“I see,” said Johansson.
“So then he tried to take his own life,” said Sarah. “It wasn’t a bad performance, I can assure you. We were living on the third floor. It was, maximum, fifteen feet from the balcony to the lawn below, so it was completely impossible to kill yourself and it was certainly my fault, that too. As a suicide attempt it was exactly like everything else he dreamed up.”
“And yet you became his heir,” said Johansson. When he did it for real, he thought.
“Yes, he was like that. If there was something that didn’t fit, he just thought it away. He never got over my breaking up with him. He’s kept in contact the whole time, even though it’s been ten years. He’d call me in the middle of the night, often just to tell me that he had met a new girlfriend.” Sarah sighed, with a certain feeling, as it appeared. “And to anyone who could bear to listen, he always said that we were still together.”
“I see,” said Johansson.
What do you say about such things? he thought.
“He seems to have been a little strange,” said Johansson, smiling tentatively.
“He was completely nuts,” said Sarah. “But that wasn’t the biggest problem.”
“So what was it?” asked Johansson.
“In four words,” she said, “he was no good.” She put emphasis on each syllable.
“That letter he wrote,” said Johansson divertingly. “Might one be able to take a look at that?”
“Certainly,” said Sarah. “I’ll get it right away, but there’s one thing I don’t really understand.”
“Shoot,” said Johansson, smiling.
“You say that he took his own life. How sure are you of that?”
Murder, suicide, accident, thought Johansson. Then he recounted Jarnebring’s and his own conclusions, with special emphasis on the note that Krassner had left behind.
“The paper was sitting in his own typewriter, it’s typed on the same machine, we’ve compared the text with the impressions on the color ribbon that was in the typewriter. In addition, his own fingerprints are on the letter. In just those places where they should be.”
“A suicide note,” said Sarah. “So John is supposed to have left a letter where he said he was going to take his own life?”
“Yes,” said Johansson. “A suicide note, that’s how we interpret it.”
“May I take a look at that letter?” said Sarah.
“Of course,” said Johansson. “I brought a copy with me-a photocopy of the original,” he clarified. “The original is still in Stockholm. It’s in the investigation file.”
Johansson took out the copy from the inner pocket of his sport coat and handed it over to Sarah.
“Here it is,” he said.
“I have lived my life caught between the longing of summer and the cold of winter. As a young man I used to think that when summer comes I would fall in love with someone, someone I would love a lot, and then, that’s when I would start living my life for real. But by the time I had accomplished all those things I had to do before, summer was already gone and all that remained was the winter cold. And that, that was not the life that I had hoped for.”
Sarah set aside the letter and looked seriously at Johansson.
“And this is the letter that you believe John would have written?”
“Yes,” said Johansson.
“He didn’t,” said Sarah, shaking her head decisively.
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t think,” said Sarah. “I know, and I can give you a million reasons.”
“I’m listening,” said Johansson.
“It isn’t that I’m jealous,” she said and smiled wryly. “It isn’t that he harped on for ten years that I was the only woman in his life, for he did that even when he’d hit me. It’s not that.”
What is it then? thought Johansson and contented himself with nodding. I’m not the one who was together with that bastard, he thought, suddenly feeling a slight irritation.
“I’m not a police officer but I’m good at English,” said Sarah. “American English, British English, pidgin English, slang English, go-fuck-yourself English, you-name-it English. I’m even good at Her Majesty the Queen’s English.”
She smiled as she looked at Johansson with her large brown eyes.
“How shall I put it?” she said. “John was no better at English than most Americans, and he definitely didn’t write this.”
“He didn’t?”
“No way,” said Sarah, “and because you’re still wondering if you can ask, I’m telling you that the person who wrote this is neither an American nor an Englishman. If I were to guess, I’d say someone who does not speak English as their native language, but who still writes and speaks it more or less fluently. A man, definitely a man, who in addition seems to have a poetic disposition or, more correctly, a poetic ambition.”
Like those poems I wrote when I was a boy, thought Johansson, nodding as he tried hard to appear sharp. She’s a little too clever, he thought. It’s crucial to be on your guard here.
“It’s nothing you recognize,” said Johansson. “A quotation, I mean.”
“No,” said Sarah, shaking her head. “It’s not that good.”
“Hm,” said Johansson, looking as though he were thinking deeply. “I still think it was your old boyfriend who wrote it. Purely technically, I mean,” he added quickly when he saw that she was preparing to object.
“What I mean is the following,” Johansson clarified. “I believe that he’s the one who sat and wrote this on his own typewriter. He’s the one who put the paper in the typewriter and wrote out the text. He even made a few corrections that you do when you’re copying off of something and discover that you’ve made a typo. And I don’t believe that anyone forced him to do it.”
Sarah nodded. Didn’t appear completely dismissive of the idea.
“Could it be that he copied something written by someone else?”
Sarah suddenly looked rather pleased.
“I could certainly imagine that. That sounds just like John.”
“So why did he do it?” asked Johansson.
“Don’t know,” said Sarah, shrugging her shoulders. “But that’s not the big problem.”
“What is it then? The big problem?”
“John would never take his own life,” said Sarah and nodded with emphasis.
“How do you know that?”
“He was far too pleased with himself,” said Sarah. “He would rather die than take his own life,” she said, smiling.
So he would, thought Johansson, but he didn’t say that. He contented himself with nodding.
“That letter he sent me,” he reminded her.
“I’ll get it,” she said. “I have it in my office.”
Perhaps a bit too round, thought Johansson, looking after her back as she disappeared out into the hall. Although she moves easily. Whatever that has to do with anything, he thought.
Finally, thought Johansson when just over three minutes later he was sitting with Krassner’s letter in his hands.
A common white envelope covered with postmarks, stamps, various internal postal notations, and three handwritten addresses. In addition it was opened, neatly opened with the aid of a letter opener.
“I’m the one who opened it. We’ll discuss that later. Read.”
Judging by the first postmark it had been sent from the post office on Körsbärsvägen to Johansson’s own post office on Folkungagatan on Södermalm in Stockholm, Friday, the eighteenth of October. Poste restante Police Superintendent Lars M. Johansson. The recipient’s title and name were written in a neat female hand.
Pia Hedin, thought Johansson as his heart, for reasons which weren’t really clear to him, beat a little faster.
Monday, the eighteenth of November, it had been returned, judging by the postmark, to the post office on Körsbärsvägen. There it had remained until Thursday, the twenty-eighth of November, when the same neat female hand had taken care of forwarding it to John P. Krassner, care of Sarah J. Weissman, 222 Aiken Avenue, Rensselaer, NY 12144 USA.