Most likely that was also why he mostly felt relieved when she too died of cancer. Yes, it really was that way. He was mostly relieved. The bad conscience about her death had only come later.
Jan Lewin was twenty, just starting at the police academy, and Holt thought it was time for her first question. Why did he choose to become a police officer?
“I’m not sure,” said Lewin. His father had a cousin who’d been a policeman. Not a replacement father figure, definitely not, but he’d been in touch on a regular basis, and he’d been there the times when he was really needed. He was a nice guy, Lewin summarized.
But most of all he talked himself red in the face about how Jan should become a policeman. It was the obvious occupation for every decent, honorable fellow who cared about right and justice and other people. Decent, honorable people who didn’t wish anyone anything bad. Such as himself, or like Jan’s mother, father, and Jan. Added to that, there was the camaraderie. Police officers always stood up for one another. Just like all those near and dear in a big, happy family.
“There were less than half as many of us at the police department at that time, but I bought the argument lock, stock, and barrel. Suddenly getting a family with seven thousand members who backed you up in all kinds of weather. That argument hit home with someone like me,” Lewin observed.
“Then you discovered that not everyone in the family was fun to deal with,” Holt put in.
“I guess it’s like that in all families, and I discovered that the very first day,” said Lewin. “The first thing I discovered was that almost all the people in the family were men, young men, and that not all of them were fun to deal with, and that basically none of them was like me.”
“But you chose to stay anyway,” said Holt. Why didn’t you leave? she thought.
“Yes,” said Lewin. “I was of course already me, so naturally I chose to stay. On the other hand, just quitting and telling them where to go, that wasn’t me.”
Jan Lewin stayed on. An odd character, but good enough at sports not to be bullied for the usual reason at that place and at that time. In addition, he was good to have around when there were tests looming in law and other theoretical subjects.
“Believe it or not,” said Lewin, “I was actually a pretty good runner at that time and a passable marksman.”
“Although you were best in the theoretical subjects,” said Holt.
“Yes,” said Lewin. “The competition was not exactly murderous. Not in the late sixties at the police academy in Solna,” he said, suddenly looking cheerful.
“Our police instructor took a liking to me,” he continued. “Already after the first course he came up and said that it had been years since he’d had such a promising student. Who do you think his last promising student was, by the way?”
“Johansson,” said Holt. “Although according to the story I heard in the building, you should have been better.”
“More precise,” said Lewin, nodding. “The only thing our old teacher had to say against Lars Martin Johansson was that he had a bohemian nature. That he wasn’t humble enough and wasn’t even afraid to talk back. But what did it matter if you were like him?”
The years after school had simply rolled by, and Jan Lewin fell into line and followed along. His old teacher from the academy had not forgotten him. As soon as Lewin fulfilled the mandatory years with the uniformed police, his mentor called and offered him a position with the homicide squad in Stockholm, and it couldn’t get better than that.
“It was not by chance that the homicide squad at that time was called the first squad, and the chief inspector with the first squad who dealt with murder investigations was C-I-1, chief inspector one,” Lewin clarified.
“Those were the happiest years in my life actually,” said Lewin. “We had a boss at homicide who was just as big a legend at that time as our own Johansson is today.”
“Dahlgren,” said Holt.
“Dahlgren,” Lewin confirmed, nodding. “When he welcomed me and we had a so-called private conversation, he told me that he was the only one on the squad who had his diploma, from Hvitfeldtska secondary school in Gothenburg to boot, and that he had noticed that now there were two of us. And even if Södra Latin in Stockholm couldn’t compare to Hvitfeldtska, still, even more was expected from people like him and me than from the ordinary, somewhat simpler officers. Dahlgren was a good person. He was educated, humorous, a very unusual policeman even at homicide. Which should have the best in the corps anyway.”
Even so he took his own life, thought Holt. Because she didn’t intend to say that.
“Even so he took his own life,” said Lewin suddenly, “but maybe you knew that.”
“Yes,” said Holt. “I heard he got sick, was disabled, and as soon as he came home he took his own life.”
“It was his heart. He couldn’t imagine such a life,” said Lewin. “Being a burden to others was inconceivable to him.”
So it was better to shoot himself. Because regardless of how educated and humorous he might have been, he was still the man he was, thought Holt. How damn stupid can they really be? she thought.
“Then I got my first big case,” said Lewin. “I remember that. Just as well as I remember the summer when Dad died.”
Now he looks that way again, thought Holt.
“It was 1978, in the fall,” said Lewin. “I was barely thirty, and it wasn’t common that such a young investigator got to run a murder investigation, but that particular fall we were really busy. It was Dahlgren who decided it, and that’s how it was, and if I had problems I could always come to him.
“Of course there were problems,” Lewin continued, sighing. “Although of course I hadn’t foreseen them.”
A young Polish-born prostitute had been murdered in her studio in Vasastan. One of the major murders of that time, headline material in the tabloids. In a police sense it was cleared up and carried down to the basement the moment the prime suspect committed suicide.
“The Kataryna murder,” said Lewin. “The victim was named Kataryna Rosenbaum. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it? The perpetrator had treated her very badly. A very intense assault.”
“I’ve read about it,” said Holt. And heard about it, she thought. About how Jan Lewin basked in police department glory.
“The one who was finally arrested, he was in prison for a few months, and according to the tabloids he was of course the one who did it. He was a man who knew her. They met at a restaurant, started a relationship; he didn’t know she was a prostitute. According to him she said she ran a secretarial agency. He was a completely ordinary man. Divorced, true, but almost everyone was at that time. Had a child with his ex-wife, a little girl, lived alone in a large apartment out in Vällingby, engineer, orderly circumstances, good finances.”
“From the little I’ve read it seems pretty clear that it was him,” said Holt.
“Yes, I actually believe that,” said Lewin. “When he realized his new woman was a prostitute, something snapped inside him and he beat her to death. According to what I arrived at myself, at least.”
“But the evidence wasn’t sufficient and the prosecutor let him out.”
“Yes,” said Lewin. “Before my associates and I had time to have another go at it, he took his own life. On Christmas Eve of all days,” said Lewin.
“But that’s hardly anything you can be blamed for,” Holt objected. “If you’re a more or less normal person and you’ve murdered someone, that’s probably reason enough. To take your life, I mean.”
“He doesn’t think so,” said Lewin, making a grimace.
“Excuse me,” said Holt. What is it he’s saying? she thought.
“Not when he visits me in my dreams,” said Lewin.
“So what does he say?” asked Holt.
“That he was innocent,” said Lewin. “That it was my fault that he took his own life. That I was the one who murdered him.”