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

by Leif G. W. Persson

  “You’re quite certain,” Johansson persisted.

  “Yes,” said Wiklander, his voice not sounding the least bit offended. “You can be completely calm, chief. She works at SePo, lives alone in an apartment in Solna, studies criminology at half speed. The home telephone number she gave to M’Boye ceased to exist only a few hours after he’d departed from Arlanda. Secret number from the start and now they’re just shaking their heads at the phone company. Typical SePo account and a heavy-duty sign that she’s done with what she was supposed to do. I’ve checked on her mother too. She’s as healthy as a horse, and if the passport photo matches she looks like she’s her daughter’s age.”

  “Do you have a picture of Officer Eriksson?” asked Johansson.

  “Yes,” said Wiklander with a somewhat broader smile. “Absolutely up to date. Took them myself the other day.”

  Wiklander handed over a bundle of photos taken with a telephoto lens and at a secure distance.

  Nice-looking girl, thought Johansson, and she doesn’t appear to be a day over seventeen.

  Jeanette Louise Eriksson, stepping out of the doorway of the building in Solna where she lived. The same Jeanette Eriksson getting out of a car in the garage of the police headquarters in the basement in the Kronoberg block. Little Jeanette in the courtyard of police headquarters, facing toward the restaurant Bylingen within the courtyard, despite the fact that she looked as though she were on her way to school when the camera captured her obliquely from above.

  “And you think that they put her on M’Boye,” said Johansson. “As a girlfriend, with all that that entails these days?”

  Doesn’t that take a bit of gall even for those crazies? thought Johansson, who had a past within the police union and was still protective of his colleagues’ work environment.

  “Yes,” said Wiklander, smiling broadly. “I actually asked M’Boye if she’d been anything special in bed but then he got a totally offended look. He’s a really burly type, so I only asked once.”

  “And there’s no possibility that M’Boye might have had something to do with Krassner’s death?” persisted Johansson, who just happened to think of the letter that he actually shouldn’t have read.

  What was it that he’d written, the piece of shit? That if he died he would have been murdered either by the Swedish secret police or by the Swedish military intelligence service or by the Soviet military intelligence service GRU. By the way, didn’t the Russians used to make use of operatives from African resistance movements when they were going to be really nasty out in Western Europe? In the back of his mind he had a vague memory that he’d read something like that in some classified memorandum that the gumshoes in the adjacent building had decided to share with their colleagues within the open operation.

  “No,” said Wiklander, shaking his head.

  “Why then?” said Johansson. “They can’t have got everything wrong, can they?” Every time, he thought.

  “He has an alibi,” said Wiklander and chuckled. “When Krassner jumped out the window, M’Boye and Eriksson from SePo were sitting in a Mexican restaurant down on Birger Jarlsgatan.”

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “I’ve checked with the owner. He’s a Spaniard and doesn’t seem to be particularly fond of blacks, if I may say so. He remembered them, maintained that he’d actually thought about phoning in a tip to the police, a big burly black guy and a little Swedish girl who looked like she was still in school. Where he came from there was the death penalty for such things. It took a good while when I talked with him before he realized that she hadn’t been murdered.”

  This is too much, thought Johansson. SePo? Scarcely believable even in his gloomiest moments when he was still a young radical and had drunk too much red wine. For a policeman, that is. The Russians? Possibly, for everything he’d heard and read couldn’t simply be nonsense? SePo and GRU. Impossible, thought Johansson. Not even the TV news editors would come up with something so preposterous.

  “What do you think is going on?” demanded Johansson, looking challengingly at his younger colleague.

  Krassner’s suicide and SePo’s interest in M’Boye had nothing to do with each other. It was a pure coincidence. Krassner had taken his own life. Beyond crazy, he drank and did drugs too. Plus there were all the other objective police circumstances that became known through the technical investigation and the forensic medical report. Not least the suicide note he’d left behind.

  “A perfectly clear-as-a-bell suicide,” Wiklander declared. “You can think what you want about our colleagues at SePo, but that’s not in their repertoire. Besides, they would never carry it out that well if any of them got the idea to try.”

  “Do you have any idea why SePo was so interested in M’Boye?” said Johansson.

  “Well, black, South African, a student, young, radical, member of some local resistance movement, here on money from the union federation—that’s more than enough for them, I guess.”

  Yes, thought Johansson. I’m sure it is. Typical Friday the thirteenth, and now it had started to snow too. As if the snow they’d already gotten wasn’t enough, even though it wasn’t yet Christmas.

  Before Johansson left work he phoned a female colleague who worked at the foreign nationals unit in Stockholm. She was the same age as him, divorced like him, with children who would soon be adults just like his. He’d called her a few months ago on a similar errand.

  “What do you think about that?” said Johansson with a touch more Norrland in his voice.

  “Sure,” she said, and sounded clearly delighted, although with a Stockholm accent.

  “Shall we say the restaurant at seven o’clock?” said Johansson.

  “What do you think about at my place in an hour?” she said, and giggled. “Then we can eat dinner afterward? I think you get so tired from all that Italian food.”

  Easy as pie, thought Johansson, suddenly feeling just as young as when he used to think like that.

  [SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14–SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15]

  Johansson had spent the weekend with his two children. They would be celebrating Christmas and New Year’s abroad with their mother and her new husband, “new” for the past ten years. This weekend offered the final chance to safeguard the remnants of tradition their present circumstances had left them. Apart from that they’d had a nice weekend. On Saturday they’d taken a walk in the city. True, it was cold, but with sparkling sun from a clear, pale-blue sky; his children had appreciated it in a way he hadn’t expected. It turns out that way, I guess, if you live in a big house in Vallentuna, thought Johansson.

  Then they’d shopped for food in the Östermalm market, had lunch at McDonald’s on Nybrogatan, and bought a Christmas tree at Maria Square that they carried home to Wollmar Yxkullsgatan, where they decorated it with red glass balls and silver garlands. True, a small and rather sad-looking tree that was already shedding seriously, but it smelled like Christmas, in any case, and the youngsters were satisfied and happy. They’d made dinner together and his son had shown unexpected domestic talents while his daughter set and decorated the table. No Christmas food, for neither Johansson nor his children were especially fond of it. Good Swedish food, quite simply, which they all helped each other select and prepare. Favorites in reprise, Johansson had thought contentedly while he carefully turned the veal burgers in the frying pan and his son attacked the potatoes with the potato masher.

  First a little Swedish smorgasbord with a discriminating selection of domestic classics: smoked eel, lightly salted lox, caviar, and a few well-chosen types of herring. Johansson had taken shots, one for each leg, from Aunt Jenny’s glass, and when he noticed that his son was glancing furtively at him as he raised the first glass he realized that sooner or later he would have to ask the question. The boy would, after all, soon turn seventeen.

  “Would you like a half shot?” Johansson had asked. It is Christmas, he’d thought.

  “No, good Lord,” his son had said with genuine feeling.

>   “You shouldn’t swear, you little bastard,” Johansson had said prudishly. “Though it’s good if you can leave the aquavit alone as long as possible,” he’d added paternally.

  After the meal they’d exchanged Christmas presents in front of the tree and both his daughter’s and son’s eyes had twinkled. The decal-inscribed sweatshirts that he’d bought at the FBI had aroused especially great enthusiasm. Considerably more than the metal-studded leather jackets that for good money he’d dragged home from the suggested shop on Fifth Avenue in New York. He himself had received a Vikings’ greatest hits collection and a book that, judging by the back cover copy at least, ought to be completely readable. Plus a padded hunting vest with leather facing and large pockets, which was a present from both of them and had certainly dug deep holes in their collective capital.

  “So dear old Dad can keep on exterminating all the animals in the forest,” said his daughter, smiling gently.

  On Sunday the youngsters had slept the whole morning while Johansson idled around the apartment in last Christmas Eve’s dressing gown. He’d showered, had coffee, read the newspaper, and thought a bit about Krassner and the remarkable coincidence of his suicide and SePo’s interest in his neighbor from South Africa. But despite his own cherished rule that in situations like this you ought to hate chance, it must nevertheless still be a pure coincidence. The exception that proves the rule, he decided in order to finally get some quiet in his head, and because the youngsters had started to show signs of life he prepared a substantial American breakfast instead.

  Pancakes with maple syrup and juniper-smoked bacon. His son had been just as delighted as his dad and loaded in double portions despite his sister’s vociferous warnings about cholesterol and being overweight and high blood pressure and sudden, premature death.

  “I don’t understand how you can eat that kind of thing,” she’d said, stirring her breakfast yogurt. “It’s not enough that it tastes disgusting, it smells disgusting too, and it’s pure poison besides. Don’t you understand that you can die?”

  “Although it is awfully good,” Johansson had said gently, stroking her on the cheek.

  In the afternoon he’d sent them home to Vallentuna in a taxi, and because he’d gotten his statement of account from the bank for his stock sale the day before, he hadn’t even thought about what it cost for two teenagers to go home that way.

  It’s clear they should have it good, thought Johansson. I have it good myself, and it will be theirs by and by anyway. Then he drew a hot bath, mixed a giant highball with a little gin and a lot of ice and Grappo, which he placed within comfortable reach before he himself stepped in to relax, not to wash himself, as it was best with hot water, an ice-cold drink, and plenty of time.

  What a splendid weekend, thought Johansson contentedly. It had started well too. True, not with a great lifelong love, but shared urges were clearly good at putting temporary loneliness to flight. They hadn’t even gone to the restaurant afterward. A simple sandwich and a glass of wine at the kitchen table had been every bit as good as an Italian three-course dinner.

  Wonder if you can live that way? thought Johansson, drawing more hot water in order to preserve his philosophical state of mind. Life as a bearable division of pleasure and tedium with occasional temporary efforts as soon as loneliness became too marked? Although in the long run it probably wouldn’t work, thought Johansson, taking a sip of his highball. It has to lead to something more lasting. How was it he’d put it, the poet Vennberg? “Cry of loon and knife toward open eye / anything at all just not the same loneliness anew.”

  He’s a good poet, that Vennberg, thought Johansson. He wasn’t alone in thinking that, either. He was the prime minister’s favorite poet too, for hadn’t he read that in some book whose author and title he’d otherwise forgotten? Some political journalist at Aftonbladet, and types like that were a dime a dozen at that rag, thought Johansson. Although Vennberg was all right. He’s probably never shot a loon, thought Johansson and smiled, for he himself had shot a good many, even when he was a little boy—he could still hear Papa Evert’s curses ringing in his ears when he’d come home with his illegal contribution to the dinner table.

  Wonder if the prime minister has ever shot a loon, thought Johansson, and in that moment he understood exactly what had happened when Krassner died.

  When Johansson climbed out of the bath he dried himself extra carefully, for now was not the time for rushing ahead. Then he put on his dressing gown and went into his study and took out the plastic bag with Krassner’s papers. Set them on the desk and decided to start with the bundle that contained the manuscript to Krassner’s book, “The Spy Who Went East.”

  He found it almost at once. First the title page with the author’s name. Then a table of contents with chapter headings that extended over two pages, still incomplete and with handwritten corrections and additions. Then he found what he was looking for. On a page of its own, a quote that served as an introduction to the text that followed in the first chapter.

  Johansson translated as he read, which was no great art because for the most part he could reproduce the short passage by heart both in the English original and the Swedish translation.

  “I have lived my life caught between the longing of summer and the cold of winter. As a young man I used to think that when summer comes I would fall in love with someone, someone I would love a lot, and then, that’s when I would start living my life for real. But by the time I had accomplished all those things I had to do before, summer was already gone and all that remained was the winter cold. And that, that was not the life that I had hoped for.”

  Now there was an additional reference. On a separate page with footnotes that had been inserted after the chapter: “Extract of letter from Pilgrim to Fionn, April 1955.”

  Johansson put the manuscript aside and took out paper and pen. What was it that she’d said, Sarah Weissman, that extraordinarily talented woman, when they’d met? Only a week ago, but it already seemed like an eternity. This was nothing that Krassner had written himself; on the other hand it might very well be something he’d pinched from someone else. On that point she’d clearly been quite right, and now when Johansson was sitting with the key—or at least the start of a key—it didn’t seem as if he’d intended to conceal that relationship, either. The author was clearly a person who’d chosen to call himself Pilgrim and who, more than thirty years ago, had written a letter addressed to another pseudonym, Fionn.

  What else had she said about the author? That it was a man, obviously, for women didn’t write like that; a man who was neither American nor British but who spoke the language fluently for the most part; an educated, talented man with a poetic disposition, or rather a poetic ambition, perhaps. Johansson had an excellent memory, this memory in particular was recent, and without having made any notes he recalled that this was exactly how she’d expressed herself.

  “I have lived my life caught between the longing of summer and the cold of winter …”; “Cry of loon and knife toward open eye / anything at all just not the same loneliness anew.” Vennberg’s poem must be of considerably later date, thought Johansson, but that was actually quite uninteresting, for this dealt with something else, a poetic disposition, a poetic ambition, a way of seeing, experiencing, and formulating, and a favorite poet was not something that you chose by accident.

  The prime minister, thought Johansson. This he’d already understood, and it was a conviction so strong as to leave no room for other alternatives. The prime minister was Pilgrim, or more exactly … he had been, more than thirty years ago.

  . . .

  And who is Fionn? thought Johansson. Who was it that Pilgrim was writing to? Easy as pie, thought Johansson, for he’d already figured that out, and when he pulled out the relevant volume of The Swedish Reference Book from the bookshelf it was mostly to get confirmation in print. Finn, he thought. Fionn must be Finn in English.

  “Finn, Anglicized form of the Gaelic name Fionn, hero in ancient Iri
sh saga literature, see Finn cycle,” Johansson read.

  John C. Buchanan, Krassner’s uncle, he thought, who in the spring of 1955, when the cold war was at its coldest, must have had his ass full as a CIA agent in Europe and Sweden. How was it Sarah had described him? One of those shrewd, lying, really thirsty, and naturally prejudiced Irishmen. But he must have had something else, thought Johansson, for this was certainly no shabby agent he’d managed to recruit.

  This is the only reasonable explanation, he thought, for it was a farewell letter sure enough, but hardly a farewell to life. Only a former external collaborator with the world’s fourth-largest security organization who, in an educated, talented, and, considering the context, unusually poetic manner, was stating that he no longer wanted to be part of it. A still-young man who had other plans for his future life.

  What do I have to do with this? thought Johansson with irritation, looking around for his highball, which he must have left behind in the bathroom. Not a thing, for regardless of what Pilgrim and Fionn had been up to more than thirty years ago, it was still a good five years too late for someone like Johansson to even lift his little finger. Statutes of limitation are not a stupid invention, thought Johansson. They save a lot of unnecessary running around. So what should he do now? For a police officer like himself there was actually only one problem remaining, and that was Krassner himself. What was it Sarah had said? That he would rather die than take his own life, and on that point she had probably been right as well, thought Johansson. What remains is just to find out how it really happened.

  Obviously it was Krassner that SePo was interested in the whole time, and quite certainly it was pure coincidence that M’Boye got to function as a hanger for Krassner’s overcoat. Not even the secret police were so dumb that they didn’t understand that it was a matter of a tiny window of happiness for the white regime in South Africa, and that someone like M’Boye might very soon be sitting in the new government. The trade federation has clearly realized that, for otherwise why would they have brought him here? Presumably SePo hasn’t even given a thought to him, thought Johansson, and from what he’d heard from Wiklander he didn’t seem to have realized anything either.