The Hand that Trembles

by Kjell Eriksson

  But Sven-Arne had also seen something deeply tragic in his uncle. The adults had quarrelled about Budapest in Grandmother Agnes’s kitchen. The fact was that the people of Hungary were being trampled.

  Sven-Arne chose a different path. He joined SSU, which pleased his father but gave rise to a lifelong conflict with Ante.

  Now he just wanted some peace and quiet, to work in the garden, to teach the children at St Mary’s, get his shave at Ismael’s once a week, chitchat with his neighbours on the street, have a beer and drinks with Lester. Nothing else. He had no passions left.

  Lies! He could touch the lie, it lay like a swollen cadaver before him, stinking, but as a politician he could close his nostrils. He had done that so many times before. At the budget preparations, in pre-election discussions, at county and judicial meetings, in Poland on the fuck-and-drink trip underwritten by the Skansa company in return for which they were allowed to buy land at bargain prices, on the way to New Zealand when Lisbet Manner vomited on the plane, started to cry and became emotional. Conservative bitch, he had thought then, but pushed it away. Once they arrived, more sobbing and tears, but he had held his tongue rather than reveal the whole spectacle.

  He should have dragged everything into the light, but shadowed it instead, playing along like the power politician that he was. How often had he not kept silent with the truth in order to protect his own position and due to his loyalty to the party? And perhaps also out of consideration for a political system that appeared to be the only one possible.

  But deep inside – this was a conclusion he had arrived at after many years of pondering in India – he had not wanted to grant Ante that he was right when he thundered about corrupt politicians bought by the capitalists, even if he agreed with much of what his uncle had to say. It would have been too painful. The decision he made as a fourteen-year-old to get involved would have been a gigantic mistake. The fact was also that Ante’s dream society did not seem so tempting. The constant, hardened defence of eastern socialism undermined Ante’s legitimacy. He disqualified himself, even if Sven-Arne understood that Ante in his heart and soul did not approve of either Stalin or Gomulka. What Ante was defending was something else, the right of the worker and the dream of revenge.

  You made it so damn easy for yourself, Ante! You placed yourself outside, leant on a Bulgarian miner who ended up blowing himself up, you sang your old songs and you shovelled snow. You did actually shovel snow. You put your gloves down on the ridge of the roof so that I would have a warm place to sit.

  But you couldn’t save the republic. You blamed the governments of Western Europe while your Communists were advocating the same superpower politics. How many times hadn’t they gone over this subject?

  1956. How old you were already – forty-one years – used up in a way that not even Grandmother or Rosberg were. Your movements were often impulsive but in a reflexive way, as if nerves and muscles allowed themselves to be steered by old, accustomed signals but did not reflect an inner life. The spark you showed was habitual, sadly antiquated.

  You were strong – no one in our family could measure up to you – but at the same time inexplicably weak. Back then there was an oomph in your movements, it was reminiscent of a time when physical labour gave a man the legitimacy to speak for many.

  I understood all this – others saw only your impetuousness, your anger and dogmatism. You became a clown.

  The years after the Spanish War were hard. No one wanted you. You were a skilled plumber but got no work. You were – like the others who joined up – blacklisted. Anders Diös laughed right in your face, as did Lindgren and Quiet Kalle. As Europe was choking under the Fascism that you had tried to fight, you were being mocked.

  You became a farmhand and felled trees in the forest in the winter. It was not a good fit for you. You wanted noise and masses of people around you. A farmer in Rasbo – even if he was decent enough – was nothing for you. You were widely known as ‘the Bolshevik.’

  The royal family and nobles gathered at the county manor house. There were hunting parties and dinners. You knew what they were toasting to, the table servants reported it back to you.

  You refused to work as a beater at the great elk hunt.

  You lived in a tumbledown cottage among other tumbledown cottages. The old woman Björk and her daughter in Sandbacken gave you cheese, eggs, and rugs. There was never enough of anything, your large body begged for more, and the floors were cold. You held Björk in high regard. In her there was nothing of the blood-red that you were fighting for, only humility, but also a warmth that must have saved you from the deep despair you must have felt.

  Then it turned. In 1943 the forest was a terrible place to work but you were warmed by the news from the eastern front. The manor house dinners did not decrease in frequency but the intoxication of victory was transformed into a fear of the red hordes that threatened to roll back the German war machine. How far it would reach was the question they anxiously posed.

  You triumphed in 1944, agitating in Film, where the party received twenty-six percent of the vote, you got a job with a smaller construction manager firm, you were put on foundation-laying jobs in Almtuna and Svartbäcken, moved into town. The tide had turned.

  You fell in love unexpectedly. Ann-Marie, who lasted eight years, even managed to get you to learn to dance.

  Is this what you are going to cover in your memoirs? If so, they could be good. If you could start in the poor cottage kitchen of the forties, when desperation overcame you, to the sound of a weaving loom and the rattle from the neighbour’s kitchen in Sandbacken, among the only confidantes you had, and then look back, to Spain, to the hovel on Dragarbrunn where Emil, Erik, and you grew up, then it could be really good. But I know you, Ante, you want to get even.

  You neither can nor want to write some sugary working-class epos, because how would the Bulgarian miner fit in? There would be no place for your never-ceasing fury, it would fight itself free and destroy the inveterately sentimental. No, it would be overwhelmingly sentimental, because in actuality Ante was a romantic, something that Sven-Arne had pointed out on many occasions but that Ante had always dismissed with an angry snort.

  Sven-Arne Persson was in agony as never before. His entire life – a mirror image of his uncle’s – was mercilessly exposed, and it was hardly an encouraging sight.

  ‘That bastard,’ he said out loud.

  For a long time, Sven-Arne had wanted to become like Ante, but also not. He wanted to be, if not loved, then at least liked, and Ante was neither. Sven-Arne wanted to win but Ante had always bet on the wrong horse, and what irritated Sven-Arne the most was that his uncle appeared to favour the losers.

  He sat down on the bed and tried to think clearly. He laid out the problems as if in a numbered list: First, he had been recognised. Rumours that the former county commissioner was alive – and how he lived! – had probably already started to circulate in Uppsala. Second, Elsa had discovered Ante’s duplicity. Third, Elsa was badly injured, lying unconscious in a hospital. Fourth, his situation in Bangalore would become untenable – journalists would soon appear. Fifth, Sven-Arne Persson was dead. He was John Mailer. He had no passport and could not leave India.

  These were the known facts. Then came some hypotheses: Elsa knew of Ante’s plans to write his memoirs but did not know what they might uncover. Or did she? Was that why she had become so upset? Lastly, if Ante felt that it would benefit him and his survivors then he would tell all.

  He lay down, stared up at the ceiling, and went through the seven items. After half an hour of deliberation, he got up and went out to make two calls, the first to Delhi and the second to a former colleague in Sweden. A man who did not hesitate to make himself guilty of manipulation if it were to the benefit of the party or himself, a man who Sven-Arne Persson did not believe had ever planted a tree his whole life, a man who had had enough of scandal and would probably do everything to avoid yet another.

  After the calls he felt ashamed.
He thought of Lester and the others at Lal Bagh.

  EIGHTEEN

  Berglund thought so much about his old murder case that his head started to hurt. An old headache becomes like new, he thought, and recalled all the days, evenings, and nights he had turned Nils Gottfrid Dufva’s life – and above all, death – inside out.

  Nils Dufva’s death was due to blunt trauma to the head. A single blow would probably have sufficed, Kalle Modin observed. He was still in service then, before he was fired for ongoing alcohol abuse. That was actually the last service he performed in the name of law enforcement.

  The strike had caught on the left side of the head, pushed in the skull bone, and caused a massive haemorrhage. Modin thought that Dufva had not died immediately, but later during the night.

  When he was found – about twenty-four hours after the murder – he was lying prone on the floor, in front of his wheelchair. The remote control was in his hand. The TV was on.

  The murder received a great deal of attention: The brutal slaying of a wheelchair-bound eighty-five-year-old was especially disturbing. The Letters to the Editor section of Upsala Nya Tidning was filled with agitated voices and the newspaper took the unusual step of interviewing a notorious thug, Runar Karlsson, who had been apprehended for assault a thirteenth time. ‘I only beat people who have a chance of defending themselves,’ he communicated proudly from the Norrtälje prison.

  If Dufva had been sitting at his desk, and not in front of the television in the living room, he might have had a better chance of defending himself. In the uppermost, unlocked drawer of the desk there was a loaded army revolver, a Luger. No weapon license could be found, but Dufva could no longer be consulted.

  A burglary was immediately suspected, but nothing appeared to have been touched or removed from the house. This did not rule out that the intruder may have originally been intent on robbing the old man, but ended up overcome by panic and fleeing the scene.

  The front door was closed but not locked when the man’s niece – actually his first cousin twice removed – came by to visit him. She did so almost daily, although not on the day of the murder. The woman, who was in her twenties, was his closest relative in Uppsala. He had a cousin in Malmö and another who lived in southern Germany. The cousin in Skåne was seventy and had not met Nils Dufva for over twenty years. They had no contact whatsoever. It was the cousin who lived in Pforzheim who had arranged for his granddaughter, Jenny Holgersson, to look in on Nils.

  There were a couple of clear prints on the glass pane of the outer door. The same fingers had left prints on an old-fashioned oak sideboard in the living room. It appeared that someone had pressed hard with the palm of their hand on the polished door of the sideboard. Berglund had always suspected that the owner of the hand had stumbled, or lost their balance, and steadied himself with his hand. In addition, the rug under the sideboard was noticeably wrinkled.

  In the hall they secured the very unclear print from a men’s shoe, right foot, size ten.

  That was all.

  The motive was unknown. The most likely explanation was still a failed robbery attempt. There was around two thousand kronor in a kitchen drawer. There were few items of any value, a gold watch for long and faithful service, some antique sables, a set of tin plates from the seventeenth century, and three gold rings in a case in one of the desk drawers. There were also five medals, of which one originated from Finland and two from Germany.

  In a small room off the living room there remained that which the intruder had probably been searching for: one of the most distinguished coin collections. The value was appraised at over three million kronor.

  The entire collection was to go to the Uppland museum, according to Dufva’s will. Everything else – the house, furnishings, close to two million in a savings account in SEB, a stock portfolio worth almost as much – was to be shared equally between Jenny Holgersson and a scholarship fund that Dufva had written up the statutes for a couple of years earlier. It was an annual scholarship of at least 30,000 kronor for the ‘person or organisation who best serves to further the independence of the nation.’

  For three months Berglund had basically spent all of his time on the case. Thereafter, it became more sporadic. Most of the murders that the Uppsala police had investigated in recent times had been solved, even if in one case, ‘the man from Dakar,’ they could not track down the perpetrator.

  But Dufva’s killer was still on the loose. And it was Berglund’s case.

  He sat at the window with a couple of folders in front of him. This was not really in accordance with regulations. The material was not supposed to leave police headquarters, but when Berglund pointed out that perhaps it was not completely kosher to peruse internal documents in a hospital room, Ottosson had lightly waved it away.

  He had read everything, the forensic report, the interview transcripts, and everything else, several times.

  There were three witnesses whom Berglund found trustworthy. Dufva’s neighbour on the other side of the street had seen a car stop and park outside Dufva’s house sometime between eight o’clock and half past eight on the night of the crime. She had only glanced out the kitchen window since she was preoccupied with preparations for a birthday celebration, and she had not seen more of the driver other than that he was a man. Later, when she went out with the dog at around nine, the car was gone.

  Berglund had browsed through car models with the woman and finally she had picked out a Saab 9000, a ‘dark blue shiny car.’

  Shortly before eight, a younger couple who were walking from their home on Tegelgatan and turned down toward Arosgatan had seen a dark car come driving up Norbyvägen. ‘Much too fast, there are so many children biking on these streets,’ the young woman had said.

  They were almost certain it was a dark Saab, but neither of them had seen the driver nor been able to tell if he was alone in the car.

  Early on in the case Berglund had decided that this was the car of the killer. It also fit the time frame. The pathologist had determined Dufva’s time of death to be between seven and nine in the evening.

  This was where the case stood at the end of 1993, when Berglund reluctantly de-prioritised it. Nothing new had emerged since then. Everyone at the station was convinced it would never be solved, unless something extraordinary occurred.

  What Berglund had been hoping for all these years was the fingers on the sideboard. Perhaps the perpetrator would be brought in on other charges, burglary for example, and then be tied to the old man’s murder.

  Or was the crime a one-time act that would not be followed by others? There were those who said it was the work of an amateur. To drive over and park in full view indicated terrible planning. Moreover, it was perplexing that nothing had been stolen. Dufva had immediately been as good as dead, no one had heard any noise, so why not continue and search the house?

  Panic, Berglund thought. Perhaps the intention had been to temporarily silence the old man, to muzzle him and take time in picking out the valuables. And then he died. One blow on the head had been enough. The unwilling murderer had fled the scene in a panic.

  Five years after the murder, Sammy Nilsson had come into Berglund’s office. He held a book in his hand.

  ‘Turn to page 233,’ he said.

  Berglund looked at the title, then turned to the page. The name ‘Nils Dufva’ was highlighted in yellow.

  ‘An unusual name,’ said Sammy Nilsson. ‘I read it last night and jumped. Is that our friend from Kungsgärdet with the crushed skull?’

  ‘What is it about?’

  Sammy Nilsson explained that Nils Dufva was listed as one of the Swedes who had tried to rebuild the Nazi movement in Sweden after the Second World War. He had played a prominent role.

  ‘If he was a Nazi after the war, then he was probably one before and after as well,’ Sammy Nilsson said.

  ‘There are more Uppsala residents in here,’ Berglund exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, a furniture dealer, a builder, and a lieutenant a
t the regiment.’

  ‘That was the one, I’ve shopped there,’ Berglund went on. ‘We bought a dining table there in the sixties. If I had known …’

  ‘That was nothing they advertised,’ Sammy said. ‘“Buy the Himmler sofa” is not exactly a catchy slogan.’

  ‘He’s listed in here as “employed in defence”. What does that mean? Did he work in the warehouses of S1, or what?’

  ‘It’s mysterious. I think I remember him as having worked in an office before retirement,’ Sammy Nilsson said.

  ‘But we didn’t find anything at his home …’

  Berglund broke off. He recalled the medals from Germany.

  After that he put down a great deal of effort in trying to chart out Nils Dufva’s earlier life. He even contacted the author of the book that Sammy Nilsson had stuck in his hand.

  The author, a historian from Göteborg, had no further information about Dufva other than that during the fifties and sixties he had probably been employed by some organisation within the defence department, maybe the military information service.

  When Berglund wanted to keep researching this he came to a dead stop. Dufva was not listed in the defence registers. No one wanted to or could give him more meat on the bone. One theory was that Dufva had been subcontracted by the defence department through the private company who employed him.

  The company was called Bohlin’s Agency and was dissolved in 1989. When Berglund started to delve into what Bohlin’s Agency had worked with and who had managed it, he found an August Bohlin, deceased that same year.

  His son, Jerker Bohlin, who worked in Florida, had told him over the phone that his father had worked with tax declarations, accounting, and wills. He had not been a lawyer or accountant, but had always kept busy. If the company had been hired by the defence department he did not know, but found it hard to believe.