The Hand that Trembles

FORTY-FIVE

On the 11th of December, Sammy Nilsson and Allan Fredriksson completed an interrogation session with Ante Persson, this time with a tape recorder and video camera. They had decided to hold it at the nursing home. There was no point in transporting the ninety-one-year-old to the police station. It would tire him out unnecessarily and the foreign environment would perhaps diminish his urge to talk.

It turned out not to matter in the end, because Ante Persson chose not to say much more than what he had already told Lindell and Fredriksson.

That same day they were issued a warrant to claim the letters that Ante – according to Anneli Hietanen – had received from India. Earlier in the morning Allan Fredriksson had been able to confirm the existence of a wooden box in the bookcase.

Ottosson and the DA had not hesitated, despite the privacy issue of reading personal letters. The letters might be able to shed some light on the strange murder case.

Fredriksson and Sammy Nilsson were given the thankless task of returning to Ramund. They didn’t like it, and it did not help matters when Ante Persson threatened to throw them out. The old man had risen from his chair – this time seemingly without any problems – and taken a swing at Fredriksson.

Sammy Nilsson had forced his arm back to his side, more or less pressed Ante Persson back into his chair, and laid the official paperwork on the table.

‘This is something we have to do,’ he said.

‘Fucking Fascists! You haven’t changed one bit since the war.’

Fredriksson walked over to the bookcase. He let his gaze flit across the spines of the books as he gently withdrew the box, jammed between two maroon volumes. Lindell had been right: Ante Persson’s library was impressive.

‘We’ll return these once we have read them, it’s as simple as that,’ Sammy Nilsson said in an attempt to calm Ante, who appeared to have drained his strength in the initial attack and now sat limply leant across the table.

‘Here is your receipt,’ Sammy Nilsson said.

The old man gave him a look, filled with disgust and helplessness, but made no attempt to take the piece of paper, so Nilsson laid it on the table.

Back at the police station, they sat down in Sammy Nilsson’s office. Fredriksson fetched the coffee, while Nilsson took out the first letter in the pack and started to read. When Fredriksson returned, he pushed it across the table and kept reading. Ottosson turned up after half an hour, wondering how things were going, but only received grunts in reply so he left them in peace.

They looked up from time to time but did not comment on what they read. Their initial discomfort was replaced by a burgeoning excitement. Sven-Arne’s stories from India were amusing and written in an engaging style, completely free of the politician’s dry and factual prose. They gave the policemen a good sense of his life in Bangalore. Straightforward descriptions of his work at the botanical garden became increasingly elaborate and detailed each year, and were mingled with glimpses of street life and news of neighbours and colleagues.

It was clear that over the years – there were one hundred letters in all, sent over twelve years – Sven-Arne had put a great deal of effort into giving his uncle entertaining reading and not simply dutiful greetings.

There was not a single musing over life in Uppsala, not a sentence touching on family, questions of everyday life, the weather in Sweden, or county politics. Both of the police officers assumed that Ante had talked about life in Sven-Arne’s former home town in his letters, but if this was the case it had not resulted in any comments or other reactions in Sven-Arne’s letters.

At one point Fredriksson looked up, put down the latest missive, and shot his colleague a look. Sammy Nilsson nodded but said nothing, resuming his task.

It was a letter dated 28th December, 1999. Perhaps it was the approaching turn of the millenium or something else that gave him a need to sum up his life, that caused him to comment for the first time on what had happened at Kungsgärdet in 1993.

When Fredriksson had put down the final letter, he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

‘What a mess,’ he said, and sighed heavily.

‘But why?’

‘I don’t understand squat. There was no reason for Sven-Arne to even mention it. We had nothing on them, back then or now, and then he lumbers in after twelve years and starts to talk.’

‘And full of lies on top of it,’ Sammy Nilsson said. ‘It’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen.’

The reading had taken one and a half hours. Both of them felt as though they had read a novel.

‘You could publish these as a book,’ Sammy Nilsson exclaimed.

‘And what a book it would be. The letters were touching.’

Fredriksson felt conflicting feelings – on the one hand the kick he had received from the sensational information surrounding Nils Dufva’s death, in part a feeling that he had walked in on something of a highly private nature. They had peeked into a person’s most private thoughts, presented in confidence with the assumption that they were only shared with one person’s eyes, not read by outsiders. Now these letters – at least parts of them – were part of official documents.

‘What do we do?’

‘We’ll have to bring in the old man, I suppose.’

‘First we talk with Sven-Arne,’ Sammy Nilsson said.

‘He may resist.’

‘You mean Ante?’

Fredriksson nodded.

‘This time we’re only going to talk to Ottosson, Lindell, and Fritte. We have to be completely sure of this before the papers get wind of it.’

They gathered up the letters and were careful to arrange them chronologically. Sammy Nilsson had marked the most memorable letters with yellow Post-its. They trotted in to Ottosson’s office.

It was as if he had been waiting for them, because when they walked in he was sitting passively, his arms crossed. There were two chairs in front of his desk and he executed an exaggerated flourish with his hand. They sat down.

‘So we have something to chew on,’ Sammy Nilsson started, and held the packet of letters aloft like a prize catch.

‘I could tell from the look of you,’ Ottosson said, and his whole face cracked into a smile. ‘You looked like two monks leaning over a photo album from the time of Jesus.’

Allan Fredriksson briefly gave an account of what they had found in the letters. Ottosson’s expression did not betray what he thought of their discovery, and when Fredriksson was done he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a file folder. It looked ancient, archive-brown in colour, with reinforced corners and two linen ribbons tied in a neat bow. It gave Fredriksson a flashback to his time as a clerk in the A6 in Jönköping. The name of his battalion chief was Anner, a man whose incompetence was legend, and he used to wave officiously with incredibly important folders of a similar appearance that contained very little of real value. Fredriksson shivered as he recalled that hateful time.

‘This is the second piece of the puzzle,’ Ottosson said, and both investigators sensed that their boss had been waiting for this opportunity.

‘What is that?’ Sammy Nilsson asked, and leant forward.

He knew he had to appear genuinely curious and concerned in order for Ottosson to go through with his performance with the dignity that he clearly felt the folder deserved.

‘This is a file on Nils Dufva.’

‘I see,’ Fredriksson said. ‘And what…’

‘The motive was clearly political,’ Ottosson said. ‘Dufva’s murder was inexplicable, or at least confounding, in 1993, but what we didn’t know then is here. There are threads that lead back in time. The motive. With your letters the picture is now complete. The mystery is solved.’

Oh, be done with it, Nilsson thought. Enough already with the speech-making.

‘Where did the file come from?’ he asked.

‘The military,’ Fredriksson said immediately.

Ottosson laid the file on the desk and looked at Fredriksson over the top of his glasses.

‘Could be,’ he said. ‘But we can’t use it. The file is on loan and God help you if you make the slightest mention of it.’

In order to underscore the gravity of his warning he quickly stood up, leant across the desk, and fixed his eyes on Nilsson, who at first looked astonished, and then started to smile, and then on Fredriksson, who made an effort not to burst into laughter.

‘All right chief,’ Nilsson said, and made a sloppy salute.

He was pleased with the fact that the investigation had taken a large jump forward. He was pleased with his grinning colleague. He was pleased with his at times spectacular boss who was now attempting to appear intimidating but who was very well aware of the fact that he was failing.

‘Okay, guys,’ Ottosson said, and changed to a double-edged smile, ‘let’s set the wheels in motion and nail a ninety-one-year-old who about three hundred years ago killed an old Nazi with his crutches. We’ll be heroes, the people will praise us, and telegrams and flower bouquets will overwhelm the station. Ante Persson will be put away for life. Justice will prevail. Hallelujah!’