Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend: a Leo Junker case

by Christoffer Carlsson (Translated by Michael Gallagher)

  ‘Good,’ Davidsson says, coughing again. ‘I’ve caught another bloody Midsummer cold. My assessment of the whole situation would be to say that the car is our best lead. We’ll have to distribute the picture to our colleagues around the country, and ask people around here whether they saw it. That’s if it’s even worth making the effort before the National Crime Squad arrive.’

  ‘What kind of bloody attitude is that?’ Söderlund stares at him. ‘This is a fucking colleague we’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, okay.’ He avoids her stare. ‘That’s true.’

  Silence. Söderlund is still staring at him. Everyone knows that this case already belongs to NCS. All of them want to be absolved of their responsibilities. They all want to go home.

  ‘Tove,’ Davidsson says, when no one can bear the silence anymore. ‘You went through his belongings, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you fill us in, please?’

  ‘It’s not immediately obvious what he was up to.’ Reaching into her bag, she pulls out copies of the papers from the packing box. ‘He might have been the type who spend their retirement trying to clear up unsolved crimes.’

  She gives a brief summary of the events detailed in the documents in the box: four serious violent crimes, all of which took place in or around Stockholm. A fatal stabbing in Farsta, 1997; a rape in Enskede four years later; a murder on John Ericssonsgatan; and notes relating to an attempted murder in central Stockholm in 2005.

  Davidsson shuffles the documents.

  ‘Where’s the rest of this one?’ He’s flipping through one of the piles of papers. ‘The others are heaving with material, even psychiatric analyses and witness interviews, yet for this attempted murder from 2005 I can’t find anything other than this memo. Not even the first incident report.’

  ‘That was it,’ says Tove. ‘That’s what’s so weird about it. We don’t even know who the victim was.’

  Davidsson raises his eyebrows, before pulling out the memo.

  ‘A Rodrigo Serraz writes the memo at three minutes past four in the afternoon, on the tenth of May 2005. A woman of around thirty attacks a man twice her age on Vasagatan. The victim manages, according to his own account, to catch a glimpse in his peripheral vision of a person coming at him with something in their hand. He parries the object but is stabbed in the side. He then struggles to defend himself until passers-by intervene and call the police, who arrive on the scene within two minutes. An ambulance takes the man to Sabbatsberg Hospital and a police car takes the woman to Kornberg’s remand prison.’ He looks up. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Could it be,’ Brandén says, ‘that the perpetrator of one of these crimes found out that Levin was working on the case, suspects that something’s up, and fears that the truth will out?’

  ‘And then shoots him, you mean?’ Davidsson says. ‘I see where you’re coming from.’

  ‘But if that’s the case, why take the mobile phone, computer, and scanner?’ says Söderlund.

  ‘He said it, didn’t he,’ Brandén nods towards Davidsson. ‘To make a bit of cash while he was at it.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ Davidsson suddenly looks pleased with himself, having received some support for his theory. ‘Go on, please.’

  ‘There were a number of books in the box, too,’ says Tove. ‘Crime and espionage novels. And this.’

  She shows them the Polaroid: the man, the woman, the child, and, on the reverse: Me, Marika, and Eva, spring ’78.

  ‘He’s so young in that.’ Söderlund’s voice is thin, so very thin. ‘Just thirty, thirty-one, or something.’

  ‘It’s taken in the same room as the case was in,’ Tove says slowly. ‘In the house at the crime scene, I mean.’

  ‘The same house?’ says Davidsson.

  ‘The same room,’ Tove stresses.

  ‘Well whaddya know? This is starting to get weird. His family — what were their names?’ He turns the photograph over. ‘Marika and Eva. Are they from here? I don’t recognise them. No, hang on.’ Davidsson squints, holding the photograph so close that the tip of his nose nudges against it. ‘Fuck me, isn’t … Hold on.’

  ‘Eva A.,’ he says. ‘A-something. She’s got a funny surname. Where the hell have I seen her?’

  ‘She’s dead,’ says Tove. ‘And her maiden name was Eva Alderin.’

  Davidsson looks disappointed.

  ‘You might have mentioned that?’

  ‘It’s in Levin’s biography, which, I assume, you have read.’

  ‘Of course,’ Davidsson mumbles, still holding the photo. ‘Eva Alderin. That’s right.’ He nods twice, to himself, informed by his own memory. ‘So tragic. It was a car crash, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘That’s what Sunesson thought, too.’

  ‘A night one December,’ Davidsson continues. ‘I was a new constable then. She’d been to pick up her daughter from a friend’s house and lost control of the car, skidded off the icy road. The girl survived the crash.’ He drops the photo. ‘The mother did not.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Brandén says. ‘What a tragedy. Not surprising that he moved after that.’

  ‘Are we sure that her death isn’t connected to Levin’s?’ asks Tove.

  ‘No, we certainly aren’t.’ Davidsson scratches his cheek. ‘We can look at the material detailing the accident, but as far as I recall there was nothing unusual. Sometimes an accident is just an accident. I’m going to talk to my friend Dan, too — he knows everything about everyone round here.’ Another cough. ‘And we’ll concentrate on the car, and the man inside it. Someone else must have seen or heard something. Make sure NCS get all of this,’ he goes on, addressing nobody in particular. Eventually, when nobody responds, Tove makes a note on her pad.

  ‘There was one more thing,’ says Brandén.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘One witness we spoke to had noticed something that might be of interest.’

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘A young man, Fredrik Oskarsson, lives on the other side of the wood, at a guess about half a mile away, as the crow flies, from the crime scene. Around half-nine on the evening of the eighteenth, he’s out in the garden, putting his parasol down. That’s when he sees a man walking along the edge of the woods.’

  ‘And this man,’ says Davidsson, ‘he doesn’t happen to be waving a firearm or anything like that?’

  ‘No. Just walking.’ Brandén looks up. ‘That was it.’

  ‘So that was that,’ says Davidsson.

  ‘Yes. I made a note of it.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  Davidsson blinks; he’s tired.

  Moments later, Söderlund leaves the room, on her way to catch a train. She seems relieved at being able to leave Bruket, and hopeful about not having to come back. Tove looks down at her notepad. Without thinking, the pen in her hand has traversed the page: Beautiful things, howe’er begotten, in this place all soon forgotten.

  ‘You still here?’ Brandén has got changed and is standing in the doorway with a rucksack on one shoulder. He takes two steps into the room and glances at the papers fanned out in front of Tove, then at the open window. ‘It’s like a sauna in here. Same every summer.’

  She wonders how old Brandén is, whether he has kids. Perhaps.

  ‘I was thinking,’ he says, before changing his mind. ‘I looked at the duty rosters we got hold of. He, Levin, was with Internal Affairs last year.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘When … when Markus …’

  It’s harder than it sounds, pretending not to know what someone’s talking about, especially when what they’re saying puts a knot in your stomach.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I wondered, if, er, well, if you knew him.’ Brandén’s eyes glide off towards the window, something invisible just behind her. ‘Or knew of him.’

  ‘I never met him.’


  Brandén seems to be trying to work out what that means.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Listen, I … I really am sorry about what happened to Markus. I didn’t know him, he was much older than me, but I knew who he was. He was a good man.’

  Tove stares at the desk in front of her.

  ‘Mm hmm.’

  From the corner of her eye, she sees Brandén’s still standing there, waiting for the conversation to continue, before eventually turning to leave.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ he says.

  ‘Mm hmm.’

  In truth, to begin with she kept as far away as possible from anything that had to do with Markus’ death. She knew that the events in Visby harbour had been widely reported, but she had only read the headlines. He’d been with the SWAT team a year when he was shot dead.

  She remembers how he changed. The men of the SWAT team soon grew into their roles. In the National Police Authority’s strict hierarchy, Markus’ group was the most renowned, the most in-demand. He was different, somehow. Or maybe she was different, and that had changed her view of him. Maybe it wasn’t her brother that had changed, but she herself who — by virtue of her membership of the force, and her lower standing in that same hierarchy — had begun to see her brother, his opinions and values, and even the wider world from a new perspective.

  Charles Levin was in charge of Internal Affairs at the time of Markus’ death, although she didn’t know that then.

  It wasn’t until later that she could face reading about it. Levin featured in the case notes: his exact witness statements, with a well-balanced signature; his carefully chosen words spoken during a supplementary interview, conducted in the aftermath of the incident.

  Charles Levin was ever-present; always behind the curtain, just out of the limelight.

  It’s almost dark by the time Tove arrives home, gets undressed, takes a long shower, and thinks about the dead policeman at Alvavägen 10. When she comes out to the kitchen, her phone is on the table with a missed call showing on the display.

  ‘A year ago,’ Mum says when Tove calls her back.

  ‘What’s a year ago?’

  ‘The interring.’

  Mum sniffles.

  ‘I know,’ says Tove.

  Getting him down here took time, and Mum insisted that he should be laid to rest here. He’d been dead three weeks by the time the funeral took place.

  She asks whether Tove remembers that last summer with Markus, when they had their leave at the same time and spent two weeks at home in Bruket. Tove doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Is it a good line?’ Mum asks. ‘I think it’s a bit crackly. Hello? Can you hear me?’

  In the darkness, the phone in her hand, Tove crumples slowly into a heap on the floor.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘I’m here.’

  I push the buzzer on the intercom, and the ringtone beeps out from the speaker. The doors are not open. It’s seven thirty in the evening, and the staff might already be dreaming about tomorrow.

  ‘St Göran’s secure unit,’ says a gruff voice.

  ‘This is Leo Junker.’

  ‘Leo. Well I never. The night before Midsummer.’ The sound of slurping from a coffee cup, of a magazine being put to one side. ‘Come in, come in.’

  There’s a clicking sound, and the doors open in front of me.

  I wish that I’d been able to leave town without doing this first, but I feel like I’ve no choice.

  St Göran’s secure unit is home to men and women who are guilty of crimes that they themselves do not comprehend. That, at least, is the verdict of the courts. The premises are cool, quiet, and white, each corridor isolated by heavy doors with code locks.

  ‘Leo Junker,’ Plit says as he approaches me, coffee cup in hand. ‘It’s been a while.’

  He chuckles. Plit is a former prison guard and a great bear of a man with a shaven head, freckled skin, and a red goatee.

  ‘I’m going away first thing tomorrow,’ I say, ‘and I’d like to see him before I go. Is he awake?’

  ‘John Grimberg is almost always awake.’

  We head towards the first of the heavy doors.

  ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s got used to his new medication now, so he might be slightly less unpleasant to be around, but he’s not someone I’d want to go for a drink with. Not unarmed, anyway.’

  That makes me laugh. We stop at the door, and I stand with my arms outstretched while Plit pats me down.

  ‘Maybe you ought to know,’ he says, ‘that he’s asked for a move.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Somewhere with less security, but that’s not going to be approved. He might soon be able to get parole though, despite the best efforts of Westin, who is middle management here.’

  ‘Isn’t it called day-release?’

  ‘Same thing, isn’t it? I heard about the murdered cop, by the way,’ he continues, kneeling in front of me, rubbing his coarse hands down my thighs. ‘Is it right that it was Charles Levin?’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘One of your colleagues was down here this afternoon. I think it had just flashed up on the intranet.’

  He gets to his feet and inspects my shoulders, back, and waist. At chest height, in line with my breast pocket, he stops. ‘If I ask to see that tube, you’re not going to be able to take it in with you. Isn’t it time you knocked it on the head?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Plit opens his mouth, as if about to say something else, but then seems to change his mind. He turns and enters the code on the keypad instead, and holds up his card against the door’s little black reader. The door clicks.

  ‘Charles Levin. Fucking hell.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Not exactly. He interviewed me a couple of times, back in my hooligan days. He was a sly bastard, could wheedle the truth out of you. I remember thinking that I never knew what was going on in his head, or what he was going to ask next.’

  ‘Levin used to be around here, right? He’d come here now and again?’

  Plit opens the door to the visitors’ room.

  ‘There are some questions I can’t answer, however much I’d like to. Grab a seat — I’ll get John.’

  John Grimberg was my best friend, once. Maybe he still is, I don’t know.

  We grew up together in Salem and we shared a special bond, until it snapped, when I was sixteen. Our paths diverged, and I thought we’d never see each other again. And, if it hadn’t been for Grim himself taking the initiative to step back into my life, a little less than a year ago, we probably never would have.

  While I had joined the police, Grim had cultivated a criminal career and an addiction that left him in the gutter. The thing that had brought him back up was his gift: his talent for making other people go up in smoke.

  He made a living from providing people in the underworld with new identities, and was living under an assumed name himself — he had made John Grimberg disappear.

  When we did come across one another again, towards the end of last summer, he tried to kill me. He failed.

  Now he’s a resident of St Göran’s, but if he were to disappear again, I know — and he knows that I know — that he would be gone for good.

  Grim is brought in through the open door. He’s awake and alert. So alert, in fact, that I almost suspect he’s taken something. He might have done. Time and again, Grim succeeds in getting hold of lighters, cigarettes, and mobile phones. The box containing contraband possessions confiscated by staff is almost full. If you can get a lighter in, you can get other things in, like drugs. And weapons.

  He smiles when he sees me. Grim’s teeth are getting a bit yellow.

  ‘Well, happy Midsummer, I suppose,’ he says, after getting Plit to help him sit down and we’ve been left alone in the cool room.
>
  ‘Yes, happy Midsummer. How are things?’

  ‘I need a new phone charger.’ He stares out the window, and I feel a sudden pang inside me. In profile, he looks like he did when he was seventeen. ‘It broke, the one I had. They took it off me.’

  He’s been in here for over six months now, and during that time I’ve been visiting him regularly. I don’t really know why I do it — perhaps he is still my best friend. Over time, we’ve learnt how to deal with each other. I’ve learnt to ignore a lot of what he says.

  ‘It might take a while,’ I say. ‘I’m going away.’

  ‘On dut—’ Grim coughs, a deep wheezing noise. ‘Fucking cough. On duty?’

  ‘Not exactly. I’m off to Bruket for a few days.’

  ‘Bruket? Where’s that?’

  ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘What are you going to do there?’

  ‘Levin is dead.’

  Saying it feels strange.

  ‘Charles Levin?’

  ‘He moved down there in May, when he retired. And today, they found his body. They think it happened yesterday.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know, but they’re treating it as suspicious.’

  Grim’s mouth tightens to a little ‘o’. I can see the teeth in his bottom jaw.

  ‘So you — the master detective — are planning to head down and find out what happened?’

  I don’t know what I want, just that I can’t stay here. Perhaps I need to see him one last time. It might actually be that simple.

  ‘Do you remember last winter,’ I say, ‘when we talked about Levin? You said that he’d been here.’

  ‘You thought I was lying.’

  ‘But a couple of days later, I spoke to Levin about it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That he’d been here.’