Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

by Leif Gw Persson

  “Fine with me,” he said. “Although you’re worrying yourself unnecessarily.”

  First Waltin had described the work they’d done. It had actually gone completely according to plan, if you could believe him. The operative had made his way in, done what he was supposed to, and made his way out, observed by no one, and that was just what the whole thing was about. True, Göransson and Martinsson had messed up and lost track of Krassner, but luck had still been on their side. It was a fact that Krassner had taken his own life, and he’d done it under his own steam. Whether he’d been high and only wanted to try his new wings or had suffered a sudden insight into his lost life was beyond Waltin’s judgment. Regardless of which, the question was not their concern. Krassner was not a security matter anymore and had actually never been one. That was Waltin’s firm view.

  “If we’re going to blame ourselves for anything, maybe it’s that, I guess. That we didn’t really see how crazy he was,” said Waltin, shrugging his shoulders. “The guy seems to have been completely confused. I suggest you look at his posthumous papers.” Waltin slid the bundle, including photographs, to Berg.

  You can be quite sure that I will, thought Berg.

  “Where are Göransson and Martinsson?” he asked.

  “On an educational trip,” said Waltin, smiling wryly. “I thought it was safest to take them out of action.”

  “How much do they know?” asked Berg.

  “They don’t know about Krassner’s suicide,” answered Waltin. “They’ll no doubt find out about it sooner or later. They don’t even know that they managed to lose him. And of course they have no idea that I know what they’d been doing instead of being on the job.”

  Berg contented himself with nodding.

  “Eriksson?” he asked.

  “Keeping an eye on the situation. I’d thought about bringing her in as soon as Stockholm has written up Krassner. I’ve told her to keep herself out of the loop.” You don’t need to worry about her, thought Waltin.

  Berg nodded again.

  Waltin and I, he thought. That’s two. Plus Göransson, Martinsson, and Eriksson, that makes five. And Waltin’s operative, whoever that might be, which incidentally was yet another question that could wait at least until he himself had found out the answer, which made six people altogether. And Forselius, he thought, and suddenly that was far too many. What is it those motorcycle hoods always say? he thought. That three can keep a secret if two are dead?

  As soon as Waltin had left, Berg had gone out to his secretary and asked her to phone for a taxi. He’d already dismissed the thought of sitting there at work. Better to go home to his wife and the house in Bromma and think over the situation in peace and quiet. Perhaps try to sleep on the matter and in the best case dream positive dreams that Waltin was maybe right despite the carelessness that doubtless was the main ingredient of his boyish charm.

  “Have we had any calls?” asked Berg, making an effort to smile at her cheerfully. A rock, he thought. A true rock.

  “The prime minister’s special adviser wants you to contact him as soon as possible,” she said.

  Eight, thought Berg gloomily.

  [TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26]

  Brooding all night, little sleep; but when he came to work early in the morning he had nonetheless gotten a few days’ respite. The special adviser had called—he’d thought they should meet but then other things had come up and he was sitting in political discussions that most likely would be long drawn out. So he’d spoken with the minister of justice, who by the way would be making contact with Berg directly during the day, and they had agreed to postpone the weekly meeting until Friday. A bad day in and of itself, but it would be just fine if he and Berg could meet a few hours before the meeting.

  “An old friend called me over the weekend and told me,” said the special adviser.

  Might his name possibly be Forselius? thought Berg, and I’ll be darned how communicative you’ve suddenly become.

  “That’ll be just fine,” said Berg. “I can meet Friday morning at nine o’clock.”

  “Great,” stated the special adviser. “And should anything happen you can reach me down at Harpsund.”

  Berg promised to contact him at once if such were the case. Them up there and us down here, he thought as he put down the receiver.

  Berg devoted the entire day to Krassner. True, at first he’d thought about whether he should turn the whole thing over to one of his more reliable coworkers, but after careful consideration—there was something in this story that didn’t feel quite right—he’d decided to do it himself. At least to start with, and until he could be completely certain that it wasn’t heading off in the wrong direction.

  He started by looking at the pictures from the secret search of Krassner’s student apartment. In total there were just under a hundred pictures, enlarged and of excellent quality. A dozen of them showed various parts of the interior from various angles. Untidy and littered with a vengeance, much like the addicts’ pads he’d seen during his time as a young uniformed policeman out in the field, and the messy desk was scarcely evidence of uninterrupted work under harmonious conditions.

  The remaining pictures depicted only papers, white typewriter paper with varying amounts of text, sometimes typewritten, some longhand. Several papers crumpled up, smoothed out to be photographed and, he hoped, crumpled up again and returned to their original position. And it was now that Berg started having problems. Krassner’s handwriting—for you had to assume that he was the one who’d held the pen—was hard to decipher, and what was actually written there was cryptic, often abbreviated, and obviously in English throughout. Same thing with the typewritten pages: short sections and lines of text without a single context, more like drafts and directions for an outline than parts of a narrative. This is no manuscript, thought Berg—with one exception, which was possibly a basis for something that was probably meant to become a book.

  The exception looked suspiciously like the title page to a book, and without being particularly familiar with the matter Berg assumed that it was a not entirely unusual expression of the agonies of authorship. “The Spy Who Went East, by John P. Krassner,” Berg read, whereupon he made a neat little pencil mark in the upper right-hand corner of his copy. Easier to see when you leaf through it, thought Berg, who had an idea that he should first try to arrange his material in some sort of logical narrative sequence. What the whole thing was really about would be a question for later.

  In total eighty-five pages with varying amounts of text, Berg thought after a second count, using a moistened index finger. Sixty-one of them, folded, wrinkled, crumpled up, seemed to emanate from the pile on his desk and the floor around it, while the remaining twenty-four, judging by one of the interior pictures, had been more or less organized on Krassner’s otherwise not especially well-organized desk.

  Berg first sorted the papers into two piles—wrinkled versus more or less orderly—in order to try to ascertain whether the written material in each pile possibly indicated some separate context or intellectual development, but it hadn’t made him any wiser. After more than an hour of reading, his only conclusion was that clearly this dealt in part with things that the author was already done with or had rejected and thrown away, and in part with things that he hadn’t gotten around to throwing out, but that the distinction was simply not clear from the written text. The fellow actually seems to be extremely confused, thought Berg, and for some reason he also happened to think about Waltin. Well-tailored, smiling, and in his eloquent way convinced that Krassner was a completely uninteresting nutcase who was only wasting their time.

  More than once during the afternoon he pondered his poor English. In an absolute sense, and definitely in a relative sense as well, it was true that he spoke better English than the majority of his colleagues at a corresponding hierarchical level within the police operation. Not compared to Waltin, of course, for he had a quite different background, but by comparison with real police officers. In a normal, s
ocial context he managed well enough, but here he felt hopelessly handicapped. English was not his language, period, and more than once he’d been surprised by the fact that certain of his fellow workers had the temerity to maintain that they spoke fluent English. And they obviously believed it, despite the fact that their English was even worse than his.

  Even before he’d started his go-through, his secretary had supplied him with a thick English-Swedish technical dictionary that he’d used before in similar connections. After lunch she’d been able to fetch a few more books that dealt with American technical expressions and common abbreviations, American colloquialisms and American slang, and after several more hours of fruitless linguistic efforts he finally gave up. He underlined those words, expressions, and passages that he didn’t understand, had his secretary copy them, and called in one of his linguists from the analysis section.

  Reminds me a little of Marja when she was younger, thought Berg, who often thought about his wife, and he smiled at his hastily summoned assistant.

  “You couldn’t help me with a little translation, could you?” said Berg, handing over the list of hard-to-decipher words and expressions. “From English to Swedish,” he added, and for some reason he almost sounded apologetic as he said it.

  The female linguist quickly looked through the copy he’d given her, nodded, and smiled.

  “I think I can manage this,” she said. “When do you want it?”

  “As quickly as possible,” said Berg, and an hour later she was back in his office.

  “Well,” said Berg, smiling. “How did it go?”

  “I think I’ve managed most of it. In a few cases I’ve provided alternative interpretations. The most likely ones are on top.” She handed over a few neatly typewritten pages in a red plastic folder.

  “Tell me,” said Berg. “Who wrote this? What kind of person?” he clarified.

  “Goodness,” she said, smiling. “Linguistic psychology is not really my strong suit.”

  “Try,” insisted Berg.

  “American,” she said, “definitely American. Neither young nor old, somewhere between thirty and forty, I’d say. Academic, seems to have written a bit, might even be a journalist, and in that case I think I can guess who his idol is.”

  “I see,” said Berg. “Who?”

  “Hunter Thompson,” said the translator. “You can see the Gonzo journalism in his way of writing, even if I would say it’s the wrong context in which to use it.”

  “Gonzo journalism?”

  “How to explain,” she said, smiling. “Let’s put it like this. If you’re going to describe an event or a person, what’s important journalistically is not the event or person itself but rather the journalist’s feelings and thoughts in the presence of the event or person. What’s interesting is what goes on in the head of the journalist, if I may say so.”

  This sounds extraordinarily practical, thought Berg.

  “That sounds awfully practical. Must save an awful lot of time.”

  “Certainly,” said his coworker, giggling. “Although if it’s a good head then it can be both interesting and entertaining. Like Hunter Thompson, for example, when he’s at his best. When he’s bad he’s just incomprehensible.”

  “Sounds a little doubtful if it’s the truth you’re after,” Berg objected.

  “The best Swedish example is probably Göran Skytte. Of a Gonzo journalist, I mean.”

  Skytte, thought Berg. Wasn’t he that tall, unpleasant, self-centered, boring Scandian who ran around with that dreadful Guillou?

  “So Skytte is a Swedish Hunter Thompson?”

  “Well,” his coworker objected, “I have a boyfriend who plays hockey in Division Four, but I guess he’s not exactly a Gretzky. Although he would no doubt really like to be.”

  “This here, then,” said Berg, pointing at the papers in the red plastic folder.

  “With the qualification that my basis for comparison is perhaps a bit thin, then I think I would still maintain that Skytte is better.”

  “Skytte is better,” said Berg. Than Krassner, he thought.

  “Definitely,” said the translator. “If we’re talking Gonzo journalism, then Thompson plays in the National Hockey League, Skytte is in Swedish Division Four, while this guy here still has major problems with ice-skating.”

  “Despite the Gonzo journalism?” said Berg. And its practical relationship to the truth, he thought.

  “Perhaps more accurately, just because of that. May I ask a question?” She looked at Berg with a certain apparent hesitation.

  “Yes,” said Berg. “Although I can’t promise that you’ll get an answer.”

  “These things that you wanted me to translate. This much I understand, of course, that it’s the basis or draft or texts for some kind of book.”

  “Yes,” said Berg. “That’s right.”

  “What I’m wondering,” she continued, “is if it’s a nonfiction book. A factual description?”

  “Yes,” said Berg. “At least that’s certainly the author’s intention.” And an exceedingly annoying one, he thought.

  “And the remaining material looks the same?”

  “Yes,” said Berg. “More or less.” In all essentials, fortunately, he thought.

  “In that case I think the author is going to have major credibility problems,” said the translator. “And besides, I don’t think he writes very well.”

  Gonzo journalism, thought Berg as she closed the door behind her. And for the first time during this dreadful day he felt really enlivened.

  When Berg could finally call it a day and go home, it was almost ten o’clock. With the answer sheet in hand, it also seemed he could have used his time on other, much more essential work, but considering the results he could still be content. He had summarized his observations and conclusions in a special memorandum a few pages long, just enough to be the basis for the oral presentation he was thinking of making on Friday morning when he met the prime minister’s special adviser. And yet, because the content of Krassner’s posthumous reflections was what it was, he was actually looking forward to this. Quite apart from the objectivity in what was clearly, despite everything, intended to be a factual description.

  “The Spy Who Went East,” thought Berg. Who Krassner’s spy was he had already figured out before he started reading, for he himself had heard it ad nauseam during his years in the big building on Polhemsgatan. During those years when the present government had been in opposition there had even been powerful forces within the closed operation working to open a preliminary investigation into the matter. Something that Berg had fortunately been able to avert with kind assistance from the then chief of national police. Although he was still not really clear about the title of Krassner’s intended book. The spy who went over to the east, thought Berg. From where, then? he thought. From the north, from the south, from the West? In all likelihood from the West, despite the fact that Krassner hadn’t given any direction whatsoever on that point in his papers, and although he’d had an uncle who worked for a number of years within the American intelligence service. Hopefully blessedly departed in accordance with the rules that applied to the cause that he served, thought Berg and decided that he’d probably been unnecessarily worried after all. The fellow actually didn’t seem to have been all there, he thought as he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

  “Excuse me, chief,” said his chauffeur with a careful throat clearing. “But we’re home now.”

  “I must have dozed off, so I guess I’m the one who should beg your pardon,” said Berg.

  [WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27]

  Finally a night of uninterrupted rest, and by breakfast time Berg had already decided that he’d been unnecessarily concerned, that he had more important things to do, and that the explanation of the immediate circumstances surrounding Krassner’s suicide could well be turned over to a reliable coworker. Persson, thought Berg, and just then the sun peeked in through the kitchen window.

  “Good m
orning, good morning,” said Berg, in an excellent mood, to his secretary as soon as he strode through the door to his office. “Can you ask Persson to come in to see me?”

  Berg had known Persson for more than thirty years. They’d been in the same class at the police academy and a few years later they’d shared the front seat of one of the Stockholm Police Department’s radio cars during a not particularly eventful summer while their older, regular colleagues enjoyed their vacations in the country with their families and other colleagues and their families. Then Berg had started his climb toward the top of the police pyramid while Persson had played it safe and chosen to remain down below. Twenty years later, and in Persson’s case twice as many pounds around the middle, they ran into each other by chance in town. Persson was working as an investigator on the burglary squad, and true, there were better jobs, no doubt, but because life was as it was … A week later he’d started with Berg, and it was a decision that neither of them had had reason to regret.

  . . .

  “I’m listening,” said Persson, sitting down in the visitor’s chair in front of Berg’s large desk without asking for permission first, because he and Berg were old constables who’d worked like dogs together and such nonsense didn’t apply to him.

  “This concerns a few discreet inquiries about an apparent suicide that occurred on Friday evening,” Berg explained.

  “Hmm,” said Persson, nodding.

  Five minutes later Berg had familiarized his former classmate with all the details and was essentially ready to go ahead with more essential matters than this lunatic Krassner.

  “Is there anything you’re wondering about?” asked Berg amiably.

  “No,” said Persson. Shook his head, got up, and left.

  A real old-time constable, thought Berg affectionately when he saw Persson’s fat rear end disappearing through the door. Just as meticulous, taciturn, merciless, and kind as his father, the rural constable, had been during his time in the corps.