt’s wait was not over until a quarter past six. He’d already made three calls to soothe his increasingly sarcastic golf buddies, when suddenly his boss opened the door and just strode right in.

“Knock, knock,” said Johansson, smiling and waving his big right hand. Wonder where the asshole put his golf bag? he thought after a quick inspection of Flykt’s office.

“Well, I realize you’ve been very busy, Chief,” said Flykt, trying to sound as unperturbed as Johansson. “This is a sorry story but I did try to warn-”

“Forget about that now, Flykt,” said Johansson. “It would be inconceivable for me to try to find out which of your many associates let his tongue run ahead of his feeble intelligence. I’ve understood from the start it wasn’t you personally.”

“Yes, I really hope you don’t think so, boss,” said Flykt.

No, thought Johansson. I’m sure you just ran off at the mouth as usual.

“You’ve seen the press release?” asked Johansson. “No objections if I’ve understood things correctly?”

“No,” said Flykt, shaking his head to make it seem more convincing.

“Good,” said Johansson. “Then it’s high time you and I took off to talk with the TV people,” said Johansson. “We’ll have to grab a bite to eat between channels.”

“But I’m not prepared to be part of any TV interview,” Flykt objected.

“You won’t be either,” said Johansson. “You’re just coming along so the vultures can learn what a united front looks like.” Even though you probably already put your golf bag in the car, he thought.

It was almost eleven o’clock before Johansson could step into his own abode on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan. First there were the two interviews for three different TV channels, and then his chauffeur let Flykt off outside the office because he needed to get his car in the police headquarters garage.

The lights were off and it was quiet in the apartment. His wife was at a kickoff meeting for the bank at a conference center hotel out in the archipelago and wouldn’t be home until the next day. Johansson was looking forward to a few hours of peace and quiet after a hard day, which could have ended badly but he hoped had ended well. In the basket under the mail slot was a CD with his TV appearances that his secretary had recorded and one of his many associates had then delivered to him.

“Home at last,” said Johansson, who was satisfied with himself and the evening.

First he arranged a tray with a suitable selection of yesterday’s leftovers and a cold beer. After a quick deliberation he also poured an ample shot. It’s Thursday after all and almost the weekend, thought Johansson.

Then he carried the tray to his study, poured the beer, and prepared an old-fashioned open-faced sandwich, put in the CD, and took a seat in his large armchair in front of the TV.

Let’s see now, said blind Sarah, thought Johansson, taking a substantial bite. He swallowed half the shot chased with pilsner and switched on the TV.

Basically it was the same feature in the early and late news programs on the two public television stations. There hadn’t been enough time to cut and paste very much. The essential difference was that the story was shorter in the later program. A good sign that the whole thing would soon blow over.

A correct male news anchor asked the expected questions, but toward the end he had trouble concealing his amusement at Johansson’s categorical denial of the information that had appeared in the country’s largest morning newspaper. Most of all at the way Johansson did it, which is probably also why he was content with the concluding routine attempts.

“But surely someone in your position must have wondered how such a rumor can arise?” the male news anchor asked.

“Of course I have,” said Johansson. “Spreading rumors is just as big a problem at my place of employment as at yours, and the reasons are probably the same. But most of what the media reports is actually true, and most of what we talk about at my job is true too. Things that are only speculations or that someone’s got turned around or just plain wrong are the price we pay for being able to carry on a dialogue with one another.”

“And this time it was completely upside down,” the interviewer suggested.

“Yes, it was,” said Johansson. “But let’s not forget that ultimately this is about the assassination of our country’s prime minister, and personally I would be seriously worried if I were to discover one day that the media was completely uninterested in talking about that.”

“Since you’re here anyway…are you ever going to solve the murder of Olof Palme?”

This is it, thought Johansson. Time to move into silver-tongue mode.

“When you’re a police officer working on a murder investigation, there’s only one thing that matters. Liking the situation,” said Johansson.

“But what do you think personally?”

“During all my years as a policeman, I’ve been involved in investigating far too many murders,” said Johansson, whose thoughts suddenly seemed elsewhere. “But I’ve never been involved in this investigation.” Time for heavy, brooding old cop, he thought. Plus that inward-gazing murder investigator look he had never really succeeded in teaching his best friend.

“But you must still-”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Johansson interrupted. “That question should go to the chief prosecutor in Stockholm, who is the leader of the investigation, or to the investigators at the Palme group who manage the practical aspects of the case.”

“But you have great confidence in them?”

“Obviously,” said Johansson. “They’re good people.”

That was that, thought Johansson contentedly. He hit the pause button, finished his good sandwich and the last half of the shot, chased it with beer, and turned on the TV again. Time for somewhat harder moves, he thought. Female reporter, considerably younger than him, almost as good-looking as his wife, and he hoped she was a little too sly for her own good.

First he got to speak his piece. Summarize the message in his own press release. Then suddenly it got serious.

“What I don’t really understand is that you appointed three of the country’s most experienced murder investigators to do something that sounds to me like a routine task for computer experts,” she said with a smile so friendly it certainly portended something else.

“To me it’s pretty obvious,” said Johansson. “If this sort of material is going to be sorted out, it’s necessary for the work to be done, as you yourself say, by a very experienced murder investigator.”

“But computers and data processing are not really their field, are they?”

“I’m afraid you underestimate my co-workers,” said Johansson. “All have extensive academic backgrounds, alongside purely police-related training, and one of them is a PhD. If you ask me she may be the police officer in this country with the greatest combined experience in these issues. She has considerable experience as a murder investigator. As a police officer she has unique expertise in science and statistics and, when it comes to computer issues, she knows how large quantities of investigative material are best handled.”

“But you yourself,” she asked suddenly. “You’re a legendary murder investigator. You’ve never felt tempted to solve the murder of the prime minister?”

“Where computers and a lot of data and that sort of thing are concerned, I’m an old geezer,” said Johansson. “I’m overjoyed every day I manage to log on to my own computer.”

“So you’ve never felt tempted?”

“Of course I have,” said Johansson. “But fortunately I’m old now and wise enough to leave it to those who have better understanding about that than I do. I have good people working on the Palme case. My job is to see that they don’t drown in all the paper they’ve collected.”

“You make it sound like a simple work environment issue.”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “Those are exactly the sort of issues someone like me should be concerned with. Creating a good work environment so my people can function. I’m sure you remember how things went earlier in this case when a lot of old bosses got the notion they should run around playing murder investigator.”

Anna Holt, Jan Lewin, and Lisa Mattei had also devoted a good portion of the evening to following Johansson’s TV appearances.

The man defies all description, thought Anna Holt as she turned on the late news on TV4. Time after time he manages to get completely normal people to lose the thread and suddenly start talking about something completely different, just because he’s decided to talk about it. It was time she went to bed if she was going to be able to crawl out from under the mountain of papers under which Johansson had buried her.

The man who can see around corners, thought Lisa Mattei solemnly, and suddenly she didn’t feel the least bit afraid of heights any longer. Then she went to her computer because she’d just had an idea.

Extensive academic educations, that’s one way to describe it, thought Jan Lewin in the absolute solitude of his small apartment up at Gärdet. In his case it was a matter of an intro course in law, forty credits in criminology, and a basic course in statistics that he dropped because he couldn’t make any sense of all the formulas and numbers.

Still, worst of all was that the little he’d learned during his academic education was either obvious or the sort of thing he already knew. Apart from statistics, of course, because that mostly confused him. It’s high time to hit the sack, he thought. Then he undressed, brushed his teeth, and went to bed. As usual he twisted and turned for a few hours before he finally fell asleep.

Like the situation, he thought. How do you do that when loneliness has robbed your life of both purpose and meaning?

Johansson himself was feeling splendid. He finished the evening by reading a few more chapters in Grimberg’s book about the Gustavian period and the assassination of Gustav III. Then he sat down in front of his computer and searched the Internet to learn more about murders of people like Gustav III and his own murder victim. The way he went about it would surely have surprised at least one female reporter at TV4.

Interesting, thought Johansson. Although you’ve suspected as much all along, he thought as he stood in the shower two hours later, pondering his new insights as a completely separate idea began to take shape in his head.

Then for some reason he started thinking about the police work in the investigation of the murder of the great king Gustav more than two hundred years ago. An excellent investigation. Based on the conditions of the time, the police chief, Liljensparre, had done everything a real policeman could be expected to do. Everything that his successor in the position 194 years later had failed to do.

First Liljensparre closed the doors to the opera house before anyone had a chance to slip out. He wrote down the names of everyone in the place and did some initial questioning. Then he personally inspected the two pistols that the perpetrator had thrown aside at the scene of the crime. One loaded, one recently fired, both recently repaired. He’d been able to do that without having to worry about fingerprints or DNA traces, thought Johansson, letting the water cascade around him.

The following day Liljensparre summoned the city’s gunsmiths, one of whom immediately recognized the weapons. He had repaired them himself a fortnight earlier for a captain by the name of Jacob Johan Anckarström. The same Anckarström who had attended the masquerade ball the evening before and had a reputation for hating the king.

Anckarström was picked up for interrogation, confessed more or less immediately, and Liljensparre trudged happily on. Quite certainly in the same red woolen stockings he was wearing in the full-length portrait that still hangs in the police chief’s corridor in the old police headquarters in Stockholm. One by one ringleaders, accomplices, conspirators, and opposition elements in general ended up in jail, where a good percentage of them more or less immediately tried to talk their way out by informing on all the others who were already there.

We must have had good interrogators at that time, thought Johansson as he soaped in extra under his arms.

With the number arrested passing a hundred, and a police chief who was getting more zealous every day, apparently the powers that be thought enough was enough. Liljensparre was released from his duties, the investigation was ended, and the majority of those who had been arrested were let out. Only the ones most closely involved were convicted, and they received surprisingly mild sentences considering the time and the crime-with the exception of Anckarström, who was, to put it simply, hacked to pieces.

Ingratitude is the world’s reward for a poor policeman, regardless of how it ends, thought Lars Martin Johansson. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, he thought, turning off the water and reaching for a towel.

Five minutes after going to bed he was sleeping deeply, his snores disturbing nobody in the whole world.

6

Despite what he’d said to Holt and Mattei at their introductory meeting, Lewin started with his old boxes. The same boxes that held everything under the sun that was at best of doubtful police value. The results of the internal investigation he’d been responsible for over twenty years earlier.

Back then he hadn’t found anything, and since then no one seemed to have even tried. Three ordinary cardboard moving boxes piled among hundreds of others. At the bottom of each pile, of course, that’s how it always was. He found them with the help of his own handwritten lists of contents that he’d taped to the boxes twenty years earlier.

Apart from the fact that someone must have moved the boxes, surely a number of times, the papers in them were arranged exactly as he’d left them. The only thing missing was cobwebs, thought Lewin. First he took out the old suicide on the islands in Mälaren. Mostly out of piety and to check his own recollections. He had no factual reason whatsoever.

The initial report-“suspected cause of death”-was dated the day after the assassination of the prime minister, Saturday the first of March 1986, and prepared by the Norrmalm police after a tip from the same colleague who’d contacted him. It was unclear why the case had ended up with the Norrmalm police-the Mälaren islands belonged to a different police district-but it was probably due to the fact that the officer who submitted the tip worked there, as well as the general chaos that prevailed after the assassination.

The report was topmost in a binder that also included an autopsy report, a technical investigation of the house on Ekerö where the former watchman who’d hung himself in the rec room was found, a ballistics report on the revolver found in the house search but which had nothing to do with the suicide, a test firing of the same weapon and a ballistic comparison with the two bullets secured at the crime scene where the prime minister had been murdered. Even though it was already known that the suicide’s weapon had a different, considerably smaller, caliber than the gun the perpetrator used to shoot the prime minister.

At the back of the binder were interviews with five different witnesses, the ex-wife, and four neighbors. At the very back was the memorandum that Lewin had prepared when he closed the case. Convinced as he then was, far beyond all the doubts that tormented him more than almost any of his colleagues, that the man who had taken his life had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Olof Palme.

How much simpler it all would have been if it had been the watchman after all, thought Lewin and sighed.

The copies of old parking tickets required a separate box. From the afternoon of Friday, February 28, 1986, until Saturday afternoon on March 1, the traffic wardens and police had ticketed almost two thousand illegally parked vehicles in the Stockholm region, at Arlanda airport; the central stations in Uppsala, Enköping, and Södertälje; plus the ferry terminals in Nynäshamn, Norrtälje, Kapellskär, and Hargshamn up in north Uppland. They were sorted into piles for the various police districts as well as the various traffic districts in Stockholm. Arranged in chronological order according to the time on the ticket. Neatly bundled with rubber bands, and he was probably the one who had organized most of them.

At the top of the piles was a blue binder. In it were copies of nineteen different parking tickets that Lewin had traced to his own agency or to individual police officers. Six of them involved civilian service vehicles, and all the tickets were canceled. The remaining thirteen applied to cars whose registered owners were fellow police officers.

Nine of them paid their fines within the stated time, and because their vehicles were parked near their home addresses there was certainly nothing remarkable about those tickets. Two of them paid after a reminder, and Lewin hadn’t been able to find anything strange there either.

He talked with both of the vehicle owners, and one of them frankly admitted he’d been at home with a woman other than the one he was married to. A colleague of his moreover, and if the Palme investigators didn’t have anything better to do then of course it would be fine to talk with her too. Better that than ending up on TV as part of the so-called police track. If Lewin would be so kind as to not talk with his wife about it, no one would be happier than he. Lewin let the matter rest with the female police officer/lover, and after that conversation crossed out yet another person as a conceivable perpetrator in the murder of the prime minister.

Remaining were two tickets dated the day of the murder for illegally parked vehicles owned by police officers who used their own cars on duty; both of the parking tickets had been canceled. One was a detective with the narcotics squad who’d met one of his informants and preferred his own Alfa Romeo because he felt that the police agency’s Saabs and Volvos were a red flag for the people he was after.

The other was an officer with the secret police who had looked in on a person that SePo kept hidden at one of their secure addresses. Otherwise everything seemed in order. Both the addresses where the vehicles were parked and the times the tickets had been written argued strongly that these events did not have the least thing to do with the assassination of the country’s prime minister. In addition he’d received papers on the matter from both the narcotics squad and the secret police.

I don’t understand how I managed, even at that time, thought Lewin as he closed up his old boxes and placed them in a pile of their own to spare his back.

After that he started doing what he had promised Holt and Mattei he would do. Simply finding the investigation files he needed for his work kept him occupied far into the evening. He was not able to leave the police station until ten o’clock. He took the subway home to Gärdet. Hesitating a moment outside the 7-Eleven store in the block where he lived, he went in and bought a sandwich and a bottle of mineral water. When he stepped into his apartment everything was as usual. What awaited him was yet another night of loneliness and the next morning yet another day with the same substance. A series of nights and days that never seemed to end, thought Lewin as he finally fell asleep.

7

Anna Holt had no intention of sitting in the Palme room. Not at a wobbly card table they’d brought in themselves with barely enough room for the computers Lisa Mattei had set up for them. So Lisa, with the help of those same computers, located the documents Holt needed for her review of “Palme assassin” Christer Pettersson. Finally they carried the material over to Holt’s office themselves, where she intended to read in peace and quiet. A total of ten binders, only a small portion of the material on Pettersson. At the same time, those portions, according to Mattei, ought to cover the essentials about the suspect up to the indictment in May 1989, the sentence of life imprisonment in Stockholm District Court a few months later, and how all this had been turned on end when a unanimous court of appeals released him in November of the same year.

As Holt disappeared with her burden she noticed a worried glance from Jan Lewin. In Lewin’s world, files of that type were not something you stuck under your arm and simply walked away with. Not least the kind that were stored in the Palme room. Files that were removed should be signed for on a special list, returned as soon as you were done with them, and checked off on the same list. Date, time, signature. True, all his colleagues did the same as Holt, but this was also the sorry explanation for why meticulous individuals such as himself often had a terrible time finding the documents they needed for their work.

Pity that Jan is so anxious. He’s actually very good-looking, thought Holt as she and Lisa disappeared through the door, headed toward the peacefulness of Holt’s office.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” asked Lisa Mattei as she set the binders down on Holt’s desk.

“That’s plenty,” Holt said. “You’ve got a few things to do yourself.”

“I pulled this out for you,” said Mattei, giving Holt a plastic folder she’d carried squeezed under her arm.

“What’s in there?” asked Holt.

“A few interesting dates on Christer Pettersson plus his police and court records. I’m sure you’ll find it in one of the binders too, but an extra copy is never a bad thing if you want to make your own notes. Otherwise there’s nothing special about most of it as I’m sure you already know. But sometimes it’s good to have exact dates and so on.”

“When did you find time to do this?”

“Did it as soon as I knew what Johansson wanted to talk about.”

“But that was before we decided I should look at Pettersson.”

“One of us had to do it,” Mattei observed, shrugging her shoulders. “That much I could figure out anyway,” she said, smiling.

“Thanks,” said Holt. Dear, dear Lisa, she thought. She’s got more in her head than the rest of us in this place combined.

When she finally shut the door, Holt cleared her desk of everything else. Placed her binders within comfortable reach, took out notebook and pen, leaned back in her not at all uncomfortable desk chair, took out the plastic folder about Christer Pettersson that Mattei had given her, and finally put her feet up on the desk. All in accordance with the general advice and life tips that her boss so regularly shared with his co-workers when he was in the mood.

According to Lars Martin Johansson, the “Genius from Näsåker,” as co-workers who didn’t think he could “see around corners” called him when they were sure he couldn’t hear them, this was the most ideal body position for engaging in “more demanding reading.” The feet and legs should be placed high in relation to the head in order to facilitate the flow of blood to the brain, and the very best choice was lying on a comfortable, sufficiently long couch equipped with the necessary number of pillows.

It was also important that it not be too warm in the room where the couch was. According to Johansson, who would usually make reference here to a major sociomedical study from Japan, including the names of the authors, this type of reading demanded approximately the same temperature as for the storage of fine wines.

The first time Johansson had expounded on this burning issue was when they were sitting in the bar toward the end of a nice staff party a few years earlier.

“That sounds really cold,” Holt objected.

“Depends on what you mean by cold,” Johansson snorted. “It should be cold around you. Then you think your best. It should be just cold enough that your noggin feels clear but without having to freeze your rear end off.”

“Well, I thought wine should be stored at about fifty degrees.”

“That depends,” said Johansson evasively. “But it can’t be more than sixty degrees in the room. For reading, that is,” he clarified. “If we’re talking about sleeping it should be a lot colder.”

“Too cold,” said Holt, shaking her head firmly. “Much too cold for me. Couldn’t even think if it were that cold in my office.” Wonder whether his poor wife is an Eskimo? she thought.

“Yes, I might have guessed that,” Johansson observed, and no more was said about it for the rest of the evening.

I don’t suppose I can even think about opening the window on a day like this, sighed Anna Holt, glancing at the sunshine behind the drawn blinds. She could also forget about a couch of her own. In any event Johansson hadn’t implemented any concrete measures in that direction, and he was the only one at the entire bureau, of course, who had a sufficiently large, comfortable couch. According to well-informed sources he used it exclusively for his regular midday slumber. So far no one had seen him reading on it.

That man is like a large child, thought Holt. She sighed again and started reading the papers on Palme assassin Christer Pettersson that Mattei had given her.

Christer Pettersson was born on April 23, 1947, in Solna. He had passed away less than three years ago at the age of fifty-seven, on September 29, 2004. He showed up for the first time in the Palme investigation’s material on Sunday the second of March 1986, less than two days after the assassination of the prime minister.

By then Jan Lewin and his colleagues who were responsible for the internal investigation were done with their first compilations of previous violent crimes that had occurred in the vicinity of the intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan, where the prime minister was shot. It was an extensive list that included thousands of crimes and more than a thousand persons. One of them was Christer Pettersson, who sixteen years earlier, in December 1970, had gotten into a quarrel with a man unknown to him down in the subway, only fifty yards from the place where the prime minister was murdered. Pettersson chased the man up to the street, where he finished the discussion by stabbing his victim through the heart with a bayonet he was carrying. Within the course of a week the police had arrested him, and in June the following year he was convicted of homicide and sentenced to a closed psychiatric ward.

To be sure, it was not the first time he’d run afoul of the Swedish legal system. In the court records there were notations on several hundred crimes, from the first time in 1964, when he was seventeen years old, and up to his death. The final notations were made in the crime registry during the summer of the year he died. Pettersson had spent almost half of his adult life in prisons, mental hospitals, and rehabilitation centers for addicts. Based on what was known about his criminal activity there was a strong element of violence. At the same time there were no notes indicating that he made use of a firearm, either before or after the murder of the prime minister. No signs either of any political or ideological motives. Pettersson’s violence seemed to have been vented on persons in the same social situation as himself or who were expected to maintain control of people like him. Men he’d argued with or robbed of money and drugs, women he’d known or lived with, whom he’d also assaulted. Plus police officers, watchmen, store security guards.

Ordinary theft and shoplifting charges dominated his criminality in terms of numbers, and the particular crime victim who appeared most often as the complainant in his record was the state liquor store. That was also how he acquired three of the four nicknames that the police had noted, “Hit-and-Run,” “Dasher,” and “Half Bend.”

Pettersson would go into the liquor store, order a bottle of vodka, schnapps, or cream liqueur, snatch the bottle as soon as the clerk set it down on the counter between them, and without further ado “run” or “dash” out of the store. A “half bend” was the body movement the liquor store employee was expected to execute when he pulled out the half-bottle of aquavit that for practical reasons was often stored under the counter near the cash register and that seemed to be one of the most common orders in Pettersson’s life.

Against this background his fourth alias was even more astonishing. Pettersson was also known as “the Count.” A title he often emphasized to his acquaintances. A real “count.”

Why he was called that did not appear in the police papers, but for Holt the mystery was already solved by the precise Lisa Mattei. Under an asterisk in the margin she’d made the following note in her neat handwriting: “CP born and grew up in Bromma. Middle-class home. Father self-employed. Mother a housewife. Dropped out of high school. Went to drama school for a few years. In his association with like-minded in the same situation often presented himself and his background as considerably finer than was actually the case.”

Heavy drug user, professional criminal of the simplest type-all these were known facts, thought Holt, but it wasn’t what she knew that made her feel less comfortable after the introductory reading. Already on day three, Sunday, March 2, 1986, he ended up on a list among thousands of similar types because of a knife murder that had happened sixteen years earlier. After that none of her colleagues seemed to have given a thought to either him or his doings for more than two years. Only during the summer of 1988 did they start to investigate him, and in December the same year he was arrested.

Why just then? thought Holt. And why in the name of God did it take so long?

8

Without lowering the level of either her precision or her objectivity, Mattei nonetheless tried to facilitate her task. Using her computer, she pulled out all the summaries and analyses in the Palme material. Then she organized them in chronological order to get an easy understanding of what information was deemed so important at a certain point in time that it required special consideration.

Because the material was a bit thin for her taste, she then used the various registries in the investigation to extract a selection of documents that she pulled out and leafed through to see what they were about. Approximately every tenth document couldn’t be located, because it had ended up in the wrong binder, the whole binder had gone astray, or the document had simply been lost.

Wonder if Johansson is aware of that? thought Mattei.

Then she carried out a number of simple, volume-related estimates of how much work her previous colleagues had expended on various working hypotheses or investigation leads. All those “tracks” as the first investigation leader, police chief in Stockholm Hans Holmér, had chosen to call them, even though the word had a completely different, very specific criminological meaning.

There were lots of Holmér’s tracks, thought Mattei. But almost none of the usual clues. No foot- or fingerprints, no fibers, bodily fluids, or abandoned belongings that might lead to a perpetrator. Obviously no DNA, for that didn’t even exist in the material world of the police when the prime minister was assassinated. All they had were the two revolver bullets that had been put to use the night of the murder, and the circumstance that it was ordinary people who found them at the crime scene and turned them over to the police had not made the burden easier to bear.

By means of a number of documents that could be ascribed to the various tracks, within a day Mattei had already formed a reasonable understanding of what her fellow officers had been doing for twenty years. The various tracks had appeared and vanished. As in a winter landscape, where certain track marks are more common than others.

First in and first out was the person who to start with was called the “thirty-three-year-old” in the media, but shortly thereafter appeared under his given name, Åke Victor Gunnarsson. In the first days after the murder the police received a number of tips about Gunnarsson. He possessed a reasonable likeness to the description of the perpetrator, was said to own a revolver of the type the perpetrator had used, to have contacts with an organization hostile to Palme, and to have expressed himself hatefully about the murder victim on several occasions. Last but not least he had been in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene at the time of the murder, and in the hours afterward he had been running around in the area, behaving strangely to say the least.

Less than a fortnight after the murder, Wednesday the twelfth of March, he had been arrested. A week later he was released, and after another two months, on May 16, 1986, the prosecutor decided to close the preliminary investigation on him.

During those two months a number of things happened that concerned Gunnarsson and in time filled half a dozen thick binders in the Palme investigation’s files: technical investigations of his residence and his clothes, interviews with relatives and witnesses, photo arrays, diverse expert statements, as well as a major charting of his background and way of life. After that there had been mostly silence about him for several years. Freed from the suspicion of having assassinated the prime minister, he emigrated to the USA in the early nineties, and it was only when the American police made contact in January 1994 and reported that Gunnarsson had been found murdered-shot several times and dumped in a wooded ravine in the wilds of North Carolina-that he once again landed in the headlines.

It proved to be an ordinary drama of jealousy. That the perpetrator on whom Gunnarsson set horns was also a policeman was in some way consistent, considering the life Gunnarsson seemed to have lived. The investigator in the Palme group who was responsible for the preliminary investigation of Gunnarsson had a hard time handling his disappointment in any case. In his world it was still Gunnarsson who had murdered Olof Palme, and only a few years after Gunnarsson’s demise he published a book in which he tried to prove it.

Mattei found a copy stuffed into one of the binders, with a personal dedication: “From the author to his colleagues in the Palme room,” and when Lewin left the room to get coffee for them both she took the opportunity to slip the book into her handbag to read in peace and quiet as soon as she got home.

Six bulging binders on Åke Victor Gunnarsson, but nothing compared to the material that dealt with the so-called Kurd track, or PKK track, which evidently occupied almost two hundred police officers full-time during the first years of the Palme investigation.

The idea that the PKK, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, could have murdered the prime minister seemed to have made a deep impression on the leadership during the first week of the investigation. The original material came from officers with the secret police who had reason to be interested in the organization in a completely different context. During the two preceding years, PKK had been behind a total of three murders and one attempted murder in Sweden and Denmark, crimes aimed at defectors from the organization, but apart from a certain superficial similarity in approach, it was almost a mystery why they also would have attacked the Swedish prime minister.

PKK was known for murdering defectors and infiltrators in their own ranks. Not for attacking Western politicians and least of all the prime minister of Sweden, a politician and a country that was kindly disposed to the Kurdish liberation struggle and had offered political asylum to a large number of Kurdish refugees.

During the latter part of July 1986 the investigation leadership decided that PKK “with high probability was behind the murder of the prime minister.” Several meetings were held on the topic, and in one of the many binders Mattei found detailed minutes from the investigation leadership’s own management team, in which their conviction was put on paper.

During the following six months the Kurd track, or PKK track, would also constitute the so-called Main track. All according to the top boss’s own terminology, and for Lisa Mattei it was a mystery in a factual sense. Regardless, at that time, twenty years ago, all their resources had basically been directed at this track, and the whole thing ended with a real bang.

Early on the morning of January 20, 1987, investigation leader Holmér conducted a major operation. Twenty-some Kurds were seized, several house searches were made, and many things were confiscated. Already after a few hours the prosecutors started releasing the majority of those whom the police had deprived of liberty, all the confiscations were revoked within a few days, and the two individuals who were arrested were released after a week.

It was a scandal. Holmér was fired as investigation leader and resigned as police chief. The responsibility for the investigation was turned over to the prosecutor, and the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation was given the task of supplying him with the police officers needed to take care of the practical aspects. The Kurd track had suddenly simply ended. All that remained twenty years later were almost a hundred binders of papers plus a number of boxes that held things that were hard to stuff into binders.

Sigh and moan, thought Mattei, even though she seldom thought that way.

But there were other things too. All the crazy tips, for example. Another hundred binders and thousands of tips, mostly about particular perpetrators who could have murdered Olof Palme. This was also the essential reason that the investigation’s list of such persons-suspects of all kinds, provided on various grounds, pointed out with no grounds, the result of pure premonitions and vibrations in the informant’s head-amounted to almost ten thousand named individuals. In the majority of cases the reports went straight into the binder without the police showing the least interest in them.

Let’s sincerely hope it’s not one of them, thought Mattei self-righteously.

Remaining were all the tracks that had the good taste to fit into a smaller number of binders. Often one or two were enough for these tracks, and the maximum was five. It was also here that there seemed to be political, ideological, or more generally visible ambitions. Here were leads that concerned South Africa, the Iraq/Iran conflict alias the Iran/Iraq conflict, the “Middle East including Israel,” “India/Pakistan” alias the “Indian weapons affair” alias the “Bofors affair.”

Here were other leads that dealt with various “terrorists” or “violent organizations” all the way from the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Red Brigades, Black September, and Ustašha to the crew-cut talents in KSS, Keep Sweden Swedish, and the old disgruntled socialists who were said to form the backbone of We Who Built Sweden.

Here too were organizations and individuals who should have known better or at least shown mercy to the victim. Government security agencies in the Balkans, in South Africa and various dictatorships and banana republics, as well as the USA’s own CIA. Military personnel and ordinary Swedish police officers, various intimates, acquaintances, and former work and party comrades. There was even a subfile that dealt with members of the victim’s own family.

The family track, thought Lisa Mattei. For some reason she thought of her mother, who had worked as a police superintendent at the secret police for more than twenty years.

Here there was literally something for everyone, and as far as the factual basis for the political speculations was concerned, Mattei believed it seemed consistent enough. Mysterious informants who claimed to have a secret past, various revelations in the media, former TV journalists with psychiatric diagnoses plus all the regular nutcases who figured in the public debate. Otherwise little or nothing.

The most concrete contributions Mattei found were the travelogues that various Palme investigators had turned in over the years. Assuming that the clues led in the direction of warmer regions and the season was right, a number of leads had been investigated on-site.

Unfortunately and in all cases without result, but at least the foreign colleagues seemed to have taken good care of their Swedish visitors.

It’s always something, thought Lisa Mattei.

Most of all, however, it was all about the “Palme assassin” Christer Pettersson. During two periods of several years combined, the investigation seemed to have been mainly about him. It began the summer of 1988 and ran through to the end of the following year, when he was freed by the Svea Court of Appeal. Then there was a period of relative calm lasting several years, up until 1993 when preparations were made for a petition for a new trial to rehear the acquittal decision.

The petition was submitted in December 1997, and in May of the following year a unanimous Supreme Court rejected it. Three years ago Pettersson himself had departed earthly life, and regardless of what he might have had to bring to the investigation, he took it with him to the grave.

The Palme investigation’s material had been packed up in boxes for years. For several years before that, a dozen investigators in the group were primarily occupied with completely different tasks. Once a week they would meet, have coffee, and talk about their case. About things that had happened before, about old colleagues who had died or retired, about Christer Pettersson, who was still the most common topic of conversation at the table.

And soon they’ll all be dead, thought Mattei, who was only eleven years old at the time when Sweden’s prime minister was murdered.

9

Despite all that had happened on Thursday, Johansson was still looking forward to a quiet weekend. His exemplary clear and unqualified denial on all the major TV stations ought to have made some impression even on the nitwits working at the country’s largest newspaper.

His message seemed to have taken hold in the other media. They’d stopped calling to ask about the Palme investigation anyway. Not so at Dagens Nyheter. On Friday morning his digestion was already disturbed at breakfast by a long editorial with the thought-provoking title “Police Force in Decline.” Obviously unsigned, as usual when things were really bad.

Must be one of those angry women who work there, thought Johansson.

If matters were as the head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation maintained-previous experience had taught the writer that nothing someone like Johansson said should ever be taken for granted, least of all when it concerned the assassination of Olof Palme-the situation was obviously even worse than the newspaper had feared.

The Palme investigation had simply been closed down in secret, even though it concerned perhaps the most important event in postwar Sweden. The case files were packed up in boxes in silence, and the investigators assigned to solve the case had been working on completely different matters. Highly placed prosecutors and police officers had apparently intended to hide this police fiasco in their own basement.

Soon the murder of Olof Palme would pass the statute of limitations. After that the case files would be classified as secret for many years. On that point DN had no doubts whatsoever. The only obvious, definitive conclusion was that it was high time for the government to appoint a new review commission with representatives from all parties in parliament and citizens who had the confidence of the general public. The choice of a chairperson was also a given according to the newspaper, namely the chancellor of justice who, according to Johansson and his colleagues, had made a name for himself by his constant lamentations over the police department’s deficient diligence, sense of order, and morals.

A fate worse than death, thought Lars Martin Johansson, and he was thinking about himself, not the prime minister who was the victim of an unsolved murder that disturbed Johansson’s sense of order.

When he arrived at work it was time for the next variation on the same theme. According to his secretary, Chief Inspector Flykt “insisted” he had to see his boss immediately.

“Okay,” he said. “You can send the SOB in.”

Chief Inspector Flykt did not seem happy. He was even noticeably nervous, his face flushed beneath the otherwise becoming suntan.

“Sit yourself down, Flykt,” Johansson grunted, nodding curtly at his visitor’s chair. Comfortably curled up in his own chair, his hands clasped over his belly, wearing a heavy facial expression. Stop behaving like a fucking first-time offender, he thought.

“What can I help you with?”

Problems, according to Flykt. Two different problems, although there was a connection between them of course.

“I’m listening,” said Johansson, picking at his left nostril with his large right thumb in search of unbecoming strands of hair.

The people at Dagens Nyheter were obviously refusing to give up. Despite the boss’s exemplary clarifying denials, they were still lurking in the bushes. Flykt had personally noticed clear signs.

“Of course,” said Johansson. “What did you expect? We’ll just have to live with it. Rooting out who let their mouths run loose is out of the question. I guess you know that as well as I do?”

Obviously not. Flykt knew that too, but the situation was both worrisome and-

“Forget about DN now,” interrupted Johansson. “They’ll get tired of this as soon as they find some other place to spread their usual dung. What was the other thing?”

“The other thing?” said Flykt with surprise.

“You had two problems,” Johansson clarified. “What’s the other one? The one that was supposed to be tied up with the first one? That’s what you said a minute ago if I remember correctly.”

Of course, of course, and the boss would have to be patient with him if he seemed a little confused. The thing was that for the past twenty-four hours he and his colleagues had been subjected to a veritable bombardment from the various informants and private detectives who had made up their primary workload since the Supreme Court had rejected the petition for a new trial against Pettersson.

In later years most of them seemed to have calmed down, but Johansson had managed to bring them back to life again.

“Yes, that is, not you, boss, but that unfortunate article in DN,” said Flykt. “Right should be right,” he added for some reason.

“The usual bag ladies who send dog shit and old bullet casings they maintain they’ve secured at the crime scene,” said Johansson, grinning.

“Yes,” said Flykt. “And all the messages of course.”

According to Flykt the switchboard had been pretty much jammed. In addition letters were pouring in, and officers careless enough to give out their cell phone numbers were being texted. The mailroom had called to complain. With loads of parcels coming in, their bomb and shit indicators were on overdrive. The internal security department had already issued ten reports related to threats against the officials who were forced to take care of the misery.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” said Johansson. “But I still don’t understand the problem.” Throw away the shit and blame the post office if worse comes to worst, he thought.

Flykt’s problem was very simple. He lacked the manpower to record, register, evaluate, and analyze this new flood of tips. Normally there were twelve investigators including Flykt, as well as his secretary and another half-time assistant. Right now there were fewer than that. Half of the force was on vacation or had comp time off. Two were at a course in Canada. Three were in the Canary Islands to help with the identification of the Swedish victims of a big hotel fire that had happened ten days earlier. Remaining were Flykt himself, his secretary, and a female colleague who was on half-time sick leave for mental burnout.

“Suggestions?” said Johansson, leaning forward and training his eyes on Flykt. “How do you want me to help you?” Whine, whine, whine, he thought.

Flykt took a run at it. Just a random idea. Could Holt, Lewin, and Mattei possibly take care of the registration until his own personnel returned to the building and could take over?

“Absolutely not,” said Johansson. “How would that look? They’re doing an administrative overview of your procedures for data handling. How could they get involved in your investigative work? That woman at the prosecutor’s office wouldn’t be happy if she could hear you now, Yngve.”

“You have no other suggestions, boss?”

“Throw the shit away,” said Johansson. “Blame it on the post office if anyone complains.”

The rest of Johansson’s day passed in a relatively normal, dignified manner.

Right before he was to go home Mattei requested admittance, and because Johansson was lying on his office couch and had already started thinking about what he would have for dinner, he was basically his usual contented self when his secretary sent her in.

“Sit yourself down, Lisa,” said Johansson, indicating the nearest chair with his arm. “How are things going for you anyway?”

“You mean with the administrative overview of the Palme material,” said Mattei.

“Exactly,” said Johansson. “Have you found the bastard who did it yet?” Clever girl, he thought. A little like Nancy Drew.

No. Mattei had not found the perpetrator. On the other hand she had a reasonable understanding of why no one else had either. Besides, she was basically done now with what the case files contained.

“In general terms,” Mattei clarified. “The direction and structure itself, if I may say so.”

“So you say,” said Johansson. You little string bean, he thought.

“I thought about trying out an idea on you, boss.”

“Shoot,” said Johansson.

“I was thinking about proposing a small sociological investigation,” said Mattei.

True, Johansson had nodded, but Mattei noted the faint shift in his gray eyes.

A small sociological investigation in which she simply interviewed the officers who for all those years had been involved in the hunt for Palme’s murderer. Those who were still alive and could be talked with. She would simply ask them about who they thought had done it and why the investigation went the way it did.

“You don’t think this is waking a sleeping bear?” Johansson objected, suddenly recalling the morning’s editorial.

On the contrary, Mattei responded. If the assignment really consisted of creating better procedures for processing this gigantic amount of material, then that necessarily required some kind of overarching assessment of it. Who would be better suited to express an opinion on the matter than the ones who’d been doing the job all these years?

“I see what you mean,” said Johansson with a drawl.

“Personally I’d be flattered if I were in their shoes,” she added.

Not you, he thought. Not me either. But almost all the others.

“Sounds good,” said Johansson. “I’ll buy it. Say the word if you need help with anything practical.”

10

Johansson’s first week after vacation ended just as well as it had begun, and he decided to forget all the nonsense in between. On Friday evening he procured leave from socializing with his wife to have dinner instead with his best friend, now working at the county investigation bureau in Stockholm as acting head of investigations, Chief Inspector Bo Jarnebring. The Greatest of the Old Owls.

“That works perfectly,” said Pia. “I have to check in on Dad if we’re going away for the weekend. Say hi to Bo and don’t drink too much.”

“I promise,” Johansson lied.

Johansson and Jarnebring met at the “usual place.” The Italian restaurant five minutes’ walk from his apartment that had been his favorite place for over twenty years. He was a frequent guest, a generous guest, an honored guest, but also one who had left his mark. For several years now he could have his favorite aquavit from his own crystal shot glass, of which he’d brought over a dozen. And enjoy various Italian variations on old Swedish classics like anchovy hash, potato pancakes, and grilled herring besides.

“You look fit, Lars. I think you may have lost a few pounds,” said Jarnebring, as soon as they’d dispensed with the introductory greetings and sat down at the usual table in a secluded corner where, according to established police custom, they could talk in peace and keep an eye on anyone coming and going.

“Depends on what you mean by a few,” said Johansson with poorly concealed pride. “According to the bathroom scale we’re talking double digits.”

“You’re not sick, are you? I got a little worried when I read the paper the other day and saw you’d appointed a new Palme investigation. Thought you had a little touch of Alzheimer’s.”

“I’m as healthy as a horse,” said Johansson. “Now, if you’d seen me on TV-”

“Nicely done,” said Jarnebring. “I saw it. You’re your usual self. Administrating away so that everything’s just so. Say the word when you want a real job and I’ll put in a good word for you down at the county bureau.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Johansson with a streak of melancholy in his voice.

Johansson abandoned that subject to talk instead about more essential things. The menu that he and his Italian restaurateur had jointly composed, in honor of the evening.

“Because we haven’t seen each other all summer I thought we should do a thorough job,” said Johansson. “The whole program, and I’ll pick up the tab. Do you have anything against that?”

“Is the pope a Muslim?” said Jarnebring.

The whole program. First two deft waiters spread out the little smorgasbord that was a necessary prerequisite for having both beer and aquavit. A deplorably neglected part of the otherwise outstanding Italian food culture, but at this particular place set to rights long ago by Johansson.

“Nothing remarkable, a few mixed delicacies, that’s all,” Johansson explained with a deprecating hand gesture. “Those mini-pizzas on the plate over there-”

“No bigger than my thumbnail,” Jarnebring interrupted. “Without the black lines though.”

“Exactly. Small pizzas topped with Swedish anchovies and chopped chives, and baked with Parmesan.”

“Is the pope Catholic?” said Jarnebring.

“Then we’ll have sardines in a marinade of garlic, mustard, capers, and olive oil.”

“The bear shits in the forest…”

“That ham there,” said Johansson. “It’s not Swedish or Italian. It’s Spanish. It’s called pata negra, blackfoot ham. Free-range hogs that wander around eating acorns until they’re slaughtered, salted, and dried. The world’s best pork if you ask me.”

With the fragrance of Sierra Madrona’s green-clad mountains, thought Johansson, picking up the scent with his long nose. He would never dream of saying that. In male company, between real policemen there were certain things you never said, and who was he to worry his best friend unnecessarily.

“Damn good pork, if you ask me,” Johansson repeated, raising his full shot glass.

“Cheers, boss,” said Jarnebring. “Shall we drink or shall we talk?”

When after his second shot Johansson described the impending entrée, Jarnebring expressed a certain hesitation. It was the only time during the evening, and it was mostly out of old habit.

“I thought we’d have pasta as an entrée,” said Johansson.

“Pasta,” said Jarnebring. Is Dolly Parton suddenly sleeping on her belly? he thought.

“With diced grilled ox filet, mushrooms, and a cream and cognac sauce,” Johansson tempted.

“Sounds interesting,” Jarnebring agreed. Dolly must be sleeping the way she always does, he thought.

Three hours later they had finished off the usual. First they talked about their own families and everyone near and dear. Ordinarily that part would be finished in five minutes, so that the rest of the evening could be spent discussing all the idiots they had encountered, regardless of whether they were fellow police officers, hoods, or ordinary civilians. Not so this time, because Jarnebring suddenly started talking about his youngest son and what it was like becoming a dad when you were over fifty and had decided long ago not to have any more children. That this in particular was probably the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. Despite all the crooks he’d arrested over the years.

Must be the good pasta that has brought out a new, gentler side of dear Bo, Johansson thought.

“So suddenly there you are with two new little rascals. The boy then. Yes, and the girl of course,” said Jarnebring, shaking his head thoughtfully. “The boy’s no slouch. Let me tell you, Lars.”

“But his big sister,” said Johansson divertingly. “How are things going for her?”

“You mean little Lina,” said Jarnebring with surprise. “The spitting image of her mother, if you ask me.”

Depends on what you mean by little, thought Johansson. Must be fifteen by now. He and Pia never had any children. It hadn’t turned out that way, he thought. For various reasons he didn’t want to talk about, and then he changed the subject.

“Speaking of crazy colleagues,” said Johansson, “I ran into your dear police chief the other day.”

After a while they left the restaurant and trotted home to Johansson’s for the usual concluding session. Halfway there they ran into four younger men who came toward them four abreast on the sidewalk with expectation in their eyes. Jarnebring stopped, looked eagerly at the biggest one, and when he saw that he recognized Jarnebring the rest was pure routine.

“How’s it going, Marek?” Jarnebring asked. “Planning to get yourself killed?”

“Respect, boss,” said Marek with frightened eyes, stepping ahead of his friends onto the street.

“Take care of yourselves, girls,” Jarnebring grunted.

We’re too old for that sort of thing, thought Johansson, putting the key into his door and seeking the peace and safety on the other side. Wrong, he thought. You’ve always been too old for that sort of thing. Bo is who he is and he’ll always be that way.

“Tell me about Palme,” said Johansson ten minutes later when they were sitting in armchairs in his large study. Jarnebring with a respectable whiskey toddy and the bottle at a comfortable distance. He himself with a glass of red wine and a bottle of mineral water. At his age you had to take care of yourself, and apart from the obligatory introductory shot, because he would never give that up, these days he was content with beer, wine, and water. Plus the occasional cognac, to help his digestion. Though not Jarnebring, of course. He was who he was. With a physique that defied human understanding and seemed completely unaffected by alcohol.

I wonder why he drinks, thought Johansson.

“Tell me about Palme,” he repeated. “You were there when it happened.”

“You want ideas about how to put all the binders on the shelves? Personally, I usually set them with the spine out. Then I paste little labels on them so that I can tell what’s in them,” Jarnebring teased.

“Forget about my binders,” said Johansson.

“It went to hell,” said Jarnebring. “If we’d done it the usual way of course we would’ve caught the bastard. If those of us who usually took care of it had been able to do it the usual way,” he clarified. “If we had not had a lot of crazy lawyers telling us what to do. You certainly would have found him if you’d been involved from the start. You wouldn’t have needed more than a month or two. But I guess you had your hands full with your binders as usual.”

“So who did it?”

“Who the hell knows,” said Jarnebring, shaking his head. “But it wasn’t Christer Pettersson. I knew him, by the way. Don’t know how many times I dragged that asshole to jail over the years. May he rest in peace,” said Jarnebring, raising his glass.

“He seemed crazy enough anyway,” Johansson objected.

“Christer Pettersson was crazy, with a certain degree of sanity. For example, he was never so crazy that he tried to attack me the times I arrested him. He knew, you see, that he would get a sound thrashing and he never got that crazy. He drank and did drugs, carried on and was generally disorderly. Fought with smaller, drunker companions and his ladies. Though it wasn’t more than that, and he didn’t understand firearms. Besides, I think he liked people like Palme. It was people like you and me he didn’t like.”

“The one who shot Palme was a skilled shooter,” said Johansson. Wonder what Palme would have thought about Christer Pettersson, he thought suddenly. A social outcast? A person who only happened to end up on the outside? Through no fault of his own?

“The one who shot, yes,” said Jarnebring. “He was just as good a shot as you or me. Forget all our colleagues who complain that it’s no big deal to shoot someone a few inches away-but in that case how could he miss Lisbeth Palme when he shot at her? Forget all that bullshit from everyone who’s never shot at anyone in a crisis situation, when people move around and start jumping and running like dazed chickens as soon as it goes off.”

“I see what you mean,” Johansson agreed.

“The bullet that strikes Lisbeth Palme goes in on her left side, passes between the skin and her blouse, the whole way along the back, level with her shoulder blade and out on the right side. If you miss like that you’re a damn experienced shot. If she’d just twisted her upper body a tenth of a second later he would’ve clipped off her back. So he could really shoot. I’m a hundred percent sure he was convinced he’d shot her through the lung, and because he also knew that was enough, with interest, he was content to get out of there.”

“She falls down on her knees beside her husband,” said Johansson.

“Sure,” said Jarnebring with emphasis. “First he shoots Palme. Hits him from behind in mid-step, and he falls flat on his face on the street. He had a bruise the size of a silver dollar on his forehead. In the next second he aims at Lisbeth, targeting the middle of her back, but just as he fires she twists her body to see what happened to her husband who has suddenly fallen headlong in front of her feet. She hasn’t even seen the shooter behind her.

“So all that about Pettersson, you can just forget. Cheers, by the way,” said Jarnebring. “There’s way too much talking at this party, if you ask me.”

It was definitely not Christer Pettersson. Completely wrong type, according to Jarnebring. Just as wrong as that nonsense about the Kurds, those guys would eat out of the hands of someone like Palme. Or the “thirty-three-year-old” for that matter.

“Usual fucking pathological liar,” Jarnebring summarized.

“So who did it?”

“Someone very familiar with the area, good physique, experienced shot, presence of mind, sure of himself, full control of the situation, sharpness and the capacity to resort to violence when it was time. Ice-cold devil. Not at all like Pettersson, because he would be jumping around yelling for a while, then waving his arms if his opponent seemed small and harmless enough. If he’d tried to kill Palme he would have started by doing a war dance around him, and then he would have done the wave and given him the finger afterward. But this perpetrator didn’t do that. He did what he needed to do, calmly and quietly, and then he just left.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Johansson agreed. “An ice-cold devil who only needs to pull a trigger to be able to shoot another person from behind. Not the least like Christer Pettersson.”

“Could be me. The one who put Palme out of business, that is,” said Jarnebring and grinned.

“No,” said Johansson. “I don’t think so, despite all the rest, because I do believe that.”

“Someone like me then,” Jarnebring persisted.

Not you, thought Johansson. Not someone who is only bigger and stronger than everyone else and never lost a fistfight. Another type, someone who can just pull the trigger and suddenly change from person to executioner, he thought.

Although he’d actually thought that the whole time, so they didn’t talk about it anymore.