“Let’s hear it,” said Johansson, leaning back in his desk chair and sipping the day’s second cup of coffee. Freshly brewed, thought Johansson contentedly, biting into a saffron bun with raisins. Good, he thought, despite the fact that he didn’t really like saffron buns with raisins.
“It’s a suicide,” said Wiklander. “On that point I’m in complete agreement with our colleagues.”
“I’m listening,” said Johansson and nodded.
True, the initial measures that the police in Stockholm had carried out left a great deal to be desired-everything, actually, if you wanted to be that way-but then their colleague Jarnebring, acting head of the local detective unit at Östermalm, had gone in and brought order into the case. Wiklander’s line of reasoning and conclusions sounded in other respects quite like that which Johansson had heard from his best friend fourteen days earlier.
“Jarnebring is really good, so you don’t get past him too readily,” Wiklander observed. “Though for that matter, chief, you know that better than I do.”
“Was there anything at all strange?”
“Well,” said Wiklander, smiling wanly. “The gumshoes in the building next to us have also gone in and checked.”
SePo, thought Johansson.
“You’re quite sure of that?”
“Yes,” said Wiklander. “Do you remember Persson, chief? The one who worked on aggravated thefts down in Stockholm a bunch of years ago? He’s working at SePo now. Big, fat guy, surly type, though good, really good policeman. I know one of the gals in the archive and she told me that Persson had been down last week and copied the file and told her to keep her mouth shut because otherwise there’d be hell to pay.”
“But she didn’t do that,” said Johansson.
“No,” said Wiklander, grinning. “She doesn’t like Persson. Thinks he’s an uncommonly surly old geezer.”
But she clearly likes you, thought Johansson.
“Was it Krassner they wanted to check on?”
“I thought so at first,” said Wiklander. “But I’m not so sure anymore. Where I’m leaning is that it was someone else they were interested in. A foreign student from South Africa, a black guy who’d gotten a scholarship from the union federation. Belongs to some radical group of civil-rights activists down in South Africa. That’s no doubt why they brought him here. The union, that is.”
“What does he have to do with Krassner?” asked Johansson.
“Nothing,” said Wiklander. “They were just living in the same corridor. Don’t seem to have known each other.”
“And why do you think that it was him they were interested in? The colleagues at SePo, that is?”
“They seem to have put an overcoat on him,” said Wiklander.
“Huh?” said Johansson.
Wiklander had among many other things made a few discreet inquiries among the students who lived on the same corridor as Krassner. That was how he’d found out that one of them had a girlfriend who came by often. Louise Eriksson, nice-looking girl, around twenty, who’d said that she was studying criminology or some similar easily digested trendy subject, when she wasn’t together with Daniel M’Boye.
She and M’Boye had clearly run into each other more or less by chance in the middle of October. After that they’d started getting together regularly, and they’d kept on that way at least through November. Although then the whole thing seemed to have run into the sand and lately he’d only spoken with her on the phone. Young Miss Eriksson herself had disappeared out to the fringes, according to her own information to go home to her parents and take care of her sick mother.
“Have you spoken with this M’Boye?” asked Johansson.
“Yes,” said Wiklander. “Although he’s actually rather difficult to talk to. Especially as it concerns that girl Eriksson. Unrequited love, perhaps,” said Wiklander, smiling wryly.
“Is there any reason for us to bring him in?” said Johansson. Whatever that would be, he thought.
“That would be rather difficult, I’m afraid,” said Wiklander. “He went home to South Africa yesterday morning.”
Sigh, thought Johansson. “The girlfriend,” he said. “Louise Eriksson, is she a police officer, does she work at SePo, or does she just freelance?”
“Jeanette Louise Eriksson, twenty-seven years old,” said Wiklander. “Left school six years ago and disappeared almost immediately to SePo. I’m guessing she’s in their detective unit. Really good type, actually, looks like she just left preschool. First name Jeanette, except when she’s studying criminology at half speed at the university, for there she calls herself Louise.”
“You’re quite certain,” Johansson persisted.
“Yes,” said Wiklander, his voice not sounding the least bit offended. “You can be completely calm, chief. She works at SePo, lives alone in an apartment in Solna, studies criminology at half speed. The home telephone number she gave to M’Boye ceased to exist only a few hours after he’d departed from Arlanda. Secret number from the start and now they’re just shaking their heads at the phone company. Typical SePo account and a heavy-duty sign that she’s done with what she was supposed to do. I’ve checked on her mother too. She’s as healthy as a horse, and if the passport photo matches she looks like she’s her daughter’s age.”
“Do you have a picture of Officer Eriksson?” asked Johansson.
“Yes,” said Wiklander with a somewhat broader smile. “Absolutely up to date. Took them myself the other day.”
Wiklander handed over a bundle of photos taken with a telephoto lens and at a secure distance.
Nice-looking girl, thought Johansson, and she doesn’t appear to be a day over seventeen.
Jeanette Louise Eriksson, stepping out of the doorway of the building in Solna where she lived. The same Jeanette Eriksson getting out of a car in the garage of the police headquarters in the basement in the Kronoberg block. Little Jeanette in the courtyard of police headquarters, facing toward the restaurant Bylingen within the courtyard, despite the fact that she looked as though she were on her way to school when the camera captured her obliquely from above.
“And you think that they put her on M’Boye,” said Johansson. “As a girlfriend, with all that that entails these days?”
Doesn’t that take a bit of gall even for those crazies? thought Johansson, who had a past within the police union and was still protective of his colleagues’ work environment.
“Yes,” said Wiklander, smiling broadly. “I actually asked M’Boye if she’d been anything special in bed but then he got a totally offended look. He’s a really burly type, so I only asked once.”
“And there’s no possibility that M’Boye might have had something to do with Krassner’s death?” persisted Johansson, who just happened to think of the letter that he actually shouldn’t have read.
What was it that he’d written, the piece of shit? That if he died he would have been murdered either by the Swedish secret police or by the Swedish military intelligence service or by the Soviet military intelligence service GRU. By the way, didn’t the Russians used to make use of operatives from African resistance movements when they were going to be really nasty out in Western Europe? In the back of his mind he had a vague memory that he’d read something like that in some classified memorandum that the gumshoes in the adjacent building had decided to share with their colleagues within the open operation.
“No,” said Wiklander, shaking his head.
“Why then?” said Johansson. “They can’t have got everything wrong, can they?” Every time, he thought.
“He has an alibi,” said Wiklander and chuckled. “When Krassner jumped out the window, M’Boye and Eriksson from SePo were sitting in a Mexican restaurant down on Birger Jarlsgatan.”
“You’re quite sure?”
“I’ve checked with the owner. He’s a Spaniard and doesn’t seem to be particularly fond of blacks, if I may say so. He remembered them, maintained that he’d actually thought about phoning in a tip to the police, a big burly black guy and a little Swedish girl who looked like she was still in school. Where he came from there was the death penalty for such things. It took a good while when I talked with him before he realized that she hadn’t been murdered.”