Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime

by Leif Gw Persson

  “Have you talked with your colleague at the German embassy?” asked Stridh.

  He had not. If he could avoid it, he did not talk with Germans for personal reasons. He preferred to talk with the Swedish police.

  “They put my father in Grini,” he explained, and that was good enough for Stridh, whose major interest in life was not police work but modern European history. In contrast to some of his colleagues he had never had any problems with his historical sympathies.

  “I know what you mean,” said Stridh with a Norwegian intonation and smiled. Nice guy, he thought.

  When he drove away half an hour later he first intended to write a few lines about the matter, but on closer consideration he decided to let it be. A simple mental note would have to suffice, for regardless of whether the guard seemed to be a good, reliable fellow, his information was far from certain. Thus he could not say without a doubt that it had been the same car all four times. Two times it was, for then he had managed to get the license plate number. And unfortunately he had a rather uncertain memory of the driver. The first time it was a young man who drove, and he had someone beside him in the passenger seat; this the guard was “rather certain” of, but he had not managed to see if it was a “boy or a girl.” The second time that he had taken the license plate number he was “almost sure” that the car was being driven by “a boy” and that he was alone in the vehicle, but if he was also the same young man as the one who had a passenger with him on the earlier occasion he could not say.

  After having pondered the matter further, Stridh decided that there must be some banal, natural explanation and to refrain from the mental note as well. Right before lunch on Thursday the twenty-fourth of April 1975, he changed his mind. The next morning, despite the fact that he was dead tired after working far into the night, he drove to the station, borrowed a typewriter, and wrote a lengthy, completely perspicacious summary of his observations and his conversation with the guard at the Norwegian embassy. This he gave to his boss, who nodded and promised to pass it on to “the spies up at Kungsholmen.”

  After that nothing happened. No one called, and as time passed he forgot the whole thing. You just had to assume that one of the secret police colleagues had checked the whole thing out and reasonably come to the same conclusion that he himself had at first—namely, that there was some banal, very innocent explanation.

  Therefore he had been extremely surprised when almost fifteen years later, in the middle of December 1989, a Commissioner Persson from the secret police rang the doorbell to his pleasant little two-room apartment on Rörstrandsgatan and wondered whether he had time to talk about the observations he had made in connection with the events at the West German embassy in April 1975.

  Part 2

  Another Life

  1

  Thursday evening, November 30, 1989

  It turned out to be an alarm with a number of obstacles, and considering that it also turned out to be a murder it was unfortunate that it took so long before the police arrived at the scene. In the normal course of things, it might have been possible to save the life of the victim, or at least arrest the culprit and thus avoid a lot of inconvenience. But things were not normal, and so it turned out the way it did. At Stockholm Police Department’s command center it was agreed, however, that it was not Charles XII’s fault.

  A few days earlier the legal department of that same police agency had granted permits for two different demonstrations, and both decisions had been preceded by considerable legal and mental exertion and extensive strategic and tactical consideration.

  In the first application to arrive, various “patriotically minded organizations and individual Swedish citizens”—which was how they described themselves—wanted to “pay homage to the Swedish heroking on the anniversary of his death.” This was to occur in the form of a torchlight procession from Humlegården to the statue of Charles XII in Kungsträdgården, with massed standards, the laying of a wreath and speeches at the statue itself, and the whole thing was planned to start at 1900 hours and be finished at 2100 hours at the latest.

  The very next day another application arrived. A number of political youth organizations, representing with one exception all of the parties in parliament, wanted to conduct “a broad, popular manifestation against xenophobia and racism.” So far so good. But for reasons that were not completely clear, in any case not evident from their request, the intention was to conduct this demonstration on that very same Thursday, the thirtieth of November, between 1900 and 2200 hours. There would be a gathering in Humlegården, a march down Birger Jarlsgatan and up Hamngatan, concluding “with speeches and a joint proclamation” at Sergels Torg, all of 400 yards from the statue of Charles XII in Kungsträdgården.

  As far as political opinions were concerned, the participants in the two demonstrations were, to put it mildly, dissimilar, to the point where they could easily be sorted into two different piles based solely on their appearance. And this nonexistent common interest would evidently be expressed at the same time and the same place. The sharp minds in the legal department were struck by this. In brief, trickery was suspected, and in order to prevent difficulties, the good old police rule of thumb was followed to separate even presumptive troublemakers.

  This plan primarily affected the group of the “patriotically minded.” There was no question of playing political favorites—of course, no official authority could support such things. The decision was made solely on the basis of police department estimates of the relative size of the two groups. Democratic decisions were after all in many respects made based on a question of size, and the friends of the fatherland were considerably fewer in number. As the chief inspector on the detective squad in charge of estimates summarized the matter, it concerned at the most a few hundred, “a few old queers from the Finnish Winter War plus their younger, skinhead comrades,” which was not “very much to hang on the Christmas tree if it’s democracy we’re talking about here.”

  So true, so true. And in a time of severely strained police resources the patriotically minded demonstrators were thus granted permission to gather at the pier below the Grand Hotel at 1800 hours, walk in formation about a hundred yards to the statue of Charles XII, where of course it was fine both to lay wreaths and to give speeches, provided that the event was over at 1900 hours at the latest and that the crowd then “dispersed in good order.” They could even sing the national anthem if they wanted to, despite the fact that, probably due to a simple omission, this activity had not been included in the application.

  On the other hand, they could forget about the torches. “You don’t really think we’re dim-witted,” as the same chief inspector remarked in explaining the rejection when one of the organizers phoned him to discuss that particular detail. And as far as flag-waving was concerned, it was assumed that this would be kept within reasonable bounds.

  On the other hand, because the participants in “the broad popular manifestation,” exactly as promised and according to a similar police department calculation, could be assumed to amount to several thousand, based on the same democratic principles the authorities had been considerably more generous. On the condition that the gathering really commenced at 1900 hours, and in no event earlier, it was fine for the demonstration to set off from Humlegården. And the demonstration could end at Sergels Torg if the crowd took Kungsgatan and Sveavägen instead of Birger Jarlsgatan and Hamngatan.

  All available police personnel were then called up, and to be on the safe side they were reinforced with a few hundred men from around the country. An “iron ring” was formed around Kungsträdgården, and the route of the counterdemonstrators was secured yard by yard and well supplied with mobile reserves behind the front lines. Literally everything was being done, it was being done by the book and in the best way, and already by eight p.m. complete chaos prevailed in Stockholm City: rock throwing, window breaking, battered cars … swollen lips, bloody noses, black eyes, broken arms, scraped knees, even a knife cut. Ther
e were howling sirens, flashing blue lights, yet at the command center they managed to keep a straight face when in the midst of it all an elderly woman phones and maintains that someone is murdering her neighbor.

  Between 2005 and 2020 hours, she calls the emergency number 90 000 a total of three times. She is quickly transferred to the police command center. Already during the first call she sounds very upset but nonetheless she starts by saying in good order what her name is and where she lives: “Rådmansgatan … up by Engelbrekt Church, you know.” After that she says, verbatim, according to the police department’s time-logged recording of the conversation, “You’ve got to come at once. Someone is murdering my neighbor. I think he’s dying.”

  The female radio dispatcher tries to calm her as best she can and asks her to stay on the phone while she dispatches the alarm on the radio, but while she tries to find someone to send out, the call is cut off. Probably because the woman who called hung up.

  The next call comes at 2014 hours, and the old woman’s voice sounds close to tears. “You’ve got to come. You’ve got to come,” and in the midst of the general muddle that prevails this call too is cut off and no available patrol car has yet been reached.

  The third and final call comes at 2020. Now the woman is screaming loudly into the telephone that “the murderers are knocking on my door,” and this is the situation when detective inspector Bo Jarnebring has mercy on his colleague, the radio dispatcher, who has started to sound more and more stressed, takes the microphone out of its holder on the instrument panel, breaks his radio silence, and responds to the call from central command.

  Inspector Bo Jarnebring was a few miles from the center of events. At eight p.m. on Thursday the thirtieth of November, he had been sitting for a couple of hours along with a female colleague in one of the detective squad’s most discreet cars, keeping an eye on a restaurant fifty yards farther down the street. The first hour they had been accompanied by an additional surveillance vehicle, but then the growing chaos down in City had forced the officers to respond to more pressing assignments instead.

  Jarnebring and his partner were sitting there because of a tip that had come in the day before. This was, incidentally, the most common reason for anyone’s spending time in this way, and if any one of the growing number of bureaucrats in police headquarters ever got the notion to produce statistics on this activity as well, then he (for it was almost always a he) or (in exceptional cases) she would have discovered that as a rule the sitting was in vain. It was exactly like hunting or fishing, uncertainty and waiting were basically the whole idea, and whether or not you got anything it was, at least to start with, exciting enough.

  The catch that their informant had promised this time wasn’t bad either. According to the informant, who in the name of discretion lacked all identifying features but in reality was almost always a man with a criminal record, an internationally wanted Iranian drug dealer at the wholesale level would show up around six p.m. to have dinner and discuss a little business with a like-minded countryman.

  Jarnebring, who had neither been born yesterday nor recently fallen off a cart, had of course asked the informant why in such a case the Iranians would choose to hold this get-together at a restaurant that with good reason was known for its Swedish home cooking, but the informant had an answer: “Saddam is an ace at not giving himself away, likes sort of exotic settings you know, and besides he’s crazy about Swedish meatballs.”

  Sounds almost too good to be true, Jarnebring had thought. Because he was also an incorrigible optimist and interested in both hunting and fishing, he had been sitting there for the past two hours. The last half hour, however, had felt a little long, and to get a break from the tedium he had turned on the police radio to listen to the action playing out down in City.

  Despite the cacophony on the radio he had also heard the call about an ongoing violent crime in an apartment on Rådmansgatan, but because he was familiar with the address and those who lived there—a nice block with conscientious middle-aged, middle-class residents—he understood at once that the person who had called was certainly an older woman who would not get worked up unnecessarily.

  He still thought that when the second call came in, but he also noted that the voice of his female colleague on the radio was starting to sound a trifle dejected. So when a short time later she dispatched the call for the third time, now actually sounding a little beleaguered, he sighed, took the radio microphone from its holder, and replied.

  “Jarnebring here,” he said into the microphone. “Can I help you, little lady?” What meatballs, he thought sourly.

  So the Iranian lived on, and presumably he and the informant were sitting in a completely different part of the city chowing down couscous and roast goat, or whatever that sort usually ate, while they laughed their heads off at all the dumb cops cultivating their hemorrhoids in the worn-down front seat of an increasingly chilly unmarked car.

  “Let’s forget about the gook,” said Jarnebring to his colleague. “Drive to Rådmansgatan.”

  She merely nodded without answering. She looked surly, thought Jarnebring. Probably because of that “little lady” remark. She was rather good-looking, if you liked dark-haired ladies. Personally he preferred blondes. And the occasional redhead, provided she was a genuine redhead. Although of course they weren’t that common, he thought.

  But she could drive a car, he had to admit that, for in just over two minutes and after two U-turns she had taken them from the west end of Tegnérgatan to the address in question on Rådmansgatan. And en route he had obtained an entry code to the outside door from the “little lady” at the command center. On the other hand she had not produced a key to the apartment door, but he could take care of that with the help of the bag of police accessories he kept in the storage compartment of the car.

  “Let’s do this,” said Jarnebring as she stopped the car outside the entryway on Rådmansgatan. “I’ll take the walkie-talkie and check the apartment, and you kill anyone who tries to sneak out onto the street.”

  Now she actually smiled. She really is good-looking, thought Jarnebring as he disappeared through the entryway with his bag and the walkie-talkie. While he was sprinting up the stairs he suddenly felt more exhilarated than he had in a long time.

  His delight was short-lived. Jarnebring stopped at the third floor to get an overview: rectangular stairwell, four apartments, two doors at an angle to each other at each end. The name of the victim was Eriksson and his door was farthest away. To the left of it was an ornate brass plate with the surname of the person who had called central command and introduced herself as “Mrs. Westergren, Ingrid Westergren.”

  Jarnebring tiptoed up to the door to Eriksson’s apartment. Silent as a grave, not a movement anywhere. He carefully tried the door handle. The door was locked, and when he bent down to peep in through the mail slot, at the same time as he loosened the holster strap that secured his service weapon, in the corner of his eye he saw a faint dent not half an inch long in the dark glazed wood on Mrs. Westergren’s door. Because the dent was at a level with Eriksson’s door handle and the door lacked a doorstop, he realized at once what had happened.

  The perpetrator or perpetrators had not tried to break into Mrs. Westergren’s, as she had told the radio dispatcher. On the other hand it was probable that someone had thrown open Eriksson’s door in great haste, whereupon his door handle had struck Mrs. Westergren’s door. Without thinking about it, he buttoned the strap on his pistol handle again, carefully opened the mail slot slightly, and peeked in.

  He had done this a hundred times before during his life as a police officer, and on a few occasions it had struck him that this might just be his last action on the job, because he might find himself looking straight into the barrels of a shotgun. But he did not think that way very often; fortunately he did not have that disposition. And it hadn’t happened now. What he saw was good enough.

  There was a light on in the hall. Straight ahead was a living room behi
nd a pair of open, glazed double doors.

  In the living room there was a couch, and in front of the couch a coffee table, approximately twenty or twenty-five feet from the outside door. The coffee table had been overturned and there was a lot of blood on the light parquet floor. Squeezed between the couch and the coffee table was a motionless man on his stomach. It was not a comfortable position, and you didn’t need to be a police officer like Jarnebring to figure out that the man had not chosen to lie down there voluntarily.

  Oh shit, thought Jarnebring, straightening up. People never can behave decently to each other.

  Then he tapped out the hinges on the door and went into the apartment.

  First he made sure the victim really was dead. He was, even if he did not appear to have been dead for very long. He had bled heavily from both his nose and mouth. His shirt was soaked through with blood from a wound that seemed to be high up on the left side of his back.

  Probably stabbed with a knife, thought Jarnebring. Lungs, heart, major organs were penetrated; trying to resuscitate him would be wasted effort, he thought.

  Then he straightened up, drew his service weapon, and carefully searched through the apartment to make certain that the victim was not only dead but also alone at home. Three rooms, hall, kitchen, bathroom, separate toilet, a large clothes closet, a total of about a thousand square feet, strikingly clean and neat, and there was nothing to suggest anything other than that the victim had had sole use of the apartment.