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

by Leif G. W. Persson

  And I’m on my way to the Nobel dinner, thought Bäckström.

  “What have you come up with, then?” said Bäckström smoothly. This will be fun, he thought.

  “That the crime scene obviously leaves a great deal to be desired,” said the Chimney Sweep haughtily.

  And what were you intending to do about it? thought Bäckström.

  “So unfortunately there’s not really much we can do,” sighed Wiijnbladh, shaking his head in distress.

  Sure, and it’s damn cold too, thought Bäckström. And who doesn’t want to come in out of the cold?

  Then they got into a taxi and drove away, but because he was a real policeman he hitched a ride with a patrol car that happened to be passing by.

  “Good that you came, Bäckström,” said the boss as soon as he stepped inside the door. “We have a tipster who’s contacted us, but she refuses to talk with anyone other than you.” The boss handed over a telephone message slip.

  “It’ll work out,” said Bäckström, heaving a large manly sigh. Seems to be a reasonable woman, thought Bäckström. Certainly someone he’d screwed, even if he didn’t remember the name.

  “How was it down at the crime scene, by the way?” asked the boss.

  “Heavy,” said Bäckström. “This can get heavy. Really heavy.”

  Then he got coffee, closed the door behind him, and called up the female tipster with the good judgment.

  “Am I speaking with Chief Inspector Bäckström?” she hissed excitedly.

  “Yes, it’s me,” said Bäckström with manly confidence. Just a matter of time, he thought.

  “We met on Christmas Eve,” she whispered. “I was the one who was raped by my old boyfriend.”

  This is God help me not true, thought Bäckström, moaning to himself. That fucking Lapp owl who ratted out her poor guy. The one who had that priceless dartboard with the victim on it, thought Bäckström. Too damn bad he hadn’t taken it with him after all. Now it would be worth a lot.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” said Bäckström curtly, “but I’m sitting here with—”

  “Good Lord,” she whispered. “He’s the one who’s murdered him. I don’t know what to do.”

  What the hell is she saying? thought Bäckström.

  “Murdered who?” asked Bäckström.

  “The prime minister,” she whispered.

  She is, God help me, off her rocker, thought Bäckström, but then he suddenly thought about the dartboard, so he didn’t say that.

  “Why do you think that?” he asked.

  “Good Lord,” she said dejectedly. “He’s been planning to do it as long as I’ve known him.”

  “Do you know if he has access to weapons?” Bäckström asked carefully.

  “Weapons, he has lots of weapons,” she whispered.

  This might be worth checking out, thought Bäckström, and since the after-hours unit mostly resembled the locked ward at a psychiatric hospital, he borrowed a service vehicle and drove to her place.

  She lived in a messy little apartment on the south end, but he’d figured that out from the start. On the other hand, what she had to say didn’t sound so stupid. Her old boyfriend, the one with the dartboard, was evidently a mean devil when it came down to it, and he had evidently hated the prime minister and then some. She mostly whispered and sniffled and snuffled, but they always did that, so it was no surprise.

  “You said that he had weapons,” Bäckström reminded her.

  “Yes, he showed me one time.”

  “What were they?” asked Bäckström. “Do you remember that?”

  “It was one of those like they have in western movies. One of those cowboy pistols.”

  What do you say? thought Bäckström, feeling the excitement rising, for before he’d left the after-hours unit he’d heard that one of the eyewitnesses from the crime scene had maintained that the perpetrator had fired a revolver.

  “You mean a revolver,” said Bäckström.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “A revolver, it was one of those.”

  Doesn’t look good for the damn dart-thrower, thought Bäckström contentedly, for soon he would have a real pro breathing down his neck. Not good at all, he thought.

  It had been the worst night in Chief Inspector Koskinen’s life. And it had all started so well. Despite the fact that it was Friday after payday, the streets had been quiet all evening. Severe cold and biting wind were always the best way to maintain general order and security on streets and squares, thought Koskinen, deciding that it was high time to say hello to a dear old friend that he kept in his locker.

  Fortunately he’d had time to knock back a few good-sized stiff ones before the roof fell in. He’d just locked away his best friend and freshened himself up with some menthol lozenges when suddenly one of his operators came rushing in looking like seven years of famine.

  “There you are. The devil himself has been let loose in the pit,” said the operator, staring at him.

  “The pit” was the internal name for the Stockholm Police Department’s command center, and at first he hadn’t understood a thing, but looked around in the dressing room to see if he might discover something or someone.

  What’s this about loose? thought Koskinen.

  “They’ve shot the prime minister,” said his operator.

  “What kind of nonsense is that?” said Koskinen. “It’s one of those fucking drills, don’t you understand?” I’ll have to take it up with the union again, he thought. Must be that lunatic who’s the head of operations.

  His younger colleague just looked at him. Then he shook his head several times. Just stood there shaking his head while he looked at him.

  “No, no, no,” he said. Then he turned on his heel and went back in to the command center.

  The rest was an absolute nightmare. Like that time last summer when he’d gotten the D.T.’s and wrestled with a squid for several hours despite the fact that he was only lying there sleeping and had almost strangled himself with his own sheets. Although that time it had worked out. He’d taken leave for a few weeks and the doctor had prescribed something a little extra strong for him. This night was worse, for it would never come to an end.

  First he ran out of throat lozenges, which wasn’t the end of the world since he had a cold anyway and it made sense to keep a little distance. But then he ran out of schnapps too, despite the fact that he’d stocked up extra since it was Friday. And then every single boss in the whole fucking district started barging in in the middle of the night, and what they all had in common was their demand to be immediately informed of the situation so that they then could devote themselves to being in the way. Situation here and situation there, and the only consolation was that the majority of them seemed to have celebrated so substantially that nobody noticed that he didn’t have any throat lozenges to offer. And say what you want to about the chief constable, he thought, he was actually the only person who hadn’t disturbed him. He hadn’t made any contact whatsoever.

  “The situation is as follows,” said Koskinen for the fifty-eleventh time the same night. “The prime minister has been shot and the perpetrator has succeeded in fleeing the scene.”

  But otherwise nothing was the same and least of all did it have anything in common with that incomprehensible drill that the chief constable had arranged. And only on Saturday afternoon did he finally get to drop into his bed.

  . . .

  The Stockholm chief constable’s leaving Chief Inspector Koskinen in peace was not due to the fact that he wasn’t interested in what had happened. He’d taken leave over the weekend and driven up to Dalarna with his mistress in order to ski in Vasaloppet, and considering the delicate nature of this he had carefully avoided informing anyone of his whereabouts.

  He had quite simply no idea that the prime minister had been shot in his own backyard. It was the porter at the hotel who told him when he came down to breakfast in the morning. The chief constable had obviously packed himself, his ski equipment, and
his mistress into his car and immediately set a course toward Stockholm.

  He could always ski in Vasaloppet next year, but the assassination of a prime minister was a more unusual event, so it was crucial to seize the opportunity that the occasion offered. What a unique opportunity, he thought as he sat behind the steering wheel, to be able to test the new intellectual methods of investigation that he’d developed for the first time on a real case. This is almost too good to be true, he thought, and while he drove, his mistress took notes on his various thoughts, ideas, and plans. Quite in order, for she was of course a police officer too, of a rather simpler type, it was true, but nonetheless a police officer.

  Even before they passed Sala on the way home she had written down thirty-five different tracks divided into the three main categories of main track, alternative main track, and secondary tracks. He’d decided to wait with the so-called dead-end track that his best friend had so meritoriously suggested to him. For one thing he still hadn’t got his promised memorandum on the matter, and also, naturally enough, he didn’t know how large a part of his investigation force he would need to keep occupied with other things while waiting until he needed them.

  “May I ask something?” said his mistress.

  “Of course, dear,” he said. She really sounds surly, he thought.

  “It’s the main track. How do you know that?”

  “Know what?” the chief constable countered patiently.

  “That it’s the Kurds who shot him,” she said. “How do you know that?”

  “Because it’s statistically the most probable,” said the chief constable.

  “They’ve never shot a Swedish prime minister, have they?” she said sourly. “They usually just shoot each other, don’t they?”

  “Yes, my dear, but it’s really not so strange,” said the chief constable, and he really exerted himself to be as amiable and pedagogical as possible. “That’s something no one has done, of course. Neither Jew nor Greek nor … well, ordinary Swede then, if I may say so, has ever shot a Swedish prime minister. So you can’t very well cite that against them. Or can you, dear?”

  Wonder why he didn’t shoot his dear wife too? thought Waltin as he strode in through the door to the apartment at Gärdet to clean up after his spiritual brother and highly esteemed coworker. Perhaps he’s starting to get soft, he thought, but because that thought was so ridiculous he immediately dismissed it and instead went to work on the practicalities.

  First he packed up the clothes and shoes in a suitcase; he would see to it that they were thoroughly cleaned before he hid them in some secure place. He obviously hadn’t even considered throwing them out. These were objects of great historic value, almost unique, and his mouth was watering when he thought about how much they might bring in the not too distant future at an auction at Sotheby’s. Or Christie’s, for that matter.

  He tossed the food and all the other garbage into the wastebasket and what remained now was only the weapon itself. When he woke up he’d already gotten an idea that was so brilliant that he’d been thoroughly excited the whole morning and had been compelled to seek relief twice before he could go to work on the practical tasks.

  First he emptied the chamber of the two empty cartridges and the four bullets that Hedberg hadn’t needed, put them in a stamp envelope, and placed them in the suitcase with the shoes and clothes. He wiped off the revolver carefully before he put that in his pocket, and then he took the suitcase with him, locked up, and left the place. So only the revolver was left, thought Waltin as he sat in his car, and the thought of what he was going to do with it made his whole body tingle.

  First the now-deceased prime minister’s special adviser had thought about writing a formal resignation letter or at least requesting a leave of absence, but from the atmosphere in the corridor where he was sitting, and without anyone having said anything—for suddenly it was as if he no longer existed—he’d understood that this would be completely superfluous. So he’d been content to just go home. On the way out he’d stopped and written a few brief lines in the condolence book set out in the lobby. True, it was a quote, not something that he’d written himself, but for various reasons it nonetheless felt more suitable than anything else, and he remembered it word for word despite the fact that it had been a good month since he’d read it.

  Death is black like a raven’s wing,

  Sorrow is cold like a midwinter night

  Just as long and no way out

  Then he drove home to the house in Djursholm, and after he thought a while he finally made a decision. First he wrote a message in Russian, the language that he’d learned in secret in his youth and that therefore he could never keep alive and that now—despite his extraordinary memory—caused him greater problems than he could have imagined. In itself that meant nothing, he thought. The message was clear enough and the fact that the language limped precariously only increased the degree of difficulty.

  Then he coded it with the prime number that he’d thought about giving to Forselius on his eightieth birthday; he’d actually cheated a little with the help of the military’s computer, but because that wasn’t relevant any longer he might just as well use it like that. When he was finished he hesitated a long time about whether he should sign his name to it, the name they’d given him when he was only a little more than eighteen years old, in order to flatter him but certainly also in order to show that they even knew about such things as what his two-years-older classmates had called him in order to tease him when he started in the first grade in elementary school.

  Finally he made up his mind and signed his name to it. Because they didn’t have access to the key, breaking the code of the message would require decades of their combined computer power. So that was really quite uninteresting, but he could always treat them to a few headaches, if they ever did.

  They’re welcome to that, he thought, and when he read through the line of numerals that he’d written down he experienced a feeling of deep satisfaction that what he’d read only had meaning for himself and perhaps a few isolated others like him. You’re welcome to that, he thought as he coded his name under the message. He could send it later, as soon as there was a suitable moment.

  To the Bear and Michael … DLJA MEDJEV I MICHAIL … The best informant … TOT KTO SAMOI LUTSHI INFARMATOR … is the one who hasn’t understood the significance of what he’s told … TOT KTO SAM NE PONJAL STO ON RASSKASOVAL …

  then his name, the name they’d given him more than twenty years before … The Professor … PRAFESSOR. For how else could he pay them back?

  Then he burned Krassner’s papers in the fireplace, and when after a while he went to bed he fell asleep for once without thinking about anything in particular.

  At about the same time as the special adviser was going out through the entryway to Rosenbad, Waltin had slunk in through the door to the tech squad. Complete chaos prevailed, which suited him just fine, because he’d been able to put back the revolver that he’d borrowed from them more than six months before. He’d simply placed it on a bench and left the place without even needing to ask about that miserable little shit Wiijnbladh whom he’d had in reserve in case one of his dense colleagues had had the nerve to ask what a police superintendent with the secret police was doing there on a day like this.

  But no one had heard, seen, or said anything, and he had simply left the place. And the feeling when he came out on the street again had been almost as fantastic as that time when he sneaked up behind dear Mother, who was standing there staggering with her pathetic canes just when he saw the train come thundering in alongside the platform. How he had passed behind her back, hardly even needing to brush against her, and continued in the direction toward the train and the escalators up to the street. How he’d heard the drawn-out metallic screeching from the braking train, the quick muffled thuds … and the seconds of silence before some hysterical female subway rider had started shrieking like a lunatic.

  Johansson got the announcement of death
on the radio as he prepared breakfast, and he’d been compelled to sit down and look at the clock. Up until five o’clock yesterday afternoon he’d been bureau head at the National Police Board. And when he stepped out through the door on Polhemsgatan it was on a leave of absence for the time being. When he’d come home he’d had dinner and devoted the evening to pondering how he should arrange his new life. Then he’d gone to bed early. Fell asleep immediately, slept securely and undisturbed the whole night, and when he woke it was with a smile on his lips. Now it was eight o’clock in the morning, no one had phoned him or pounded on his door in the middle of the night, because he’d pulled out the phone jack, and he suddenly understood that now he was someone completely different than he’d been yesterday.

  Jarnebring phoned in the evening. He’d been away on vacation along with his fiancée and avoided the crash itself, but now he was called home and in service along with all the old comrades at the bureau. Plus quite a few new ones that he didn’t much care for.

  “How’s it going?” Johansson asked automatically.

  “It’s going to hell,” said Jarnebring with both conviction and feeling. “Do you know what they’ve got us doing?”

  “No,” said Johansson. How would I know that? he thought.

  “We’re going through old parking violations and suicides and hotel bookings since last summer,” said Jarnebring. “Fucking academics. If you killed yourself last summer you can’t God help me have shot the prime minister, can you?”

  “They don’t seem to know what to do,” said Johansson. For that matter, how could they? he thought. Then they concluded their conversation and each returned to his own business. Johansson sorted his dirty laundry and threw out old papers. Then he went to bed and fell asleep more or less as usual.

  When the chief constable strode into his office they came rushing like a flock of sheep, all bleating at the same time. But he only needed to stop and raise his hand with a commanding movement to silence them.