“It wasn’t yesterday,” said Johansson, nodding with warmth toward his older colleague. He looks a hell of a lot friskier than I do, he thought enviously.
The officer had clearly made the same observation, for their lunch had started with the obligatory joke about all the superintendent muscles that were swelling around Johansson’s waist nowadays.
“You crossed my desk the other day,” said Johansson. “Saw that you were thinking about quitting.”
“And then you got the idea that you could convince me to stay,” declared his older colleague.
“Yes, you see,” said Johansson, smiling, “despite your advanced age you appear both clear and energetic.”
“That’s not the problem,” said his lunch guest, shaking his head. “Do you know why I became a policeman?”
“Because you knew that you could become a good policeman,” said Johansson, who already sensed what was going to come.
“Because I wanted to put crooks in the slammer so ordinary decent people could live in peace.”
“Who doesn’t want that?” said Johansson, and suddenly he felt gloomier than in a long time.
“I didn’t for Christ’s sake become a policeman to sit for days on end filling out forms that I stuff into a binder,” declared the older man with a certain intensity.
Me neither, thought Johansson. I became a policeman because I wanted to be a policeman, not because I wanted to become head of the personnel bureau of the National Police Board.
“How’s it going for you, by the way?” asked his guest. “I guess you’ll soon have more binders to put things in than anyone else on this sinking ship.”
And then they proceeded to talk about old times.
The only bright spot in Johansson’s existence was the lively debate that had broken out on the personnel bureau’s bulletin board over the fact that the Stockholm chief constable was nowadays swinging his pen with his visor lowered. When Johansson returned from his unsuccessful lunch mission he took a look at the latest contributions.
There was a little of everything, from various commentaries and suggestions arising from the chief constable’s problematic living situation to mixed literary viewpoints: “It can’t be fun to live like that” declared “A concerned colleague,” while the contribution from “Unlicensed real-estate agent within the corps” was both clear and constructive: “I can arrange a studio in Sumpan for you off the books for just twenty-five bills so you don’t have to spend the night on your windowsill.”
Police humor is crude without exactly being warm, thought Johansson, proceeding to the literary portion: “This year’s Nobel Prize winner?” speculated the pseudonym “I write too in my free time” while “Poetess in a blue uniform” was more to the point in her appreciation: “Write more! Release my longing! Slake my thirst!” Even a completely innocent Johansson was included in one corner as “Old Man from Ådalen.”
Oh well, thought Johansson, sighing as he settled down behind his even bigger desk, despite the fact that the one he’d had before had been more than large enough.
It was considerably worse for himself. In a formal sense he was still a policeman, and if he was doubtful on that point he only needed to dig his police ID out of his pocket and look at it. A small national coat of arms in yellow and blue, the word “Police” in red block letters, and the only thing that might confuse a badass was possibly his highly suspect title “Bureau Head.” Although on the other hand they never did look very carefully, and when by the way would he have an opportunity to flash it, for this was actually only a friendly gesture from his employers’ side to keep him, and people like him, in a good mood.
Already the object of social therapeutic measures, thought Johansson, and that was when he decided. High time to clean up Krassner, he thought, taking the government office telephone book off its shelf. Next highest up on the first page, thought Johansson, and with a longer title than anyone else in all of Rosenbad. “Special adviser at the disposition of the prime minister,” he read, and he dialed the number.
Not completely unexpectedly, it was the special adviser’s secretary who answered his telephone.
“My name is Lars Johansson,” said Johansson. “I’m bureau head at the National Police Board. I would like to speak with your boss.” An extra lot of Norrland in his voice, however that might have happened, he thought.
“I’ll see if he’s in,” said the secretary neutrally. “One moment.”
Do that, thought Johansson, silently sighing, and to be on the safe side check that he hasn’t hidden under his desk. And then he answered.
“We’ve only met in passing,” said Johansson, “but now the matter is such that I would like to meet you again.”
“I remember, I remember,” said the voice in Johansson’s telephone, and he could picture him, poured out in an easy chair and with the heavy eyelids at half-mast. “It was an interesting discussion we had.”
“Yes,” said Johansson. And you aren’t going to be any happier this time, he thought.
“You don’t want to say what it concerns?”
“There are a number of papers that I want to unload,” said Johansson. “It’s a long story and I’m not calling on official business.”
“Yes?”
“They’re about your boss,” said Johansson. But it’s clear, just say the word so I can heave them over to the colleagues at SePo, he thought.
“You have a hard time talking about it on the phone?” asked the special adviser.
“No,” said Johansson, “but I thought it would be best if I came over so we could deal with this privately.”
“Now I’m getting really curious,” said the special adviser. “You don’t want to…”
“There are greetings to your boss from Fionn,” Johansson interrupted.
“One moment,” said the special adviser, “just one second.”
It took longer than that, more than two minutes, but then things progressed rapidly, and less than an hour later Johansson was sitting across from the special adviser in his office on the eighth floor at Rosenbad.
He’s his usual self, thought Johansson. Although the smile on his lips was friendlier than the last time. An interesting smile.
“It concerns these papers,” said Johansson, pushing across the bundle with Krassner’s manuscript and documentation.
The special adviser nodded amiably but without even a hint of a movement in the direction of the papers he’d just been offered.
“I received them without having asked for them,” said Johansson. “It’s a long, involved story that, moreover, I don’t intend to go into.”
The special adviser nodded again.
“I’ve read them, naturally,” said Johansson. “They deal with your boss. A few of the papers he’s even written himself, and because I haven’t received them as part of my job and I have no reason to suspect him of any crime, I thought that you could give them to him. I think it’s really not my department,” said Johansson.
“You want to relieve yourself of a worry,” said the special adviser understandingly.
“Because it isn’t my worry,” said Johansson. “And if someone else wants to worry about it, I don’t intend to get involved.”
“I understand,” said the special adviser, nodding.
“I’ve written a little memorandum on the whole thing,” said Johansson, handing over the short summary that he’d written on his brother’s typewriter, without signing it.