What does he really mean? thought Holt, and the person she had in mind was her colleague Jan Lewin who had prepared the final paper in the thin bundle. Typewritten, neat, like everything that came from Lewin, it had been prepared on Friday the twenty-eighth of March 1986, exactly four weeks after the murder. Astonishingly brief considering it came from him. Only six points on a normal letter-size sheet. Signed by then criminal inspector Jan Lewin with the homicide squad in Stockholm, and in all essentials he seems to have been the same man then as he was now.
In principle what was there was as unimpeachable as it could ever be, considering the circumstances. Even the quintessence of what the police actually knew about what had happened. The problem was Lewin’s exactitude. All these places where the actors found themselves, preferably stated to the nearest yard. All these points in time when they were at a certain place, if possible noted to the second. All movements and everything else humanly possible that the perpetrator and the witnesses were doing in between. Obviously calculated in yards and seconds. The pedagogical value was zero, the reading pleasure nonexistent, and it took Holt more than fifteen minutes before she managed to force her way through the Lewinian thicket of words and finally understand what was there.
The first point in his memo was comprehensible enough. The next four were harder to read, but his opening said most of what needed to be said: “(1) Sweden’s prime minister Olof Palme was murdered at the intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan on Friday the twenty-eighth of February 1986, at approx. 23:21:30.”
I see then, thought Holt. Lewin has set the time according to Witness One. He’s the one who gets to start the film when the perpetrator flees, and with that you can forget about all the other clocks, whether they are fast or slow.
Witness One had been walking on Tunnelgatan in the direction of the crime scene when he heard the first shot and at the same moment he was clear about what was happening thirty yards further down the street. Then he hides himself-in the protection of darkness, the trailers, the piles of construction material, and all the other debris piled on the right side of the street-while the perpetrator “jogs past” to his left at a distance of no more than a few feet. Only when the perpetrator has passed, and for a moment disappeared from the witness’s field of vision, does he peek out from his hiding place and see the perpetrator run up the stairs to Malmskillnadsgatan, stop for a moment at the top of the stairs, and then disappear from his view.
According to what Witness One says in the first interview, the first of many that the police would hold with him during that time, he then waited “about a minute” before he left his relative safety and followed the perpetrator. Carefully, carefully, first Tunnelgatan up to the stairs, then the stairs up to Malmskillnadsgatan. According to Lewin this had taken him “an additional sixty seconds.”
The conclusion was clear enough. Witness One shows up at the same place where he saw the perpetrator disappear “not until about two minutes after the perpetrator.” The perpetrator is putz weg. The only thing Witness One sees is Witness Two, and she is the one who is asked whether she has seen “a man in a dark jacket run past.” She has. “Just now” she has seen “a dark-clothed guy” run right across Malmskillnadsgatan and down David Bagares gata.
The problem is that she shouldn’t have seen him, considering that he would have passed by two minutes earlier.
In Lewin’s own words: “Considering Witness Two’s position when she observed this man, the fact that she states in interviews that she was walking in a northerly direction the whole time, across the bridge over Kungsgatan and in the direction of the stairs down to Tunnelgatan, and her purely physical possibilities of making the observation as she claims to have done, her observation can thus be made at the earliest thirty seconds before she runs into Witness One farther down on Malmskillnadsgatan, that is, about one and a half minutes after the perpetrator already ought to have left the place in question.”
It was the same with the witness Nilsson, according to Lewin. Hardly a minute before Witness Two came up onto Malmskillnadsgatan, Nilsson passed the stairs from Tunnelgatan and disappeared out of view, to the left down on Döbelnsgatan, in the direction of her residence at Döbelnsgatan 31.
The perpetrator? The perpetrator is far away. Yet another minute earlier, the witness Nilsson would have met him en route down the stairs from Malmskillnadsgatan to Kungsgatan. About sixty yards to the right of the stairs up from Tunnelgatan to Malmskillnadsgatan and moving in a direction that was completely different from what everyone except Lewin seemed to think.
In the sixth and final point in his memo Lewin reported his conclusions in an at least somewhat understandable way compared to the line of reasoning he had taken to arrive at it.
“It cannot be ruled out that the man whom the witness Nilsson encounters on the stairs down to Kungsgatan is the perpetrator. This however rules out that the man whom Witness Two saw running down to David Bagares gata is identical to the perpetrator. On the other hand, the fact that Witness Two actually saw a man who did this appears highly probable considering the testimony of Witness Three, who was run into by a man about fifty yards further down the same street, as well as Witness Four, the man accompanying Witness Three, who confirms the information in the interview with Witness Three. That this man, who had been observed by witnesses Two, Three, and Four, would be the perpetrator seems less probable, however, considering that he shows up on the scene one and a half minutes too late.”
Finally, thought Holt.
“Have a seat, Anna,” said Jan Lewin five minutes later, smiling and nodding at the vacant chair in front of his desk. “It’s been less than an hour,” he said, looking at his watch. “Long time, no see, as the Englishmen say.”
“I’ve always been a little slow,” said Holt. “We girls are a bit slow on the uptake, as you know.”
“I’ve never thought that,” said Lewin. “With you and Lisa it’s more likely that you get things more quickly than most of us.”
“Well, I get the point in any event with the help of what you wrote. What I don’t really understand, on the other hand, is why you prefer witness Nilsson ahead of our old colleagues’ entire witness chain? Can’t it be as simple as Fylking thought? That Nilsson might have met someone on the stairs down to Kungsgatan, but that the meeting took place before Palme was shot?”
“Sure,” said Lewin. “Of course it might be that way. The problem with that is it doesn’t solve the problem for us.”
“Take it one more time. I think I get it, but explain anyway. I’m a little thick, as you know,” said Holt.
“The problem with the man whom Witness Two claims to have seen running down to David Bagares gata is that she sees him much too late. Now I don’t recall exactly what I arrived at back then, but I seem to recall that it was about one and a half minutes. If it was the perpetrator she saw, she ought to have seen him one and a half minutes earlier, and considering where she was then, it’s a good stretch from the stairs up from Tunnelgatan, then she can’t have seen him. It’s out of the question that it’s the perpetrator she’s seen running across Malmskillnadsgatan. That’s the very point. Or the major catch in the investigators’ line of reasoning if you like.”
“I’m with you then,” said Holt. “I understand how you’re thinking.”
“A lot can happen in one and a half minutes in such a limited area,” said Lewin. “If you walk at a brisk pace you can manage a hundred fifty yards in one and a half minutes. If you trot or jog, then you’ll manage two hundreds yards or more.”
“Okay,” said Holt. “Let’s take this in order. Who did Witness One see down on Tunnelgatan?”