Free Falling, As If in a Dream Read online

  The reading had taken an hour, most of it he already knew, and then he took out paper and pen to make notes while he thought.

  The masked ball at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm on March 16, 1792. A circle of perpetrators in the victim’s vicinity who hated him and what he stood for. Aristocrats, courtiers, members of the king’s own guard. A circle of perpetrators whose opportunity was served up on a silver platter. With a personal invitation and far enough in advance to make the most of it. A circle of perpetrators who were expected to wear masks even before they set to work.

  A circle of perpetrators who had access to firearms. Johansson smiled wryly as he made a note of this. One of them was motivated enough to approach the victim, draw his weapon, aim, and fire. Motive, opportunity, and means, Johansson summarized the same way his colleagues at that earlier time must have done.

  A victim who was hated by many—aristocrats, military officers, rich citizens. Fine people, in brief, who held power in their swords, their moneybags, their history, and feared that an absolute monarch would take it away from them for good. A victim who was loved by many. By poets and artists, for the shimmer they maintained was a result of King Gustaf’s reign, and for them in particular on good economic grounds, thought Johansson.

  The fact that large segments of the peasantry also seemed to have liked their king was not as easy to understand. Plagued as they were by constant wars that drove the finances of the realm to the bottom, and suffering all the everyday misery of crop failure, starvation, epidemics, and common diseases. People must not have known any better, thought the farmer’s son Johansson, sighing.

  Hated by many, loved by many, but with no room for many feelings in between. What more can one ask of a so-called motive, Johansson summarized as he brushed his teeth in front of the bathroom mirror after a day of hard work, an excellent meal he’d made himself, and a little reading purely for the sake of enjoyment. At best I’ve learned something too, he thought.

  Ten minutes later he was asleep. With a smile on his lips but otherwise exactly as usual. On his back with his hands clasped over his chest, with manly snoring, secure in his own body, free from dreams. Or in any case the kind of dreams he would remember, even vaguely, when he woke up the next morning.

  Most often it was Lars Martin Johansson who fell asleep last and woke up first, but for once his wife had evidently gotten up before him. It was the faint aroma of coffee that alarmed his sensitive nose and woke him. Although it was only seven o’clock it was still a few hours late compared to his usual routine. His wife, Pia, had already had time to set out breakfast—“I’ve labored like a beast to start paying you back for dinner last night”—and in passing she alerted him to the morning paper with an innocent smile.

  “You’re in the newspaper, by the way,” said Pia as she poured coffee for him. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “About what?” asked Johansson as he splashed warm milk in his coffee cup.

  “That you’ve appointed a new Palme investigation.”

  What the hell are you saying, woman? thought Johansson, who would never dream of saying that out loud. Not to his beloved wife and after almost twenty years of marriage. The fact that all days hadn’t been good weighed easily against the fact that many had been good enough and several far better than anyone had the right to ask for, even from his wife.

  “What is that you’re saying, dear?” said Johansson. What the hell is it she’s saying? he thought.

  “Read it yourself,” said Pia, handing over the copy of Dagens Nyheter that for some reason she had chosen to set on the floor next to her own chair.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Johansson moaned, glaring at the unflattering picture of himself on the front page of the country’s largest morning paper.

  “High time if you ask me,” said his wife. “A new Palme investigation, I mean,” she clarified. “Though maybe you should make sure they get a better picture of you. You’ve actually lost quite a bit of weight since they took that one.”

  4

  When Johansson had finished his breakfast, he showered then dressed with care. No linen shirt open at the collar, no red suspenders. Instead a gray suit, white shirt with discreet tie, black polished shoes: the necessary armor for someone like him when it was time to take the field. Then he went to the kitchen, folded up the newspaper, stuck it in his jacket pocket, and went to work. He hadn’t read the article. Didn’t need to, because a quick glance was enough for him to know what was in it.

  Once at work he greeted his secretary amiably, waved the newspaper deprecatingly, went into his office and closed the door. Only then did he read through, carefully and with pen in hand, what was the day’s major media event. That the head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation had appointed a “new, secret investigation of the assassination of Olof Palme.” Was I right or was I right? thought Johansson, sighing because everything in it confirmed his misgivings.

  Even the picture. A few years old with a Lars Martin Johansson forty pounds heavier glaring at the camera. Obviously such a character could not be reached for comment; instead the newspaper’s two anonymous sources had been allowed to carry on freely and tell about all their sufferings. Inadequate resources, unsympathetic bosses, and now their jobs had been taken from them.

  The fat, mean boss who takes out his own shortcomings on his poor, innocent employees, thought Lars Martin Johansson.

  “Seems like we have a lot to get to work on,” said Johansson to his secretary as soon as she sat down on the opposite side of his big desk.

  “There are a number of persons who have called wanting to talk with you,” she replied with an expression as innocent as his wife’s.

  “So what was on their minds?”

  “Something they read in the newspaper,” answered his secretary. “About a new secret investigation of the assassination of Olof Palme you supposedly set up yesterday.”

  “So who are they? Who called, I mean.”

  “Basically everyone, it seems,” answered his secretary as her eyes searched the paper she held in her hand.

  “Give me a few names,” said Johansson.

  “Well, Flykt of course. He’s already been here twice. He wanted to see you personally to work out any misunderstandings that might result from what’s in the article.”

  “Imagine that,” said Johansson. “I had no idea Flykt was working at Dagens Nyheter. Tell the SOB he can wait,” said Johansson.

  “Yes, perhaps not word for word,” answered his secretary. “Because in that case it’s best if you say it yourself. I’ll let him know you’ll call him during the day and that you want him to be in his office.”

  “Excellent,” said Johansson, because he knew that Flykt preferred to end his workday early, especially on days like this when the weather promised to be excellent for playing golf. “Make sure he remains here in the building until I call him.”

  “I understand exactly what you mean,” said his secretary, who knew her boss and right now did not envy Inspector Yngve Flykt with the Palme group.

  “So who are the others?” Johansson repeated.

  “Basically everyone, as I said. Everyone from the media at least, because they’re calling like crazy, so I’m forwarding them to our own press department. But if we start here in the building, we have the chief of national police who contacted us through our communications director, you know, the new one. The police chief is on a visit to the police in Haparanda. Our director general also called and wondered if there’s something she needs to know about or can help with. I promised to relay that. Then Anna Holt called and asked if there’s anything new that she and her colleagues ought to know about. Your best friend called too, if you haven’t had a falling out again, of course.”

  “Jarnebring,” said Johansson. “Did Bo call? What did he want?”

  “Yes,” said his secretary. “What did he want? Well, he wanted to talk with you. Said he’d read the morning paper and he was worried about you.”

  “Word
for word, please,” said Johansson.

  “Okay,” she sighed. “He wondered if you’d had a stroke. If he could help you with anything, and that you should call him as soon as you had the time.”

  “So that’s what he said,” said Johansson.

  “The chief prosecutor in Stockholm called. Twice already. She’s very anxious to talk with you. If I remember correctly she’s the head of the preliminary Palme investigation, so it may very well have something to do with that case.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Johansson. “Okay then. Let’s do this. Call that skinny woman at the prosecutor’s office and say that if she still wants to talk with me that’s fine of course. Otherwise you can just inform her that she shouldn’t believe all the shit she reads in the papers. I can meet with our own media gnomes in fifteen minutes, and that can be here in my office. The others can wait until I contact them. Was there anything else?”

  “We can start with this,” his secretary agreed.

  First in and first out on Johansson’s phone was the female chief prosecutor in Stockholm. The head of the preliminary investigation and in a formal sense the highest-ranking person responsible for the investigation of the assassination of the prime minister, if one were to be precise and look at the formalities more than the circumstances. Why would anyone do that? Johansson’s role in this context was more modest and consisted of supplying her with the police resources she thought she needed to carry out her assignment. He was obviously well aware of all this, and before he made his decision to go forward he had thought many hours about how he would handle this issue. How he would see to it that something was done and that those who did it got peace and quiet around them while they were doing it. The high risk of leaks decided the matter. That’s how he’d thought, and everything else could advantageously wait until later, but then it hadn’t turned out the way he’d hoped and now it was high time to regroup.

  “I see in Dagens Nyheter that you’ve appointed a new Palme investigation,” the chief prosecutor began in a well-controlled, suspiciously courteous tone of voice. “What I’m wondering about is simply—”

  “Yes, I saw that too,” Johansson interrupted gently. “What fucking nutcases! Where do they get all this from?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Slow news day,” said Johansson. “Pure fantasies. Typical slow news day story. Although at that rag it’s like they have slow news days all year long.”

  “So I should interpret this as meaning that you haven’t appointed a new investigation or gone in and made any changes to the investigation that I’m actually leading?”

  She was not as controlled now. Not as courteous. It is high time to put a stop to it, thought Johansson.

  “How would that look?” said Johansson with a resentful face, even though he was alone in his office. “I think you know that even better than I do. You’re the head of the Palme investigation. Besides, between the two of us you’re the one who’s the lawyer, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Then I really don’t understand a thing.”

  “Me neither,” Johansson agreed with emphasis. “As I’m sure you know, all the case files have been packed up in boxes for years, and it was only a few months ago that we were able to make room for all of them and put them on the shelves again. You do know about that?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I was the one who made that decision, in consultation with Flykt and the others in the group.”

  “Exactly,” Johansson agreed. “But then they’ve been on me about that. They said they need even more room, and if the rest of us who work here aren’t going to end up on the street because we have no place to put our rear ends, then I thought it was high time to take a look at the case indexing. Find a better, more modern system, simply. Maybe transfer it onto those little diskettes, you know, and move all the papers to the basement. Or some of them, at least. It was Flykt, by the way, who pointed that out to me. I thought it was an excellent idea, and so I asked a few of my younger officers to see if they had any good ideas. Modern computer processing and data storage, and all that, you know, which old geezers like me have completely missed despite all the courses we have to take.”

  “Lewin then?” asked the chief prosecutor, who still did not sound completely convinced. “True, he’s not ancient, but describing him as a younger colleague is still a stretch.”

  “He knows the material from before, and the people who work for you seem to be busy with other things,” Johansson clarified. You must have talked with someone here in the building, thought Johansson. In the article there wasn’t a word about Lewin. At the bureau there are more than seven hundred police officers, but only one with that surname, and it’s lucky for you you’re not sitting in an interrogation with me, he thought.

  “Obviously it would be out of line for me to intervene in your administrative procedures,” the prosecutor agreed.

  “No, how would that look?” said Johansson, sounding as happy as someone who hadn’t heard what he just said.

  The rest went like a dance where Johansson was leading. For the sake of a good cause he set aside five whole minutes for the usual courtesies and concluded the conversation by expressing the hope that they would meet again soon for social activities. For a long time Johansson and his wife had talked about inviting the chief prosecutor and her husband to dinner. Eat and drink well, and as far as the media was concerned she wasn’t the least bit worried. He would take care of the media himself because it was his table, and no one else’s, they’d had the bad taste to shit on.

  “You have to wonder where they get all this from,” sighed Johansson, shaking his head to further his point, even though he was still all alone in his office.

  Then he had a meeting with the national police chief’s information director and his own information department to firm up the media strategy. According to Johansson it was very simple. He had not formed a new Palme investigation. He had not even made the slightest change in the investigation that had been ongoing for the last twenty years. In other words the Palme investigation wasn’t his responsibility but rather the leader of the preliminary investigation’s responsibility, and as they knew she was chief prosecutor in Stockholm.

  “What this is about,” said Johansson as he leaned forward, supporting his elbows on the table, “is that I’ve asked three investigators here at the bureau who have particular experience in how to handle large quantities of preliminary investigation material according to the latest methods—computer technology goes forward with giant leaps, to say the least, and you youngsters know that better than I do, by the way—how we could store the material so that the Palme group can work with it without our needing to build an extra floor here in the building. It was Flykt’s idea by the way, if anyone’s wondering.”

  “Yes, I realized that the case files have been packed up in boxes for years,” said the information director with a sly expression.

  “Exactly,” Johansson agreed. “We can’t have it that way. The stuff has to be easily accessible for the people in the group so they can work with it. Otherwise we might just as well carry it down to the basement and close the case.” Clever boy, he thought.

  “What do we do with the media?” asked his own information manager.

  “Usual press release. I want to see it before it goes out. I’m sure the police chief wants to see it too,” said Johansson, checking with a glance in the direction of the police chief’s information director.

  “What do we do about TV?” his colleague at the bureau wondered. “Should I set a time for interviews this afternoon here with you, boss?”

  “So they can sit in their fucking studios and cut and paste the tape as they like? Definitely not,” said Johansson, letting his own media manager taste the old police gaze he’d learned from his best friend Bo Jarnebring. “If they’re still interested, I can be available for a live broadcast this evening, on channels one, two, and four. Just me, no one else, and above all no so-called experts.” I’ll have to keep
an eye on you, he thought.

  Flykt can wait, thought Johansson two hours later after he’d cleared the papers off his desk, had lunch at a Japanese restaurant in the vicinity of police headquarters, and was starting to feel that he was regaining a firm grip on the rudder of his own boat. On the other hand perhaps I should have a conversation with little Anna, he thought. True, she can be annoyingly pigheaded, but you can count on her saying what she thinks.

  Five minutes later “little Anna,” that is, Police Superintendent Anna Holt, forty-seven, was sitting in the visitor’s chair in his office.

  “How’s it going?” said Johansson with a friendly smile and interested blue eyes.

  “You mean with our overview of the data processing of the Palme material,” said Holt acidly. No “boss” this time, she thought. They were alone in the room, had known each other well for many years, and to be honest she wasn’t in the mood for it.

  “Exactly,” said Johansson. “Have you found the bastard who did it?”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about me, Lisa, or Lewin,” Holt replied. “True, the media have been chasing us like madmen, but none of us has talked with any of them. We won’t either.”

  “So you know that?” said Johansson.

  “Yes,” said Holt.

  Then it’s probably that way, thought Johansson. Holt was not one to lie. It was probably so bad that she didn’t even know how to. And Mattei was, well, Mattei. And Lewin? That coward didn’t talk with a living soul unless he was forced to.

  “On the other hand there are two other things that perhaps you ought to think about,” said Holt.

  “I’m listening,” said Johansson, leaning back in his chair.

  “First,” said Holt, “I think the whole idea is crazy. How can three pairs of so-called fresh eyes find anything new of value when hundreds of our colleagues haven’t, in more than twenty years? You can’t really mean in complete seriousness that everyone who has worked with the Palme case for all these years is a nutcase, featherbrain, blind bat, nitwit, and glowworm, to use a few of your own favorite epithets.”