Free Falling, As If in a Dream

After an almost ten-minute run, two nautical miles from the harbor and even with the cape outside La Fortaleza, Esperanza corrected course twenty degrees port in the direction of the tip of Cap de Formentor. To port and starboard is land, the steep cliffs of north Mallorca, almost impossible to ascend from the sea. Straight ahead is only the sea. The same sea that awoke after a calm night and breathes with a slowly heaving swell. The sea. Esperanza. The sun quickly climbing up the pale blue wall of sky. The haze letting up. Then the sea under Esperanza. Just as deep as the spiny heights in the reflecting water. The keel, hull, plating, the five feet between that carries her over the deep below her. Alone on the sea. Esperanza, a beautiful boat with a beautiful name.

11

Seven weeks earlier, Wednesday, August 22.

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

“Our colleague Flykt has a valid excuse,” said Johansson, smiling at Holt, Lewin, and Mattei. “He suddenly has a lot of tips to take care of.

“I thought you could start, Jan,” he continued. “Tell us ignorant people what happened that unfortunate Friday evening the twenty-eighth of February 1986.”

“I’ve written a little memo about it,” said Lewin with his obligatory, cautious throat clearing. “It’s in your e-mail. You have it in front of you too. I suggest we take ten minutes so you can all read it in peace and quiet.”

“Excellent,” said Johansson, getting up. “Then I can get coffee for us and take the opportunity to stretch my legs.”

Johansson seems pleased and satisfied, thought Holt. Suspiciously pleased and satisfied, she thought, taking Lewin’s memo out of the plastic folder in front of her. What’s this? she thought. Twenty pages of text plus another ten pages with some kind of index at the end. The latter listed almost two hundred individuals, with full names and social security numbers, each name accompanied by one or more reference numbers.

“The witnesses who were interviewed about the various sections as reported in my memo,” Lewin explained, having evidently noticed her wonder. “The numbers reference the interviews in the Palme material where the information is reported.”

“I see,” said Holt and nodded. What’s wrong with Jan? she thought. He’s not the type who tries to call attention to himself. Pull yourself together, Anna, she thought, starting to read.

“Prime Minister Olof Palme (hereafter designated OP) left his office in the government building Rosenbad (address Rosenbad 4) approx. 18:15 on Friday, February 28, 1986. As far as is known-no information of a different import has been reported in the investigation-he walked the shortest route home to his residence at Västerlånggatan 31 in Old Town.

“OP passes through the main entry to Rosenbad, turns left down to Strömgatan approx. 55 yards, then turns left up Strömgatan to Riksbron approx. 66 yards. After that OP turns right and, on foot, passes Riksbron, Riksgatan, and the bridge across Stallkanalen up to Mynttorget, a total of approx. 220 yards. From Mynttorget OP continues up Västerlånggatan in a southerly direction, approx. 270 yards. He arrives at his residence about 18:30 or right before that. The total walking distance of just over 650 yards corresponds to an approx. ten-minute walk at a normal pace, and this time period is thus compatible with the times and other circumstances as stated above.

“OP walked home alone and does not appear to have spoken, or had other contacts, with anyone during that time. Right before 12:00 the same day he explained to his bodyguards that he would not need them anymore that Friday. His two bodyguards state in interviews that he told them he was going to spend the afternoon at his office and the evening and night in his residence together with his wife, Lisbeth Palme (hereafter designated LP), and that therefore he would not need them anymore that Friday.

“One of the bodyguards then contacted his immediate superior at the secret police bodyguard squad by telephone, who in an interview states that he, ‘based on what the surveillance object himself stated, ordered them to suspend guarding for the remainder of the day.’”

Classic Lewin, thought Lisa Mattei. Jan Lewin-hereafter designated JL-she thought, and to cover her smile she held her right hand over her chin and mouth in a meditative gesture before she turned the page and continued reading. Lewin hadn’t noticed. He seemed completely absorbed in his own text.

“OP spent the time between approx. 18:30 and right after 20:30 in his residence together with his wife, LP. No other persons were present or visited them during that time. OP spoke on the phone with three individuals, party secretary Bo Toresson, former cabinet minister Sven Aspling, and his son Mårten Palme (hereafter designated MP), and had dinner with his wife, LP. It was also during this time period that the Palmes decided to go to the cinema that same evening. After the conversation with MP it was decided together with MP and his then girlfriend (later wife) to see the film The Mozart Brothers (directed by Suzanne Osten) at the Grand cinema on Sveavägen, situated approx. 350 yards northwest of the scene of the crime at the intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan. This decision was only made at approx. 20:00 according to what has emerged in the interviews with LP and MP.

“Right after 20:30 OP and LP leave their residence on Västerlånggatan in order to go on foot to the subway station in Old Town. OP and LP turn left on Västerlånggatan and then right on Yxsmedsgränd. The total walking distance between the residence and the stairs down to the subway station is approx. 275 yards, and the estimated time expenditure approx. three-four minutes…”

It must be angst, thought Holt. Only strong inner anxiety can explain this manic interest in details. She was forced to change her way of reading. A whole page of text and our victim isn’t even on the subway in Old Town yet, and damn you, Jan Lewin, she thought. Then in six short sentences she summarized a full two pages of Jan Lewin and located the Palmes in their seats at the Grand.

“Gets on the subway in Old Town approx. 20:40. Rides three stations and gets off at Rådmansgatan approx. 20:50. Enters the cinema right before 21:00. Talks with their son and his fiancée. OP buys tickets for him and LP. In their seats in the theater approx. 21:10,” Holt noted on the back of one of Lewin’s many papers.

“The screening was over right after eleven o’clock, and once they were out on the street the prime minister and his wife talked with their son and his girlfriend for a few minutes. Then they went their separate ways. The Palmes in the direction south toward the city center on the west side of Sveavägen and now the time is approximately a quarter past eleven. The temperature is twenty degrees Fahrenheit, wind speed of six to seven meters per second, and many people are moving about. A number of witnesses observed the prime minister and his wife. They walk at a rapid pace, side by side, he on her left side, closest to the street. At Adolf Fredriks Kyrkogata, the cross street before Tunnelgatan, they cross to the other side of Sveavägen. Stop a minute or two at a display window and then continue in the direction of the city center. This side of the street is deserted for the most part.

“As they pass the intersection to Tunnelgatan, with only a few yards left to the stairs down to the subway, the perpetrator suddenly appears behind their backs. He raises his weapon, and with only a few inches between the mouth of the barrel and his victim he fires the first shot at Olof Palme. It hits him in the middle of his back, at the level of his shoulder blades, and the prime minister falls headlong onto the sidewalk. His wife sees him suddenly lying there, looks at him, the murderer fires his second shot at her just as she twists her body and sinks down to her knees beside her husband.

“Now the time is twenty-one minutes and thirty seconds past eleven. Give or take ten seconds, for it will never be more precise than that, and in any event a fact of minor significance considering what just happened. The murderer observes the two on the sidewalk for a few seconds. Turns around and disappears into the darkness on Tunnelgatan.”

And out of the story, thought Anna Holt. The only reasonable explanation must be that he followed them when they left the cinema. When they crossed Sveavägen at Adolf Fredriks Kyrkogata, the cross street before Tunnelgatan, he went on ahead of them, crossed the street, took a short cut ahead of them and waited at the next corner. It’s no more conspiratorial than that, she thought. Despite all the pages à la Jan Lewin with all conceivable conditions, reservations, and alternatives.

Where does all this anxiety come from? she thought suddenly. A good-looking guy, slim, in good shape, true, over fifty, but he looks at least ten years younger, and when he’s with the rest of us he behaves completely normally. Polite, maybe a little too reserved, but completely normal in contrast to our beloved boss, the Genius from Näsåker, thought Anna Holt. An attractive man harboring very strong inner anxiety. Why is that? she thought.

12

Johansson returned to them after twenty minutes, and what he had really been doing was unclear. It couldn’t have been getting coffee, because his secretary had just brought it in. It was somewhat strange. As soon as Holt was done reading and pushed the papers aside, he suddenly came in and sat down, in just as good a mood as when he left them, judging by the expression on his face. I guess he can see around corners, she thought. From the couch in his office where he was probably lying down the whole time.

“Okay,” said Johansson. “Thanks, Jan. A model of clarity,” he added. And way the hell too long, he thought.

“I have a number of questions, so Lisa it would be good if you could take a few notes for us. And please pass the coffee around,” he continued, nodding at Holt. “Where was I now?”

“You have some questions,” Holt reminded him. How can it be that I suddenly recognize myself? she thought.

“Exactly,” said Johansson. “It’s the movie theater. When did he decide that, actually, and how many knew that he was going out to gad about town in the middle of the night on a Friday after payday, among all the drunks, glowworms, and common hoods? To me he seems almost a little suicidally inclined. What do you say, Lewin?”

“Well,” said Lewin, squirming uncomfortably. “I’ve gotten an impression that his security awareness was significantly greater than has been generally thought, and according to the interviews this was decided very late. About eight o’clock in the evening. According to the interviews with his wife and son, that’s how it supposedly went in any event,” he said.

“The colleagues at SePo then,” Johansson persisted. “Did he say anything to them?”

“Not according to the interviews,” Lewin replied. “According to the interviews he states that he would spend the remainder of the day at his office and the evening at home in his residence together with his wife. Not a word about going to the movies or any other errands in town either for that matter.”

“Were they asked that question?” said Johansson.

“It doesn’t show up in the interviews,” said Lewin. “It may be because they’re in summary, of course, and no one thought to include it in the transcript.” I would have asked that question anyway, considering what happened, he thought, but of course he hadn’t. Not twenty years later and considering that his colleagues at that time hopefully thought like he did.

“But that’s not the way it works if someone like him is going to the movies,” Johansson persisted. “Think about it now. He and his wife must have talked about it, don’t you think? I mean, someone like him must have had lots to do, and going to the movies isn’t something you think of right before it’s time to go, is it?”

“I don’t really understand where you’re heading, boss,” said Holt. Maybe it’s your view of people, she thought. You and your own little world populated by drunks, glowworms, and common hoods.

“What I mean is simply the following,” said Johansson. “Assume that he’d said something along those lines. That he and his wife perhaps wanted to take a short swing into town and see the family but that he wanted to be left in peace for once. Not have a lot of police officers from SePo staring over his shoulder. Now, if he’d said something like that, or only hinted at it or left the possibility open, is it likely, considering what happened, I mean, that the ones who had responsibility for him would mention that particular detail in an interview? Do you understand what I mean, Anna? That it wasn’t only drunks, glowworms, and common hoods that someone like him had reason to be worried about?”

“You mean that someone at SePo would have let the cat out of the bag and it reached the wrong ears,” said Holt. Sometimes you’re a little creepy, she thought.

“It wouldn’t have to come from there at all,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders. “He had lots of co-workers he talked with all the time. That special adviser he had as a henchman, for example, who sat in the same corridor in Rosenbad and was mostly occupied with various security issues. All his buddies at work. What are you and the little woman thinking about doing this weekend? We might see a movie. Maybe have a bite to eat in town. I see then. Well, you know how these things go,” said Johansson. “That’s how we humans are. We talk about things all the time. I never met Palme, but I get the idea that’s how he was when he was comfortable and feeling good. A cheerful companion who talked about this and that with people he trusted.”

He’s probably completely right, thought Mattei. However you confirm that twenty years later.

“So you mean that such knowledge might have reached the wrong ears rather late, that it wasn’t particularly precise, and that the planning of the murder came after that,” said Mattei.

“Exactly,” said Johansson. There’s no limit to how far that little string bean can go, he thought. She’s also female, so she’ll probably get a thirty percent discount in the bargain.

“A slightly more spontaneous and modest conspiracy theory,” said Holt, who sounded saucier than she intended.

“That’s what I’m saying,” said Johansson, who did not seem to have taken offense. “You should know, Anna, that I have nothing against conspiracy theories. The problem with most of them is only that they’re so over-the-top conspiratorial, not to mention completely flat-out wrong, which in turn stems from the fact that the people who think them up are seldom operating on all cylinders. A quite different point is that when someone like Palme is murdered-I’m not talking about celebrities like John Lennon-then the usual explanation is a conspiracy in his vicinity. It’s seldom anything remarkable. But even so it is a conspiracy, with more than one person involved who has special knowledge of their victim. The solitary madman is only the second most common explanation. True, it is almost as common, but if we take those two alternatives away then there’s almost nothing left. Not all conspiracies are crazy. There are plenty that are reasonable, logical, and completely rational, if it’s the execution we’re talking about.”

“None of the witnesses who were questioned are said to have made any observations that indicate that the Palmes might have been under surveillance when they left their residence in the evening,” said Lewin. “During and after the cinema, on the other hand, there are several witnesses who observed at least one mysterious man who was in the vicinity of the Grand cinema and the Palmes and may have followed them. But I understand what you mean, boss,” he added quickly. “Assuming that the surveillance was sufficiently competent, such a person might have avoided detection.”

“Exactly.” Johansson emphasized with a satisfied nod. “A horrifying number of years ago when I was working as a detective down in Stockholm we had a saying-”

“See but don’t be seen,” Holt interrupted, having also worked in the detective squad with the Stockholm police. With the legend Bo Jarnebring, Johansson’s best friend.

“So you know that, Anna,” said Johansson. “Think about it,” he added suddenly. “There was another thing-”

“But wait now,” said Holt. “Assume that it is as you say. Why didn’t he shoot them earlier in that case? In some dark alley in Old Town. Not on the subway, maybe, because there were lots of people and it would be basically impossible to escape from there.”

“Maybe he never got an opportunity,” said Johansson. “It might have been that a patrol car glided by on a cross street and that was enough for him to change his mind. Or someone approached. Or he simply didn’t have time.”

“I think he saw them by chance as they went into the theater, or perhaps even when they left,” said Holt.

“Personally I don’t believe in chance.” Johansson shook his head. “That he would have seen them as they came out of the theater I don’t believe for an instant. A crazy hooligan who hates Palme beyond all reason and happens to be walking around with a loaded revolver in his coat pocket the size of a suckling pig. That just such a person would get such an opportunity? No, I don’t believe that.”

“If he saw them before the movie started he would have had two hours to arrange that detail with the weapon,” Holt persevered, who didn’t intend to give in. “There are also several witness statements that can be interpreted in that direction-that at least one mysterious figure remained in the vicinity of the Grand cinema while the Palmes were sitting inside.”

“Possibly,” said Johansson, shrugging. “Although I don’t think much of the mysterious man and those particular witnesses. Regardless of whether it was Christer Pettersson or any of his brothers in misfortune these people might have seen.”

“Okay,” said Holt, raising her hands in a deprecating gesture. A final attempt, she thought.

“Let’s assume it is as you say,” she continued. “A completely different and more competent person than someone like Christer Pettersson, not a solitary madman, that is, has found out that the victim and his wife will leave their residence to go to the movies…”

“Yes, or out on the town in general terms,” Johansson interjected.

“He follows them from their residence in Old Town, for various reasons doesn’t get the chance before they are inside the cinema, and there are lots of people there so he can’t do anything there. Instead he waits for them until they come out. Follows them, takes the opportunity to get ahead of them when they cross to the other side of Sveavägen, places himself in ambush and shoots them in the intersection at Tunnelgatan.”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” said Johansson.

“But why in the name of sense does he choose to do it in such a stupid place?”

“Best place in the world if you ask me,” said Johansson. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here. The bastard went up in smoke.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Holt. I wonder how many times our various colleagues have sat and bickered about this case? she thought.

“Good,” said Johansson. “Which naturally leads us to the next question. Where did he go? I think we can all agree that he didn’t go up in smoke.”

13

The perpetrator had not “gone up in smoke.”

He had “half run,” “trotted,” “lumbered,” or “jogged” down Tunnelgatan in the direction of the stairs up to Malmskillnadsgatan. The word choice varied in the different witness statements, but the majority were at least in agreement on the essentials. In total there were almost thirty witnesses who had seen him, the entire act, parts of it, or what happened right afterward.

How the perpetrator runs down Tunnelgatan. On the left side of the street, seen from Sveavägen. How he runs “straddle legged” between the sidewalk and street. How he puts the weapon into the right pocket of his jacket, or coat, as he runs.

Nor did he have any choice. On the right side are construction site trailers, so he can’t get out there. There’s no use thinking about running out on Sveavägen because there are swarms of people and cars and there’s no place to go. Down on Tunnelgatan, apparently deserted, and in any event no one who can threaten him, into the darkness, up the stairs and away. He already knows all this, and he also knows that as an escape route it can’t be better.

“How long does it take, Lewin,” asked Johansson, “running at a leisurely pace down Tunnelgatan from the crime scene and up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan? At a leisurely pace?”

“You have that on page seventeen in my memo, boss,” said Lewin, starting to leaf through the pages.

“Refresh my poor memory,” said Johansson. Preferably today, he thought.

It was a full sixty yards from the crime scene over to the stairs. Then fifty yards on the stairs up to Malmskillnadsgatan. A total of more than a hundred yards with a change in elevation of more than forty-five feet. At an easy running pace, according to the reconstructions that had been done, it would take between fifty and sixty seconds.

For someone like me, assuming I dash for all I’m worth, thought Johansson, who preferred to walk when he went out to get some exercise.

“And if you’re running for all you’re worth?”

“Max thirty seconds for a person in good shape,” said Lewin. “According to our witnesses he ran rather slowly at first, but how fast he was running when he got to the stairs we know less about. There we have only one witness, and his testimony is not completely unambiguous. There’s also some uncertainty about how much the witnesses actually might have seen. Other than that he was running up the stairs, for on that point at least our main witnesses seem rather sure.”

“Perhaps I should add,” said Lewin after a careful glance at his boss, “that we have no technical observations. True, there were patches of snow and ice on the sidewalk, the curb, and the street, but no footprints or other clues were secured that might give us an estimate of his stride.”

“No, that wasn’t done,” said Johansson, leaning back and clasping his hands over his stomach.

“Admittedly the head of the tech squad and a couple of his co-workers were on the scene about an hour after the murder, but considering the situation that then prevailed at the crime scene it was decided not to carry out any such measures. They were judged to be futile.

“So they went home instead. To the little woman and a warm house, because it was Friday night after all,” Johansson observed. Damn lazy asses, he thought.

“Yes, unfortunately they did,” said Lewin. “The thing about him running straddle-legged, trotting a little, there are three different witnesses who describe it that way.”

“Yes,” said Johansson.

“I think he did that to keep from slipping,” said Lewin. “But we haven’t secured any clues to confirm that.”

It was completely incomprehensible, he thought. Just leaving a crime scene unattended like that. But who was he to criticize his colleagues in the tech squad, considering that he’d been lying in his own bed at home and as usual hadn’t been able to fall asleep until two o’clock in the morning. He had been awakened before six the next morning when his immediate supervisor called and reported that the prime minister had been murdered the evening before, and now it was a matter of embracing the situation and reporting immediately for duty.

“So what happens next?” asked Johansson.

According to Lewin the following happened.

The perpetrator ran diagonally across Brunkebergsåsen with a few dodges along the way to mislead anyone following.

“This was the initial understanding among the police about the perpetrator’s escape route,” said Lewin. “This was decided on rather early. After having shot the prime minister, he runs down Tunnelgatan, up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan, continues straight ahead across Malmskillnadsgatan, and on down David Bagares gata. After about a hundred yards on David Bagares gata he veers off to the left onto Regeringsgatan and thus disappears in a northerly direction. Where he goes then is less clear, but according to the prevailing understanding he must have veered off to the right after another hundred yards of double time on Regeringsgatan and taken Snickarbacken down to Smala gränd. After that he emerged on Birger Jarlsgatan at the corner by the park, Humlegården that is. It’s about five hundred yards from the crime scene, and at the pace he’s moving he ought to have managed it in about three minutes.”

“So how do we know that?”

“We have five different witnesses,” said Lewin. “In a kind of chain of witnesses, if you like, although the various links are a little iffy. Whatever, that’s the escape route that was already decided on within a week, and that’s also the one the officers who did the crime analysis and perpetrator’s profile seem to have accepted. The alternatives are countless of course within five hundred yards from the crime scene. But…” Lewin shrugged his shoulders.

A chain of witnesses with five links, and just like all other chains it was as strong as the weakest link.

First there were a number of witnesses who had seen him disappear down Tunnelgatan. All were touchingly in agreement about this, and that escape route was also the only one imaginable, considering how it looked at the scene. After only forty yards he disappeared from their field of vision and all that was left is the chain with five links.

The first witness in the chain, a man in his thirties, is the only one who claims to have seen the perpetrator run up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan. That it was the perpetrator he had seen he also realized because he had heard the two shots and understood at least part of the course of events.

The perpetrator ran up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. At the top of the stairs, at Malmskillnadsgatan, he stopped for a moment. To get oriented, catch his breath, or see if he was being followed. This is according to the suggestions the witness himself stated at the initial interview. Then the perpetrator disappeared from the witness’s field of vision.

The witness then followed him. In the interviews he makes no secret of the fact that he was extremely upset and was not in any great hurry. When he himself comes up onto Malmskillnadsgatan, he encounters the second witness, a woman, and asks her whether she has seen anyone running.

She had. She’d seen a man who disappeared down onto David Bagares gata in the direction of Birger Jarlsgatan. She hadn’t seen much more than that, however, and when the first witness looks down the same street he in any event doesn’t see the man who had run up the stairs.

When the perpetrator rounds the corner of David Bagares gata and Regeringsgatan, according to the third and fourth witnesses, a woman and a man, he literally ran into witness number three. The perpetrator comes running from behind, the woman hears someone coming, turns her head, and slips. The perpetrator runs into her, and she yells a few insults at him. The perpetrator takes no notice of this but instead continues running and disappears almost immediately out of their view.

The fifth and final link in the chain was the one who aroused the greatest public attention and the one about whom Lewin himself was most doubtful. A woman, who in the media came to be called “the Cartoonist,” had observed a mysterious man in Smala gränd, approximately fifteen minutes after the murder and hardly five hundred yards from the scene of the crime. The man is walking hunched up with his hands in his pants pockets, and when he discovers that the fifth witness is looking at him-obviously without her having any idea what has happened to the prime minister-he looks “terrified,” turns around, hastens his steps and disappears in the direction of Birger Jarlsgatan and Humlegården.

Regardless of all the doubtful aspects in connection with the observation itself, the suspect had however made a deep impression not only on the witness but also on the leadership of the investigation. A phantom image was made of him, which was published in the media the week after the murder, and which according to the leadership of the investigation depicted a man who “possibly could be identical with the perpetrator.”

“Although hardly anyone believes that anymore,” said Lewin. Personally I never did, he thought.

“A nosy question,” said Johansson with an innocent expression. “That woman our perpetrator supposedly ran into when he rounded the corner at David Bagares gata and onto Regeringsgatan. The one who shouted insults at him. What was it she shouted?”

“Look out you fucking gook,” said Lewin with a shy glance in the direction of Anna Holt.

“Gook,” said Johansson. “What did she know about that sort?”

For some reason Jan Lewin seemed embarrassed by the question.

“She is extremely definite on that point. That was what she shouted at him. Her exact choice of words and the reason for it, she maintains, according to what she says in the interview, was that he looked like a-quote-‘typical gook’-end quote. To answer your question. Well, I get the impression that she has a definite understanding of how such a person looks in any event. Her story is also corroborated in the interview with the man who accompanied her.”

“She did of course get to look at the pictures of Christer Pettersson, everyone’s Palme assassin,” said Johansson.

“Yes,” said Lewin. “Though as I’m sure you know, boss, that wasn’t until the fall of 1988. It took over two years before Pettersson became a central figure in the Palme investigation.” It’s Anna he’s after, thought Lewin.

“And?”

“No,” said Lewin, shaking his head. “She didn’t recognize Pettersson.”

“Now when you say it,” said Johansson, “I have a faint recollection of that interview. Isn’t it the case that in response to a direct question of whether it was Christer Pettersson who ran into her, she answers approximately…that in that case she wouldn’t have shouted ‘fucking gook’ at him?”

“Yes,” said Lewin. “Something like that. I don’t recall her exact words. But that issue is brought up. It’s there on the tape. Not in the transcript, because that part of the interview has only been summarized.”

“So what would she have said instead?” interrupted Holt, looking at Johansson. Sloppy of me to miss that interview, but that’s not Jan’s fault, she thought.

“She thinks Pettersson looks like a typical Swedish drunk, a genuine Swedish bum. Definitely not a gook,” Johansson observed.

“Which conveniently leads us to the next item on the program, namely Christer Pettersson, and if I’ve understood things correctly you have a good deal to say about that, Anna,” he continued with an innocent expression.

“Yes, I do have a few things,” Holt agreed. She had decided to play along and put a good face on it.

“Then let’s do that,” said Johansson. “But first I would like to propose a leg stretch of about fifteen minutes. I have to make a few calls.”

14

Holt and Lewin went to Lewin’s office so they could talk undisturbed.

“I owe you an apology, Anna,” said Lewin.

“For what?” asked Holt. You have to stop apologizing, Jan, she thought.

“I saw the material about Pettersson you brought with you. It was that documentation that was the basis for the indictment against him, and that witness that the perpetrator ran into, the one who shouted at him, she’s not in there.”

“It’s really not your fault,” said Holt. “Just a nosy question. Are there other witnesses like her who weren’t included when Pettersson was indicted?”

“It was done the way it’s always done, I guess,” said Lewin. “You include what supports the indictment and the rest you choose to overlook. It’s a real mess.” Lewin looked at her gloomily. “When the suspicions about Pettersson came out in the media and he became a national celebrity, suddenly a lot of information came in about him. He’d been seen all over the area. At times I’ve thought that in this case there are witnesses about literally everything and everyone. Pointing in all conceivable and inconceivable directions.”

“But from the beginning,” said Holt. “If we stick to Christer Pettersson.”

“From the beginning,” said Lewin, nodding meditatively. “Well, none of the witnesses to the murder identify him in particular. Not so strange perhaps, because the majority are ordinary, decent people who don’t know people like him. As I said, the first pictures of him were not shown to the witnesses until the fall of 1988, two and a half years after the fact. Several of them then claim to see a certain resemblance with Pettersson, but it’s nothing more than that. Not then. In connection with the new trial, additional witnesses emerged who claimed to have seen Pettersson in particular, persons in the same situation as he was, the kind who know him, and it was at this time that several of the earlier witnesses seem to have decided that it probably was Christer Pettersson they’d seen after all. With one exception. The only one who pointed him out the first time she saw him was Lisbeth Palme. It was at that famous, or should I say infamous, lineup on December 14, 1988.” Lewin slowly shook his head.

“I’m sure you remember it,” said Lewin.

“Yes, sure,” said Holt. “But I’m listening. What’s your understanding of that?”

“Well, first she says, Lisbeth Palme that is, that it’s easy to see which one is the alcoholic. That good-for-nothing prosecutor told her before the lineup that the suspect was an alcoholic. Then she says, well, it’s number eight, he fits my description, the shape of his face, his eyes and his shabby appearance. As you know, Christer Pettersson was number eight in the lineup.”

“Just how sure do you think she was?”

“Well, I don’t know. First there’s that unfortunate statement from the prosecutor. Then there’s the lineup video itself. It’s a strange story. Pettersson undeniably stuck out. Compared with the others he looked really shabby. Unfortunately. I don’t really know.”

“The evidence is not as strong as pointing someone out,” said Holt.

“Could have been better, of course,” said Lewin.

“I have one more question,” said Holt. “If you’re able?”

“Of course,” said Lewin, smiling and nodding.

“Why did it take so long before anyone started getting interested in Pettersson? It was more than two years. Even though he was on the list of people of interest only two days after the murder, and even though a number of tips about him came in during the spring of 1986. I noticed that a routine interview was held with him at the end of May 1986. He was asked what he was doing on the evening of the murder. But it was never more than that. Not until two years later did it get going in earnest.”

“That’s a good question,” Lewin agreed. “But I’m afraid there’s no good answer. Maybe the investigators had other interests those first two years.”

“So what do you think?” said Holt.

“In the worst case it’s as simple as that he wanted to make sure he ended up there,” said Lewin.

“You have to explain that,” said Holt.

“Yes, strangely enough the media seems to have missed this, but the fact is that only a few months after the crime, tips started coming in that Christer Pettersson was running around town and maintaining, or hinting, both saying and hinting, that he had shot Olof Palme. There were tips from various persons in his vicinity, and more and more as the reward got larger.”

“But nothing was done about it then?”

“No,” said Lewin. “I guess they were completely occupied with other things judged to be more interesting. He wasn’t alone in running around bragging that he was the one who shot Olof Palme either. There were several with the same background doing that. But as I said it took awhile before he was taken at his word-not until the summer of 1988. Then they started checking what he was up to. They discovered he was at an illegal gambling club in the vicinity of the crime scene the same evening Palme was murdered. That his dealer had an apartment on Tegnérgatan in the vicinity of the Grand cinema. One thing leads to another, and suddenly it’s all about him. It’s a strange story.”

“So what does he say about it in the interviews? That he himself supposedly ran around saying that,” said Holt.

“He denies it categorically, flatly denies it,” said Lewin. “The police didn’t make a big deal of it either. Probably considering their informant. Their informant was one of those types Pettersson associated with. By the way, it’s time we return to our dear boss,” said Lewin with a glance at his watch.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘dear,’” said Holt.

“Okay then,” said Johansson, looking expectantly at Holt as soon as she sat down at her usual place. “Now we’ll hear the truth about Christer Pettersson.”

“I don’t think I can promise that,” said Holt. “But I promise to say what I think.” You should get a taste of your own medicine, she thought.

“I’m listening devoutly,” said Johansson, sinking back in his chair with his hands clasped over his stomach.

“It was Christer Pettersson who shot Olof Palme,” said Anna Holt.

“Without further ado, just like that,” said Johansson.

“Of course,” said Holt. Call it what you want, she thought.

“You don’t have the desire to be a little more, well, specific?” Johansson had lowered a few more inches in his chair.

“Of course,” said Holt. “I’ve even written a little memo about it.” She took a plastic sleeve from her binder, opened it, and passed out a letter-size piece of paper. First to Johansson, then Lewin, and then Mattei. One page with five points, and less than one line written for each point.

“A model of brevity,” said Johansson after a quick glance at the paper. “I’m listening,” he said, nodding at Holt. I must have overestimated Holt or else she just wants to mess with me, he thought.

15

The first point on Holt’s list had the heading “Perpetrator Description.”

According to the eyewitnesses, the perpetrator must have been at least six feet tall and between thirty and fifty years old. He was wearing a dark, longish jacket or short coat, reaching halfway down his thigh. His movement patterns were described as “clumsy,” “loping,” “limping,” “rolling,” “like an elephant.”

“That agrees pretty well with Pettersson if you ask me,” Holt summarized.

“Yes, this is a really amazing description,” said Johansson with an innocent expression. “By the way, what do you think about those witnesses who describe the perpetrator as being as nimble as a large bear, as someone with powerful, controlled movements, who gave an impression of agility and strength as he ran away, who took two stairs at a time when he ran up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan? Not to mention our gook witness, the only witness who had physical contact with the perpetrator. Or everyone outside the Grand who’d seen a lunatic with an intense gaze. Or that small-boned artistic type our so-called Cartoonist saw down at Birger Jarlsgatan. The man in the first phantom picture. The woman who was supposed to be some kind of artist in civilian life. Do you want me to continue?”

“That’s enough,” said Holt, smiling. “Some of that information may also be consistent with Pettersson.”

“The face, the hair?” Johansson looked even more innocent.

“Apart from Lisbeth Palme, none of the witnesses has been able to provide any such information,” said Holt.

“No, exactly,” said Johansson. “Sometimes our murderer is wearing a cap and sometimes he’s bareheaded, and when you look at the times it seems he was seen simultaneously. With Lisbeth I think it’s so bad that she never saw the perpetrator. I think he was standing in her dead spot, pardon the expression, at an angle behind her.”

“I intend to come back to Lisbeth Palme,” said Holt. “Now let’s move on to the next point. Point number two.”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson.

At the time before the murder Christer Pettersson had been in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene. According to what he himself had admitted, he’d been at the illegal gambling club called The Ox up on Malmskillnadsgatan.

“So he’s been there at least,” said Holt. “Then we have other witnesses who saw him at the Grand cinema. By the way, one of his dealers had an apartment on Tegnérgatan.”

“Everyone in the country’s dealer at that time, Sigge Cedergren,” said Johansson. “Nowadays no longer among us, and just like all the other drugged-out nutcases from Grand-more and more certain of their story the more years have passed since the murder. ’Cause at that time they didn’t have much to say.”

“Granted,” said Holt. “But there is a logic to it. There are actually good prospects that he might run into Olof Palme completely by chance. He used to hang out in those parts, and it wasn’t to go to the movies and see The Mozart Brothers.”

“On that last point we’re in complete agreement,” said Johansson. “Personally I think the perpetrator ends up at the Grand and then by and by at the crime scene because his victim leads him there. I think he followed him from Old Town, and it was no more coincidental than that.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Holt. “My third point,” she continued, holding up her paper. “There are several pieces of information to the effect that Christer Pettersson at least periodically had access to a revolver of the type used in the murder. Among others from Sigge Cedergren, who is said to have lent him one like that.”

“A gun that he and the others near and dear in Pettersson’s circle of friends think up ten years or so after the murder. Which they denied at first, and then remembered, and then took back again. In that context there are two completely different things that struck me,” said Johansson.

“Yes?” asked Holt.

“That there isn’t a smidgen about Christer Pettersson using a firearm during his more than twenty-year criminal career before the murder. Not afterward either. There’s only Cedergren’s and the others’ mixed memories ten years after the assassination of Palme.”

“The second thing,” said Holt. “What was the other thing that struck you?”

“That I’m hell and damnation convinced that our perpetrator is both a practiced and a skillful shot with so-called single-hand weapons, pistols or revolvers. Pettersson wasn’t. He hardly knew front from back on a revolver.”

“The perpetrator is a skilled shooter? Even though he misses Lisbeth Palme from a distance of three feet?”

“Believe me,” said Johansson. It was meaningless to sit and argue with a woman about this, he thought.

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Holt. But I still don’t agree with you. I can shoot too, she thought.

“I’m beginning to sense we’re not in agreement,” said Johansson. “This fourth point? That Lisbeth Palme supposedly pointed out Pettersson. I assume you know what happened when she did that?”

“Yes,” said Holt. “I still think she makes a strong identification.”

“Why in the name of God?” said Johansson with some heat. “First there’s that crazy prosecutor who raves about the perpetrator being an alcoholic. Then there’s that so-called lineup that would be a pure Santa Claus parade if one of them wasn’t limping around in beard stubble, running shoes, and a dirty old sweatshirt.”

Holt had been struck by two other circumstances. That Lisbeth Palme became noticeably upset when she saw Christer Pettersson.

“She got agitated, scared simply,” said Holt.

“What would you have expected?” Johansson snorted. “The way he looked on that video?”

“Then she spontaneously points out that the perpetrator did not have a mustache. Pettersson had a mustache on the lineup video, but according to the investigation he didn’t have one at the time of the murder.”

“But sweet Jesus,” said Johansson. “A type like Christer Pettersson, do you think he shaves every day? He probably has a mustache every other week if you ask me.”

“There’s another thing I’ve wondered about,” said Holt. “The reason that the court of appeal rejected Lisbeth Palme’s testimony was, in part, what you’ve said just now: all the errors committed in connection with the lineup.”

“Obviously,” said Johansson. “How the hell would it have looked otherwise?”

“Assume that it had been Lisbeth who was murdered and that Olof Palme had survived. That he was the one who testified and had to be involved in the same worthless lineup she had to go through. Assume that he pointed out Christer Pettersson and did it in exactly the same way that Lisbeth did. How do you think things would have gone in the court of appeals then?”

“Then Pettersson probably would have been convicted. Even courts make mistakes.”

“You have no other observations in that connection,” said Holt.

“No,” said Johansson. Could it be so bad that Holt and little Mattei have been plotting a gender perspective? thought Johansson. Though she seems innocent enough, he thought, glaring acidly in Mattei’s direction.

Holt’s fifth and concluding argument was that Christer Pettersson corresponded well with the description of the perpetrator in the profile that their colleagues at the national crime bureau had produced in collaboration with experts at the FBI.

“In the profile the perpetrator is described in the following way,” Holt began.

“This concerns a solitary perpetrator with primarily chaotic and psychopathic features, an intolerant, disloyal, and merciless person who is governed by impulses and whims. A disturbed person who has a hard time maintaining normal relationships with other people. Who in a superficial sense may appear self-confident, but who is both conceited and affected. A person lacking an inner compass. He is not interested in politics but probably harbors considerable hatred for society and its representatives. A solitary person living a failed life. Who has had poor contacts with his own family since childhood. It is completely ruled out that he would have participated in any conspiracy, whether large or small.”

“Imagine that,” Johansson snorted.

“Yes, imagine that,” said Holt. “He is thus about six feet tall and relatively powerfully built. He is right-handed and not in particularly good shape. He was probably born sometime in the 1940s, and he has some experience with firearms. He lives alone, has only sporadic contact with women, and probably has no children of his own. He is probably poorly educated and has no job. If he has had a job it has been for short periods and involved unskilled tasks. He has bad finances, lives in an apartment with low rent, and has a low standard of living. He is probably known to the police for previous criminal offenses of a less serious nature. He lives, works, or for other reasons has often spent time in the vicinity of the crime scene and the Grand cinema.”

Holt glanced up from her papers and looked at Johansson.

“The same man who according to the same profile, correct me if I’m remembering wrong, was not supposed to have had any contact with the mental health system. Who is not a serious abuser of either alcohol or narcotics,” said Johansson. “So it can’t have been Sigge Cedergren in any case, Pettersson’s spigot and official purveyor, whom the perpetrator would visit to buy dope,” said Johansson. “Maybe he was going to the movies after all?”

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Holt. “Ninety percent of this is still about Christer Pettersson, although-”

“Ninety percent? I really wonder about that,” Johansson interrupted. “A person who according to the profile might possibly have committed minor crimes against property, but never killed anyone with a bayonet, never robbed or assaulted or threatened a lot of people. Pettersson was in various jails and nuthouses for over ten years for that very reason. Not to mention all the years he did for drug offenses and all the other shit he was up to. Plus the fact that he’d been drinking and doing drugs on a daily basis practically since he was a little boy.”

“You think this speaks to Christer Pettersson’s advantage,” said Holt with an innocent expression.

“Right here I actually think it does,” said Johansson. “Do you want to know what I personally think about the perpetrator?”

“Gladly,” said Holt. I really do, she thought.

“For one thing, I believe he had help. Nothing remarkable, but I think he had some contact or contacts. Before he went to work.”

“Okay,” said Holt.

“This is a well-organized, alert perpetrator. He is in good physical condition. Strong. He has no criminal record, and he’s not an abuser. He has both authority and presence, and he seizes his opportunity on the wing the moment he gets the chance. He has considerable personal experience where resorting to violence is concerned, and he is a very skilled shot, right-handed. The weapon he uses is probably his own, and in any event he didn’t buy it on the cement down at Sergels Torg. He’s very familiar with the area, has a driver’s license, car, good residence, and good financial and other resources. In short he has all the qualities required for him to be able to disappear without a trace, even though it should be impossible considering the way in which he did it.”

“In other words, he’s the exact opposite of the profile,” Holt summarized.

“No,” said Johansson, shaking his head. “I’ll buy the fact that he hated Palme. That psychological drivel about him and his upbringing leaves me cold. He’s an evil person. Sure. Normal people don’t shoot someone like Palme from behind, regardless of who they vote for.”

“We’re in agreement there,” said Holt.

“Forget about that now,” said Johansson. “Someone like that shouldn’t be running around loose. He should be in prison for life, and if I could choose I would boil the bastard for glue.”

“That last part I won’t sign on to but otherwise we’re in agreement,” said Holt.

“Good,” said Johansson, getting up quickly. “We’ll meet in a week. Same time, same place. Then I want a name.”

“Our boss seems to have taken this case to heart, “ said Lewin as he and Holt left the meeting.

“It’s not his commitment I’m questioning,” said Holt.

“I understand what you mean,” Lewin agreed. “The major problem with this particular case is that it’s completely impossible to just sit down and read your way to the truth. Like I already said, regardless of what you think or believe, you can always find testimony to support it.”

“You’re thinking about that female witness who called the perpetrator a gook bastard,” said Holt. “Careless of me to miss her.”

“No,” said Lewin. “I was actually thinking about a completely different witness. Although she disappeared from the process early on. Removed from the investigation. Her testimony was judged to be uninteresting. I actually saved a copy of it. I have it in my office if you’re interested. I never did anything about it. It never happened,” Lewin observed, sighing.

“I’d be glad to read it,” said Holt.

“Sure,” said Lewin. “You’ll get it. Although perhaps I should warn you ahead of time: This is far from a problem-free witness.”

“She has all the usual problems that witnesses aren’t allowed to have? The kind of witnesses that our boss calls nutcases, glowworms, and bag ladies?” Holt looked inquisitively at Lewin.

“Of course,” said Lewin. “But in this particular case that’s not the problem.”

“So what is it?” said Holt.

“The major problem arises if you get the idea that what she says adds up,” said Lewin as he opened the door to his office. He held it open for Holt and made sure to close it behind them.

“So what do you mean?” Holt repeated.

“You can only hope that she’s mistaken,” said Lewin. “Here it is.”

Lewin opened a binder he’d taken out of his well-organized bookshelf, removed a thin plastic folder with papers, and gave it to Holt.

“You’re welcome to it, Anna. You’re certainly braver than I am,” said Lewin.

“So what happens if what she says is correct?” said Holt while she weighed the thin folder in her hand.

“Then there are problems,” said Lewin, looking at her seriously. “Major problems.”

16

The day after the second meeting, Lisa Mattei concluded her small sociological investigation. She had interviewed thirteen old Palme investigators, all of them men of course, of which six were retired, three were still working in the Palme group, and four had left for other assignments within the agency. Combined, her thirteen older colleagues had devoted almost a hundred years of their professional lives to searching for the perpetrator who just over twenty years earlier had assassinated the prime minister.

None of them seemed to have any problem with her explanation for wanting to talk with them. On the contrary, almost all of them thought it was an excellent idea. That it was high time someone did something about the mountain of papers that nowadays were mostly collecting dust. Several of them had also gone directly to what the actual purpose of her visit was, without her even having to ask.

“It’s an excellent idea. I saw your boss Johansson on TV when he read the riot act to those journalists. That’s a real cop for you. Not one of those paper pushers with a law degree. We’ve known each other since our time in the detective unit down in Stockholm, and if there was anyone who had the right feel for the job it was Lars Martin. Though he was just a young kid at that time. You can tell him from me that he can carry everything that’s not about Christer Pettersson down to the basement, and I guess the simplest thing to do would be just to burn it. You can tell him that too, while you’re at it. He’s never been a coward. I’ll be the first to testify to that…

The Kurds. It was the Kurds who shot Palme. Those terrorists within their so-called revolutionary workers party, PKK. I and many of our colleagues realized that right from the start, so all the piles of paper the group collected later are really not our fault, and now it’s too late to correct that mistake. The really big scandal is that we never got to finish our case. The politicians and the journalists took it away from us, for political reasons. It was the journalists who put the pressure on, and the prosecutors who couldn’t stand up to them, and the politicians just chimed in as usual. Even though Palme was a Social Democrat and we have a Social Democratic government. What they did to our first investigation leader, Hasse Holmér-he was county police chief in Stockholm as I’m sure you know, and I say that mostly because it was before your time-it was a pure scandal if you ask me. He got fired simply because he refused to let a lot of politicians and newspaper people run the investigation…”

“Sounds like an excellent suggestion. Start by subtracting everything that deals with those Kurds. They had nothing to do with the assassination of Palme. It was thanks to him that people like that could come here. Palme was pro-immigrant, and I have nothing to say about that per se. When people got riled up about him it was usually for other reasons that mostly had to do with his personality. I don’t believe someone like Christer Pettersson could have done it either. He was just too mixed up to manage a thing like that. Probably barely even knew who Palme was. Besides he’s been dead now a few years, so that alone is enough to take him out of the Palme case. Then there were all those political speculations about Iran and Iraq and India and the Bofors affair and South Africa and God knows what. I think, even if it were that way, that’s nothing we police can do anything about, is it? Besides, I don’t believe in it. I think the explanation is much simpler. Some ordinary citizen who got tired of Palme and his politics and maybe even believed he was working as a spy for the Russians. Quite a few did at the time, I’ll tell you. Someone who simply took matters into his own hands when he happened to run into him by chance outside the Grand on Sveavägen…”

There was an ongoing pattern in what Mattei heard. An expected pattern. You believed in what you had worked with or in any event what you’d worked with the most. On the other hand, you seldom set much store by anything you hadn’t been involved in investigating. On one point, however, with one very surprising exception, they were in agreement. All except one of those asked categorically rejected the so-called police track, and the one who believed in it the least was the investigator who at various times had devoted five years of his life as a police officer to trying to find out what his colleagues had actually been up to when Palme was murdered.

“I promise and assure you,” he said, nodding seriously at his visitor. “All those leads that the media inflated all those years. Once you sit down and figure out what it’s really about, at best it’s pure nonsense. I say at best because far too often there was real ill will on the part of a lot of extremists and criminals who fingered our colleagues.”

There’s still a certain something about old murder investigators, thought Mattei as she got into her service vehicle to leave the little red-painted Sörmland cottage where the last of her interview victims now enjoyed his rural retirement. Where she had been offered coffee and rolls and juice and cookies. Especially the retired ones, she thought. Retirement loosened the tongue and gave them both the time and the desire to talk about how things really were. Especially when they could do so for a younger female colleague who seemed both “quick-witted and humble.”

If they only knew, Mattei thought. Although it was mostly pretty harmless, and most of them were good storytellers at least. There was only one she dreaded meeting, and during that meeting she mostly sat gritting her teeth while her small tape recorder whirled and her interview subject expounded about Olof Palme and everything else under the sun.

Chief Inspector Evert Bäckström, “legendary murder investigator with thirty years in the profession and considered by many the foremost of them all,” according to the anonymous source that was frequently quoted in Dagens Nyheter’s most recent article about mismanagement at the national crime bureau. This in combination with the Swedish Envy was also, according to the same source, the only explanation for why just over a year ago the head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation had banished said Bäckström from the National Homicide Commission to the Stockholm police department’s property investigation squad.

“So that genius from Lappland needs help clearing up Palme,” said Bäckström, while leaning back in his chair and scratching his belly button through the biggest gap in the Hawaiian shirt that stretched across his stomach.

“No, that’s not how it is,” said Mattei. “We’ve been given the task of doing an overview of the registration of the material in the Palme investigation, and he was interested in your viewpoints. How the various parts of the material should be prioritized.”

“Sure, sure, like I believe that,” said Bäckström with a crafty look behind half-closed eyelids. “Imagine that, look over the registration.”

“I understand you were involved in the initial stage and that it was you, among others, who ferreted out the thirty-three-year-old, Åke Victor Gunnarsson.”

“That’s right,” said Bäckström. “I was the one who found that little piece of shit, and if I’d just been allowed to run the case, then I would have seen to it that we got to the bottom of it. Instead some older so-called colleague came in and took over. Someone who’d licked his tongue brown up the backside of the so-called police leadership. If you’re wondering about all the question marks that still remain around Gunnarsson, then he’s the one you should go to. Not me.”

“Is there any particular track you think ought to be prioritized?” said Mattei to change the subject.

“Paper and pen,” said Bäckström, nodding encouragingly. “So you have something to take notes with,” he explained as he put his own ballpoint pen in his right ear to remove some irritating deposits of wax.

“In the material there’s quite a bit you can carry down to the basement,” said Bäckström, viewing the outcome of his hygienic efforts and wiping the pen on the desk blotter. “Start by taking out all the old ladies. Motive, modus operandi, and all conceivable perpetrators that are old ladies, whether or not they wear trousers. I won’t go into what I thought about the so-called victim, but an old lady would never have managed to take the wrapping off Palme in that way. Not even an old lady like Palme,” he clarified. “It was a competent bastard who was holding the ax-handle that time.”

After that Bäckström talked for almost an hour without letting himself be interrupted. About conceivable perpetrators, motives, and methods.

According to Chief Inspector Bäckström, for the most part everyone, that is to say completely normal Swedish men like himself, had a motive to assassinate the prime minister. The driving force-according to his definitive, professional experience-also would be stronger the more you had to do with the victim. At the same time the good thing about that was that the frequency of old ladies, regardless of whether they wore pants or skirts, was especially high around someone like Palme, which in turn provided more opportunities to do a thorough cleanup in all those papers.

“Tell me who you associate with, I’ll tell you who you are,” Bäckström summarized. “There’s a lot worth considering in our old Bible.”

“I interpret this to mean that you don’t believe in the often stated hypothesis of a solitary madman who by chance happened to catch sight of Olof Palme outside the Grand cinema,” Mattei alertly interjected.

Pure nonsense, according to Bäckström. First, you didn’t need to be crazy to have good reason to shoot Palme. On the other hand, secondly, you had to have “a fucking lot of spine,” and thirdly, it would naturally be the very best if you were sitting on a little inside information about what someone like Palme was up to.

“Forget about Christer Pettersson and all the other drunks,” Bäckström snorted. “Gooks, drunks, and common hoods. Why should they attack Palme? He was the type who supported them. What we’re talking about is a guy with first-class knowledge of the situation, primo sense of locale, handy with the rectifier, and a fucking lot of ice in his belly.”

“You mean, for example, a police officer or military man or someone with that background?” asked Mattei.

“Yes, or some old marksman or hunter. Or maybe that Gilljo even. Only author in this country who’s worth the name, if you ask me,” said Bäckström. “Besides, he’s actually there on the lists of conceivable suspects. We got a fucking lot of tips about him. So take a look at Johnny Gilljo if you don’t have anything better to do. I believe more in someone like him, or a military man, than in another police officer,” Bäckström summarized, nodding. “I mean, me and the other cops could always hope we would get the chance to arrest him when he was drunk,” he clarified. “Small consolation is still consolation, even when the general misery is at its greatest. As it was while Palme was alive.”

“Arrest Palme for drunkenness?” Mattei asked, sneaking a glance at her tape recorder to be on the safe side.

“The most common wet dream among our colleagues at that time.” Bäckström grinned, and for some reason looked at the clock. “Now you have to excuse me, Mattei, but I have a few things to do too.”

“Of course,” said Mattei, getting up with all the desired speed. “I really must thank you for participating.”

“A few more things,” said Bäckström. “For the sake of order. I see that this is a confidential conversation, and I assume that what I’ve said stays between us.”

“As I said by way of introduction, all interview subjects are anonymous.”

“Like I believe that,” said Bäckström with a sneer.

“There was something else you wanted to say,” Mattei reminded him as she put away the tape recorder, paper, and pen in her bag and closed the zipper.

“You don’t need to greet the surströmming eater from me,” said Bäckström.

“I promise,” said Mattei. “You don’t need to worry.”

“I never worry,” said Bäckström. “It’s not my thing.”

Lisa Mattei’s little investigation had taken five days, and she had drawn her conclusions even before she started. The material in the Palme room was the result of these colleagues’ work, and with two exceptions they believed in what they’d done.

The support for the police track was limited to Bäckström’s general musings, and the material collected was not particularly extensive.

The great exception was the so-called Kurd track, for which the police investigations generated even more paper than for Christer Pettersson. In round numbers, two hundred man-years for a year, and it turned out an enormous number of binders. One investigator out of thirteen was left who believed in what was there, and surely the proportion wouldn’t vary much with all the hundreds she hadn’t contacted.

In the evening after the final interview she stayed at work until late and wrote a short memo about what she had come up with. Two pages, in contrast to Jan Lewin’s twenty-five. Then she e-mailed it to Johansson. Only to Johansson, because she thought it was his business to decide whether anyone else should read it.

What do I do now? thought Mattei as she shut off her computer. It needs to be something quite specific, and it’s time I had a talk with my dear mom, she decided.

17

As usual, Johansson arrived first at his office. The hour before his secretary showed up he would usually use to have an extra cup of coffee in peace and quiet, read his e-mail, and do all the other things he never had time for during the rest of the day.

A model of brevity and well written, thought Johansson as he read the memo Mattei had e-mailed him. That little string bean is hardworking too, he thought. According to the date and time the memo had arrived in his mailbox shortly after eleven the night before.

But the memo was hardly exciting, because he already knew everything that was in there, he thought. So all hopes were dashed from the start that any of the old owls would have a new, exciting, concrete lead to offer.

Although you knew that too, thought Johansson and sighed. The remaining consolation was that at least one of the older colleagues seemed to be thinking along the same lines as he was. A minor conspiracy in the victim’s vicinity and a highly capable perpetrator who took care of the practical aspects.

Must be Melander, he thought. Melander had been his and Jarnebring’s mentor when they started at the central detective squad in Stockholm more than thirty years ago. Wonder how the old geezer’s doing? he thought just as Anna Holt stepped in through his open door, knocked on the doorjamb, and showed her white teeth in a smile.

“Knock, knock,” said Holt. “Isn’t that what you always say when you barge into someone’s office?”

“Sit down, Anna,” said Johansson, nodding toward his couch. “What are you doing at work this time of day?” She’s actually a really nice-looking lady, he thought. On the thin side, perhaps, and a little tedious sometimes, but…

“Have to hurry along,” said Holt, shaking her head. “Just a quick question.”

“Shoot,” said Johansson.

“If you’d shot Palme, run down Tunnelgatan and up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan, which way would you have gone after that?”

Mercy, thought Johansson.

“I have three options,” he answered. “I can go left on Malmskillnadsgatan toward the park by St. Johannes Church, I can cross the street and go straight ahead, as it is alleged that the perpetrator did, continue straight across Brunkebergsåsen that is. Or I can turn right on Malmskillnadsgatan in the direction of Kungsgatan.”

“So which way would you have gone?”

“Personally I would go right,” he said, nodding in emphasis, “take the stairs down to Kungsgatan, melt in among all the others walking there, and then disappear down into the subway.”

“Why?” said Holt.

“Because it’s best,” said Johansson.

“Thanks,” said Holt. She nodded, smiled, turned on her heel and left.

Wonder what she’s after? thought Johansson, and though it was said he could see around corners, he had no idea that Holt too had shared his speculations for almost a day now. Wonder if little Mattei has shown up yet? he thought suddenly, looking at his clock. Worth a try, he thought, entering her number.

“Sit down, Lisa,” said Johansson, indicating the chair on the other side of the desk.

“Thanks, boss,” said Mattei, doing as she was told. Be on the alert, Lisa, she thought.

“Thanks for the e-mail,” said Johansson. “A model of brevity. And well written,” he added.

“Thanks,” said Mattei. “Although I’m afraid there weren’t any new ideas.”

“No,” said Johansson. “But neither of us thought there would be. Speaking of new ideas, by the way, I’d hoped maybe you would have some.”

Sink or swim, thought Mattei, and if it were to sink and go completely down the toilet it would still be a point in her favor if Johansson knew about it in advance.

“I actually have an idea,” said Mattei. “I don’t know, but-”

“Go on,” said Johansson, nodding encouragingly.

“I was thinking about what you said at our last meeting. About the Palmes going to the movies. I share your understanding, boss. I think he might very well have talked about it before, and that his plans might have been known among his co-workers, and that the people at SePo might also have heard talk of it.”

“So now you’re thinking about having your mother invite you and a now retired head of personal security to dinner and let all the good food and drink take care of the rest,” Johansson observed. That girl can go as far as I have, he thought.

“Roughly like that,” said Mattei. He can see around corners, though I already knew that, she thought.

“How long has she been at SePo now? Your mother, that is,” Johansson clarified.

“Since I was in preschool,” said Mattei. “Almost thirty years. Now she has a position as director of constitutional protection. She’s retiring next year.” My mom will be a retiree, she thought.

“Although you can’t really say that kind of thing,” said Johansson, who had been operational head of the secret police himself before he wound up at the national bureau. “I have the idea that she was with personal security too?”

“In the eighties, actually. She was there for several years, including when Palme was assassinated. She was responsible for the queen and the children in the royal family,” said Mattei. “If I dare say that.” What else would a woman be doing at that place? she thought.

“To me you can say anything whatsoever,” said Johansson with an authoritative expression. “It stays in this room, as you know.”

“So she knows Chief Inspector Söderberg well. He was the one who took care of the government and Palme, as I’m sure you recall. He’s always had an eye for my mother.” Who didn’t at that time? she thought.

“Of course,” said Johansson. “Who hasn’t? She’s an elegant woman, your mother. Though Söderberg has never really been himself since the murder of Palme,” he added. I guess it would be strange otherwise, he thought.

“He seems to have taken it extremely hard in the beginning,” said Mattei. “Although the last time I saw him, at my mom’s sixtieth birthday dinner by the way, he was lively and happy. So what happened when Palme was murdered he certainly remembers in detail.”

“Sounds good,” said Johansson. “That’s what we’ll do,” he said, nodding. “Say the word if there’s anything practical I can help you with.

“Oh, and there’s one more thing,” said Johansson, who was suddenly struck by a thought. “Which one of the old Palme investigators was it, by the way, who had the same good idea as I did?”

“I really can’t say that,” said Mattei, shaking her blond head unusually firmly. Good Lord, she thought.

“I’m still listening,” Johansson repeated.

“Not even to the boss,” Mattei persisted. “I’ve promised all of them anonymity. You can get a list of the ones I’ve interviewed, but I can’t go into what this one or that one said.”

“I understand,” said Johansson. “How’s Melander doing, by the way?” he added with an innocent expression. “We worked together at the bureau ages and ages ago.”

“Good,” said Mattei. “He said to say hello, by the way.” You didn’t manage that corner, she thought.

“I can imagine that,” said Johansson contentedly.

18

What does he really mean? thought Holt, when she had returned to her office the day before and started reading the papers Lewin had given her.

There was a total of ten pages, and at the top was a tip form that had been filled out on Saturday the first of March 1986, the day after the murder. That day a young woman succeeded in getting past the Stockholm police department’s seriously overloaded switchboard and evidently made such a strong impression on the officer who took the call that he asked her to come down to Kungsholmen so they could hold an interview with her.

The interview with the young woman, Madeleine Nilsson, born in 1964, took place at the duty desk on Kungsholmen late on Saturday evening. The interview was transcribed in summary and took up no more than one letter-size page. It had been done by an officer unknown to Holt, someone by the name of Andersson, who sent it on to the homicide squad for any follow-up and other actions.

“Nilsson states the following in summary. She spent Friday evening at a pub down on Vasagatan where she saw acquaintances with whom she had a beer. Nilsson does not remember the name of the place, but states that it is diagonally across from the Central Station in the direction of Kungsgatan.

“After her companions went their separate ways about 11:00 p.m. she made her way on foot in the direction of her residence at Döbelnsgatan 31. She took Kungsgatan in an easterly direction, crossed Sveavägen, and then took the stairs on the left side of Kungsgatan up to Malmskillnadsgatan. Then she continued on Malmskillnadsgatan and Döbelnsgatan north home to her residence where she arrived at about 11:30 p.m.

“About halfway up the stairs from Kungsgatan to Malmskillnadsgatan she encountered a solitary man walking at a rapid pace down the stairs toward Kungsgatan. Nilsson is uncertain about the time but thinks it was about 11:20.

“The man was about six feet tall, broad-shouldered, neither heavy nor thin. He gave the impression of being in good condition and did not seem intoxicated in any way. He had short dark hair, and Nilsson estimates his age at about 35-40. The man had no head covering, was dressed in a half-length dark coat or longer jacket with turned-up collar, plus dark pants (but not jeans). Information about his footwear is lacking. Nilsson cannot talk about his appearance in more detail as the man held his hand in front of his face, as if to blow his nose, as he passed her. At the same time she has a general impression that he was good-looking with regular features, dark eyes, and short dark hair.

“During the walk between the intersection of Sveavägen and Kungsgatan and her residence on Döbelnsgatan, she has not made any further observations of interest. She states in conclusion that according to her definite understanding it was calm in the city. She saw only a few people during the walk on Döbelnsgatan, and none of them acted strange in any way. When she was walking on Döbelnsgatan she encountered a police bus that drove in the direction of Malmskillnadsgatan. The bus was driving at a moderate speed and without flashing lights or sirens. She remembers this because they blinked the headlights at her.”

I see then, thought Holt. So far everything seemed well and good, apart from the fact that the investigation’s chain of witnesses had suddenly broken already at the second link. If this does add up, she thought.

Wednesday the fifth of March, the week after the murder, another interview had been held with Madeleine Nilsson at the homicide squad in Stockholm. A dialogue interview that was seven pages in transcript. The interview leader was also named Andersson, unknown to Holt, but judging by the first name a different Andersson than the one the witness had met at the duty desk a few days earlier, and with a completely different attitude toward her.

First she had to repeat the same story she had told a few days earlier. Then she was asked whether she could provide the name of the individuals she had been with at the pub on Vasagatan. She didn’t want to do that, and she didn’t want to talk about why either.

The subsequent questions were straight to the point and left no room for any doubt whatsoever as to what direction the interview had taken.

What had she really been up to down in City on Friday evening the twenty-eighth of February?

She’d been doing what she already said. Nothing more, nothing less.

Had she in reality been in the block around Malmskillnadsgatan to “pick up a john”?

Or to “buy a few downers”? Or maybe even a few “uppers”?

She did not even want to comment on this. She had been doing what she said. Nothing more, nothing less. She had called the police because she wanted to help them. If it was going to be like this, she didn’t want to cooperate anymore.

After a few more questions on the same theme, the interview was concluded. The handwritten notes that her interview leader made on the interview transcript also meant the end of witness Madeleine Nilsson.

“Witness Nilsson is not credible. Appears in the police record under five different sections (theft, fraud, shoplifting, narcotics offenses, etc.). Is a known addict and prostitute.”

The chief inspector at the homicide squad who reviewed the various witness statements specifically related to observations of the perpetrator drew the same conclusion about the value of her testimony. According to the photocopy of his decision to withdraw the witness’s statement from the file, the story lacked “relevance.” “It is most likely that the witness passed the scene before the murder of OP.”

His signature was completely legible, and Holt knew very well who he was. When she first starting working with the detective squad in Stockholm, a few years after the assassination of Palme, she had run into him on numerous occasions. One of the old legends at the homicide squad, Chief Inspector Fylking. Nowadays both retired and deceased.

What does he really mean? thought Holt, and the person she had in mind was her colleague Jan Lewin who had prepared the final paper in the thin bundle. Typewritten, neat, like everything that came from Lewin, it had been prepared on Friday the twenty-eighth of March 1986, exactly four weeks after the murder. Astonishingly brief considering it came from him. Only six points on a normal letter-size sheet. Signed by then criminal inspector Jan Lewin with the homicide squad in Stockholm, and in all essentials he seems to have been the same man then as he was now.

In principle what was there was as unimpeachable as it could ever be, considering the circumstances. Even the quintessence of what the police actually knew about what had happened. The problem was Lewin’s exactitude. All these places where the actors found themselves, preferably stated to the nearest yard. All these points in time when they were at a certain place, if possible noted to the second. All movements and everything else humanly possible that the perpetrator and the witnesses were doing in between. Obviously calculated in yards and seconds. The pedagogical value was zero, the reading pleasure nonexistent, and it took Holt more than fifteen minutes before she managed to force her way through the Lewinian thicket of words and finally understand what was there.

The first point in his memo was comprehensible enough. The next four were harder to read, but his opening said most of what needed to be said: “(1) Sweden’s prime minister Olof Palme was murdered at the intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan on Friday the twenty-eighth of February 1986, at approx. 23:21:30.”

I see then, thought Holt. Lewin has set the time according to Witness One. He’s the one who gets to start the film when the perpetrator flees, and with that you can forget about all the other clocks, whether they are fast or slow.

Witness One had been walking on Tunnelgatan in the direction of the crime scene when he heard the first shot and at the same moment he was clear about what was happening thirty yards further down the street. Then he hides himself-in the protection of darkness, the trailers, the piles of construction material, and all the other debris piled on the right side of the street-while the perpetrator “jogs past” to his left at a distance of no more than a few feet. Only when the perpetrator has passed, and for a moment disappeared from the witness’s field of vision, does he peek out from his hiding place and see the perpetrator run up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan, stop for a moment at the top of the stairs, and then disappear from his view.

According to what Witness One says in the first interview, the first of many that the police would hold with him during that time, he then waited “about a minute” before he left his relative safety and followed the perpetrator. Carefully, carefully, first Tunnelgatan up to the stairs, then the stairs up to Malmskillnadsgatan. According to Lewin this had taken him “an additional sixty seconds.”

The conclusion was clear enough. Witness One shows up at the same place where he saw the perpetrator disappear “not until about two minutes after the perpetrator.” The perpetrator is putz weg. The only thing Witness One sees is Witness Two, and she is the one who is asked whether she has seen “a man in a dark jacket run past.” She has. “Just now” she has seen “a dark-clothed guy” run right across Malmskillnadsgatan and down David Bagares gata.

The problem is that she shouldn’t have seen him, considering that he would have passed by two minutes earlier.

In Lewin’s own words: “Considering Witness Two’s position when she observed this man, the fact that she states in interviews that she was walking in a northerly direction the whole time, across the bridge over Kungsgatan and in the direction of the stairs down to Tunnelgatan, and her purely physical possibilities of making the observation as she claims to have done, her observation can thus be made at the earliest thirty seconds before she runs into Witness One farther down on Malmskillnadsgatan, that is, about one and a half minutes after the perpetrator already ought to have left the place in question.”

It was the same with the witness Nilsson, according to Lewin. Hardly a minute before Witness Two came up onto Malmskillnadsgatan, Nilsson passed the stairs from Tunnelgatan and disappeared out of view, to the left down on Döbelnsgatan, in the direction of her residence at Döbelnsgatan 31.

The perpetrator? The perpetrator is far away. Yet another minute earlier, the witness Nilsson would have met him en route down the stairs from Malmskillnadsgatan to Kungsgatan. About sixty yards to the right of the stairs up from Tunnelgatan to Malmskillnadsgatan and moving in a direction that was completely different from what everyone except Lewin seemed to think.

In the sixth and final point in his memo Lewin reported his conclusions in an at least somewhat understandable way compared to the line of reasoning he had taken to arrive at it.

“It cannot be ruled out that the man whom the witness Nilsson encounters on the stairs down to Kungsgatan is the perpetrator. This however rules out that the man whom Witness Two saw running down to David Bagares gata is identical to the perpetrator. On the other hand, the fact that Witness Two actually saw a man who did this appears highly probable considering the testimony of Witness Three, who was run into by a man about fifty yards further down the same street, as well as Witness Four, the man accompanying Witness Three, who confirms the information in the interview with Witness Three. That this man, who had been observed by witnesses Two, Three, and Four, would be the perpetrator seems less probable, however, considering that he shows up on the scene one and a half minutes too late.”

Finally, thought Holt.

“Have a seat, Anna,” said Jan Lewin five minutes later, smiling and nodding at the vacant chair in front of his desk. “It’s been less than an hour,” he said, looking at his watch. “Long time, no see, as the Englishmen say.”

“I’ve always been a little slow,” said Holt. “We girls are a bit slow on the uptake, as you know.”

“I’ve never thought that,” said Lewin. “With you and Lisa it’s more likely that you get things more quickly than most of us.”

“Well, I get the point in any event with the help of what you wrote. What I don’t really understand, on the other hand, is why you prefer witness Nilsson ahead of our old colleagues’ entire witness chain? Can’t it be as simple as Fylking thought? That Nilsson might have met someone on the stairs down to Kungsgatan, but that the meeting took place before Palme was shot?”

“Sure,” said Lewin. “Of course it might be that way. The problem with that is it doesn’t solve the problem for us.”

“Take it one more time. I think I get it, but explain anyway. I’m a little thick, as you know,” said Holt.

“The problem with the man whom Witness Two claims to have seen running down to David Bagares gata is that she sees him much too late. Now I don’t recall exactly what I arrived at back then, but I seem to recall that it was about one and a half minutes. If it was the perpetrator she saw, she ought to have seen him one and a half minutes earlier, and considering where she was then, it’s a good stretch from the stairs up from Tunnelgatan, then she can’t have seen him. It’s out of the question that it’s the perpetrator she’s seen running across Malmskillnadsgatan. That’s the very point. Or the major catch in the investigators’ line of reasoning if you like.”

“I’m with you then,” said Holt. “I understand how you’re thinking.”

“A lot can happen in one and a half minutes in such a limited area,” said Lewin. “If you walk at a brisk pace you can manage a hundred fifty yards in one and a half minutes. If you trot or jog, then you’ll manage two hundreds yards or more.”

“Okay,” said Holt. “Let’s take this in order. Who did Witness One see down on Tunnelgatan?”

“The perpetrator,” said Lewin. “On that point I have no doubt at all. Never had any.”

“Witness Two then,” said Holt. “Who is it she sees cross Malmskillnadsgatan and run down to David Bagares gata?”

“Someone other than the perpetrator,” Lewin observed. “Someone who’s a minute and a half behind the perpetrator in our timetable.”

“But wait now,” said Holt. “If he’s not the perpetrator, why is he behaving so strangely? According to Witness Two he was running as he passes her. You yourself write that it’s the same man who runs into Witness Three farther down on David Bagares gata.”

“Quite certainly so,” said Lewin, nodding. “In this area, if we’re talking about the blocks above the crime scene, around Malmskillnadsgatan, David Bagares gata, Regeringsgatan, the closest blocks in other words, there are, according to what we ourselves arrived at, more than a hundred persons who were moving about on the street at the time in question, that is, when Palme was shot. How many of them, considering the time and place, wanted to avoid having to talk with people like you and me at any price? Way too many, if you ask me. Let’s not forget that this was the classic red light district in Stockholm and that there were also lots of ordinary criminals and addicts hanging out there.”

“An alternative hood,” said Holt. “He may not have shot Palme, but he realized that something bad has happened on Tunnelgatan down by Sveavägen that he doesn’t want to be dragged into.”

“About like that.” Lewin nodded. “Perhaps you recall that in the interview with Witness Two she also says that not only was he running away-”

“I remember,” Holt interrupted. “She saw that he was pushing something down into a clutch bag that he was trying to stuff into the pocket of his coat.”

“Exactly,” said Lewin. “This made a deep impression on many investigators. In other words, it was thought that this might be a small weapon case or a weapon bag and that he was trying to hide his gun.”

“Sounds pretty likely,” said Holt.

“I don’t think so,” said Lewin.

“Why not?”

“Three reasons,” said Lewin. “First, we’re talking about a revolver. Almost fourteen inches long from the heel of the butt to the mouth of the barrel. One that scarcely fits in a coat pocket. Besides, if you put it in a rectangular case, then you need really large pockets, at a minimum.

“Second,” he continued, “for that very reason, bags or bag-like cases for revolvers in particular are extremely unusual. With pistols it’s a different story. There are small bags you can put them in. There were such bags for our service weapons at that time, our Walther pistols.”

“I remember,” said Holt. “I’ve used that kind of case myself.” Including at a royal banquet or two, she thought.

“I suspect why,” said Lewin. “Then I’m sure you also know that your weapon took up only half as much room as the revolver with a seven-inch barrel that was probably used to shoot Palme.”

I see what you’re thinking, thought Holt.

“And the third? Your third reason?”

“The time when he does it,” said Lewin. “If it’s the perpetrator she’s seen, he’s still only a hundred yards from the crime scene, and that’s hardly the moment to be putting your weapon in a bag. A bag that means he won’t have time to use the gun if he needs to and that what he has in his pocket becomes twice as bulky and even easier to find if he were to be stopped and searched. But I believe in the bag,” said Lewin. “That’s just the kind of observation that witnesses very seldom make up.”

“So what would he be doing with the bag?”

“To me it sounds like one of those small handbags that many addicts used to store their equipment in. Their needles-so as not to risk sticking themselves, which can easily happen if you just put them in your pocket-a bent spoon for mixing and heating, a candle stub, a plastic bottle of water to dilute the dope with, a box of matches or a cigarette lighter, perhaps even a stamp envelope with leftover dope. Well, you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Holt agreed. Someone who was hiding to shoot up at the absolute worst place in the city, she thought.

“You don’t think it could have been an accomplice?” she continued. “The man whom Witness Two saw when he ran across Malmskillnadsgatan? Someone waiting in the background to cover the shooter’s retreat, maybe?”

Lewin squirmed.

“I’ve had that thought,” he said. “But I still don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“If he’s further down on Tunnelgatan, in the background so to speak, then Witness One should have observed him as he was walking up Tunnelgatan. Though sure, this is maybe mostly a feeling I have, that he doesn’t have anything to do with the case. Someone who only ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s what I think.”

“Let’s go back to what you said about the times,” said Holt.

“Okay,” said Lewin.

“Another possibility naturally is that our first witness, Witness One in the chain, is considerably faster than you think,” Holt objected. “Maybe he only waits twenty seconds, not a minute, after he’s seen the perpetrator disappear up on Malmskillnadsgatan. Maybe he doesn’t need a minute to run up the stairs. Maybe he runs just as fast as the perpetrator. Maybe he’s up on Malmskillnadsgatan only one minute after the perpetrator. He’s twice as fast as you think, Jan.”

“In that case he’s showing a large measure of modesty in the interviews that were held with him,” Lewin observed. “But regardless of whether he was twice as fast, that doesn’t solve the problem either. He’s still half a minute too late up on Malmskillnadsgatan.

“For it to fit together in terms of time,” he went on, “he has to run after the perpetrator at full speed as soon as he sees him disappear up Malmskillnadsgatan. Not hesitate a second to be on the safe side. Run full speed down Tunnelgatan and up the stairs. Say he manages this in thirty seconds. Then his story at least nearly jibes with the observations that Witness Two claims to have made.”

“But not with his own testimony, because I’ve read that,” said Holt, shaking her head. “Apart from the fact that in that case it would have been a pure suicide attempt on his part.”

“No, he’s really not trying to play the hero when he’s questioned. He makes both a credible and a sympathetic impression on me,” said Lewin, nodding in agreement.

“So all we’ve managed to do so far is get rid of the entire chain of witnesses,” Holt concluded. “Without even needing to rely on the witness Madeleine Nilsson. She may still have passed by before the murder, and the man she met doesn’t need to have anything to do with the case.”

“Absolutely,” said Lewin. “On the other hand, I was skeptical of the reconstruction of the perpetrator’s escape route from the very beginning. I couldn’t get the times to agree, as you understand.”

“Did you talk with the other investigators about this?” Holt asked.

“No. I was too busy with other things. All the parking tickets and old suicides as you may recall,” said Lewin.

“You wrote a memo about the case only four weeks after the murder. You must have thought a great deal before that.”

“Approximately fourteen days before that,” said Lewin. “Madeleine Nilsson contacted me a week or two after the second interview with her. We met and talked. Then I sat down and tried to redo the reconstruction of the perpetrator’s escape route that our colleagues had made and that by then was already the established truth.”

“You held an interview with Nilsson,” Holt clarified.

“If you can call it an interview,” said Lewin, shrugging his shoulders. “She wanted to meet me, we met, had a cup of coffee, and talked about what had happened.”

“But why did she want to meet you?” asked Holt. This is getting stranger and stranger, she thought. Lewin of all people goes out for coffee in town with a known prostitute and drug addict.

“I knew her,” said Lewin. “She was a good person who lived a very sad life.”

“You knew her? How?”

“I got to know her a few years before the Palme assassination. It was in connection with an investigation. A female acquaintance of Madeleine’s, in the same situation as Madeleine, had a so-called boyfriend who beat her black and blue and ended up trying to slit her throat. She got away, fortunately, but she was scared to death and refused to talk with us. Though not Madeleine. She not only showed up and testified against her friend’s boyfriend. She also managed to talk sense into her so for once the charges held up in court. He got six years in prison for attempted homicide, felony procurement, and a few other things, and was released after serving his sentence.”

“You think that Nilsson actually encountered the perpetrator on the stairs down to Kungsgatan?”

“Yes, actually,” said Lewin. “It’s highly probable that she did. I see no time-related problems, and she was definitely not the type who would lie or try to make herself interesting. She was a good person, honorable, talented, pleasant, always stood up for others. Considering the life she lived, I also believe she was very observant about just that sort of thing.”

A good person who lived a sad life, thought Holt.

“You didn’t speak with any of the investigators about this? After you talked with her, I mean,” she said.

“I brought it up with Fylking,” said Lewin. “Partly because it was his area, partly because he was my immediate boss, both in the Palme investigation and in ordinary cases.”

“So what did he think?”

“He didn’t think the way I did,” said Lewin, smiling again for some reason. “At the same time he was friendly enough to point out, and it was very unusual coming from him, that regardless of which of us was right, it was completely uninteresting because the top officials in the investigation leadership-that was his own expression-had already decided.”

“Is she alive?” asked Holt. “Is there any sense in interviewing her again?”

“There certainly would have been,” said Lewin. “As I said she was an excellent individual. She died of an overdose about a year after the Palme assassination. In September the following year, if I remember correctly.”

“I see then,” said Holt, sighing faintly. “So our chain of witnesses already breaks between the first and second link. Instead we have witness Madeleine Nilsson, who has been dead for at least twenty years.”

“Yes,” Lewin agreed. “Though if it’s Christer Pettersson we’re thinking about, I’m afraid our witness chain broke off even earlier.”

“Witness One,” said Holt with surprise. “The one who seems so sensible. So what was wrong with him?”

“I don’t think there were any major faults with him,” said Lewin. “Possibly it was the case that our dear colleagues forgot to ask him the obligatory introductory question.”

“The obligatory question,” said Holt with surprise. “You mean whether he knew or recognized the perpetrator?”

“Exactly. But that doesn’t seem to have been done. Instead they went directly to the perpetrator’s appearance. He was never asked whether the perpetrator was anyone he knew or recognized.”

“So you mean that Witness One is supposed to have known Christer Pettersson?” What is he saying? thought Holt.

“Witness One did not know Christer Pettersson personally,” Lewin clarified. “On the other hand, he knew of him and knew who he was. Not least by appearance, because they lived in the same neighborhood out in Sollentuna. He had seen Pettersson on numerous occasions during the last few years, several times a week sometimes. Pettersson was the type that all normal people in the area took detours around.”

“So when did he report that?” This is getting stranger and stranger, thought Holt.

“Toward the end of the summer of 1988. More than two years after the murder. When our colleagues in the investigation had become interested in Christer Pettersson. Then Witness One was questioned again. At that time pictures of Christer Pettersson were shown to him, among other things.”

“So what did he say?”

“That’s when he admitted that he knew Pettersson. Not least by appearance.”

“And?”

“No,” said Lewin, shaking his head. “This rang no bells in his head. He hadn’t recognized the perpetrator as Christer Pettersson when he ran past him on Tunnelgatan ten seconds after the murder. Neither had the famous lightbulb come on at any time over the next two years during which he’d seen Pettersson in the neighborhood where he lived. And it seems like it should have. If it had been Pettersson who shot Palme.”

“So how does he explain that?” said Holt.

“That the perpetrator and Pettersson were not especially alike,” said Lewin. “In other words, he thinks he would have thought of that, and in that case naturally he would have contacted the police. Witness One is a completely ordinary, honorable person. Not the slightest shadow on him, if you ask me.”

“How many are there who know about this piece of information?”

“A few, among those who count,” said Lewin, shrugging his shoulders. “And now you too,” he said, smiling faintly. “For the usual reason that it’s not something that was talked about very much. Among other police officers.”

“Among other police officers,” Holt repeated, and for some reason it was Johansson she could see before her.

“Among other police officers,” Lewin confirmed, and to be on the safe side he carefully cleared his throat as he said it.

19

As soon as Lisa Mattei left Johansson, she called her mother, Linda Mattei, one of the superintendents at SePo’s department of constitutional protection, located in the building next to her daughter-“the secret building”-in the big police headquarters at Kronoberg. She was exactly twice Lisa’s age. Apart from the fact that they were both blondes, they did not look particularly alike. Linda Mattei was a big, busty blonde. When she was a young police officer, she had been a “real bombshell” among her male colleagues. These days, and for almost twenty years, she was “still a very elegant woman,” according to the same sources.

Her daughter, Lisa, was a thin, pale blonde. According to Johansson, like a young Mia Farrow. Lisa took after her father in appearance. Apart from the hair color, of course.

Her father, Claus Peter Mattei, had come to Stockholm and the Royal Institute of Technology as a young chemistry student in the late sixties. Short, thin, and radical, dark with intense brown eyes and almost a political refugee from Munich. He’d left because it was no longer possible to live there if you were a young person who thought and felt the way he did. In the strange world in which we live he and Linda fell madly in love, had a daughter they christened Lisa, and divorced a few years later when the differences between them became too great to be papered over by a love that steadily lessened.

What remained was Lisa. Apart from the hair color, recognizably like the father she seldom saw since he’d left her. He was the same father who for a long time now was different from the one who had left Lisa and Sweden. Still short, dark, and thin. His gaze was now melancholy and insightful in the way appropriate for every proper German investor with a PhD in chemistry and a job as research head of one of the Bayer group’s larger companies. Repatriated to his childhood Munich, he was a humanist, a conservative liberal, of course an opera lover, a wine connoisseur, and a philanthropist too.

The mother, Linda, and her daughter, Lisa, had lunch together at a restaurant a comfortable walking distance from the big police building. Lisa’s suggestion. A bit too expensive to entice their colleagues and thus discreet enough for anyone who wanted to talk undisturbed. Sliced beef with onions for Linda, seafood salad for Lisa, mineral water for both of them, the introductory mother-and-daughter exchange, and as soon as they started eating Lisa made the same suggestion she had to Johansson, and because Linda was her mother she also talked about why.

“Johansson,” said Linda Mattei with a frown. “You have to be a little careful with that man. Is this something you’ve cooked up together?”

“My idea, but he bought it right away,” said Lisa Mattei. “Best boss I’ve had. The best police officer I’ve met. You know he can see around corners?” Almost always, she thought.

“Yes, I’ve heard that. Ad nauseam,” said Linda Mattei, who did not seem particularly pleased. “You haven’t fallen in love with him?”

“But Mom,” said Lisa, shaking her head, “he’s twice my age, at least. Besides, he’s already married.”

“They usually are,” Linda Mattei observed. “Which seldom seems to hinder them.”

Though Lisa is probably not Johansson’s type exactly, thought Linda Mattei. Even though I’m her mother.

“Nothing like that,” said Lisa Mattei. “But what do you think about the idea itself?” I wonder if they’ve ever been together. Dear mother and Johansson.

“I promise to call Söderberg,” said Linda Mattei, and then nothing more was said about it.

After her second meeting with Lewin, Holt started grappling with the witnesses from the crime scene. She had meticulously read each and every interview with the thirty witnesses to the murder itself. As well as the half a dozen who might have seen the perpetrator as he fled from the scene. Plus the dozen or more who several years later recalled that in any event they had seen Christer Pettersson right before and right after the murder. Plus the hundred others the police chose to disregard.

For example, Madeleine Nilsson, who for some reason ended up on the same computer list as the two teenage girls who admitted at the second interview, a week after the murder, that they had made it all up. True, they had been to the movies on Kungsgatan, but when the screening was over they ended up at a club down at Stureplan. They had not walked past on Sveavägen just as Olof Palme was shot.

Young punks, thought Holt with sudden vehemence, because just reading through all the papers had taken her almost a full day. She’d come up with no answers, only new question marks. And the big question mark, which Lewin had put in her hands, was just as big as before.

She could live with Lewin’s calculations in principle. Perhaps something completely unexpected had happened to the perpetrator as he stood up there on Malmskillnadsgatan and no one saw him. Maybe he’d stood there only a minute or so before he finally collected himself and ran down David Bagares gata, where he saw Witness Two coming toward him further up the street. If that’s really how it was, then suddenly the times were neat and tidy and there were no longer any broken links in the chain of witnesses. Although considering Witness One and his knowledge of Christer Pettersson, or Witness Three and the “fucking gook” who actually shoved her, it could hardly have been Pettersson who stood there collecting himself before he ran on to the next link.

Thought Anna Holt, sighing deeply.

Johansson’s intuitive observation-dead sure and incomprehensibly spot-on-she could live with too. True, Johansson was almost always right, but now and then he was wrong, and in some isolated instance he might even have been completely out-in-left-field wrong. The few times Holt reminded him of this he grinned and shrugged his shoulders. If you were going to say wise things, it was also necessary to say something really stupid, and handled correctly that was an unbeatable way to learn something new, according to Johansson.

The problem was the improbable alliance between Lewin’s monomaniacal calculations, his anxiety-driven exactitude, and Johansson’s merrily unrestrained intuition. An angst-ridden accountant teamed up with a male fortune-teller, and to hell with both of them, thought Holt. To hell with Lewin, who was almost always right but hadn’t been man enough to stand up for what he believed when he had the chance twenty years ago. To hell with Johansson, who was almost always right despite his big ego, his self-centeredness, and all his vices. But if both of them believe it, the bad thing unfortunately is that it’s true, thought Holt. So what do you do about it? she thought. Shrug your shoulders, act like it’s raining, and go on with your life?

Linda Mattei called her daughter within an hour after they’d finished their lunch.

“This evening at seven o’clock,” said Linda Mattei. “Björn is going away fishing for the weekend. He was supposed to meet a former colleague down in Strömstad and be there all next week. But because it’s Johansson who’s insisting, there’s probably some urgency too, and he had nothing against coming here as soon as this evening.”

Rapid response, thought Lisa.

“He must have a little crush on you, Mom,” she teased. “As soon as you call he comes rushing over.”

“Certainly,” said Linda Mattei. Who doesn’t, she thought. The problem was that they were all considerably older than she was.

“What will you be serving?” asked Lisa.

“No salad anyway,” her mother answered. “Be sure to arrive on time, by the way.”

Just about the time Linda Mattei’s two guests were sitting down at her neatly set kitchen table, Anna Holt decided to bite the bitter apple and visit a crime scene more than twenty years old. Embrace the situation. What alternative do you really have? thought Holt in the taxi on her way into town. It was another completely ordinary evening, nothing on TV, no movies she wanted to see, no friends or even acquaintances who had called and wanted to see her. Definitely no guys, despite the fact that there was more than one to choose from, and none of them should have any reason to complain. Not even her only child, her son, Nicke. He could be reached only by voice mail on his cell phone, where she would hear a message announcing with youthful naturalness that he didn’t have time right now but feel free to try again later. He doesn’t even need money anymore, thought Holt and sighed.

Holt spent over two hours in the neighborhood around the scene of the crime. Followed the perpetrator along the trail and even did so in the various walking styles described by the witnesses. She leafed through her bundle of old crime scene photos, paced out distances, pressed on her stopwatch, walked, jogged, and ran at full speed. She did everything the witnesses said the perpetrator or they themselves had done. Finally she considered the various alternatives and boiled them down to two conclusions.

Lewin was probably right. If it were the perpetrator Witness Two had seen, then she’d seen him much too late. The only possibility-it was unclear why and highly improbable-was that in that case he had stopped on Malmskillnadsgatan above the stairs to Tunnelgatan and that he stood there for approximately one and a half minutes. Why in the name of God would he do something that stupid? thought Holt.

Johansson was definitely right. There were no objections to his hypothetical line of reasoning. Other than that it was hypothetical, of course. The escape route he proposed was decidedly the best if you wanted to get away from the scene undetected. Up the stairs from Tunnelgatan to Malmskillnadsgatan, turn right, sixty yards’ brisk walk, and then down the next set of stairs on the same street. The one that led from Malmskillnadsgatan down to Kungsgatan.

It was Friday after payday, and all the people walking down there were unaware of what had happened only a few hundred yards away. All the restaurants, cafés, cinemas, all the stairs down to the subway, and it could hardly be more safe than that for a perpetrator who had just shot the prime minister in the street. Times Square, Piccadilly, or Kungsgatan in Stockholm, if it was about hiding yourself in the crowd it was all the same, thought Anna Holt. An ice-cold soul who knows the area, without mercy and with no butterflies in his stomach. I only wonder whether Johansson read the interview with witness Nilsson, she thought.

The former chief inspector with the secret police bodyguard squad, Björn Söderström, had not felt better in a long time, and considering that it actually should have been a completely ordinary day, this was completely incomprehensible. First an unexpected invitation to dinner at home with a still very elegant woman he had known for almost thirty years and who had been a real bombshell when she started with the police.

Then there was the eighteen-year-old malt whiskey that she offered almost as soon as he stepped inside the door. Things having come that far, the whole thing appeared to be signed, sealed, and delivered. If it hadn’t been for her daughter, of course. She seemed both quick-witted and well brought up, but nonetheless her appearance was a surprise because her mother had not said a word about her when she had called and invited him a few hours earlier.

“Cheers and welcome, Björn,” said Linda Mattei, raising her glass. What one won’t do for one’s only child, she thought.

“I’m the one who should thank you,” said Söderström. “It’s not every day an old bachelor like me gets an invitation like this.” The daughter is certainly here only as a cover, he thought hopefully.

“Nice to see you, Björn,” Lisa Mattei concurred. “I don’t know if you remember, but we are actually former colleagues too.”

“Of course I remember,” said Söderström heartily. “You were one of those youngsters who came over with Johansson when he became operations head with us. It was you and Holt and a few others, if I remember correctly. Now he’s put you on Palme, if I understand things right. I saw something in the newspaper the other day.”

“He’s asked us to look over the registration of the material,” said Lisa Mattei.

“It’s about time that something happens,” Söderström said. “I can promise you, Lisa, that you’ve ended up with the right man, because what I don’t know about Olof Palme isn’t worth knowing.”

What do you say if you’re a girl and just had a shot of aquavit? thought Lisa Mattei. Nothing, she thought.

You smile shyly and nod.

It’s already ten, thought Anna Holt, looking at her watch. Time to go home and get your beauty sleep, she decided. Then she walked down the stairs from Malmskillnadsgatan to Tunnelgatan and out onto Sveavägen. Taxis went by there all the time, and considering the sparse traffic she ought to be home in her apartment on Jungfrudansen in Solna, brushing her teeth, in twenty minutes, she thought.

It had gone faster than that. Holt hardly managed to set foot on the sidewalk down on Sveavägen-two yards from the place where a Swedish prime minister, just shot in the back, had fallen headlong onto the street-before a patrol car from the police in West Stockholm braked and stopped alongside her. The older officer who sat next to the driver rolled down the window and nodded toward the backseat.

“If you’re going home, superintendent, it’s fine to ride with us,” he said.

“Nice of you,” said Holt. She opened the door to the backseat and sat behind the driver. It’s a small world, she thought, because she recognized the older officer almost immediately.

“We’re going back to the police station,” he explained. “Coming from an appointment down at Grand Hôtel, and you live up on Jungfrudansen if I remember correctly.”

They had not driven more than fifty yards from the country’s most famous crime scene of all time before he started talking.

“I was there,” he said. “I was working at the Södermalm riot squad, and we were the second patrol at the scene. According to one of all those know-it-all chief inspectors, we were supposed to have been getting out of the bus three minutes after he was shot. The victim, Palme that is, was still on the scene, and at first I didn’t understand who it was, but I could see it was bad. People were screaming and pointing, so me and the other three officers ran down Tunnelgatan and up the stairs, and there was another couple standing and waving, pointing down to David Bagares gata. I ran so hard I could taste blood in my mouth, and you should know, Holt, at that time I didn’t look the way I do today.”

Then more police streamed in. The Norrmalm riot squad, several patrol cars, at least two detective units and one from narcotics.

“After ten minutes there were at least twenty of us searching the blocks around Malmskillnadsgatan. We tried to bring a little order into the general chaos. What were we doing there? ’Cause the man who shot Palme must have been halfway to the moon by then.”

“I thought Christer Pettersson lived a good ways north of the city,” said Holt.

“Pettersson,” said the officer, shaking his head. “If only it had been that good. No, this was probably a guy of a completely different caliber, if you ask me.”

“So you say,” said Holt. Seems like Johansson has his own little fan club, she thought.

Former chief inspector Björn Söderström had not felt better in a long time. First this unexpected invitation from a very elegant former colleague who had the good taste besides to invite her young daughter. Also a former colleague, but above all a very delightful young woman. Then the malt whiskey, and all the good food. Food that an old bachelor like himself was certainly not treated to every day. First he ate pickled herring with chopped egg, dill, brown butter, and potato. A cold beer and an even colder shot of aquavit. The steaming carafe on the table promised more if he desired.

“Well, this I have to say,” said Söderström, raising his glass. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen every day for an old bachelor like me. You ladies ought to know that.”

“It was really nice that you could tear yourself away, Björn,” said Lisa Mattei with a well-mannered smile. The way to a man’s brain goes through his stomach, she thought. Just like all other animals.

“Cheers, Björn,” said her mother, raising her glass to the topmost button of the cleavage that had made her famous in the corps forty years ago. What one won’t do for one’s own daughter, she thought.

Fifteen minutes later Holt’s colleagues let her off outside the building where she lived. Her older colleague, who had been there when Palme was killed, followed her to the entryway.

“The corps has probably never taken as many lumps as after the assassination of Palme. The Swedish police department’s own Poltava,” he summarized as he held open the door for her. “Imagine all the misery we would have avoided if the regular old colleagues from homicide had been in charge of it. Ask me about it. I don’t know how many years those crazies on TV went on and on about the police track and alleged that it was me and the colleagues in the riot squad who were behind the murder of the prime minister.”

“Yes, I’ve seen that,” said Holt, shaking her head. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, extending her hand and smiling.

Because you really have, she thought a minute later as she was standing in the hall of her apartment. If she hadn’t counted wrong there were at least a score of leads in the Palme case files relating to him and his closest associates with the Stockholm police riot squad.

This must be the best completely ordinary day in my life. Or in any event the best I can remember, thought former chief inspector Björn Söderström, sinking his teeth into one of his absolute favorites, an ample grilled entrecôte with garlic butter, served with root vegetables au gratin and a good Rioja to top it off. Raspberries, whipped cream, and vanilla ice cream for dessert. He declined the port wine, too sweet for his taste, but that wasn’t important, for half an later hour he was sitting in a comfortable armchair in his colleague Linda Mattei’s living room with coffee and an excellent cognac.

Wonder where he went after that? thought Holt as she stepped out of the shower. First down to Kungsgatan, but then where? If he really was as skilled as Johansson seems to think, then he’d have to go to some secure location, she thought. Clean up, get rid of the clothes and all the annoying traces of gunpowder, hide his weapon. A secure location, because we all want to go to such a place whether we’re ordinary madmen or professional killers, she thought. An ordinary person or an ordinary madman would surely go home. But this kind of character? Where does he go? A hotel room, a temporary apartment? Best to ask Johansson, she thought, sneering at her own mirror image. Then she brushed her teeth and went to bed.

“It was the worst day of my life,” Söderström sighed. “So I can tell you I remember it in detail.”

“I wasn’t more than eleven when it happened,” said Lisa Mattei, “so I guess I mostly don’t remember anything. But I’ve understood from the papers that I’ve recently read that a lot of people asked how it happened that Palme didn’t have any security that evening.”

“Well,” said Söderström, with an even deeper sigh, “I’ve asked myself that too a number of times. He’s probably the only one who can answer that. He was no easy security object, but he was one very talented and, for the most part, nice guy. The boys who took care of him, he almost always wanted the same officers, so that was Larsson of course, and Fasth. Sometimes Svanh and Gillberg and Kjellin, who had to step in when Larsson and Fasth couldn’t. The boys liked him, pure and simple. So I think I can say that none of them would have hesitated to take a bullet for his sake if it had turned out that way.” Söderström nodded solemnly, taking a very careful gulp considering the seriousness of the moment.

“I understand that he was a troublesome surveillance object,” Mattei coaxed, setting her blond head at an angle to be on the safe side.

“He had his ways, as I said,” said Söderström. “If he’d had his way I think he would have dropped us. He was very careful about his private life, if I may say so.”

“That particular Friday-”

“And that particular Friday,” Söderström continued without letting himself be interrupted, “he said to Larsson and Fasth that they could take off at lunchtime. He would stay at the office until late, and then he intended to go straight home to the residence in Old Town and have dinner with his wife. A calm evening at home in the bosom of the family, as they say. So they didn’t need to be worried about him. Although Larsson, he knew what to expect of the prime minister. He joked with him a little and said,…Can we really rely on that, boss?…or something like that…he said…Palme wasn’t the type to be offended by that sort of thing. As I said, he and the officers liked each other plain and simple. I can vouch for that.”

“A calm evening at home,” Mattei clarified.

“Yes, although when Larsson was joking with him then, the prime minister said he wasn’t planning any major undertakings in any event. That was exactly what he said. That in any event he wasn’t planning any major undertakings. He and the wife had talked about going to the movies, but there was definitely nothing decided, and they had also talked about seeing one of their sons over the weekend. That must have been Mårten, if I remember correctly, for the youngest one was in France when it happened, and where the other one was I don’t honestly remember. His son Mårten and his fiancée, that was it. But nothing definite there either.”

“But he did say that perhaps he would go to the movies with his wife?”

“To be exact he didn’t rule it out. But the likely thing was that he would sit at home all evening with his wife,” said Söderström, taking a more resolute gulp. “When he said that, Larsson joked with him and said that if the prime minister were to change his mind he had to promise to call us at once. So he promised that. He’d been in a good mood, he often was actually, and there was no threat that was current, but in any event he said that if he were to change his plans he would be in touch. He had a special number to our duty desk, as I’m sure you know. A number he could call anytime day or night if he needed to.”

“But he never did,” said Lisa Mattei.

“No,” said Söderström. “He didn’t. The movie came up at the last moment. I guess he thought it wasn’t worth the trouble. In that respect he was really not especially hard to deal with.”

“But you know that at least there were such plans,” said Mattei.

“Of course, Larsson called me right afterward and told me. Said what happened. That he and Fasth had been demobilized, so to speak, and that the security object would be at home during the evening. Possibly that he might go to the movies with his wife or see his son, but that nothing had been decided yet.”

“What did you do then?” asked Mattei.

“I went to bureau director Berg, my top boss,” said Söderström, “and told him what had been said. I think I can say that in a professional sense I wasn’t very happy about that sort of thing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“If I’d been in charge, Palme would always have had security,” said Söderström.

“Berg then? How did he react?”

“He wasn’t happy either,” said Söderström. “He was extremely concerned about Palme’s…well, that bohemian side of his. He said actually that he would call his contact at Rosenbad-that was Nilsson, the special adviser on security issues; if I’m not misinformed he’s still there-and ask one more time if we couldn’t get somewhat clearer instructions. If there was a change in plans Berg promised to contact me immediately so I could reorganize.”

“So what happened then?” said Mattei.

“He never called,” said Söderström, shaking his head.

“Berg never called?”

“No,” said Söderström, who suddenly looked rather moved. “He never called. Right before twelve o’clock, about midnight that is, the officer who was on duty with us called and told me what had happened. That was the absolute worst moment of my entire life.”

Right before Holt fell asleep, in the brief moments between trance and sleep, she thought of it. Suddenly wide awake, she sat bolt upright in bed. It’s clear-that’s the way he did it, she thought.

20

On Friday Holt had e-mailed Lars Martin Johansson and attached the interviews with witness Madeleine Nilsson, Lewin’s memo, and a written summary of the same matter. Where did the murderer go after he shot Palme?

She had not heard a peep from Johansson. After the weekend she ran into him by chance in the police station dining room, quickly led them both to the most remote table, and without any frills asked what he thought about what she’d written.

Considering what he’d said earlier, Johansson appeared strangely uninterested. He’d read the material from Holt. The interview with Madeleine Nilsson was new to him. What could he do about it more than twenty years too late? In principle he agreed with her of course. But what could he do about it more than twenty years too late?

“I also noted,” said Johansson, “that you think our perpetrator went down to Stureplan on Kungsgatan and took the subway east. To the fine neighborhoods of Östermalm and Gärdet, to which regular hoods like Christer Pettersson would never dream of going.”

“More or less,” said Holt.

Considering the story up till then, if he had been following his victim, he could not set out in a car of his own. It didn’t seem likely that he had an accomplice who picked him up either, considering that the whole thing happened before the age of cell phones. He had to manage by himself, and because he was logical and rational, he headed in the wrong direction. The right direction for him but wrong for everyone who was searching for him. He avoided the blocks around City that would be crawling with police officers right after the murder, both down in the subway and up on the street.

“The problem was that they weren’t doing that,” said Johansson, sighing. “The few who were there were running around like decapitated chickens up around Malmskillnadsgatan.”

“But he didn’t know that,” Holt objected. “They ought to have been down in City, and if you’re rational then you are.

“It was the other night,” Holt explained. “Suddenly I happened to think about what Mijailo Mijailovic did when he’d murdered Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.”

“Instead of heading down to City and risking running into all the officers there, he walked calmly and quietly down to Strandvägen and Östermalm,” said Johansson, nodding.

“There he took a taxi, which then took him all the way home to the southern suburbs where people like him usually live,” Holt observed. “He did the exact right thing. Regardless of how crazy he might have been.”

“I don’t believe in any taxi in this case,” said Johansson, shaking his head. “All the regular taxi drivers were checked, and if he’d taken an unlicensed cab the reward would surely have enticed the driver who picked him up.”

“I agree with you,” said Holt. “Besides, I think he returned to Östermalm or Gärdet because he left from there,” she said. “It’s worth trying in any case,” she added.

“Sure,” said Johansson and sighed. “Stockholm must be crawling with tips if you just go looking.”

What’s happening? thought Holt. What’s happened to Johansson?

“Lars,” said Holt. “I don’t recognize you. What happened to embracing the situation?”

“It’s actually your fault, Anna,” said Johansson, and suddenly he looked like usual again.

“Tell me,” said Holt.

“The witness Madeleine Nilsson,” said Johansson. “I got extremely depressed when I read what she said. It was during the first twenty-four hours in Sweden’s largest murder investigation that she said it, and today it is twenty-one years and six months since she said it. Naturally I can’t swear it was the perpetrator she saw, but in any case I wouldn’t have dismissed her like that prize fool of a fellow officer did. Assume that it turned out it was as she said?” Johansson gave Holt an assessing glance.

“I’m still listening.” Holt nodded.

“I won’t put on airs,” said Johansson, “but in that case I can promise you that Bo Jarnebring and I and all the other officers from that time, the ones who knew what they were doing, the ones who had done it all the times before, we would have rooted out the bastard.”

“I see what you mean,” said Holt.

“Damn that Lewin,” said Johansson with sudden vehemence as he stood up suddenly. “Diligent as hell, almost absurdly meticulous, and an excellent head on his shoulders. What use is it to him if he’s too cowardly to use it? Why the hell did someone like that become a cop?”

“Don’t get worked up, Lars,” said Holt. I understand what you mean. You’re not particularly like Jan Lewin, and it’s nice that he didn’t hear what you just said, she thought.

“I’ll try,” Johansson muttered. “See you on Wednesday. Then I want the name of the bastard.”

Police Superintendent Anna Holt, age forty-seven, devoted the weekend to physical exercise, and when she returned to her apartment on Sunday after a two-hour workout she faced the same alternative-free existence she had been lamenting all summer long. Is it my bathroom mirror there’s something wrong with? Is there something wrong with me? Or is there something wrong with guys? thought Holt.

The most startling thing that had happened while she was running like a rabbit in the terrain around the police academy was that her son, Nicke, age twenty-four, had left a message on her voice mail.

For the past week Nicke had been in the archipelago with “the greatest woman in the whole universe.” The life he was now living was “phat,” and to top it off the greatest woman in the universe also owned the “coolest” place in the whole Stockholm archipelago. “What do you mean pool? Ma! We’re talking pools here!”

Besides, her “pears,” her parents that is, had had the good taste to head into town almost as soon as their only daughter showed up with her new boyfriend. “Can’t describe it, really,” said Nicke.

Pears. Wonder if the girl has a name, thought Anna Holt, scrolling to the next message for the answer.

“Her name is Sara, by the way,” said Nicke, and that was that.

There is at least one person who seems to be happy, thought Holt, and without really understanding how it happened she phoned Jan Lewin at home and asked if he wanted to have dinner. Just a sudden impulse. A result of Johansson’s outburst or simply that she had nothing better going on?

“Have dinner,” said Lewin guardedly when he finally answered after the sixth ring.

“Dinner at my place,” said Holt. “So we can talk in peace and quiet,” she clarified. You know, dinner, that meal you eat before you go to bed, and if I said that I bet you’d die on the spot, she thought.

“Sounds nice,” said Lewin. “Do you want me to bring anything?”

“Just bring yourself. I have just about everything,” said Holt.

Because I do, she thought an hour later as she stood frying shrimp and scallops for the salad she intended to serve.

Wonder if she likes me? thought Jan Lewin as he exited the subway in Huvudsta.

“I’ve been thinking about one thing, Jan,” said Anna Holt three hours later. You won’t get a better chance than this, she thought. The first bottle of wine was lying in state in the garbage can out in the kitchen. The second was on the table between them, half empty. She had curled up on the couch, and Jan Lewin was sitting in her favorite chair and appeared both inexplicably calm and generally satisfied with existence.

“Well,” said Lewin.

Not the usual throat clearing, thought Holt. Only a faint smile and a curious expression in his eyes. He should take care of those eyes. If he could just remove the fear from them, I would throw myself flat on my back, she thought.

“All those details you’re so precise about,” said Holt. So now it’s finally said, she thought.

“You’re not the first to wonder,” said Lewin. No throat clearing now either, only the same faint smile. Same brown eyes, although without fear, without guardedness.

“Yes,” said Holt.

“A year ago I actually went to a psychiatrist,” said Lewin. “It was the first time in my life, but I was feeling so bad that I had no choice.”

“This stays between us,” said Holt.

“That doctor was an excellent person,” said Lewin. “A very insightful person, a kind person, and if nothing else I learned a good deal about myself. Among other things, about the carefulness. The anxiety-conditioned carefulness that annoys all the other officers.”

“Not me,” said Holt. “I’m not annoyed by it. But I have wondered about it.” Let me tell you, and it would be strange if I hadn’t, she thought.

“I know,” said Lewin seriously. “I know you don’t get annoyed.” Otherwise I wouldn’t have come here, he thought.

“So what causes it?” said Holt.

“Do you want the short or the long version?” asked Lewin.

“The long one,” said Holt. “If you don’t think it’s too trying, of course.”

“It’s trying,” said Lewin. “Both the short and the long versions, but I can talk about it. Though I never have before.” Never with another officer, he thought. “You’ll get the long version,” said Lewin.

Then he told her.

The summer that Jan Lewin turned seven and after he got his first bicycle, his father died of cancer. First he taught Jan how to ride, and when he finally could his father let go and died of cancer.

“It was as if the bottom went out of me in some strange way,” said Lewin. “Dad took all my security with him when he disappeared.”

Only Jan and his mother remained. No siblings. Only Jan and his mother, and because the bottom had fallen out for her too, her entire life revolved around Jan.

“It’s not easy having a mother who does everything for you. That’s probably the best way to get a guilty conscience about everything and everyone,” Lewin observed.

Most likely that was also why he mostly felt relieved when she too died of cancer. Yes, it really was that way. He was mostly relieved. The bad conscience about her death had only come later.

Jan Lewin was twenty, just starting at the police academy, and Holt thought it was time for her first question. Why did he choose to become a police officer?

“I’m not sure,” said Lewin. His father had a cousin who’d been a policeman. Not a replacement father figure, definitely not, but he’d been in touch on a regular basis, and he’d been there the times when he was really needed. He was a nice guy, Lewin summarized.

But most of all he talked himself red in the face about how Jan should become a policeman. It was the obvious occupation for every decent, honorable fellow who cared about right and justice and other people. Decent, honorable people who didn’t wish anyone anything bad. Such as himself, or like Jan’s mother, father, and Jan. Added to that, there was the camaraderie. Police officers always stood up for one another. Just like all those near and dear in a big, happy family.

“There were less than half as many of us at the police department at that time, but I bought the argument lock, stock, and barrel. Suddenly getting a family with seven thousand members who backed you up in all kinds of weather. That argument hit home with someone like me,” Lewin observed.

“Then you discovered that not everyone in the family was fun to deal with,” Holt put in.

“I guess it’s like that in all families, and I discovered that the very first day,” said Lewin. “The first thing I discovered was that almost all the people in the family were men, young men, and that not all of them were fun to deal with, and that basically none of them was like me.”

“But you chose to stay anyway,” said Holt. Why didn’t you leave? she thought.

“Yes,” said Lewin. “I was of course already me, so naturally I chose to stay. On the other hand, just quitting and telling them where to go, that wasn’t me.”

Jan Lewin stayed on. An odd character, but good enough at sports not to be bullied for the usual reason at that place and at that time. In addition, he was good to have around when there were tests looming in law and other theoretical subjects.

“Believe it or not,” said Lewin, “I was actually a pretty good runner at that time and a passable marksman.”

“Although you were best in the theoretical subjects,” said Holt.

“Yes,” said Lewin. “The competition was not exactly murderous. Not in the late sixties at the police academy in Solna,” he said, suddenly looking cheerful.

“Our police instructor took a liking to me,” he continued. “Already after the first course he came up and said that it had been years since he’d had such a promising student. Who do you think his last promising student was, by the way?”

“Johansson,” said Holt. “Although according to the story I heard in the building, you should have been better.”

“More precise,” said Lewin, nodding. “The only thing our old teacher had to say against Lars Martin Johansson was that he had a bohemian nature. That he wasn’t humble enough and wasn’t even afraid to talk back. But what did it matter if you were like him?”

The years after school had simply rolled by, and Jan Lewin fell into line and followed along. His old teacher from the academy had not forgotten him. As soon as Lewin fulfilled the mandatory years with the uniformed police, his mentor called and offered him a position with the homicide squad in Stockholm, and it couldn’t get better than that.

“It was not by chance that the homicide squad at that time was called the first squad, and the chief inspector with the first squad who dealt with murder investigations was C-I-1, chief inspector one,” Lewin clarified.

“Those were the happiest years in my life actually,” said Lewin. “We had a boss at homicide who was just as big a legend at that time as our own Johansson is today.”

“Dahlgren,” said Holt.

“Dahlgren,” Lewin confirmed, nodding. “When he welcomed me and we had a so-called private conversation, he told me that he was the only one on the squad who had his diploma, from Hvitfeldtska secondary school in Gothenburg to boot, and that he had noticed that now there were two of us. And even if Södra Latin in Stockholm couldn’t compare to Hvitfeldtska, still, even more was expected from people like him and me than from the ordinary, somewhat simpler officers. Dahlgren was a good person. He was educated, humorous, a very unusual policeman even at homicide. Which should have the best in the corps anyway.”

Even so he took his own life, thought Holt. Because she didn’t intend to say that.

“Even so he took his own life,” said Lewin suddenly, “but maybe you knew that.”

“Yes,” said Holt. “I heard he got sick, was disabled, and as soon as he came home he took his own life.”

“It was his heart. He couldn’t imagine such a life,” said Lewin. “Being a burden to others was inconceivable to him.”

So it was better to shoot himself. Because regardless of how educated and humorous he might have been, he was still the man he was, thought Holt. How damn stupid can they really be? she thought.

“Then I got my first big case,” said Lewin. “I remember that. Just as well as I remember the summer when Dad died.”

Now he looks that way again, thought Holt.

“It was 1978, in the fall,” said Lewin. “I was barely thirty, and it wasn’t common that such a young investigator got to run a murder investigation, but that particular fall we were really busy. It was Dahlgren who decided it, and that’s how it was, and if I had problems I could always come to him.

“Of course there were problems,” Lewin continued, sighing. “Although of course I hadn’t foreseen them.”

A young Polish-born prostitute had been murdered in her studio in Vasastan. One of the major murders of that time, headline material in the tabloids. In a police sense it was cleared up and carried down to the basement the moment the prime suspect committed suicide.

“The Kataryna murder,” said Lewin. “The victim was named Kataryna Rosenbaum. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it? The perpetrator had treated her very badly. A very intense assault.”

“I’ve read about it,” said Holt. And heard about it, she thought. About how Jan Lewin basked in police department glory.

“The one who was finally arrested, he was in prison for a few months, and according to the tabloids he was of course the one who did it. He was a man who knew her. They met at a restaurant, started a relationship; he didn’t know she was a prostitute. According to him she said she ran a secretarial agency. He was a completely ordinary man. Divorced, true, but almost everyone was at that time. Had a child with his ex-wife, a little girl, lived alone in a large apartment out in Vällingby, engineer, orderly circumstances, good finances.”

“From the little I’ve read it seems pretty clear that it was him,” said Holt.

“Yes, I actually believe that,” said Lewin. “When he realized his new woman was a prostitute, something snapped inside him and he beat her to death. According to what I arrived at myself, at least.”

“But the evidence wasn’t sufficient and the prosecutor let him out.”

“Yes,” said Lewin. “Before my associates and I had time to have another go at it, he took his own life. On Christmas Eve of all days,” said Lewin.

“But that’s hardly anything you can be blamed for,” Holt objected. “If you’re a more or less normal person and you’ve murdered someone, that’s probably reason enough. To take your life, I mean.”

“He doesn’t think so,” said Lewin, making a grimace.

“Excuse me,” said Holt. What is it he’s saying? she thought.

“Not when he visits me in my dreams,” said Lewin.

“So what does he say?” asked Holt.

“That he was innocent,” said Lewin. “That it was my fault that he took his own life. That I was the one who murdered him.”

“I can imagine what your psychiatrist said about that.”

“Yes,” said Lewin. “She was very clear on that point. It wasn’t even about him. It was about me.”

“I agree with her,” said Holt.

“I don’t know,” said Lewin. “But it helped to talk about it.”

“It helped?”

“Yes,” said Lewin. “Now it’s been awhile since he visited me last. What do you think about a quick stroll, by the way? These therapy sessions can be a strain. My legs fall asleep.”

“Sure,” said Holt. “We can finish that when we come back,” she said, nodding at the wine bottle on the table. Now he’s smiling again. Maybe you should switch jobs, Anna, she thought.