Free Falling, As If in a Dream

Just under an hour’s run and the Volvo Penta marine diesel engine that is Esperanza’s heart has taken her twelve nautical miles out into the bay. Past Platja de Formentor, Cala Murta, and the excellent fishing spots outside El Bancal where you can catch sea perch, octopus, and skate almost year-round. Less than a nautical mile remaining to the tip of the peninsula at Cap de Formentor and then straight out in the deep channel toward Canal de Menorca. Heaving swell with foam on top, a good deal deeper under her keel, parry with the rudder, soon time to make the final decision and shift course. The sun like a flaming ball halfway toward the zenith. High enough to burn off the haze and keep it 90 degrees in the shade. A hot day even here where it is normally almost 70 degrees during the day long into the fall. Other boats in sight and Esperanza is no longer alone on the sea.

21

Six weeks earlier, Wednesday, August 29.

The headquarters of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation on Kungsholmen in Stockholm

“Flykt is no longer among us,” said Johansson. “Tips are pouring in, so the Palme group has its hands full. We’ll have to get by without him, and I thought that you, Lisa, could start,” said Johansson, nodding at Mattei.

“Okay,” said Lisa Mattei. “As I already told the boss, I saw Söderström last week. As I’m sure you know, he was the head of the bodyguards when Palme was assassinated.”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson solemnly, clasping his hands over his belly and sinking down in his own chair. The one that was twice as big as all the others around the table in his own conference room. The one that had neck support, arms, a foldable footrest, and built-in massage function.

Mattei reported what Söderström had said. That the prime minister, the day he was murdered, mentioned that he had tentative plans to go to the movies, or perhaps meet the family outside his own residence. Plans, Mattei underscored. The actual decision to go to the movies, and then kill two birds with one stone by also seeing their son Mårten and his fiancée, had been made only half an hour before Olof Palme and his wife left their apartment.

“I see then,” said Johansson. “How many of the officers up at SePo were aware of his plans before he decided?”

“If I may add something before I touch on that,” said Lisa Mattei, with a careful glance at her boss.

“Of course,” said Johansson with a generous hand gesture.

“I’ve read the interviews with both his wife and his son. The decision to go to the movies was made that evening. What decided the issue was probably his conversation with his son about eight o’clock. He had, however, talked about plans to do that earlier the same day.”

“Which of the colleagues at SePo knew about it, his plans, that is?” asked Holt.

“First the two officers who were assigned to him that day,” said Mattei. “They were his usual bodyguards. The two colleagues the newspapers at that time always called Bill and Bull,” said Mattei. “Criminal Inspector Kjell Larsson and Detective Sergeant Orvar Fasth. When at noon the prime minister told them he didn’t need them anymore, Larsson called Söderström and reported how things were. Söderström went directly to his superior, bureau head Berg, and informed him; thus so far there are four people at SePo who were already aware of the whole thing at twelve noon.”

“After that,” said Lewin.

“Then it gets trickier,” said Mattei. “Because Söderström might need to reorganize and send in two replacements for Larsson and Fasth, he informed the officer on duty during the evening. He in turn, at least this is what Söderström thinks, talked with the six guards on the on-duty list for the weekend. Another seven colleagues and now we’re up to eleven,” Mattei summarized.

“Which probably means the whole squad must have known about it by that time,” Lewin observed.

“Not everyone,” Mattei objected. “That’s not what I think at least.”

“Why not?” asked Holt. “Even at the time I was working there they had a break room.”

“Certainly more than eleven.” Mattei nodded. “Some of them must have said something to someone. But at the same time we have to be clear that this was not exactly a big sensation. The victim already had a history of similar behavior, if I may say so. Sometimes he simply wanted to be left alone.” Who doesn’t, she thought.

“Twenty,” Johansson suggested with a slight wave of his right hand. “About twenty of our colleagues in the bodyguards knew that the prime minister had vague plans to go out and do something.”

“Sounds about right,” said Mattei. “In total there were thirty-eight officers working there at that time.”

“Okay,” said Johansson. “How many at the victim’s office knew about it?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Mattei, shaking her head. “My contacts in the government offices are still small, or more precisely, nonexistent. I’ve read the interviews with the people who worked there.”

“So what do they say?” said Johansson.

“The question about possibly going to the movies was not asked at all.”

“What kind of nonsense is that?” said Johansson. “It’s clear they must have asked about that.”

“No,” Mattei persisted. “The closest you get is that a few were asked whether the prime minister said anything about leaving his residence that evening. That’s not really the same thing,” she observed.

Certainly not, thought Johansson.

“All three who were asked replied that he did not,” said Mattei. “On the other hand, no one was asked about any plans.”

“I do have a contact in the government offices,” said Johansson. “He was around back then. I think I’ll talk to him and then get back to you.”

“The special adviser, later undersecretary, the government’s éminence grise, the man without a name, Sweden’s own Cardinal Richelieu,” said Mattei.

“Oh well,” said Johansson. “It’s probably not all that remarkable. His name is actually Nilsson.” So you’re aware of him in any event, he thought.

“He was interviewed too,” said Mattei.

“So what does he say?” asked Johansson.

“Nothing, basically absolutely nothing,” said Mattei. “He simply has nothing to say. He actually says that. That’s almost the only thing he says. Out of consideration for the security of the realm, he can’t say anything. Out of consideration for the security of the realm he also can’t explain why he can’t say anything. It’s completely meaningless. When he gets that routine question in the beginning about confirming that he is who he is, name and address and social security number and all that, he tells the interviewer to stop fooling around. Stop fooling around, next question, constable. Word for word, that’s what he says.”

“So what does the officer who interviewed him say?” asked Johansson.

“He apologizes. He’s probably about to pee his pants,” said Mattei.

“I’ll talk to him,” said Johansson with an authoritative expression. “Then I’ll get back to you.”

“About twenty at SePo, an unknown number at his office, but at least one-”

“Who’s that?” interrupted Johansson.

“The special adviser,” said Mattei. “Bureau head Berg confirmed that in his memos from the day of the murder. They’re incorporated into the case files, and according to Berg’s notes he discussed various security issues with him, including the prime minister’s personal protection, at around three in the afternoon. What this concerned in concrete terms, according to Söderström, was the prime minister’s plans to possibly go to the movies that evening.”

“But the officer who questioned him still must have asked about his conversation with Berg,” said Johansson.

“He did, too. But out of consideration for the security of the realm, blah blah blah, and next question, please. Amazing interview,” said Mattei.

“What remains is the victim’s family,” she continued. “His wife, his son Mårten, and the son’s then girlfriend. That makes three, and according to the interviews none of them talked with anyone else. Moreover, both the wife and the son seem pretty security conscious, if I may say so.”

“Friends and acquaintances then,” Johansson persisted.

“According to the interviews with former cabinet minister Sven Aspling and party secretary Bo Toresson, besides the son the only ones he talked with on the phone from home that same evening, he didn’t say anything about this.”

“They were asked the question anyway,” said Johansson.

“Yes,” said Mattei. “They were.”

“So basically the whole world may have known about his plans, at least five or six hours before he even decided,” sighed Johansson.

“A maximum of fifty persons, if you’re asking me. Twenty at SePo, perhaps as many at his office, plus ten as a margin of error. Makes fifty tops,” said Mattei.

It’s always something, thought Johansson. The date and time of the masquerade at the Stockholm Royal Opera House in March 1792 were known by several hundred people months in advance. A hundred of them received written invitations two months before, and at least ten of those who were there had been involved in the assassination of Gustav III.

“High time for a little leg stretch,” said Johansson, getting up suddenly.

22

After the leg stretch Holt declared that she no longer believed either in Christer Pettersson as the perpetrator or in the escape route that the Palme investigators had decided on early in the investigation. On the other hand, she did believe in the witness Madeleine Nilsson and even in Johansson’s description of the perpetrator.

“You’ve finally seen the truth and the light,” said Johansson.

“Call it what you want. I’ve changed my opinion,” answered Holt.

“Although it took awhile, Anna,” Johansson teased.

Mattei seemed to have taken on Holt’s doubts. With all respect for Holt and Lewin’s calculations, she was generally skeptical of witness statements. Essentially the only thing they had accomplished was to cast doubt on the earlier investigation’s theories and promote a new hypothesis instead. Not an antithesis even, only a hypothesis.

“But we can’t be any more certain than that,” said Mattei. “A dramatic, muddled situation. Seconds here or there, that means nothing to me,” she declared, shaking her blond head.

“Do you think there’s any point in testing it then, our hypothesis, that is?” asked Johansson.

“Of course,” said Mattei. “It’s the only thing we have. We don’t even need to prioritize. But it won’t be an easy task finding our alternative perpetrator in the case files. Assuming that he’s there. I can promise you that, boss.”

“It doesn’t seem completely hopeless though,” Johansson objected. “A highly qualified perpetrator between ages thirty-five and forty-five, military, police officer, or someone else who understands this sort of thing, no criminal record, access to weapons, good financial and other resources, who has an inside contact in the government offices, with SePo or in Palme’s family. To me it doesn’t sound like a completely impossible task. Especially if you consider that he would have taken the subway to Östermalm or Gärdet when he’d finished the mission,” he added, smiling at Holt.

“The problem is that you can’t look for him that way,” said Mattei. “It’s not like on the Internet, where you can enter a number of search terms to limit the number of alternatives. The Palme case files are organized in a completely different way. Or according to completely different principles, to be exact.”

“So what are those principles?” said Johansson, looking suspiciously at Mattei.

“It is highly unclear,” said Mattei. “I don’t even think they know themselves. It’s said that the material has been organized by investigation lead file, but it’s not searchable in the way you’re talking about, boss.”

“Investigation lead file,” said Johansson with a bewildered look. I guess everyone knows what that is, he thought.

“Yes, and clearly different things are meant by that,” said Mattei. “The most common lead is a so-called tip, which as a rule means that an informant has pointed to an individual; there are thousands of such tips. The next most common is an action that the investigators themselves have initiated, an interview, a search, an expert witness, basically anything at all. Even the sort of thing that the first investigation leader called ‘tracks’ in the mass media are stored as lead files. In a nutshell, it can be anything at all. Most of it seems to have been sorted in a spirit of fatigue. Everything is already so messy and immense that when something new shows up, they don’t really know what binder to put it in. So it gets put in a separate binder. Literally speaking, that is. Would you like an example, boss?”

“Gladly,” said Johansson. One lethal stab more or less makes no difference, he thought.

“I discovered the other day, for example, by pure chance, that the same tip from the same informant-it concerns the singling out of a certain individual as Palme’s murderer-was registered in three different lead files. Considering the identity of the informant, and he is a very diligent one, I won’t rule out that there are more leads than that. Same tip, same informant, same perpetrator who is singled out. At least three different leads, according to the registry.”

“But why in the name of God then?” said Johansson.

“It came in at three different times, received by different officers. Because of the previous registration it couldn’t be grouped with the earlier tip,” said Mattei, shrugging her shoulders.

“What do you say, Lewin?” said Johansson. It sounds completely random, he thought.

“I’m inclined to agree with Lisa,” Lewin said. “If you don’t know which file to look in, then it’s hard. That is, knowing what you’re looking for doesn’t help. You also have to know where to look. Apart from certain isolated exceptions.”

“Like what then?” said Johansson. This is contrary to the nature of searching, he thought.

“The so-called police track is probably the best example. When the investigation started its work, SePo got the task of investigating all information that concerned the police. Almost all the officers who were singled out as involved in the murder worked in Stockholm, and considering that almost the entire investigation force was recruited from Stockholm it was considered inappropriate for them to investigate themselves, so to speak. So SePo got to do it, and the one good thing about that was that the material is collected in one place, most of it anyway. What it’s like for anything that has come in later I honestly don’t know.

“Okay,” said Johansson. “I hear what you’re saying. We just have to do the best we can. Work with what we’ve got.” What the hell choice do we have? he thought.

“I think you know that, Lars,” said Holt.

“Know what?” said Johansson.

“That we always do the best we can,” said Holt.

“Excellent,” said Johansson curtly. “Same time, same place, in a week.”

“And then you want the name of the one who did it,” said Holt. “Wasn’t his name ‘The Bastard’?”

“Watch it, Anna,” said Johansson.

23

After their meeting Johansson took Lewin aside for a private conversation. What choice did he really have? What had evidently been an excellent, or in any case an energetic, idea fourteen days earlier had so far only produced five different results.

More than four hundred work hours for Holt, Lewin, and Mattei, who of course did not lack other tasks. Waste of police resources. That was the first.

The media also appeared to have put on high alert all the notorious informants who constantly made life miserable for this investigation. Flykt and his colleagues were not amused. That was the second.

Johansson had clearly ended up in the little black book at the editorial offices of Sweden’s Largest Morning Newspaper. There had been a daily harvest of arrows against his bared chest, news articles about various improprieties at the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, editorials on the police department’s lack of efficiency, and most recently a cartoon with the heading “Remembrance of Things Past.” Depicted was a very fat Johansson holding a leashed German shepherd with one hand while he shone a flashlight on something that suspiciously resembled an ordinary pile of dog shit. Johansson was not amused. That was the third.

What was left were things that had to do with the issue at hand.

There was the insight that the material to a large degree had already been lost. The old police article of faith that the perpetrator you didn’t manage to find, despite everything, was there in the investigation might well be correct. The problem was simply that this time there were far too many papers that were far too unsorted for anyone to have a reasonable chance of finding him. That was the fourth.

At last the fifth. Fourteen days had passed and what had three of the country’s very best detectives actually accomplished? On reasonably good grounds they had called into question the previously accepted opinion about the perpetrator’s escape route. And they had offered only a new question mark in return.

There was the witness Madeleine Nilsson who had encountered a nameless, faceless man unknown to everyone on the stairs down to Kungsgatan. Before or after the murder? False or true? Regardless, the witness had been dead for about twenty years.

Lewin was a cautious general. If all generals had been like Lewin, there never would have been any wars. Lewin was nevertheless an excellent police officer. One of the very best. Okay, thought Johansson. Ask a direct question. If Lewin, in his peculiar way, even hints that this is futile, then you close it down.

“What do you say, Jan?” said Johansson. “Is this at all meaningful?”

“Don’t know,” said Lewin. “Easy it’s not.”

“Should we break it off and swallow the bitter pill?”

“Give it another week, by then we’ll have made an honorable attempt at least,” said Lewin. It must be Anna, he thought. She’s still on my mind.

“Okay,” said Johansson. What the hell has happened to Lewin? he thought. The guy seems to have had a change of personality.

“Sometimes you do things for good reasons but without really being clear about what those reasons are,” said Lewin meditatively.

“That was nice of you, Jan, but this time maybe it’s mostly about vanity,” said Johansson.

“Let’s give it another week,” said Lewin, getting up, nodding, and leaving.

It’s not just vanity, thought Johansson as his colleague closed the door after him. Of course he had personal reasons, that sort of thing is always present, but in this particular case it was probably more about the thirst for revenge than about vanity.

The week before he went on vacation he had been at an international police chief conference at Interpol’s headquarters in Lyons. These were recurring meetings that were aimed at people like him, whether they came from England or Saudi Arabia, Austria or Sri Lanka. Pleasant gatherings, to be sure, with plenty of time allotted for more informal activities. On the very first evening after the official banquet he and the usual colleagues from near and far gathered at the bar that was within walking distance of their hotel and which for several years now they considered their own regular bar in Lyons. There they had listened to the classic war stories. Everyone had something to contribute in the give-and-take, and naturally Johansson received the usual taunts for the same old reason. That the murder of his own country’s prime minister had remained unsolved for more than twenty years constituted the most colossal failure in global police history. Regardless of what anyone believed about the role that Lee Harvey Oswald had played in the assassination of Kennedy in November 1963.

This time it was one of his best friends, the head of the detective department of the Metropolitan Police in London, who fired the first stone in the direction of Johansson’s glass house. With an innocent expression, a friendly smile, and the nasal voice, vocabulary, and body language that people like him acquired at the breast at the family estate.

“How about the Olof Palme assassination? Any new leads? Can we look forward to an imminent breakthrough in your, quite surely, assiduous investigation? Satisfy our curiosity, Lars. Inform us ignoramuses in our professional darkness. Dispel all our worries.”

The usual merry cackling, obviously. Toasts and sporting nods to take the edge off of what had just been said-no harm intended of course, comrades-in-arms, et cetera, et cetera-but in Johansson’s case of little consolation, because the failure with the Palme investigation stuck in his head like a thorn.

For that reason too they always got the same answer.

With the Swedish police department’s Palme investigation, things were unfortunately so bad that for years it had served as an example of the danger of a major murder investigation being cockeyed from the start. There was the fact that they had failed to seize the perpetrator at the scene of the crime or surround and arrest him in its immediate vicinity. That almost never happened when it concerned the murder of someone like the Swedish prime minister.

Instead there was an unknown murderer who disappeared in the darkness of the night. Police procedures and professional practices that suddenly seemed swamped by officers running in all directions. All the wild hypotheses and pure guessing games as a substitute for the persistent, penetrating, long-term detective work that was the structural part of every genuine police identity. Everything that held them up. The individual police officer just as much as the corps he served.

But certainly he and his Swedish colleagues had learned their lesson, and if they didn’t believe him, all they had to do was to think back to the same Swedish police department’s successful hunt for the murderer of the Swedish foreign minister a few years ago.

“A good piece of old-time footwork, if you ask me,” Johansson stated in his now impeccable police chief English. “We learned our lesson. We did it the hard way. But we did it well.”

His English friend and colleague nodded in assent and indicated his approval by slightly raising his glass of amber-colored malt whiskey. But he didn’t want to let go, for if he’d understood things right the investigation was still active. Despite what Johansson had just said, and despite more than twenty years of failure.

“It’s about embracing the situation,” said Johansson sternly. “As long as the statute of limitations hasn’t passed, we’re going to keep at it.” He hadn’t said a word about the fact that for many years his investigators had essentially been occupied with other things.

“An obvious courtesy to a high-standing politician who was murdered,” agreed his English companion, and obviously the only one imaginable or indeed appropriate, should anyone ask his opinion. Moreover a necessary measure to preserve political stability in every constitutional state and democracy. Despite the fact that police officers were actually above politics.

Possibly, nodded Johansson. Perhaps he hadn’t thought about this because political theorizing left him cold. He hadn’t even been involved in the investigation until much later, and then in the role of the government’s technical expert in the various commissions that had been appointed. At the same time, if it was the police’s failure that was to be explained, he wanted to underscore an observation he’d made, and from his listener’s changed body language he understood that the occasion had arrived.

His well-mannered tormentor had obviously fallen into the trap, coming to a halt in Johansson’s field of fire with his broad side toward the shooter. This was extraordinarily interesting and he wanted to hear more about it at once.

“It is essential for complicated police investigations to be run by real police officers,” said Johansson as he smiled just as amiably, leaned forward, and patted his adversary on the shoulder.

According to Johansson’s firm opinion, it was completely dangerous, not to say a guaranteed total fiasco, to turn such things over to all those attorneys and bureaucrats who populated the upper echelons of most modern Western police organizations nowadays, and this unfortunately had been done at the time when his own prime minister was assassinated.

“Touché, Lars,” replied the colleague from New Scotland Yard, seeming almost more amused than the happy faces around him. Sure, it was no secret that he personally had not patrolled his way up through the corps that he now led. It was not until he turned fifty that he had risen from the judge’s high bench in the criminal court at the Old Bailey to take his place in the executive suite on Victoria Street. For all that, the judge’s seat he’d left for the police could be of use in that context. Especially as he worked mostly with finance and personnel issues and “would never dream of sticking my long nose in a murder investigation.”

“You’re the one who started it,” grunted Johansson.

Then it continued as it always did; this time the acting police chief in Paris was talking about the city’s problems with “all the statues of great Frenchmen, the plentiful occurrence of pigeons, and not least the fact that the pigeons in Paris shit like crazy.”

According to Johansson’s French colleague, the Swedish Palme investigation was an extraordinary example of basically the only thing that the police could do. Failure or no. Actually Johansson and his Palme investigators played the same decisive role for the maintenance of Respect for Authority in Sweden as the fifty-some persevering workers with the municipal cleaning company in Paris, who tried to keep all the statues in the city free of pigeon shit.

“Respect for a great nation stands and falls with respect for the great leader,” he said. He himself wanted to take the opportunity to make a toast to his Swedish colleague who, with indefatigable zeal and self-sacrifice, and without the least regard for his own comfort, had shouldered this task.

High time to call it an evening, thought Lars Martin Johansson as soon as the volleys of laughter subsided, and two hours later, as he was lying in bed in his hotel room, he made up his mind. Then he fell asleep. Just like he always did when he was at home. Lying flat on his back with his hands clasped over his chest. Quickly falling asleep while he thought about his wife and that he left her far too often for things that were actually unimportant and only stole their lives from them both.

24

“Has anything happened?” Johansson asked his secretary as soon as Lewin had left him.

“Things happen here all the time,” she answered.

“Has anyone called?”

Just like always calls had been coming in the whole time. Not that the whole world wanted to talk with her boss, but a good share of those who were interested in the darker side seemed to experience a strong need to get in touch with him in particular. Just like always she’d taken care of these calls herself and given the person who called what he or she needed without having to disturb Johansson. With two exceptions so far on this Wednesday morning.

“That secretive character down in Rosenbad called, the one who never says his name.”

“So what did he want?” The prime minister’s own special adviser, Sweden’s own Cardinal Richelieu, thought Johansson.

“Are you making fun of me, Lars?” she answered. “He wouldn’t even spit out whether he would call again or if you should call him.”

“I’ll talk with him,” said Johansson. “Who was the other one?”

“Probably nothing important,” his secretary answered, shaking her head.

“He doesn’t have a name either?”

“Well, he’s called several times. Last Friday, actually, but because I didn’t want to disturb the weekend for you I thought it could wait.”

“Name,” said Johansson, snapping his fingers.

“Bäckström,” said his secretary and sighed. “He called the first time last Friday, and since then he’s called another half a dozen times. Most recently just this morning.”

“Bäckström,” repeated Johansson skeptically. “Are we talking about that fat little creep I kicked off the homicide squad?” It can’t be possible. That was only a year ago, he thought.

“I’m afraid it is. Chief Inspector Evert Bäckström. He demanded to speak with you personally. It was extremely important and enormously sensitive.”

“So what was it about?” asked Johansson.

“He wouldn’t say.”

“Tell Lewin to call him,” said Johansson.

“Of course, boss,” said Johansson’s secretary. Poor, poor Jan Lewin, she thought.

Johansson’s secretary contacted Lewin by sending an e-mail via the police department’s own variation of GroupWise, a system that was difficult to break into even for a talented hacker. Because Johansson’s secretary was not the least bit like her boss, it was both a courteous and an explanatory message. Obviously formulated as a request. Would Lewin be so kind as to contact Chief Inspector Evert Bäckström, current position with the property investigation squad with the Stockholm police, and find out what he really wanted? This by request of their mutual boss, Lars Martin Johansson, chief of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

What have I gotten myself into? thought Lewin. Only an hour ago, in a moment of weakness that had flapped past his top superior on weary wings, he had had the decision in his hands and a decent chance of putting an end to the whole charade. Now it was too late. Everything was as usual again and probably even worse. After taking three deep breaths he called Bäckström, and just as he’d feared he too was the same as always.

“Bäckström speaking,” Bäckström answered.

“Yes, hi, Bäckström,” said Lewin. “This is Jan Lewin. All’s well, I hope. I have a question for you.”

“Johnny,” said Bäckström loudly and clearly, because he knew that Jan Lewin hated being called Johnny. “It’s been awhile, Johnny,” he continued. “What can I help you with?”

Lewin steeled himself. Really exerted himself to be polite, correct, and brief. He was calling on the boss’s behalf. The boss wondered what Bäckström wanted and he had assigned Jan Lewin to find out.

“If he’s so fucking horny about it I suggest he get in touch himself,” said Bäckström.

“Excuse me,” said Lewin.

“Now it’s like this, Johnny,” said Bäckström in his most pedagogical tone of voice. “If I were you,” he continued, “I would seriously advise him to call me. I think it’s in his own interest. Considering what he’s up to,” he clarified.

“I’m interpreting this as that you don’t want to talk with me,” said Lewin.

“As I said,” said Bäckström. “If I were Johansson I would sure call Chief Inspector Bäckström. Not send you, Johnny.”

“I’ll convey that,” said Lewin. “Anything else you want said?”

“If he really wants to put some order in Palme, then he can call,” said Bäckström. “Now you’ll have to excuse me. I have a lot to do.”

What an exceptionally primitive policeman, thought Jan Lewin.

Regardless of anyone’s opinion of the prime minister’s own special adviser, he certainly could not be accused of being primitive. On the contrary, he was cultivated far beyond the limits of ordinary human understanding. Johansson called him on his most secret phone number and he answered immediately. Obviously without identifying himself because that, considering his mission and calling, was so to speak in the nature of things.

“Yes,” said the special adviser with an inquisitive hesitation on the word.

“Johansson,” said Johansson. “I heard you called, and naturally I’m wondering if there’s anything I can help you with. How are you doing, by the way?”

“Lovely to hear from you, Johansson,” said the special adviser with tangible warmth in his voice.

Actually he didn’t want anything in particular. Just a simple “how are you doing these days?” to a good friend with whom he got in touch far too seldom. Personally he was just back from a well-deserved vacation, and as soon as he’d set foot on Swedish soil he was struck by the thought that he had to call his dear old friend Lars Martin Johansson.

“An almost Freudian symbolism,” observed the special adviser, who seemed to have had vague presentiments of Johansson even an hour earlier, as he sat in the government plane en route from London to Arlanda, but it was only when he set foot “on the native soil that shaped us both” that the pieces fell into place.

“Nice of you to think of me,” said Johansson. Talk, talk, talk, he thought. Otherwise the special adviser was feeling “really splendid, just as I deserve, and thanks for asking.” He had obviously noted Johansson’s friendly offer of unspecified help, but that was not why he’d called, but simply to invite Johansson to dinner. Socialize, eat a little and drink a little.

“What do you think?” said the special adviser.

“Sounds nice,” said Johansson. “It will be a pleasure.”

“What do you think about doing it as soon as tomorrow?”

“Suits me fine,” said Johansson.

This preparedness, this readiness, this obvious capacity…regardless of all of life’s changes…not to mention unforeseen and spontaneous invitations.

“I envy you, Lars.” The special adviser sighed. “Imagine if I could always be the same. Shall we say seven-thirty at my humble abode in the Uppland suburbs?”

“Looking forward to it,” said Johansson. Wonder what he really wants? he thought, and personally he also had a question to which he wanted an answer.

“What did Bäckström want?” asked Johansson as soon as he finished the call and got hold of his secretary.

“He didn’t want to talk with Lewin in any event,” she replied. “He wanted to talk with you. Lewin suspects that he has a tip about the Palme assassination. Bäckström called again just five minutes ago.”

“In that case he’ll have to take it up with Flykt,” grunted Johansson.

“I actually suggested that,” said his secretary. “I told him that if it concerned the Palme assassination, he should call Flykt.”

“What did he say then?”

“He demanded to talk with you,” sighed his secretary.

“The hell he will,” said Johansson, feeling his blood pressure rise. “Call Flykt and tell him to shut the bastard up. Now!”

“I’ll speak with Flykt,” said Johansson’s secretary. Poor, poor Yngve Flykt, she thought.

Flykt didn’t send Bäckström an e-mail. All that stuff with IT and computers and networks and all the other electronic hocus-pocus that the younger officers were involved in was not his cup of tea. It was extremely overrated, if you asked him, and in any event he was too old to learn that kind of thing.

What was wrong with an ordinary, honorable telephone? The classic police resource when you wanted to get in touch with someone, thought Flykt as he dialed Bäckström’s number. Bäckström answered the moment after the first ring.

“Hello, Henning,” Bäckström hissed. “Where were we when we were interrupted?”

“I’m looking for Chief Inspector Bäckström, Evert Bäckström,” Flykt clarified. “Have I-”

“Bäckström speaking,” said Bäckström, sounding just like always again.

“That’s good,” said Flykt. “Then I’ve called the right number. This is Yngve. Yngve Flykt at the Palme group. Hope all’s well with you, Bäckström. I heard you had something about Palme? I’m all ears.”

“Do you have a paper and pen?” asked Bäckström.

“Of course,” said Flykt sincerely, because he’d hit the record button before he phoned. “I’m taking notes,” he lied. This is going like a dance, thought Flykt.

“Then you can tell your so-called boss that he can call me,” said Bäckström.

“I understand,” said Flykt. “But he has actually asked me to talk with you. This is my area, my and my colleagues’ area, as I’m sure you understand.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” said Bäckström. “So you can tell him I don’t want to talk with you.”

“Now I think you’re being unjust, Evert,” said Flykt. “If you have something to contribute, it’s actually your duty as an officer-”

“Listen, Flykt,” interrupted Bäckström, “I don’t want to talk with you. I might just as well call the newspapers. I want to talk with Johansson.”

“But why?”

“Ask Johansson,” said Bäckström. “Ask Johansson if he has any ideas about that.”

“He seemed completely out of control, if you ask me,” said Flykt five minutes later.

“You have the call on tape,” said Johansson.

“Of course,” said Flykt. “First I got a definite impression that he thought it was someone else who was calling, some Henning…You don’t think he may be in contact with that old celebrity lawyer? Henning Sjöström?”

“I can’t imagine that,” said Johansson. “Sjöström is an excellent fellow. He only defends pedophiles, arsonists, and mass murderers. Someone like Bäckström he wouldn’t touch with a pair of tongs.

“It’ll work out,” he continued, shrugging his shoulders. “Just e-mail me the conversation.”

“Obviously, boss,” said Flykt. What do I do now? Best to ask a younger talent, he thought.

“Now let’s do this,” said Lars Martin Johansson fifteen minutes later, looking sternly at his secretary.

“I’m listening, boss.”

“Prepare a memorandum on all previous conversations with Bäckström. As of now I want complete documentation when he calls again. When he’s called five more times, inform me immediately.”

“Understood, boss,” said his secretary. Poor, poor Evert Bäckström, she thought.

25

After the meeting with Johansson, Holt felt a need to leave her office and the police building on Kungsholmen where her desk was only one of several thousand. Simply get out and move around. Work the way she had back when she was a real police officer. Talk with someone who’d been there and had something to tell.

Lisa Mattei had expressed doubt about Holt and Lewin’s theory about the perpetrator and his escape route, and that was reason enough to check them one more time, two birds with one stone, and who better to talk with in that case than her older colleague from the uniformed police who’d driven her home from the crime scene a few days earlier. The one who’d been there when it happened.

The colleague was named Berg, and he was now with the uniformed police in Västerort. He had worked more than forty years as a policeman, would soon retire, and was still a police inspector. This could not be blamed on lack of contacts within the corps. His father had been a policeman, his uncle a legendary police officer, bureau head Berg, Johansson’s predecessor as head of the operational unit of the secret police.

The fault was his own. For more than ten years, from the late seventies to the early nineties, he’d been one of the country’s most investigated police officers. The department of internal investigations with the Stockholm police had been at him thirty or more times due to complaints of mistreatment and other excesses on duty. His own boss, Lars Martin Johansson, had even put him and his colleagues in jail twenty years ago. That time it concerned serious mistreatment of a retiree, which was supposed to have taken place in the holding cells at the Norrmalm district. Nonetheless, the outcome was minimal. Berg and his associates had been released every time.

The one who put a stop to his career-the one ultimately responsible for Berg’s inability to gain the title of chief inspector-was his own uncle. The year before the prime minister was murdered, he had the secret police make a survey of extreme right-wing officers within the Stockholm police, and before long it became clear that his own nephew was playing a prominent role in that context. When the prime minister was assassinated six months later and the media started digging into the so-called police track, Police Inspector Berg was the individual officer most often mentioned in the various lead files that the Palme investigators were collecting. Never convicted. Indicted and released one time, but no more than that, and for the days his own boss had him held and jailed him, he was later able to collect sizeable damages.

The night the Swedish prime minister was murdered he’d been the third police officer to set foot on the crime scene.

Small world, and who could be better than him? thought Anna Holt.

When Holt got hold of her colleague Berg by phone, he suggested they meet at a café near the police station. Like Holt, he lived in Solna, and because he would be working the afternoon shift, getting together down by the station was best for him. Besides, there were never any people there at that time of day, and they had good coffee and sandwiches too.

“Iranians,” Berg explained. “But nice people. They’re the ones who’ve taken over the service sector nowadays.”

“Nice of you to help out,” said Holt half an hour later.

“It’s cool,” he said, smiling. “Had nothing better to do, to be honest. But there’s one thing I want to say before we start.”

“Of course,” said Holt.

Then he’d expounded for five minutes about himself-by way of introduction, pointing out everything that Holt surely already knew-before he got to the payoff. He had not had anything whatsoever to do with the assassination of Olof Palme. He had been as surprised as everyone else. Just as dismayed as everyone else, believe it or not, and if there was anything he wished from his life, it was that he and his fellow officers who’d been there when it happened had succeeded in seizing the perpetrator at the scene.

“Just so we save time,” said Berg, shrugging his shoulders.

“I believe you,” said Holt. “I’ve never believed in those characters on TV and their police track.” The fact that I do believe quite a bit of the other things I’ve read is hardly interesting right now, she thought.

“Nice to hear,” said Berg, looking as though he meant what he said.

“There’s a completely different matter I wanted to discuss with you,” said Holt. “The reconstruction of the crime that our colleagues made at that time. I had a hard time getting the times to tally.”

Then for five minutes she recounted her and Lewin’s conclusions that Witness One must have been one and a half minutes behind the perpetrator when he came up from the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan. And that Witness Two, simply for that reason, could not have seen the perpetrator run across the street “right before.” On the other hand, she did not say a word about the witness Madeleine Nilsson. Holt intended to wait with that bit.

“If we assume that the murder was committed at 23:21:30,” said Holt, “and that the perpetrator needs a minute to run down Tunnelgatan and up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan, then he’s standing up there at 23:22:30.”

“I know,” said Berg with feeling. “The man who shot Palme must’ve had crazy good luck.”

Then he recounted his memories of the same course of events, which Holt had devoted hours to reading about.

“According to the officers at central administration and all the know-it-alls, we got the alarm from Sveavägen almost exactly twenty-four minutes past eleven,” said Berg. “I’ll buy that, plus or minus the usual seconds here or there, ’cause it’s always like that. The time is thus 23:24:00,” he clarified. “Then we were at Brunkebergstorg right by the National Bank, we were coming from the north on Malmskillnadsgatan, so less than a minute earlier we’d passed the stairs up from Tunnelgatan. We must have missed the murderer by only thirty seconds. Palme is down on Sveavägen, a hundred yards to the right of us. He was shot only a minute and a half earlier, and we’re driving past at a leisurely pace up on Malmskillnadsgatan and manage to drive another four hundred yards before we get the alarm. You can go crazy for less.” Berg sighed and shook his head.

“So how fast were you driving?” said Holt.

“We were gliding,” said Berg. “The way you do when you want to see all you can from a bus. Gliding down Malmskillnadsgatan at max twenty miles an hour. Calm and quiet out. It was cold and nasty too, I recall. People were trotting along with turned-up collars, hands in their pockets and shoulders hunched. We were sitting there in peace in our warm Dodge until all hell broke loose on the radio.” Berg shook his head.

“What happened then?”

“Full speed as soon as we responded to the call,” said Berg. “Gunfire at the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan, so there wasn’t much more to ask. Blue lights, sirens, first a right from Brunkebergstorg down to Sveavägen and then five hundred yards straight north to the crime scene. I was the first man out of the bus, and the time must have been somewhere between 23:24:20 and 23:24:30. Would’ve taken us less than half a minute after we responded, so that certainly tallies,” Berg said.

The riot squad bus had driven down Malmskillnadsgatan one and a half minutes after the murder, and thirty to forty seconds after the murderer stood at the top of the stairs and looked around before he disappeared from Witness One’s view.

The officers in the Södermalm riot squad had not seen the perpetrator. They hadn’t seen Witness One either, or observed Witness Two, and so far all was well and good, for they shouldn’t have, thought Holt.

Witness One and Witness Two, thought Holt, but before she could ask him he had anticipated her.

“I see what’s bothering you, Holt,” said Berg suddenly. “You have the idea that the woman up on Malmskillnadsgatan, the one who’s called Witness Two in that chain all the geniuses at the bureau were harping about, the one who says to Witness One as he comes up on the street that the murderer ran down David Bagares gata, you get the idea that it was someone other than the perpetrator she’d seen.”

“Why do you think that?”

“That’s what I thought as soon as the picture was clear to me,” said Berg. “How else would it have fit together? Time-wise,” I mean.

“But you never said anything,” said Holt.

“Why do you suppose that is?” said Berg. “Assume that someone like me had gone to the fine colleagues at the detective bureau on Kungholmsgatan and said I thought they’d gotten a few things turned around. Something that major, I mean.”

“I don’t think they would’ve started cheering,” said Holt. “What did you do when you got out of the bus down at the crime scene?” she continued.

“As soon as the situation was clear to me, this must have been ten seconds at the most, three of the others and I ran down Tunnelgatan. When we got to the stairs up to Malmskillnadsgatan a woman was standing up there, waving and shouting, so I ran up the stairs to the street. That was Witness Two, that woman, I realized later. It might have taken a minute at most for me to run from the crime scene up to Malmskillnadsgatan. As I said to you the last time we talked.”

“So now the time is somewhere around 23:25:30, four minutes after the murder,” Holt clarified.

“Something like that, yes,” Berg agreed.

“So what did you do next,” asked Holt.

“Continued in the direction shown by Witness Two,” said Berg. “Down David Bagares gata toward Regeringsgatan that is, and about fifty yards down the street I ran into Witness One.”

“So what did he say?” asked Holt.

“Not much,” said Berg. “It probably took a minute or so before I realized that he hadn’t seen which way the perpetrator went. He only reported what Witness Two had said to him.

“If you ask me,” he continued, “there’s a thing or two rattling around loose in that part of the description. Such as, for example, that it’s a hundred percent certain they’d seen the same person run past.”

“Explain what you’re thinking,” said Holt.

Berg had talked with both Witness One and Witness Two. He was actually the first police officer to do that, and for once he hadn’t been asked to write even a line about it. The officers from the bureau had taken over that aspect as soon as they arrived at the scene, and he had no idea what had happened to his brief, handwritten notes. He had just a vague memory, of some colleague from the duty desk who stuffed them in his coat pocket.

Berg had not conducted any interviews. He’d only stopped to talk with Witnesses One and Two for the obvious reason that he wanted to know as much as possible as quickly as possible to organize his initial search for the perpetrator.

“When Witness One comes up on Malmskillnadsgatan, he runs into Witness Two. Then he asks her if she’s seen a character in a dark coat run past. I don’t recall the exact wording, but I get the idea that Witness One asks her whether she’s seen a guy in a dark coat who’s run past. She replies that she has. Right before she saw a man in a dark coat run across Malmskillnadsgatan and down on David Bagares gata.”

“Right before,” asked Holt.

“I asked the same question myself as soon as I had the chance. It must have been maybe fifteen minutes later. According to her it concerned a male individual in a dark coat who twenty seconds at most before she got the question from Witness One had run across Malmskillnadsgatan and down on David Bagares gata. Otherwise she didn’t have much in particular to offer. Nothing else about his clothes other than that she thought he had a small bag in his right hand that he tried to put in his coat pocket. She hadn’t seen his face. She had an idea that he was maybe trying to conceal it from her as he ran past. Tall or short? Thin or husky? Stout or slender? Dark or light? Old or young? No definite perception about that either. Looked like all the other male individuals who were out that evening, I guess, if you were to summarize her observations. Apart from the fact that he’d acted suspiciously, of course. On that point she was more and more certain the more we talked. That he seemed nervous, hunted, tried to conceal his face and all that. Yes, Lord Jesus,” said Berg and sighed. “What could she say otherwise? By that time there was a horde of officers crowding around her.”

“Witness One then. What does he say?” asked Holt.

“He was right there the whole time up on Malmskillnadsgatan, and if I could have chosen I would have kept him and the other witness apart, but it was so damned messy that that didn’t work. Before the officers from the bureau took over, the two of them must have stood talking with each other for close to half an hour. Witness One and Witness Two, that is.”

“Did you make note of any differences between their descriptions of the man they’d seen?” asked Holt.

“Witness One was considerably more detailed. He’d heard the shot and seen the perpetrator with the weapon and realized what’d happened. A man in a dark jacket or coat, possibly bareheaded, possibly with a knit cap on his head, the kind Jack Nicholson had on in Cuckoo’s Nest, sturdily built, rolling gait as he ran or trotted away, almost bear-like, maintained that he’d seen him put the weapon in his right jacket or coat pocket but nothing about a bag. He looked mean, that was what he said. About forty to forty-five years old. Older than the witness, in any case. Otherwise nothing.”

“I see what you mean,” said Holt and nodded. Now’s the time to bring up Madeleine Nilsson, and how do I do that without putting words in his mouth? she thought.

“When you drive up Döbelnsgatan, past the stairs to Tunnelgatan at the start of Malmskillnadsgatan, the bridge passes over Kungsgatan and continues on Malmskillnadsgatan down to Brunkebergstorg where you get the alarm…”

“I follow you,” said Berg, nodding.

“You didn’t observe any other mysterious or suspicious persons?”

“Then we would have mentioned it,” said Berg, shaking his head. “Definitely no one with a smoking revolver in his fist,” he said.

“No one else?”

“Mostly ordinary Joes who were freezing. A whore or two, naturally, that’s where they worked, and at that time there were lots of them. Certainly a few hooligans and addicts too, but no one up to anything.”

“And if you’d seen someone like that?”

“Then naturally we would have stopped and frisked him or her. We always did that if we didn’t have anything better to do. Otherwise we would blink at them, and I’ll tell you, we had an uncannily good knowledge of people.”

“Blink?”

“With the headlights,” said Berg. “Just to let them know their presence was noted, if nothing else. Get them to realize we were keeping an eye on them.”

“But you don’t recall any particular person from that evening?”

“No,” said Berg. “Then we would have mentioned it, like I said. It was not an ordinary evening exactly.

“Too bad you weren’t involved from the start, Holt,” he added, smiling at her. “There was one more thing, by the way. If you can stand listening, and it’s really not at all about this. And besides, I want it to stay between you and me,” he continued.

“If it’s not about this, it will stay between us,” said Holt.

“It’s not,” said Berg. “It’s about your boss.”

“Johansson,” said Holt. “Fire away,” she said. Not a second to lose, she thought.

“Just a piece of advice,” said Berg. “As I’m sure you know, he and I have a history together that’s not very pleasant, so I guess you have to take this for what it’s worth.”

“I know he put you in jail for a week twenty years ago.” On not completely baseless grounds, she thought.

“Me and my colleagues,” said Berg, nodding. “Then you also know that my colleagues and I were cleared of all suspicions and that we got damages for the time we spent in jail.”

“I know all that,” said Holt. “I know for example that you and many other colleagues in the uniformed police call him the butcher from Ådalen.”

“It wasn’t that he put us in jail. I’m sure I’ve put a few innocent so-and-sos in jail too. The name we gave him, he’s earned honorably. I’ve never met such an ice-cold bastard in my entire life. A person who can kill you without hesitation if he thinks it’s in his interest. Without even breaking a sweat. So whatever you do, Holt, watch out for that man,” said Berg, shaking his broad shoulders.

“Now you’ll actually have to explain yourself,” said Holt. What is he saying? she thought.

“Yes,” said Berg, “I will.”

Then he told the story about his father.

Berg’s father had also been a policeman, a regular patrol cop with the uniformed police in Stockholm. When Berg was a young boy in his teens his father had died on duty. While chasing a couple of car thieves he’d been forced into a ditch. It was the sixties, and there were no seat belts even in police cars. Berg’s father was thrown headfirst through the windshield, broke his neck, and died on the spot.

“I really loved my father,” said Berg quietly. “Despite all his faults, because both my mother and I knew he had them. It was because of him I decided to become a policeman. As soon as I got the chance I told everyone about my father and what happened to him and why I chose to become a policeman. I talked about what all my relatives had told me, and in our family there’s no shortage of policemen, you should know. What all Dad’s colleagues told me. That my father was a hero. That he actually sacrificed his life in his job as a policeman. For twenty-five years I believed that’s what had happened.”

The one who had opened Berg’s eyes about his father was Lars Martin Johansson. Berg and his colleagues were being held for the third day. Johansson and his co-workers conducted daily interrogations. Johansson spent most of his time with Berg, the one Johansson knew was the leader.

“I’m not particularly sensitive, but this you should know, Holt: It gets to you if you’re a cop and suddenly you’re sitting in the jail at Kronoberg,” said Berg. “So on the third day I was actually pretty much done. Johansson and another officer had been attacking me the whole day, and if I’d only been able to keep my shoelaces or my belt I know exactly what I would have done as soon as they left.”

“So what happened then?” asked Holt. Though I already sense it, she thought.

“A few hours later, after dinner, I was there on the cot staring at the ceiling and wondering how I could strangle myself with the blanket. Tear it in strips and all that-you get pretty inventive in those situations. There’s no hook in the ceiling where you can hang yourself in that place, as I’m sure you know. Suddenly Johansson was standing in the doorway. He was alone, apart from a couple of jailers hiding out in the corridor. He had his overcoat on. I remember he said he was going to go out and get a bite to eat before he went home. He’d brought a little nighttime reading for me. He realized I had a hard time sleeping, that is. Then he threw one of those old investigation files at me. The ones with green cardboard binders that we had ages and ages ago. Then he simply left and there was a lot of locking and slamming before he and the jailers finally wandered off.”

“At first I thought it was an interrogation with one of my colleagues who was in there too, and that he wanted to play us against each other, but that wasn’t it,” said Berg.

You’re not feeling well, thought Holt. Right now you’re feeling really bad, and you’re not the least bit like the Berg I’ve read about, she thought.

“It was the investigation of the cause of death of my own father,” said Berg. “With pictures and everything. From the scene of the accident, the autopsy photos, everything. The same investigation that Dad’s colleagues had hidden down in the basement and that none of them had said a word about during all those years, and least of all to me or Mom.”

Berg shook his head and took a short pause before he continued.

“What they’d told me and my mother wasn’t correct. One day Dad put on his uniform and borrowed a radio car. He had been suspended from service because he’d shown up drunk at the station one evening the week before, but Mom and I knew nothing about that. Whatever,” continued Berg, shaking his head. “He got into the radio car and drove out to Vaxholm. On the way there he consumed a whole bottle of straight vodka plus a quart of schnapps. More than a quart of alcohol. When he got down to the ferry landing in Vaxholm he waited until the ferry set out. Then he put the accelerator to the floor and drove right out over the edge of the pier. The car landed more than fifty feet out in the water, so before he drowned he really had driven his head through the windshield and broken his neck.”

“So what happened then?” asked Holt.

“I went crazy,” said Berg. “They had to strap me down and drug me. Took twelve hours before I came around enough that they could drag me back to my regular cell. The file was gone, naturally. Who do you think retrieved it.”

“Have you told this to anyone else?” asked Holt.

“A few other officers,” said Berg. “Without going into any details. It’s history now.” Berg looked at her and nodded. “Be careful with that man, Holt. He’s not just pleasant and entertaining in that Norrland way. He has other sides that he can show when he feels like it.”

26

After the conversation with Bäckström, Lewin sought the serenity of the Palme room. Mattei was already there, and she had clearly not been inactive. On the table in front of her was a tall stack of thick binders, and when Lewin came in she was leafing through one of them with her left hand as she typed diligently on her laptop with her right.

Eidetic memory combined with a very high capacity for multitasking, thought Lewin. A lovely young woman besides.

“Hi, Jan,” said Mattei, smiling at him. “I had no idea there were so many certified crazies. I’ve already found over three hundred, and because I’m sure I’ve missed half of them there are going to be quite a few.”

“But now they’ll end up in a registry,” Lewin observed. Wonder how many uncertified lunatics there are? Must be lots more anyway, he thought.

“There,” said Mattei, shrugging her slender shoulders. “Some kind of list, in any case.”

Nice to hear, thought Lewin, and for lack of anything better he took out his old box of parking tickets. Neatly packed, stored in one place, and probably completely uninteresting in fact. If our perpetrator is as well-organized as both Anna Holt and Johansson seem to think, he won’t have parked illegally, he thought.

More than two thousand parking citations had been issued in the Stockholm area the day of the murder. A few hundred of them had been distributed in the finer parts of the city that were along the Red Line on the subway. Gärdet, Östermalm, Lidingö. Why was it called the Red Line? Considering who lived there, it really should be the Blue Line, Lewin philosophized as he leafed through the bundles of tickets, trying to think of what he was really searching for.

Vehicles in good condition, no clunkers, illegally parked in the hours before and after the murder around the various subway stations, thought Lewin. Twenty-one years later, for the most part all of the vehicles had gone to the junkyard several years ago, and all information about the owner or user had disappeared from all conceivable registries. Even if the murderer had a brand-new Mercedes when he shot Palme, thought Lewin and sighed.

For lack of anything better he had to rely on his old notations. Almost everyone who’d parked illegally had done so in the immediate vicinity of their own residence. Just as you would expect, and this was hardly instructive considering Holt’s hypothesis that the perpetrator had relied on his own car for further transport.

Before Lewin went home for the day he also made a separate review of his own contribution to the so-called police track. Of the total of nineteen parking tickets pertaining to police service vehicles or cars belonging to individual police officers, three had been issued along the Red Line. One in Östermalm, one at Gärdet, and one in Hjorthagen at the final station in Ropsten. Besides one out in Lidingö, all the way on the other side of the bridge, five hundred yards from the final station.

Nothing strange about those either, thought Lewin as he put the bundles back in the box. The colleague out in Lidingö, for example. He lived in Lidingö, worked with the Lidingö police department, and his car had been illegally parked the whole weekend. According to information from his co-workers, this was because he had the flu and was in bed from Thursday evening until Monday morning.

Nothing strange about that either. When Lewin talked with one of the bedridden illegal parker’s colleagues twenty years ago, he remembered that he’d called down to the station as early as Friday morning and asked one of the other officers to move his car. They could get the keys in his apartment up on Torsviksvägen. But it never happened. Suddenly there were more important things to do than deal with illegally parked vehicles.

There was a clear pattern in Mattei’s material about more qualified crazies. The origin of the information was almost always a tip from various individual informants. Extremely few of the conceivable Palme assassins had ended up in the files on the basis of information the police had produced through their own detective work. The constantly recurring reason they ended up in the Palme investigation was that they all hated Olof Palme and had also talked about it to individuals in their vicinity. These individuals had then contacted the police, as a rule pretty soon after the prime minister had been murdered, and told about their strange friend, acquaintance, neighbor, co-worker, ex-spouse, partner, and so on, who had promised to kill him. Conspicuously often by shooting him, and always with a weapon to which they had legal access. Hunters, marksmen, reservists, gun collectors.

Their qualifications were not impressive either. To start with Mattei sorted out the cases of pure psychosis, known addicts, and professional criminals. What remained were several hundred odd, single men, often extremists, almost always with broken relationships, and usually with a bad name in their own neighborhoods. Almost exclusively men of Swedish origin. Immigrants-for example the “gook” who according to Witness Three supposedly ran into her on David Bagares gata-were a clear minority. This was about Swedish men. The kind you talked to only if you had to, so as not to rile them up unnecessarily.

“I’m a hundred percent convinced that it’s Tore Andersson who murdered Olof Palme. On several occasions he’s shown me a black attaché case with a revolver in it and said he was going to shoot Palme. The most recent time this happened was only a week before the murder, and I know he was in Stockholm visiting an acquaintance who lives on Söder, the same weekend Palme was murdered. And besides, he had definite information that Palme was spying on behalf of the Russians. Tore also corresponds well with the description of the perpetrator. He’s rugged, about six feet tall, dark, and forty-four years old. Tore is something of a loner…”

“It was Stefan Nilsson who murdered Olof Palme. He has a definite radical right-wing image and is a very eccentric and exhibitionistic person. At the same time he’s a so-called lone wolf, and as far as I know he’s never been involved with a woman. He’s forty-one years old, and in the hall to his apartment there’s a closet where he stores a number of firearms. When Palme was here at a conference less than a year ago I know Nilsson visited the hotel where Palme was staying to try to find out which room he was in…”

“After much consideration I want to convey the following. I have a former boyfriend who, after being trained as a security guard, moved to Stockholm and got a job at a security company there. For the past several years he’s said to have lived in Old Town right in the vicinity of the street where Palme lived…”

Mattei had a simple matrix she held them up against-about forty years old, about six feet tall, dark-colored hair without streaks of blond or gray, relatively sturdy body build, familiar with the area, familiar with the use of firearms, access to legal weapons-and at a rate of ten per hour she then put them aside.

In nine cases out of ten the lead file that her colleagues had prepared consisted exclusively of the tips they’d received. A letter, often anonymous, a telephone call, or even a personal visit to the police. Often a courier was used because the informant himself dared not risk appearing because the perpetrator would then immediately realize who had told on him. In nine cases out of ten it had never been more than that.

In one case out of ten things had happened. The police had done searches on the person pointed out in various registries, interviews had been held with him and persons who knew him. On several occasions he had even been tailed. It was unclear why, because these individuals were oddly similar to a number of others on whom nothing more had been done than receive the tip, give it a serial number, open a new lead file, put the papers in a binder, and put the binder on a shelf.

What’s the use of this? thought Lisa Mattei and sighed. The only consolation was that none of them seemed especially like the perpetrator that Lars Martin Johansson or Anna Holt had talked about. No acuity, no presence of mind or merciless capacity for practical action; not familiar with the area; no interesting contacts. What remained were chance encounters with the victim, where the probability was so slight that it could scarcely be calculated. The same chance that both Johansson and Holt had dismissed early on. Why in the name of heaven should a person who had lived his entire life in a small community in northern Värmland suddenly get in the car and drive four hundred miles one way to Stockholm, wander around the city, and quite unexpectedly run into the person he hated more than anyone in the world?

He’d been away that weekend. No one had talked with him before he left. When he came back on Sunday evening he was a different person. He made hints to people around him…he’d shown one of them his gun…

But you leave me cold, thought Mattei, putting him back in the same binder where he’d been the whole time.

27

Already by Thursday evening Bäckström had used up the grace Johansson had measured out to him. A quickly escalating activity in which Bäckström sounded more and more like Bäckström with every new call and expressed himself downright offensively in the last one. Pure telephone terror, and Johansson’s secretary was not only sick and tired of him; she hated him deeply and heartily.

Now you’ve had it, you little butterball, she thought as she knocked on Johansson’s door.

Now you’ll get yours, you fat little slob, thought Lars Martin Johansson five minutes later. Then he called Holt and told her he wanted to meet with her immediately.

“So you mean to say he called Helena cunt-lips?” asked Holt ten minutes later.

“Sure,” said Johansson. “We have it on tape. Along with all the other indecencies he spewed out.”

“If he did that he’ll be immediately removed from duty,” said Holt.

“Sure,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders. “Talk with our attorney if you need to. Do what you want with him. Boil the bastard for glue, if you want. But before you do it, I want to know what he wants, and when I know that I want him to stop calling.”

“I’ll arrange it,” said Holt. “But before I do that there’s another thing I have to talk with you about.”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson. “With excitement,” he added.

“I talked with an old acquaintance of yours. Officer Berg who works with the uniformed police in Västerort.”

“Depends on what you mean by acquaintance,” said Johansson, who no longer seemed pleased. “The only Berg I know is dead. Erik Berg, his uncle. My predecessor at SePo and an excellent policeman. Not the least like that neo-Nazi he’s unfortunately related to.”

“I’ve read his file in the Palme material,” said Holt. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.”

“You wanted to tell his version of what happened at the jail one evening more than twenty years ago,” said Johansson.

“Yes,” said Holt.

“You don’t need to,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve already heard it through the usual grapevine. If you’re interested, on the other hand, I can tell you why I did what I did back then.”

“That would be nice,” said Holt.

“Sure,” said Johansson, and then he told her why he’d visited Berg in his cell more than twenty years before, only six months before the prime minister was shot. Whatever that had to do with the matter.

The interrogation was on its third day. Berg had been confronted with a number of serious suspicions. He lacked all factual counterarguments. He was hanging by a thread, according to Johansson.

“The bastard was hanging by a thread, in brief, and earlier in the day he had mostly sat there and protested what a capable policeman he was and bragged about his dad and how much he’d meant to him and how he had had to sacrifice his life on duty and all that bullshit. I never met his father, but from what I’d heard I realized he was the spitting image of his son. Plus he drank like a fish. Lazy, incompetent, a bully, petty criminal, wife beater, drunk…and a policeman. We can’t have it like that, Anna.”

“But why did you show the investigation of cause of death to his son?” asked Holt.

“I’ll get to that,” said Johansson. “To show him that he could spare us that bullshit. To pull the rug out from under him. But it wasn’t news to him. He’d known for a long time what had really happened when his dear dad closed up shop.”

“Then there was no purpose in telling him that, was there?” Holt objected.

“Sure there was,” said Johansson. “The purpose was to show that there were others besides him who knew. It hit home, if you ask me. If he could have chosen he would surely have admitted almost anything, just to avoid hearing that I knew the truth about his dad.”

“I still think it was both cruel and unnecessary,” said Holt.

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson. “I don’t think like you. Someone like Berg should never have become a policeman. Nor his dad either, and if I’d had anything better to hit him with than his hero of a dad of course I would have used that instead.”

“You were never worried he might kill himself?”

“Not in the least,” said Johansson. “Unfortunately he’s not the type. He’s the type who gladly kills other people. On the other hand, when it comes to himself he’s both gentle and understanding.”

“I think he’s changed considerably, actually. I’m pretty sure he’s a completely different and better person today.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment,” said Johansson. “You, on the other hand, are a good person. An excellent police officer, a decent person. Too weak for someone like Berg, because you’re a little too decent.”

“What about you?” said Holt. “According to Berg-”

“I know,” interrupted Johansson. “If you’re wondering on your own account. Sure, I’m a consistent person. Good to the good, hard to the hard, and bad to the bad. Once upon a time when I was dealing with that sort of thing I was an excellent police officer too. One of the very best, actually. But if you’re so worried about my character, I don’t understand why you don’t ask Lewin what he thinks of Berg.”

“Lewin?”

“Your colleague Jan Lewin was around at that time. He was there and questioned Berg the same day that I visited him in jail later in the evening.”

“But then he wasn’t along,” said Holt.

“No,” said Johansson. “I would never dream of subjecting him to that, but if it’s your meeting with that shitty little character Bäckström that’s worrying you, I can take care of that myself.”

“No,” said Holt. “I’ll arrange it.”

“Excellent,” said Johansson. “Find out what he wants and then you can boil the bastard for glue. Someone like Bäckström shouldn’t be a policeman either.”

What is going on? thought Bäckström. Here you try to help a lot of incompetent colleagues to finally put a little order in the Palme investigation and the only thing that happens is that they set police officers on you. Besides that nonentity who was his boss down at lost-and-found.

“Like I said, Bäckström, you will report immediately to Superintendent Holt at the bureau,” said Bäckström’s boss. This is the best day in a very long time, he thought. Finally a decent chance to get rid of that criminal little fatso his own boss had foisted off on him.

“If she wants to chat with me she can come here,” said Bäckström. Fucking dyke, he thought.

“Like I said, Bäckström. This is not a general wish on my part. This is an order. You must report immediately to Police Superintendent Anna Holt at the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation,” repeated Bäckström’s boss. This is the best day of the whole summer, and I wonder just what he’s thought up this time? he thought.

“Hello,” said Bäckström, raising his hand in a deprecating gesture. “She can’t give me any orders. I’m working in Stockholm. Has the national bureau taken over the Stockholm police district, or what? Have we had a fucking military coup?”

“Like I said, Bäckström. I’m the one who’s giving you an order. I work here, in case you missed that. An order on duty. You must report immediately to Police Superintendent Holt at the national bureau.” This is getting better and better, he thought.

“I promise to think about it,” said Bäckström. “Now you’ll have to excuse-”

“Go now, Bäckström,” said his boss. “Otherwise I’m afraid you’re going to spend the night in jail.”

“Lay off. What for?” What the hell is this fairy saying? he thought.

“Johansson,” said his boss. “Holt called on behalf of the boss.” The butcher from Ådalen, he thought, and this was definitely the best day he’d had since he’d first met Bäckström.

“Why didn’t you say that right away?” said Bäckström, getting up. Finally the Lapp bastard has understood his own best interest, he thought.

“Where’s Johansson?” asked Bäckström ten minutes later, as soon as he sat down in the chair across from Holt. You skinny little wretch, he thought.

“Not here in any case,” said Holt. “I’m the one you’ll be talking with.”

“I prefer to talk with Johansson,” said Bäckström.

“I understand that,” said Holt. “But it’s like this,” she continued. “You can talk with me and tell me what you want. If you don’t want to we can go our separate ways and you will immediately stop harassing Johansson’s secretary. If not, then we’re going to file a complaint against you for unlawful threat, sexual assault, and official misconduct, so at a guess you’ll be brought in for questioning later today.”

“Lay off, Holt,” said Bäckström. What the hell is that dyke sitting there saying? he thought.

“We have all your calls on tape,” said Holt. “Our attorney has listened to them. According to him it’s more than enough for a summons.”

“What’s in it for me?” said Bäckström. What do they mean by taping people secretly? That’s criminal, damn it, he thought.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” said Holt. “You’re going to be reported as suspected of a crime, removed from duty, convicted of sexual assault, unlawful threat, and a number of other things. Believe me, Bäckström, I’ve listened to you on the tapes. Then you’re going to get fired from the agency. The alternative is that you stop calling Johansson’s secretary and tell me what you want to say. Maybe then I can convince Johansson not to file a complaint against you.”

“Okay, okay,” said Bäckström. “So it’s like this. I’ve received a tip from one of my informants that concerns the weapon that was used when Palme was shot.”

“That sounds like something you should talk about with Flykt,” said Holt.

“Sure,” said Bäckström. “So we can all read about it in the newspaper tomorrow.”

“Hundreds of tips have come in about the Palme weapon,” said Holt. “You know that as well as I do. What makes this tip so special?”

“Everything,” said Bäckström with emphasis. “The informant’s identity, to start with.”

“What’s his name?” said Holt.

“Forget that, Holt. I would never dream of exposing any of my informants. I’d rather go to jail. Forget about my informant. What counts is that the informant has the name of the man with the weapon,” said Bäckström.

“Of the perpetrator?” asked Holt.

“Of the one who took care of the weapon,” Bäckström clarified. “The spider in the web you might say.” There, you got something good to suck on, you disturbed little sow, he thought.

“So give me a name.”

“Forget it,” said Bäckström, shaking his head. “You would never believe me if I told you.”

“Try, Bäckström,” said Holt, looking at the clock.

“Okay then,” said Bäckström. “Blame yourself, Holt, but this is the way it is according to my informant, and who he is you can just forget. I know who he is. He’s a white man. So forget about him now.”

“I’m listening,” said Holt. “Tell me what your anonymous informant has already told you. What he said about the weapon, who he’s fingering, and how he knows it.” A white man, thought Holt.

28

The special adviser lived in a palatial villa in the Uppland suburb of Djursholm, where the crème de la crème in the vicinity of the royal capital had the highest fat content. Twenty-plus rooms, 2,100 square feet, stone, wrought iron, brick, and copper. A hundred-yard-long asphalt driveway, an acre of lawn with shading oaks that weren’t allowed to obscure the view. Not a vulgar waterfront location obviously, simply high and well-situated enough for morning sun and a clear view across Stora Värtan and Lidingö to the east. The special adviser would never have dreamed of swimming down in Framnäs bay where the IT billionaires and property swindlers held court.

Officially he didn’t even live where he did. The villa was owned by his first wife-“clever as a poodle and faithful as a dog”-who had bought it thirty-five years earlier, only a few months before she was divorced from the man who had always lived there. Not a bad deal for a young woman who worked as a secretary at the military headquarters at Gärdet, earned 3,000 kronor a month at that time, and evidently didn’t need to borrow a cent to execute the deal.

The special adviser himself was listed as living on Söder. A simple apartment with two rooms and a kitchen, and he was even in the telephone directory. Anyone who didn’t know better could call there and talk with his answering machine or send a letter that would never be answered. The special adviser preferred a secret life, assembled of all the particular secrets that the truly initiated love to talk about, and he gladly contributed his share.

The rumor was…that the special adviser was immensely wealthy. At the same time he lacked assessed property. He took no deductions, and his stated income agreed to the krona with the salary he had drawn from the government offices for almost thirty years. “I don’t understand what people are talking about. I’m an ordinary wage earner. I’ve always been thrifty, but you don’t get rich on that.”

According to rumor…the special adviser had an art collection that would make the financier Thiel and Prince Eugen green with envy. “It’s nice to have a little color on the walls. Most of this is actually on loan from my first wife.” The same wife who’d moved to Switzerland thirty years earlier and was as quiet as a basenji. Immensely wealthy besides, according to the official information that the Swiss authorities unwillingly surrendered.

The rumor stated…that the special adviser had a wine cellar that, apart from the contents, could only be compared with Ali Baba’s treasure chamber. “I appreciate a good glass of wine over the weekend and especially in the company of good friends. Because I’m extremely moderate of course I’ve accumulated a few bottles over the years.”

The special adviser had been a member of the Social Democratic Party since he was a teenager attending high school. In his wallet he still carried his first party book, no photo, just his name, the party branch he belonged to, and old, handwritten receipts for the dues he’d punctually paid. “That’s what characterizes us real Social Democrats. That we have both our hearts and our wallets to the left.” He gladly showed the evidence that he carried in his left inside pocket, and presumably it was completely true.

According to the brief information in the National Almanac, Who’s Who, and the National Encyclopedia, he was born in Stockholm in 1945, earned a doctorate in mathematics at Stockholm University in 1970, and was appointed professor in 1974. The following year he started as a technical adviser in the government offices (“technical adviser government offices 1975-76”), returned to the university and his professorship during the conservative administration of 1976-1982, then back as “special adviser at the disposal of the prime minister 1982-91,” another pause during a three-year conservative administration when he worked as a visiting professor at MIT, back as “undersecretary 1994-2002.” Since then he had evidently slowed down, “technical adviser in the government offices since 2002.”

Finally a short recitation of his more important academic appointments: “Member of the Board of Directors of the Royal Academy of Science since 1990; Visiting Professor at MIT 1991-94; Honorary Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford University, since 1980.”

In the country where he lived there was no one like him-in any event there shouldn’t be-and for a long time he had lived the myth that surrounded him. The special adviser, Sweden’s own Cardinal Richelieu, the prime minister’s top security adviser, the extended arm of power or perhaps simply power? In one of the few newspaper interviews with him he described himself as “a simple lad from Söder who’s always been good at arithmetic.”

Wonder what he plans to serve this evening? thought Johansson as the taxi stopped in front of the house where the man didn’t live.

The special adviser received him under the crystal chandelier in the hall and in the most Mediterranean manner.

“Lovely to see you, Johansson,” he said, standing on tiptoe, embracing his guest and marking two kisses on the cheek. “Let me look at you.” He took a step back but without releasing his hand. “You look like the picture of health, Johansson,” he continued.

“Nice of you,” said Johansson, smiling as he coaxed his fist loose from the special adviser’s damp grip. “You’re doing well yourself, I hope?” Although you look awful, and what in the name of God have you got on? he thought.

The special adviser was just below average height. In school he’d been a chubby little boy who for obscure reasons had never been bullied. As an adult first corpulent, then fat, and nowadays truly obese. A rotund body, with spider-like arms and legs, topped by a good-sized head of thick gray hair that stood straight up and out at the sides over his large ears. His face was bright red in color, consisting mainly of forehead and a nose worthy of a conquistador. His eyes were large and clear blue, well entrenched behind heavy eyelids and bulging cheeks, the imposing nose, a round pouting mouth with moist lips like those of a small child, then a natural progression to the three flowing chins that sought shelter under the lining of his shirt collar. Taken as a whole he was clearly a person who must possess considerable inner qualities.

In honor of the day he was dressed in an improbable ensemble of green velvet. Baggy pants without creases, green jacket with shiny lapels, and held together with a thick braided silk cord that he’d wrapped around his body. Along with a tuxedo shirt with black bow tie and a pair of gold-embroidered velvet slippers.

“Thanks for asking,” said the special adviser. “I feel truly excellent, exactly as I deserve. Like a pearl in gold. But you yourself, Johansson, you’ve become a real athlete lately. Soon you’ll be looking like Gunde Svan, that skier-or was he a high jumper?-you know,” he said with a slight wave of his left hand. “Shall we sit awhile and refresh ourselves while my dear housekeeper puts the final pieces in place?”

Then he made an inviting gesture and went ahead of Johansson across all the creaking parquet floors to the large salon where a small buffet was set out with mixed finger foods, a gigantic cut crystal vodka carafe, champagne, and mineral water in a table cooler.

Mostly beluga caviar, duck liver, and quail eggs, and why fritter away your short life on nonessentials? He still had free access to the beluga through one of his contacts “from the bad old days” who now ran an apparently successful contract operation in Kiev. The quail eggs he got from an acquaintance in the province of Sörmland, “a count and a landowner interested in hunting,” who also supplied him with pheasant, wild duck, grouse, and partridge. Plus all the “large game” of course. Such as moose filets, deer steaks, wild pig cutlets, and saddle of venison. His housekeeper shopped for the duck liver at the specialty food shops in the Östermalm market. On the other hand he’d stopped consuming goose liver. It was much too fat nowadays to be consumed in risk-free forms. Pure animal torture besides if you considered the source. He didn’t drink beer anymore either, not good for either the stomach or the liver, and in the golden middle age in which he and Johansson were now living, they had to keep an eye on what they put away.

“Caution and precision should characterize temporal things as well,” the special adviser summarized. “Water, vodka, champagne, and a little bite to eat with it. Cheers, by the way,” he said, raising his full glass.

“Cheers,” said Johansson. Talk, talk, talk, he thought.

After two sturdy shots, mineral water, a couple glasses of champagne, and ten or so small appetizers each it was time to sit down to a serious dinner. “No negligence this time,” said the special adviser, shaking his flaming red face with emphasis. This evening he intended to compensate Johansson for previous frugal entertainments and treat him to “a really old-fashioned, bourgeois dinner.” As soon as Johansson had accepted his invitation the special adviser had also conducted a number of “special reinforcement measures” to guarantee a successful result.

True, it was Thursday, but Johansson did not need to be troubled about either peas or pork. Much less pancakes with jam. The last time the special adviser had eaten such things was many years ago at a lunch at the defense department. Under silent protest, but unfortunately on duty and thereby without a choice. Before the end of this barbaric gathering he was already tormented by gas and for several days was confined to bed with tympanites, feverish and miserable, and if it hadn’t been for the diet his considerate housekeeper had quickly established-plenty of Fernet Branca, boiled fish, light white wines, mineral water without bubbles-the situation might have ended very badly.

“How can the military be allowed to challenge our armed forces like that?” asked the special adviser with an indignant glance at his guest. According to him it was pure treason, and regardless of whether it was a crisis situation or not those responsible should be brought before a military court, convicted of high treason, and immediately executed. If the special adviser could decide, that is. Or even better, beheaded with a dull, rusty ax if they’d had the nerve to serve warm punch with the peas. Food that only barbarians could ingest, and according to the special adviser it was obviously not by chance that Hermann Göring was supposed to have been particularly fond of both peas and pork plus pancakes with whipped cream and jam. Not to mention warm punch.

Talk, talk, talk, and personally I think that sounds good, thought Johansson.

His host’s reinforcement measures were clearly visible as soon as Johansson crossed the threshold to the dining room. The adviser’s dining room table accommodated twenty-four guests, this too was a good old bourgeois custom, according to the host. Now it was set for two at one end of the table. The special adviser at the short end and his guest to his right. At a comfortable conversational distance without the risk of spilling on each other. On their plates were elaborate folded damask napkins plus printed menus, around them a parade of various cut crystal glasses and an improbable amount of silverware. Simply the host and his guest at a table for twenty-four and obviously only two place settings. But otherwise the table was completely set with a white linen tablecloth, candelabras, centerpieces, and flower arrangements.

In honor of the evening the special adviser’s housekeeper had the help of a male steward in black tuxedo and a cook in full getup waiting in the background.

“Yum,” said the special adviser delightedly, rubbing his fat hands together and sitting down as soon as his male reinforcement measure pulled the chair out for him.

Johansson had to seat himself, and it was probably his own fault. When his host’s housekeeper hurried over to help him, he just shook his head deprecatingly and sat down. He quickly pulled in the chair and for lack of a straw reached for his napkin. I’m a simple boy from Näsåker. Hope she wasn’t offended, thought Johansson. His mother, Elna, would never have dreamed of pulling out the chair for her husband or her seven children either as soon as they were big enough. On the other hand she often stood at the stove while the others ate. Here it was more complicated than that, thought Johansson, and when the day came that he wasn’t man enough to seat himself it would probably be the end of most everything, he thought.

A nine-course dinner, different wines with every course, and already with the introductory consommé of lobster, finely shredded onions, and petits pois, the special adviser started the monologue that was his own variation on the cultivated conversation one was expected to carry on during the consumption of a bourgeois dinner. First of all however he spilled on himself. Just like happy children always have a habit of doing, and without even noticing it.

“I see you’re admiring my tuxedo, Johansson,” said the special adviser, sighing contentedly as he lowered the spoon and began his initial comments.

Despite the color it apparently had nothing to do with the French Academy. Such small societies for mutual admiration left the adviser cold. The French Academy was an ordinary, government-financed soup kitchen for various literary aesthetes who had never done an honorable day’s work in their entire lives. As a mathematician he was above such things, and in his case it was far better than that. This was namely the particularly comfortable tuxedo that the special adviser would wear to dinner when he sat at High Table in the banquet hall at his English alma mater, Magdalen College, Oxford. Founded in the Middle Ages when most northern Europeans could barely express themselves comprehensibly, much less read, and obviously named for Mary Magdalene, the foremost of Jesus’s female disciples.

“Mohdlinn, pronounced Mohdlinn without an English ‘e’ at the end,” the special adviser clarified, pouting with enjoyment.

As Johansson perhaps didn’t know, for many years his host had been an honorary member of this fine old college. Honorary fellow, first-class member of the faculty by virtue of his scientific merits in mathematics but also in the more philosophically oriented theory of science. Over the years there had been numerous prominent physicians, physicists, biologists, and chemists who had studied at Magdalen College, two Nobel Prize winners in fact, all of whom gratefully enjoyed the insights that were basically unique to the special adviser when it came to constructing intricate theoretical models and testing more complex empirical lines of reasoning.

“Speak up if I’m tiring you, Johansson,” said the special adviser.

“Not at all,” said Johansson. Better that than you drinking too much, he thought, and personally he intended to wait for coffee and cognac, when from experience he knew that his host would be in a more contemplative state.

Already by course number two-pilgrim clams with tomato, asparagus and Avruga caviar-his host had left the scientific world and taken a sidetrack. Magdalen had a particular quality that distinguished it from all other colleges, not only at Oxford but in the whole world, and that especially ought to appeal to a man like Johansson.

“We have our own deer enclosure,” said the special adviser, smiling happily at his guest. “Think of it, Johansson. As an old hunter, I mean.”

In the midst of the medieval main street in the world’s foremost seat of learning, right behind the main buildings, walled in and along the river Cherwell, over three hundred years ago one of Magdalen’s many benefactors had had a deer park constructed.

“Sounds like fallow deer,” said Johansson.

“If you say so, Johansson,” said the special adviser with the usual hand waving. “Those brown things with white spots on their sides. Some of them have horns,” he clarified.

“Fallow deer,” said Johansson. “Quite certainly fallow deer.”

“Whatever,” answered the special adviser, and in any event it wasn’t the deer per se that was the point.

The point was better than that, and the special adviser did a proper job on all the details of the story while they enjoyed the third course, grilled king crab with veal sausage, grated potatoes, and a spicy sauce.

“Where was I now?” asked the special adviser as he wiped away a little sauce from his mouth and rinsed with an Alsatian pinot gris that was both refreshing and rich in minerals.

“The number of deer in the deer park,” said Johansson, who was unwillingly getting interested in the subject.

“Exactly,” said the special adviser, dabbing with his napkin. “As I’ve already suggested…”

The number of deer in the park should be, according to the donor’s will, equal to the number of full members of the college. At the present time there were sixty fellows and honorary fellows, and in the park behind the main building there was thus exactly the same number of deer.

“So you have your own deer,” said Johansson, raising his glass. A fat little rascal with a bad heart, gigantic head, short horns, and feeble legs. Approximately like the ones his children used to construct out of matches, pipe cleaners, and pinecones when they were little, he thought.

“Of course,” said the special adviser, sounding rather conceited.

“But that’s not all of it,” he continued.

The story was even better than that, and all according to the original statutes. As soon as a new member of the college was inducted, the deer herd was increased by one deer. And if one of them died, the proctor-the students’ own highest prefect-went out in the park and shot one deer, which was then served at the memorial dinner that was always held for the fellow who had taken leave of earthly life. The special adviser even claimed to have seen the proctor early one morning as he carried out this important task. Otherwise the deer were left in peace. Left to the pastoral peace that prevailed in the park at Magdalen College and in all the halls of learning.

“At the break of day, with the mist from the river sweeping into the park in its white veil, there comes the proctor in his long coat, his high black hat, with the worn-out shotgun in his steady hand. Imagine the shot, Johansson, that echoes out over the river Cherwell and the High Street,” said the special adviser, sighing as voluptuously as the male protagonist in a novel by the Brontë sisters.

Although the dinner itself was nothing remarkable, he remarked. Just an ordinary English gentlemen’s dinner, with venison steak, brown gravy, and overcooked vegetables. The wines on the other hand would usually be quite all right. A number of other benefactors had seen to that. The wine cellar at Magdalen was one of the foremost in Oxford. True, not like the one at Christ Church, with all those American Coca-Cola children, Arabian princes, and little Russian oligarchs, but quite all right, according to a connoisseur like himself.

“To be sure, English cuisine has little in common with this excellent filet of brill,” Johansson agreed, having secretly peeked at the menu as soon as they’d made it to the fourth stage in the bourgeois dinner. Filet of brill with globe artichoke and étouffée of crayfish tail.

“Not to mention this phenomenal Meursault,” the special adviser agreed, raising his large goblet of almost amber-colored wine. From his own cellar of course, and apart from the number of bottles completely in a class with the one served at Christ Church College, Oxford.

“There’s one thing I don’t really understand,” said Johansson.

“You’re much too modest, Johansson,” said the special adviser.

“How you manage to keep the same number of deer as members of the college. If you only shoot them when someone dies,” Johansson explained.

“What do you mean? Explain,” said the special adviser.

Johansson’s objections to the adviser’s story, his explanations, the questions and counterarguments from his host, the entire discussion took up the remainder of their dinner, as new courses were continually brought in. Glasses were filled, raised, and lowered…the gooseberry sorbet to cleanse the palate, venison noisettes, chanterelles grilled in butter, roasted cauliflower, Cumberland sauce, cheese soufflé, Brie and truffles with apple jelly, cream cheese with plums, chocolate terrine, the concluding small pastries. New wines all the time…red from Burgundy…white from Bordeaux…from the Rhône and Loire…while an indefatigable Johansson-like a cavalry officer from the days of the Crimean War-rode ahead with the discussion of the special adviser’s story about the deer in the park at Mary Magdalene’s own college.

According to Johansson the whole thing was very simple. An enclosure with sixty fallow deer ought to reasonably include twenty or so fertile does, which in turn meant that you could count on twenty-some fawns around the end of June every year. If the enclosure had been there for three hundred years and you shot a deer only when a member of the college died, then the number of members of the same congregation ought to amount to several million by now, and as far as the more precise calculations were concerned, he would happily leave those to his host.

“You must have enormous recruiting problems every summer. All those new fellows who will suddenly be elected,” said Johansson with an innocent expression.

There was really no question of that, according to the special adviser. He’d never really thought about how the exact details were solved. That the deer and their instincts would govern the selection of fellows was, on the other hand, inconceivable.

“What if a deer were to die? That sort of thing happens all the time,” said Johansson. “How was that resolved? By showing a fellow the door or perhaps even expanding the proctor’s assignment with the shotgun?”

This too was naturally ruled out, according to the special adviser who, however, promised to think about it.

“You are a real policeman, Johansson,” he said for some reason.

“Of course I am,” said Johansson. “Think about it, as we said.”

Then Johansson thanked him for dinner with a few well-chosen words, and his host got up from the table so they could continue their conversation in the library in peace and quiet, have a cup of coffee, and perhaps a glass or two of the special adviser’s downright remarkable cognac.

“Frapin 1900,” said his host with a happy sigh. “Think how good we rich people have it, Johansson.”

29

Over coffee they finally got to the point, and it was his host who raised the issue. For whatever reason, thought Johansson.

During his vacation, of which he had spent a week at Magdalen to ponder the larger questions in peace and quiet, the special adviser had understood, from the Swedish newspapers he’d still been reading, that his guest had apparently breathed new life into the old investigation of the assassination of his first boss, Prime Minister Olof Palme. Why, on the other hand, he hadn’t understood. According to his firm opinion it was Christer Pettersson who had murdered Palme. Pettersson was now dead. In any event it was much too late in the day, time to wipe the slate clean, forget the whole thing and move on.

“Let bygones be bygones,” he summarized.

According to Johansson a person should be very careful about believing everything that appeared in the newspaper. What he’d done was simply assign a few co-workers to look over the indexing of the material. That was all, and it was high time, by the way, that it was done.

“You don’t think it was Christer Pettersson who did it?” his host interrupted.

“Because it’s you who’s asking,” said Johansson, “no. I never have.”

“But why in the name of God then,” objected his host. “Lisbeth actually singles him out.”

“Even the best can make a mistake,” said Johansson.

“You’ll have to excuse me but the logic of what you’re saying-”

“He doesn’t feel right,” interrupted Johansson, indicating by rubbing his right index finger against his right thumb. “If you want details I can ask one of my co-workers to give you a presentation.”

“To me he feels quite right,” said the special adviser. “Unfortunately,” he added.

According to Johansson’s host, Christer Pettersson was a step in a logical progression. A woeful progression to be sure, but nonetheless a logical one. First there was an eccentric aristocrat, with certain radical ideas for the time, who murdered Gustav III at an opera masquerade for the upper classes. Then a middle-class child who had gone wrong in life and grew up to be a drug-addled hooligan who shot his own prime minister on the street. In the midst of all the ordinary citizens. Now most recently a crazy Serb had cut down the country’s foreign minister in the most bestial way when she was shopping for clothes at the city’s largest department store among all the other prosperous middle-class female shoppers.

“What should we expect next time, Johansson?” asked his guest with a sorrowful expression. “The old orangutan from the Rue de Morgue? Or perhaps the swamp adder in Conan Doyle’s story about the speckled band?”

“More of the opera masquerade, if you ask me,” said Johansson. “There’s no time for monkeys or adders. They’re too unpredictable.”

“Yet another solitary madman, if you ask me,” said the special adviser. “Even solitary madmen can change the world, unfortunately. They do it all the time, actually.”

Because they were still on the subject Johansson had a question of his own. More precisely, one of his many co-workers had a question for his host, and he had actually promised to ask him.

“She knows we know each other,” Johansson explained. “She worked with me at SePo.”

“Of course,” said the special adviser. Johansson was free to ask him about everything. In contrast to all his colleagues, who he was now much too old and tired to bear talking with.

The prime minister’s plans to go to the movies that evening more than twenty years ago. Just how known were they at his office in Rosenbad?

“I’ve already been asked that question,” said the special adviser, smiling.

“I know,” said Johansson. “I’ve read the interview. I also know that you spoke with Berg about the matter in the afternoon of the same day Palme was shot. Not much was said.”

“How would that look, Johansson? If someone like me exchanged confidences with people like that? It’s bad enough that they exchange confidences with each other, and I’m actually a little surprised that Berg, who was a relatively well-organized person for being a policeman, had the poor judgment to submit a memo about our secret conversation into the investigation. And what is it that suddenly causes me to sense the sweet odor of a so-called conspiracy in the vicinity of the victim?”

“We’re that way, us cops,” said Johansson. “We wonder about strange coincidences, write little notes to each other.”

“Yes, I’ve realized that. Personally I keep such things in my head. My own head.”

“Tell me about it,” said Johansson. “You knew the victim. Personally I never met him. What was he like? As a person?”

A talented person. At the same time a person of feeling. An impulsive person. In a good mood a very charming, entertaining, and considerate person. In a bad mood he was a different person, and in the worst case his own enemy.

“I’ve understood that he was very talented,” said Johansson.

“Oh well,” said the special adviser. “He had that quick, superficial, intuitive gift. Verbal, educated, the right background. He had all that in abundance. Although the really difficult questions he preferred to avoid. The questions that don’t have any definite answers. Or, in the best case, several answers, none of which is clearly better than the others. The kinds of questions that I, and you too, Johansson, are drawn to. Like the moth that’s drawn to the kerosene lamp. Although what you want to know is actually something else,” he added.

“What do you mean by that?” said Johansson.

“You’re wondering if he had the habit of running around among his co-workers, asking them what movies he should see?”

“Did he do that?”

“When he was in the mood. As I already suggested. When Olof was happy and suddenly stood there in the doorway to your office and just wanted to talk a little, then you were happy too. Genuine happiness and not so strange perhaps considering who he was and considering who you were. One time he even asked me if I could recommend a film.”

“So what did you say?” said Johansson.

“That I never went to the movies,” said the special adviser. “That I thought it was an overrated diversion. The temple of the fearful. Wasn’t that what Harry Martinson said? Besides, I thought it was inappropriate for purely security reasons for him to do that. If it really was absolutely necessary for him, I assumed he would inform those responsible for his security in good time. The secret police, myself, all the others affected.”

“So what did he say?” asked Johansson.

“That I was a real cheerful little fellow,” said the special adviser. “He was in a good mood that day.”

“The day he was murdered then,” said Johansson.

“The only time he asked me for movie advice I’ve just mentioned to you. That was long before he died. Then I think he never returned to the question. I know I would recommend the occasional ethnic restaurant to him. Sure. Could he have asked someone else? Perhaps. I don’t know. I didn’t even know that he had such plans the day he was murdered. I remember that Berg was nagging about that when we talked on the phone in the afternoon.”

“But you didn’t talk with the prime minister about it?”

“No,” said the special adviser. “It never happened, but considering what did happen perhaps I ought to have done that.”

Suddenly he’s as clear as crystal, thought Johansson. Not a trace of all the wine he’s poured into himself. Suddenly a completely different person.

During the remainder of the evening the special adviser quickly recovered his usual amiable self-given that he was in the mood-and, just as expected, the dinner degenerated in the pleasant manner that bourgeois dinners supposedly never deviated from in the good old days.

First they played billiards. The evening’s host insisted. He demanded to teach Johansson how you played billiards. If Johansson refused, it wasn’t the first time the issue had come up, the alternative was that Johansson teach him how to shoot a pistol and on the police department’s own firing range besides.

“Believe it or not, Johansson, but when I did my military service I was actually an excellent rifleman.”

Faced with this alternative Johansson had no choice. He played billiards with the special adviser, and even though it was the second time in his life he thrashed him soundly. The special adviser excused himself citing all the good wine with dinner and offering difficult-to-interpret statements about the obligations of being a good host.

Then they had a light supper in the special adviser’s laboratory-like kitchen. Herring; crayfish; and Jansson’s temptation, grilled sausages; small beef patties topped with fried eggs; a multitude of various kinds of schnapps; and an improbable selection of beers. Despite their health-impairing qualities and obviously solely out of consideration for his guest.

“I thought you would surely want a little pilsner before going to bed,” said the special adviser, raising his foaming glass.

When Johansson was standing on the front steps with his hand extended to say farewell, his host anticipated him in the most Mediterranean manner. Got up on tiptoe, placed his arms on his shoulders, and gave him two moist kisses, one on each cheek. When the taxi drove away he was still standing there. With raised arms, the baggy green jacket pulled up over his belly. In his delicate boy tenor he’d given his guest a concluding homage in song. The choice of music quite certainly inspired by the instructive conversation they’d carried on during dinner.

“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again…some sunny day…”

30

What Anna Holt was up to was unclear. Lewin and Mattei on the other hand devoted the whole weekend to going through the investigation’s material on more qualified perpetrators. So far, however, none of the individuals they had scrutinized was particularly impressive, measured by Johansson’s standards. Mattei was also struck by the fact that the number of suspects of foreign origin was surprisingly small. Normally this number would be considerable, and haunting the back of her mind was also the testimony of Witness Three, the woman who shouted “fucking gook” at the man who’d run into her only two hundred yards from the crime scene.

Mattei was clear about why almost immediately. As so often before, it was due to the way the case files had been registered. The usual proportions obtained, but this time the perpetrators of foreign origin had been piled under common lead files with titles such as “German Terrorism,” “PKK Track,” “Middle East including Israel,” “South Africa,” “Iran/Iraq,” “Turkey,” and “India/Pakistan.” Clearly the most common reason that an individual ended up in one pile and not another was the suspected perpetrator’s ethnic origin, or more precisely the Swedish police’s perception of his ethnic origin, but the exceptions were numerous and the logic far from crystal clear.

In the lead file that dealt with German terrorism, a number of Swedes appeared that SePo had surveyed in the 1970s and ’80s in connection with the drama at the West German embassy and the plans to kidnap the Swedish minister for immigration Anna-Greta Leijon. It was also here that Mattei stumbled on the first spotlighted perpetrator who fit Johansson’s template. A Swedish former paratrooper from Karlsborg who during the seventies was suspected of having robbed a number of banks in Germany along with some members of the Red Army Faction. What he had been up to later was unclear. Where he was, whether he was alive or dead, was also unclear.

On the other hand it was clear that he had attracted the interest of the Palme investigators. Along with thirty-some other named Swedish military personnel, he was also included in the so-called “military track.” There were even two cross-references in the files to make it easier to find him. That was something that Mattei was not otherwise accustomed to finding in the course of her diligent reading.

Why he would have reason to murder Palme was, however, veiled in darkness.

So what do I do about you then, little old man? sighed Mattei, even though he must be almost twice as old as she was if he was still alive.

Serbs and Croats, Bosnians and Slovenes, Christians and Muslims all over the place, and even though they’d been at one another’s throats since ancient times the Swedish police finally united them all under a joint lead file, “Suspected Perpetrators with Yugoslav Connection.” Police logic left it at that, both in the Balkans and elsewhere in the wide world outside Sweden.

Basically every Yugoslav gangster who had been active in Sweden and had sufficient hair on his chest was also on the investigation’s list of conceivable or even probable Palme assassins. The majority of them were ordinary felons, convicted for murder and robbery, blackmail, hired gun and protection rackets, and everything else that could provide a person with a decent income without having to stoop to ordinary wage labor.

Where committing violence against others was concerned they had an impressive list of credits. Aggravated and instrumental violence to enrich themselves. Their motives for also having murdered Sweden’s prime minister, like the reasons that were provided, were consistently weak or nonexistent. Various anonymous informants, the classic means among hoods and bandits to rat out a competitor, old police prejudices pulled out of the archives where they’d been unexamined for years.

The oldest contribution to the “Yugoslav track” came from the Swedish secret police and was already fifteen years old at the time of the assassination. Three terrorist actions from the early 1970s: the occupation of the Yugoslav consulate in Gothenburg in February 1971, the embassy occupation and murder of the ambassador in Stockholm two months later, the airplane hijacking at Bulltofta in Malmö in September of the following year. The perpetrators were in all cases Croatian activists involved in armed resistance against the Serbian administration of the Yugoslav republic.

In the extensive investigation, mixed reasons were given for why these terrorists could have murdered Palme. As individuals they were described as “fascists,” “political extremists,” “aggressive psychos,” and “extremely violence prone.” In addition they were “hateful” toward the prime minister and the Swedish government that had kept them locked up in jail for fifteen years. On the other hand as far as the law itself was concerned the evidence was nonexistent, the indicators weak and contradictory, the investigative results nil.

If they really had murdered Palme-“that they had very strong reasons to want to see Olof Palme eliminated and that this motive is one of the most convincing in the entire investigation”-then of course their categorical denial conflicted with their whole terrorist tradition, their worldview, and their own personalities. “It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard,” as one of them summarized their common attitude, when before an interrogation he was named as being suspected of complicity in the murder of the Swedish prime minister.

I’m inclined to agree with you, and because you’ve been in prison in Kumla the whole time it wasn’t you at any rate who ran into Witness Three on David Bagares gata, thought Lisa Mattei, taking out the binder with the “Iran/Iraq track.”

All due respect to the violent traditions of the Balkans, but what do we have here? she thought.

On March 5, less than a week after the murder, an anonymous informant called the Swedish secret police with a tip. The day before in the morning “on Riksgatan between the two parliament buildings” he had observed “a slightly balding man, about thirty-five years old, dressed in a brown coat, black pants, and black shoes.” The man appeared to be “under the influence of something, behaved aggressively, and called out Olof Palme’s name at least three times.” According to the informant, he was “Iranian or possibly Iraqi,” was named “Yussef, or possibly Yussuf, Ibrahim,” and “worked as a dishwasher at the Opera Cellar,” a few blocks away from the Parliament Building.

The secret police’s searches had yielded no results. At the Opera Cellar there were “so many dishwashers and janitors of foreign extraction that the tip based on the description was of very limited use.” It was thus not possible to locate any “Yussef, alternatively Yussuf, Ibrahim at the referenced place of business.” The one who best agreed with the meager facial description, a Tunisian, first name Ali, had an alibi for the relevant points in time and was still filed in the “Iran/Iraq” binder despite his place of origin and despite the fact that the secret police had eliminated him over twenty years earlier.

Wonder how the informant knew his name was Yussef? thought Mattei and sighed. And only after another three hours of browsing and reading was it time for her to take yet another binder out of the pile.

Suleyman Özök, born on February 28, 1949, and thus thirty-seven years old to the day when the prime minister was murdered, had come to Sweden in 1970, trained as a mechanic, and at the time of the murder was working as a repairman at Haga Auto Body Repair on Hagagatan in Stockholm. According to the informant “only a stone’s throw from the crime scene.”

The informant had not demanded to be anonymous other than in relationship to the perpetrator about whom he intended to turn in information. Fourteen days after the murder he visited the detective bureau on Kungsholmsgatan in Stockholm and reported that he was “a hundred and twenty percent certain that Suleyman Özök had murdered Sweden’s prime minister.”

According to the informant, Özök was actually a secret agent for the Turkish military dictatorship and his work at the auto body repair shop was only a cover. His real mission was to keep the Kurdish refugees in the country under surveillance and if needed conduct “wet work” for his employers.

Özök was an almost notorious Palme hater, and the reason was the support that Palme and the Swedish government had given to the Kurds who fled from Turkey and sought asylum in Sweden. Özök had access to “at least one pistol and a revolver” that he had shown the informant on several occasions. Most recently, on Tuesday of the same week the prime minister was murdered, he had taken the revolver out of the glove compartment of his car, shown it to the informant, and on the same occasion said that over the weekend he “intended to celebrate my birthday in an honorable way by shooting that swine Olof Palme.”

The same evening the prime minister was murdered the informant “by pure coincidence” happened to pass Tegnérlunden in Stockholm, “only a stone’s throw from the Grand cinema,” and then discovered that Özök’s private car was parked on the street on the north side of Tegnérlunden. Because he did not know that the prime minister “was sitting watching a movie just then only a stone’s throw farther down the street,” he hadn’t thought any more about it, but instead took the subway home to his apartment on Stigfinnargränd in Hagsätra, where he also spent the night.

When he turned on the TV the next morning he was in such severe shock that it took fourteen days before he managed to gather himself to the point that he could contact the police.

Apparently he had made a deep impression on them. Özök had immediately been categorized under the lead file that then still went under the designation “Turkey/PKK.” The investigator presented the case to the prosecutor, who decided that Özök should be picked up for questioning without prior summons and that the police should do a search of his house in Skogås, his car, and his place of work.

The efforts were extensive. The outcome meager. No weapons had been found. The closest they got was some fishing equipment. Özök was an enthusiastic sports fisherman both in Stockholm’s archipelago and in various lakes in the vicinity of the capital. In addition he liked soccer and had been a loyal Hammarby supporter for many years. Most of all he was upset at the police and their informant.

He had never had any firearms. Thus he could never have shown anyone any. He admired Olof Palme, a great man and politician. He had never expressed criticism of him. Much less threatened him. On the contrary, he had taken his side in a number of political discussions at his workplace, Haga Auto Body Repair. He had been a Swedish citizen for many years. He did not intend to return to Turkey even on vacation. Turkey was a military dictatorship. Suleyman Özök was a democrat, a Social Democrat to be precise, and a proud one. He preferred to live in social democratic Sweden despite the sorrow and loss after Palme. He had given up hope on his old homeland long ago.

Finally he had a message for the anonymous informant. If he did not immediately stop harassing him and his new woman, Suleyman would deal with the matter personally. On the other hand he did not intend to make a police complaint. In an auto body repairman’s world there were more substantial, manly means, if such were required.

“You can tell him that if he even tries to touch my lady I’ll stuff a welding iron up his ass,” said Suleyman Özök to his interviewer, but it hadn’t amounted to more than that.

From the concluding notation in Özök’s file it appeared that “Suleyman has been engaged for some time to a former female acquaintance of the informant. Özök’s fiancée works as a secretary at Stockholm University and lives in a service apartment at Teknologgatan 2, in the vicinity of Tegnérlunden. She does not appear in the crime registry.”

Late on Friday afternoon Lewin and Mattei took a long coffee break at an Italian café in the vicinity of police headquarters and discussed their findings of the past week. They each had a café latte. Mattei threw all moderation overboard and feasted on some tiramisu while the ever-cautious Lewin was content to nibble at the biscotti with almond and nuts that came with his coffee. Despite the weekend calm, the beautiful weather, the cheerful atmosphere at the table, and the article of faith that they must always embrace the situation, it had been a conversation under a cloud of resignation.

Together they had reviewed-or at least read about-almost a thousand suspects who, in at least a formal sense, met their criteria of a qualified perpetrator. Upon closer consideration, few of them proved to fulfill these criteria, and what they all had in common was that nothing tangible argued for their having murdered the prime minister twenty years ago. There was a shortage of motives, and even if the police had found the means and opportunities they still would not have been able to find the motive, although hundreds of man-hours had been devoted to certain cases.

At the same time only a few of the suspects could be ruled out with complete certainty. The normal reason was that they were in a correctional facility at the time of the crime, not on the run or on leave or able to sneak out unnoticed. That it was certain that they had been somewhere else, sufficiently far away or with people who were reliable enough that the police could live with their alibis. In summary almost all were investigative question marks, difficult enough to straighten out back then, probably quite impossible to get straight today.

A contributing reason to the latter was that a strikingly large share of them were now dead. When the prime minister was shot, the median age of the men in the group that Lewin and Mattei were reviewing was just over forty. Today it was sixty plus among the sixty percent of them who were still alive.

There were unusual causes of death. Twenty of them had been murdered over the years. Compared with regular, decent folk this was a hundred times more than the expected rate. A hundred of them had committed suicide, a rate twenty-five times greater than it ought to have been. Another couple of hundred had died in accidents, of drug abuse-related diseases, or of “unknown” causes. That rate was ten times greater than normal. Finally fifty or so had simply “disappeared,” and it was unclear where and why.

“I got the list from our CIS squad this morning,” said Lewin, sneaking a look at a small piece of paper. “But you seemed so occupied by your reading I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“More than a third have died,” Mattei summarized. “Instead of about seven percent, as in the normal population, I mean.”

“I wonder what the mortality rate is among our informants and witnesses,” sighed Lewin, as if he were thinking out loud.

The same as for those they singled out, thought Mattei.

“What do we do?” she asked.

Talk with Anna Holt about it. Look at the military and police track because they’d looked at all the rest anyway. Talk with Johansson. Explain to him that his idea of this variation of an internal investigation lacked any conceivable possibility of success. That it was simply too late. That it was time to wipe the slate clean. That what remained was simply the hope of some decisive lead.

“The one we’ll never get,” said Lewin, sipping his coffee. “Not a moment before the clock strikes twelve in any case,” he noted, shaking his head.

“Oh well,” objected Mattei. “There are still three years, six months, six days, and a little over six hours left,” she said, looking at her watch to be on the safe side.

“Three years, six months, six days, six hours…and thirty-two minutes…if mine is running right,” said Lewin, looking at his watch.

“Yes, and here we are, lazing around,” said Mattei. You’re overworked, she thought.

“I was thinking about continuing that over the weekend, lazing around, that is,” said Lewin.

Then they went their separate ways. Lewin walked to the subway to return to his apartment at Gärdet. He meant to shop on the way. Mattei didn’t have anything particular in mind, until she suddenly discovered that she was outside the entryway to her office in the big police building on Kungsholmen.

I guess you didn’t have anything better to do, she thought as she passed the guard in reception, held up her police badge, and drew her pass card through the card reader in the entry passage.

Exactly three years, six months, and six days left, she thought after a quick look at her watch six hours later.

Then she opened the end paper of the last of the thirty-one individual files that were in the three binders that contained the Palme investigation’s “military track.” The one that concerned a baron and captain who ended up last in the alphabetically ordered list of brethren because he was registered under “v” as in “von” and not under his real surname. He was fifty-five years old when the prime minister was assassinated, and in an opinion piece in Svenska Dagbladet a year before the murder he had criticized the murder victim because he had neglected Swedish defense and had been much too indulgent to the great neighbor in the east. An officer and a gentleman, as well as an aristocrat, politically incorrect, and, in the eyes of the Palme investigators, possibly a latter-day Anckarström.

Ay, ay, ay, now it’s really starting to heat up, thought Lisa Mattei. Then she had a serious attack of the giggles and was forced to hunt for a tissue to dry her tears and blow her nose.

31

Late on Friday afternoon-about the same time as Lewin and Mattei were taking their coffee break at a nearby Italian café-Superintendent Anna Holt looked in on her chief to report what she was up to. The secretary’s office was empty and the door to her boss’s office was wide open. Johansson was lying on his couch, reading a thick book with an English title Holt was not familiar with, by an author she did not recognize. He seemed to be in an excellent mood.

“Sit yourself down, Anna,” said Johansson, waving his thick book in the direction of the nearest armchair.

“Thanks,” said Anna.

“Well, well,” said Johansson, changing to a semi-reclined position. “Because Bäckström has stopped poisoning life for Helena I realize you’ve battered that little fatty. What can I do for you in return?”

“It would be good if I could return to my normal work assignments,” said Holt.

“Everything has its time, Anna,” said Johansson, making a deprecatory hand gesture. “Tell me. What kind of bullshit did he want to sell us this time?”

“He got a tip a few weeks ago. It was Friday the seventeenth of August. The day after all the articles reported that we’d started up the Palme investigation again.”

“Imagine that,” said Johansson.

“Yes,” said Holt. “I understand what you’re thinking. The tip comes from one of Bäckström’s own informants. This one seems to have turned in tips to Bäckström on a previous occasion and is according to him a very experienced and reliable individual.”

“You don’t say,” said Johansson. “So he wants to be anonymous of course.”

“Of course. Although Bäckström knows who he is. They seem to have known each other a long time, according to Bäckström, and he has no intention of giving out his name. Otherwise he sounds more or less as usual.”

“Well, perhaps he’s found his place in life. The police lost-and-found warehouse. If he didn’t steal so much I would’ve made a parking garage guard out of him,” said Johansson. “Did he have anything to offer?”

“It’s unclear,” said Holt. “I’m in the process of checking that part. But probably not.”

“Surprise, surprise,” said Johansson.

“Although he actually gave us a name,” said Holt.

“A name? What kind of name?”

“Of that bastard you’re always harping about,” said Holt, smiling for some reason.

“So what’s his name?” asked Johansson, sitting up on the couch, and now he was no longer smiling.

“Not a bad name, actually,” Holt teased. “We’ll really have to hope it doesn’t add up.”

Esperanza was not only beautiful to look at with her harmonious lines and well-balanced proportions. She was also well built, with keel stock, frame, and plating made of oak from the mainland where the oaks grow more slowly than here and give better timber. Built entirely of wood with blue-coated carvel-built planks, white-painted railing, and a teak deck. She was twenty-eight feet long and ten feet across. Softly rounded at the stern, slightly concave bows tapering toward the stern and room for a small cabin forward. The deck was a good size, with plenty of room for fishing tackle and diving equipment. She had a reliable engine too, a four-cylinder, two-hundred-horsepower Volvo Penta marine diesel, and a good-sized fuel tank.

A boat built for all types of weather and the vicissitudes of life. To moor in the sunshine on the smooth sea; to eat, drink, and socialize. To fish and dive from. To rest in or simply sit leaning back against the railing while you cooled your hands and arms in the reflecting water. But also strong and tenacious enough to make its way to the mainland on either the Spanish, French, or African side, as long as the winds kept below hurricane force. Or perhaps to Corsica, where the boat’s owner had at least one friend he trusted unconditionally, and where there were many like him. To Corsica, three hundred nautical miles and a thirty-hour run northeast of Puerto Pollensa, where he could find a refuge for the remainder of his life if he needed it.

32

Bäckström was little, fat, and primitive, but if necessary he could be both sly and slow to forget.

Of the country’s seventeen thousand police officers he was also the one who had the largest professionally adapted vocabulary, with hundreds of crude names for everyone he didn’t like: immigrants, homosexuals, criminals, and regular Joes regardless of gender. In brief, everyone who wasn’t like him, of which there were extremely few. Taken together these human qualities had made him famous within the corps he had served for thirty years. Detective Chief Inspector Evert Bäckström was a “legendary murder investigator” who, in contrast to most other legends, was active in one thing or another.

A year earlier he had been exiled from his natural habitat at the National Homicide Commission to the Stockholm police department’s property investigation squad. Or the police lost-and-found warehouse as all real policemen, including Bäckström himself, called this final storage place for stolen bicycles, lost wallets, and strayed police souls.

Bäckström was a victim. Of unfortunate circumstances in general and evil plots in particular. But most of all of the Royal Swedish Envy. His former chief, Lars Martin Johansson, simply could not cope with Bäckström’s successful battle against the constantly increasing and ever more serious criminality. When Bäckström solved an unusually complicated murder case of a young female police candidate from Växjö, Johansson wove a rope from all the strands of slander, put the noose around Bäckström’s neck, and personally gave him the final kick.

Despite an unsympathetic, grudging, and flat-out destructive environment, Bäckström tried to make the best of his situation. Work as a property investigator offered interesting opportunities for anyone sufficiently alert to seize opportunity in flight. That wouldn’t include his new colleagues, who were a deplorable congregation of unimaginative pietists who did not even realize that they were sitting with the whole bunch of keys to the gigantic treasure chest that contained “stolen,” “misplaced,” or simply “ownerless” goods. Something that Bäckström of course realized as soon as he crossed the threshold to his new place of work.

The most deplorable colleague at his new job was an old acquaintance from the time when Bäckström worked at the homicide squad in Stockholm, Detective Inspector Göran Wiijnbladh. Wiijnbladh had worked at the Stockholm police technical squad until 1990, when he took partial retirement and was moved over to what was then the lost property warehouse. He was a technician from the old tribe, and apart from six years of elementary school, less than a year at the old police academy, and a few weeklong courses for crime technicians, he had carefully avoided all theoretical digressions, firmly convinced as he was that the only knowledge worth the name was what had been obtained through practical work. It was this attitude that would prove to be his misfortune.

Wiijnbladh’s major problem at that time was that his wife had betrayed him. This was relatively simple, in that she made up approximately ninety-nine percent of his total quantity of problems. It was worse that she did it quite openly, which considering the nature of the operation also conflicted with its fundamental idea. Worst of all, however, was that she preferred to do it with other police officers, and because this had been going on since the day after their wedding, there wasn’t a department in the Stockholm police where one or more co-workers hadn’t put horns on fellow officer Wiijnbladh.

In the autumn of 1989 Wiijnbladh decided to do something about this by poisoning her with thallium he had come across at work. During his preparations he happened to poison himself. He handled his thallium the same way he was accustomed to dealing with fingerprint powder. He got microscopic quantities on his fingers and hands, suffered acute poisoning, and almost died to boot. When he came back from the hospital a few months later, he was only a splinter of his former self. Though he hadn’t been particularly imposing to begin with.

The whole thing had been hushed up by police leadership. With assistance from the police officers union the event was transformed into a tragic workplace accident, which the parties then resolved on the best of terms. Wiijnbladh was given a half-time pension and a decent one-time compensation for employment injury, and the half of him that remained was moved to the unit that later that same year changed its name from Stockholm police lost property warehouse to the Stockholm police property investigation squad.

There he’d been for the past fifteen years, occupied with stolen art and stolen antiques. Why this area in particular, no one understood. He did not seem to possess any particular expertise in the subject, but because it seemed harmless enough he’d been allowed to stay there. In the very smallest room at the end of the corridor sat Wiijnbladh, browsing through all his binders of stolen and misplaced artworks. He would drink his coffee in solitude in the same room, and none of his co-workers really had any idea when he came and went. No one cared, and soon he would take retirement.

It’ll be nice to be rid of that little half-fairy, thought Bäckström in his sympathetic way the few times he’d seen him sneak past in the corridors.

Although to start with he’d had some benefit from him.

About the same time Bäckström arrived at his new workplace, the squad got one of its biggest cases in many years. An eccentric Swedish billionaire, who’d had his official and actual residence in Geneva for ages, had a break-in in his “overnight apartment” in Stockholm. An ordinary, simple, ten-room apartment on Strandvägen where, according to information from the Swedish tax authorities, he stayed at the most a few times a year. “It’s usually a week around Christmas and New Year’s, and perhaps another week when I’m home to celebrate Midsummer or visit my children,” the man had said. Probably this was also the reason that it took almost a month before the Stockholm police became aware of the extent of the crime.

On Pentecost Eve, Saturday the third of June, the police command center received an alarm from Securitas of a crime in progress on Strandvägen. The reason that help was being requested from their government-financed competitor was that their own response vehicle happened to run into a bicyclist in Östermalm, approximately half a mile from the scene of the crime. In addition this was urgent, because the frightfully advanced alarm system that had been installed a few years earlier was completely convinced that the thief was still at the crime scene-according to the same system he appeared to be alone.

The police seldom got such an opportunity to rap their private-sector competitors on the knuckles, and in the general delirium unfortunately the officers in the radio car that arrived first forgot to turn off both the blue lights and the siren as they braked outside the entryway. The perpetrator had been scared off, and when the apartment was finally entered it was empty. The thief had sneaked out through the kitchen entry, across the back courtyard, and out to the street on the other side of the block. No one was arrested, but the outcome was good enough because it appeared that he hadn’t managed to make off with anything from the overnight apartment, which could best be described as an “art museum” according to the technicians and experts from the property investigation squad who were called to the scene. This was also the information that the security company gave the customer when he was called at home in Switzerland.

Break-in at the apartment. Now taken care of by additional protective measures. Break-in interrupted. The thief had departed from the scene and it seemed that he hadn’t taken anything with him. No technical clues had been secured. Perpetrator unknown. Only three weeks later, when the crime victim showed up to celebrate Midsummer-“have some pickled herring, a shot or two of aquavit, listen to Evert Taube, and watch the sun go down behind the dear old outhouse”-had they realized the extent of what had happened.

The crime victim’s attorney then contacted both the security company and the Stockholm police to report that the thief had not left as empty-handed as they had asserted. Despite the sirens down on the street, the perpetrator had managed to take with him a small oil painting by Pieter Bruegel the Younger, which the owner of the apartment had hung in his guest toilet to annoy guests who weren’t as rich as he was.

The crime victim was a taciturn man, and neither his security company nor the police made a big deal of it. There was not a word in the newspapers, although the stolen painting had an insurance value of thirty million Swedish kronor. In the greatest possible silence an extensive investigation had begun. Even if clues were completely lacking and despite the fact that in principle the painting was unsellable.

Bäckström heard about it all as he sat in the break room. Personally he didn’t work with art thefts. No paintings, no antiques, not even a pitiful little silver candlestick was allowed to cross his desk for some reason. He had been assigned more substantial things, and since the first day he had been fully occupied with an Estonian freight truck found abandoned in a parking lot up at Norrtälje. Upon closer examination it proved to contain almost two hundred stolen bicycles.

“Here’s something for you to bite into, Bäckström,” said his immediate supervisor as he set the investigation file on his desk.

“What the hell should I do with this shit?” said Bäckström, glaring acidly at the multipage list of stolen goods.

“How about finding the owners?” said his boss with a sneering smile. “Welcome, by the way,” he added.

Now this is war, goddamn it, thought Bäckström, and how the hell do you go about telling two hundred bikes apart? Personally he didn’t know anyone who needed a bike. The only people who bike are homos, dykes, treehuggers, and anorexics. Even the Chinese drive cars nowadays, he thought.

Now it’s a matter of embracing the situation if you’re not going to starve to death, thought Bäckström, and after some pondering he remembered a female acquaintance he’d met on the Internet. She worked as a dental hygienist in Södertälje and surely needed a bicycle. She was a real barn owl who always ran around in home-sewn clothes and gave him a batik T-shirt she’d dyed herself back in the day. If she deals in that kind of shit she probably bicycles too, thought Bäckström. Sitting and rubbing herself on some old saddle, and what the hell did a horndog like that have to choose from? he thought.

A few things as it turned out, as soon as he got hold of her by phone. For one thing her new fiancé, who worked as district chief with the local police in Solna, had given her a car of her own. For another she already had a bicycle. Third, she thought it was a strange coincidence to say the least that Bäckström had a bike to sell. Almost new, and cheap besides. Fourth, she was seriously considering calling Bäckström’s boss and letting him know about this.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” asked Bäckström.

“My guy told me you got a job at the police lost-and-found warehouse,” she replied.

“Hello, little lady,” said Bäckström. “You don’t think I’m so fucking dense that I’m trying to foist a stolen bike off on you?” Now it’s a matter of damming the creek before the shit ends up in the river, he thought.

“Yes,” she said, “I think you really are that dense.” Then she just hung up.

Fucking cunt lips, and what the hell do I do now? thought Bäckström, but because he’d always had a lucky streak it worked out anyway. The very next evening he ran into an old acquaintance he’d gotten to know at his neighborhood restaurant: Gustaf G:son Henning, a very successful and respected art dealer who had offered Bäckström a thing or two over the years in exchange for simpler police confidences. Now seventy years old, slender and well-tailored with silver hair, a large apartment on Norr Mälarstrand, an office at Norrmalmstorg, he was a frequent guest on all the art and antique programs on TV. Among those who knew him he was called GeGurra, and the only mystery was that he would show up regularly at the humble greasy spoon on the wrong side of Kungsholmen that Bäckström frequented basically every day of the week.

When GeGurra was born his dear parents had christened him Juha Valentin. Juha after his maternal grandfather, who had Finnish Gypsies on his side of the family and had great success, as both a rag-and-bone merchant and a scrap metal collector. Valentin after his paternal grandfather, who had been active in the amusement industry and among many things owned a traveling carnival and two porno clubs in Bohuslän back when the industry was new and a real Wild West for anyone who could help themselves. Juha Valentin Andersson Snygg, a name with both ancestry and obligations, and absolutely inconceivable for the hopeful young man who saw a future in the somewhat more elegant trade in art and antiques.

As soon as Juha Valentin became an adult he changed his name. To be on the safe side both his first names and his surname, which he chose according to the snobbiest prejudices to be found in the industry he intended to make his own. He also made an exciting addition as an homage to the most stuck-up of them all. Juha Valentin Andersson Snygg had been transformed to Gustaf G:son Henning in the civil registry and to the public, and to GeGurra among near, dear, and regular acquaintances. Juha Valentin belonged to a time long since past.

It sometimes happened that Gustaf G:son was asked what G:son really stood for. Then he would smile sadly before he answered.

“After old uncle Gregor. Though he’s been dead for many years, as I’m sure you know.”

It was also quite true. His mother, Rosita, had a brother whose name was Gregor who had died under tragic circumstances back in the fifties. The distilling apparatus in his trailer exploded, but he never got that kind of follow-up question.

The day after the failed bicycle deal, GeGurra had again shown up in Bäckström’s life and in the usual way.

“Nice to see you, Inspector,” said GeGurra, patting Bäckström on the shoulder. “Here you stand, philosophizing by the worn-out old bar counter.”

“Really nice to see you, Henning,” said Bäckström, who could also be formal if required. Fucking good luck I haven’t ordered yet, he thought.

“Thank you, thank you. You’re much too kind,” GeGurra acknowledged. “Have you eaten, by the way?”

“Thanks for asking,” said Bäckström. “I was just thinking about having a small bite.” Birdseed and a glass of water, if it’s my own wallet that decides, he thought.

“You know what,” said GeGurra, “then I propose we take a carriage and drive down to the Theater Grill where we can converse in peace and quiet. And I’ll pick up the check.”

“I understand you’ve finally wound up at a well-laid table,” GeGurra observed fifteen minutes later, raising his glass. “Cheers, by the way.”

“Depends on what you mean by well-laid,” said Bäckström, shaking his head. Twenty minutes ago he’d been at the bar in his squalid regular place. Now he was sitting in the most isolated booth at one of the city’s deluxe restaurants. The personnel tied themselves in knots as soon as GeGurra appeared at the door. Large dry martini for GeGurra, malt whiskey and beer for Bäckström, each with a menu in hand. As soon as they sat their rear ends down and without Bäckström’s host needing to say a word about it.

“You don’t know anyone who needs a bicycle?” Bäckström added and sighed.

“In a rough game you should keep a good face,” GeGurra observed. “Ask me, a simple guppy who shares the aquarium with sharks, piranhas, and ordinary jellyfish. When I see you, dear Bäckström, I get a definite premonition that considerably better times are approaching.”

“You don’t say,” said Bäckström. You don’t say, he thought.

“You see, I have a small problem I think you can help me with,” said GeGurra, sipping his dry martini carefully.

“I’m listening,” said Bäckström.

GeGurra had an old customer. For many years now he’d also been a good friend. It was often that way among friends of art. Great art collector, significant patron, living abroad for many years. A few months ago he’d had a break-in in his apartment in Stockholm. An old Dutchman that wasn’t exactly free had been stolen. True, it was insured for its full value, but what did that help for a true art lover who didn’t care the least about money and besides had more of that commodity than all his spoiled heirs could imagine running through for several generations to come. He wanted his painting back. It was no more difficult than that, and now he’d asked GeGurra for advice.

“What do you think, Bäckström?” said GeGurra. “What do you think are the chances that you and your new associates will succeed in clearing this up and making sure he gets his painting back?”

“You probably shouldn’t ask me that,” said Bäckström. “It’s not my case.”

“Sad, very sad,” said GeGurra and sighed. “You don’t think your associates will put this to rights?”

“Forget it,” said Bäckström. If you don’t believe me I can show you little Wiijnbladh, he thought.

“You wouldn’t be able to check on how it’s going?” asked GeGurra.

“It’s not as easy as you think,” said Bäckström. “There’s a fucking lot of secrecy these days. You’d almost think you were working for a secret sect. If it’s not your case, then you’re screwed if you try to ferret anything out. Back in the day the insurance companies would buy back stolen paintings, but then a lot of fucking teetotalers and clean-living fools came in who made short work of that solution. As soon as some helpful bastard shows up with the painting, he lands right in jail. He can just forget about the reward money, and the insurance companies don’t want to hear about such things anymore.”

“My good friend has a Swiss insurance company,” said GeGurra. “I can assure you that they have a completely different and much more practical attitude.”

“Sure,” said Bäckström. “Tell that to the one who’s going to turn in the goods. He can only dream about the dough while he’s serving four years in the can for receiving stolen goods.”

“Think about it,” said GeGurra. “While we have a bit to eat and a little schnapps so we’ll think better.”

“What’s in it for me?” said Bäckström. Just as well to have it said, he thought.

“In my world no one goes empty-handed,” said GeGurra with a well-tailored shrug of his shoulders. “So what do you say we start with gravlax?”

The following day Bäckström took the opportunity as soon as Wiijnbladh stumbled out the door at three o’clock. All was calm and quiet in the corridor. Not a single soul around because it was both payday and Friday and high time for all hardworking constables to visit the state liquor store before they went home to the little wife and let the struggle against criminality take a weekend rest.

Bäckström started by turning over Wiijnbladh’s desk pad, and the only problem was that he’d taped the reminder slip upside down. Eight digits and eight letters written in shaky handwriting. As a personal code he had chosen Cerberus, and he was probably not the only one in the building to do so. Wonder if he’s thinking about buying new false teeth, thought Bäckström as he entered the codes in his flash drive.

Then he logged in and printed out a copy of the investigation of the art theft on Strandvägen. Put it in his pocket, took a bracing walk from his workplace to GeGurra’s residence on Norr Mälarstrand, and dropped it in his mail slot.

The following week he and GeGurra had a discreet meeting with a Swiss attorney and an English-speaking representative of the Swiss insurance company. It was clear that Bäckström would be able to arrange the retrieval of the painting if he could do as real policemen had always done. No problem, according to the insurance executive and the attorney. One wish remained on Bäckström’s side.

“This meeting never took place and you gentlemen and I have never met,” said Bäckström.

No problem with that either, and what the hell do I do now? thought Bäckström when he returned to work an hour afterward.

One week later the matter resolved itself. Even though it wasn’t his case, Inspector Evert Bäckström received an anonymous tip by phone. A polite young man who did not want to say his name announced that there was a recently stolen car parked on Polhemsgatan outside the entryway to the large police building. Only a hundred yards from Bäckström’s own desk, although he didn’t say that. In the trunk was a stolen painting, and so the police wouldn’t have to waste time, the vehicle had been left unlocked.

Bäckström went to his immediate boss and briefly explained what the whole thing was about. He said that if his boss so desired he would obviously follow up on the phone call and take a look.

“What I still don’t get is why the informant called you, Bäckström,” the chief hissed ten minutes later when they opened the back of the stolen car and saw the just-recovered painting by Bruegel the Younger. “This is not really your investigation.”

“I guess he wanted to talk with a real policeman,” said Bäckström, shrugging his fat shoulders. There’s something for you to suck on, you little bureaucrat, he thought.

One week later Bäckström’s boss gave him a new case to sink his teeth into. The department at the Swedish Economic Crime Authority that dealt with environmental crimes needed help tracing the original owner of fifty-some barrels of apparently toxic waste that the police in Nacka had found in an abandoned factory.

How do you tell such things apart? thought Bäckström. They’re all the same anyway, he thought. A few days earlier he’d met GeGurra, who thanked him for the help, treated him to dinner, and delivered a plain brown envelope without return address plus a promise that more would be coming, peu à peu, as custom dictated, between discreet friends.

You really are a cunning little devil, GeGurra, thought Bäckström when after a good meal he returned to his pleasant bachelor pad on Inedalsgatan, only a stone’s throw from the large police building. Even a half-fairy like Wiijnbladh had to make his contribution without having a clue about it.

Maybe I should buy new false teeth for the little poisoner, thought Bäckström as he mixed an ample evening toddy. The wooden kind, he thought.

Chief Inspector Evert Bäckström, legendary murder investigator in forced exile at the police lost-and-found warehouse. Gustaf G:son Henning, successful art dealer and known from TV. Inspector Göran Wiijnbladh, the police’s own knight of the mournful guise. Three human fates that had turned out differently, to be sure, but that in less than a year would be joined in a way none of them could have foreseen.

33

Almost a year later, on Thursday, August 16, Bäckström was sitting at home in his apartment on Inedalsgatan, having a quiet evening highball. Fruit soda and Estonian vodka he’d bought from a fellow officer who worked with the coast guard and had a few contacts on the other side. Despite the monthly contribution from the good Henning, there had been many holes to fill. Since he’d acquired his new plasma TV with the giant screen, malt whiskey, at least for a time, had to be replaced by simpler fare. I hope it is a temporary problem, thought Bäckström, sighing contentedly. Turning on his new acquisition he almost choked on his drink.

Lapp bastard, he thought, staring at Johansson on the screen. Sitting there telling lies in that drawling Norrland way. Just like all the other Lapp bastards in a coma from too many dumplings.

That put an end to his evening repose. Even though he changed channels almost immediately and even though he tried to extinguish the smoldering fire inside him with another couple of substantial bracers. He didn’t even have the energy to check his e-mail to see if anything new had shown up from that crazy female who preferred “real men in uniform” with “fixed routines and clear orientation” but who at the same time were not unfamiliar with “boundary-crossing activities.”

How the hell does the little sow get that to fit together? thought Bäckström. And the only prospect he could think of personally was a royally drunk Italian customs agent he’d met at a conference a few years earlier.

I’ll kill the Lapp bastard, thought Bäckström, and with these consoling thoughts in his round head he fell asleep almost immediately in his newly purchased Hästens bed.

The following day was like all other days at his new job. Old bikes, shithouse barrels, and for a week now half an office that a practical-minded entrepreneur had dumped on a wooded hillside on an old aristocratic estate twelve miles north of Stockholm. A lot of worn-out computers, wobbly desks, and dilapidated desk chairs. A method of disposal both practical and cheap if you couldn’t make it to the dump, and what the hell did the police have to do with this? thought Bäckström.

Although he did realize it was the wrong wooded hillside. The fine people who lived on the estate had been extremely indignant and took the chief constable aside when he was at dinner with their old friend His Majesty the King. Already the next day the case was on Bäckström’s desk. Serious environmental crime with highest priority from the highest police leadership and necessary assistance required from the lost-and-found warehouse’s most experienced property investigator, that is, Bäckström.

“So I guess you’ll have to borrow a service vehicle, Bäckström, and do a little investigating on the scene. Sounds like there’s a lot of nutritious technical clues out there if I’m correctly informed,” said his immediate boss as he gave him the assignment and set the complaint on his desk. “By the way, don’t forget to take along a pair of rubber boots,” he added thoughtfully. “The ground is supposed to be pretty damp this time of year.”

The case had mostly been going nowhere, but Bäckström did his best to get things moving and was even invited to a restorative lunch by the crime victim himself when he interviewed him about the probable time of the crime. Basically whenever, according to the plaintiff, because these days he spent most of his time in his house on the French Riviera where fortunately he didn’t own any wooded hillsides he had to worry about.

“Probably one of those bankruptcies,” the landowner suggested, saluting his guest with his schnapps glass. “Unless you have any better ideas, chief inspector?”

“I’m thinking about having the whole pile of shit hauled to the tech squad,” said Bäckström.

“Sounds like an excellent idea,” his host observed. “I assume the police will cover the expense.”

“Of course,” said Bäckström.

His boss had not been equally amused. Especially not after his conversation with the head of the tech squad, but Bäckström stuck to his guns and if this was to be war, so be it.

“So now I’m suddenly supposed to forget about a serious environmental crime,” said Bäckström indignantly. “Even though that fucking greenhouse effect will be the death of both old ladies and children. You have kids, don’t you?” With an exceptionally ugly old lady, he thought.

“Of course not, Bäckström, of course not,” his boss protested. “Yes, I have three kids so I understand exactly. What I mean is simply that perhaps we shouldn’t expect that tech will treat this as a priority. You haven’t tried to trace the things yourself?”

“Bookshelf ‘Billy,’ office chair ‘Nisse,’ and a lot of old broken computers that were bought over the counter ten years ago. Though I did find at least two hard drives among the other mildew, and if the boys at tech just focus on those I think we’ll be home free,” said Bäckström. That gives you a little something to suck on, you effeminate little binder carrier, thought Bäckström.

Then his old benefactor GeGurra called him on his cell phone and suddenly there was hope in his life again.

“Do you have time for dinner next week?” Gustaf G:son Henning wondered as soon as they were finished with the introductory courtesies. “I have a very interesting story, and I think we can be of mutual benefit and use to each other, if I may say so. Unfortunately I have a lot of work right now, so what do you think about the Opera Cellar on Monday at seven o’clock?”

“Of course,” said Bäckström. “You can’t give me a clue?” Now this is starting to look like something, he thought. That fucking office furniture they could almost lamentably shove up their rear ends if they asked him.

“Big things, Bäckström,” said GeGurra. “Much too big to be discussed on the phone I’m afraid.”

Wonder if they’ve pinched that old Rembrandt at the National Museum, thought Bäckström. The one with all those bastards sitting and boozing while they swore some fucking oath.

“Worse than that, I’m afraid,” said Gustaf G:son Henning, looking at his guest seriously as they sat down in the usual out-of-the-way corner and each got a refresher while they studied the menu.

“What do you know about the weapon that was used when Olof Palme was shot?” he continued, as he nibbled carefully on the large olive that the waiter had set on a dish alongside his dry martini.

Goodness, thought Bäckström. Now we’re talking.

“Quite a bit,” said Bäckström, nodding with all the dignity that suits anyone who was there when it happened. Now the Lapp bastard will have to watch out, he thought. The honorable Henning was unquestionably a man who dealt in hard goods. Not an ordinary glowworm who let his jaw run on its own.

“Do tell,” said Bäckström.

“I have a few questions first, if you’ll excuse me,” said his host.

“I’m listening,” said Bäckström.

“They say there’s a reward?”

“The socialist government put a price tag on the bastard. Fifty million tax free provided he’s delivered in travel-ready condition.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Ready for further transport to the courts and our dear criminal justice system.” Bäckström grinned, taking a gulp of his life-giving malt.

“What if he’s dead?”

“Still fifty million if it can be proved that it was him,” said Bäckström. “On the other hand, if you can only deliver the weapon he used, you’ll have to be content with ten million,” he continued. “Because we have the bullets from the crime scene to compare with, it’s also pretty easy. If you find the right weapon, that is. Proving that it was the one that was used, I mean,” Bäckström clarified.

“What would happen if you were to show up with the weapon? Or mentioned where your colleagues could find it?”

“I wouldn’t get any money in that case,” sighed Bäckström. “I am a cop after all, so I’m expected to do that sort of thing for free.” On the other hand I would have guaranteed hell from the Lapp bastard and probably wind up in jail as thanks for clearing up his shit, he thought.

“What if the tip came from me?” asked GeGurra.

“Then you’d get pure hell,” said Bäckström, nodding in emphasis.

“Anonymously then? Assuming I gave an anonymous tip?”

“Forget it,” said Bäckström. “We’re talking about the assassination of Olof Palme, so you can forget anonymity. Jail! That’s where you’ll end up. Out of pure reflex, if nothing else.”

“Even if I can prove that I wasn’t the least bit involved?” his host persisted.

“Then you can still forget about being anonymous. This is no ordinary lottery winnings we’re talking about,” said Bäckström. “Some of my fellow officers are as taciturn as a tea strainer. Give out more than you pour in, if you know what I mean.”

“Sad,” said GeGurra and sighed. “Personally I’ve done considerably larger deals than this without saying a word about either the seller or the buyer.”

“Sure,” said Bäckström. “It’s a completely different matter, since I’m the one who’s the cop in this company.”

“Yes?”

“What do you think if I ask the questions and you answer?” said Bäckström.

“Of course,” said GeGurra and nodded. “Then I’ll tell you what I heard from an old acquaintance almost fifteen years ago.”

“Wait now,” said Bäckström, making a deprecating gesture. “Fifteen years ago? Why haven’t you said anything until now?”

“It was as if it never happened,” said GeGurra, shaking his head. “But then I saw in the newspaper a week or so ago that the head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation apparently opened a new secret investigation. Because the crime will soon pass the statute of limitations, I thought perhaps this was the right time to speak out.”

“Okay, I’m listening,” said Bäckström. Talk about danger in delay, he thought.

Almost fifteen years earlier, an old acquaintance, who “was in the same line of work as Bäckström,” told Gustaf G:son Henning about the weapon used to murder Olof Palme. Because he had kept a diary for many years, Bäckström could of course get an exact date for their conversation if he so desired.

“Why did he tell you that?” asked Bäckström. A fellow cop. That’s the shits, he thought.

“He wanted to know what it might be worth if it was sold on the international art and antiques market,” GeGurra explained. “People collect the strangest things, you know,” he said, shaking his head. “A few years ago I sold an old pair of flannel pajamas that had belonged to Heinrich Himmler, the old head of the Nazi SS, as I’m sure you recall, for three hundred fifty thousand kronor.”

“What kind of answer did he get? Your acquaintance, I mean.”

“That it would probably be extremely difficult to find a buyer. Considering that it concerned a still unsolved murder of a prime minister. A million, tops, at that point in time. But that the potential price could obviously change radically as soon as the murder was past the statute of limitations, assuming the weapon was not criminally acquired, of course. The limitations period for receiving stolen goods is a bit complicated, as I’m sure you know. In any event, after the end of that period this would surely be a matter of millions.”

“More than ten?”

“Certainly.” GeGurra nodded. “Assuming that you find the right buyer, and I know several who would reach down pretty far to add a showpiece like that to their collections.”

“The Friends of Palme Haters,” said Bäckström and grinned.

“Yes, one of them, at least.”

“Did he tell you anything else about the weapon?”

“Yes. Among other things he said that this did not concern a Smith and Wesson revolver as has always been maintained in the media. Instead it concerned a different, American-manufactured revolver, a Ruger. The model is called Speed Six and has a magazine that holds six bullets. Chrome, silver-colored, with a long barrel, ten inches I seem to recall he said, a.357 caliber Magnum. Wooden butt made of walnut with a checkered grip. In perfect condition. I remember I asked about that, by the way. That kind of information is important to someone like me.”

“Did he say anything else?” said Bäckström. “Did he have any registration number on the weapon?” The model may actually correspond, he thought.

“Not that he gave me anyway. On the other hand the weapon was ready for delivery, in the event of a deal. It had been stored in a very secure place for a number of years.”

“So where was that?” asked Bäckström.

“In the lion’s own den,” said GeGurra, smiling faintly. “Those were his own words. That it had been stored in the lion’s own den.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I’ve no idea. But he seemed extremely amused when he said it.”

“Did he say anything else?” asked Bäckström.

“Yes, actually. One more thing. Pretty strange story, in fact. According to what he alleged, the same weapon had been used for another two murders and a suicide. A few years before it was used to shoot the prime minister. I definitely remember that he said that. That this was a weapon with a long history. It had been used not only to shoot a prime minister who spied for the Russians, but also to clear away more ordinary riffraff. He expressed himself more or less like that, actually.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Who?” said GeGurra, with a modest smile.

“Your informant. The one who was in the same line of work as me. Does he have a name?”

“Yes,” said GeGurra. “But hardly a name that you discuss at a place like this. So you’ll have to be patient for a few hours. I asked one of my co-workers to place a discreet envelope in your mail slot. The usual monthly amount for our old deal plus a little extra to defray your expenses in connection with what we’ve just discussed, which I hope can be our next project. Plus a slip of paper with the name of my old acquaintance.”

“Sounds good,” said Bäckström. “By the way, how did you get to know him?”

“Like most of the others,” said GeGurra. “He bought a painting from me. A Zorn, actually.”

“Goodness,” said Bäckström. “That wasn’t cat shit.” Wonder what a colleague like that had worked out? he thought. Must have been better than the lost-and-found warehouse.

“A rather unusual Zorn,” said GeGurra. “When the great painter of women was in his most exhilarated mood, his female studies could be rather penetrating, if I may say so. Not just skin, hair, and water. An unknown side of Zorn, or perhaps a side not readily discussed by art historians, but which suited my acquaintance’s somewhat special taste. Like hand in glove, if you will.”

“He painted her pussy,” Bäckström concluded.

“The best-painted cunt in Swedish art history,” GeGurra concurred with unexpected emphasis. “What do you say to an ample slice of meat, by the way, and a decent bottle of red?”

Bäckström remained sitting at the restaurant longer than he intended. He had yet another project to attend to. Besides an envelope that waited on his own hall mat.

GeGurra really is an old brick, thought Bäckström as he sat on his couch, counting up the monthly stipend, plus the to say the least generous incentive to support the new project. Although personally he wouldn’t have given many kopeks for the name of the informant on the enclosed slip of paper.

What do you mean “colleague”? No way did that fairy manage to shoot Palme, and how did someone like that have the money for a Zorn? thought Bäckström, shaking his round head before downing an ample dose of Estonian vodka and fruit soda. Besides, there was definitely someone else he knew who always used to bang on about the fact that he had been a good friend of the same man.

Now who the hell was that? thought Bäckström, and never mind, for it would certainly come back to him. Must be that fucking Baltic vodka, he thought before he fell asleep. Like an eraser on an otherwise perfectly functioning brain like his.

34

On Thursday, August 31, contrary to habit Bäckström had been dutifully active the whole day, because there were big things going on. Not bicycles, waste drums, or worn-out office furniture. Likely this was a matter of future Swedish crime history that for once had ended up in the right hands and not with one of his more or less retarded fellow officers. For once it was also so expedient that he had access to all the information he needed in his own computer. Even the police lost-and-found warehouse had been mobilized in the hunt for the revolver used to shoot the prime minister. A hunt that had gone on for as long as the hunt for the murderer himself. Which had required tens of thousands of man-hours over the years and still with no results.

As early as Sunday, two days after the murder, the leader of the investigation at the time, Hans Holmér, held his first press conference, and the murder weapon had been the media headliner. The large conference hall at police headquarters, hundreds of journalists, packed to the rafters with people, TV cameras from all over the world, and a police chief who was positively quivering with desire to meet his audience. He leaned on his elbows, his upper body swaying like a boxer as he sat at a table on the high podium, silenced the audience with a hand gesture, and nodded seriously but nonetheless smiling toward the hall of attentive listeners.

After a well-considered stage pause, he held up two revolvers in front of him while he was met by a veritable cascade of flashbulbs, wave after wave of lights that streamed toward him, and personally he had never felt as strong as right then.

From that day on the investigation leadership had also decided that this “in all probability concerned a U.S.-manufactured revolver of the brand Smith & Wesson with a long barrel.” Partly because this was possibly true, but mostly because this was not a time for provisos and reservations.

How could he be so sure of that? Bäckström thought, who knew better because he had been there from the beginning and was a real police officer in contrast to Holmér and all the other legal fairies who barely knew where the trigger was.

That it concerned a revolver and not a pistol seemed highly probable. The half a dozen witnesses who had seen it in the perpetrator’s right hand described it exactly that way. Like a “typical revolver,” “one of those Western pieces with a long barrel,” or even like “the real Buffalo Bill thing.”

Their observations had also been supported by the few technical clues that had been secured-or not secured-at the crime scene. No bullet casings had been found, and because pistols in contrast to revolvers eject the casing when fired, this argued for a revolver. The caliber of the two bullets found at the crime scene was.357 Magnum, and almost all guns in that caliber were revolvers. There were exceptions, such as the Israeli army’s Desert Eagle service pistol, but these were uncommon and did not tally with the bullets that were found. The bullets at the crime scene were somewhat special and manufactured only for revolvers.

The first one had been found early in the morning after the murder. It was on the sidewalk on the other side of Sveavägen, about fifty yards from the crime scene. The second one was found a day later at lunchtime and was in the line of fire less than six yards from the place where the prime minister had been shot.

It had been possible to trace the bullets to the manufacturer. The make was Winchester Western.357 Magnum, metal piercing. Lead bullets supplied with an especially hard mantle consisting of a layer of copper and zinc, which therefore could also break through metal. The reason for manufacturing them was that the American highway patrol expressed a desire for a bullet that was sufficiently hard and resistant so that for example it could be shot through the engine block of a car.

How many had then been used was uncertain. At the same time this was of minor importance because the metal piercing bullets quickly became popular among regular Magnum shooters and especially among those engaged in so-called combat shooting, a practice in which a certain type of adult male runs around shooting at most everything from paper figures to empty gas cans.

Otherwise these facts were hardly instructive. Revolvers of the relevant caliber had been on the market for over thirty years before the Swedish prime minister was shot. Millions of specimens had been manufactured and sold over the years, and their owners had fired hundreds of millions of shots using the same caliber bullets. How many of these had been metal piercing was uncertain, but the largest manufacturer, Winchester Western, had sold millions of them in any event.

On top of all this, from the start there had been serious doubt about the two bullets that had been found because it wasn’t the police who had found them but two members of that great group of detectives, the general public, who moreover were kind enough to immediately turn them over to the police. Among many journalists and ordinary citizens it was therefore suspected that these bullets were actually false leads planted at the crime scene to deceive the investigators.

Because both bullets had quite visible traces of the substances they had passed through, that is Olof Palme’s clothing and body and Lisbeth Palme’s clothing, that issue could have been solved almost immediately, if normal criminological procedures had been followed and these fiber and tissue traces had been secured before the bullets were cleaned to determine their caliber.

This had not been done. Wiijnbladh and his associates at the Stockholm police department’s tech squad had put them in separate little plastic bags and sent them to the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping for “caliber determination.” This was the only request that had been checked on the form that was enclosed with the plastic bags.

At the crime lab the request had quickly been satisfied. The two bullets were placed in a basin with spirits; cleaned of fibers, body tissue, and blood; and rinsed off under ordinary tap water. Whatever was washed off the bullets and remained in the basin was lost when the liquid was poured off and the bullets’ caliber was measured with a micrometer.

Not until some years later were helpful physicists at the University of Stockholm able to straighten out the question marks that the police had created for themselves. An amiable professor of particle physics made contact with the police and reported that what ordinary people called lead could actually be very different things depending on what was added to it. Lead could have various isotope combinations, and when, for example, bullets were manufactured, lead was almost always mixed with various isotope combinations, resulting in bullets with different combinations of lead isotopes.

The professor therefore ventured to propose a simple scientific investigation: the isotope combination in the two bullets would be compared with the traces of lead it should be possible to secure in the victims’ clothing, to see whether they matched.

This they did, and the technical investigation had taken at least a small leap forward. The two bullets that had been found were with “very high probability” identical to the bullet that killed Olof Palme and the one that grazed his wife, and the constant nagging about planted false leads could finally be set aside. And that was not all. By means of the bullets’ isotope combination, it had also been possible to trace the lead batch from which they originated.

True, the batch included hundreds of thousands of bullets, which the Winchester Western had supplied to a number of countries, but only six thousand of them had ended up with gun dealers in Sweden. The deliveries had been made during the years 1979 and 1980, in good time before the assassination of the prime minister. It was hope-instilling enough as a lead file, but they never got any further than that.

What remained was the weapon that the police had never found, but a number of other experts had put in their two cents’ worth. Far and away the most common weapons in the relevant caliber were Smith & Wesson revolvers in various models and barrel lengths. Hence the first investigation leader’s conclusion that “with the greatest probability” it concerned a Smith & Wesson revolver.

At the same time this was a conclusion that could be challenged on both statistical and forensic grounds. It was true that the traces from the barrel on both bullets did agree well with a Smith & Wesson, but at the same time they also agreed just as well with half a dozen revolvers of different manufacture, and taken together the latter made up a quarter of the world’s combined stock of revolvers of the relevant caliber. The great consolation in this context was that the ballistic traces on the bullets did not correspond with the second most common Magnum revolver, the one manufactured by Colt-the legendary armory that was Smith & Wesson’s foremost competitor on the market for Magnum revolvers.

What made Bäckström happy was that the traces on the bullets also agreed very well with revolvers that came from the third largest American manufacturer, Sturm, Ruger & Co. in Southport, Connecticut. Even the barrel length agreed with the weapons technicians’ conclusions to a fraction of an inch. If the barrel had been shorter than that the bullets should have “mushroomed up” in back, and they had not.

This is going like a fucking dance, thought Bäckström. If he’d only been able to run this from the very start, it would most likely have been settled right off.

One small question remained. How to connect-with sufficiently high probability-the two bullets from the crime scene to the revolver that was used to shoot the prime minister. The technical report that Bäckström found in his computer was from 1997, and the anonymous expert who wrote it was doubtful on that point. Both bullets were “in pretty poor condition.” They could be used for comparisons of various types of weapons and they had been good enough to rule out the hundreds of various weapons that had been test fired over the years. But this was not to say that they could be linked to the murder weapon with certainty in the event it was found.

What a fucking ditchdigger, thought Bäckström. Technology was advancing by giant leaps! He’d seen this with his own eyes, on his own TV, at home on his own couch. The hundreds of miracles that his associates on CSI delivered all the time just by tapping on their computers. If it didn’t work out some other way, it probably wouldn’t involve more than his taking the weapon with him and traveling over to the other real constables, on the other side of the water.

Las Vegas or Miami, thought Bäckström. That’s probably the big question.

35

After having freshened up his knowledge of the Palme investigation’s weapons track-most of it he already knew, and it was really no great art to figure out the rest-Bäckström proceeded to more active internal detection on his computer. The results had unfortunately been meager. He had found only two Magnum revolvers of the Ruger brand entered in the registry of stolen, missing, or sought-after items in his computer.

The first had been stolen in a break-in a few years earlier at the home of a Finn who lived outside Luleå and was evidently both a marksman and a hunter. During vacation “one or more unknown perpetrators had forced entry into the plaintiff’s residence, broken open his gun case, and taken three sporting guns, a combo gun, three shotguns, and a revolver.” None of the stolen weapons had been recovered.

The revolver was a Ruger caliber.357 Magnum, but that was also the only thing that tallied. It was blued with a short barrel and rubber-clad butt, and for once there was even a picture of it on the computer.

Lapp bastards and Finns, thought Bäckström. How the hell could you put weapons in the hands of such people? It was bad enough that they could go to the liquor store and buy all the booze they poured into themselves all the time.

The second case seemed to offer more hope. Two years earlier the Stockholm police had made a house search in an apartment in Flemingsberg. Living there was the girlfriend of a known thug who was suspected of an armored car robbery in Hägersten a few months earlier, and behind the refrigerator they found a Ruger brand Magnum revolver. It was a pure mystery, according to both the girlfriend and the suspected robber. Neither of them had seen it before, and the only explanation was probably that the previous occupant of the apartment had left it behind when he moved out. It would probably be simplest to ask him directly, but unfortunately they could not help out because they didn’t know what his name was or where he lived.

The technical investigation had not produced anything either. The weapon could not be linked to any crime, nor to the people living in the apartment. It was not reported as stolen and was not in the registry of legal weapons. The prosecutor had written off the case, the revolver had been confiscated and was now with the Stockholm police department’s tech squad, but more detailed information than that was not available on Bäckström’s computer.

Worth a try, thought Bäckström, and called the tech squad. He explained his business to his fellow officer who took the call, and asked him to immediately e-mail a picture of the weapon in question.

“Have you changed occupations, Bäckström?” asked his colleague, who sounded pretty reserved.

“What do you mean changed occupations?” said Bäckström. What the hell is the bastard yapping about? he thought.

“I thought you dealt with used office furniture.”

“Forget about that now,” said Bäckström. “Do as I say.”

“I promise to think about it,” his colleague replied, and then hung up without further ado.

While waiting for the colleague at the tech squad to be done thinking and finally get his ass in gear and send him the photo of the revolver, Bäckström engaged in his own musings.

Three murders and a suicide, thought Bäckström. Apparently as some kind of spring cleaning in the circles of greater and lesser riffraff. Perhaps more, even, he thought hopefully. The weapon had been knocking around for more than twenty years and could certainly have been used for one thing or another during that time. Perhaps by some secret organization of professional murderers? More or less like what went on with the Brazilian colleagues, who periodically did a vigorous weeding out in their own slum neighborhoods.

That part about the lion’s own den sounded interesting too. Didn’t all those camel riders, date stompers, and suicide bombers have a lion as a symbol for their secret society and terrorist activities? Hadn’t the victim rubbed elbows with a lot of hook noses from Arabia, and everyone knew how it usually ended when you associated with that sort? This may have limitless ramifications, thought Bäckström. He would beneficially continue pondering at home in his cozy lair that was only a convenient stone’s throw from his run-down office.

Still no e-mail from that fucking lazy ass at the tech squad, and because it would soon be three o’clock it was time for something better. Now if one of his so-called bosses was wondering about where he’d gone, he actually had a crime scene of his own he had to inspect. Furthermore it was in the vicinity of a real crown estate where fine people lived, even though apparently they made a habit of dining with that fool who was his so-called boss.

Duty calls, thought Bäckström. He entered code two, as in official business, on his phone and quickly and discreetly left the building for so-called external duty. On his way home he took the opportunity to go past the liquor store and replenish his supply of malt whiskey and shop for some mixed snacks at the nearby deli. Fifteen minutes later he was on his couch in front of the TV with a little highball within comfortable reach. After the first gulp the blessed malt had dispersed the Baltic haze.

Suddenly it came to him which of all his crazy colleagues used to brag that he knew that half-fairy who had evidently offered the most well-known murder weapon in crime history to his old acquaintance GeGurra.

It was that fucking Wiijnbladh, thought Bäckström, shaking his round head in amazement.

36

The following day Bäckström decided it was time to get cracking, which is why he started work in good time before lunch.

First he turned on the computer to go through his e-mail. Nothing from that lazy ass at the tech squad, even though the hottest lead in Swedish police history might very well be sitting at the tech squad getting cold.

How the hell can someone like that be a cop? thought Bäckström, sending yet another e-mail.

Then he called Johansson’s secretary and asked to speak with her boss.

“Chief Inspector Evert Bäckström,” said Bäckström. “I want to speak with the boss.”

“He’s not in,” his secretary answered in a reserved tone. “What does this concern?”

“Nothing I can talk about on the phone,” said Bäckström curtly. In any case not with you, you little cunt lips, he thought.

“Then I suggest you e-mail a few lines and mention what it’s about.”

“Not that either,” said Bäckström. “I have to see him.” Even her jaw must sit perpendicular, he thought.

“I will convey your message and ask if he has time.”

“Do that,” said Bäckström, hanging up before she had time to. What the hell do I do now? he thought. It was only eleven-thirty. Too early to eat lunch if you wanted to have a real pilsner with your food. Even too early to punch out of prison, because his so-called boss was roaming around in the corridor, like an eagle eyeing his meagerly allocated time. Wiijnbladh, he thought suddenly. It was time to put the squeeze on that little fairy and see what he had to offer.

Not very much, it appeared. Wiijnbladh was on all fours under his desk, and it looked like he was searching for something.

“How’s it goin’, Wiijnbladh?” said Bäckström. “Are you inspecting the cleaning, or what?”

Wiijnbladh twisted in place, shaking his head and giving Bäckström a shy glance.

“My pill, I’ve lost my pill.”

“Pill,” said Bäckström. What the hell is he babbling about? he thought.

“My medicine,” Wiijnbladh clarified. “Right when I was going to put it in my mouth, it fell on the floor, and now I can’t find it.”

“Have you thought about switching to suppositories?” Bäckström suggested. Try to stay alive until I’ve had time to talk with you, he thought.

That little half-fairy is completely gone, thought Bäckström as he closed the door on Wiijnbladh.

For lack of a better alternative he returned to his office. First he thought about calling a relative who worked at the police union and knew most everything about all his so-called colleagues. Upon further thought, however, he decided not to. Despite the blood ties that united them, his cousin was a little too curious and much too unreliable for Bäckström to dare approach him in such a sensitive matter.

Because it was now the stroke of twelve, with room for a quick walk between the police building and his usual lunch place a few blocks away, it was time to see about putting something in his craw. Especially as his own hawk had evidently changed territory. Best to take the opportunity to keep starvation away from your own door, thought Bäckström. He punched in code zero-as in lunch-on his phone and quickly left the building.

It turned out to be a short mealtime. Before two hours were up, he had returned to the building and still had time to purchase some invigorating breath mints en route. Though still no e-mail from the tech snail and nothing from the Lapp bastard either.

He must have his hands full with reindeer sorting, thought Bäckström.

Then the good Henning called and wondered how it was going. Because almost everything in Bäckström’s life these days concerned keeping him in a good mood, he laid it on a little. It looked rather promising, Bäckström assured him. He reported that he was fully occupied with internal surveillance of both person and object.

“There are a number of interesting leads, actually,” Bäckström observed.

“Anything you can talk about on the phone?” asked GeGurra.

Unfortunately not. Much too sensitive. On the other hand Bäckström himself had a question.

“You said he bought a Zorn from you. How did he come up with the money for that? That’s not like anything policemen usually hang on the wall. Mostly things like those crying children, I would think,” said Bäckström. Personally he also had one that he hung in the bathroom in his apartment. Right above the privy so the little crybaby could at least enjoy the Bäckström super-salami the few times they met.

“Rich parents,” Gustaf G:son Henning said. “Both his mom and dad and then several generations back. The great mystery is perhaps that he chose to become a police officer. Not an ordinary police officer fortunately, but a policeman nonetheless.”

“So what do you mean?” What do you know about real police officers? thought Bäckström.

“He seems to have had his faults, if I may say so. Rather special faults, if you understand what I mean.”

“No. Explain,” Bäckström persisted.

It was not something one discussed on the phone, and because he had customers waiting GeGurra suggested they be in touch after the weekend.

You stingy bastard, thought Bäckström. What’s wrong with meeting and having a bite to eat?

Then he called Johansson again. It was already past two, and because it was Friday it was presumably much too late. Someone like Johansson had surely already slipped away from work.

“Bäckström,” said Bäckström urgently. “Looking for the boss.”

“Unfortunately he’s not available,” answered Johansson’s secretary. “But I promise to convey your message as soon as I have a chance to talk with him.”

“That’s probably best,” said Bäckström.

“Excuse me?”

Shit your pants, you little sow, thought Bäckström and hung up.

For lack of a better plan he punched himself out with a code four. A short business trip to look at the crime scene twenty miles north of the city, and as soon as he was at a safe distance from the building he went straight home.

In some respects the weekend was more or less like it usually was. Some decent boxing on the sports channels and at least one memorable match where a giant palooka hacked a banty rooster half his size down to chicken feed, and the ringside audience looked like they had a case of measles after the first round.

Just wonder if life can get much better than this, thought Bäckström with a happy sigh. Here you sit on your new leather couch with an ample whiskey and a cold beer while two blacks pound the shit out of each other on your own big screen.

The weekend’s porno offerings had unfortunately been the usual. The endless bobbing, hopping, and moaning, and at last he got so sick and tired of it that despite all the malt whiskey he made a serious attempt to find something more interesting on the Internet. He did too. A red-haired babe from Norrköping who posted a tape of her own efforts on her home page. Cheap besides. Red-haired for real, judging by her mouse, and definitely a natural talent. Not to mention her dialect. Unbeatable, considering the lines, thought Bäckström, being the connoisseur he was.

On Saturday he had dinner at the usual greasy spoon, even though he now had the means to do much better. Just as usual it turned out to be too much of most everything, and basically he spent all of Sunday in his checkered bed from Hästens. In the early hours he’d had the company of an insolent little lady he had dragged home from the bar. Then she got as tedious as all the other hags his age, but because he was a decent fellow he gave her money for a taxi before he kicked her out. So he was finally able to sleep off a hard week. With revived energies he concluded the weekend with a long walk to a better restaurant down in City. Returned at a humane hour and went to bed early. Now damn it, thought Bäckström when at ten o’clock on Monday morning he was already back at work.

No sign of life from the colleague at the tech squad, and as a first measure he called the Lapp bastard’s secretary to give her a little reminder. This time the bastard was sitting in a meeting and could not be disturbed. If possible she herself sounded even snippier than usual. Wonder if it’s her mouse she talks with, thought Bäckström. Perseverance wins the day, he thought an hour later and called again. Although she sounded exactly the same, it seemed as though the message was finally about to get through.

First that weak dick Lewin had called. Evidently he had had to interrupt his archival studies down in the Palme room for his boss’s sake. Bäckström made the session brief. Then Lewin evidently trotted over to Flykt and asked for help. Ass licker Flykt, of all people. A retarded golf player who had evaded honorable work for at least twenty years by hiding behind his fine murder victim. Bäckström was even briefer.

Then he called Johansson’s secretary again to give her yet another little reminder. Called her on Monday, on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, when his bottle cap popped off and he told her a thing or two she needed to hear. The only result was that his own little office fool and so-called boss came charging into his office and threatened first one thing and then another, and then suddenly Bäckström was going to be granted the favor of meeting Anna Holt.

From weak dick to ass licker to that anorexic dyke whose ribs you can count through her jacket. We’re taking giant steps here, thought Bäckström as he put his best foot forward in the corridors that led to Police Superintendent Anna Holt.

Clearly he was the target of a conspiracy. They had recorded his calls in secret, and Holt threatened first one thing and then another. First he only intended to give her some general advice and tell her to stick her opinions up her anus, but because this still was about the murder of a prime minister he tried to make an effort and give her everything GeGurra had given him. Decent fellow that he was, case-oriented as he was too, and considering the great values that were at stake.

What the hell is happening with the police? thought Bäckström as he left her office. Where the hell are we headed, really?

37

Holt was not impressed by the little that Bäckström had to tell. It sounded too much like other weapons tips that had come into the Palme investigation over the years. For the sake of orderliness she had nonetheless done such checking as she could with the help of the case files. It took her almost two days. With the greatest probability two wasted days, she thought as she put the last paper aside.

During more than twenty years the investigators had received close to a thousand tips that entirely or partially concerned the weapon that was supposed to have been used to shoot the prime minister. In addition over six hundred.357 caliber Magnum revolvers had been test fired. Practically all of them Smith & Wessons and legally owned. Nothing of what had been done had yielded any results. A few tips had seemed promising, because it was always like that. None of them led the police closer to the weapon or the perpetrator who had used it.

All of this information was collected in over sixty binders. For once at least the majority of this information had been transferred to computers. What disturbed Holt was that the police’s follow-up of the weapons leads almost exclusively concerned Smith & Wesson revolvers, even though right from the start it was clear that it was fully possible that the bullets could have been fired by half a dozen Magnum revolvers of different makes, and that the Ruger revolver was one of them.

The explanation seemed to be historical. As early as fourteen days after the first press conference, the investigation leadership decided to focus on Smith & Wesson revolvers, and what was a statistical estimate to start with turned into absolute truth and a direct order.

Holt was an excellent shot. She shot better than most of her fellow police officers. She could take apart and put together her service pistol blindfolded, but at the same time she was also completely uninterested in weapons and almost considered them a necessary evil that came with the job. Fortunately less and less often, in her line of work.

To be on the safe side she called a colleague she had met at a conference during the spring. He was a forensic technician and an even better shot than Holt. Weapons were his life’s interest and his livelihood, but he still had left room for other things. The only time they met each other they wound up in the same bed the first night of the conference, and it had been really nice. The silence that followed afterward she had first explained by the fact that he worked at the crime lab in Linköping and she in Stockholm. That he probably fiddled with his beloved weapons both day and night. That perhaps he didn’t dare call a colleague of such a high rank. Thoughts she had let go of rather quickly.

So I’ll have to ask for a little positive special treatment, thought Holt, dialing his number.

Nice of her to call. So why haven’t you called yourself? thought Holt.

Sure, the weapon that shot Palme could just as well be a Ruger of the model she described, as for example the corresponding model from Smith & Wesson. It wasn’t really the weapon that shot Palme that we’re after, but the person who used it, thought Holt.

Then she asked the decisive question.

“Assume that you found the right weapon. Would you then be able to link it to the bullets that were found on Sveavägen? With the certainty required in a courtroom?” she clarified.

“Well, assuming it’s in the same condition today, then it ought to be possible.”

“If we assume that,” said Holt. Stored in the lion’s own den and in excellent condition, she thought. At least according to the little fatso Bäckström. Or more correctly stated, according to the little fatso’s own anonymous, obviously completely trustworthy source.

“Today I believe that the probability with which you can testify is a little over ninety percent,” he answered. “If you had asked me five years ago, I would have said it was at maybe eighty percent, and that’s probably the bare minimum.”

“How’s that?” asked Holt.

“Both bullets are damaged. What’s messed them up the most is that they got a little bent and twisted around their own longitudinal axis, if you understand what I mean. But today we have access to software that means that someone like me can reconstruct them to almost original condition in my little computer. So with a little luck, then-”

“Can you link them together?” asked Holt. I recall that you were extremely handy, she thought.

“Excuse the question, but it’s not the case that-”

“Absolutely not. Forget that,” interrupted Holt. “My top boss has asked me to go through the Palme material, and as I read through the weapons part it struck me that they seem to have almost entirely disregarded all revolvers that didn’t come from Smith and Wesson.”

“Yes, that was sloppy of them,” he sighed. “In my job you have to be extremely meticulous.”

“Thanks for your help,” said Holt. Not only at work, she thought.

“If you happen to be in the area then perhaps we…”

“I promise to think about it,” said Holt. Besides, I seem to recall that you have my number, she thought.

Guys, she thought as she put down the receiver. What is it that’s actually wrong with them?

Bäckström was so wrong in all human respects that she couldn’t even hate him. Could barely manage to dislike him. Preferably avoided thinking about him. A fat little guy who had certainly been bullied by his classmates from the very first day at school. Who was sufficiently thick-skinned and good at fighting to be able to pay back in kind. Who had almost never been liked as the person he really was. Who to be on the safe side responded by disliking everything and everyone.

Then there was Lars Martin Johansson. Who could be as merciless as their fellow officer Berg maintained. Whom she herself could dislike intensely until he said something or did something that hit her right in the gut. Even though she had never loved, hated, or even feared him. Johansson, whom she mostly disapproved of nowadays. Because he affected her and because she thought about him far too often. Because of his gray eyes that assessed most of what came into his vicinity.

Her very temporary lover she had just been talking with. This handsome, physically fit, and handy man who couldn’t even manage to pick up the phone to call her. Who at the same time made no secret of the fact that he could imagine another encounter. Casual and without reservations. Just like all the firearms he took apart, put together again. And fired off.

Or Lewin with his complete presence and his shy gaze. Who seemed to have understood most of both his own and others’ lives but would never dream of talking about it. Not since that time when he was only seven years old, had just lost his dad, and it was as if the bottom had gone out of him. If it hadn’t been for those scared eyes. If only he had a little more of Johansson’s unreflective self-confidence. If…

Oh for Christ’s sake, Holt, thought Anna Holt. Pull yourself together.

On Friday Bäckström received an e-mail from his lazy, incompetent colleague at the tech squad. Not because he understood what Bäckström was after, but mostly because Bäckström had nagged him so much and he himself was a decent, helpful colleague who unfortunately had far too much to do. There was Bäckström’s old office furniture, for example, that he and his colleagues still hadn’t had time to tackle.

According to the picture of the revolver that he sent with the same e-mail, it was chrome, had a long barrel, and a butt of checkered wood, which might very well be walnut. Exactly like the weapon Bäckström was asking about.

According to the accompanying text it had been test fired the week after it had been confiscated. A search in the police registry had not produced anything. They had not been able to connect it with any previous crimes. It had not been found in the Swedish weapons registry of legally owned weapons. Nor was it on any lists of weapons that Interpol, Europol, or the police in other countries were searching for.

In order to possibly get an answer to the question of how it could end up behind a refrigerator in Flemingsberg, a routine inquiry had been sent through Interpol to the American manufacturer. Six months later an answer was received. The weapon in question was more than twenty years old. This was evident, in part, from the weapon’s manufacturing number. In the fall of 1985 it had been sold, along with fifty other pistols and revolvers, to their German general agent in Bremen, in what was then West Germany. This was evident from the manufacturer’s own delivery lists, which, according to federal and state legislation, they had to archive for at least twenty-five years. On the other hand if the Swedish police wanted to know more about the weapon’s continued fate, it was the general agent in Germany who should be contacted.

Hell, thought Bäckström excitedly. It was probably so simple that they neglected to compare it with the bullets from Sveavägen simply because it was a Ruger and not a Smith & Wesson. What could you expect from Wiijnbladh and his old colleagues who couldn’t find either their mouth or their ass when they were going to take the daily dose of medicine that they so badly needed? The same colleagues who would doubtless rob him of both the glory and the money if he gave them the chance.

The description of the weapon matched what GeGurra’s informant had said to a T, and it was surely no coincidence that it had been delivered only a few months before it had been used. What the hell do I do now? And here it’s a matter of thinking clearly, thought Bäckström.

A minute later he was already sitting at his computer writing a memo that to be on the safe side he dated the day before he met GeGurra. A little more than a week before he met Holt, and at least one full day before he talked with the tech squad. First a description of the weapon and then a little, but not unessential, addition given the money and the glory. The weapon number that the incompetent lazy ass at the tech squad had just sent him.

What remained was a credible explanation to his female colleague, who would have to carry him on her raised arms into police department glory. A little addition with a few personal, explanatory lines between colleagues.

Dear Holt. At my first meeting with my informant information also emerged in the sense that the informant could remember portions of the referenced weapon’s manufacturing number. After exhaustive searches in the registry, I have decided that it is highly probable this must concern the revolver described in the attached memo. The complete manufacturing number is enclosed. According to my investigations the referenced weapon was confiscated in a house search in Flemingsberg on April 15, 2005. A copy of the initial report is enclosed. The weapon in question has since been stored at the technical squad in Stockholm where unfortunately they seem to have missed doing a ballistic comparison with the bullets that were secured at the crime scene at Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan on the first and second of March 1986. Considering the sensitive nature of the matter I assume that the information I am now giving you is covered by heightened confidentiality and that only I personally will be kept informed on an ongoing basis of the measures that the national bureau carries out. With best regards. Detective Chief Inspector Evert Bäckström

Now you’ve got something good to suck on, you skinny little wretch. Now make sure you take care of yourself, and kind uncle Evert will buy a pair of real knockers for you, thought Bäckström contentedly.

What remained was to figure out how the revolver could have ended up behind a refrigerator out in Flemingsberg with a common thug who had nothing but consonants in his surname, and who was only six years old when Palme was shot. That’s worth thinking about over the weekend, and the old poisoner Wiijnbladh surely has a thing or two to contribute, thought Bäckström. High time to go home as well.

A few hours later, about the same time that Bäckström was deep in thought on his couch with a whiskey and a cold beer nearby, Anna Holt was going through her e-mail as a final task before she took off for the weekend.

Goodness. Now Bäckström has really gone crazy, she thought as she read his memo. Because she still intended to talk with her boss before she went home, she printed out a copy for him.

So Johansson too gets something good to suck on, thought Anna Holt based on a familiar example, as she turned off her computer.

38

On Saturday morning Mattei woke up in the overly large apartment on Narvavägen she’d been given by her kind dad. Personally she would have preferred to live on Söder, but her father just shook his head. Either Östermalm or nothing at all. He would have preferred to see her move home to Bavaria. The Bavaria that was the Mattei family’s homeland. Not like Sweden, which was only a temporary stopping place on the way through life.

What’s wrong with Söder, and what is it that happens to all old radicals? thought Lisa Mattei as she laced up her running shoes.

She ran her usual end-of-the-week circuit on Djurgården. It went better than expected, considering that lately she had started noticeably neglecting her exercise. It’s like there’s no reason to work out, thought Lisa Mattei as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror and squeezed her flat stomach. A pale, thin blonde, thought Mattei, shaking her head at her mirror image.

It had been three months since anyone had kissed her, and that had happened when she made her annual visit to her dad. Because it involved one of her father’s many assistants, she could not rule out that dear old dad had ordered him to do it.

She got dressed. Had a late breakfast. Took a mineral water, an apple, and a banana and went to work. In reception there was a new guard, whom she didn’t recognize. That much too common type, with a shaved head, bulging shoulders, and upper arms as thick as her waist. She nodded curtly, held up her ID, and made a beeline for the entry passage. Then he called out after her.

“Hello! May I look at that,” he said, pointing with his whole hand at her ID.

“Mattei, national bureau,” said Lisa Mattei, holding up the card about a foot in front of his eyes.

“Okay,” he said, suddenly smiling. “I’m new here. Just been at a course for two days, and the only thing they talked about was what would happen to me if I let the wrong person in.”

“It’s cool,” said Mattei. Smiled and nodded. Seems relatively normal even though he looks the way he does, she thought.

Stuck-up lady, thought the guard, watching her as she went in. That cool, blonde type that always played the leading role in his daily dreams of a better life. What would someone like that have to do with someone like him? A moonlighting student. Shaved head to conceal the baldness that had started to appear even in high school. Could bench-press four hundred pounds. A workout buddy had suggested he should moonlight as a guard. Better than student loans. Plenty of time to read. Get paid while he did it.

So now here he was. In the reception area of the big police building, of all places. On the basis of his appearance and even though he was in cinema studies at the university. They must have missed that on his application. Although there wasn’t much time for reading. Not after all the instructions he had been given at the new employee training course. But what would someone like her do with someone like me? he thought.

The police track was the track that no serious thinking person believed in. That the police themselves didn’t was both human and explicable. At the same time they were in good company. The special adviser had already expressed his condemnation a few years after the murder, when the issue was discussed in the mightiest of all secret societies, where people like him exchanged viewpoints and ideas with one another.

“The classic conspiracy theory is a thin fabric of poorly conceived ideas, personal shortcomings and ordinary, common slander as…ersatzmittel…for factual circumstances,” he stated in his introductory address. “Or plain nonsense, if you prefer that description,” he added.

What was called the police track in the mass media was, in the Palme investigation’s materials, the general designation for a number of tips, leads, and theories that individual police officers, groups of police, or the police as an organization in one way or another were involved in the murder of the prime minister.

In an objective sense-factual, or simply putative-to start with this was about three threads in “the thin fabric of conspiracy.” Policemen who had been on duty during the night of the murder and appeared, or acted, in a strange way; police officers who harbored extreme political opinions, hated the murder victim, and for that reason also would have had motive to kill him; and the operational leadership of the police in Stockholm, who conducted their mission so badly after the murder that it must have been with intent or ill will.

After that the tips had poured in. About mysterious meetings between police officers, about policemen who said strange things, about policemen who did the Hitler salute and toasted that Olof Palme was finally dead, about policemen who had supposedly vowed to kill him years before he was actually assassinated. Policemen who were observed in the vicinity of the crime, policemen who had a violent past, who had a license for their own Magnum revolvers, policemen who…

It was the secret police who as early as the second day of the investigation were given the task of investigating the substance of all this. The reason was simple and obvious. Almost all the tips were about policemen who worked in Stockholm, the same police authority that also had responsibility for the investigation of the murder. Placing it with the Stockholm police department’s own department for internal investigations was not an option either. The mission was far too extensive, and those affected much too close to one another.

The opinion of the leadership of the first investigation had been clear from the start, and to be on the safe side provincial police chief Hans Holmér had yet another memorandum prepared. In reality there was no “police track” that could be investigated. The very thought of such a thing collapsed on its own absurdity. What remained was that it could not be ruled out that the murderer, or one of his accomplices, was or had been a policeman. Just as he might be a doctor, teacher, or journalist. There was thus no police track, as a simple logical consequence of what was stated in the memo. Just as there was no doctor, teacher, or journalist track.

Even though the police track didn’t exist it ended up with SePo, sufficiently far enough away and sufficiently nearby. But so as not to bring chaos into the overarching detective organization, for once the secret police had to subordinate themselves to their colleagues in the open police operation. The leadership in the Palme investigation also led the investigation of the police track. That was who the secret police reported to. It was there that the final, conclusive decisions were made.

In concrete terms the police track encompassed about a hundred named policemen. All the way from the first investigation leader, the provincial police chief in Stockholm, whose alibi for the night of the murder was challenged, to the sort of colleagues who had generated complaints for assault on duty, because they had behaved offensively, expressed themselves disparagingly, or simply acted inappropriately in general.

All the way from the provincial police chief to those who had already been fired, quit voluntarily, or been well on their way to doing so when they wound up in the investigation. Because they’d had problems with their nerves, with alcohol, with wives, with finances. Problems that seldom came alone. Because they drove while drunk, beat up inmates in jail, stole from the till at work, threw a flowerpot at the wife’s head, shot real bullets through a neighbor’s window after a night of partying. Or simply kicked their dog.

Some seventy of them were identified, investigated, and in all cases removed from the investigation. Remaining were about thirty cases where the policemen who were pointed out could not be identified with certainty. Or even the kind of cases where it was extremely unclear whether the nameless “policeman” that was pointed out was actually the one he was alleged to be. Leads and tips that sometimes had been investigated, sometimes immediately set aside without further action. Tips, leads, cases, which in any event had not resulted in the slightest concrete suspicion that the policemen investigated had been involved in the murder of Olof Palme. In everything else imaginable, to be sure, what came out was hardly flattering to these men or the organization they served, but considered as murder suspects without any substance worth the name. Exactly as might be expected from a track that collapsed on “its own absurdity.”

Mattei started by making a list of the policemen, arranged them in alphabetical order by surname, and with her customary precision studied the information alleged against them.

After two hours and a dozen names she opened her bottle of mineral water, drank half, and ate her banana. Another two hours and ten names later she had consumed the rest of the water, eaten her apple, gone to the restroom, and then stretched her legs by walking around the floor where her office was.

Say what you will, but life as a police officer can be unbearably exciting, thought Lisa Mattei as she returned to her binders and looked at a postcard of one of her former colleagues. After twenty years of work as a policeman he had resigned. A few years later he entered contemporary history as one of the heavy names in the police track.

The picture on the postcard was a full-length photograph of himself. According to his own information, he also took the picture. Same with the postcard which he, according to the investigation, personally produced and paid for. Civilian clothes, polyester trousers, sport shirt, sandals with brown socks. Summer or late spring in the early eighties. A middle-aged man with a beer belly and early-stage baldness standing at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin doing the Hitler salute. He’s on vacation. In a week he will return to Stockholm and his work as a police inspector with the first precinct in Stockholm City.

Intense guy. Almost as handsome as Bäckström, thought Mattei.

Two hours later and halfway through the police track it was time for her to go home. Why should she do that? thought Mattei. The very best thing would probably be if she brought a cot into the Palme room and didn’t leave before she had the name of “the bastard who did it” and earned a friendly pat on the shoulder from her boss. The same man who was supposed to be able to see around corners, but for unknown reasons avoided personally peeking around this particular one.

The guard from the morning was still sitting there behind the counter in reception, and as she passed through he again called after her. He appeared at least to have a decent memory.

“Hello! Inspector Mattei. May I ask you a question?”

You want to know how to apply to the police academy, thought Mattei, who’d had that question before from people like him.

“Sure,” she said.

“You have to promise not to get mad,” he said, suddenly not seeming equally sure of himself.

“Depends on the question,” said Mattei guardedly.

“I was wondering if I could invite you to a movie?”

“To a movie,” said Mattei, who had a hard time concealing her surprise. To watch your favorite, Conan the Barbarian, she thought.

“Almodóvar’s latest, the one that opened last week,” he clarified.

Almodóvar, thought Mattei. Wonder if he’s working for Candid Camera, she thought.

39

Mattei declined. And regretted it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She tried to save herself with the usual follow-up questions and explanations. New mistakes were added to previous ones; everything went wrong.

Almodóvar? Are you pulling my leg? thought Mattei.

“You like Almodóvar?”

Yes, Almodóvar had touched him. Almodóvar had taught him a few things about “ladies” that he hadn’t been able to figure out himself. Latin ladies at least. Almodóvar was perhaps not his biggest favorite, but he was good enough that he had decided to see his film. Besides, ladies usually like Almodóvar.

“I’m studying film at the university. This is a moonlighting job,” he explained, shrugging his broad shoulders.

Still not too late to change her mind. Wrong again.

“That would have been really nice,” said Mattei. “The problem is that I have to work all weekend. So maybe I’ll see you tomorrow,” she added.

“My day off,” he said, shaking his head and looking downhearted.

“It’ll have to be another time,” said Mattei.

“It’s cool,” he answered.

What would someone like her do with someone like me? he thought as she disappeared onto the street.

When Mattei arrived at her overly large apartment that had been given to her by her kind father, she was in a lousy mood. Hated herself, hated the apartment, hated dear old dad. First she pulled on her workout clothes and did an extra circuit. She returned pumped up but in an equally bad mood. Instead of stepping into the shower and simply letting the water run, she started cleaning. In a fury she picked up, loaded the dishwasher, vacuumed, and scrubbed. Almost ready to faint, but just as angry, she called out for a pizza, managed to get half of it down even though she hated pizza otherwise. Drank almost a whole bottle of wine with the pizza. Even though she almost never drank. Then she lay down on the couch and flipped among the TV channels. When she finally went to bed her stomach hurt. She wasn’t even drunk. Just angry. What would someone like him do with someone like me? she thought.

Then she finally fell asleep.

She woke up with both a headache and an upset stomach. Showered, got dressed, swallowed milk of magnesia and mineral water instead of eating breakfast, went to work.

And there he was.

“I thought this was your day off,” said Mattei, smiling to conceal how happy she was.

“I traded with a buddy,” he said, suddenly looking embarrassed.

“Okay then,” said Mattei. “But it’ll have to be the late showing because I have lots to do.”

“Sure,” he said and nodded. “That’s no problem. I’m working until six o’clock so that’s cool.”

Yes, thought Mattei as she disappeared through the entry passage.

Yes, he thought as he watched her disappear into the building.

40

Concentration, thought Mattei as she opened the binder that she’d made it only halfway through the day before. Everything has its time. What remained were just under fifty policemen, the names of thirty of whom she didn’t even have and who were not necessarily policemen. Eight hours for them, she thought. Then go home, shower, change clothes, and, for once, powder her little nose.

Then Almodóvar with a man she had only talked to three times and whose name she actually didn’t know. Who had his appearance against him but seemed completely normal and even nice. “Call and find out what his name is,” she wrote on her notepad.

Then she returned to her list of policemen who had been observed in the vicinity of the crime, who had a violent past, their own Magnum revolvers, harbored extreme political opinions, or simply acted inappropriately in general. Police, police, police, thought Mattei and sighed.

A few hours later Anna Holt called and asked her to check a name of a former colleague for her.

“Because I assume you’re at work,” Holt explained.

“Nothing better for me,” Mattei agreed. Although tonight I’m going to a movie, she thought.

“Can you see if he’s in the material?” Holt asked.

“No,” said Mattei. “I’m pretty sure he’s not. Not named, at least. I have the list in front of me and he’s not there. There are about thirty who are supposed to have said they were policemen, or where the informant alleges that they were policemen but where their identity is lacking. If you ask me he’s not one of them either,” said Mattei. That’s just as well, she thought, because according to Holt he was supposed to have been dead for fifteen years, and no bells were ringing in her head.

“You think so,” said Holt.

“Yes. He doesn’t tally with the description of any of them. Why are you asking, by the way?”

“A tip,” said Holt and sighed for some reason. “From our colleague Bäckström,” she said, sighing again.

“That explains it,” said Mattei. “Lewin told me he’d called,” she clarified.

“On a completely different matter, since you’re working on it anyway,” Holt continued. “Can you see if there’s anything about lions?”

“Lions, like in Africa?”

“Exactly,” said Holt. “The lion’s den, in the lion’s den, where they live or hang out, that is. Lions, that is.”

“I can try with a plain text search,” said Mattei.

“Will that work?”

“Should. Most of this is actually entered on the computer.”

“This comes from Bäckström too. If you’re wondering.”

“I’ll call if I find anything,” said Mattei and made another notation on her pad. “Check lion, lion/den, the lion den, the lion’s den, in the lion’s den.”

The plain text search for “lion” produced twenty hits. All could be traced back to half a dozen colleagues who had been in South Africa on vacation during the eighties and the apartheid regime. Who met with colleagues, visited nature reserves, went on photo safaris, saw lions out in nature, and in addition said the word “lion” when SePo’s investigators held tape-recorded interviews with them.

The same search for “lion/den” produced one hit among the previous twenty. A Swedish policeman who said that during his visit his South African colleagues had invited him on a real safari-“not the kind of shit where you only get to take pictures”-so that he would get an opportunity to “put a bullet in a lion.” A favor that evidently had not been granted the others, and a shooting opportunity that “unfortunately” did not happen.

Searches on “lion/den,” “the lion den,” “the lion’s den,” and “in the lion’s den” produced one hit. A small apartment on Luxgatan on Lilla Essingen in Stockholm that did not have the slightest connection with certain colleagues’ choice of politically controversial vacation destinations.

What’s this now? thought Mattei as she finished reading half an hour later. Then she called Holt back and reported her findings.

“One hit on the lion’s den,” said Mattei. “Or more correctly stated on ‘the lion den,’ not possessive,” she clarified.

“Okay. I’m listening,” Holt replied.

In the eighties there had been an informal association of policemen, a kind of social club, that called itself “Mother Svea’s Lions.” Ten or so policemen, all of whom worked with the uniformed police in City, the majority of them with the riot squad, and many of them also did UN service both in the military and as police officers. That was how the name had come about. During their foreign service they started calling themselves “Mother Svea’s Lions.” Even had their own T-shirts printed, in blue and yellow with a big-busted, lion-like woman and the slogan: Mother Svea’s Lions.

“One of them apparently had a spare apartment out on Lilla Essingen that they used to call the Lion’s Den. Two rooms and a kitchen. A hundred and seventy square feet. They apparently shared the rent, they all had keys to the apartment, and it was there they would congregate and have their so-called meetings. Our former colleagues at SePo even did a house search there a few years after the murder. On October 10, 1988. I’m sitting with the report in front of me, if you’re wondering.”

“So did you find anything?”

“No,” said Mattei. “It’s very meagerly furnished, if you ask me. Beds in both rooms but not much more, judging from the pictures.”

“Sounds like a fuck pad,” said Holt.

“You probably shouldn’t ask me about that,” said Mattei. “I’ve never had the pleasure,” she clarified.

“I have,” said Holt. “You haven’t missed a thing. But that’s probably not why they did a search.” Little lady, she thought.

“No,” said Mattei. “It was because of who had the keys to it.”

The information that produced the hit on the computer was in an interview with police inspector Berg. Apparently also the informal leader of Mother Svea’s Lions. In addition he was the particular policeman who, by dint of his history, appeared in most of the lead files in the so-called police track.

“I don’t know if you remember, but he was one of the officers Johansson put in jail in the fall of 1985,” Mattei explained. “The material about him reads like a serial.”

“I know who he is,” said Holt.

“But there’s nothing concrete on either him or any of his friends. It’s the usual, a lot of previous reports for excessive force on duty, strange political statements, and private weapon ownership. Plus he actually has an alibi that’s pretty good. His…”

“I know,” Holt interrupted. “His riot squad was the second patrol on the scene when Palme was shot.”

“The world is full of coincidences,” said Mattei.

“It sure is,” Holt agreed and sighed for some reason.

As soon as she hung up the phone rang again. On her landline that she had connected to her cell.

“Hi,” said the voice on the phone. “This is Johan, Johan Eriksson down in reception. If you want I can pick you up. Otherwise I suggest we meet ten minutes before outside the theater. I’ve got the tickets.”

“Outside the theater is fine,” said Mattei. Even though her name and address were actually in the phone book, in contrast to the majority of her colleagues. Leading him to her own front door would be bringing him a little too close.

If he didn’t look like he did you would almost get the idea that he was as courteous as a gentleman of the old school, thought Mattei as she deleted him from her reminder list. Although he sounded a little shy, of course, and gentlemen of the old school probably weren’t, she thought.

41

On Sunday Holt was supposed to meet her son, Nicke, and his latest girlfriend. An hour beforehand he called and canceled. They had quarreled and he wasn’t in the mood even to see his mom.

“You’ll just have to talk with her,” said Holt, and as she put down the receiver she suddenly felt much older than forty-seven.

The next call came after an hour and was initiated with a cautious throat clearing. Lewin, thought Holt. Now he sounds like himself again.

“Yes, hi, Anna, it’s Jan. Jan Lewin. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“No,” said Holt. “You’re not.” Because as usual I have nothing else going on, she thought.

Lewin wanted to thank her for the other evening and invite her in return. Not at his place however-cooking was not his strong suit-but at a decent neighborhood restaurant up at Gärdet where he lived.

“Really good, actually,” Lewin attested.

“Sounds nice,” said Anna Holt, and regretted it as soon as she’d said it. I hope he isn’t falling in love with me, she thought as she hung up.

When Mattei left the police building at six o’clock her movie companion had already gone home. To shower and slick back his nonexistent hair, she thought, laughing to herself when she saw his co-worker with the same lack of hair behind the reception counter. A little gruffer type, apparently, who nodded at her curtly.

“Have a nice evening, police inspector,” he said, managing to sound surly.

“Same to you,” said Mattei. The type that doesn’t like women police officers, she thought.

Once she arrived home life got more complicated. She intended to rest for an hour first, but somehow that didn’t happen. Instead she lay down and half watched TV and even called her dad. To get the time to pass, if nothing else. Immediately she regretted picking up the phone, but fortunately he hadn’t answered. Her bad conscience meant the message she left on his answering machine was more tender than intended.

Lisa, what the hell? thought Lisa Mattei, who never swore. You have to stop behaving like you’re fifteen years old.

It was a grown-up woman who got into the shower. Who then dressed herself carefully. Not too much, not too little. Discreet dress, low-heeled pumps you could walk in. Who powdered her nose and a number of other places as well. Who regretted the look immediately as soon as she saw the results in the mirror. Tore off the dress and pumps. Threw them in a pile on the floor in the bathroom. Replaced them with jeans, linen shirt, an old jacket, and loafers. Still the same skinny, pale blonde, she thought crossly. Still fifteen years old and right now not much time to play with. She could forget about walking to the theater. It would have to be a taxi, which of course was late, and when she finally got there she was a good ten minutes late.

There he stood alone on the sidewalk outside the cinema, and when he caught sight of her he looked so relieved that all that had happened before was uninteresting.

“I was almost getting worried that something had happened,” he said. “I didn’t have your number, so…”

“You know women,” said Mattei, smiling and shrugging her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I usually keep track of the time, actually.”

“It’s okay,” he said, brushing lightly against her right arm. He nodded and invited her to go in ahead.

Just like an old-time gentleman, thought Mattei. Although they probably never looked that shy, of course.

“Not a word about work,” said Holt as soon as she sat down.

“You don’t need to worry, Anna,” said Lewin with the usual faint smile. “I talked with our colleague Bäckström a few days ago, so I’ve had my fill for the rest of the year.”

“Red or white, meat or fish,” he continued, handing her the menu.

Goodness, thought Anna Holt. What is happening? Lewin of all people.

“Vegetarian pasta,” said Holt. “With a lot of tomato and basil and a little, little grated cheese. Mineral water and a glass of dry white Italian wine.”

“Sounds good,” Lewin agreed. “I think I’ll have the same.”

Now I recognize you again, Jan, she thought.

Then they talked about everything except work. Holt talked about taking some time off and going to a warmer place as soon as she got the chance. Even though she hadn’t planned the slightest little trip, just as insurance against something she couldn’t even name.

Then they talked about travels in general. Lewin mostly about the kind that never happened, but the way in which he spoke was completely bearable to listen to.

“I read a novel many years ago. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten both the title and the author, but it made a deep impression on me.” Lewin shook his head, the same Lewinian smile. “A little too deep, perhaps,” he said and sighed.

“Tell me,” said Holt. You need to talk, she thought.

The novel whose title Lewin had forgotten was about a young French nobleman who decided to go to Africa at the end of the nineteenth century on an expedition. First he devoted an entire year to the most careful preparations. Exhaustively depicted in a couple of hundred pages. Then came the great day when he and his servant and attendants left the rural estate en route to the station for further transport to the great harbor city Marseilles, the boat to Africa and all the discoveries that still remained to be made in his life.

“Then he changed his mind and went home again,” said Lewin. “Why should he go to Africa? He’d already made the entire journey in his own mind.”

“Jan,” said Anna Holt. “Look at me. That’s a terrible story.”

“I know,” said Lewin, who suddenly seemed almost exhilarated. “But that’s me.”

Then they talked about other things, and when they went their separate ways and she was standing down in the subway waiting for the train home the evening caught up with her. He’s in love with me, she thought. It’s your own fault, and what do you do about it? she thought.

As soon as they were in their seats and the lights in the theater had been turned down, her old-fashioned gentleman, roughly twenty-five years old and a hundred kilos of muscle and bone, stretched, made himself comfortable, sank into his seat, and laced his large hands over his flat stomach. Then he uttered not a sound for ninety minutes.

Halfway into the film-as if by accident-he placed his right hand on the arm support between them. Mattei happened to graze against it as she tried not to rustle the bag of candy she otherwise never ate. Then he turned up his palm and she set aside the bag of candy and-as if by accident-placed her hand in his.

It was still there when they stepped out on the street. It had started raining, and Johan looked at her with almost childish delight.

“It’s raining,” he said. “That’s the surest sign of all.

“The movie, what did you think?” he continued, squeezing her hand, very lightly, almost imperceptibly, simply like a signal from his own hand. Strong, tan, long fingers, with the veins on the back of the hand clearly visible.

“I don’t really know,” said Lisa Mattei, shaking her head. What film? she thought.

“If you’re very strong then you have to be extremely nice,” said Johan, looking at her seriously.

“What time do you start work tomorrow?” Mattei asked suddenly.

“I’m off,” said Johan, shaking his head. “Like I said, I switched shifts with a buddy.”

“Then I suggest we go to my place,” said Lisa Mattei. “I have to be up early.”