Rule number three, thought Johansson. Hate chance. There at least it seems that you were quite right. He gave a wry smile toward Krassner’s pile of papers on his otherwise well-organized desk. And because that pile was now his own, he could start by finding out what it was really about. What was it he’d written in that letter that he’d probably never seriously believed Johansson would ever receive? So I can see to it that justice is served in my own country, thought Johansson.
[MONDAY, DECEMBER 16]
On Monday morning right before eight o’clock Johansson phoned his secretary and reported that he planned to sit at home and work during the day and that he preferred not to be disturbed.
Unless all hell breaks loose, of course, although why would that happen? thought Johansson.
“Yes, unless something totally new comes up,” he said.
“But you’ll be in tomorrow?” asked his secretary.
“Sure,” said Johansson. “I’m coming on Tuesday morning as usual.” Quit nagging, he thought.
“And you haven’t forgotten that you’re going to a conference on total defense on Tuesday and Wednesday?” she continued.
“No,” said Johansson, and finally he could put down the receiver.
It took him a couple of hours to go through Krassner’s manuscript. If even a portion of what was written in it was true and could be substantiated, it would be tricky enough for the person it dealt with, but just now it wasn’t the actual contents of the papers that interested him. What started the police alarm bells ringing in his head was the extent, the volume, and above all else the structure of what Krassner had written, combined with the imagined contents of what he still hadn’t had time to write.
What was there was just under one hundred fifty typewritten pages that dealt with the book’s protagonist, the prime minister, and regardless of whether what was written there was true or false-for that was a later, subsidiary question-it was a manuscript in sufficient condition that a professional editor could manage to make a book out of it. A book of roughly two hundred fifty to three hundred printed pages, assuming the author had been able to realize the ambitions that he had recorded in his table of contents and transform what remained to be done into written text.
Even more interesting was what was still unwritten. What that would deal with was evident from a rather detailed outline, which seemed to assimilate all the chapters with headings and brief descriptions underneath, and last but not least from the frequent handwritten notations that Krassner had made in his manuscript. Thus, among what was missing were chapters that would deal with Swedish social democracy and the history of social democracy, previous social democratic leaders and their wheelings and dealings, Sweden’s role in the Second World War, the Swedish policy of neutrality, the security situation in northern Europe, and the threat from the great neighbor to the east.
A background description, plain and simple, thought Johansson, and he also realized from the handwritten notes under the still-unwritten chapters that Krassner had intended to complete that part of the work in situ-that is, in Sweden. It stood there plainly in a number of places and in Krassner’s own, barely legible handwriting, “Sweden!” “to be written in Sweden,” “write in S.,” and there were also handwritten references to the places he would be seeking his materiaclass="underline" “Labor Movement Archives,” “Social Democratic Archives,” “Parliamentary Protocols,” “Kungliga Biblioteket (Royal Library, Humlegarden),” and so on.
Most interesting of all was the conclusion that followed from the fact that the manuscript on his desk, with the exception of about twenty pages, consisted of photocopies. There must be an original and possibly one or several copies somewhere else. Those pages that weren’t copies showed up more or less randomly in the running text; possibly it was as simple as that they’d just landed in the wrong pile when Krassner sorted them after copying.
True, Johansson was not an author, but if he had been one and had flown four thousand miles to write an already-determined background description for a book that he, both mentally and in terms of content, surely thought he was already pretty much done with… if such had been the case, thought Johansson, then I would have so help me God brought along what I’d already written. In order to have a baseline when I was writing those final obvious sections that nonetheless needed to be there so that it would look one way and not another if you’d gotten it into your head to write a book.
Hence the alarm bell that was ringing in his head. When his colleagues had done the house search at Krassner’s place right after he was supposed to have jumped out the window, it had simply and summarily been swept clean of the sort of things that ought to have been found there, namely Krassner’s collected working materials. What he’d brought with him from the States and what he’d gathered together during his six weeks in Sweden. True, he didn’t expect any great feats from Bäckström and Wiijnbladh-he was well acquainted with both of them and if he’d had any say neither of them would have been a police officer-but they weren’t completely blind. Besides, Jarnebring had been there and the only, obvious conclusion from the fact that he hadn’t found any papers either was that there weren’t any to find. And who in that case had cleared them away? For Johansson was completely convinced that they’d been there from the start.
The guys at SePo, thought Johansson, and, considering what had happened since, there were two alternatives that appeared more credible than any others. In the first case someone had taken the opportunity to do a so-called covert house search while Krassner was out running around town, on his own initiative or because someone had lured him away, and this someone had gathered up his papers and taken them along when they’d left the place. And so far all was well and good and most likely even legal. True, Johansson had no particular insights into the classified legislation that governed the more sensitive aspects of the work of the secret police, but the little he knew still suggested that that was how it had been.
Then Krassner comes home right after seven, for Jarnebring himself had told him about that, which suggested strongly that it was probably true. And when he comes into his room and discovers that all his papers are gone, he becomes so depressed that he steals a few last farewell lines, from the protagonist in his work in progress, and jumps out the window. The same prime minister who, according to Krassner himself in several places in his manuscript, “makes me wanna puke” gets the honor of formulating his last words in life?
Forget that, thought Johansson. Not Krassner, who has multiple copies of all the essentials in his safe-deposit box back home in Albany and most likely an original too that he’s tucked away somewhere else. Not Krassner, who has a loaded, unsecured automatic weapon in his bedroom in Albany. Not Krassner, who even in his youth was capable of beating up the woman in his life. Not SePo either, for that matter, for what would be the point of doing a covert house search if the person you did it to would discover it as soon as he came home? In that case there were other, considerably easier solutions. Concoct a suitable suspicion, arrest the piece of shit, and put him in jail while you go through his belongings in peace and quiet. Johansson himself had done that more than once, so here he had solid ground under his feet.
But… what if despite everything there hadn’t been any papers? Perhaps he stored them some other place? What if the secret police had never done a covert house search? What if Krassner quite simply had taken his own life? If, if, if, thought Johansson with irritation. Maybe a necessary prerequisite for getting any reasonable order into all of these reservations would be for him to go there and speak to the former neighbors. Forget that too, thought Johansson, for apart from everything else he simply didn’t have time.