The Falling Detective (14 page)

15/12

Hallunda, early Sunday morning. There's an old playground behind the shops. It's definitely seen better days — the fence is covered in graffiti tags, the swings hang wonkily on their chains, and the wooden rocking-horses are rotting away.

Two young men make their way towards the playground from opposite directions. They are surprisingly alike, in their looks and in their clothes. One has darker skin, and the other has a few more scars on his face, but otherwise there's nothing to tell them apart. They're both wearing dark jackets and light jeans, they both have cropped hair, and their movements suggest a reluctance to do whatever it is they're about to do: their hands stuffed deep in their pockets, heads down and eyes on the ground. One is coming from the underground station; the other, from the tall, pale high-rise blocks on Klövervägen.

And, even as an observer, you can almost taste it — the time that's passed since they were children, and everything that's happened along the way.

Hallunda, early morning. They meet. The man who came from the underground seems apprehensive. He keeps his hands in his pockets. It looks like the other guy is the one who's asked to meet. He's leading the conversation. They stand, an arm's length apart, and talk, surrounded by the silence. Before long, they're each sitting on a swing.

One of them pulls his hand from his coat pocket. In it is a small, dark-blue Dictaphone. In spite of the cold, a little bead of sweat has gathered on his narrow top-lip.

Day three. We no longer have an investigation, but the media don't yet seem to have grasped that fact. They're still naming Olausson as the prosecutor, although it's someone else now. Someone has leaked the news that there's only a handful of officers on the case, and an editorial column has expressed the broadsheet journalist's surprise at this information. She blames the decline of the Swedish Police and a reduction in resources, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever, because our resources have been significantly improved over the last ten years.

I keep myself to myself, hiding away in my office. I fill in the minutes of earlier meetings, print out interview transcripts, and write short reports on my movements since the start of the operation. In one note, I refer to the dead man's missing Dictaphone, and speculate that it may be in the hands of his assailant. Then I attach a copy of the fieldwork notes, despite the fact that I don't have permission to access them, and say that that's the only known copy, aside from the one on Heber's computer. It's now their problem. I then formally cease my involvement in the investigation into Thomas Heber's death, and send the lot over to
SEPO
. I do what's been asked of me. What I'm supposed to do.

There's a good boy.

Olausson's not around, and nor is anyone else. An invisible hand seems to have redirected all incoming emails surrounding Heber's death away from my account and into someone else's. So my inbox is quiet, apart from a message that seems to have evaded the invisible hand. This informs me that Heber's parents are coming to Stockholm today, to say farewell to their son. Chances are it won't mean anything, other than possibly for the parents. Sometimes parents are just that — nothing more.

I call Olausson, and I rack my brain for something to say as I listen to the ringing tone. I don't yet know what it is I want to find out, but something just isn't right. I'm not going to try to dupe him, and not because it would be wrong, but because it would be impossible. He won't be fooled. He's too clever, too reserved, too careful.

As with so much else in a police officer's life, this preparation turns out to be wasted, because Olausson doesn't even answer. A cold, automated voice instructs me to leave a message, and I'm about to, but after the beep it's my turn to speak and I just sit there in silence, staring at the uncomfortable wooden chair on the other side of my desk, unable to say anything.
Can't think of anything to think.

I hang up. After a few minutes, maybe just one, I ring Oscar at Café Cairo. He doesn't answer either. Primarily to check that my phone is working — a thought that often strikes me when I ring several people and no one answers — I ring Birck. It rings for ages, and when he eventually does answer, he hisses his surname down the phone.

‘Am I disturbing you?' I ask.

‘What the fuck do you think?'

‘What are you doing?'

‘I was on call last night.'

‘No you weren't.'

‘Okay,' Birck says. ‘I wasn't. I'm on the fucking job. Ring this afternoon.'

‘Who are you fucking?'

Birck hangs up.

Just before lunch, there's a knock on the door. It's Olausson, the almost skeletal prosecutor, who pushes the door handle, breathing through his nose with that characteristic whistling sound.

‘I've been trying to call,' I say.

‘Handover go well?' He asks loudly, as though he hadn't heard me.

‘I think so.'

‘Good.'

‘You knew all along, didn't you?'

Olausson lets go of the door handle, and takes two steps into the room. He notices the chair, and seems to be considering sitting on it before thinking better of the idea and staying on his feet.

‘What do you mean?' he asks as he closes the door and crosses his arms, causing his expensive blazer to creak.

‘That they were going to take over the investigation.'

‘No, I had no idea about that.'

‘Why are you lying?'

‘If you're going to accuse me of lying, you can at least have the decency to look at me while you're doing it.'

I look up.

‘If you're going to lead murder investigations that you know we're not going to be allowed to hold on to, you could at least be straight about it.'

‘But I didn't know.'

‘You and Goffman,' I say, ‘were at law school together, at Stockholm University. A little more than twenty years later, you're hand-picked to join
SEPO
by Goffman himself. You stay there until you are thrown out after the failed police operation at the Gothenburg riots in 2001. Nothing, however, points to the two of you still being friends. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but in fact the handling of this case suggests that on the contrary, you are actually very close.' I tap the papers on the desk. ‘I've got my contacts in the building, too.'

Olausson is studying me with an inscrutable expression. It sounds like he's sighing, but I can't tell whether the situation is getting to him or not.

‘Is it okay if I sit down?'

‘At your own risk, apparently.'

Olausson slumps onto the chair, crossing one leg on top of the other.

‘Christ. You wouldn't want to sit here for long.' He scratches the back of his hand, making a raspy sort of noise that is almost pleasant. ‘What do you want me to say, Leo?'

‘I want to know why the case was taken off us.'

‘Because it contained certain threats to national security, which meant it was always going to end up with
SEPO
.'

‘National security?'

Olausson laughs out loud.

‘Hardly.'

‘What is it then?'

‘I don't know. Paul and I are friends, not colleagues.'

‘So you don't know any more?'

‘I know exactly what I just said.'

He pulls a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his blazer and hands it to me.

‘That's what I got.'

The paper is a formal request for the Thomas Heber case to be transferred from the City district's Violent Crimes Unit to the security services. I have seen them before. They bear the signature of the Security Police: a definite air of paranoia and secrecy, combined with an absurd form of patriotism. I make a note of the date. It is signed on the thirteenth, at half-past two in the morning, just hours after Heber's death.

As Birck and I were in Heber's apartment, trying our best not to fall out, someone at the security services had already worked out that this was a case for them.

Olausson stretches out his hand, and I fold the letter and give it back to him.

‘Why didn't you say something? Why did you even let us start the investigation at all, if they were always going to take over?'

‘That,' he says slowly, ‘I'm afraid I can't answer, beyond that those were Goffman's orders. That really is as much as I know.'

It is always like this. We do the legwork and the hard graft, and then it's handed to them on a plate. It will look good in their statistics. It's never immediately clear which department has done what during the investigations, and only those keen enough to read the detailed reports ever find out the truth. And no one can be bothered with that. Internal criticism has come from some real heavyweights, who feel that
SEPO
, despite enormous resources, actually does very little in the way of field work. This is an easy way to keep everyone, including themselves, happy, since they can sit behind their desks and occupy themselves with the sorts of things that are too complicated for anyone beyond their corridors to understand.

I think about asking whether he's aware of the two
SEPO
cars that have shadowed our every move since the very beginning of the operation. Olausson's facial expression — smug, the look of a boss who has convinced his underlings that he can't be blamed for any of what's happened — persuades me not to bother.

‘If anything else to do with this case should show up on your desk,' Olausson says, getting up from the chair, ‘which it might well do, considering the delay in handing over and all the rest of it, then get in touch with me and hand it over, and I'll pass it on to Paul.'

‘And what happens if I don't?'

‘Oh,' Olausson says, ‘you might well ask. But that vomit on Döbelnsgatan shouldn't be too difficult to test for certain substances in your blood, or piss. Blood and piss are not hard to get hold of — a routine test would be sufficient. In your case,' he goes on, ‘it would be perfectly reasonable for someone to request such a test, considering how recently you returned to duty, and the stress which you have already been exposed to.'

He pulls something from his pocket and drops a photo onto the desk.

The picture is taken from a distance, with a poor-quality digital camera, perhaps a mobile phone. It's the night before Lucia, in Vasastan. Incident tape flaps in the foreground, and a little way away, propped up against a wall, I spot myself, down on my knees and busy puking. My skin is pale pink, the strain of vomiting visible in my cheeks. The first thing that strikes me is how small I look.

The wind is knocked well and truly out of my sails. I hope he can't tell, but I'm sure he can.

‘Do you understand me?'

‘How did you get hold of this?' I ask.

‘Do you understand me?' he repeats.

It's as though the colours in the photo are getting stronger, sharper, right in front of me.

‘Yes.'

He opens the door.

‘Good.'

Once he's gone, I rip the photo in half. Then I tear the halves in two, and again, into smaller and smaller pieces until they get so small it's difficult to hold them between my fingertips. I cannot stop.

The threat makes me groggy. I make my way out into the corridor, past the Christmas tree to the coffee machine. I wait there as it spits and splutters and prepares to fill my cup.

In the room opposite, a colleague is sitting with a few documents. Next to her, the televised annual Christmas serial plays on a monitor with the sound turned off. A man with a white beard, a paunch, and ruddy cheeks is lying comatose on a kitchen sofa, in a forest cabin. He's either drunk or delirious. This episode seems to alternate between his story and that of three children, two girls and a boy, as they hurry across a snowy landscape. Above the man is a ticking clock that presumably must have some significance.

I'm following the plot to avoid having to think, to deflect the craving for a Serax and something stronger, and to distract myself from the knowledge that the day I'm going to get caught is getting closer and closer. By the end of the episode, the kids have arrived at the cabin and are struggling to wake the man, without success.

The end-credits roll. My cup is ready. I return to my office. The seasonal programming takes me back to my childhood Christmases, the ones that always turn white when you think back but never actually were. I remember the smell of the candles and the Christmas tree, and the sound of Mum, standing in the closet and wrapping presents while my dad would entertain me and Micke. For a moment, everything just washes over me again, and perhaps it's no coincidence that the phone starts ringing and the word
SALEM
is blinking on its screen.

‘Hi Mum.'

‘Er, hi Leo.'

The voice on the other end is deep and clear, serene — a voice I haven't heard for a long, long time.

‘Hi, Dad.' I put my cup down. ‘How … how's it going?'

‘Good, all good. We've just had breakfast.'

Mum cares for her husband as my dad's mum cared for hers, Arthur Junker, my grandfather, who was struck by the same illness. The fate of a family goes in cycles.

‘You sound well,' I say.

‘Oh yes, bloody well actually.'

‘That's great.'

‘What are you doing? I'm not disturbing you?'

‘No, don't worry. I'm at work.'

‘What would you like for Christmas?'

‘I, oh, I don't know.'

My dad is with it, in a way he hasn't been for a very long time. How that could be possible, I have no idea, but the emotion is overwhelming.

‘We thought we'd all chip in for a holiday for Micke,' he says now. ‘He never gets away from work any more.'

‘Okay. Yes, of course. How much should I put in?'

‘Two thousand? Maybe three. Is that too much? Your mum and I were thinking we'd put in six, so altogether it would be eight or nine thousand. That's enough for a trip, or if he wants to go further afield he'd just need to put up another thousand or so himself.'

‘But that's only enough if he goes on his own. Isn't he going to go with someone?'

‘He's been saying how he'd like to travel on his own,' Dad says, determined.

‘Okay.'

One day, I've got a dad who no longer knows how to flush a toilet, because he doesn't understand how it works. The next day, I've got a dad who doesn't use loo paper, but wipes himself with his towel instead. On the third day, as though the previous days have been distorted fragments of a dream, he's perfectly able to use a telephone and to do arithmetic.

‘What do you think?' he says. ‘Can you chip in?'

‘Of course,' I say, again. ‘Shall I take out some cash?'

‘That's more fun than a voucher, don't you think? Cash is king. Isn't that right? Or is that just me being old-fashioned?'

‘Saying cash is king isn't old-fashioned,' I reassure him.

Dad laughs.

‘Are you coming down soon?'

‘I … yes. I'll try and come over before Christmas, otherwise I'll see you then.'

‘Good. Your mum wants a word. Here she comes.'

I hear rustling and crackling before my mum's voice arrives.

‘Mum, what was that? He sounds perfectly n—'

‘I know, love, I know.'

I notice that I'm holding my breath.

‘What does this mean?'

‘Not a lot. He's like this sometimes, little bursts.' She lowers her voice. ‘It's been … I think he can tell when he's slipping again. That's why he put me on now, he doesn't want you to hear.'

‘Why haven't you mentioned this?'

‘You make it sound like a conspiracy. I just didn't want to get your hopes up, do you understand?

‘And you wouldn't be,' I say.

‘I can tell that you're not telling the truth, you know that.'

We carry on talking, but she soon sounds distracted, perhaps because Dad is nearby, fiddling with the vacuum cleaner. It sounds as though he's decided it's not working and he's going to fix it.

‘I'm going to have to give him a hand,' she says. ‘But I'll be in touch, about Micke's present?'

‘Yep,' I say. ‘Speak soon.'

Everything's back to normal.

Sitting up here, I feel so far removed from the world down below, it could go to pieces, and no one within these walls would even notice. I think about the photo I tore up, a photo that I will never so much as name for anyone.

My computer bleeps — it's a feed from the intranet. A demonstration in Rålambshov Park is just getting underway. Far-left activists are protesting against the deportation of asylum-seekers and refugees, whilst the far right are demonstrating against the left-wing demonstration. There's a significant risk of clashes, so the police are there in numbers.

My phone rings again.

‘Are you finished?'

‘You should probably come to my place,' Birck says.

‘Why? And where do you live?'

‘Lützengatan 10, fourth floor. I have someone in my hall claiming to be 1599. And I think she's telling the truth.'