“That’s enough,” said Holt, smiling. “Some of that information may also be consistent with Pettersson.”
“The face, the hair?” Johansson looked even more innocent.
“Apart from Lisbeth Palme, none of the witnesses has been able to provide any such information,” said Holt.
“No, exactly,” said Johansson. “Sometimes our murderer is wearing a cap and sometimes he’s bareheaded, and when you look at the times it seems he was seen simultaneously. With Lisbeth I think it’s so bad that she never saw the perpetrator. I think he was standing in her dead spot, pardon the expression, at an angle behind her.”
“I intend to come back to Lisbeth Palme,” said Holt. “Now let’s move on to the next point. Point number two.”
“I’m listening,” said Johansson.
At the time before the murder Christer Pettersson had been in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene. According to what he himself had admitted, he’d been at the illegal gambling club called The Ox up on Malmskillnadsgatan.
“So he’s been there at least,” said Holt. “Then we have other witnesses who saw him at the Grand cinema. By the way, one of his dealers had an apartment on Tegnérgatan.”
“Everyone in the country’s dealer at that time, Sigge Cedergren,” said Johansson. “Nowadays no longer among us, and just like all the other drugged-out nutcases from Grand-more and more certain of their story the more years have passed since the murder. ’Cause at that time they didn’t have much to say.”
“Granted,” said Holt. “But there is a logic to it. There are actually good prospects that he might run into Olof Palme completely by chance. He used to hang out in those parts, and it wasn’t to go to the movies and see The Mozart Brothers.”
“On that last point we’re in complete agreement,” said Johansson. “Personally I think the perpetrator ends up at the Grand and then by and by at the crime scene because his victim leads him there. I think he followed him from Old Town, and it was no more coincidental than that.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” said Holt. “My third point,” she continued, holding up her paper. “There are several pieces of information to the effect that Christer Pettersson at least periodically had access to a revolver of the type used in the murder. Among others from Sigge Cedergren, who is said to have lent him one like that.”
“A gun that he and the others near and dear in Pettersson’s circle of friends think up ten years or so after the murder. Which they denied at first, and then remembered, and then took back again. In that context there are two completely different things that struck me,” said Johansson.
“Yes?” asked Holt.
“That there isn’t a smidgen about Christer Pettersson using a firearm during his more than twenty-year criminal career before the murder. Not afterward either. There’s only Cedergren’s and the others’ mixed memories ten years after the assassination of Palme.”
“The second thing,” said Holt. “What was the other thing that struck you?”
“That I’m hell and damnation convinced that our perpetrator is both a practiced and a skillful shot with so-called single-hand weapons, pistols or revolvers. Pettersson wasn’t. He hardly knew front from back on a revolver.”
“The perpetrator is a skilled shooter? Even though he misses Lisbeth Palme from a distance of three feet?”
“Believe me,” said Johansson. It was meaningless to sit and argue with a woman about this, he thought.
“I hear what you’re saying,” said Holt. But I still don’t agree with you. I can shoot too, she thought.
“I’m beginning to sense we’re not in agreement,” said Johansson. “This fourth point? That Lisbeth Palme supposedly pointed out Pettersson. I assume you know what happened when she did that?”
“Yes,” said Holt. “I still think she makes a strong identification.”
“Why in the name of God?” said Johansson with some heat. “First there’s that crazy prosecutor who raves about the perpetrator being an alcoholic. Then there’s that so-called lineup that would be a pure Santa Claus parade if one of them wasn’t limping around in beard stubble, running shoes, and a dirty old sweatshirt.”
Holt had been struck by two other circumstances. That Lisbeth Palme became noticeably upset when she saw Christer Pettersson.
“She got agitated, scared simply,” said Holt.
“What would you have expected?” Johansson snorted. “The way he looked on that video?”
“Then she spontaneously points out that the perpetrator did not have a mustache. Pettersson had a mustache on the lineup video, but according to the investigation he didn’t have one at the time of the murder.”
“But sweet Jesus,” said Johansson. “A type like Christer Pettersson, do you think he shaves every day? He probably has a mustache every other week if you ask me.”
“There’s another thing I’ve wondered about,” said Holt. “The reason that the court of appeal rejected Lisbeth Palme’s testimony was, in part, what you’ve said just now: all the errors committed in connection with the lineup.”
“Obviously,” said Johansson. “How the hell would it have looked otherwise?”
“Assume that it had been Lisbeth who was murdered and that Olof Palme had survived. That he was the one who testified and had to be involved in the same worthless lineup she had to go through. Assume that he pointed out Christer Pettersson and did it in exactly the same way that Lisbeth did. How do you think things would have gone in the court of appeals then?”
“Then Pettersson probably would have been convicted. Even courts make mistakes.”
“You have no other observations in that connection,” said Holt.
“No,” said Johansson. Could it be so bad that Holt and little Mattei have been plotting a gender perspective? thought Johansson. Though she seems innocent enough, he thought, glaring acidly in Mattei’s direction.
Holt’s fifth and concluding argument was that Christer Pettersson corresponded well with the description of the perpetrator in the profile that their colleagues at the national crime bureau had produced in collaboration with experts at the FBI.
“In the profile the perpetrator is described in the following way,” Holt began.
“This concerns a solitary perpetrator with primarily chaotic and psychopathic features, an intolerant, disloyal, and merciless person who is governed by impulses and whims. A disturbed person who has a hard time maintaining normal relationships with other people. Who in a superficial sense may appear self-confident, but who is both conceited and affected. A person lacking an inner compass. He is not interested in politics but probably harbors considerable hatred for society and its representatives. A solitary person living a failed life. Who has had poor contacts with his own family since childhood. It is completely ruled out that he would have participated in any conspiracy, whether large or small.”
“Imagine that,” Johansson snorted.
“Yes, imagine that,” said Holt. “He is thus about six feet tall and relatively powerfully built. He is right-handed and not in particularly good shape. He was probably born sometime in the 1940s, and he has some experience with firearms. He lives alone, has only sporadic contact with women, and probably has no children of his own. He is probably poorly educated and has no job. If he has had a job it has been for short periods and involved unskilled tasks. He has bad finances, lives in an apartment with low rent, and has a low standard of living. He is probably known to the police for previous criminal offenses of a less serious nature. He lives, works, or for other reasons has often spent time in the vicinity of the crime scene and the Grand cinema.”
Holt glanced up from her papers and looked at Johansson.