“They’ve never shot a Swedish prime minister, have they?” she said sourly. “They usually just shoot each other, don’t they?”
“Yes, my dear, but it’s really not so strange,” said the chief constable, and he really exerted himself to be as amiable and pedagogical as possible. “That’s something no one has done, of course. Neither Jew nor Greek nor… well, ordinary Swede then, if I may say so, has ever shot a Swedish prime minister. So you can’t very well cite that against them. Or can you, dear?”
Wonder why he didn’t shoot his dear wife too? thought Waltin as he strode in through the door to the apartment at Gärdet to clean up after his spiritual brother and highly esteemed coworker. Perhaps he’s starting to get soft, he thought, but because that thought was so ridiculous he immediately dismissed it and instead went to work on the practicalities.
First he packed up the clothes and shoes in a suitcase; he would see to it that they were thoroughly cleaned before he hid them in some secure place. He obviously hadn’t even considered throwing them out. These were objects of great historic value, almost unique, and his mouth was watering when he thought about how much they might bring in the not too distant future at an auction at Sotheby’s. Or Christie’s, for that matter.
He tossed the food and all the other garbage into the wastebasket and what remained now was only the weapon itself. When he woke up he’d already gotten an idea that was so brilliant that he’d been thoroughly excited the whole morning and had been compelled to seek relief twice before he could go to work on the practical tasks.
First he emptied the chamber of the two empty cartridges and the four bullets that Hedberg hadn’t needed, put them in a stamp envelope, and placed them in the suitcase with the shoes and clothes. He wiped off the revolver carefully before he put that in his pocket, and then he took the suitcase with him, locked up, and left the place. So only the revolver was left, thought Waltin as he sat in his car, and the thought of what he was going to do with it made his whole body tingle.
First the now-deceased prime minister’s special adviser had thought about writing a formal resignation letter or at least requesting a leave of absence, but from the atmosphere in the corridor where he was sitting, and without anyone having said anything-for suddenly it was as if he no longer existed-he’d understood that this would be completely superfluous. So he’d been content to just go home. On the way out he’d stopped and written a few brief lines in the condolence book set out in the lobby. True, it was a quote, not something that he’d written himself, but for various reasons it nonetheless felt more suitable than anything else, and he remembered it word for word despite the fact that it had been a good month since he’d read it.
Death is black like a raven’s wing,
Sorrow is cold like a midwinter night
Just as long and no way out
Then he drove home to the house in Djursholm, and after he thought a while he finally made a decision. First he wrote a message in Russian, the language that he’d learned in secret in his youth and that therefore he could never keep alive and that now-despite his extraordinary memory-caused him greater problems than he could have imagined. In itself that meant nothing, he thought. The message was clear enough and the fact that the language limped precariously only increased the degree of difficulty.
Then he coded it with the prime number that he’d thought about giving to Forselius on his eightieth birthday; he’d actually cheated a little with the help of the military’s computer, but because that wasn’t relevant any longer he might just as well use it like that. When he was finished he hesitated a long time about whether he should sign his name to it, the name they’d given him when he was only a little more than eighteen years old, in order to flatter him but certainly also in order to show that they even knew about such things as what his two-years-older classmates had called him in order to tease him when he started in the first grade in elementary school.
Finally he made up his mind and signed his name to it. Because they didn’t have access to the key, breaking the code of the message would require decades of their combined computer power. So that was really quite uninteresting, but he could always treat them to a few headaches, if they ever did.
They’re welcome to that, he thought, and when he read through the line of numerals that he’d written down he experienced a feeling of deep satisfaction that what he’d read only had meaning for himself and perhaps a few isolated others like him. You’re welcome to that, he thought as he coded his name under the message. He could send it later, as soon as there was a suitable moment.
To the Bear and Michael… DLJA MEDJEV I MICHAIL… The best informant… TOT KTO SAMOI LUTSHI INFARMATOR… is the one who hasn’t understood the significance of what he’s told… TOT KTO SAM NE PONJAL STO ON RASSKASOVAL…
then his name, the name they’d given him more than twenty years before… The Professor… PRAFESSOR. For how else could he pay them back?
Then he burned Krassner’s papers in the fireplace, and when after a while he went to bed he fell asleep for once without thinking about anything in particular.
At about the same time as the special adviser was going out through the entryway to Rosenbad, Waltin had slunk in through the door to the tech squad. Complete chaos prevailed, which suited him just fine, because he’d been able to put back the revolver that he’d borrowed from them more than six months before. He’d simply placed it on a bench and left the place without even needing to ask about that miserable little shit Wiijnbladh whom he’d had in reserve in case one of his dense colleagues had had the nerve to ask what a police superintendent with the secret police was doing there on a day like this.
But no one had heard, seen, or said anything, and he had simply left the place. And the feeling when he came out on the street again had been almost as fantastic as that time when he sneaked up behind dear Mother, who was standing there staggering with her pathetic canes just when he saw the train come thundering in alongside the platform. How he had passed behind her back, hardly even needing to brush against her, and continued in the direction toward the train and the escalators up to the street. How he’d heard the drawn-out metallic screeching from the braking train, the quick muffled thuds… and the seconds of silence before some hysterical female subway rider had started shrieking like a lunatic.
Johansson got the announcement of death on the radio as he prepared breakfast, and he’d been compelled to sit down and look at the clock. Up until five o’clock yesterday afternoon he’d been bureau head at the National Police Board. And when he stepped out through the door on Polhemsgatan it was on a leave of absence for the time being. When he’d come home he’d had dinner and devoted the evening to pondering how he should arrange his new life. Then he’d gone to bed early. Fell asleep immediately, slept securely and undisturbed the whole night, and when he woke it was with a smile on his lips. Now it was eight o’clock in the morning, no one had phoned him or pounded on his door in the middle of the night, because he’d pulled out the phone jack, and he suddenly understood that now he was someone completely different than he’d been yesterday.
Jarnebring phoned in the evening. He’d been away on vacation along with his fiancée and avoided the crash itself, but now he was called home and in service along with all the old comrades at the bureau. Plus quite a few new ones that he didn’t much care for.
“How’s it going?” Johansson asked automatically.
“It’s going to hell,” said Jarnebring with both conviction and feeling. “Do you know what they’ve got us doing?”