Free Falling, As If in a Dream Read online

  “No, not all,” Johansson agreed. Favorite epithet, he thought. Anna’s starting to become an educated woman. Must be the association with little Mattei, the string bean who got her PhD a few years ago. True, she wrote an incomprehensible dissertation on what a shame it is about women being killed by their boyfriends, but in any case it was good for tossing into the jaws of hungry media vultures when needed, he thought.

  “The material is gigantic,” said Holt. “It’s a mountain, not a regular haystack where there might be a needle. Regardless of whether it’s there, we’re not going to find it. Although I’m sure you already know that.”

  “Sure,” said Johansson. “So that means we really have to like the situation. The other thing you were talking about? What’s that?”

  “Okay,” said Holt. “Assume that we do it anyway. Assume that we find something decisive that could give us a breakthrough in the investigation. Then I would say that you’re going to have major problems with a number of people in your vicinity. Considering that you’ve actually been lying to their faces. Not to mention the media. I went past our information department before lunch and happened to see a draft of your press release. I don’t understand how you dare.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson, whose thoughts already seemed elsewhere.

  “I learned something from my father,” he continued.

  “Yes?”

  “When I was a little boy at home on the farm, Dad had a visit from an insurance agent who wanted to sell him a policy on a forest parcel he’d just bought. It was an iffy location if the wind was strong, and windfalls and trees with their tops lopped off aren’t good business. The problem was that the insurance cost more than he’d paid for the parcel. So that wasn’t a good deal either. Do you know what my old man said?”

  Here we go again, she thought. One-way trip fifty years back in time. From the Palme investigation, a current, very concrete problem, to yet another of Johansson’s childhood memories.

  “No,” said Holt. How could I know? I guess that’s the point, she thought.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Johansson. “That’s what he said. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ So there was no insurance, but on the other hand when he cut down the forest after twenty years there was a tidy profit. You don’t seriously believe I would be a social outcast if—granted, against all odds—we could put some order into this story? The only risk I run in that case is that they’d erect a monument to me outside the entryway down on Polhemsgatan.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” said Holt.

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders.

  5

  Chief Inspector Flykt’s wait was not over until a quarter past six. He’d already made three calls to soothe his increasingly sarcastic golf buddies, when suddenly his boss opened the door and just strode right in.

  “Knock, knock,” said Johansson, smiling and waving his big right hand. Wonder where the asshole put his golf bag? he thought after a quick inspection of Flykt’s office.

  “Well, I realize you’ve been very busy, Chief,” said Flykt, trying to sound as unperturbed as Johansson. “This is a sorry story but I did try to warn—”

  “Forget about that now, Flykt,” said Johansson. “It would be inconceivable for me to try to find out which of your many associates let his tongue run ahead of his feeble intelligence. I’ve understood from the start it wasn’t you personally.”

  “Yes, I really hope you don’t think so, boss,” said Flykt.

  No, thought Johansson. I’m sure you just ran off at the mouth as usual.

  “You’ve seen the press release?” asked Johansson. “No objections if I’ve understood things correctly?”

  “No,” said Flykt, shaking his head to make it seem more convincing.

  “Good,” said Johansson. “Then it’s high time you and I took off to talk with the TV people,” said Johansson. “We’ll have to grab a bite to eat between channels.”

  “But I’m not prepared to be part of any TV interview,” Flykt objected.

  “You won’t be either,” said Johansson. “You’re just coming along so the vultures can learn what a united front looks like.” Even though you probably already put your golf bag in the car, he thought.

  It was almost eleven o’clock before Johansson could step into his own abode on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan. First there were the two interviews for three different TV channels, and then his chauffeur let Flykt off outside the office because he needed to get his car in the police headquarters garage.

  The lights were off and it was quiet in the apartment. His wife was at a kickoff meeting for the bank at a conference center hotel out in the archipelago and wouldn’t be home until the next day. Johansson was looking forward to a few hours of peace and quiet after a hard day, which could have ended badly but he hoped had ended well. In the basket under the mail slot was a CD with his TV appearances that his secretary had recorded and one of his many associates had then delivered to him.

  “Home at last,” said Johansson, who was satisfied with himself and the evening.

  First he arranged a tray with a suitable selection of yesterday’s leftovers and a cold beer. After a quick deliberation he also poured an ample shot. It’s Thursday after all and almost the weekend, thought Johansson.

  Then he carried the tray to his study, poured the beer, and prepared an old-fashioned open-faced sandwich, put in the CD, and took a seat in his large armchair in front of the TV.

  Let’s see now, said blind Sarah, thought Johansson, taking a substantial bite. He swallowed half the shot chased with pilsner and switched on the TV.

  Basically it was the same feature in the early and late news programs on the two public television stations. There hadn’t been enough time to cut and paste very much. The essential difference was that the story was shorter in the later program. A good sign that the whole thing would soon blow over.

  A correct male news anchor asked the expected questions, but toward the end he had trouble concealing his amusement at Johansson’s categorical denial of the information that had appeared in the country’s largest morning newspaper. Most of all at the way Johansson did it, which is probably also why he was content with the concluding routine attempts.

  “But surely someone in your position must have wondered how such a rumor can arise?” the male news anchor asked.

  “Of course I have,” said Johansson. “Spreading rumors is just as big a problem at my place of employment as at yours, and the reasons are probably the same. But most of what the media reports is actually true, and most of what we talk about at my job is true too. Things that are only speculations or that someone’s got turned around or just plain wrong are the price we pay for being able to carry on a dialogue with one another.”

  “And this time it was completely upside down,” the interviewer suggested.

  “Yes, it was,” said Johansson. “But let’s not forget that ultimately this is about the assassination of our country’s prime minister, and personally I would be seriously worried if I were to discover one day that the media was completely uninterested in talking about that.”

  “Since you’re here anyway…are you ever going to solve the murder of Olof Palme?”

  This is it, thought Johansson. Time to move into silver-tongue mode.

  “When you’re a police officer working on a murder investigation, there’s only one thing that matters. Liking the situation,” said Johansson.

  “But what do you think personally?”

  “During all my years as a policeman, I’ve been involved in investigating far too many murders,” said Johansson, whose thoughts suddenly seemed elsewhere. “But I’ve never been involved in this investigation.” Time for heavy, brooding old cop, he thought. Plus that inward-gazing murder investigator look he had never really succeeded in teaching his best friend.

  “But you must still—”

  �
�You’re asking the wrong person,” Johansson interrupted. “That question should go to the chief prosecutor in Stockholm, who is the leader of the investigation, or to the investigators at the Palme group who manage the practical aspects of the case.”

  “But you have great confidence in them?”

  “Obviously,” said Johansson. “They’re good people.”

  That was that, thought Johansson contentedly. He hit the pause button, finished his good sandwich and the last half of the shot, chased it with beer, and turned on the TV again. Time for somewhat harder moves, he thought. Female reporter, considerably younger than him, almost as good-looking as his wife, and he hoped she was a little too sly for her own good.

  First he got to speak his piece. Summarize the message in his own press release. Then suddenly it got serious.

  “What I don’t really understand is that you appointed three of the country’s most experienced murder investigators to do something that sounds to me like a routine task for computer experts,” she said with a smile so friendly it certainly portended something else.

  “To me it’s pretty obvious,” said Johansson. “If this sort of material is going to be sorted out, it’s necessary for the work to be done, as you yourself say, by a very experienced murder investigator.”

  “But computers and data processing are not really their field, are they?”

  “I’m afraid you underestimate my co-workers,” said Johansson. “All have extensive academic backgrounds, alongside purely police-related training, and one of them is a PhD. If you ask me she may be the police officer in this country with the greatest combined experience in these issues. She has considerable experience as a murder investigator. As a police officer she has unique expertise in science and statistics and, when it comes to computer issues, she knows how large quantities of investigative material are best handled.”

  “But you yourself,” she asked suddenly. “You’re a legendary murder investigator. You’ve never felt tempted to solve the murder of the prime minister?”

  “Where computers and a lot of data and that sort of thing are concerned, I’m an old geezer,” said Johansson. “I’m overjoyed every day I manage to log on to my own computer.”

  “So you’ve never felt tempted?”

  “Of course I have,” said Johansson. “But fortunately I’m old now and wise enough to leave it to those who have better understanding about that than I do. I have good people working on the Palme case. My job is to see that they don’t drown in all the paper they’ve collected.”

  “You make it sound like a simple work environment issue.”

  “Yes,” said Johansson. “Those are exactly the sort of issues someone like me should be concerned with. Creating a good work environment so my people can function. I’m sure you remember how things went earlier in this case when a lot of old bosses got the notion they should run around playing murder investigator.”

  Anna Holt, Jan Lewin, and Lisa Mattei had also devoted a good portion of the evening to following Johansson’s TV appearances.

  The man defies all description, thought Anna Holt as she turned on the late news on TV4. Time after time he manages to get completely normal people to lose the thread and suddenly start talking about something completely different, just because he’s decided to talk about it. It was time she went to bed if she was going to be able to crawl out from under the mountain of papers under which Johansson had buried her.

  The man who can see around corners, thought Lisa Mattei solemnly, and suddenly she didn’t feel the least bit afraid of heights any longer. Then she went to her computer because she’d just had an idea.

  Extensive academic educations, that’s one way to describe it, thought Jan Lewin in the absolute solitude of his small apartment up at Gärdet. In his case it was a matter of an intro course in law, forty credits in criminology, and a basic course in statistics that he dropped because he couldn’t make any sense of all the formulas and numbers.

  Still, worst of all was that the little he’d learned during his academic education was either obvious or the sort of thing he already knew. Apart from statistics, of course, because that mostly confused him. It’s high time to hit the sack, he thought. Then he undressed, brushed his teeth, and went to bed. As usual he twisted and turned for a few hours before he finally fell asleep.

  Like the situation, he thought. How do you do that when loneliness has robbed your life of both purpose and meaning?

  Johansson himself was feeling splendid. He finished the evening by reading a few more chapters in Grimberg’s book about the Gustavian period and the assassination of Gustav III. Then he sat down in front of his computer and searched the Internet to learn more about murders of people like Gustav III and his own murder victim. The way he went about it would surely have surprised at least one female reporter at TV4.

  Interesting, thought Johansson. Although you’ve suspected as much all along, he thought as he stood in the shower two hours later, pondering his new insights as a completely separate idea began to take shape in his head.

  Then for some reason he started thinking about the police work in the investigation of the murder of the great king Gustav more than two hundred years ago. An excellent investigation. Based on the conditions of the time, the police chief, Liljensparre, had done everything a real policeman could be expected to do. Everything that his successor in the position 194 years later had failed to do.

  First Liljensparre closed the doors to the opera house before anyone had a chance to slip out. He wrote down the names of everyone in the place and did some initial questioning. Then he personally inspected the two pistols that the perpetrator had thrown aside at the scene of the crime. One loaded, one recently fired, both recently repaired. He’d been able to do that without having to worry about fingerprints or DNA traces, thought Johansson, letting the water cascade around him.

  The following day Liljensparre summoned the city’s gunsmiths, one of whom immediately recognized the weapons. He had repaired them himself a fortnight earlier for a captain by the name of Jacob Johan Anckarström. The same Anckarström who had attended the masquerade ball the evening before and had a reputation for hating the king.

  Anckarström was picked up for interrogation, confessed more or less immediately, and Liljensparre trudged happily on. Quite certainly in the same red woolen stockings he was wearing in the full-length portrait that still hangs in the police chief’s corridor in the old police headquarters in Stockholm. One by one ringleaders, accomplices, conspirators, and opposition elements in general ended up in jail, where a good percentage of them more or less immediately tried to talk their way out by informing on all the others who were already there.

  We must have had good interrogators at that time, thought Johansson as he soaped in extra under his arms.

  With the number arrested passing a hundred, and a police chief who was getting more zealous every day, apparently the powers that be thought enough was enough. Liljensparre was released from his duties, the investigation was ended, and the majority of those who had been arrested were let out. Only the ones most closely involved were convicted, and they received surprisingly mild sentences considering the time and the crime—with the exception of Anckarström, who was, to put it simply, hacked to pieces.

  Ingratitude is the world’s reward for a poor policeman, regardless of how it ends, thought Lars Martin Johansson. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, he thought, turning off the water and reaching for a towel.

  Five minutes after going to bed he was sleeping deeply, his snores disturbing nobody in the whole world.

  6

  Despite what he’d said to Holt and Mattei at their introductory meeting, Lewin started with his old boxes. The same boxes that held everything under the sun that was at best of doubtful police value. The results of the internal investigation he’d been responsible for over twenty years earlier.

  Back then he hadn’t found anything, and since then no one seemed to have even tried. Three ordinary c
ardboard moving boxes piled among hundreds of others. At the bottom of each pile, of course, that’s how it always was. He found them with the help of his own handwritten lists of contents that he’d taped to the boxes twenty years earlier.

  Apart from the fact that someone must have moved the boxes, surely a number of times, the papers in them were arranged exactly as he’d left them. The only thing missing was cobwebs, thought Lewin. First he took out the old suicide on the islands in Mälaren. Mostly out of piety and to check his own recollections. He had no factual reason whatsoever.

  The initial report—“suspected cause of death”—was dated the day after the assassination of the prime minister, Saturday the first of March 1986, and prepared by the Norrmalm police after a tip from the same colleague who’d contacted him. It was unclear why the case had ended up with the Norrmalm police—the Mälaren islands belonged to a different police district—but it was probably due to the fact that the officer who submitted the tip worked there, as well as the general chaos that prevailed after the assassination.

  The report was topmost in a binder that also included an autopsy report, a technical investigation of the house on Ekerö where the former watchman who’d hung himself in the rec room was found, a ballistics report on the revolver found in the house search but which had nothing to do with the suicide, a test firing of the same weapon and a ballistic comparison with the two bullets secured at the crime scene where the prime minister had been murdered. Even though it was already known that the suicide’s weapon had a different, considerably smaller, caliber than the gun the perpetrator used to shoot the prime minister.

  At the back of the binder were interviews with five different witnesses, the ex-wife, and four neighbors. At the very back was the memorandum that Lewin had prepared when he closed the case. Convinced as he then was, far beyond all the doubts that tormented him more than almost any of his colleagues, that the man who had taken his life had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Olof Palme.