Never Fuck Up: A Novel (47 page)

There was an opened envelope on the kitchen table. Beside it, some paperwork. The words: Adoption Center. When he bent down he could feel his heartbeat speed up. It couldn’t be true. Please say you’ve found something for us. Something I can live with.

The papers felt tacky, sticking to one another. He was nervous, his hands were trembling, he tried to read calmly. Lots of filler words.
Information has been verified. A doctor has been consulted. Our ambition is for the family not only to receive word of the child as soon as possible, but that the information received also be as accurate and complete as possible. How much information we have been able to collect about the child, however, varies a great deal between different countries and areas.
He read through it, even though he kept wanting to flip ahead. Maybe to prepare himself in case of bad news. He wondered why Åsa hadn’t called.

Then there was a bunch of untranslated official Estonian paperwork, stamps, strange signatures. The pages that followed: descriptions of the orphanage, the boy’s age, condition, family situation. Rules for picking him up, demands for further permits, etc. And then, on the final pages: the pictures. Of Sander.

The boy was the most wonderful child he’d ever laid eyes on. A sixteen-month-old angel, chubby, with pale blond curls and brown
eyes. He loved the kid immediately: Sander. His heartbeat transformed into rhythmic bells of joy. For the first time in many years, he felt completely warm inside. Happy, he guessed. It was fantastic. He called Åsa.

She picked up on the first ring. Bubbling with joy. Talk interlaced with tears. For once, Thomas didn’t get annoyed. He felt the same; they were going to have a son. They began planning right away. When they would pick up the boy, outfitting a nursery. Wallpaper, a lamp, a crib, a car seat, a stroller, a BabyBjörn. All the stuff Åsa’d heard her girlfriends go on about for years.

Åsa said that she hadn’t wanted to call and wake him up with the news. She wanted him to see the surprise for himself in the kitchen, the way it’d been for her. Thomas laughed. Maybe he was too hard on her about needing his sleep.

Goddammit—he was going to be a dad. He couldn’t decide: Laugh/cry. Cry/laugh. Laugh until he cried.

He worked out up in the TV room. The joy was still there, underneath it all. But the other thoughts’d snuck up on him. It was more than ten weeks since he’d been transferred to the traffic geeks. More than eight weeks since he’d done his first job for his new employer. His side gig as the Yugos’ made man was better than he’d expected. The strip club was beginning to feel like home. Life changed so quickly. The way he saw his work. His attitude toward everything. It snuck up on him over the years, a tiny bit at a time. The temptations aren’t actually built into the job—they’re built into the person. And one fine day you find yourself in a wasteland, where it doesn’t matter anymore how you treat the rabble and yourself. When it feels normal. He often thought about his dad. Gunnar’d built Sweden. Believed that everyone deserved to come along for the ride. Back then, Thomas wouldn’t have let anyone ruin what his dad’d built. But now he wasn’t so sure anymore. How’d he been treated by his own? Ljunggren and Lindberg? Sure, they toasted him at their Friday get-togethers, but what did they do, really? Ljunggren’d agreed to be reassigned that night and not gone on the beat with him. His regret about it came too late, somehow. There was no police spirit when you needed it. In comparison, Ratko, Radovan, and the others he’d met were real men. Honest in their own way. They stood by their word, did what they’d promised. He was paid the salary they’d agreed on without written contracts. But most important of
all—nothing leaked out to Åsa or the cops. Thomas trusted the Yugos. More than anyone within the police force. It was strange, but true.

So, no matter how weird it sounded, the job at the club imbued him with a kind of calm. It offered a slow, steady rhythm that he felt at home with. It was more his style: freer rein. Uppity johns at the strip club got a taste of Andrén if they grew too rowdy.

Sometimes he did other things too—more complex, sophisticated. Participated in the security team at more high-class get-togethers. Swedish and foreign businessmen who wanted to have a good time. The strippers were glammed up to look like chicks with class, pro makeup artists were hired, young brats from the fancy Östermalm area organized the parties. Thomas didn’t see much of the actual events, but he dealt with the surrounding details. Taught the younger gym guys Ratko introduced him to how to use a baton and a Taser. Explained how to deal with a tanked fifty-year-old: calmly and correctly, but without taking no for an answer. Hard as steel. Made sure the right vests were bought, radio and walkie-talkie systems, belts, handcuffs, and gloves. He knew this stuff like the back of his hand. Ratko loved him. Maybe it was a breakthrough. Maybe he could do this full time.

And then there was the major thing. That kept eating away at him. Like a Post-it note stuck to the inside of his forehead. The Palme thing. Leader of the Social Democrats during Thomas’s entire childhood and adolescence, Sweden’s prime minister. Murdered. The moment when Sweden lost its virginity. It was insane. Everything pointed to the fact that Rantzell was the murdered man he’d found five months ago. And Rantzell was Cederholm. And Cederholm—that name ought to ring a bell—was the key witness in the entire Palme investigation. The man who claimed that he’d given a Smith & Wesson revolver to Christer Pettersson. The weapon that half the trial’d revolved around. Had Christer Pettersson had such a weapon or not? Was Cederholm credible or not? What was the nature of their relationship? The questions were making his head explode. But worst of all: What’d he stepped into? He thought about the way Rantzell’d been killed. Professionally done. The sliced fingertips, the missing dentures, no other ways to identify the victim. At the same time: so cheap and simple. In a basement, bloody, messy as hell. There had to have been a better way.

And one more thing: it almost felt personal. He thought about his old man again. For his dad, being a Social Democrat was as instinctive as being a man. There were no alternatives. Not because he was actually
interested in politics on a theoretical level, but because he voted with his gut. What’s good for me is good for Sweden—everyone deserves to come along for the ride. Gunnar’d worked as a housepainter all his life. Hadn’t done what everyone did today: worked 80 percent off the books and did a little on the record for the sake of the tax man. Gunnar worked for someone, not for himself. He was an employee, a paycheck slave, his entire life. Union member since he was eighteen. “The Social Democrats,” he used to say, “are giving Sweden a chance.” People said that Palme was hated because he betrayed his class—the upper class he’d been born into. But Gunnar sang a different tune: “Palme was hated because he could talk so you felt it, all the way into a painter’s heavily surface-treated heart.”

Thomas remembered his dad in front of the television. Standing with him when Palme spoke at the square at Norra Bantorget. The man’s footwork behind the podium. Gunnar’s laughter when Palme smiled after delivering a sharp line.

Now someone’d killed Cederholm, the guy who’d ratted out the person who was a hair’s breadth from being convicted of the murder of Olof Palme. Thomas didn’t know what to do with it all. He’d told the current detective on the case, Ronander, that he’d met Ballénius at Solvalla, and he’d given him all the other info too. But he didn’t let slip about his conversation with Ljunggren that night in the car.

He knew it, could feel it in the pit of his stomach stronger than he’d ever felt any other warning—he shouldn’t poke around in this mess. And still, he did. To Thomas, it was so obvious. If it’d stopped at Adamsson bursting in on his and Hägerström’s visit to the morgue, he wouldn’t have given it another thought. But then, when Ljunggren told him that it was Adamsson who’d stopped him from going out on the patrol too, Thomas knew: Adamsson was knee-deep in this shit.

His options were pretty simple: either he forgot about Adamsson or else he proceeded with his own investigation. The conclusion was even simpler: no one would get away with shitting on him—he was going to nail those fuckers. Solve the Rantzell mystery.

It was on that night two months ago, when Ljunggren’d told him who Rantzell really was, that he’d made up his mind.

Right after they parted ways, he’d climbed into his car. Made an effort to keep to the speed limit. The embarrassment if he ended up being investigated by his own traffic unit would be too much. He went into a pizzeria on Sveavägen. Ordered a calzone and a glass of some cheap-brand whiskey. Downed it in two minutes. Everything was spinning. At the time, he’d just found out. Cederholm was Rantzell. Rantzell was Cederholm. Adamsson was involved. How much? In what way? Ljunggren’s new information opened up an abyss.

Thomas scarfed down the calzone.

The incidents were being put into a context. If this was connected to something as big as the Palme murder, anyone could be involved. It was sick. The guy outside their window three months ago could be a cop, a South African mercenary soldier, a Mossad agent, a Kurdish PKK terrorist. Anything. Thomas belonged to the camp that thought Christer Pettersson actually was the one who’d popped Palme. But there were some doubts. Sure, he’d heard other theories. Someone didn’t want the track marks on Claes Rantzell’s arm to come to light. Someone’d swept Thomas out of the picture. Someone with astonishing resources.

So far, Thomas’d acted impeccably, at least according to himself. It couldn’t be prohibited for a cop to look around a little on his own—and as soon as he’d found something out he’d called the new detective heading the investigation. But now it was time to go rogue completely. He needed to clear his name.

After the calzone, he walked across the street to a Cuban place. Had a seat at a table. Ordered a glass of Gran Reserva. Felt lonely. The walls were painted black. Big Cuban flags. Should he tell Åsa what he was doing?

He asked to borrow a pen and some paper from the waitress. Started writing down what he knew about the murder in bullet-point form.

Drank the wine in big gulps. The pistol was dangling along one side of his suit jacket. The waitress set down a small plate with grilled scampi. He ordered another glass of wine.

Looked at his list. Names, places, times. Too few bullet points. A big question mark around Rantzell. Who was he?

His cell phone rang. It was Åsa, who wondered where he was. He told her the truth: “I’m sitting at La Habana, alone, drinking red wine.” She wondered why. He almost told her the truth: “Seeing Ljunggren put me in a bad mood.”

An hour later: when he went to take a piss, he saw himself in the mirror. A reddish-purple grin filled with worry. He thought, Come on now, this’ll work itself out.

He walked outside, climbed into the car. Really didn’t care about his blood alcohol content. The traffic unit could go fuck itself. He drove toward Fruängen. His buzz felt fine, anyway.

The fall darkness that usually made him depressed felt invigorating. This was his investigation.

He’d realized that something was going on in the building already down by the entrance. Two big notes were posted on the elevator door.
A police investigation is being conducted on the third floor, as well as on certain other floors. Due to this, the county police will be present in your building for a certain period of time. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any questions, please call: 08-401 26 00.

He took long strides. The right floor. The right name on the mail slot. Caution tape. Thomas took a step forward. There was a heavy padlock on the door. He went back down to the car again. Found his skeleton key. Brought his gloves along. Cleared the padlock in under a minute.

Went inside. The hall was dark. He turned the lights on. Jackets on hangers to the right. The floor was bare. His colleagues’d probably cleaned up shoes and other crap. Sent the stuff to the lab. Thomas wondered why they hadn’t taken the jackets, too.

The kitchen was small. Dirty dishes and silverware, run-down and nasty—standard protocol in junkie apartments. He knew the drill. Had been inside more crack dens than regular apartments in his life. He tried to analyze what kind of job the cops’d done in there. Felt like the booze was making him sharper. He could follow the sequence of events. How they’d swabbed, searched for fingerprints. Polished surfaces, placed dirty objects in evidence bags. He let his gaze register the details. Rantzell didn’t take care of himself. The signs were all there, the filth spoke a clear language.

The living room: a leather couch, a leather chair, flea-market art, shelves empty of books. Thomas took a step forward. Dust in the bookshelf. He remained standing there for a second. Looked, registered. Analyzed. Tried to see things through a detective’s eyes. What would Hägerström have seen in here? There was something, his gut told him so. He looked around the room again. The coffee table was cleared, traces in the dust, stains, burn marks. The TV, video: nothing strange.
Hägerström, what would he have been looking for? Things that didn’t tally. Anomalies. Departures from the ordinary. Thomas knew all about crack dens. He could visualize the bookshelf before they’d emptied it. A couple of paperbacks maybe, possibly some inherited hardcovers or collected works. Even addicts cared about culture. Probably a few photos, possibly memories from a better time, a time before the present.