Ten days, thought Johansson hopefully. Then he would have vacation over the Christmas, New Year’s, and Epiphany weekends, and when he finally returned he would just clean out his office before he left for a more tranquil existence at the personnel office of the National Police Board. And a nice dinner or two with the old comrades from the union, thought Johansson, who in spirit was already sitting in his own neighborhood restaurant with his counterpart, making toasts with Aunt Jenny’s crystal shot glasses.
After lunch-because he hadn’t felt especially hungry he had been content with a cup of coffee and a sandwich-the jet lag caught up with him and struck with full force. True, he’d slept a few hours on the plane home, and where he was sitting it was only two o’clock, but in his head it was suddenly bedtime after a long, strenuous day.
“Now I’m going to go home and turn in before I faint,” said Johansson to his secretary. “If you can call a taxi for me, then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
At home on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan everything was as usual. The neighbor had watered the plants, fed his two fish, and sorted his mail. The pile of newspapers was much higher, but that could wait. Instead he set the suitcases down in the hall, went straight to his bedroom, took off his clothes, crept down between the sheets, and fell asleep at once. When he woke up, it was eight o’clock in the evening and he was as frisky as a squirrel. He was ravenously hungry too, despite the fact that the contents of his refrigerator offered a man with his appetite faint hope. Beer, mineral water, and way too much aquavit, thought Johansson gloomily, and what do I do now?
First he thought about pulling on his clothes and slipping down to his beloved neighborhood restaurant, but instead he got into the shower and let the water run so he could think better, and an hour later it had all resolved itself for the best. All that had been required was a systematic ransacking of the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry, and a little creative thinking as well as various practical measures à la Kajsa Warg, thought Johansson contentedly as he filled the coffeemaker and poured a tall cognac as a reward.
First an open-faced sandwich with egg and anchovies on hardtack; after that a few slices of moose filet, which he’d thawed quickly in the microwave and simply turned in a hot iron skillet so that they were still thoroughly red and juicy under the browned crust; add to that raw-fried potatoes and homemade garlic butter, all in all a classic Swedish meal worthy of a genuine Norrlander who had once again returned to his native soil after completing exertions abroad.
After that he pulled out the phone jack in order to be in peace, and took his coffee, cognac, and the thick bundle of newspapers into the living room, where he lay down on the sofa in order to evaluate, in peace and quiet, his colleague Wiklander’s summary of what had taken place in the realm during his absence.
Färjestad had taken a comfortable lead in the ice hockey finals and it had been unusually cold for that time of year. Some days the temperature in Stockholm had been between 10 degrees above and 10 degrees below zero, but as for the rest everything seemed to have been rolling along as usual at this time of year.
Christmas sales should break records-on this point merchants and consumers were in touching agreement-despite the fact that the times obviously could have been better. The minister of finance, on the other hand, was unusually optimistic, and in a widely publicized interview he maintained that Sweden was now finally on its way to removing itself from the ensnaring debt the country had landed in due to the previous conservative administration’s mismanagement.
The minister of finance was a popular person and possibly the chief explanation for why things were going well for the ruling party. In Sifo’s December opinion polls, support for the social democrats had risen to forty-four percent, an increase of one percent over the previous month, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of the party’s supporters simultaneously “completely or partially lacked confidence in” the leader of the same party, the country’s prime minister.
Poor devil, it can’t be easy for him, thought Johansson with a sympathy that in any case was uncharacteristic of the rest of the police in the nation. News reports, political analyses, editorials, cultural articles, humor columns, and the usual gossip, page up and page down, all shared a common preoccupation with the prime minister’s character deficiencies and various human shortcomings.
During the short time that Johansson had been away, the prime minister had managed to be assessed for back taxes and promised “an impending tax charge of considerable proportions”; had “seriously damaged Nordic cooperation by his arrogance”; had “expressed opinions that are completely alien to a unionized democratic philosophy”; and had “vacillated disquietingly” when information about the Russians’ shameful treatment of their political dissidents was demanded of him.
In addition he had “incited a struggle against the tax collectors” when, at a lunch with a number of journalists, he had discussed the latest turns in his own tax case. But in contrast to anyone else, who would have been met with standing ovations, by the next day the evening papers had already forced him into full, disorderly retreat. “An unfortunate joke at a private, informal gathering,” the prime minister explained.
How the hell does he keep it up? thought Johansson from the depths of his police experience; the only possible consolation in the misery was that there were others in the same arena who didn’t seem to be having it so easy either. The Center Party’s nominating committee had fired its party leader six months before the convention, which mortified Johansson even more, for two reasons. For one thing, they were both natives of the province of Ångermanland-according to Johansson’s firm conviction there were far too few representatives from Ångermanland in national politics-and also because he seemed to be a decent fellow.
True, Johansson had never met him, but he’d seen him on TV, and you didn’t need to be a policeman to understand that he was decent, honorable, and completely normal. In contrast to most others in the same business, thought Johansson, who was clearly irritated despite the fact that he would never dream of voting for the Center Party, for there were more than enough others in his family who did so. This country is in the process of going completely to hell, thought Johansson gloomily, consoling himself by pouring another splash of cognac into his almost empty glass.
Within the so-called cultural sector, on the other hand, the picture was more divided and at first glance not particularly easy to understand. The Charter Trip II was still the number one movie, in its fourth week now with over a million viewers, while the country’s second most esteemed director was in a state of severe personal brooding due to a lack of financing for his next film. The planned staging of Swan Lake at the Stockholm Opera had had to be postponed because of a simple broken leg, and at the same time Sidney Sheldon and the Collins sisters were topping the Christmas best-seller charts and selling more books than “almost all serious authors combined.”
High time to go to bed, he thought, as the jet lag again made itself known, resulting in a large yawn.
…
Krassner can wait, thought Johansson as he brushed his teeth. He could unpack his suitcases tomorrow, because apart from Krassner’s posthumous papers they contained mostly clothes that needed to be laundered, and as far as Krassner’s papers were concerned he already had a gnawing premonition of what was there, and the only thing he felt about that was a growing unease.