He Who Kills the Dragon

73.

That afternoon the county police chief had held an extraordinary meeting with her staff. The pressure from the media was immense. The people were demanding to see their hero, Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström. In fact, she couldn’t recall anything similar since the murder of Anna Lindh, and then it wasn’t her they were after but the head of the county crime unit at the time. Nowadays he had been given other, less public responsibilities, but it had taken a lot of time and effort to ensure that he wasn’t plagued by unnecessary exposure in the mass media.

The new head of the human relations department had kicked off the brainstorming session with an interesting suggestion. He had previously worked for the Moderate Party’s policy think tank and had once worked as acting press secretary to the prime minister. Only a month ago he had taken part in a confidential and extremely interesting weekend conference at Gimo Herrgård Manor. And within this closed circle he saw no problems with lifting the veil a bit.

The popular demand for ostentation and vanity was immeasurable. A wealth of opinion polls provided evidence of this. In fact, the ‘self-affirmation coefficient’ had never been so high in all of the thirty years that similar polls had been conducted, and the trend was heading inexorably higher.

The military and the police — even ordinary customs officers, coastguards, and firemen — wanted more distinctive grading, more titles, epaulettes, insignia, medals, and awards. Ordinary people wanted the royal family to have a more prominent role in Swedish society; they wanted the reinstatement of the public honors system, and a qualified majority demanded that it be massively expanded to include citizens such as themselves rather than just a load of culture vultures and generals.

And the prime minister, who had attended the last day of discussion, had come up with an extremely interesting suggestion. A daring suggestion worthy of a great political thinker like him, and among the most thought-provoking the HR head had ever heard. Honestly.

‘So what was it?’ the county police chief asked.

‘The nobility. The prime minister wanted to raise the idea that we should reinstate the nobility. Apparently they’ve already done the number crunching in Finance, and we’re talking about billions that could be saved in wages, bonuses, and golden handshakes.

‘Today everything is about chasing dreams. And what are fifteen minutes of fame compared with the chance to flash your backside in a reality show?’ the head of HR said.

‘So what exactly are you thinking, in practical terms?’ the county police chief’s top legal adviser asked. She was a thin woman of the same age as her boss, who had been well-disposed toward their marketing maestro from the day he first started his new job.

‘The Great Gold Police Medal,’ the head of HR said. ‘The most prestigious honor in the police force, and largely forgotten about for generations.’

The last time there had even been any discussion of awarding it was almost thirty-five years ago. It was after the hostage crisis in the bank on Norrmalmstorg, when the two ‘heroes of Norrmalmstorg,’ Detective Inspectors Jonny Johnsson and Gunvald Larsson, had freed the hostage being kept down in the vault and hauled out the perpetrators in handcuffs with perfect timing for the newspapers’ print deadlines and the serious evening news broadcasts, to be met by a veritable wall of microphones and pyrotechnic flashbulbs.

Nothing came of it on that occasion. The then chief of police, an old compromise candidate from the People’s Party who only got the job in the absence of anyone better, simply didn’t have the guts to go through with it.

‘It was in the middle of an election campaign, Social Democratic government and all that, Palme was going crazy, and the chief of police bottled it. Didn’t have the balls, basically,’ the head of HR concluded.

The last time the medal had actually been awarded was almost sixty years ago. The recipient was the then police inspector of Stockholm, Viking Örn, and the reason why he was deemed worthy of the honor was his decisive contribution during the so-called Margarine Riots of November 1948.

‘The Great Gold Police Medal,’ the county police chief said, sounding as if she was trying out the taste of the words. She had been thinking of something else entirely but had decided to keep that to herself. For the time being, at least.

‘Do you think you could look into this, Margareta?’ she asked her legal adviser. ‘Put together some notes, and we’ll have another meeting early tomorrow morning.’

‘I’d be happy to,’ the legal adviser said, and for some reason she smiled warmly at the new head of HR. ‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ she added.

Who was Viking Örn?

What were the Margarine Riots?