The Sword of Justice

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘A toilet?’

  ‘Yes, WC, I mean.’

  ‘Winston Churchill?’

  ‘That’s it. That was his name. We’re related, by the way. My grandmother’s sister was married to one of his cousins. People like us are always related to each other.’

  ‘Your father gave Winston Churchill a musical box?’ Must have been another one, Bäckström thought.

  ‘Yes, unless Churchill gave it back to Daddy? Like that miserable old vicar. You’ll have to forgive me, Superintendent, but I don’t remember. I know Daddy met Churchill several times when he lived in England. Mostly at private functions, of course. I know he wrote about it in his diaries. And there was some English historian who wrote a book about Churchill, and he mentioned Daddy as well. Remind me before you go and I’ll dig it out for you. I saw it in one of the boxes in the library. Must have been fairly recently, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  Half an hour later, after Pyttan had drunk a third glass of champagne and refilled Bäckström’s glass, Bäckström left her. He was carrying a total of four diaries written by her father. Ordinary, fat notebooks with black wax-cloth covers. And a book about Winston Churchill written by an English historian. It had been a lovely meeting, Pyttan declared. As soon as she and Mario had sorted things out a bit, Superintendent Beck was welcome to come again. But at the moment she was run off her feet, there was so much to do. But soon things would be better. When all the furniture was in place and Mario had employed someone to take care of the practical details.

  She was thinking of getting a pet to keep her company when Mario was away. A dog, perhaps. Pyttan had always been fond of animals. She’d had loads of animals, ever since she was a little girl. Back home on the estate in Västergötland where she grew up there had been considerably more animals than people. Horses and cows, pigs and hens, cats and dogs … All sorts of other things too. Lots of those little animals.

  Bäckström understood exactly what she meant. He too was hugely fond of animals. For many years he had been particularly fond of parrots. He actually had several at the moment, and he couldn’t wish for better company. ‘The sort you can talk to,’ Bäckström specified. Who cares, as long as it works, he thought.

  Pyttan had never had a parrot. She had owned both canaries and budgerigars, but never a parrot that could talk. The closest she had come to that was a tame raven that she was given by her brothers, but he could only caw, and then he croaked shortly after that.

  ‘A parrot that can talk, that must be absolutely wonderful,’ Pyttan said, looking as if she really meant it.

  This is going to work out nicely, Bäckström thought as he sat in a taxi on the way to the police station in Solna.

  144

  As soon as Bäckström arrived at work he went and spoke to Nadja, who had some news for him. Interesting news about Mario Grimaldi and his new woman, Countess Astrid Elisabeth Hamilton, born 1940, who preferred to be called Elisabeth but was known to her friends and family by the nickname Pyttan. And born a countess, which was not entirely irrelevant under the current circumstances, but presumably Bäckström knew all this.

  ‘So what don’t I know, then?’

  What he didn’t know was that she already existed in the files of the Solna Police under the name Astrid Elisabeth Linderoth. Linderoth from her late husband, who had died five years ago. A highly respectable man who appeared to have spent his career as a doctor and professor of internal medicine at the Karolinska Institute.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Bäckström said, raising his hand to stop her. ‘Astrid Linderoth? Wasn’t that the name of that crazy old bag who was reported for animal cruelty?’

  The very same, Nadja confirmed. A month ago Astrid Elisabeth Linderoth had changed her name back to her old maiden name, Hamilton, at the same time that she and Mario Grimaldi had the banns read in advance of their marriage, and so far there hadn’t been any problem, not regarding the change of name, her title, or their impending marriage.

  ‘Apparently, they’re getting married tomorrow, on Midsummer’s Eve. At the Swedish Embassy in Rome.’

  ‘I see,’ Bäckström said. How the hell were we supposed to know about that? he thought.

  ‘That explains quite a lot. Not least that home visit García Gomez paid to Fridensdal, her neighbour, after she’d reported her for animal cruelty.’

  ‘What do we do about that, then?’ Bäckström asked. That nice young man who helped Mario put up his kitchen curtains, even though Mario was such a practical man, according to Pyttan, he thought.

  Nothing, according to Nadja. All the charges had been dropped. García Gomez was dead. Grimaldi was impossible to talk to. His wife-to-be was probably unaware of the help he had given her. But it was still interesting. Being able to answer the questions in one’s own mind.

  Nadja doesn’t give up, Bäckström thought. Someone really ought to talk to her about those gold teeth. Get them replaced with ordinary porcelain crowns. If nothing else, she should consider the risk of being mugged. It was like going around with a wad of notes in your mouth. But as he had just had a brilliant idea, it was high time for him to get down to work. Best to strike while the iron’s hot. Anyway, Pyttan’s probably already forgotten she’s going to Rome tomorrow to get married, he thought. He put what he needed in his old briefcase, called for a taxi and left the police station in Solna in something of a hurry.

  First, he stopped off at GeGurra’s office and left the books Pyttan had given him with GeGurra’s secretary. He also asked her to say that his investigations were proceeding, and that the provenance had been clarified. Albeit at the cost of replacing three generations of Bernadottes with two countesses and one count in the Hamilton family.

  Then he went home, calling Pyttan en route, and asking if he could stop by and drop off a present for her. Pyttan thought that sounded quite marvellous. She looked forward to seeing the superintendent again.

  Isak didn’t seem quite so perky. He just sat in his cage glaring at Bäckström as he put him in the back seat of the taxi for onward transportation to his new custodian.

  ‘Goodness, how cute!’ Pyttan said, clapping her hands in delight. ‘And such lovely colours! Are you quite sure you want to give him away, Superintendent?’

  Because Bäckström had several parrots, that wasn’t a problem at all. Even if this particular one was one of the most talented when it came to the gift of speech.

  ‘What’s his name?’ Pyttan asked.

  ‘Isak,’ Bäckström said. ‘But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you wanted to call him something else.’

  But Pyttan said there was no question of changing his name. On the contrary, she thought the name very fitting. You could see straight away why Isak was called Isak. And he looked exactly like old Goldman, the lawyer.

  It should be noted that Isak, to his credit, gave no grounds for complaint. At the critical moment when she stuck her hand in and tickled him under his chin, he merely laid his head to one side and chuckled happily. When he was given a peanut, he opened his beak and behaved precisely as one had a right to expect of a parrot like him. ‘Many thanks,’ Isak said, tilting his head and clucking at his new owner.

  ‘He’s quite wonderful!’ Pyttan said, her eyes sparkling to match her diamonds. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you in return, Superintendent?’

  ‘Please, don’t mention it,’ Bäckström said. That would have been the musical box, he thought, but you’ve already forgotten all about that.

  Then Bäckström left the pair of them before Isak got back to normal again. He had a long lunch, followed by an afternoon nap, and didn’t wake up until GeGurra called. He began by thanking Bäckström for enabling him to hear the wings of art history fluttering. He also wanted to meet him as soon as possible. Dinner, eight o’clock, Operakällaren. The private dining room, as it was high time to discuss matters of decisive importance for the history of the Western world.

  145

  That evening B
äckström and GeGurra had dinner in the private dining room in the Opera House. A simple meal, seeing as it was the middle of the week. Bäckström made do with assorted fried titbits for a starter and swapped the veal steak for plum-glazed pork collar, but GeGurra went even further, assuming an almost ascetic attitude and ordering salad and fried sole.

  An evening devoted to work, which was underlined by the fact that they had both brought their briefcases with them. Bäckström’s was considerably fatter than GeGurra’s, which was eminently practical, because it was more than big enough to contain what this whole business was about.

  After the introductory toast, GeGurra began by praising Bäckström for his efforts. As soon as his secretary had rung to tell him of Bäckström’s visit, he had dropped everything else he was doing. He raced to the office, then spent the rest of the day studying Archie Hamilton’s diaries of his time as a clandestine attaché at the Swedish Embassy in London.

  ‘It’s a quite remarkable story,’ GeGurra sighed. ‘I doubt whether even you have heard anything to match it, Bäckström.’

  Do I have a choice? Bäckström wondered, but contented himself with a nod.

  Count Hamilton had spent just over a year in London, from the spring of 1944 to the summer of 1945, and during that time he met Winston Churchill on half a dozen occasions. The meetings always took place in private, and they appeared to have spent most of the time talking about the war and, in particular, deliveries of ball bearings from Sweden. During each of their meetings Churchill had taken care to ask how things were going with the clandestine operations for which Hamilton was responsible.

  Hamilton and Churchill shared the same aristocratic background. There were family ties between them stretching back three centuries. On a personal level, they shared a deep and mutual admiration. Values, family ties, personal respect. All the things that mattered to people like them.

  Hamilton admired Churchill for who he was and what he was doing. A younger man’s respect for someone twenty years older than him. Somewhere between an older brother and a young father. For Churchill, it was simpler. He liked Archie Hamilton because he was a daredevil, the perfect choice to command a ship if you needed to order an attack. It was highly likely that he reminded him of his own younger self when, thirty years before, he had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, the first major political challenge of his life and the one he always remembered most fondly.

  At the end of December 1944, a few days before Christmas, they met at a dinner at Blenheim Palace outside Oxford. Towards the end of the evening, Churchill, Hamilton and a select few other guests had withdrawn from the rest of the gathering to round off the evening by discussing things that were for their ears only, smoke one last cigar and have a final nightcap.

  Churchill was in a bad mood, on the verge of grouchy. The offensive in the Ardennes that the Allies had launched a few days before had ground to a halt. The Germans were gathering for a counterattack, and it wasn’t looking remotely like the victory procession his generals had promised him. Not that he feared for the final outcome but, with each passing day, he found himself with less room for manoeuvre at the forthcoming Yalta Conference in a couple of months’ time, where he was due to meet his two allies, the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Russian leader Josef Stalin, and where the first point on the agenda was to redraw the map of Europe and decide its political future.

  It wasn’t the American president who was Churchill’s problem. It was his Russian ally, Josef Stalin, and on that point everyone in the present company was touchingly unanimous. Dealing with Russians was very straightforward. You couldn’t trust them. It was highly likely that this was when Count Archie Hamilton got the idea of cheering up Winston and preparing him for future meetings with Stalin, a man who came from an entirely different world to them. A man who couldn’t be trusted.

  At least, that was how Hamilton described the background to the story in his own diary when he wrote of how he sent his adjutant to Churchill’s headquarters immediately after New Year to give him a musical box as a present, with an accompanying message to the eminent recipient of the gift. A reminder of the conditions that applied whenever they met someone who wasn’t like them. And a hope that Stalin had the same sort of nose as Pinocchio.

  One week later Hamilton’s gift was returned to him, with a friendly, personal letter in which Churchill thanked him for the present and his words of warning but explained that he couldn’t accept it. Fabergé’s musical box had a history which sadly rendered that impossible.

  Hamilton’s diaries, his own handwritten copy of the letter he had sent to Winston Churchill, Churchill’s letter to Hamilton. In the original, typewritten on the prime minister’s own notepaper, signed by Churchill and tucked inside the envelope from the Cabinet Office in which Hamilton received it. All of this was now in one larger envelope bearing the Hamilton coat of arms. Tucked inside the book that Pyttan Hamilton had given Evert Bäckström in the hope that he might find something inside it that he could be bothered to read. They must have been put there by her father, the count. A man who was more concerned with firing guns than filing cabinets.

  ‘It’s quite wonderful,’ GeGurra said, holding up the book that Pyttan had given Bäckström. ‘Funny how easy it is to find what you’re looking for when you know where you should be looking.’

  ‘I know,’ Bäckström said. He had been a police officer his whole life.

  ‘I presume you haven’t had time to read the book yet, my dear friend?’

  ‘No,’ Bäckström said. ‘I’ve had other things to deal with.’

  ‘Then I shall tell you,’ GeGurra said. ‘It really is quite wonderful.’

  What choice have I got? Bäckström thought again, and gestured to the maître d’ that his glass needed refilling.

  The author of the book was a very well-known English historian, Robert Amos, later Lord Amos, who ended his days as professor of history at Balliol College, Oxford. During the Second World War Amos had been a member of Churchill’s staff and, on a number of occasions towards the end of the war, also acted as his personal secretary. Twenty years after the war ended he published a book about his former boss, entitled Winston Churchill: Political Thinker, Rhetorician and Strategist (Oxford University Press, 1964), in which he focused on Churchill’s often overlooked talent for strategic thinking in political situations. Churchill may have been regarded – with good reason – as one of the finest rhetoricians in global history, but he was also a careful and precise politician, even when it came to the question of what gifts one could accept from those around one.

  The example he gives in the book is a musical box the prime minister was given by a Swedish count and naval officer. A man who, at risk to his own life, had done great service to England and Englishmen during what might well have been the most difficult time in the long history of the Empire. He was also a distant relative, and a personal friend, and so was beyond any suspicion of harbouring a hidden agenda. Yet it was still a gift that it was impossible to accept. Because of its origins and history, because of the message it conveyed between giver and recipient the moment it was accepted. Because of the political situation that pertained at the time between Churchill and Stalin. In short, it was a good example of Churchill’s skill at political and strategic thinking.

  ‘Straight from the horse’s mouth,’ GeGurra declared. ‘Lord Amos was present at that dinner at Blenheim. He also wrote the draft of Churchill’s letter in which he declined the gift, and he and Churchill spent a whole hour discussing the matter, even though they were fully occupied almost round the clock with preparations for the Yalta Conference.’

  ‘So he sent the musical box back?’ How stupid can you get? Bäckström thought.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what he did,’ GeGurra said. ‘To the great benefit of posterity, and not least you, my dear friend, whose finely honed mind has at last managed to deduce the remainder of our story. All that remains now is to find the musical box itself.’ And, for som
e reason, GeGurra glanced at the large briefcase that was sitting next to Bäckström on the sofa where he was seated.

  ‘Well, you can relax now,’ Bäckström said. He opened the briefcase, took out the dark wooden box and put it on the table between them.

  146

  The remainder of the evening was spent discussing financial terms, which fairly soon reached a point where they took their toll on both food and drink, and the harmonious relationship between the two parties.

  GeGurra began by putting on a pair of white cotton gloves, before carefully starting to examine Pinocchio with the help of a magnifying glass and an extra reading lamp provided by their maître d’.

  ‘Not a single scratch.’ GeGurra sighed.

  ‘There’s nothing for you to worry about,’ Bäckström said. ‘It works, too.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ GeGurra said, looking at him with wide eyes.

  ‘I tried it out,’ Bäckström said. ‘It sounded fucking awful, but the nose came out and went back in, whistling the whole time.’

  GeGurra put Pinocchio back in his box. He asked for a large linen cloth, and gently wrapped it round the box. He left the package on the table.

  ‘Make me an offer,’ Bäckström said.

  Considering the circumstances, and not least the fact that his dear friend had just made a crucial contribution to the history of art, for the first time in his long life as an art dealer he was prepared to abandon a principle that he could never have imagined giving up, even in his wildest dreams.

  ‘I’m willing to split my fee with you. Fifty–fifty.’

  ‘What sort of money are we talking about?’ Forget it, Bäckström thought.

  Considering the documentation they now had at their disposal, and bearing Winston Churchill in mind, they were now dealing with a market value in the region of a quarter of a billion kronor – so the commission would be around fifty million kronor. Twenty-five million each.