Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End: The Story of a Crime

by Leif G. W. Persson

  Okay, thought Berg as he sat in the backseat of his car returning to Kungsholmen, now what do I know? That Kudo and Bülling, mostly Kudo—for say what you will about Bülling, he wasn’t directly communicative—let their mouths run before their brains, despite instructions to the contrary. And that the moronic Stockholm chief constable evidently had a direct channel to the prime minister’s special adviser. So far everything’s fine and dandy, thought Berg. Such knowledge is simply power.

  What is it he wants to say to me? thought Berg. It’s completely clear that there’s a message. Who would invite someone like that to their wedding? Not even a Kurd. What type of message is it he wants to give me? That he knows what I’m doing and that he’s keeping an eye on me? Quite certainly, thought Berg. That I should watch out? Quite certainly that too. But why does he talk about it to me? Because he wants to draw attention to himself? Possibly, but scarcely probable. To get me off balance, even if that means he has to show his cards to me? Or is it so bad … Berg’s thoughts were interrupted by a quiet throat-clearing from the driver’s seat.

  “Boss, excuse me for interrupting, but we’re here now.” The car had stopped down in the garage and his chauffeur was looking at him uneasily in the rearview mirror.

  “Please excuse me,” said Berg. “I’m sitting here with my own thoughts.”

  Is it that bad, thought Berg in the elevator on the way up to his office on the top floor, that the card he’s shown me means nothing to him? That he can lay it out just to shake me up, because he’s holding much better cards than that? Who? thought Berg. Who in that case is the traitor in my immediate circle? Most likely Waltin, he thought, and the sorrow he suddenly felt in passing had the same cold intensity he felt whenever he thought about the children he and his wife had never had.

  At the meeting the following week he reported on Waltin’s compilation of those threats and menaces directed at, or intended for, politicians and senior officials in the Cabinet, the parliament, and the authorities that were of decisive significance for the security of the realm. Waltin had done an excellent job: He had done it regardless of how things stood with his own reliability, and Berg himself was very satisfied with the way in which he had set up his report. First he had quickly peeled away the remaining authorities and the parliament in order to concentrate on the menace that concerned the Cabinet and those who worked there.

  As an introduction he had sketched out the various forms this took: threats from foreign powers, political conspiracies at various levels within the realm, terrorist actions with an origin in another country, domestic terrorism, political extremist groups, and actions carried out by so-called individual lunatics, and he was very satisfied with that presentation as well. An assessment that, by the way, was quite clearly shared by the minister, who larded his summary with verbal agreement and nods. And by the legal officer as well, for this could be seen in his eyes despite his usual silence. The special adviser sat with his eyes closed and he had neither grinned, chuckled, nor had any opinions, which was probably the highest praise Berg could count on from that quarter.

  “Yes,” said Berg, clicking a new picture from the slide projector he had brought in. “We’re starting to approach the heart of the matter, as the saying goes. As you see from the charts, the volume of threats directed at the government and persons in its vicinity has increased violently since the change of administration at the last election.”

  At this point the special adviser had chuckled, not said anything, but chuckled in that very unnerving way. Should I wait him out? thought Berg.

  “The number of threats we’ve captured against the government and its affiliates has increased by more than one thousand percent since the change of government. Under the previous lot, we used to get a few hundred per year, but now it’s a few thousand.”

  “That’s just terrible,” said the minister of justice. “I received a letter bomb myself about a year ago.”

  “That case is included here, as you no doubt know,” said Berg confidently, “and we have good hope of finding the perpetrators. We know they belong to a neo-Nazi group on the extreme right-wing fringe.”

  “It’s really nice that they’re still on that fringe,” said the special adviser. “You say ‘bomb,’ ” he continued, looking at Berg. “Are we talking about that package with three fireworks in it, where some mentally challenged young man with pyrotechnic inclinations pasted match-striking surfaces on the fuse?”

  “Our technicians were not that shaken up,” Berg agreed. “And that’s the good side of things. The volume has increased dramatically, as you see, but when we observe the various individual cases the picture begins to change. It’s almost exclusively a matter of communications by telephone or various types of mailings, mostly letters; in a purely judicial sense it’s most often a question of insults and slander than pure threats. The most common individual communication that we receive, for example, claims that our prime minister is a Russian spy.”

  “But that’s shocking,” said the minister.

  “Stay calm,” said the special adviser, leaning forward and patting the minister on the arm. “I’ve got my eyes on that little scoundrel.”

  “But, but,” persisted the minister, pulling his arm away. “I’m not so amused by all these threats and my wi—yes, my partner … actually became quite upset when she heard about my letter bomb.”

  “Obviously,” said the special adviser jovially. “But wasn’t that a different partner? Than the one you have now, I mean.” Now he was laughing so that his fat belly bounced.

  “Yes, you can joke,” said the minister. “Tell me, Berg,” he continued, nodding amiably. “What kind of people are these, who get mixed up in such things?”

  “All possible types if we’re talking occupations and social groups,” said Berg. “And obviously there is a significant overrepresentation of persons with psychiatric problems, but we have everything from counts and barons and doctors and executives to common laborers, students, the unemployed, people on disability, and mental patients. Many are immigrants too, it should be pointed out, but almost all in that subcategory seem to have acted more out of personal dissatisfaction than any extreme political ideology.”

  “Police officers,” said the special adviser. “Police officers and military personnel, the ones you described to us a few weeks ago. How is it with them?”

  “What I am accounting for today are almost exclusively reported cases. With or without a known perpetrator. So the persons included in my earlier account, where we ourselves sniffed out the information, are not part of these statistics.” Berg nodded thoughtfully before he continued. “But certainly there are also police officers and military personnel in our material on reported cases. Here, for example, there is a detective chief inspector with the Stockholm police who called the prime minister’s chancellery on his service phone and conveyed threats against the prime minister to his secretary. Still in service, by the way, case closed when the crime couldn’t be confirmed against his denials.”

  Berg cleared his throat and continued.

  “We have a half dozen officers—the highest ranking is a lieutenant colonel with a ranger unit—who have uttered, to say the least, inappropriate viewpoints about the government and its work as well as individual members of the government in the presence of draftees and subordinate personnel. In brief, quite a few,” concluded Berg.

  “Am I unjust if I say that the material about reported cases consists mainly of rubbish, but that at the same time you are sitting on other data that perhaps indicates a more qualified menace and with presumptive perpetrators of a quite different, and higher, quality?” The special adviser looked expectantly at Berg.

  “No,” said Berg. “I guess I concur unreservedly with your description. That is how I myself and my coworkers view the situation.”

  What is going on? thought Berg. I don’t even need to say it myself. He’s the one who is saying it for me.

  After the meeting he met Waltin. First he compli
mented him for his excellent support and then briefly gave his view on how the whole thing had turned out.

  “It was a good meeting,” said Berg. “I got a definite sense that we’re finally starting to transmit on the same wavelength.”

  Waltin nodded. He looked satisfied, but not in any way that appeared exaggerated or suspicious, just satisfied. I’ve probably been mistaken, thought Berg. What I need is a week’s vacation.

  Waltin of course had no idea of the suspicions that had been moving around in Berg’s head lately, and even if he had he wouldn’t have been overly concerned. There were other things stirring in Waltin’s head. One that was stirring more and more often was that dark little thing with the boyish body and that small, small, firm rear, which just now was sitting in a small, small chair in the section for internal surveillance. Before her big, big computer. At first he had thought about finding out how old she was, but on further reflection he had decided not to. That would ruin the enjoyment, thought Waltin. She looked as though she were in high school, despite the fact that she must have turned twenty-five, and that was good enough.

  Lately he had looked in on her and her coworkers more and more often, and that puritanical upper-class fairy Hamilton, who was still working directly under him, had only gotten surlier and surlier. I guess I’ll have to live with that, thought Waltin, and he grinned exactly like a wolf whose fantasies were only getting better and better. This time she had been sitting alone too, so he had avoided wasting a lot of unnecessary time setting up smokescreens and conversing with her male coworkers.

  “How nice that you came,” she said. “I need help. There’s something I have to ask you.”

  “I’m listening,” said Waltin. He assumed a semi-profile and a manly yet easy smile as he unobtrusively moved his chair closer to hers. Little Jeanette, age seventeen, thought Waltin while his well-tailored crotch tightened a little.

  “We’ve received a few tips that I’m not really sure about,” she said, wrinkling her brow.

  Delightful, thought Waltin, that little wrinkle in her forehead as she bit on the pen she was holding in her little hand. Imagine if she had a lisp too, he thought. Then he might even have considered taking responsibility for his actions.

  “Tell me,” said Waltin, crossing his right leg over his left while loosening the knot of his tie.

  “It’s about an American journalist,” she said. “He arrived at Arlanda from New York last Sunday and I’ve already received two tips about him.”

  “What’s his name?” asked Waltin and leaned forward to get a better look at the text on her computer screen. What a delightful scent, he thought. Like rosy, freshly bathed skin.

  “Jonathan Paul Krassner, goes by John,” she said. “Born in 1953.”

  CHAPTER V

  Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End

  New York, New York, in December

  [FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6]

  When Johansson and his companions arrived in New York they were met by a biting wind, and his first move was to buy a heavy jacket and a sturdy pair of shoes. Wonder if they have them with a hollow heel? thought Johansson, smiling to himself as he stood in the store with the robust winter shoe in his hand. Heel?

  “What do you call this?” asked Johansson, indicating the heel with his thumb.

  “ ‘Heel,’ sir,” the clerk said politely. “You want them with a different heel?” he asked.

  Johansson shook his head and smiled.

  “No,” he said. “These are fine the way they are. I think I’ll wear them, so you can just put the old ones in a bag.”

  That evening he and his two traveling companions went to a restaurant for dinner. At first they considered going to a Swedish restaurant with a good reputation located close to their hotel, but after further discussion they settled on an Italian one that the officer from the Interpol section had visited the last time he was in New York.

  “It’s excellent, if you like Italian food.” The officer from Interpol nodded to underscore what he was saying. “A few officers here in town tipped me off about it last time I was here. It’s supposed to be a frequent haunt of the local Mafia bosses, and that’s a good sign, of course.”

  “So herring and a shot is out of the question,” objected the officer from narcotics. “Instead you’ll be shot from behind with your head landing in a bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce.”

  “You’ve missed the point,” said Johansson jovially. “You can eat herring when you get home, can’t you? You have the whole Christmas holiday ahead of you.”

  And because he was the boss, Italian food is what they had.

  “There’s a very good Italian restaurant a few blocks from where I live, but I must confess this risotto is hard to beat,” said Johansson a few hours later.

  “It’s the truffles that do the trick,” said the Interpol chief inspector, who had eaten a meal or two while in service.

  “Is that those little black bits of sawdust?” asked the narcotics chief inspector suspiciously. “I was just wondering.”

  “It’s a remarkable mushroom,” said the one from Interpol. “It’s said to grow best if fertilized with human blood, at least if you believe that tale, and they grow best of all, it’s said, if the blood is from someone who’s been murdered.”

  “Why don’t you take it, then? If they’d been a little bigger I could have pushed them to the side, but these are way too small. Especially now when you have a little red wine under your belt.” The head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s narcotics squad smiled wryly and raised his glass.

  “Maybe you should try grating a few truffles over the herring,” said Johansson, smiling. “Combine the Swedish and Italian food cultures, if I may say so.”

  “The Swedish is good enough for me, herring and a shot and new potatoes with dill.” The narcotics chief inspector sighed nostalgically.

  “What plans do you gentlemen have for tomorrow?” asked the Interpol chief inspector, changing the subject. “If there’s any interest, I can arrange a little educational field trip. I spoke with my friends this afternoon.”

  Sounds interesting, thought Johansson. I can phone that woman who knew Krassner in the morning. If I end up calling her at all.

  “Sounds interesting,” he said. “I have a few things to do in the morning, thought I’d shop for a few Christmas presents, but in the afternoon and evening I’ve got nothing better to do. Sure, I’ll gladly put the squeeze on the local bad guys.”

  “Me too.” The chief inspector from narcotics nodded and there was a gleam in his eyes. “It’s going to look brilliant in the travel report the boss, here, is going to turn in. No rest for the wicked regardless of whether it’s a Sunday or a workday or wherever on earth you are. Such is a simple constable’s lot.” He grinned at Johansson.

  “Then it’s a deal.” The officer from Interpol nodded.

  [SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7]

  Johansson waited until ten a.m. before he phoned Krassner’s ex-girlfriend. In the back of his mind he had the idea that she was probably the type who preferred to get up late if given the choice, which she no doubt could on a Saturday morning. He had brooded a good deal besides, before it even occurred to him to pick up the phone. It would be simplest, of course, to forget about the whole thing, he thought. Agree with Jarnebring’s theory of a little half-crazy suicide who for unknown but probably uninteresting reasons had chosen to store a slip of paper with Johansson’s complete name, title, and home address in a shoe with a hollow heel. A shoe with a heel with a hole in it, thought Johansson, and sighed.

  He let go of that thought, however. Johansson had been curious even as a child, and that thing about the hollow heel was simply too much. Which was not to say that it was wise to phone her if it was his own curiosity that he wanted to appease. If he looked at the matter purely professionally it was almost always better to show up unannounced and simply knock on the door of the person in question. Or forget about knocking if that was the way it was. But this isn�
��t the right time for that, thought Johansson, so what do I do now?

  With the help of a friendly receptionist at the hotel, he had carried out certain preparatory measures the day before. First he double-checked the telephone number he got from Wiklander. Not because he didn’t trust him. Wiklander was almost as capable a police officer as he himself had been at the same age, but better a check too many than one too few, thought Johansson. Weissman’s telephone number was in the phone book, so that had been simple enough, and because the address was the same as in his notebook it was quite certainly correct: Sarah J. Weissman, 222 Aiken Avenue, Rensselaer, New York. In addition he realized that Rensselaer was right across the river from Albany, which clearly was the capital of the state of New York. Like Solna and Sundbyberg in relation to Stockholm, thought Johansson.

  “What’s the easiest way to get there?” asked Johansson.

  “By train from Grand Central Station,” the receptionist explained. “Takes a little less than three hours if you go on the express. I can get you a timetable. They’re quite frequent even on weekends. Besides, it’s a really beautiful trip along the Hudson River,” she added. “Not like this,” she said, nodding toward the street outside the swinging lobby doors.

  Wonder if it’s as beautiful as driving along the Ångerman River, thought Johansson.

  I can take the train on Sunday morning, Johansson decided. Look around a little, see how he lived, perhaps exchange a few words with his ex-girlfriend since he had to be there anyway. The most practical, of course, would be to phone her ahead of time. There was nothing that suggested she was a common criminal who would cut and run if a Swedish policeman phoned to talk about an old boyfriend. Or was there? Johansson thought and sighed. Six of one, he thought, and dialed her number.