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

by Leif G. W. Persson

  The quiet life in the country, Johansson thought a few days later. And for reasons he wasn’t clear about either, and without knowing anything about it, it was life in the Russian countryside he had in mind. The life that was lived in the time of the czars, before the revolution and by a small number of landed gentry. Must be something I’ve read, thought Johansson. Perhaps it was the birch groves down toward the sea, the stillness, the lack of activity while he read his books, took long walks, ate and slept, and watched his brother drive away and come home again in his constant business affairs, the particulars of which he preferred not to think about. No sleigh rides with blazing torches, of course, but no wolves howling in the winter night, either. No balls with champagne and women with plunging necklines who flirted wildly behind open fans in order to keep the cold at a distance. But no anxiety, either, that the cold you caught while you were doing that would also end your brief life.

  . . .

  Days came and went, and he himself was only an ordinary, temporarily appointed police superintendent who would soon become a bureau chief and in the meantime was charging his batteries. That was how you ought to look at it. On Saturday, the twenty-eighth of December, the Stockholm chief constable was the birthday child of the day in the big evening tabloid, and because Johansson had met him on several occasions he devoted almost a quarter of an hour of his usual walk to thinking about the day on which his birthday fell. Holy Innocents’ Day, thought Johansson, and regardless of what you thought about the fellow—he had a definite opinion—he was hardly an innocent. Neither in the original meaning of the word nor in the general, everyday pejorative sense it had gotten later. I’m afraid it’s probably worse than that, thought Johansson as he lengthened his stride. For whatever reason, it was certainly the most exciting thing that happened that day.

  On New Year’s Eve his brother and sister-in-law had a big party with champagne, hired serving personnel, and a number of female guests with plunging necklines and men in tuxedos.

  “I forgot to say that,” said Johansson’s brother. “It’s formal, but if you want you can borrow my old one, which I don’t use anymore. In the worst case you can just say to hell with buttoning it.”

  How nice, thought Johansson. So I don’t have to rent one.

  Buttoning it had also gone well. Despite the fact that the jacket was double-breasted it felt roomy, and when Johansson observed himself in the mirror in his room, he looked like any other middle-aged car salesman.

  “Christ, little brother, you almost look human,” said his brother contentedly when Johansson came down to the living room a while later.

  “Pity you have such short legs,” said Johansson. “Otherwise it would have fit perfectly.”

  “You can keep it,” said his brother generously. “I have several.”

  “You don’t know a dwarf who’s sufficiently short and fat?” said Johansson.

  “Christ, little brother,” said Johansson’s big brother, putting his arm around his shoulders and hugging him. “Tonight we’re going to have fun. We’ll eat and drink and dance and be nice to the ladies. By the way, did I say that I’ve arranged a surprise for you?”

  Johansson’s surprise had arrived approximately in the middle of the crush of guests, which was quite all right considering who she was and who the other guests were. And in a low-cut dress, which she hadn’t been wearing the last time they’d had dinner at his neighborhood restaurant.

  “Lars,” she said, sounding both happy and surprised. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” said Johansson.

  Because Johansson’s big brother was not one to leave anything to chance, not least if he was in cahoots with Mama Elna, for that’s what must have happened, thought Johansson. Obviously they were seated next to each other at the table and had lots of time to talk about both this and that.

  “You never called me the way you promised,” said Johansson’s table companion, sounding almost a little hurt when she said it.

  How about you, then? thought Johansson, but he didn’t say that. Instead he looked at her with his honest blue eyes and lied.

  “Of course I did. I called you the same week I came home from the U.S., and at the switchboard they promised to leave a message,” said Johansson, who knew from experience just how certain such a thing was.

  “They’re completely hopeless,” said his table companion with feeling in her voice.

  “And then I’ve been really busy,” said Johansson.

  Which was at least a bit more true, he thought.

  “How do you know my brother, by the way?”

  . . .

  They had evidently met at a Rotary meeting where the police had been discussed, and only a week later the invitation had come in the mail.

  Still, you must have said something else, thought Johansson.

  “And because my ex-husband and I had finally decided to go our separate ways, then … well, here I am anyway,” she said, smiling in a manner that could hardly be misunderstood.

  He ate and drank, quite a lot even, and then he danced, and he mostly danced with his table companion, and more than once he noticed his big brother’s shrewd grin in the throng behind his back. At the stroke of twelve he gave her a kiss and got a kiss in return, but instead of replying to it he gave her the same wolfish grin that his best friend used to give women when he needed time to think.

  “I didn’t think they let women into Rotary,” said Johansson.

  “Rotary?” said his table companion, confused and more than a little drunk. “Rotary? You’re probably thinking of the Masons.”

  Then a light supper was served in the large kitchen, and even though she didn’t have a fan her intentions were clear enough. And what the hell do I do now? thought Johansson, who suddenly was not the least bit interested. Much less here at home with his own older brother and his gingerbread-colored wife.

  “When are you coming to Stockholm next time?” asked Johansson distractingly while he removed his hand from hers, which was only half as large. He could always give the baseball cap he’d bought at the FBI to someone else, he thought.

  But it finally resolved itself, and the farewell kiss she gave him before she left in the taxi along with several other guests was sufficiently cool for him to understand that this was probably not the moment for him to change his mind.

  “Christ, Lars,” said his brother crossly when they were sitting alone in the large living room in the middle of all the rubbish that the guests had left behind, “you’re starting to lose it.”

  “I have a hard time with thin women,” said Johansson, who both knew his brother and knew that his sister-in-law had gone to bed.

  “What do you think I’ve said to the wife?” said his brother with feeling. “Thin women are an abomination. But do you think she listens? Hell, no,” he sighed gloomily.

  “Skoal,” said Johansson, and then he finally went to bed.

  On New Year’s Day after dinner he and his brother sat in front of the TV, not really watching, sipping highballs, and exchanging small talk the way you do when you know each other well and most everything has already been said. On the evening news there was a long, live-broadcast New Year’s interview with the prime minister. According to the introduction, which sounded peaceful enough, it was to have been about what had happened during the year just passed and what was going to happen during the year that had just begun, but it quickly changed to being only about the prime minister himself and his various private doings, and of course it took this turn in a way that was clearly planned from the start. The reporter pulled and tugged at the prime minister like an angry terrier with a trouser leg while the interview victim tried to protect himself with his usual arrogant eloquence; without his having seemed to grasp it, this was the very point of the whole performance.

  Those bastards probably can’t even spell “Christmas peace,” thought Johansson, who was just as fond of journalists as all real policemen, but his brother seemed greatly amused.

/>   “Poor devil,” big brother chuckled with delight. “He never learns.”

  “You’ve stopped voting for the social democrats,” said Johansson innocently.

  “Don’t be an ass, Lars,” said his big brother good-naturedly while he reached for the remote control and switched off the TV.

  “I had a salesman once,” said his big brother, “and he was, so help me God, exactly like that wretch that they always come down on so hard as soon as he shows himself on TV.”

  “I see,” said Johansson. What should I say? he thought. “So, what was he like?” asked Johansson.

  “He was probably the friendliest devil this side of the Dal River,” said Johansson’s brother, laughing a little at the memory as he poured more whiskey into his glass.

  “Friendly?”

  “Well, he could barely manage to open the hood on the damn car he was showing before he was practically on top of them. Babbling like a windmill about the family and the weather and serving them coffee and almost tying himself in knots to please them. Although they just wanted to buy a car. He was completely unbeatable, the poor bastard.”

  They don’t sound especially alike, thought Johansson. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “It must be all the Christmas food, but I don’t really understand.”

  “What is it you don’t understand, little brother?” said Johansson’s big brother indulgently.

  “They don’t sound especially alike,” said Johansson. “Your salesman and the prime minister, I mean.”

  “So help me God he was exactly like the prime minister, except the other way around,” Johansson’s brother clarified. “They were alike as two peas where it counts.”

  “I still don’t get it,” persisted Johansson.

  “And you’re supposed to be a policeman,” sighed big brother. “Neither of them could keep their distance,” he clarified. “That damn salesman I had was like a Band-Aid without you even having to ask him, and that wretch we just saw on TV with his well-oiled yap would risk making an enemy for life out of any old idiot just to have the last word, when he ought to have the sense just to keep his mouth shut and nod and go along because everyone knows that he knows better.”

  Finally, thought Johansson.

  “I understand what you mean,” he said. “Did he sell any cars?”

  “He must have sold one occasionally,” said Johansson’s brother, shrugging his shoulders. “He got fired. No one can afford that type if you’re going to make a living from it,” he added, taking a good-sized gulp from his glass. “People who aren’t like everyone else, I mean.”

  I understand exactly, thought Johansson, who had been to a course and heard the same thing, although expressed in a different way and in other words.

  Krassner, he thought. I must do something about that wretched Krassner.

  “I’m going to need to work for a few days,” said Johansson. “Do you have a free desk in the house?”

  “You can borrow my farm office,” said Johansson’s brother. “No one will disturb you.”

  If you’re going to do something anyway, it’s just as well to do it methodically, Johansson always thought, and he did so this time as well, despite the fact that he had seldom felt so ambivalent and poorly motivated. The day after New Year’s Day he carried Krassner’s papers down to the farm office, and when he could finally pack them in his suitcase again it was already Epiphany and high time to go home to Stockholm.

  There hadn’t been much vacation, either, between sessions at his borrowed desk. True, every day he’d taken a long walk, but it was Krassner and his papers that occupied his thoughts the whole time. At the family meals he became more and more monosyllabic, and when his brother suddenly had to go away on business for a few days he almost experienced it as a liberation, despite the fact that they seldom had time to meet.

  He’d been forced to drive in to Sundsvall twice to go to the library, and he’d made several calls to Stockholm; he’d spoken on the phone three times with a more and more perplexed Wiklander. But on the day before Epiphany, he was done; he’d even written a long memorandum on how he viewed the matter. What am I really up to? thought Johansson. It was of course not a matter of an ordinary crime investigation, even though he was now convinced that Krassner had been murdered and even though he felt he had a more than reasonable conception of why and how it had been done. He had learned a great deal about the prime minister, he certainly had. He knew just about as much about him as about the perpetrators and victims whose lives he used to survey when he worked investigating especially violent crimes. And a great deal, besides, which only a very few knew about.

  The problem, thought Johansson, was simply that however he twisted and turned the matter, the prime minister was neither the perpetrator nor the victim in the part that dealt with Krassner. With the exception of himself, the perpetrator, and a probable few shadowy characters whose existence he could only intuit, everyone else was ignorant not only of this but probably of the entire story. It’ll work out, thought Johansson, for he already had an idea of how he would be able to leave Krassner and his papers behind him.

  He devoted the first day to reading through Krassner’s manuscript and the remaining documentation that he’d come across—to get an overview and because he always used to do it that way. That was also the most frustrating day of all, and what irritated him above all else was the author’s way of writing. With the exception of the first chapter, each section was introduced by a text in which the author, at length, with great seriousness and unshakable confidence in his own importance, recounted his feelings and thoughts about the various facts and other circumstances that he later described. And even in the running account there were reflections and passages inserted according to the same pattern. And what a cockeyed style, thought Johansson with irritation, traditional reader that he was, and firmly convinced that a factual condition is best described with facts and only facts, the colder the better. Crap, thought Johansson acidly, pushing aside the piles of papers and deciding it was high time to call it an evening. Besides, his belly was growling seriously.

  The following day he finally went to work on the factual questions themselves. From everything that he’d read, what was true, what was false, what was questionable? Krassner’s manuscript began with a sensational story said to have played out in March of 1945 in Stockholm. It was a detailed narrative with names, places, times, and several persons involved in the action. If nothing else that bit could be checked out, thought Johansson.

  There were quite certainly several aims behind Krassner’s choice of introduction. A good way to whet the reader’s appetite for what was to follow, besides being a simple and effective presentation of two of the book’s main characters, his own uncle John C. Buchanan and a Swedish mathematics professor by the name of Johan Forselius. The actual aim, however, was quite certainly different—namely, to describe how the Swedish military intelligence service in the final phase of the war had collaborated fully with its American counterpart, and the way in which that might have been done.

  The protagonist of the story was a Polish captain by the name of Leszek Matejko. When the Germans attacked his country in September 1939, Matejko was a young lieutenant of the Polish cavalry with its fine old traditions, which was crushed under the treads of the German tank divisions in a matter of days. Matejko had escaped with no more than a fright and a bloody rag around his head, and when the Polish defeat was a fact he succeeded in making his way to England by dangerous paths to continue the fight. Once in London he became one of the first Polish officers enrolled in the “free Polish armed forces.”

  Their need of cavalrymen had been limited, but because Lieutenant Matejko was a talented young man he had quickly been made into an intelligence officer, and in that capacity he remained in London during almost the entire war. It was also here that he got his anglicized nickname, Les. In the fall of 1944, when the Russians had driven the Germans a good way back into his old homeland, Captain Les Matejko was moved to th
e British embassy in Stockholm as a liaison officer, you “hardly needed to be a military person to understand why,” wrote Krassner. Of course, thought Johansson, nodding, for even he understood that, even though he always considered himself highly civilian in outlook. What he didn’t understand, on the other hand, was why Krassner hadn’t continued to write the way he’d started. This could have been really good, thought Johansson, sighing disappointedly.

  . . .

  At about the same point in time the American major John C. Buchanan showed up at the American embassy in Stockholm where he, almost immediately and apparently quite without embarrassment, seems to have initiated cooperation with his “colleagues” in the Swedish military intelligence service. One of the Swedes he met, with whom he even started to socialize privately, was the professor of mathematics Johan Forselius. According to his nephew the author, and not described particularly respectfully, the friendship was primarily due to the fact that they had another great interest in common besides intelligence activity, namely alcohol. A commodity to which Buchanan, accredited to the American embassy and in contrast with his dried-out Swedish comrade-in-arms, had free and unlimited access.

  One more lush, thought Johansson, and before he could read on, for some reason he saw the glass pyramid in Buchanan’s coal cellar again.

  Forselius was an interesting person, thought Johansson, making a note on his pad.

  Born in 1907, a mathematician and clearly not a bad one: He defended his dissertation at the age of twenty-seven and was named professor at Uppsala University at only thirty-three, approximately the same time as the Germans occupied Denmark and Norway. That was also the point when he had to leave the academic world. Forselius was called up as a regular, noncommissioned officer assigned to the intelligence department at army headquarters as an analyst and code breaker. When he was discharged at the end of the war, in 1945, he was still just a sergeant. At the same time he was a legend among code breakers the world over.