The Hand that Trembles

FORTY-ONE

The interrogation of Sven-Arne Persson was resumed at half past eight in the morning. Sammy Nilsson thought he looked decidedly more alert than the day before. Persson praised the breakfast but complained that his stomach was acting up.

When the coffee was on the table, Sammy Nilsson turned on the tape recorder, recorded the session details, and thereafter looked at Persson as if he expected him to automatically resume his narration.

‘Have you thought about-’

‘Yes, I have been thinking,’ Persson immediately interrupted, ‘I have been thinking as hard as I can. There’s nothing for me to add. Now I just want peace and quiet, that is the only thing I want.’

Peace and quiet, Sammy Nilsson thought, and felt a sudden spurt of irritation toward the man on the other side of the table. He kills a defenceless old man and then demands peace and quiet.

‘How were you feeling that autumn twelve years ago?’ Allan Fredriksson asked.

‘Fine,’ Persson said quietly, but corrected himself at once. ‘No, that is, I was intensely uncomfortable. I had it up to here with politics. All the bitches.’

‘Bitches?’

‘Yes, haven’t you noticed that the old biddies have taken over? All these well-spoken ladies in their trouser suits but without substance, without sense, only air. And there are men who are old biddies too. It may in fact be the case that there are more men than women in this category.’

Allan Fredriksson could not help smiling. Sven-Arne Persson was showing a human side for the first time. Up to this point he had appeared almost completely unfeeling, despite his politeness. Now a little humour was emerging. Fredriksson knew it was good and continued along this path.

‘You’re talking about your political opponents?’

‘And my friends,’ Persson said. ‘The talkers are distributed everywhere. That is no party-specific characteristic.’

‘And would you call yourself an old biddy?’

Persson looked up, bewildered.

‘You were a man in the midst of a career. How did you reach your position? Through empty chatter, as you call it, or were you unique?’

‘Not unique, perhaps unusual, but I was on my way to becoming a biddy. But we can forget all that now. This isn’t a political seminar. I went to India to get away from all this loose talk.’

‘So you didn’t leave because you had committed a murder?’

‘For both those reasons.’

‘Were you afraid of being found out?’

‘No, not really. You didn’t seem to be getting anywhere in the investigation. I had some contacts and kept myself abreast of your progress. Don’t take it personally. It was a difficult case, I know.’

‘Your flight must have been painstakingly planned. You had arranged for a false passport, put away large sums of money, and even prepared a disguise so that you could leave City Hall without being recognised.’

‘It amused me.’

‘To plan this?’

Persson nodded.

‘Do you know how you seem to me?’ Sammy Nilsson broke in. He had been listening to this dialogue without speaking. ‘You seem like a cold, calculating guy, who wants to pose as a defender of the weak, the only honest politician, but in reality he is a remorseless killer who disappears after his deed for his own amusement, not only fleeing from justice and civic responsibilities, but even from his own family.’

‘I had a wife, not a family.’

‘In short,’ Sammy Nilsson said, ignoring Persson’s comment, ‘you’re a bastard who hides behind pseudo-arguments about “old biddies”. You leave your wife and your friends to their worries and complete ignorance and you even seem to like it.’

‘That is probably an accurate description,’ Persson answered. ‘I’m not going to argue against your image of me.’

‘So the question is why you return all these years later. You do not seem particularly remorseful.’

‘I got tired of India. I imagined spending my last remaining years in an institution.’

‘Bullshit,’ Sammy Nilsson said.

Fredriksson coughed and leant forward, as if he wanted to push his colleague aside.

‘If we come back to a thread from yesterday,’ he said, and smiled at Persson, ‘your uncle Ante. First you told us that you were alone in Kungsgärdet but you later changed your story to say he was waiting in the car. Do you hold firm to this?’

‘Yes, he stayed in the car. I took one of his crutches, so he couldn’t leave the car.’

‘Why did he even come along?’

‘We were out for a ride. That was something we did sometimes, went on small excursions.’

‘Small excursions,’ Fredriksson repeated. ‘Did he know where this one was headed? Who you were going to see?’

‘No. I said I was running an errand.’

‘Why did you choose an excursion?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you had been planning to murder Nils Dufva, wouldn’t it have been better to go there alone?’

‘Maybe I didn’t want to kill him.’

‘The crutches.’

‘I brought them for self-defence. I was led to believe that Dufva was a violent man.’

‘Bound to a wheelchair?’

‘What can one know?’

‘Can you precisely describe your exchange of words when you were face-to-face with him?’

‘We didn’t say much.’

‘Did he recognise you?’

‘I think so.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘I guess he wondered what I was doing walking into his house. I can’t remember exactly. It was a number of years ago. And there was such a racket in his place I couldn’t hear properly.’

‘What kind of racket?’

‘The old man had both his television and radio turned on, and on the highest setting. As I said, it was an infernal racket.’

‘You didn’t turn off the appliances?’

‘No, why would I have done so?’

‘You weren’t there to talk?’

Sven-Arne did not reply. Fredriksson made a notation in his notebook.

‘And what did you say when he wondered why you had walked into his house?’ he said after a brief, somewhat ominous pause.

‘I asked him if he was Nils Dufva.’

‘You did not recognise him from before?’

‘I wanted to be sure.’

‘You wanted to be sure that you were going to kill the right man?’

Persson did not answer, and to all extents and purposes that was where the session ended. Sven-Arne Persson was unwilling to say anything else. He skirted their attempts to clarify what had happened that fateful autumn day of 1993 and above all why he became a killer. He became bantering in his tone and thereafter more brief in his answers, only to finally lapse into silence. He was escorted back to his cell.

Sven-Arne Persson was in no way pleased with his performance, but he did not know how he could have approached it in any other way. He regretted his outburst over his political colleagues. It was meaningless to waste energy on such things.

He knew that the policemen were dissatisfied, and he had registered Nilsson’s obvious irritation, not to say exasperation. The other one, Fredriksson, appeared to take the whole thing more calmly. Perhaps they were playing two different roles in order to get him to talk. Not that he really cared; it did not change anything.

Despite the stomach pains that had come and gone all night, he felt in fine form. The most freeing thing was that he did not need to make any weighty decisions. He existed in a pleasant vacuum. His cell was small and spartan but he was accustomed to modest surroundings from his time in India. So all in all he found it congenial. The only thing he missed was books, but he had been promised a couple of novels. Newspapers he did not want. He was indifferent to television. He vegetated, but somewhere in his consciousness there was a question about how long this situation would last, and above all how he would stand it. Perhaps he would wake up one morning and feel prison for what it was: a cage.

But right now he felt no great concern. He lay down on the camp bed, closed his eyes, and fell asleep after several minutes.