Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

by Leif Gw Persson

  “So, here we sit like two little birds on a branch,” said Waltin with a conciliatory smile while in passing he adjusted a crease in his new trousers of classic English tweed. And you’re only getting sadder and grayer, he thought, nodding toward his boss.

  “There are a few things we need to talk about,” said Berg.

  It certainly did not turn out to be a pleasant conversation. The subjects that Berg had chosen didn’t allow for that.

  First he brought up the Krassner case. It was as though he couldn’t avoid the misery, despite the fact that Krassner had taken his own life. Despite the fact that their own covert house search was only an unfortunate coincidence. Despite the fact that they had done exactly what they were expected to do and what their employer actually had the right to demand of them. Which he actually had demanded of them, even if the special adviser hadn’t left any paperwork about the matter.

  “What I’m trying to say,” said Berg, “is that we could have avoided a great deal of trouble if you had followed my advice and made an ordinary narcotics arrest. I’m not ruling out the possibility that he might have tried to take his own life as soon as he’d been let out of jail, but then this wouldn’t have ended up as close to our table as it does now.”

  I don’t believe my ears, thought Waltin. He seems to have become as gaga as old man Forselius.

  “With all respect I seem to have a different recollection,” said Waltin with a friendly smile. “I seem to recall that when I suggested that we should do it like that, you rejected the whole idea.” And I never found out why you did, he thought.

  “Then I am afraid that our recollections diverge,” said Berg, digging out a paper from the pile on his desk. “I have a notation here that we discussed the matter the day before; it was Thursday, the twenty-first of November, at sixteen zero five hours in the afternoon and I was the one who called you.…”

  This isn’t true, thought Waltin, but he didn’t say that. He was content to smile and nod, for if it was really going to be like this it was important to keep a good countenance.

  “And according to my notes,” Berg continued, “you then told me that you had planned a narcotics arrest the following day. I’ve also noted that I approved that.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Waltin. “But that was at the point when Forselius had not yet made contact, but then he did late in the evening and we went back to our original plan.”

  Berg moved his shoulders regretfully.

  “I have no notes about that,” he said. “Why didn’t you call and tell me about your change of plans?”

  My change of plans? thought Waltin. This is not true, dammit, he thought.

  “I seem to recall that you’d gone to the Germans,” said Waltin.

  “That wasn’t until the following day,” said Berg. “And if so, wouldn’t it have been possible to call me there too? Or what?”

  “Yes,” said Waltin, smiling despite the fact that it was starting to be an effort. “Somewhere there seems to have been a breakdown in communication.”

  “Yes, unfortunately that does appear to be the case,” said Berg. “A completely different matter,” he added.

  Then he discussed the department’s view of the external operation and that he himself would not be opposed to an inspection if one were to be requested. There was no one outside pulling on the door handle exactly, but sometime during the spring it would certainly come up.

  “We’ll have to set aside a few days and go through all the papers,” said Berg. “Sometime at the start of the new year.”

  “Fine with me,” said Waltin, getting up.

  He’s not smiling anymore, thought Berg.

  Wonder how it’s going for Persson, thought Berg, leaning back comfortably in his chair after he’d been left alone in his office. The only light in my firmament; wrong, he thought, for there was actually one more, faintly glistening in the distance like the Star of Hope. The hope that he would finally be rid of Kudo and Bülling.

  The Stockholm chief constable and Kudo and Bülling had found one another. Given the police context it almost resembled a love story. Not because they slept with each other or even cuddled a little, for they were all fully reliable homophobes, and in that respect no shadow fell on any of them, despite the chief constable’s secret literary leanings, Kudo’s recurring observations of gnomes, and Bülling’s general peculiarities. What was involved instead was a very strong, almost transcendental spiritual communion of the type that can only arise when highly gifted people are united by a common interest even greater than themselves.

  “The Kurds,” said the chief constable with ominous emphasis on both words. “Gentlemen,” he continued solemnly, nodding toward his two visitors. “We are talking about what is at the present time the most dangerous terrorist organization in the entire Western Hemisphere. So give me some good advice. What do we do?”

  Finally, thought Kudo. Finally someone in the leadership who realizes the seriousness of the situation. Necessity trumps the law, thought Kudo, for he’d read that somewhere, and purely concretely it was the incomprehensible secrecy rules of the secret police that this very necessity had in mind. Then he and Bülling related everything to their new ally, but first they had naturally given him the necessary background.

  The very first thing they had related was their secret language. About weddings and other events, about poets and about lambs who were to be butchered. About cakes, pastries, and rolls and all their difficulties in working out what this actually meant.

  “We will have a wedding, we will butcher a lamb, we will have two poets, cakes, pastries, and rolls.…” The Stockholm chief constable nodded with pleasure while he savored every word. … “Exactly like myself, you gentlemen have paid notice to the strongly ethnic character of the codes they’re using.”

  “Exactly,” said Kudo. “Exactly.”

  “Exactly,” said Bülling, nodding toward the chief constable’s newly polished floor.

  “So it’s hardly by chance that they have chosen these particular codes for their operations here in the West,” stated the chief constable. “Tell me,” he said as he rubbed his hands with delight. “Tell me how you’ve solved this ethnically oriented problematic.”

  It was Kudo then who told about their new informant. He was himself a Kurd. Political refugee like all Kurds, but in contrast to the rest of their informants he had applied of his own free will. He was a baker besides, and had a brother who was a butcher, and together they ran a little catering business whose customers were almost all Kurds too. For many years they’d been delivering their wares and services to countless Kurdish weddings, funerals, and parties.

  In such a context that particular background was unbeatable, Bülling had thought as he made the preparatory analysis. Their new informant knew everything about what deliveries and other arrangements were part of a real wedding, a normal funeral, or an ordinary party. Apart from his special knowledge he could see directly if there was something strange when their surveillance objects were planning their activities, and as a result they were sitting in a tight spot, thought Bülling. Planning a political murder based on the orders for a real wedding was naturally impossible. The operation would be doomed to fail.

  The fellow had another quality besides, and it was not so strange that it was his best friend and closest colleague, Kudo, who had discovered it, considering that he himself had received the same gift: Their new informant was also a seer. He could see contexts, connections, and occurrences that were hidden to normal people, and this regardless of whether they were already a fact or were still in the future. At first Bülling had resisted the very thought that it might be like that. Considering his informant’s other qualities, it was almost too good to be true, and Bülling’s critical bent and analytical mission made him generally skeptical of such possibilities. Therefore Kudo had proposed a scientific test, and it was Bülling himself who had set it up and carried it out. Down to the least detail and in order not to leave any imaginable explanation un
tested.

  First he’d pulled out a number of cases that he and Kudo had succeeded in clearing up and of which their new informant could not have the least knowledge. Based on these cases he had then formulated twenty or so specific questions that had taken him and Kudo months to reach a solution to. Their new informant had only required a little less than an hour to answer all the questions, and all of his answers had been correct.

  Before they’d told the chief constable about their new weapon in the struggle against Kurdish terrorism, they had discussed whether they should reveal to him that their new informant was also a seer, that he had the gift. It was unfortunately the case that many people resisted such possibilities for primitive, emotional reasons, and because their own worldview was then at risk of collapse. This had solved itself quite naturally and obviously. Toward the end of their lecture, Kudo had nodded toward their new ally, and when he saw the look in his eyes, those gentle, wise, boundary-crossing eyes, he had simply said it. Straight out.

  “And besides, he has the gift,” said Kudo. “He can see things that others don’t see.”

  The Stockholm chief constable only nodded at first. Mostly to himself, it seemed. Then he looked at them with great seriousness and great sincerity.

  “They’re the best,” he said. “And the most difficult.”

  Finally they told about their most recent and most urgent surveillance case. On the planned assassination of a “highly positioned but not more closely identified Swedish politician.”

  “He has given us the name,” said Kudo.

  “I’m listening,” said the chief constable.

  “The prime minister,” said Kudo.

  . . .

  When Kudo and Bülling had left him, the chief constable decided that he must warn the prime minister. The prime minister was still his personal friend from long ago; he himself was the only police officer that the prime minister could trust. He had helped him before and at a time when he wasn’t even the prime minister. Most important of all: If the prime minister met with a political assassination, it was the chief constable’s personal responsibility to see to it that it was cleared up and that the perpetrator was brought to justice.

  I must warn him in good time, thought the chief constable. Before something happens, he clarified to himself and in order to rule out any possibility of a mistake.

  If Kudo and Bülling and the Stockholm chief constable had seen the light, it was all the darker in the world where Göransson and Martinsson were nowadays. First that mysterious work trip to Petrozavodsk in the middle of a biting-cold Russian winter, where they were both about to freeze their rear ends off. When they’d come home, a series of freezing-cold, meaningless surveillance assignments, one after another, which never seemed to end.

  The news that they would be moving back to the open operation after the New Year had almost come as a relief. Naturally they hadn’t been told the reason that it had turned out that way, but in the squad there were rumors of yet another reorganization. The week before Christmas they were called in to the top boss’s own stable boy, Chief Inspector Persson, in turn—Göransson first because he’d been serving the longest—and as usual in these contexts he’d had the company of the bureau’s attorney. There they had to sign the usual papers, which promised secret legal proceedings, multiyear prison sentences, financial ruin, and personal disgrace if they uttered a word about their time with the closed operation. More terrifying than the documents they signed was Chief Inspector Persson himself, and before Martinsson left the room he gave him a parting word.

  “You’ve had damn good luck, lad. If I’d been the one to decide we would’ve boiled you for glue.”

  Whatever, and you can shove it up yours, you fat asshole, Martinsson thought, and that evening he went to the local bar and got royally drunk.

  . . .

  Obviously it had been the usual old dive down on Kungsgatan, and as it was right before Christmas there was no lack of police officers in the place. The line wound all the way down to Vasagatan—a few guys who were working in radio cars had been in such a hurry to get there that they still had their uniform trousers on—and when Martinsson finally got in there was so much going on that the floor, walls, and ceiling shook. But despite the fact that he got drunk as a lord, he couldn’t summon up the right mood. After a while he spotted young Oredsson, who was sitting with a couple of girls in a corner, and because they seemed unusually sober it was there that he sat down.

  He’d met Oredsson last summer. They went to the same gym and had run into each other while exercising, lifting weights, and sitting in the sauna and male bonding, and one thing had led to the other and rather quickly it had become clear to each of them where the other stood. Because he himself was working quite a lot with the survey of the police at Norrmalm, he had also tipped off his chief about Oredsson. Here was a budding officer who shouldn’t have any difficulties making his way into the circles they were working with. There was nothing really wrong with Oredsson, thought Martinsson. There was nothing really wrong with his opinions either, for most of what he said was both right and reasonable and everyday police fare, for that matter. As an infiltrator he would have passed like a hand in a glove, but just before he was to give him the invitation, the boss had suddenly blown off the whole thing, and as usual he hadn’t been told a damn thing about why. And considering what he himself had met with it was no doubt the best thing that could happen, thought Martinsson.

  When he was standing in the john relieving the pressure, Oredsson came in and stood at the urinal beside him.

  “How’s it going, Strummer?” said Oredsson, sounding worried. “You seem a little down.”

  “It’s okay,” said Martinsson, shaking the artillery piece before lifting it into his trousers. With just one hand, thought Martinsson, for he always thought that.

  “How’d it go, by the way, with that job you were talking about last summer?” said Oredsson. “You never got back to me.”

  “It got fucked up,” said Martinsson. And you should probably thank God for that, he thought.

  “Too bad,” said Oredsson. “That thing with SePo sounded exciting.”

  “I’ve quit,” said Martinsson.

  “Did something happen?” said Oredsson, taking him by the arm.

  “Fucking fifth columnists,” said Martinsson, and then he pulled Oredsson into the john. Locked the door and told him everything about what Berg and the other bastards were doing.

  Afterward it felt much better. Oredsson stood him a few beers and they made a toast in silent collusion. And that stable boy Persson could shove those fucking papers up his fat ass, thought Martinsson.

  Bäckström celebrated Christmas at the after-hours unit. It wasn’t the first time and certainly wouldn’t be the last, either, especially now that old Jack Daniels was completely off the wall, but on the whole it wasn’t too bad. The union had clearly celebrated a victory, for they’d gotten yet another nap room since last year. Not that Bäckström cared. He used to sneak up to the homicide squad when he needed a nap, for it was a lot quieter there, but the union rep was proud as a rooster and because he was a tedious bastard Bäckström made sure to take a potshot at him while passing through.

  “I thought we were here to work, not to slack off,” said Bäckström. “But correct me if I’m wrong.”

  The poor bastard just glared at him, despite the fact that it was Christmas and everyone should be happy, and then the safety rep took over and nagged for a quarter of an hour about that new disease A-I-D-S. Doesn’t concern me, thought Bäckström, for he didn’t poke assholes, blacks, or drug addicts, and if he needed to touch someone there were always plumber’s gloves that he could put on.

  The cases were mostly shit as usual. Nothing worthy of a real pro such as himself. Mostly thefts and drunken driving, and who had the energy to care? Not Bäckström, in any case, so he took the opportunity to nap for a few hours. Although there was naturally a bright spot or two despite the fact that the Christmas food
in the break room had disappeared rather quickly. Three Finnish tramps—real geniuses from Karelia—had broken into a shoe store on Sveavägen and emptied the Christmas display of fifty left shoes, and when the police cars came with their blue lights one of the Finns had almost cut his own throat as he was trying to finagle his way out through the window. So when they came to the after-hours unit there were only two of them, but every little bit counts, thought Bäckström as he locked up the remaining two, each in his own barred compartment.

  Then the riot squad came in with a little gypsy lad who had been siphoning gasoline up on Karlbergsvägen. It was Ornery Adolf’s squad—dear colleagues have many names—and he and his guys were sour as vinegar, for the rest of the tribe had managed to escape. He was a funny little guy, thought Bäckström. With Goofy shoes, trousers a foot too long—where had he pinched those?—and the tribal chieftain’s cap on his curly little head. He was bent over like a poker and moaning that he’d gotten gasoline in his little belly and had to go to the hospital, so Bäckström arranged a barred compartment for him too. Farthest in, to be on the safe side, so he wouldn’t disturb the others who were there.

  But then the boss started to make a fuss about the gypsy’s age, and that perhaps it would be best if someone sat with him in a normal room until the old ladies from the social services after-hours office had time to drag themselves there and take over.

  “It’s cool,” said Bäckström. “I’ve counted his fingers and there are six on each hand.”

  The boss, who was a Pentecostalist, was a humorless bastard, so he didn’t want to hear that, and for a while it looked rather critical. But then the tribal chieftain himself showed up with half of his numerous relatives to talk the lad out, for he was only thirteen according to Papa Taikon, and then it became a real circus. For clearly they’d missed the fact that Ornery Adolf and his lads had taken the opportunity to stay and chow down a holiday snack. And then they suddenly had six folk dancers arrested instead of one. This is a pure Christmas week sale, thought Bäckström.