“Tell me,” said Jarnebring while bolting yet another anchovy toast and nodding knowingly toward his empty glass. “Spare me no details, like Bogart used to say.”
So Johansson told about his visit to the FBI and the meeting with the police in New York, but as to the rest he didn’t say a word about meeting Krassner’s old girlfriend Sarah Weissman or about Krassner’s posthumous papers that he’d brought home with him.
“You gave up on that crazy American?” asked Jarnebring.
“Sure,” said Johansson. “I’ve given up on that, although yesterday I figured out how he got hold of my home address, and you were just about right there. He got it from one of our Swedish talents. I talked with him today. Krassner clearly wanted to make contact with the Swedish police. Not that I understand why, but he clearly did.”
“They always do, damn guys,” snorted Jarnebring, who hated journalists. “You should have made glue out of that bastard who gave out your home address.”
“I let mercy precede justice,” said Johansson, smiling wanly, “so he was allowed to live. How’s it been going for you, by the way?”
The sun was shining on Jarnebring’s home front. The colleague with the Achilles heel had shown promising signs of recovery and should be coming back half-time after the holidays. Someone other than Jarnebring could take care of the other fifty percent, so he would get back to the bureau and a little real work. And his live-in-for that was no doubt the way he had to view her, since he mostly lived at home with her, despite the fact that hers was the only name on the apartment lease-had been unusually kind and good recently.
Hultman had also offered a happy surprise. It wasn’t enough that he’d shown up with the promised mixed case. He’d also had the good taste to supplement all the liqueurs and other shit that women were so fond of with a whole carton of Jarnebring’s favorite bourbon. But naturally he hadn’t mentioned that to Johansson. True, Johansson was his best friend, but in the thin air where his friend was living nowadays there were a few things that he would feel better about not knowing. Instead Jarnebring chose a different solution and invited him home for a small pre-Christmas dinner.
“What do you think about next Thursday? Me and my old lady are both off then. I’ve bought two kinds of aquavit,” Jarnebring assured Johansson, for that was another way of looking at the matter.
“Suits me fine,” said Johansson, for it did.
“She has a damn pretty girlfriend too.” Jarnebring for some reason lowered his voice and leaned across the table. “A colleague, working temporarily at Norrmalm. What do you think about that?”
“Well,” said Johansson. “It sounds nice. Is it anyone I know?” What should I say? he thought.
“Don’t think so,” said Jarnebring. “She’s been put on duty for a few months. Works in Skövde with the uniformed police, fresh gal, no kids, nothing steady.”
“How old is she?” asked Johansson.
“Well,” said Jarnebring, shrugging his shoulders. “Like mine, in her prime.”
So that’s how it is, thought Johansson, and for unclear reasons he suddenly became a little depressed. Perhaps it was his tightening pants lining and his still only half-eaten and in and of itself extraordinarily good-tasting roast pork with marsala sauce and polenta. It must have been something.
“That’ll be nice,” Johansson repeated.
It’ll have to be the swimming pool early tomorrow, he decided, pushing his plate to the side.
“If you’re not having any more I can take that,” said Jarnebring greedily.
They remained sitting, talking, and drinking until the restaurant closed, and then Johansson called off the traditional follow-up, pleading a combination of jet lag and early business matters. Jarnebring’s protests were surprisingly mild.
“You work too much, Lars,” he said. “And exercise too little. Come along and work out sometime, why don’t you?”
Then he did something highly unusual. He leaned over and put his burly arms around Johansson’s shoulders and gave him a hug.
“Take care of yourself, Lars. We’ll see you in a week.”
It must be the Italian food, thought Johansson with surprise.
When he came home and went to bed he had a hard time falling asleep for once. A feeling of depression that didn’t want to go away. Women, thought Johansson. Must get myself a woman. Then he dropped off as usual.
[THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12]
Johansson had started his day at work with an hour in the swimming pool, but when he emerged from the sauna after an additional half hour his waist measurement unfortunately appeared to be the same as before. On the other hand he’d acquired a ferocious appetite that he felt obligated to alleviate at once. He had two cups of coffee and a substantial slice of rye bread with meatballs and red-beet mayonnaise down in the cafeteria in order to put a stop to the worst of it before he sat down behind his desk.
Muscle-building, thought Johansson; he would certainly be able to solve the woman problem during the course of the day. First he thought about the post office manager he’d met when he was poking around on the fringes of the Krassner case. A really splendid woman, who seemed wise as well, whom he’d already made use of in his fantasies on a few occasions when he followed big brother’s advice, but the practical problems were considerable.
You can’t just call her up and ask if she wants to go to bed, thought Johansson. However much you’d like to. Besides, that was inappropriate for other reasons as well. Consider, for example, if the Krassner case were to take an unfortunate turn and get new life and she were to be called in as a witness in a new investigation, and he himself were to be… something he’d rather not imagine. You’ve chosen the wrong profession, thought Johansson, feeling the despondency coming back with renewed force, and what was that wretched Wiklander up to anyway? Almost two full days since he’d told him to check on whether the pieces in Jarnebring’s investigation really were in place, and since then he hadn’t heard a peep from him.
Six weeks without naked skin, thought Johansson. And the fact that he was crawling in his own hide wasn’t so strange. In a week he would be meeting the female friend from Skövde that Jarnebring had announced, but quite apart from the fact that that was an eternity away, his feelings about this encounter were, to say the least, mixed. Say what you will about his best friend, his view of women was different from Johansson’s.
After lunch he sneaked away from the office to shop for Christmas presents, and when he came home it was already evening and he was dead tired. First he had a simple dinner alone and idly watched TV for an hour. Then he went to bed and fell asleep without any fuss, and during the night his post-office manager visited him in his dreams and it was quite obvious that she didn’t work for the police.
[FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13]
When Johansson woke up he was in an excellent mood despite the fact that no candle-adorned Lucia appeared to sing for him; in the shower he followed big brother’s advice. Seeing that it was Friday the thirteenth, when no one ought to stick his neck, or any other body part, out unnecessarily, this was, moreover, a risk-free and attractive form of erotic practice. While he made coffee he hummed an old Sven-Ingvars song, great fan of dance-band music and real policeman that he was, in contrast to those fictional opera lovers who seemed to populate every single made-up police station from Ystad to Haparanda. Despite the ominous combination of date and weekday, he felt instinctively that this was going to be a really good day.
…
When he got to work his faithful coworker Wiklander was already sitting in the corridor outside his office waiting for him, but before he let him in he sent him to fetch coffee for both of them. There had to be some system; he himself had fetched numerous cups of coffee for older colleagues when he was Wiklander’s age.