One of the few who didn’t have anything to say about the matter was the Stockholm chief constable. He’s no doubt writing in his little blue book, thought Johansson, but merely as a matter of form he nonetheless called him up to hear what he thought. His voice sounded guarded, thought Johansson, like all aesthetes when their circles are disturbed by simple types like himself. It’s all the same, he thought, and then he briefly recounted his view of the matter.
“I’ve already solved that question,” said the chief constable. “But thanks for your concern.”
“Excuse me,” said Johansson. “I don’t really understand.”
No, who would have thought that? thought the chief constable, sighing.
“The drill you were wondering about,” said the chief constable, making an effort to speak slowly and clearly the way you would if you were speaking to a child. “I’ve had a simulation carried out instead,” he explained. “A kind of police war game, if you understand what I mean.”
“Actually not,” said Johansson. “You wouldn’t be able to explain-”
“Don’t worry yourself,” interrupted the chief constable. “And if you’ll excuse me I actually have other, more important matters on my agenda.”
The bastard hung up, thought Johansson, looking with surprise at the receiver in his hand. He hung up right in my ear.
The whole thing was really rather simple, and that kind of practical drill based on some sort of obsolete boot-camp model was not only violently overrated, costly, and risky, it also missed the essential, namely the honing of intellectual preparedness, while encouraging driving around street corners on two wheels with howling sirens and screeching tires.
The chief constable had also tried to explain that to the so-called operational head, but as usual the man had refused to listen. He’d let Grevlinge take charge and they would no doubt be able to find something for him, and if they didn’t then it was his bad luck. Västberga, thought the chief constable, and then he’d decided it was high time to have a look at them even though it was Monday morning and he really had more important things on the program, like his workout session and that course in creative writing he’d had his mistress order from the community college.
Obviously he’d chosen an intellectual approach. The drill organizers had been allowed to borrow the police administration’s conference room, and by moving a few tables together in the middle of the room they had been able to set out the large general map of the police district that usually hung on the wall. The necessary written information with the applicable assumptions had been passed out to all the participants, and when the alarm was given it was only a matter of going to work.
Chief Inspector Koskinen sat at a smaller table at one end of the room while the others walked around, moving the vehicles and other units as he directed and positioned and redirected, and at times it got rather hectic before the perpetrators could be arrested. Because everyone was in the same room they had also gotten by completely without radio communication. They talked and passed notes to each other, and it wasn’t more difficult than that, even if purely verbally and for the sake of realism they had of course used the usual hailing codes.
“I would like to congratulate you on a well-performed job,” said the chief constable, nodding graciously at Koskinen. Good Lord, he looks completely worn out, he thought. Must have been tough.
“Yes, it worked out,” puffed Koskinen. “Despite the fact that it was Monday morning when it happened. May I offer you a throat lozenge, by the way?”
Koskinen was clearly a little under the weather-had a cold, he explained-and you realized that although the fellow reeked of menthol tablets, he’d nonetheless heeded the call to arms when the trumpets sounded. Which only showed that I was right the whole time when I refused to listen to all the whining about his appointment, thought the chief constable contentedly when he returned to his office. For that matter, high time to put on my running shoes. A sound mind in a sound body, thought the chief constable, and in the evening he thought seriously about drinking a few glasses of red wine while he tuned the strings of his inner lyre.
CHAPTER XIX
And all that remained was the cold of winter
Stockholm in February
Waltin was in the habit of keeping everything sensitive in his head. He’d learned that early on, and there would have to be compelling reasons to put something on paper within the operation where he worked. He had no great faith in auditors, either, and if you simply kept things orderly around you there was no reason to fear them. Nonetheless-and this he knew-people did make mistakes. This applied to him as well, and for that reason he was very careful about inspecting the papers that were to be turned over to Berg.
The money didn’t worry him. Everything essential was already taken care of, and on that point he didn’t have the least concern. Certain withdrawals and transfers could, however, still be made, an invoice or two might be supplied with the right date and inserted into the bookkeeping, and if you minded the pennies the dollars tended to take care of themselves. Hedberg’s little foreign company in the security industry, the one that Waltin owned but with Hedberg’s name on all the files, would shortly receive a substantial replenishment of liquid assets.
Because he was forced to do what he was doing, he’d taken the opportunity to amuse himself royally while he did it. He’d sorted and turned in the material in the most confusing way, attached hard-to-read handwritten scraps of paper with questions and opinions on everything between heaven and earth, which was innocent enough and totally uninteresting if it was really him that they were after. The auditors might as well have to earn their keep while they were at it.
…
Berg never ceased to surprise him. Waltin had been completely convinced that the coward would roll over when he tossed Hedberg out on the table. But he hadn’t. Instead Berg had obviously thrown a wrench into his plans, even if he’d needed that fat-ass Persson in order to put up real resistance. Inspected closely, his own cards weren’t especially good, either. What could he say? That he had reason to suspect that his own operative had killed Krassner and feigned his suicide? In which case, why had he kept quiet about the matter for more than two months? Not good, not good at all.
But apart from his mounting irritation at a totally incompetent boss, there was nothing to suggest that if everyone just sat quietly in the boat, things would go wrong. As it was now, they were in the process of dismantling a perfectly functioning organization simply because some social democrats in the government office building wanted to be ornery with them. This was pure madness, and even wanting to discuss the matter at all showed how weak you were. He’d spoken with Hedberg on the telephone several times but he seemed almost evasive. Did he suspect anything? Did he have any clue that Waltin was trying to lure him home to Sweden in order to lock him up in prison? Hedberg was far from being a genius, but he was sufficiently intelligent for the kind of thing Waltin usually used him for. He was a calm, likable person, and above all else he was reliable. In addition, considering their history together, he was the very last person Waltin wanted to quarrel with. Anyone at all, but not Hedberg.
Finally he’d been forced to take the bull by the horns and explain to Hedberg that he now so help me God had to come home to Sweden to help clean up. There were things that Waltin didn’t understand and that Hedberg might possibly help him with. The sort of things that you couldn’t discuss on the telephone, for they both knew that so-called secure lines only existed in the believer’s imagination. And perhaps if he now distrusted Waltin, he ought to take a look at the amounts that had flowed into the company’s account recently. Money that Waltin had turned over to Hedberg with full confidence and that he would naturally never be able to demand back if Hedberg turned difficult. Clearly he’d bought that argument, for the last Saturday in February he’d suddenly phoned from Arlanda on Waltin’s secret number to report that he was on the scene.