Free Falling, As If in a Dream Read online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Finally, thought Holt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Sounds pretty likely,” said Holt.

  “I don’t think so,” said Lewin.

  “Why not?”

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

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

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

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

  I see what you’re thinking, thought Holt.

  “And the third? Your third reason?”

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

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

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

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

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

  Lewin squirmed.

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

  “Why not?”

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

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

  “Okay,” said Lewin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You knew her? How?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “So what did he think?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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