The Strange Case of the Moderate Extremists

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I wonder why that should be,” mused Ulf.

  Erik did not hesitate. “Because of overfishing,” he said.

  “By other people?” asked Ulf.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Ulf glanced at Anna, who returned his glance with a look of her own. That look said: Don’t, Ulf. Just don’t.

  * * *

  —

  That morning, then, hearing Anna’s remark about the chances of being struck by a meteorite, Erik said, “Don’t speak too soon. The likelihood of being struck by a meteorite is much higher than you imagine.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Anna.

  Erik was. “I’ve been reading about it.”

  “In New Fisherman?” Ulf enquired.

  Erik shook his head. “No. There’s a magazine called Future Watch. It had an article on meteors and the odds of one falling on earth. They say we should look out, because if one of these big ones came our way, that’d be the end for humanity.”

  “And fish?” asked Ulf.

  Erik was confident that fish would survive. He explained to Ulf that the dust cloud created by a large meteor strike would make life impossible for land-based creatures, but would not affect those who lived away from it all underwater.

  “So, fish would survive,” said Ulf. “But there’d be nobody to catch them.”

  Erik looked sad. “I suppose that’s true. Fishing conditions would be great, but you’re right: there would be nobody left to catch anything. Pity, really.”

  It was at this point that Ulf’s telephone rang. On the other end of the line, a distant nasal voice, the voice of a receptionist, said, “Please hold the line for Mr. Varg.”

  Ulf realised that it was his brother, Bjorn, and indeed it was Bjorn who came on the line a few seconds later. He skipped preliminaries. “I need to see you,” he said. “Can you do lunch today?”

  Ulf glanced at his diary, open on the desk in front of him. “I could,” he said.

  “Good,” said Bjorn. “I need your help, Ulf.”

  Ulf’s heart sank. Every policeman dreads the call in which a friend or relative says, I’ve done something foolish. You had to stop the conversation right there; you had to say, as firmly as you could without sounding hard-hearted, “I’m sorry but if the law’s involved I can’t do anything—I just can’t.”

  Now he said to his brother, “I hope you’re not in trouble, Bjorn.”

  “No, of course not. Or, at least, not the sort of trouble that you people deal with.”

  This brought a sigh of relief from Ulf. “Political trouble then?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure if there’ll be anything I can do. The world of politics is pretty much a closed book to me.”

  “I know that,” said Bjorn. “But I still need to talk. One o’clock in the Ship’s Galley. You know that place?”

  Ulf did. “I’ll be there,” he said.

  Chapter Three

  The criminal use of laxatives

  Ulf knew the Ship’s Galley for professional, rather than personal reasons. Ulf’s department was concerned only with unusually sensitive crimes, and a crime that he had investigated in the restaurant had clearly met the criteria for their involvement. It had concerned Arvid Hellström, a chef who targeted politicians with whom he disagreed politically, by lacing their food with powerful laxatives. The case had been widely reported and had caused a great deal of mirth both in Sweden and abroad, but had not been all that amusing for the victims. Some of these had been obliged to leave the debating chamber in Parliament in mid-speech, or had brought public appearances to a premature end as the concentrated senna inserted in their lunchtime dishes took effect.

  It had not been difficult to identify the Ship’s Galley as the source of the problem once the victims had been quizzed as to their whereabouts over the twenty-four hours preceding the attack. Time and again they revealed that they had lunched in the restaurant, which was popular with politicians from the Progressive Liberal Party. This party, which campaigned on a Stalinist platform of hard-left policies, was neither progressive nor liberal, and tended to attract the particular anger of those of an ultra-conservative persuasion. Arvid Hellström was one such person: he had, since his teenage years, been particularly hostile to left-wing causes, and felt a special antipathy for the Progressive Liberals and all associated with them.

  Those feelings might never have found expression had it not been for the proximity of the Ship’s Galley to the headquarters of the Progressive Liberals and to those of another, less influential party of similar views. This meant that at any lunchtime a fair proportion of diners would be hard-left politicians, a source of constant affront, it transpired, to Chef Hellström.

  “I cannot bear the thought of these people eating my creations,” he was heard to mutter. “They sit there as bold as brass, eating away, while all the time they are plotting the destruction of our cherished institutions. Do these people have no shame? Do they not care for His Majesty and all he does for our country? Does that mean nothing to these idle rabble-rousers?”

  Junior members of the kitchen staff listened to these tirades and nodded their agreement. They might not have shared the chef’s views, but they had learned that a nod of agreement was all that he expected, and anything for a quiet life.

  “There goes chef again,” they whispered to one another. “Blah, blah, blah! Same old, same old!”

  Eventually it was the evidence of a kitchen porter that resulted in the chef’s conviction. This man, who was himself a paid-up member of the Progressive Liberals, noticed the chef sprinkling something over selected dishes shortly before passing them on to a waiter. He noticed that the chef seemed to pay particular attention to the destination of the dishes in question, asking the waiters to confirm that they would be served to particular customers.

  His suspicions aroused, the porter found the container from which the chef appeared to extract the savouring in question. Taking a sample, he passed this on to a friend who worked in a lab around the corner. This friend obtained a free chemical analysis that revealed the true nature of the seasoning.

  “Senna,” he explained, “is a powerful natural laxative. It has no known culinary application.”

  The porter had gone to a cousin who worked as a police driver. This man had then made enquiries of some of the senior police officers whom he drove, and had been referred to Ulf’s department at exactly the time they were investigating a complaint from a politician who was convinced that his recent appearance at a party congress had been sabotaged. From then on, the fate of Arvid Hellström had been settled; after a short trial, conducted in the full glare of media interest, he had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.

  “We will not tolerate this sort of thing,” the trial judge pronounced. “This goes to the heart of our system of representative democracy. You cannot poison those with whom you disagree. This will simply not be allowed in Sweden.”

  One or two journalists had questioned whether this meant that it might be allowed elsewhere, or whether this was yet another example of the enforced consensus of Swedish society, but such questions were rightly treated as juvenile and irreverent. For his part, Arvid Hellström was unrepentant. The politicians he had targeted deserved what they got, he maintained, and they were lucky that it was not arsenic, or worse, that he had put in their food. In general, he was treated sympathetically by the right-wing press, the view being taken in that quarter that this was a relatively harmless protest by a man who was a patriot and upholder of Swedish values.

  The Ship’s Galley now had another chef, carefully vetted for political extremism. This one had no strong views on anything, as far as the restaurant’s proprietor could ascertain. His only hobby, it appeared, was membership in a Western reenactment club, the members of which dressed as cowboys and strutted about in a mock-up saloon. This, although ec
centric and vaguely un-Swedish, was thought not to pose any security issues, even if it meant the appearance on the menu of various Mexican bean-based dishes that had previously not been a feature of the Ship’s Galley’s offerings. With the new chef in place, the fortunes of the restaurant, dented by the publicity of the previous chef’s conviction, soon recovered. The politicians returned reassured, and it was not unusual to see well-known figures from national politics huddled at a table with local friends and allies.

  Bjorn was already at his table when Ulf arrived. As Ulf approached, he stood up and extended his hand to his brother. They shook hands and sat down, Ulf immediately picking up the menu and scanning it.

  “You do know that I had a case here?” he said to his brother. “Remember that business with the chef?”

  Bjorn smiled. “Not exactly something one would forget. He’ll have served his sentence by now, I imagine.”

  Ulf nodded. “I heard that he joined the merchant navy.”

  “As a cook?”

  Ulf raised an eyebrow. “I imagine so. But I did hear that he’d learned his lesson. Somebody told me he’d become very religious in prison. That sometimes happens, you know.”

  “If it keeps him on the straight and narrow,” said Bjorn.

  Ulf pointed to an item on the menu. “Have you had any of this Mexican food?” he asked.

  Bjorn sighed. “I don’t see what’s wrong with Swedish dishes,” he said. “If we come to power, I’ll be tempted to put a stop to all this ethnic food.”

  Ulf looked at his brother. Where did this come from, he wondered. They had had the same childhood—more or less—and yet he had none of his brother’s strange ideas.

  “It would be a bit extreme to tell people what they’re to eat,” Ulf said mildly. “Even in Sweden. There wouldn’t be many votes in that, I’d have thought.”

  Bjorn shrugged. “You don’t have to put things in your manifesto. There are all sorts of things you can do once you’ve been elected. You can reveal the programme then.”

  Ulf was silent for a moment. Sometimes he thought that his brother was joking—that he did not actually believe half of what he said. At other times he asked himself whether he was merely cynical, and would say anything that he thought might attract newspaper attention. “You can never get enough exposure,” Bjorn had once said to him. “It doesn’t matter what the cause is, as long as your name ends up in the press. You could assault Santa Claus at a children’s party, and the publicity would still be worth it.”

  Now Ulf simply said, “Isn’t that a bit dishonest? Aren’t you meant to tell people what you’re going to do?”

  Bjorn’s response was to wave a hand in the air in a gesture of insouciance. “People don’t pay attention to what you say,” he said. “There’s no point in telling them things if they’re not listening.”

  Ulf changed the subject; an argument with his brother could quickly deteriorate into mutual haranguing. “These Mexican dishes look a bit spicy. I’m going to go for fish stew.”

  “Very wise,” said Bjorn. “Me too.”

  Their order placed, Ulf looked across the table at his brother. Bjorn had been a bit fleshy, but seemed to have lost weight. He quizzed him about this.

  Bjorn patted his reduced stomach. “It’s for television,” he explained. “Kitty thought I’d look better on television if I were a bit thinner.”

  Kitty was Bjorn’s wife. She was Colombian, and taught Spanish in a local high school. Ulf liked her, but had always wondered what she could possibly have seen in his brother.

  “How is Kitty?” asked Ulf.

  “Busy,” replied Bjorn. “She’s doing a degree part-time. Classics. Keeps her at her books more or less every night.”

  “So she can’t go to all your party functions,” said Ulf. “I assume you have dinners and so on.”

  Bjorn made another dismissive gesture. ‘They aren’t really her scene,” he said. “In fact, Kitty doesn’t entirely see eye to eye with party objectives.”

  This did not surprise Ulf. He was interested, though, in how a marriage would work if the two parties had radically differing political views. Surely there would be tensions.

  “She doesn’t approve?” he asked.

  Bjorn shook his head. “No. But it doesn’t matter too much. I don’t bring work home with me, so to speak. I don’t talk to her about it.”

  “Is she a member of another party?” asked Ulf.

  Bjorn hesitated. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t know for sure?”

  “No, I don’t, and look, I don’t open her letters. Nor do I question her as to where she’s going when she goes out. She’s an adult; I’m an adult. We have our separate lives to lead.”

  “And that works?”

  Bjorn nodded. “It seems to. We keep off certain topics. That’s the way to do it.”

  Ulf looked at his watch. “I have to keep a slight eye on the time,” he said. “We’re coming up for a departmental audit. There’s an awful lot of paperwork to do.”

  “When we come in,” said Bjorn, “we’ll stop that straightaway. Police will be out on the street, not filling in forms. And with vastly increased powers, I can tell you. You see somebody you don’t like the look of—pick him up. For ten days if necessary. And you’ll be able to question him properly in that time. Not just talk about the weather and what he has for breakfast.”

  Ulf said nothing. His brother knew nothing about policing—or anything else very much, he thought.

  Bjorn leaned forward. “But I didn’t want to talk to you about policy,” he said, his voice lowered. “I wanted to ask your advice on a rather tricky security issue.”

  It occurred to Ulf that his brother might be the recipient of threats. Politicians seemed to attract them, and it must be disturbing, even if most of them were not intended seriously.

  “You’ve been threatened?”

  Bjorn shook his head. “No, not me. Or not recently. But it’s nothing to do with that.” He paused, lowering his voice still further so that Ulf had trouble in hearing what he had to say. “We have a leak in the party. Somebody’s talking to the press.”

  Ulf waited.

  “You see,” Bjorn continued, “we take our decisions at what we call National Council level. We don’t always make those public, because, well, you don’t give ammunition to your enemies. So, many of these decisions are kept in reserve, so to speak, until the time is right for us to announce them.”

  “And somebody’s revealing them prematurely? Stealing your thunder?”

  “Yes,” said Bjorn. “And in some cases, passing them on to the Extreme Moderates.” He made a face. “Those people are utterly unscrupulous. They’ve taken a number of our best ideas, turned them round a bit, and then announced them as their own. It’s theft—pure and simple theft.”

  Ulf sighed. “But that’s what politics is all about,” he said. “It’s a battle, isn’t it?”

  Bjorn agreed. “Yes, it is. And battles have spies, don’t they? And traitors. We have one right at the heart of our party. Right up there among the thirty-two members of the National Council. One of them is a spy—a traitor, even—but how can we find out who that is?”

  Ulf drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t know if I can help you, Bjorn. This is private business. There’s nothing criminal going on.”

  Bjorn protested that he did not want Ulf to get involved personally. “All I want is some advice as to how to deal with a situation like this. You’re the detective, aren’t you? Can’t you just tell me what to do?”

  Ulf looked up at the ceiling. It was difficult to say an outright no to your own brother. He had no sympathy for the Moderate Extremists, but Bjorn was his flesh and blood and he could not turn him away. “Can you let me have a think about it?” he said at last.

  Bjorn was clearly relieved. �
�I knew I could count on you,” he said.

  Ulf looked up at the specials board. “What are bean enchiladas?” he asked.

  “Un-Swedish,” answered Bjorn.

  Chapter Four

  Four o’clock—in your Saab

  Ulf returned to the office in an unsettled state. He did not see Bjorn regularly and it annoyed him that so many of their meetings should be awkward ones. There was more often than not a certain tension in the air on such occasions—an atmosphere that Ulf suspected went back to unresolved issues of childhood. It seemed to him that Bjorn was overly keen to explain his political views—as if he might somehow convert his brother to his opinions. Yet surely he must know that Ulf had no intention whatsoever of joining the Moderate Extremists—or even voting for them. He had always been at pains to make that clear, and still Bjorn would go on about policies that he knew Ulf either deplored or about which, at best, he was unenthusiastic. There was some lingering urge at work here, Ulf thought; this was an old competitiveness that had its origin way back in their shared boyhood, but that had a long reach, as had so many of the feelings of childhood. You had to make a conscious effort to give up on these things—to clear out the psychological cupboards of those early years. How much easier it would be if Bjorn simply steered clear of politics—and possibly art too; there were plenty of other subjects on which they might have engaged without disagreement or rancour.

  Anna sensed Ulf’s disquiet. She was good that way, having unusually fine antennae for the detection of unhappiness. From her desk, where she was occupied with the filling in of a frustrating form, she cast an eye over her colleague. His body language told her everything: what she saw was reluctant acceptance, mixed with irritation, and she guessed that this was something to do with some demand made by his brother. He had told her that he was going off to see him for lunch, and she knew that he inevitably came home from such meetings angered over some imposition sprung on him. It could not be easy, she thought, to have a brother who was the leader of the Moderate Extremists and, over and above all that, a demanding and emotionally insecure sibling.