For some reason it took Berg almost a half hour to explain and to recount the conclusions he’d drawn from the fact that the special adviser had asked him whether Johansson and Waltin might be in this together. Persson sat silently the whole time, and he did so even when Berg was through.
“Well,” said Berg. “What do you think?”
“I’m thinking,” said Persson, holding out his glass. “May I have another cognac?”
…
When Persson had gotten his cognac, he sat silently for another few minutes without even sniffing the expensive drops. He just sat there, sunk in his chair with his gaze turned inward. Finally shook his head, looked at Berg, and raised his glass.
“Naw,” he said. “Both you and that socialist in the government building have gotten this wrong. So I think we’ll just forget that.”
“What do you mean?” said Berg, with his faint smile.
“Someone like Johansson wouldn’t even touch someone like Waltin with a ten-foot pole,” said Persson. Johansson’s a real policeman, thought Persson, but he didn’t say that. And a good fellow, he thought, but he didn’t say that either, for Berg could certainly figure it out all on his own.
“So if Johansson were to have said something about Krassner, in any case he hasn’t heard it from Waltin,” said Berg.
“We can just forget that,” said Persson. “If indeed he has said something… for that’s of course just pure guesswork on your part.” Persson smiled and nodded at Berg. You need a vacation, he thought.
“You don’t think he might have heard something from Jarnebring?” Berg persisted. “They’re both still like two coats of paint.”
“Whatever he might have heard from him,” said Persson. A good fellow, Jarnebring, thought Persson. And a real policeman, just like him and Johansson, or like Berg when he was young. Before he became the boss and started looking under his own bed for ghosts that were never there.
“So you think we should close the case,” said Berg, smiling. Peculiar, he thought. Suddenly he felt both calm and happy, despite all the special advisers and strange colleagues with Rolex watches who took the joy out of existence.
“I don’t even think we have a case,” said Persson. “If you don’t believe me I suggest you ask Johansson if he’s said something about the Krassner guy to that socialist in the government building. For that matter, perhaps you should question all three. Johansson, Jarnebring, and the socialist. Good luck,” he said and chuckled.
“I give up,” said Berg. “I’m on the wrong track.”
Persson shrugged his fat shoulders.
“He might well have heard something,” he said. “Given how much shit all the police are talking the whole time. He might well have said something to that socialist. If for no other reason than to test him,” said Persson, who was a real policeman. “Or to mess with him. I’ve heard that he can be as annoying as his boss.”
“Skoal,” said Berg, raising his glass. “And merry Christmas, by the way.” And peace to both great and small, he thought.
Berg and Johansson had a story in common, and Berg hoped that Johansson, despite his sometimes uncanny ability to be able to see around corners, was unaware of this.
Almost ten years earlier Johansson, who at that time was working with the Stockholm Police Department’s central detective unit, developed suspicions about someone in the bodyguard unit of the secret police. According to Johansson-for likely his old armor-bearer and best friend Bo Jarnebring had been acting as travel companion-one of Berg’s officers (granted, one at the base of Berg’s high pyramid) robbed a post office in connection with a security assignment. And as if this wasn’t bad enough, he tried to cover his tracks by murdering two witnesses who had recognized him.
Briefly and in summary, it was quite a hair-raising story, and how Johansson-who truly lived up to the epithet “a real policeman”-was able to think along such uncollegial lines at all was a complete mystery. Possibly here as well it was a matter of his ability to sometimes be able to see around corners. In any event, there were unfortunately many things that indicated that he was correct in all the essentials. This even Berg was forced to admit, although it still pained him every time he did so. The investigation had been closed rather quickly and the man concerned had not even been questioned, much less informed that he was under suspicion in the matter. He hadn’t even been fired-however that could have been arranged-but after a few more years he had chosen to leave of his own free will, and instead of returning to the open operation he had quit the police force. Where he’d gone after that Berg had studiously avoided finding out.
His own role in this sad story was not something he was proud of, despite the fact that he’d been able to turn it into an advantage for the operation instead of the catastrophe that would have otherwise been the alternative if Johansson had prevailed. Actually it also concerned far more important issues than one policeman who ought never to have been allowed to become one. Important matters that Berg was assigned to protect and in which the price, regardless of how the whole thing came out in the end, would always be too high. For all that, the only one who had acquitted himself creditably in the matter was Johansson, despite the fact that, measured by any objective legal standard, he had failed completely.
During the years that followed, Berg had been worried about how things would go for Johansson. Would he run around like a rabid dog telling his story to anyone who had, or didn’t have, the energy to listen? Would he, like so many before and after him-completely disregarding whether they were right or wrong-go to the media to get help?
Johansson had shown himself to be exactly what he seemed to be, a real policeman. He had never said a word. Just held his tongue and shook himself and continued as though nothing had happened. Instead he’d made a career within the same operation that had betrayed him. Certainly not a bad one, and the way he’d gone about it fit in well with the reputation that had always surrounded him. Say what you will about Lars Martin Johansson from Näsåker, and there were many of his colleagues who did, no one would even think that he was anything but “a real policeman.” There were plenty enough who’d arrived at a painful insight in that regard.
And Berg would never think so, for he himself was “a real policeman.” Or had been, in any case, before the bureaucracy that he was now appointed to lead had started to eat him up from inside. He had tried to do what he could for Johansson, and as far as such things could be done in secret. He’d tried to become his secret mentor, his “rabbi,” his “padre,” his “godfather,” as his foreign colleagues used to describe the situation. Why isn’t there any good word in Swedish for that, by the way? thought Berg. Because such things are un-Swedish, naturally, and in any case nothing you can talk about openly. Especially not in these times.
But with Waltin it was much simpler, for regardless of what he might be, in any case he was not “a real policeman.” Berg and Waltin also had a history in common. It went even further back than his one-sided secret contacts with Johansson. Most recently it had unfortunately developed less well, and by the day after his meeting with Persson, Berg decided that it was high time to change that. Despite the fact that it was almost Christmas.
“So, here we sit like two little birds on a branch,” said Waltin with a conciliatory smile while in passing he adjusted a crease in his new trousers of classic English tweed. And you’re only getting sadder and grayer, he thought, nodding toward his boss.
“There are a few things we need to talk about,” said Berg.
It certainly did not turn out to be a pleasant conversation. The subjects that Berg had chosen didn’t allow for that.
First he brought up the Krassner case. It was as though he couldn’t avoid the misery, despite the fact that Krassner had taken his own life. Despite the fact that their own covert house search was only an unfortunate coincidence. Despite the fact that they had done exactly what they were expected to do and what their employer actually had the right to demand of them. Which he actually had demanded of them, even if the special adviser hadn’t left any paperwork about the matter.