The Dying Detective

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘These are appalling allegations,’ Staffan Nilsson said, getting to his feet. ‘Accusations like this could drive an entirely innocent man like me to commit suicide.’

  ‘I don’t see how that applies to you,’ Johansson said. ‘To start with, you’re guilty, even if I’ve chosen to disregard the fact that your crime has been prescribed. And you’re far too self-important to kill yourself. If I turn out to be wrong on that point, I think I could live with the guilt. I’m strongly opposed to capital punishment, you know. That’s why I’m giving you the chance to survive, to take your punishment. Joseph Simon, Yasmine’s father, doesn’t share my attitude. He takes a more Old Testament view of things. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, if you’re wondering what I mean. So call me. You’ve got my number on your answer-machine at home, in case you weren’t sure. And you don’t have to worry about any of the practical details. I can give you a lift to police headquarters myself. I can even help you get hold of a good lawyer.’

  ‘You can forget that,’ Staffan Nilsson said. There was hate in his eyes now, because fury had momentarily conquered his fear. ‘If you breathe a word of these deranged allegations to anyone, I’ll sue you for every krona you’ve got.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Johansson said. ‘Let’s suppose you sued me for gross defamation, suppose you won and got a couple of hundred thousand in damages, because you wouldn’t get more than that. You’d be dead before the court had time to publish its verdict. Anyway, that’s small change for me and my brother.

  ‘Do you know what?’ Lars Martin Johansson went on, fixing him with the stare that he and his best friend used to save for the very worst cases. ‘You’re actually the worst person I’ve ever met in my entire life. But I’m still going to do you one last favour. I’m going to give you a chance to call me and tell me that you agree to take responsibility for what you’ve done. Call me, Nilsson. Seeing as you’re already on your feet, I suggest you leave now before I change my mind and throw you out of the window instead.’

  ‘If you like, I can do that for you, boss,’ said Max, who was suddenly standing in the room, even though Johansson had told him to keep out of the way. His big fists were opening and closing, and his eyes were those of a wolf staring at its already wounded prey. His bony, expressionless face was as white as when he had talked about Nadjesta, his big sister in the life that had been forced upon him. Raped, drugged and asphyxiated when she inhaled her own vomit in the children’s home they were both planning to run away from, to move to a house that no one else knew about, to have children of their own who they would spend all day kissing and cuddling.

  ‘Let him go,’ Johansson said. ‘He’ll be in touch.’

  As soon as Staffan Nilsson reached the street, he hailed a taxi, got in and drove off. Well, then, Johansson thought. Regardless of his headache and the constant tightness in his chest, there was at least one man who felt worse than him. For good reason, he thought, and he called Lisa Mattei on her mobile.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to Staffan Nilsson,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ Lisa Mattei said. ‘He’s sitting in a taxi and seems to be on his way home. In case you were wondering, Lars.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ Johansson said. This girl could go as far as she wants, he thought.

  ‘My hunch is that he’s not the sort to commit suicide,’ Mattei said.

  ‘I quite agree. But there’s a chance he might hit upon the uniquely bad idea of trying to run.’

  ‘I can’t imagine where he might be able to hide. But, of course, right now he probably isn’t thinking very rationally. So I’ve decided to keep an eye on him. If he were to get any ideas, I can always have a word with him. I can’t hold him against his will, of course, as you no doubt appreciate, and there’s not a great deal of enthusiasm here for giving him a protected identity, if I can put it like that.’

  ‘There might be one way of solving that,’ Johansson said. ‘Lock him in a cell for a while to give him time to think.’

  Then he told her about the report Nilsson had filed with the police in the Western District and the claim for damages he had probably already filed with his insurance company. Even if an attempt at aggravated insurance fraud was probably the last thing on his mind right now, despite his having just met Max.

  ‘Worth trying, if he doesn’t see sense,’ Mattei said. ‘I promise to bear it in mind. At best, we could probably lock him up for a month or so.’

  ‘Sure,’ Johansson said. ‘And he’d be able to read about what he did to Yasmine in the papers while he’s in prison. That would give him a bit of peace and quiet in which to contemplate what to do about that before we kick him out on to the street again.’

  ‘Lars, Lars,’ Lisa Mattei said. ‘I didn’t hear that last bit.’

  ‘But that’s what’s going to happen, if the bastard doesn’t take his punishment. I’ll see to it myself if no one else wants to do the dirty work. I’ve given him a chance. If he doesn’t take it, then he’ll only have himself to blame. But I don’t think he’s quite as unbelievably stupid as that.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Mattei said. ‘Good luck with the elk hunt, by the way.’

  So you know about that, too, Johansson thought when he ended the call. Remarkable woman. Lies without any compunction and in the most believable way, even to a man who’s twice her age and had been her boss and mentor for more than ten years.

  96

  Friday, 27 August to Sunday, 29 August

  On Friday evening Johansson took a fond farewell of his wife. As fond as all his blood-pressure-lowering medication would allow, that is, as he hugged and kissed her, just to be on the safe side.

  ‘Promise to take care of yourself,’ Pia said.

  ‘I promise,’ Johansson said. I’ll soon be back at the farm, and nothing bad can happen to me there, he thought.

  Then he and Max headed out to Bromma Airport, where they drove straight out on to the apron and climbed on board the private plane his brother Evert shared with a couple of equally rich friends.

  They landed in Kramfors an hour later and walked straight to the waiting helicopter. Three hours after leaving his home on Södermalm Johansson was standing in the farmyard of his parental home.

  ‘Welcome home, Lars,’ Evert said. He strode out on to the front porch dressed in green moleskin trousers and a chequered flannel shirt and gave Johansson a bear-hug which, oddly enough, seemed to ease the tightness in his chest.

  ‘Thanks,’ Lars Martin Johansson said. Home at last, he thought.

  ‘Right, we’re going to have a good time and just relax. Maybe shoot an elk or two as well, of course. I thought that you, me and Max could sleep here, in Mum and Dad’s house, and the other lads can stay in the hunting lodge and make as much mess as they like.’

  ‘When are they arriving?’ Johansson asked.

  ‘Sunday,’ Evert said. ‘We’ll have the run-through and hunt dinner then. Until then, we’ll have to manage on our own.’

  ‘As long as you don’t do the cooking.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Evert said, putting his arm round his shoulders. ‘I’ve got hold of a couple of women from the village. They’re hard at work already. You’ll get your herring and vodka and meat and potatoes, no need to worry.’

  Evert kept his promise. As did Johansson. He refrained from a third vodka, because he could suddenly see Pia before him. He drank only two glasses of red wine with his pork stuffed with prunes and declined the apple pie to finish altogether. He contented himself with a cup of coffee and a tiny glass of cognac.

  ‘I’m almost starting to worry about you, Lars,’ Evert said, winking at him.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You’re a reformed character. There’s barely anything in that brandy glass.’ He nodded towards the glass in Johansson’s hand.

  ‘Never too late to learn,’ Johansson said. ‘And now I’m thinking of getting an early night.’

  Then he went and had a wash before getting into bed. He fell asleep without any help fro
m his Greek ally and woke up the following morning as the first rays of sunlight were peeping between the edge of the roller-blind and the window frame.

  He went out on to the meadow in front of the farm and stood there barefoot in the grass, watching as the pale sun rose in the east and dissolved the morning mist down in the valley.

  This must be where Osslund stood, Johansson thought. Whether it was late winter or early autumn, as now, there was no more beautiful place on the planet.

  Then he went back inside the house again, took his pills, had a shower, got dressed, breathing the way he used to, his head finally clear. Home at last, he thought. There was probably no more to it than that.

  After a hearty breakfast they drove to Evert’s very own shooting range so Johansson could practise with the elk rifle that the gunsmith had modified, which Max had already worn in for him.

  It went far better than he could have anticipated. After just a couple of dozen shots he had no problem with his new trigger-finger. He could still twist his torso and hold the butt and barrel okay.

  ‘I recognize you now, Lars,’ Evert said with an approving smile.

  Even Max had trouble hiding his surprise, even though he had never met anyone who could shoot better than him.

  On Sunday evening he met up with the other hunters in Evert’s hunting lodge, which, practically enough, lay in the middle of the forest, and right in the middle of the hunting ground. Everything was the same as usual: the same faces, the same stories, the same laughter, the same food and just as much vodka as always. Johansson even allowed himself a third glass and didn’t spare his wife a thought as he raised his glass to drink a toast with the others.

  ‘Damn, us rich chaps have a good life,’ Evert snorted three hours later as he sat with his nightcap in front of the flaming fire.

  ‘“Away, yearning and weakness from soot-blackened breasts, no more cares in our snow-covered home. We have fire, we have meat, we have liquor for guests . . .” Cheers, lads!’ Evert said, standing up on slightly unsteady legs.

  ‘Now I’m going home to put my brother to bed,’ said Johansson, who was clearly the soberest member of the group, even though his wife was a thousand kilometres away. Apart from Max, of course, who hadn’t drunk a drop all evening.

  ‘You don’t fancy a bit of arm-wrestling, then?’ Evert said. ‘Tomorrow,’ Johansson said. Home, he thought. Properly home. Evidently, he needed a blood clot in his brain to make him appreciate what it was he had left behind fifty years ago.

  97

  Monday, 30 August

  The first session that morning took place just a few hundred metres from the farm where he had grown up, at the edge of a large patch of felled woodland sloping towards the river a couple of kilometres further down. That was where they always began. As far back as Johansson could remember, the elk hunt started by sweeping the river valley and the banks below the farm.

  ‘What the hell have you done to my tower?’ Johansson said, nodding towards the wooden shooting tower where he had sat for the past twenty years.

  The usual wooden ladder had been replaced by a flight of steps with handrails on either side. Like something from a professional sporting set-up, Johansson thought. He had taken over the stand from his father when he thought he was getting too old. Because Johansson’s father thought he was a much better shot than his elder brother.

  ‘Evert sent me up here,’ Max said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘The day you got out of hospital, boss,’ Max said.

  ‘Very forward-thinking of him,’ Johansson said. Must finally be feeling a bit guilty for everything he did to me when I was little, he thought.

  No problem at all, Johansson thought as he climbed up and sat down on the broad bench.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he said to Max, who was already halfway up the tower.

  ‘I thought I’d sit next to you, boss.’

  ‘You can forget that idea,’ Johansson said. ‘If you promise to keep your mouth shut and sit still, I might just let you sit underneath the tower. Otherwise, you can join the beaters.’

  ‘I talked to Evert—’

  ‘Forget it,’ Johansson interrupted. ‘Right, enough about Evert. We’re here to have a good time. We’re going to do some shooting.’

  ‘Okay, boss,’ Max said, then shrugged and did as he had been told.

  Nothing on this planet of ours could be more beautiful than this, Lars Martin Johansson thought. He breathed in the clear morning air, the sharpness of autumn stroking his cheeks and chin. It doesn’t get better than this, he thought, at the very moment someone squeezed his ribcage. Squeezed so hard he couldn’t even gasp for air. Someone who was much stronger than Max, who was sitting just a couple of metres below his feet and had never met anyone stronger than him.

  No bonus this time, Lars Martin Johansson thought, and that was the last thing he thought.

  VI

  Thine eye shall not pity …

  Book of Deuteronomy, 19:21

  On Monday, 20 September, three weeks after Lars Martin Johansson’s death, the Director General and head of the Security Police decided to withdraw the surveillance on Staffan Nilsson. He was of the firm opinion that Johansson’s death had intrinsically changed the situation. In the best-case scenario, Johansson was the only person outside the Security Police who knew that Staffan Nilsson had murdered Joseph Simon’s daughter more than twenty-five years ago. Either way, Nilsson appeared largely to have reverted to his normal life and, if he were to apply to have his identity protected, he was free to do so in the usual way.

  ‘What do you say, Lisa?’ the Director General asked. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I have an idea that we have more pressing matters to spend our money on.’

  ‘I’m in complete agreement with you, boss,’ Lisa Mattei said. As she said this she put a protective arm round her stomach. Poor Lars, she thought.

  On Friday, 1 October the bells of Maria Magdalena Church on Södermalm rang for a hunter and wanderer from Ådalen in northern Ångermanland whose earthly wanderings had come to an end just over a month before.

  A month of nothing but grief for his wife, Pia, and when just a couple of days earlier she managed to fend it off for a short moment, it was only with the help of the anger she must have been storing up for much longer than that.

  Bloody Lars, she thought. Why didn’t you ever listen to me? Why didn’t you do as I told you, just for once?

  After the service the mourners gathered at Johansson’s old neighbourhood restaurant to eat a belated but restorative lunch buffet. The whole of the extended Johansson family, his former colleagues from Stockholm Police, National Crime and the Security Police – all the old stalwarts turned out in force, with Jarnebring at their head.

  It gradually turned into a fairly boisterous occasion. The dead man’s name was on everyone’s lips – Lars Martin Johansson wasn’t the sort of man to be buried and quietly forgotten. There were far too many good stories that deserved to be told again.

  Even Pia couldn’t help laughing, even though she now lived alone in an apartment that was far too big for her and which she had already decided to sell, because it was now only a reminder of a different, better life. The night before she buried her husband she had lain awake while unanswered questions chased round her head. Should I laugh or cry? she wondered as she walked up the aisle of the church to the pew at the front, flanked by Anna Holt and Matilda.

  First, she cried once more, for the umpteenth time. Then she laughed. For the first time. The funeral was over, her life was going on, a different life to before, but there was nothing she could do to change that.

  ‘It’s still a bloody shame,’ big brother Evert declared as he stood at the bar, flanked by his brother’s best friend and his own little lad. Red-eyed from crying for the first time in his life, almost eighty, and heedless of the fact that he, too, would die soon. Not today, not tomorrow, but sooner or later, just like everyone who had gone before him. Not that Evert had th
e slightest intention of doing any such thing. Especially now that his little lad had been restored to his father’s house.

  ‘It’s still a bloody shame he wouldn’t eat and drink like a normal person,’ Evert said. ‘That he wouldn’t take any exercise. Except for when he was hunting, of course, because he could be quick enough then. He was only a young fellow, after all, just sixty-seven years old. That’s no age, is it? Our father, Evert, lived to be ninety-three, and mother, Elna, was ninety-six. And I’m seventy-seven and I feel better than I have done in years.’

  ‘I think he was just bloody unhappy,’ Jarnebring said. ‘When he stopped working, three years ago, it was like he’d made his mind up somehow. If he couldn’t be a police officer any more, then he really wasn’t that bothered.’

  ‘The boss was a good man,’ Max said. ‘A good man who was unhappy. In the end he was very unhappy.’ Because an evil man was eating him up from inside, he thought.

  ‘I see,’ Evert said with a nod. ‘Lars was always a little unusual, of course. I hear what you’re saying, but I had no idea that things were that bad. He always had the hunt and the forest. And the farm. We still own it together, of course, he and I. But now I suppose his lad will take over his share, Little Lars.’

  ‘You can’t think it was a coincidence that he gave up the ghost on the first day of the elk hunt,’ Jarnebring said.

  ‘Probably not,’ Evert said, and his big shoulders shuddered. ‘Take care of yourself, little brother,’ he said, lifting his eyes towards the grey October sky above their heads. Raised his glass and downed it in one. ‘Cheers, Lars,’ he said.

  ‘Cheers, Lars,’ Jarnebring echoed. What the hell am I going to do now? he thought.