“But you never said anything,” said Holt.
“Why do you suppose that is?” said Berg. “Assume that someone like me had gone to the fine colleagues at the detective bureau on Kungholmsgatan and said I thought they’d gotten a few things turned around. Something that major, I mean.”
“I don’t think they would’ve started cheering,” said Holt. “What did you do when you got out of the bus down at the crime scene?” she continued.
“As soon as the situation was clear to me, this must have been ten seconds at the most, three of the others and I ran down Tunnelgatan. When we got to the stairs up to Malmskillnadsgatan a woman was standing up there, waving and shouting, so I ran up the stairs to the street. That was Witness Two, that woman, I realized later. It might have taken a minute at most for me to run from the crime scene up to Malmskillnadsgatan. As I said to you the last time we talked.”
“So now the time is somewhere around 23:25:30, four minutes after the murder,” Holt clarified.
“Something like that, yes,” Berg agreed.
“So what did you do next,” asked Holt.
“Continued in the direction shown by Witness Two,” said Berg. “Down David Bagares gata toward Regeringsgatan that is, and about fifty yards down the street I ran into Witness One.”
“So what did he say?” asked Holt.
“Not much,” said Berg. “It probably took a minute or so before I realized that he hadn’t seen which way the perpetrator went. He only reported what Witness Two had said to him.
“If you ask me,” he continued, “there’s a thing or two rattling around loose in that part of the description. Such as, for example, that it’s a hundred percent certain they’d seen the same person run past.”
“Explain what you’re thinking,” said Holt.
Berg had talked with both Witness One and Witness Two. He was actually the first police officer to do that, and for once he hadn’t been asked to write even a line about it. The officers from the bureau had taken over that aspect as soon as they arrived at the scene, and he had no idea what had happened to his brief, handwritten notes. He had just a vague memory, of some colleague from the duty desk who stuffed them in his coat pocket.
Berg had not conducted any interviews. He’d only stopped to talk with Witnesses One and Two for the obvious reason that he wanted to know as much as possible as quickly as possible to organize his initial search for the perpetrator.
“When Witness One comes up on Malmskillnadsgatan, he runs into Witness Two. Then he asks her if she’s seen a character in a dark coat run past. I don’t recall the exact wording, but I get the idea that Witness One asks her whether she’s seen a guy in a dark coat who’s run past. She replies that she has. Right before she saw a man in a dark coat run across Malmskillnadsgatan and down on David Bagares gata.”
“Right before,” asked Holt.
“I asked the same question myself as soon as I had the chance. It must have been maybe fifteen minutes later. According to her it concerned a male individual in a dark coat who twenty seconds at most before she got the question from Witness One had run across Malmskillnadsgatan and down on David Bagares gata. Otherwise she didn’t have much in particular to offer. Nothing else about his clothes other than that she thought he had a small bag in his right hand that he tried to put in his coat pocket. She hadn’t seen his face. She had an idea that he was maybe trying to conceal it from her as he ran past. Tall or short? Thin or husky? Stout or slender? Dark or light? Old or young? No definite perception about that either. Looked like all the other male individuals who were out that evening, I guess, if you were to summarize her observations. Apart from the fact that he’d acted suspiciously, of course. On that point she was more and more certain the more we talked. That he seemed nervous, hunted, tried to conceal his face and all that. Yes, Lord Jesus,” said Berg and sighed. “What could she say otherwise? By that time there was a horde of officers crowding around her.”
“Witness One then. What does he say?” asked Holt.
“He was right there the whole time up on Malmskillnadsgatan, and if I could have chosen I would have kept him and the other witness apart, but it was so damned messy that that didn’t work. Before the officers from the bureau took over, the two of them must have stood talking with each other for close to half an hour. Witness One and Witness Two, that is.”
“Did you make note of any differences between their descriptions of the man they’d seen?” asked Holt.
“Witness One was considerably more detailed. He’d heard the shot and seen the perpetrator with the weapon and realized what’d happened. A man in a dark jacket or coat, possibly bareheaded, possibly with a knit cap on his head, the kind Jack Nicholson had on in Cuckoo’s Nest, sturdily built, rolling gait as he ran or trotted away, almost bear-like, maintained that he’d seen him put the weapon in his right jacket or coat pocket but nothing about a bag. He looked mean, that was what he said. About forty to forty-five years old. Older than the witness, in any case. Otherwise nothing.”
“I see what you mean,” said Holt and nodded. Now’s the time to bring up Madeleine Nilsson, and how do I do that without putting words in his mouth? she thought.
“When you drive up Döbelnsgatan, past the stairs to Tunnelgatan at the start of Malmskillnadsgatan, the bridge passes over Kungsgatan and continues on Malmskillnadsgatan down to Brunkebergstorg where you get the alarm…”
“I follow you,” said Berg, nodding.
“You didn’t observe any other mysterious or suspicious persons?”
“Then we would have mentioned it,” said Berg, shaking his head. “Definitely no one with a smoking revolver in his fist,” he said.
“No one else?”
“Mostly ordinary Joes who were freezing. A whore or two, naturally, that’s where they worked, and at that time there were lots of them. Certainly a few hooligans and addicts too, but no one up to anything.”
“And if you’d seen someone like that?”
“Then naturally we would have stopped and frisked him or her. We always did that if we didn’t have anything better to do. Otherwise we would blink at them, and I’ll tell you, we had an uncannily good knowledge of people.”
“Blink?”
“With the headlights,” said Berg. “Just to let them know their presence was noted, if nothing else. Get them to realize we were keeping an eye on them.”
“But you don’t recall any particular person from that evening?”
“No,” said Berg. “Then we would have mentioned it, like I said. It was not an ordinary evening exactly.
“Too bad you weren’t involved from the start, Holt,” he added, smiling at her. “There was one more thing, by the way. If you can stand listening, and it’s really not at all about this. And besides, I want it to stay between you and me,” he continued.
“If it’s not about this, it will stay between us,” said Holt.
“It’s not,” said Berg. “It’s about your boss.”
“Johansson,” said Holt. “Fire away,” she said. Not a second to lose, she thought.
“Just a piece of advice,” said Berg. “As I’m sure you know, he and I have a history together that’s not very pleasant, so I guess you have to take this for what it’s worth.”
“I know he put you in jail for a week twenty years ago.” On not completely baseless grounds, she thought.
“Me and my colleagues,” said Berg, nodding. “Then you also know that my colleagues and I were cleared of all suspicions and that we got damages for the time we spent in jail.”
“I know all that,” said Holt. “I know for example that you and many other colleagues in the uniformed police call him the butcher from Ådalen.”
“It wasn’t that he put us in jail. I’m sure I’ve put a few innocent so-and-sos in jail too. The name we gave him, he’s earned honorably. I’ve never met such an ice-cold bastard in my entire life. A person who can kill you without hesitation if he thinks it’s in his interest. Without even breaking a sweat. So whatever you do, Holt, watch out for that man,” said Berg, shaking his broad shoulders.