The Dying Detective

by Leif G. W. Persson

  His children were due to arrive that weekend, first his daughter and son-in-law, then his son and daughter-in-law. It was decided that the grandchildren would stay at home without him even having to request this. But they sent him messages and presents instead.

  The eldest, who was now seventeen and would be graduating from high school the following spring, wrote him a long letter in which she encouraged ‘the best grandfather in the world’ to stop getting so stressed, to take things easy and relax, ‘chill out’ and ‘chillax a bit more’. To underline this point, she wrote that she was sending him a book on meditation and a pirated CD entitled Soothing Favourites.

  Her little sister had sent him a picture she had drawn, showing Johansson lying in bed surrounded by white coats with a big bandage around his head. But he looked happy, and was even waving, and beneath it she had written: ‘get wel soon granddad’.

  Her cousin, two years younger, sang to him on his mobile in his delicate boy’s voice, and sent him ‘half’ his weekly sweets – foam bananas and jelly babies, sticky from childish fingers – but only after some hesitation, apparently. His twin brothers, two years younger than him, had set aside their differences for once and drawn him some stick figures and something which was probably supposed to be the sun.

  A much-loved husband, father and grandfather, but more than anything he would have liked to be left alone, so they didn’t have to see him looking so weak and he didn’t have to see the concern in their eyes.

  Pia had diverted all visits from other friends and acquaintances. Jarnebring kept calling, pretty much the whole time, and Johansson’s eldest brother called every morning and every evening, and also wanted to discuss business with him. Then there were all the other relatives, friends, acquaintances and former colleagues, who wanted at the very least to be given ongoing-status updates.

  ‘It can’t be easy for you, love,’ Johansson said, patting his wife’s hand. ‘But it will soon be over. I’m thinking of asking them to discharge me on Monday, as soon as the weekend is over.’

  ‘Let’s talk about that later,’ Pia said with a weak smile.

  Because he’d had that response before, he knew it wouldn’t be happening on Monday.

  Despite the fact that he kept improving. The number of tubes, pipes, wires and needles had halved. The headaches were coming less frequently. He took almost all his medication in the form of differently coloured pills, carefully counted and lined up in tiny plastic cups, and he swallowed them all himself and rinsed them down with water. On Monday he was given his very own little box by one of the nurses: it was important that he learned to organize his medication and, the sooner he could get into the routine, the better.

  Johansson showed it to his wife that same evening. A small box made of red plastic with seven transparent little lids. A total of twenty-eight tiny compartments for morning, midday, evening and night, for all the days of the week. Well-filled tiny compartments, a total of about ten pills each day.

  ‘Medals and a decent pension are all very well, but getting your very own health-service pillbox feels pretty special,’ Johansson declared with the crooked smile that now came naturally.

  ‘Yes,’ Pia said. ‘That’s when you know you’ve really made it.’ Then she smiled, with both her mouth and her eyes, and she seemed as happy as the first time she ever smiled at him. I’m so grateful to have you back, she thought.

  8

  Wednesday morning, 14 July

  On Wednesday morning he met Ulrika Stenholm, who this time brought with her a notebook full of writing.

  ‘You’ve got the verdict with you, then,’ Johansson said, nodding towards the notebook.

  ‘If you feel up to it?’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Johansson said, and as he spoke it happened again: a sudden, strong and inexplicable feeling. Elation, this time.

  Dr Stenholm was both organized and pedagogical. Johansson had suffered a stroke in the left side of his brain which had led to ‘partial paralysis of the right side of his body’, which had, among other things, ‘reduced mobility’ in his right arm and also caused a reduction in feeling, movement and strength in his right leg. Because he had stopped breathing for a minute or so, his lungs had evidently also been affected, but she couldn’t find any signs of lasting damage there.

  ‘Brief interruptions in breathing aren’t uncommon and can be caused by a lot of different things,’ Ulrika Stenholm explained.

  ‘What I can’t understand is why it happened to me,’ Johansson said. ‘I’ve never had any problems with my head. I hardly ever have to take headache pills even.’ And my prostate’s absolutely fine, he thought, but that was none of her business, so he kept that to himself.

  ‘That isn’t actually the problem, either,’ Dr Stenholm said. ‘The problem’s your heart.’

  ‘My heart,’ Johansson said. What the hell’s the woman saying? he thought. He sometimes got a bit out of breath when he over-exerted himself, felt a bit of tightness in his chest, maybe his pulse raced on the odd occasion, and he could get a bit dizzy if he stood up too quickly, but that was hardly the end of the world, was it? Things usually sorted themselves out after a few deep breaths and a short nap.

  ‘I’m afraid your heart isn’t in great shape.’ She moved her head and nodded twice to underline what she’d just said.

  ‘So that stroke was just some sort of bastard bonus, then?’ Johansson said.

  ‘Yes, that would be one way of describing it.’ She was smiling now. ‘Let me explain,’ she continued.

  Not a bad list, Johansson thought when she had finished. Atrial fibrillation, arrhythmia, enlarged heart, enlarged aorta, a heart that beat far too fast and far too unevenly, and something else he had already forgotten, and all because he ate too much, and the wrong kind of food at that, did too little exercise, was seriously overweight, suffered from too much stress, had high blood pressure and atrocious levels of cholesterol.

  ‘Your atrial fibrillation is the worst of the bad guys in this particular drama. That’s what lets blood cells cluster together and form clots,’ she explained, and her expression left no room for doubt that there were plenty more bad guys romping about in his chest.

  ‘So what are you thinking of doing about it, then?’ Johansson said. He wasn’t planning on just giving up. Not after all the tax he had paid into the health service over the course of a long, industrious life, and not considering all the hypochondriacs who had effectively stolen from him on that front with the help of their gullible doctors.

  ‘Medication,’ she said. ‘The sort that will lower your blood pressure, thin your blood, lower your cholesterol. You’re already on those drugs. The thing that’s going to make the biggest difference long term, though, is entirely down to you.’

  ‘Lose weight, eat less, stop getting stressed, start exercising,’ Johansson said. So there’s no need for you to sit there nagging, he thought. And no more Günter’s.

  ‘There, see?’ Dr Stenholm said with a smile. ‘You already know what to do. You need to start looking after yourself. There’s no more to it than that.’

  ‘Am I allowed to have a Christmas tree?’ Johansson asked. He hadn’t felt this cheerful for ages. Quite incomprehensible, he thought.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Ulrika Stenholm said, not looking even remotely amused. ‘If you don’t change your way of life, and I mean radically, then you’ll die. If you stop taking your pills, or even skip them occasionally, then I’m afraid that could happen very soon.’

  ‘But the clot in my brain was just a little bonus. Because my heart suddenly had a flutter and started fucking with me.’

  ‘That was a warning,’ she replied. ‘And you got off lightly. I’ve got patients who have received considerably more serious warnings than you. You must have had these problems with your heart for a number of years. Hasn’t your doctor ever said anything?’ She looked at him curiously.

  ‘I have regular medical checks. Annually, and he usually listens to my heart and all that,’ he explaine
d. ‘But no, he’s usually happy with me. He’s never said anything.’

  ‘He’s never said anything?’

  ‘No,’ Johansson said. ‘Just that I should take things a bit easier. But no drugs or anything.’

  ‘Sounds like a strange doctor, if you ask me.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Johansson said. ‘He’s an old hunting buddy of mine. We go elk-hunting together back where I grew up. He was born in the next village, his dad was a vet in Kramfors. He studied medicine in Umeå. He usually gives me the once-over when we meet up to go hunting in September.’

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me if I’m labouring the point, but he’s never said anything about your heart?’

  ‘Nooo,’ Johansson said, now getting seriously fed up of this endless nagging. ‘The last time I saw him he praised my good health. Said he was jealous of me, and that I must be a happy man.’

  ‘Praised you? What for?’

  Okay, Johansson thought, deciding to put an end to this utterly pointless conversation.

  ‘For my dick and prostate,’ Johansson said. ‘His exact words? He said that if he had my dick and my prostate, he’d be a happy man. And he’s a urologist, so he must know what he’s talking about. I daresay he’s seen several kilometres’ worth of dicks in his time.’ That told her. Mind you, she was asking for it, he thought.

  Dr Stenholm contented herself with shaking her blonde head regretfully. She seemed cross.

  ‘Do you have any questions of your own?’ he added with an innocent expression.

  ‘If there’s anything I’m wondering about? What would that be?’ Still cross.

  ‘That business with the squirrel,’ Johansson said. ‘If you feel up to listening.’ His own sudden flare-up of temper seemed to have died down.

  He went on to tell her about all the squirrels he had shot when he was a lad. And the way they moved their heads. And the hundreds of hours he had spent watching them. But he added that, otherwise, and certainly for a layperson who lacked his special insights in the subject, she wasn’t at all like a squirrel.

  ‘I daresay it’s just a tic I’ve picked up.’ Ulrika Stenholm nodded, as if to emphasize what she’d said.

  A bit happier now. She even smiled, but without tilting her head.

  ‘On a completely different subject,’ she said. ‘Not about you. Well, about your job. Your old job,’ she clarified. ‘I thought I’d take the opportunity while we’re talking one to one. I’ve got a question.’

  Johansson nodded.

  ‘If you’re sure you feel up to it? It’s quite a long story.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Johansson said. And that was how it all started. For Lars Martin Johansson, anyway. For everyone else involved, it had started long before then.

  9

  Wednesday morning, 14 July

  A long story. The outline was long. The questions that popped up afterwards were many. What she was wondering about was simple enough. Did he remember the murder of Yasmine Ermegan? She had been just nine years old when she was raped and strangled.

  First the outline, which unfortunately was far too long and messy for Johansson’s liking.

  Ulrika Stenholm had a sister who was three years older than her, Anna. She was a prosecutor, and Lars Martin Johansson was the great idol of her professional life. She had related countless stories about Johansson to her younger sister, Ulrika.

  ‘She worked for you for a couple of years, back when you were head of the Security Police. She used to say you could see around corners. I mean, without having to lean forward and look.’

  ‘I daresay that’s the point,’ Johansson said. Who did she take him for? And I don’t remember her sister, he thought. As for ‘head’ – he had been operational head. Not some deskbound paper-shuffler.

  ‘Our father was a vicar, Åke Stenholm. He had a parish in Bromma,’ she went on. ‘This is really about him. He died last winter, just before Christmas. He was old – eighty-five years old – when he died of cancer. He was already retired by then, of course. He retired in 1989, when he was sixty-five.’

  Okay, Johansson thought, with rapidly growing irritation. What’s this got to do with me? he wondered.

  ‘I’m making a mess of this,’ Ulrika Stenholm said, shaking her head nervously. ‘I’ll try to get to the point. A couple of days before he died, my dad told me that there was something that had been tormenting him for many years. One of his parishioners had apparently told him, when she was making her confession, that she knew who had murdered a little girl. The girl’s name was Yasmine Ermegan. She was nine years old when it happened, and she lived in the parish of Bromma. But she, the woman making the confession, made him promise not to say anything, and because it was part of a religious confession there wasn’t a problem with that. As I’m sure you know, priests have an absolute oath of confidentiality. Unconditional and with no exceptions, unlike mine and my colleagues’. But it tormented him badly, because the perpetrator was never found.’

  What a uniquely messy story, Johansson thought. It wasn’t made any better by the fact that his head had started to ache again.

  ‘So, what I’m wondering, and this was what I wanted to—’

  ‘Give me a pen and paper,’ Johansson interrupted, snapping the thumb and forefinger of his left hand commandingly. Whatever the hell do I want them for? he thought quickly. ‘Wait,’ Johansson said. ‘It’s better if you write. Make notes. Start a new page. What did you say the victim’s name was? The girl, the nine-year-old. The one who lived in your dad’s parish.’

  ‘Yasmine Ermegan.’

  ‘Write that down,’ Johansson said. ‘Like this: victim, colon. Yasmine Ermegan, nine years old, lived in the parish of Bromma.’

  Ulrika Stenholm nodded and wrote. She stopped writing, looked up and nodded again.

  ‘When is this supposed to have happened?’ It can hardly have been very recent, he thought.

  ‘It was in June 1985, there was something about it in the papers just a few weeks ago. A big article to mark the fact that it was twenty-five years since it happened.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Johansson said. ‘When in June? When in June 1985?’ he added, to be on the safe side. I’ve talked to plenty of confused informants over the years, Johansson thought. Things weren’t made any easier by his damn headache, and the fact that he himself was both a pensioner and a patient and was expected to take things very, very gently. And why in the name of holy fuck had he suddenly started swearing like a navvy in his thoughts or when he was alone, and why was he so angry with pretty much everyone except Pia?

  ‘She went missing on the evening of 14 June 1985, the Friday before Midsummer. And she was found murdered a week later, she’d been raped and strangled, on Midsummer’s Eve. The murderer had buried her in the forest outside Sigtuna. He’d wrapped her up in those awful black bin-liners.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Johansson said. ‘What day is it today?’ His head was completely blank all of a sudden.

  ‘Wednesday,’ Ulrika Stenholm said. ‘It’s Wednesday today.’

  ‘Wrong,’ Johansson said. ‘The date, I mean. What date is it?’ What the fuck’s going on inside my head? he thought.

  ‘It’s 14 July today. Wednesday, 14 July 2010.’

  ‘And how long does that make it?’ Johansson said. ‘Since they found her, I mean.’

  ‘Twenty-five years and three weeks, more or less. Twenty-five years and twenty-three days, if I’ve counted right.’

  ‘In which case it’s passed the statute of limitations,’ Johansson said, and shrugged his shoulders: even the right one worked now. ‘That means people like me can’t do a thing about it now. Whoever did it can act as suspiciously as he likes, and people like me can’t so much as talk to him about it.’

  ‘But that rule has been abolished – the statute of limitations, I mean. It went through Parliament back in the spring, didn’t it? These days there’s no statute of limitation for murder. The murder of Olof Palme, for instance. That’ll never be prescribed.’

&n
bsp; ‘Listen,’ Johansson said. She’s pretty damn persistent, he thought. ‘The statute of limitation for murder, and a number of other crimes with a lifetime sentence, was abolished as of 1 July this year. Parliament voted it through in the spring, but the law was changed only from 1 July. Murders that had already passed the statute of limitations before 1 July are therefore not covered by the change in the law. They’re dead and buried for good. You can talk to your prosecutor sister if you don’t believe me.’ She seems a bit simple as well, he thought.

  ‘Okay, but what about Palme, then?’

  ‘Because Palme was murdered in February 1986, that crime wasn’t already prescribed by 1 July this year, meaning that it’s covered by the new legislation. And will never be prescribed. But this Yasmine you’re talking about was murdered in June 1985, so her case was already prescribed when the law was changed. You see the difference,’ Johansson said.

  ‘But that’s awful,’ Ulrika Stenholm said. ‘Suppose they found the murderer. Suppose one of your colleagues found the man who killed Yasmine. Suppose you found him today. You’d be forced to just let him go. You wouldn’t be able to do a thing.’

  ‘We couldn’t do diddly-squat,’ Johansson said, nodding as he lay in bed. ‘Diddly-squat,’ he repeated, just to be on the safe side, seeing as law didn’t seem to be her strong subject.

  ‘But that’s just awful,’ Ulrika Stenholm repeated. ‘In spite of all the DNA and other stuff you’ve got these days.’

  ‘Yes, it’s bloody ridiculous,’ Johansson said, suddenly in an inexplicably good mood again.

  ‘Yes, it is ridiculous,’ Ulrika Stenholm agreed.

  ‘Yes, and do you know what makes it even worse?’ Johansson asked.

  ‘No.’ She shook her short, blonde hair.

  ‘That I didn’t get that blood clot in my brain six months ago. That was very remiss of me. Then we’d have had plenty of time to solve this problem between us. Before it got prescribed, I mean. Or you could have talked to one of my colleagues in good time. Or your dad, the good priest, could have done. Or the man who murdered Yasmine could have had the decency to wait a few weeks before he killed the poor girl.’