“So what happens next?” asked Johansson.
According to Lewin the following happened.
The perpetrator ran diagonally across Brunkebergsåsen with a few dodges along the way to mislead anyone following.
“This was the initial understanding among the police about the perpetrator’s escape route,” said Lewin. “This was decided on rather early. After having shot the prime minister, he runs down Tunnelgatan, up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan, continues straight ahead across Malmskillnadsgatan, and on down David Bagares gata. After about a hundred yards on David Bagares gata he veers off to the left onto Regeringsgatan and thus disappears in a northerly direction. Where he goes then is less clear, but according to the prevailing understanding he must have veered off to the right after another hundred yards of double time on Regeringsgatan and taken Snickarbacken down to Smala gränd. After that he emerged on Birger Jarlsgatan at the corner by the park, Humlegården that is. It’s about five hundred yards from the crime scene, and at the pace he’s moving he ought to have managed it in about three minutes.”
“So how do we know that?”
“We have five different witnesses,” said Lewin. “In a kind of chain of witnesses, if you like, although the various links are a little iffy. Whatever, that’s the escape route that was already decided on within a week, and that’s also the one the officers who did the crime analysis and perpetrator’s profile seem to have accepted. The alternatives are countless of course within five hundred yards from the crime scene. But…” Lewin shrugged his shoulders.
A chain of witnesses with five links, and just like all other chains it was as strong as the weakest link.
First there were a number of witnesses who had seen him disappear down Tunnelgatan. All were touchingly in agreement about this, and that escape route was also the only one imaginable, considering how it looked at the scene. After only forty yards he disappeared from their field of vision and all that was left is the chain with five links.
The first witness in the chain, a man in his thirties, is the only one who claims to have seen the perpetrator run up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan. That it was the perpetrator he had seen he also realized because he had heard the two shots and understood at least part of the course of events.
The perpetrator ran up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. At the top of the stairs, at Malmskillnadsgatan, he stopped for a moment. To get oriented, catch his breath, or see if he was being followed. This is according to the suggestions the witness himself stated at the initial interview. Then the perpetrator disappeared from the witness’s field of vision.
The witness then followed him. In the interviews he makes no secret of the fact that he was extremely upset and was not in any great hurry. When he himself comes up onto Malmskillnadsgatan, he encounters the second witness, a woman, and asks her whether she has seen anyone running.
She had. She’d seen a man who disappeared down onto David Bagares gata in the direction of Birger Jarlsgatan. She hadn’t seen much more than that, however, and when the first witness looks down the same street he in any event doesn’t see the man who had run up the stairs.
When the perpetrator rounds the corner of David Bagares gata and Regeringsgatan, according to the third and fourth witnesses, a woman and a man, he literally ran into witness number three. The perpetrator comes running from behind, the woman hears someone coming, turns her head, and slips. The perpetrator runs into her, and she yells a few insults at him. The perpetrator takes no notice of this but instead continues running and disappears almost immediately out of their view.
The fifth and final link in the chain was the one who aroused the greatest public attention and the one about whom Lewin himself was most doubtful. A woman, who in the media came to be called “the Cartoonist,” had observed a mysterious man in Smala gränd, approximately fifteen minutes after the murder and hardly five hundred yards from the scene of the crime. The man is walking hunched up with his hands in his pants pockets, and when he discovers that the fifth witness is looking at him-obviously without her having any idea what has happened to the prime minister-he looks “terrified,” turns around, hastens his steps and disappears in the direction of Birger Jarlsgatan and Humlegården.
Regardless of all the doubtful aspects in connection with the observation itself, the suspect had however made a deep impression not only on the witness but also on the leadership of the investigation. A phantom image was made of him, which was published in the media the week after the murder, and which according to the leadership of the investigation depicted a man who “possibly could be identical with the perpetrator.”
“Although hardly anyone believes that anymore,” said Lewin. Personally I never did, he thought.
“A nosy question,” said Johansson with an innocent expression. “That woman our perpetrator supposedly ran into when he rounded the corner at David Bagares gata and onto Regeringsgatan. The one who shouted insults at him. What was it she shouted?”
“Look out you fucking gook,” said Lewin with a shy glance in the direction of Anna Holt.
“Gook,” said Johansson. “What did she know about that sort?”
For some reason Jan Lewin seemed embarrassed by the question.
“She is extremely definite on that point. That was what she shouted at him. Her exact choice of words and the reason for it, she maintains, according to what she says in the interview, was that he looked like a-quote-‘typical gook’-end quote. To answer your question. Well, I get the impression that she has a definite understanding of how such a person looks in any event. Her story is also corroborated in the interview with the man who accompanied her.”
“She did of course get to look at the pictures of Christer Pettersson, everyone’s Palme assassin,” said Johansson.
“Yes,” said Lewin. “Though as I’m sure you know, boss, that wasn’t until the fall of 1988. It took over two years before Pettersson became a central figure in the Palme investigation.” It’s Anna he’s after, thought Lewin.
“And?”
“No,” said Lewin, shaking his head. “She didn’t recognize Pettersson.”
“Now when you say it,” said Johansson, “I have a faint recollection of that interview. Isn’t it the case that in response to a direct question of whether it was Christer Pettersson who ran into her, she answers approximately…that in that case she wouldn’t have shouted ‘fucking gook’ at him?”
“Yes,” said Lewin. “Something like that. I don’t recall her exact words. But that issue is brought up. It’s there on the tape. Not in the transcript, because that part of the interview has only been summarized.”
“So what would she have said instead?” interrupted Holt, looking at Johansson. Sloppy of me to miss that interview, but that’s not Jan’s fault, she thought.
“She thinks Pettersson looks like a typical Swedish drunk, a genuine Swedish bum. Definitely not a gook,” Johansson observed.
“Which conveniently leads us to the next item on the program, namely Christer Pettersson, and if I’ve understood things correctly you have a good deal to say about that, Anna,” he continued with an innocent expression.
“Yes, I do have a few things,” Holt agreed. She had decided to play along and put a good face on it.
“Then let’s do that,” said Johansson. “But first I would like to propose a leg stretch of about fifteen minutes. I have to make a few calls.”
14
Holt and Lewin went to Lewin’s office so they could talk undisturbed.
“I owe you an apology, Anna,” said Lewin.
“For what?” asked Holt. You have to stop apologizing, Jan, she thought.