“Do you have anyone in particular you intended to suggest?” said Lewin.
“Holt,” said Johansson. “Anna Holt. She likes you, for one thing. Besides, you’re the same age. You should be careful about running after younger talents. They have a fucking capacity to grow away from you.”
“In a collegial sense, possibly,” said Lewin, squirming. “Besides, I’m actually twelve years older than her.”
“Yeah, who the hell can believe that,” said Johansson. “You don’t look a day over forty-five, and Anna is forty-seven if I remember right, so I’m sure that will work out.”
“So you say,” said Lewin, smiling hesitantly.
“Because you know she’s twelve years younger than you, you’ve presumably already thought about it,” Johansson observed.
“Why do you think that?”
“Any real policeman could see that,” said Johansson. “If you know something like that, you’ve already checked out the lady in question.”
The conversation with Anna Holt went better than he had thought. Considerably better than he had feared.
Holt also wanted to return to her regular work. Not only that, she assumed that she would do so.
“Sure,” said Johansson. “You’ll get everything as you wish, Anna. I’m sure you already know that.”
“Thanks,” said Anna Holt. “What I already have is good enough.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” said Johansson.
“I have just one last question,” said Holt, getting up.
“I sensed that,” said Johansson.
“What happened to Hedberg was a strange coincidence, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Johansson. “It was probably one of the strangest things I’ve encountered in my whole life.”
“And,” said Anna Holt.
“I was just as fucking shocked as you were when you told me what had happened,” said Johansson, looking seriously at her with his honest, gray eyes.
“I believe you,” said Anna Holt. She nodded and left.
The following day Lewin went into Holt’s office and after the usual hemming and hawing squeezed out his real errand.
“I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me?”
Holt thought it sounded like an excellent idea. She suggested they could do it that same evening and preferably at her place. True, there was nothing really wrong with the restaurant he’d invited her to, but in the long run she thought it was a little tedious to go out. Unnecessarily expensive too.
“Gladly,” said Lewin without clearing his throat. “Is there anything you want me to bring?”
“It’s enough if you bring yourself,” said Holt. If I ask you to bring along a toothbrush, I’m sure you’ll call to cancel right beforehand, and if need be you can always borrow mine, she thought.
The provincial police chief in Stockholm was a busy woman. Not until the same day that Johansson and the chief prosecutor in Stockholm decided to carry the Palme investigation down to the basement of the police building in the greatest possible secrecy did she have time for Bäckström’s presentation on the same case.
To begin with it had looked fairly promising. The police chief’s own conference room. A small, highly qualified group. She herself, the attorney for the Stockholm police, the presenter Bäckström, and his faithful squire Fridolin.
“The Friends of Cunt,” said the police chief with an incredulous expression. That was how the whole thing started, and then it only got worse.
An hour later it was over. Ms. Police Chief nodded curtly at Bäckström and requested a private conversation with Fridolin.
“I’m disappointed in you, Fridolf,” she said as she closed the door on the two of them.
The following day her attorney called Bäckström’s home number to clarify certain legal and employment-related matters.
As a private individual Evert Bäckström had great freedom to have his own opinions about this and that, such as for example about the murder of Olof Palme, and to the degree that he violated laws and regulations it was his own responsibility. Concerning Inspector Evert Bäckström it was also very simple. Memoranda of the type he had submitted to him and to his superior the day before should not be signed with his official title, because the contents did not have the slightest thing to do with Bäckström’s position with the police. If he nonetheless did so, it was as stated a matter of his own criminal liability. In order to avoid any misunderstanding on this point, the attorney had also written an explanatory letter that was already in Bäckström’s mailbox.
“What do we do now?” said Bäckström, giving Fridolin the evil eye. You little dickhead, I should flush you down the john, he thought.
According to Bäckström’s squire it was too early to throw in the towel. On the other hand perhaps an alternative plan of action ought to be chosen.
“What do you think about TV, Bäckström?” said Fridolin, leaning forward. “I have quite a few contacts in the media, too.”
“Journalist bastards,” Bäckström snorted, already missing Egon so much it hurt.
“These are no ordinary journalists,” Fridolin assured him. “I know a guy at TV4. A heavy dude, really heavy. He works at Cold Facts,” Fridolin stated, sounding more and more like his new mentor.
“So he does,” said Bäckström, nodding and taking a meditative sip of the good malt in order to think even more clearly. “So he does,” he repeated. Wasn’t it the case that in war all means are permitted? he thought.
102
On Thursday the second of November the special adviser departed the era in which he had lived and worked for over sixty years. Not because he had consumed enormous quantities of pea soup and warm punsch, but rather from completely natural causes. His bad heart, his high blood pressure, a lifelong excess of food and alcoholic beverages that his doctor had advised him against. Constant negligence with his medications, even though the same doctor emphasized how important it was that he follow his prescriptions to the letter. Completely natural causes in other words, and the great mystery was really how he had lasted a day beyond the age of thirty considering the life he had lived.
Just like his mentor, old professor Forselius, he died as a result of a massive brain hemorrhage. According to the autopsy report there were a number of good reasons, but because the pathologist would be asked anyway he wanted to point out one of them in particular. That his blood had been thin as water, due to a severe overdosage of the blood thinner warfarin, which he was forced to take due to his bad heart. It was a classic rat poison that had also been beneficial in the art of medicine, even though in combination with large quantities of alcohol it was much worse than rat poison. His high blood pressure had taken care of the rest, producing a logical conclusion. The great mystery was, as stated, how he had lived as long as he had.
In the investigation of the death there were also two interviews. One with his housekeeper, who found him dead in the morning. The second with the last person who saw him alive and had dinner with him the same evening he died, former detective inspector Åke Persson. Persson had worked the majority of his active career with the secret police, and according to him that was also how he and his host had gotten to know each other.
A simple three-course dinner. Swedish home cooking. First some herring with a couple of shots and a beer for each, then sailor’s beef casserole with which they shared a bottle of red wine, for dessert homemade apple pie made by the host’s housekeeper. A little cognac with coffee, and possibly a thing or two he’d forgotten, but absolutely no extravagance.
They finished the evening with a game of billiards and a little evening toddy. Then Persson went home. His host had as always been in the best of spirits and even sang to him as he got into the taxi. On the other hand he had no memory of what it was he sang. Whatever that had to do with it, by the way.