Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

by Leif Gw Persson

  He wants to talk about Krassner, thought Johansson, but because he himself didn’t intend to open that discussion, he sat in the backseat and read through his conference material. It was only when they’d started heading east at Järna, and there wasn’t much time left to play with, that Wiklander spoke up.

  “There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” said Wiklander. “If you have time to listen, chief?”

  “Of course,” said Johansson, making the effort to sound as though he really did.

  “It struck me when we left each other yesterday. I don’t know if I’m on the wrong track, but your questions got me thinking. I suddenly got the idea that maybe the colleagues at SePo took the opportunity to do a little house search in that guy M’Boye’s room and that was why our colleague Eriksson had carted him away to the restaurant.”

  “The same thought struck me,” said Johansson. “That was why I asked you.” Only a half lie, he thought.

  “And while they’re doing that, that wretch takes the opportunity to jump out his window,” said Wiklander, his voice actually sounding rather gloomy.

  “I’ve thought about that too,” said Johansson, trying to slip in a little extra authority in the service of the lie and of credibility. “They did their thing and Krassner did his and then they left without having any idea that Krassner had already jumped or was just about to jump out his window.”

  “Can it really be that bad?” said Wiklander doubtfully. “I mean, they must have had people outside keeping an eye on the situation, don’t you think?”

  “They must have been standing outside the entrance at the back in that case, while Krassner jumped out on the front side,” said Johansson, who had decided to preserve Wiklander’s misunderstanding.

  “Yes. Well,” said Wiklander, but he didn’t sound especially convinced. “It doesn’t appear to have been very professional.”

  “I think we’re in complete agreement about that,” said Johansson without needing to sound uncertain, “but personally I think they probably never did a house search.”

  “You mean …” said Wiklander.

  “That Eriksson and M’Boye went out and ate and that was all,” said Johansson.

  “Hmm,” said Wiklander, nodding. “That’s sort of what I’ve been thinking. That it’s a coincidence, plain and simple.”

  “And I also think that was why they wanted to check out the investigation of Krassner’s cause of death,” said Johansson. “To be sure that M’Boye didn’t have something to do with Krassner in some mysterious way.”

  “Well,” said Wiklander, sounding considerably happier. “There’s probably no doubt he took his own life. There’s simply no other possibility.”

  “No,” said Johansson. It’s nice to hear that you’ve arrived at that insight, he thought.

  Johansson was the only police officer at the conference, and when he’d read through the list of participants a few days earlier he’d thought that by God this wasn’t cat shit they’d scraped together—with certain reservations about himself. The list contained two chief executives, a supreme court justice, six managing and deputy managing directors from industry, two editors in chief, plus a police superintendent who, to be on the safe side, had been propped up with the addition of “and head of the Swedish Bureau of Criminal Investigation.” All in suits and ties, of course, because it was only the Scots who made war in skirts.

  It had been a very civil affair. True, it had started with a war game where first the participants drew lots and swapped occupations, not in order to go to the front lines but rather to see to it that communications, the food supply, and the medical and legal systems were functioning. In other respects as well the conference had primarily dealt with just that: how you got roads and telephones, electricity and water, to function, how you saw to it that people didn’t starve to death and that they had clothes on their backs. And how you got them to behave like “people” even if the worst were to occur.

  The final morning had been devoted to a seminar drill under the leadership of a “special adviser to the prime minister,” the latter’s own éminence grise, who also bore the highest responsibility for security questions affecting the government and the central administration. Considering that, he’d been unusually specific when he handed out his assignment. He wanted the course participants to write down the names of the three living Swedes who ran the greatest risk, ranked by likelihood of personal attack. Not just anybody, obviously, but those who were in high positions in politics, industry, or the bureaucracy. Or were celebrities for other reasons such as, for example, the queen, Astrid Lindgren, or Björn Borg.

  In total the delegates had written down twenty-some names, and the country’s prime minister had landed overwhelmingly in first place, having received twice as many risk points as the remaining names combined. All of the delegates had placed him topmost, and one managing director of a large fashion company, himself far from unknown, had written the prime minister’s name three times to be on the safe side. Despite their seminar leader’s title.

  “So the result appears to be quite unambiguous,” said the special adviser as he began the concluding discussion. “It would be interesting to hear your reasons,” he continued while he observed the delegates behind half-closed eyelids and with a sardonic smile.

  Peculiar type, thought Johansson. If he hadn’t been so fat you could easily take him for a viper lying in the hot sun, only pretending to be asleep.

  “Politicians of course often become a bit controversial,” one editor in chief began tactfully, because someone had to begin.

  “Good God,” moaned one of the executives, who, judging by his complexion, ought to do something about his blood pressure. “If people like you read what you yourselves were writing, you must surely understand that he doesn’t seem the least bit controversial. You just have to read back what you’re writing.”

  “What do you mean?” said the editor in chief with a faint smile.

  “I think it’s touching that you all appear to agree that the fellow is a real son of a bitch. I myself have no idea, for I’ve never met him,” he added, glaring acidly at the editor in chief.

  “Which I have,” clarified the editor in chief, looking for some reason rather superior.

  “So he is a real son of a bitch, then,” said the executive, and the ensuing laughter drowned out the weak protests of his opponent.

  Then things had broken loose in earnest: “arrogant,” “upper-class type,” “rotten,” “malicious,” “holds a grudge,” and “very un-Swedish.” In addition he was “much too intelligent,” “much too educated,” “much too verbal,” “much too talented,” and all in all “much too unreliable.”

  “And let’s not forget that he’s obviously spying for the Russians too. How he manages that between all his tax evasions,” said the executive with the blood pressure, looking sternly at the second editor in chief for some reason.

  The only one who hadn’t said anything was Johansson. He hadn’t even changed his expression but was content to surreptitiously observe their seminar leader, whose body language, apart from the wry smile and the lowered eyelids, was not completely unlike his own. But now he had the chance.

  “I think that’s all nonsense,” said Johansson suddenly, and because he was who he was and looked the way he did, the room suddenly went completely quiet.

  “What do you mean?” said the special adviser, with a faint twitch of the eyebrow.

  Good, thought Johansson. Here’s a nibble, and it’s the big fish who’s circling the hook.

  “Well,” said Johansson leisurely and with a lot of Norrland in his voice. “Quite apart from all the logical and rational reasons that argue against that … and you know that sort of thing better than someone like me,” he added good-naturedly, nodding toward the rest of the assembly.

  “Speak up, man,” hooted one of the younger executives who’d been on a survival course abroad. “If you’ve said A then you have to say B.”

  “
Purely from a police perspective, then,” said Johansson hesitantly in order to secure the bait thoroughly around the sinker and the line. “Purely from a police perspective, then … he’s simply the wrong type, as we say. The type who would never spy for the Russians. Not him, no.” Johansson shook his head heavily and everyone who saw him understood that the very thought was impossible.

  “It is quite nice to hear that opinion from such an esteemed representative of the police,” said their chairman. “It’s not always what I’ve heard being whispered among his colleagues.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Johansson.

  “That the prime minister would not be a spy,” said the special adviser with clear emphasis.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Johansson with well-acted astonishment while he carefully traced the line between his thumb and index finger.

  “I thought you said he was completely the wrong type?” Now the prime minister’s special adviser had hoisted up his eyelids at least halfway.

  “No, there I think you’ve got me wrong,” said Johansson like a peasant, shaking his head. “As a spy he’s probably a rather good type, at least when he was younger. Today no doubt he has too much to do, and then he’s probably pretty much under observation too. If it’s the case that he has spied for someone, then I believe that it was long before he became prime minister. And he would never dream of doing it for the Russians.”

  “That is very nice to hear. You don’t have any tips on who it might have been in any case?” asked the special adviser.

  “Quite certainly for the Americans,” said Johansson. “For the CIA, if I were to speculate.”

  And there you bit, thought Johansson when he saw the shift in the special adviser’s look.

  “I’ve understood that within the police your political preferences differ from mine and my boss’s,” said the special adviser, sounding a little bit too offended for someone like him.

  “Well,” said Johansson and nodded. “That’s no doubt correct. Although I personally think that he appears both educated and … well, intelligent.”

  “But a spy? For the CIA?” said the special adviser, and got a few giggles as reward.

  “It’s so easy to get into things,” said Johansson, letting him savor his heaviest police look. “And the kind of intelligence I’m thinking of here doesn’t have anything to do with it. On the contrary. What attracts a person the most is the sort of thing you’re already suited for; otherwise it would be no big deal to abstain. It’s easy to get into things, but it can be considerably trickier to get out.” Johansson nodded again, mostly to himself as it appeared, and in the room where he was sitting it was dead silent.

  “I don’t believe we’ll go any further than this,” said the special adviser with a light hand movement and a suave expression. “Besides, I understand from the agreeable aromas wafting their way in from the kitchen that it’s almost time for lunch. I think it’s high time to adjourn. Gentlemen … personally I think that this has been both extraordinarily pleasant, interesting, and even exciting, and if I now may …”

  What if I were to ask him to extend greetings from Fionn? thought Johansson as he gathered up his notes. Although that’s probably not necessary, for now he could read him like an open book. Despite his heavy, unmoving face, his reclining posture, the half-closed eyelids, despite all of his body language, his phlegmatic self-assuredness and well-formulated speech, Johansson could see that he appeared truly terrified. Wonder how much he knows? he thought.

  [THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19]

  When Johansson came to work on Thursday morning, it was as if the pre-Christmas calm had been blown away and a state of total war prevailed between his own narcotics squad and its counterpart at the provincial police department in Dalarna. They’d been working together on a large case for several weeks. The head honchos were in Borlänge and Falun, and it was there that it had started, but the case had quickly expanded and appeared to have offshoots both in the rest of the country and abroad. Finally the chief constable in Dalarna had slammed his fist on the table and put his foot down. No more travel or surveillance outside their own turf, and it was high time to bring in a partner if he wasn’t going to get the auditors around his neck.

  After an agitated meeting, in which the head of the province’s narcotics squad had called his chief, the chief constable, “a fucking accountant,” the commander had nonetheless had the last word, and for the past three weeks the case had been divided between the police authorities in Dalarna and Johansson’s own national bureau. And no one was happy.

  As far as the police in Dalarna were concerned, it was their biggest narcotics case since the gold rush years in the midseventies, and they had no intention of sharing the returns on their own efforts and exertions with some “Stockholm-area-code hotshots.” So the collaboration might have been better.

  At the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation it wasn’t the travel allowance or even the budget in general that constituted the inhibiting factor, for in that respect new angles kept popping up. There was nothing wrong with their creativity, either, and because “the peasant police out in the sticks” were always just “scratching the surface,” the joint case had grown like a mold culture until it finally landed “in the competent hands of real policemen.”

  “This could become a really big deal,” explained Johansson’s traveling companion from his visit to the United States.

  “But the colleagues in the province want to go in now?” asked Johansson.

  “Sure, so they can celebrate Christmas in peace and quiet, those lazy bastards,” said the head of the bureau’s narcotics squad with a certain heat.

  “Still, I’m thinking they must have some other reason,” said Johansson, who’d been around awhile and had heard this and that before.

  “A few of the local crooks are heading to Thailand over Christmas. Those provincials have gotten it in their heads that they intend to stay there for good, which is pure rubbish, and besides they’re not the ones who are interesting. It’s our usual guys who are behind this, the Turks and then those Polacks I was telling you about, they’ve been with us of course for several years now. Those damn Dallanders are just retailers,” snorted the head of the bureau’s narcotics squad, who was from Stockholm and didn’t know better.

  “Let Dalarna bring them in then, if they aren’t of interest to us,” said Johansson.

  For the sake of household peace—and our own crooks don’t seem to be running away from us either, he thought.

  “But it’s going to spoil our own job with the real head honchos,” objected his former traveling companion, and he didn’t sound at all the way he had the last time they’d met.

  “I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson.

  And I’ve heard it ad nauseam, he thought.

  “It’s been their case from the start,” said Johansson, “so it’s hard for me to see how we would be able to stop them.” Or why, he thought.

  “Well, you’re the one who decides, of course,” said the narcotics chief inspector sourly, standing up.

  “Yes,” said Johansson and contented himself with smiling with his mouth only. I’m the one who decides. And sometimes that’s awfully practical, he thought.

  Childishness, thought Johansson, which had taken the entire morning from other things that he’d needed to do instead. Such as slipping out and shopping for a few backup provisions as a present to Jarnebring, who would surely require extra contributions of both liquid and dry goods for dinner, despite his energetic protestations to the contrary. Besides, he himself needed more exact information as to the time and place.

  Now that had been solved, at any rate. Jarnebring had phoned after lunch and given the address of his latest girlfriend.

  “I was thinking it’s more practical that way,” said Jarnebring. “You know girls, they love to fuss. And then I’ve loaned out my pad too. To Rusht, if you remember him?”

  “Is there anything I can bring?” asked Johansson. To Rusht,
he thought with surprise. Wasn’t he that long-fingered character with the bad breath who managed the coffee fund at the bureau? Surely that was going too far, despite the fact that he was a colleague.

  “No,” said Jarnebring. “I’ve arranged everything. His old lady kicked him out,” Jarnebring clarified, “and I can’t really let the poor bastard celebrate Christmas at the local mission. Besides, I’ve hidden the silverware in my toothbrush case, so he’ll never find it.”

  “And you don’t need any aquavit?” said Johansson, who was not one to take risks and especially not right before Christmas.

  So our colleague Rusht had a girlfriend, despite the fact that he reeked like a cadaver in a well and had six fingers on each hand, he thought.

  “No,” said Jarnebring emphatically. “I’ve got lots of liquor at home. Well, at home with my girlfriend, that is, I’m not stupid that way, and he seems to have something more permanent going for the week after Christmas. Rusht, that is,” he clarified.

  “Decent of you,” said Johansson, who had always thought that Rusht was a real son of a bitch regardless of the season.

  “So you don’t need to think about aquavit,” Jarnebring concluded.

  Strange, thought Johansson as he put down the receiver. Wonder if he’s won on one of those horses he bets on?

  That Jarnebring had a new girlfriend was nothing strange. He almost always did; to be on the safe side he usually recruited them from his own ranks. Considerably younger than he, strawberry blonde, high-busted colleagues who as a rule were doing service with the uniformed police when they weren’t fussing around Jarnebring. And so far that added up this time as well, thought Johansson when she opened the door after the second ring and smiled broadly at him. More interesting was the fact that this particular example had clearly survived spring, summer, and autumn, and that this time Jarnebring seemed to have brought pillowcase and blanket with him and, at least for awhile, abandoned his own bachelor pad in Vasastan. She’s probably both motherly and patient, despite the fact that she looks like she does, thought Johansson.