The Treacherous Net (13 page)

There was yet another mystery with no apparent explanation. Elof had deposited six thousand kronor in a bank account in two installments, three thousand each time. This amounted to almost two months’ salary. The first deposit was made in the middle of July, the second almost exactly a month later. No money had been paid into the account in September. Marianne had no idea where the money had come from. When the case was closed, it was decided that the young widow would be allowed to inherit the money.

The police spent a long time wondering what Persson could have meant during that last conversation with his wife. She had interpreted his promise of a larger apartment to mean that he would be getting a raise, perhaps even a promotion. However, his employers made it clear that this was definitely not the case. Nor could they work out what he meant by his talk of “the net.” Marianne had thought he was talking about some kind of spy network or something similar, and the security service had also leaned toward that theory. However, they were never able to verify it.

When Mats Persson went missing, he had his wallet with him. His bank account was monitored following his disappearance, but it was never touched, which led the police to believe at a fairly early stage that he must be dead. His family hadn’t noticed any signs of deepening depression, but still the conclusion was that he had probably taken his own life. There was nothing whatsoever to suggest that he had fallen victim to crime. Not until his body was found walled up in a chimney on the first sunny day in May 2008.

Shot three times, just as his father had been forty-two years earlier.

Sven Andersson had found the three bullets that killed Elof Persson in a small tin inside one of the cardboard boxes. According to the ballistics report, they were 7.26mm caliber. Andersson was taken aback; he read the report three times before he asked his colleague to take a look. Leif Fryxender picked up the sheet of paper and read through it. Slowly he put it down, and their eyes met.

Fryxender had taken the bullets and the gun down to the lab himself, and now the results had arrived. All six bullets had been fired from the old Tokarev pistol.

The two remaining
members of the Cold Cases Unit had each armed themselves with a mug of coffee and a wrapped pastry from the canteen. Andersson’s pastry was sugar-free; it looked both smaller and drier than his colleague’s. Leif Fryxender pressed
play
on the small cassette player, and Tommy Persson’s voice filled the room:

“
. . .
DCI Tommy Persson. Today’s date is Monday, May twelfth, 2008. Are you okay with me recording this interview?”

“Yes
. . .
that’s fine. I realize it must be difficult to write everything down. Where shall we start?”

“Let’s begin with your name and date of birth.”

“Barbro Linnea Persson-Melander. I was born on July third, 1945, so I’ll be sixty-three this summer.”

“Unfortunately I have to ask you to revisit what actually happened before your husband
. . .
your husband at the time
. . .
disappeared. The original investigation was conducted as a missing persons case; today we know that he was murdered.”

[Silence.]

“Murdered
. . .
I can’t believe it! Who’d want to murder Mats? He was so kind and
. . .
inoffensive. It’s
. . .
I just can’t process it.”

“What did you think had happened to him?”

“I thought
. . .
I thought he’d gotten confused, maybe lost his memory and was wandering around somewhere
. . .
at least that was in those first few days. When I started to realize that he was gone
. . .
suicide seemed the most-likely explanation. But then again, it didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“His depression had lifted—in fact, he was almost manic. That last day he was kind of
. . .
feverish.”

“Did he seem as if he’d come across a secret?”

“Yes
. . .
well, it was more as if he was going to find out about something. He seemed
. . .
full of anticipation. I remember he was pacing around the house when I got home at four thirty.”

“And he never told you what was making him feel that way?”

“No. When I asked what was going on with him he just said he was close to a breakthrough, and that the final pieces of the puzzle were within reach.”

“I believe he mentioned S
ÄPO
as well?”

“I can’t remember his exact words
. . .
it’s a long time ago
. . .
but I think he said the material was still top secret, and he’d have to get permission from S
ÄPO
.”

“Permission to do what?”

‘I’ve no idea. I was only half-listening to him
. . .
I was so sick of hearing him go on about his father and the secret police tracking down spies.”

“Could he have arranged to meet someone?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering since I heard
. . .
that he’s been found
. . .
how did he end up in that place?”

“You didn’t know anyone who lived in the vicinity?”

“No.”

[Brief silence.]

“What actually happened when his mother died?”

“My mother-in-law never regained consciousness after her stroke; she passed away after three days. Mats was so strong when it happened and immediately after her death. When the funeral was over he went to clear out her apartment, and when I got home one day there was a rented truck outside our house. Mats had filled our cellar with bags and boxes. I couldn’t believe it—I wondered what the hell he was doing. I mean, I thought he was supposed to be clearing the place out and sorting her stuff, but apparently he’d just boxed it all up. I was furious—I stormed off to ask him for an explanation, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I remember searching the whole house
. . .
”

“And where did you find him?”

“In Anna’s playhouse in the garden. He was curled up on the floor, shaking. I couldn’t get through to him at all. In the end a neighbor helped me get him indoors, and the following day he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic.”

“Did you go through the boxes while Mats was away?”

“No. I couldn’t bear to look at them.”

“So nobody touched them?”

“No.”

“And when did Mats start to sort through them?”

“In August ’83. His therapist had told him to have a look to see what was in his father’s papers. After only a few weeks he was completely obsessed.”

“Did he tell you what he’d found?”

“He talked about nothing else! He got in touch with his father’s family in Katrineholm, and wrote down the family history. He’d found a number of documents relating to Elof ’s service record—he’d been in the army from the start—and Mats contacted various authorities.”

“Did he ever tell you that he’d come across some kind of secret?”

“No, except for what he said on that last day, about S
ÄPO
and the material being top secret. Then he took the bus into the city; he said he was going to look around for a new camera. I can’t actually remember whether he mentioned going to the library. The police asked me about that when he disappeared, and I’ve thought about it since then.”

[Brief silence.]

“When did you move to a new house?”

“When I moved in with Frank in ’89. We didn’t get married until ’94. I wanted to wait ten years.”

“But Mats was declared dead before then?”

“Yes of course, but you can’t imagine
. . .
every time the doorbell rang
. . .
the hope
. . .
and at the same time the
fear
. . .
that it would be him.”

[The sound of rustling papers, Barbro blowing her nose discreetly.]

“Are you okay to carry on?”

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just a reaction to
. . .
actually knowing. You wouldn’t believe what a relief it is to finally find out what happened. To be able to bury him. The kids have gotten their dad back. At long last they have a grave to visit. And I hope I will find peace in my soul too.”
[Brief silence.]

“What happened to all the boxes when you moved?”

“My son, Peter, took some of them. He was nineteen at the time, and I guess he wanted to save anything that might provide some kind of clue. We got rid of everything else.”

“Does he still have them?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never asked what he did with them.”

“In that case I’d like to thank you very much for
. . .
”

Sven Andersson pressed the
stop
button.

“We need to contact the son.”

Leif Fryxender nodded.

“I wonder what happened to the books he’d ordered. Because he had them with him when he left the library,” he said thoughtfully.

On June 22,
1941, German forces launched an offensive against the Soviet Union: Operation Barbarossa. Finland saw an opportunity to regain the territory they had lost to the Soviet Union, and allied themselves with Germany in what came to be known as the Continuation War. Germany requested permission to send the Engelbrecht Division, consisting of almost fifteen thousand fully equipped troops, through neutral Sweden. The Swedish parliament was deeply divided on the issue; the heated debate went on for four days and was later dubbed the Midsummer Crisis. Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson then stated that King Gustaf V was threatening to abdicate if Germany was not allowed to transport troops through Sweden, and faced with this threat parliament acceded to the request, opening up a transit route from Norway to Finland via Sweden.

The Engelbrecht Division’s journey across Sweden ended on July 12 without incident. The only thing that happened in association with the transportation was that five wagons carrying German ammunition exploded at Krylbo train station on July 19. Suspicions of sabotage were later confirmed.

During this period of political tension, Elof Persson was working in Stockholm. His role within the security service was to monitor individuals who were suspected of cooperating with the Soviet Union. His office was responsible for running counter-espionage operations against NKVD, Russia’s civilian intelligence bureau, along with its military counterpart RU; they also monitored the activities of Comintern and Swedish communists. All Russians living in Stockholm were kept under surveillance in order to map their network of contacts.

According to his wife, Marianne, Elof Persson had been talking about a “net” minutes before he was killed. The conclusion reached by the investigating officers in both 1942 and 1983 was that Persson had been murdered by someone who worked for the Soviet Union and was involved in some kind of espionage network. Perhaps Persson had unwittingly exposed an agent who was significantly more important than he had realized. The security service interpreted the expression “a disgusting creature” as referring to a traitor, which meant that Persson’s comment probably implied that he was talking about a Swede. However, these were merely hypotheses with no underlying evidence.

When SÄPO went through what was left of the material from the summer of 1941 in 1983 and 1984, they were unable to find any report submitted by Elof Persson that suggested that he was on the trail of an unknown agent. He had spent most of that summer keeping the Intourist travel agency in Stockholm under surveillance, principally following two NKVD officers by the names of Viktor Starostin and Vasily Siderenko. They were employed at the agency as a cover, and were watched around the clock. Their telephone calls were also bugged, and every single person they contacted was meticulously noted. There wasn’t the slightest indication that Elof Persson had had any personal dealings with the Russians, nor with anyone else mentioned in the copious reports on the activities of Starostin and Siderenko.

The remainder of
the Cold Cases Unit had gone through all the old case notes relating to Elof and Mats Persson; there were documents from the Second World War and up to the mid-1980s. They had read certain passages several times, without getting much further than their predecessors had done sixty-seven and twenty-four years ago.

“Elof must have been running his own race,” Leif Fryxender said eventually.

He took off his glasses and massaged the deep indentation on the bridge of his nose. Sometimes he wished he could wear contacts. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried; the whole family had ended up on their knees in the bathroom, searching for his lenses. They had found only one; the other had mysteriously disappeared. After that Leif had decided that contacts weren’t for him; his blink reflexes were too strong.

“I expect you’re right,” Andersson muttered, trying to suppress a yawn. He was sick and tired of all these old documents.

“So in order to solve the murder of Mats Persson, we have to solve the murder of his father,” Fryxender said slowly.

“And how are we supposed to do that? It happened sixty-seven years ago!” Andersson exclaimed, suddenly coming to life.

“But we’ve got something they didn’t have in 1941,” Fryxender said with a cunning smile.

“Like what?”

Fryxender’s smile grew broader.

“The murder of Mats,” he said, looking as if he’d just come up with a solution to global warming.

“The murder of . . . What the f—”

“We know that Mats said he’d found something out on the day he disappeared. He said he was close to the solution and talked about SÄPO. We know which books he’d ordered from the library. There could be something useful in the boxes his son kept. And we know that Mats and his father were shot with the same gun. Either it was the same killer or, which is perhaps more likely, the person who killed Mats had access to the same gun.”

Andersson tried to feel as optimistic as Fryxender sounded, but he couldn’t quite get there. The whole case seemed impossible to crack.

“I’ve arranged to see Peter Persson this afternoon. Let’s hope he still has the boxes; if so I’ll ask him if we can go through them.”

Andersson wasn’t looking forward to going through yet more boxes. That was the worst aspect of his new job, all those boxes of old garbage he had to rummage through. On the other hand, both he and Leif had gotten pretty good at it: rooting through a load of crap and finding the tiniest fragments of gold.

Peter Persson lived
in a residential area not far from the old church in Örgryte. The houses had all been built during the first half of the twentieth century, and most bore the signs of recent or ongoing renovations. The gardens were large, with impressive fruit-laden trees. Roses and an array of early autumn perennials filled the beds with glorious color. Even though Sven Andersson had lived in Göteborg all his life, he had never been in this part of Örgryte, either for private or professional reasons. It was no more than half an hour by tram from the area around Masthugget where he had grown up, but the class divide between the two parts of the city made the journey much longer—virtually unachievable, in fact.

Andersson recognized Mats Persson’s son as soon as he opened the door. He bore a striking resemblance to the passport photo they had obtained of the deceased, and he also matched the description: slightly above medium height, slim build, with fine blond hair. Andersson and Fryxender knew that Peter Persson was thirty-eight, but he looked older. He was casually dressed in blue jeans and a blue-and-white-striped polo shirt.

He politely invited them in, leading them straight through the house and out onto a large glassed-in veranda. The sliding doors were pushed back to let in the afternoon sun and a cooling breeze, which carried with it the heavy scent of overripe berries and summer apples from the garden. The cane chair creaked alarmingly as Andersson sat down. On the glass-topped matching table there was a tray laid out with coffee, cups, milk and sugar. To Andersson’s disappointment the only accompaniment was a plate of Ballerina cookies.
I’d better stick to coffee since there’s nothing but sugar bombs,
he thought crossly.

When Fryxender had accepted a cup of coffee and a cookie, he started by asking whether Peter Persson still had the boxes his father had left behind. It turned out that he had.

“Did you take all the boxes?”

“No, only those that seemed interesting. The ones that contained paperwork, that kind of thing.”

“And have you ever gone through them?”

“No. I’ve only lifted the flaps and peered inside, nothing more,” Peter said, sounding slightly apologetic. He remained silent for a little while before continuing. “I think I brought the boxes when I moved out because I was angry with my mother. She wanted to burn the lot. I was thirteen when my father disappeared, and I missed him . . . somewhere deep inside I always hoped he’d turn up one day. I felt as if my mother was betraying him somehow. But that was the reaction of a teenage boy. I realized a long time ago that meeting Frank was good for her.”

Suddenly he laughed.

“Perhaps you can tell that I’ve worked through my father’s disappearance? I was in therapy for a few years—and I married my therapist. Erika and I have two kids, a boy and a girl. She went to pick them up; they’ll be back at any moment, and I can promise you that will be the end of the peace and quiet!”

“In that case perhaps we should go and take a look at the boxes,” Andersson suggested.

Peter led the way back through the living room with its contemporary décor. The fact that most of the furniture and the walls was white suggested that the children couldn’t be all that young, Andersson thought. The place felt cold and unwelcoming, if anyone was interested in his opinion.

The boxes were in a storeroom that had once been a pantry off the cellar: ten banana boxes piled on top of one another.

“Is it okay if we take them down to the police station?” Fryxender asked.

“Sure. Erika will be delighted.”

Ten more goddamn boxes to go through,
Andersson thought gloomily.

It took two
trips in the car to transport all the boxes. They stacked them along the wall, then started to work through them one by one. First of all they simply put to one side anything that didn’t seem relevant. Nothing was thrown away; even the material that was discarded initially would be checked later. Then they began to look more closely at anything that seemed even vaguely interesting. It was time-consuming, but they were experts.

After two weeks they had finished examining the contents of all the boxes; it took another five days to revisit everything they had put aside at the very beginning.

It was Sven Andersson who found it. On the back of an A5 notepad someone had written in pencil:
Rönblom H.-K., The Spy Without a Country.

And underneath, in the same neat handwriting:
Stig Wennerström, Carl-Johan Adelskiöld, Oscar Leutnerwall.

“Well, we know who Stig Wennerström was. And Adelskiöld is the old guy who died in the fire. In the building where we found Mats Persson! But who the hell is Oscar Leutnerwall?” Andersson said.

“Mmm . . . the name sounds vaguely familiar . . . No, I can’t remember. But we’ll find out!”