“I don’t believe we’ll go any further than this,” said the special adviser with a light hand movement and a suave expression. “Besides, I understand from the agreeable aromas wafting their way in from the kitchen that it’s almost time for lunch. I think it’s high time to adjourn. Gentlemen… personally I think that this has been both extraordinarily pleasant, interesting, and even exciting, and if I now may…”
What if I were to ask him to extend greetings from Fionn? thought Johansson as he gathered up his notes. Although that’s probably not necessary, for now he could read him like an open book. Despite his heavy, unmoving face, his reclining posture, the half-closed eyelids, despite all of his body language, his phlegmatic self-assuredness and well-formulated speech, Johansson could see that he appeared truly terrified. Wonder how much he knows? he thought.
[THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19]
When Johansson came to work on Thursday morning, it was as if the pre-Christmas calm had been blown away and a state of total war prevailed between his own narcotics squad and its counterpart at the provincial police department in Dalarna. They’d been working together on a large case for several weeks. The head honchos were in Borlänge and Falun, and it was there that it had started, but the case had quickly expanded and appeared to have offshoots both in the rest of the country and abroad. Finally the chief constable in Dalarna had slammed his fist on the table and put his foot down. No more travel or surveillance outside their own turf, and it was high time to bring in a partner if he wasn’t going to get the auditors around his neck.
After an agitated meeting, in which the head of the province’s narcotics squad had called his chief, the chief constable, “a fucking accountant,” the commander had nonetheless had the last word, and for the past three weeks the case had been divided between the police authorities in Dalarna and Johansson’s own national bureau. And no one was happy.
As far as the police in Dalarna were concerned, it was their biggest narcotics case since the gold rush years in the midseventies, and they had no intention of sharing the returns on their own efforts and exertions with some “Stockholm-area-code hotshots.” So the collaboration might have been better.
At the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation it wasn’t the travel allowance or even the budget in general that constituted the inhibiting factor, for in that respect new angles kept popping up. There was nothing wrong with their creativity, either, and because “the peasant police out in the sticks” were always just “scratching the surface,” the joint case had grown like a mold culture until it finally landed “in the competent hands of real policemen.”
“This could become a really big deal,” explained Johansson’s traveling companion from his visit to the United States.
“But the colleagues in the province want to go in now?” asked Johansson.
“Sure, so they can celebrate Christmas in peace and quiet, those lazy bastards,” said the head of the bureau’s narcotics squad with a certain heat.
“Still, I’m thinking they must have some other reason,” said Johansson, who’d been around awhile and had heard this and that before.
“A few of the local crooks are heading to Thailand over Christmas. Those provincials have gotten it in their heads that they intend to stay there for good, which is pure rubbish, and besides they’re not the ones who are interesting. It’s our usual guys who are behind this, the Turks and then those Polacks I was telling you about, they’ve been with us of course for several years now. Those damn Dallanders are just retailers,” snorted the head of the bureau’s narcotics squad, who was from Stockholm and didn’t know better.
“Let Dalarna bring them in then, if they aren’t of interest to us,” said Johansson.
For the sake of household peace-and our own crooks don’t seem to be running away from us either, he thought.
“But it’s going to spoil our own job with the real head honchos,” objected his former traveling companion, and he didn’t sound at all the way he had the last time they’d met.
“I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson.
And I’ve heard it ad nauseam, he thought.
“It’s been their case from the start,” said Johansson, “so it’s hard for me to see how we would be able to stop them.” Or why, he thought.
“Well, you’re the one who decides, of course,” said the narcotics chief inspector sourly, standing up.
“Yes,” said Johansson and contented himself with smiling with his mouth only. I’m the one who decides. And sometimes that’s awfully practical, he thought.
Childishness, thought Johansson, which had taken the entire morning from other things that he’d needed to do instead. Such as slipping out and shopping for a few backup provisions as a present to Jarnebring, who would surely require extra contributions of both liquid and dry goods for dinner, despite his energetic protestations to the contrary. Besides, he himself needed more exact information as to the time and place.
Now that had been solved, at any rate. Jarnebring had phoned after lunch and given the address of his latest girlfriend.
“I was thinking it’s more practical that way,” said Jarnebring. “You know girls, they love to fuss. And then I’ve loaned out my pad too. To Rusht, if you remember him?”
“Is there anything I can bring?” asked Johansson. To Rusht, he thought with surprise. Wasn’t he that long-fingered character with the bad breath who managed the coffee fund at the bureau? Surely that was going too far, despite the fact that he was a colleague.
“No,” said Jarnebring. “I’ve arranged everything. His old lady kicked him out,” Jarnebring clarified, “and I can’t really let the poor bastard celebrate Christmas at the local mission. Besides, I’ve hidden the silverware in my toothbrush case, so he’ll never find it.”
“And you don’t need any aquavit?” said Johansson, who was not one to take risks and especially not right before Christmas.
So our colleague Rusht had a girlfriend, despite the fact that he reeked like a cadaver in a well and had six fingers on each hand, he thought.
“No,” said Jarnebring emphatically. “I’ve got lots of liquor at home. Well, at home with my girlfriend, that is, I’m not stupid that way, and he seems to have something more permanent going for the week after Christmas. Rusht, that is,” he clarified.
“Decent of you,” said Johansson, who had always thought that Rusht was a real son of a bitch regardless of the season.
“So you don’t need to think about aquavit,” Jarnebring concluded.
Strange, thought Johansson as he put down the receiver. Wonder if he’s won on one of those horses he bets on?
That Jarnebring had a new girlfriend was nothing strange. He almost always did; to be on the safe side he usually recruited them from his own ranks. Considerably younger than he, strawberry blonde, high-busted colleagues who as a rule were doing service with the uniformed police when they weren’t fussing around Jarnebring. And so far that added up this time as well, thought Johansson when she opened the door after the second ring and smiled broadly at him. More interesting was the fact that this particular example had clearly survived spring, summer, and autumn, and that this time Jarnebring seemed to have brought pillowcase and blanket with him and, at least for awhile, abandoned his own bachelor pad in Vasastan. She’s probably both motherly and patient, despite the fact that she looks like she does, thought Johansson.
Her friend from Skövde who’d been called in was also on the scene, and as far as her exterior was concerned she might very well have been a sister of the evening’s hostess. When they said hello he also noted interest in her eyes. Wonder if it’s something she’s heard, he thought, or if it’s just my blue eyes? For it can’t be due to the fact that I exercise too little and eat too much. Because of my blue eyes, Johansson decided, and as soon as he decided that it turned into a very pleasant evening.