Take, for example, the pictures of that red-haired sow he’d seriously considered sending as a “reader’s contribution”-where did they get them all, those jerk-offs, for you know they couldn’t read?-to one of the working class’s many pornographic publications, but on closer consideration he’d refrained, because you actually couldn’t tell from the pictures that she was the subject. A fat red-haired sow lying tied up to the bedposts, before and after the removal of a portion of red bush; true, you could see that, and for many people perhaps that was good enough, but you actually didn’t see that she was the one it depicted, and that was of course the whole point of publishing the pictures.
Because she had wriggled so infernally his meticulously applied muzzle had slid up so it covered half her face, and unfortunately he’d missed correcting that little detail during the photography, overworked and stressed as he was due to Berg and his incessant paranoid fantasies.
All the inactivity and idling at home in the apartment finally almost made him crazy, and because he was in the process of jerking himself dry just to get a little peace and quiet, he hadn’t had any choice. Despite the fact that the risks were considerable, for they always were, and with the bad luck he’d had lately they would scarcely have lessened, he nonetheless decided to go out into the field again. Sink or swim, thought Waltin, but I have to find something sensible to do.
First he deliberated whether he should arrange a wiretap on her-he’d done that before and it was simple enough to sneak in an extra number when you were turning in the usual monthly lists anyway-but because that madman Persson was running around loose somewhere out in his own terrain he didn’t dare take the risk. Instead he had to reconnoiter himself-in and of itself he’d done that before and he did it better than most-but the problem was that it was so doggone boring. It was only policemen and ordinary brain-dead people who endured sitting for hours in the front seat of a car staring at the same entryway while the object of surveillance was lying at home in bed playing with himself or looking at videos or gobbling down pizza, so he did what he usually did. He improvised a little and chanced it a little to get the time to pass, and one way or another it always worked out for the best.
But not this time.
Instead of sitting the whole day outside her office, he crank-called her a half hour before she quit in order to make sure she was there, and when she answered he just put down the receiver, got into the car, and took up a suitable position outside the exit to her office. It took only a quarter of an hour before she suddenly stepped out onto the street, her coat unbuttoned despite the cold, so that no poor, overworked wretch who only wanted to go home to suburban misery would be able to miss those fat breasts straining under her yellow sweater. The stuffed sow is always the same, thought Waltin, giggling as he visualized her, how she sat there rubbing against the seat of her chair all day while she stuck things into small holes.
But instead of disappearing in the direction of the subway-he planned to approach her right before the intersection-she remained standing. She just stood there, then she looked at her watch, and suddenly that well-known excitement started to sneak up on him. The one he always felt right before he found out something about someone that he could make use of. She’s waiting for someone, thought Waltin.
And at the same moment someone knocked urgently on the windshield of the car, pulled open the door, and stuck a police ID in his face.
“Move over,” said Police Inspector Berg, nodding with narrowed eyes toward the passenger seat.
Berg’s nephew, thought Waltin. Hadn’t he just been taken out of service for those reports of brutality? The jeans and the jacket seemed to indicate that, but why in that case hadn’t they taken his ID away from him?
“What’s this about?” said Waltin guardedly. He already knew, though, for in the corner of his eye he saw that the stuffed sow on the other side of the street was almost jumping with delight. She’s fucked him too, of course, he thought. She’s certainly fucked all of those cavemen.
“Are you deaf or do you want me to help you?” asked Berg.
And because his eyes looked the way they did, despite the completely improbable situation, Waltin nonetheless did as he was told and wriggled over to the passenger seat.
“I’ll make it brief,” said Berg. “Lisa is a good friend of mine. Stop messing with her, or I’ll see to it that things get fucking disagreeable for you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Waltin, sticking his hand in his pocket in order to take out his own ID to get him to understand the seriousness. You don’t threaten a police superintendent with the secret police, thought Waltin.
“Stop persecuting Lisa, or I’ll see to it that she reports you, and don’t try to say that you’re here on duty,” said Berg, pushing aside Waltin’s hand with the ID card.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” said Waltin. The guy is completely crazy, he thought. You can see it in his eyes.
“You and I both know,” said Berg. “She reports you, my colleagues and I who’ve seen you stand up and testify. Do we understand one another?”
“I would encourage you to leave my car immediately,” said Waltin. Completely crazy, he thought. Totally crazy.
“This isn’t your car, it’s the department’s car, just so you know,” said Berg as he opened the door to get out.
Waltin didn’t say anything, for the threat in his eyes was so real that he could touch it.
So he just remained sitting and watched Berg go over to the stuffed sow and take her by the arm. They both disappeared up the street. Only then did he drive away. I’ll kill them, thought Waltin.
After Berg had followed Lisa to the subway he met his comrades. It was a meeting that they’d already planned during the Christmas holiday, and it was also then that they’d set up the tactics for how to find the traitor who had wormed his way into their ranks. They already had their suspicions, so now it was only a matter of setting the trap and seeing to it that it closed on the right man.
Lisa’s a good girl, he thought. Really good lay too, and a jerk like that Waltin should just be killed. It was clearly enough to poke at him to make him shit in his pants, so it probably wouldn’t be all that difficult, thought Berg.
At the meeting he “surprised” the assembly with a few well-prepared little semi-red viewpoints that he and the group had agreed on, and it was the very guy that they’d guessed in advance who started to carry on and go on the rampage. Damn overacting, thought Berg. We’ll get you soon. Then they had coffee and he only needed to exchange a glance with the comrades to know that they’d understood exactly the same thing he had. The traitor had worked like a beaver to ingratiate himself and provoke people to say wrong things, but of course that hadn’t gotten him anywhere.
On the first day of the new job, Johansson noticed a newspaper clipping on the internal bulletin board next to the cloakroom. It was the annual New Year’s greeting from the Stockholm chief constable to his faithful personnel, which someone had clipped out of the Stockholm Police Department’s personnel newsletter, and to be on the safe side marked it, with the help of a felt pen, with a thick black frame.
It was no ordinary New Year’s greeting, especially not within the police. True, he’d heard whispering for a long time about the chief constable’s literary ambitions, but he really hadn’t counted on this. People didn’t usually throw themselves headfirst out of their private closets when they’d finally made up their minds, thought Johansson, while he muttered his way through the poem’s seven short lines. One of them he happened to recognize from some other context, but he’d forgotten from where, and on the whole it was all the same.