If Kjell Hedberg was still alive, and there was nothing to indicate that he wasn’t, he would have turned sixty-three just over a month ago. If he was the one who shot the country’s prime minister, he would have been forty-one when he did it. Tall enough besides. When he applied to the police academy almost forty years before he had been six foot one. According to the information in his passport, now seven years old, these days he was slightly shorter.
“Age takes its toll even on someone like that,” Johansson observed.
After finishing nine years of comprehensive school, Hedberg worked for a few years as a carpenter’s apprentice at a small shipyard in Vaxholm while he studied at evening school and earned a high school diploma. When he turned eighteen he did his military service with the coast commandos in Vaxholm. He trained as an attack diver and mustered out with the highest grades in all subjects. As soon as he was a legal adult he applied to the police academy and was admitted the following year. He was then twenty years old and the year was 1965.
Once he was through with his year of police training, he ended up with the police in Stockholm as a trainee. He was promoted to assistant one year later, and after a total of ten years he applied for a position as a detective inspector with the police in Solna.
Hedberg got the position. Not only did he have good recommendations. He was also the kind of colleague everyone spoke well of. Someone who could be relied on when things suddenly heated up. Someone who always volunteered. Despite his youth, Hedberg was a real constable. The year was 1975 and he had just turned thirty-one.
After only a year at the bureau in Solna the secret police had been in touch. Spoke with Hedberg’s boss. Spoke with Hedberg himself. Sent their usual recruiters there. Interviewed Hedberg, brought him to the mandatory test week at their training camp, somewhere in Sweden. Asked if he wanted to start with them. Got an affirmative reply. Took care of all the papers and got the go-ahead from his police chief and Hedberg himself.
Hedberg was placed with SePo’s bodyguard squad. He was the Solna police department’s best marksman. He was in perfect physical shape. Single, no children. There was nothing that would prevent him from living life as a policeman to the fullest. He looked good. Was careful about his appearance. Dressed well. Was courteous and well-mannered. Had everything required of someone who would be watching over the potentates of the realm, and in the worst case would take the bullet meant for the person he was protecting.
So far all was well known and well substantiated. What happened next was at best mere slander in the big police building on Kungsholmen. At worst it was true, even though Hedberg during his entire active time as a police officer had never been named as a suspect for the crimes he was supposed to have been guilty of.
Johansson’s memo was about Hedberg’s life up to the point when the wicked rumors had taken over. The boss pointed out that he had done it himself, that it was concise and a model of brevity, and that despite his advanced age he still managed to hit the right keys on his computer.
“So read and enjoy, because the rest I intend to do verbally,” said Johansson. “You’ll understand why immediately, and I don’t need to even explain why this has to stay in this room. For the time being, at least. If it’s as I think, there’ll be some changes coming soon. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Johansson.
“On Friday, May 13, 1977, Hedberg robbed the post office at Dalagatan 13,” said Johansson. “His assignment was to guard the then minister of justice during the day. The minister of justice wanted to take the opportunity to visit his favorite hooker a few blocks from there. Hedberg got leave for a couple of hours and passed the time by robbing the post office. Got away with almost three hundred thousand in cash. A lot of money at that time, when a detective inspector like myself earned five thousand a month, before taxes and including all the overtime you accumulated.”
“I’m sure I’ve heard that story a hundred times,” said Holt. “Is it really true?”
“Yes,” said Johansson. “How do I know? Well, I know. I was the one who found him, you see.”
Then it got even worse. During the ensuing months Hedberg did away with two witnesses to the robbery by murdering them. The first was a young man whom he ran over with his car when the man was crossing the street outside the subway station at the Skogskyrkogården cemetery just south of Stockholm. That case had been written off as a tragic traffic accident-the victim had been high and more or less threw himself in front of Hedberg’s car. The second was a completely ordinary murder. An elderly man and social outcast had his neck broken and was dumped in the same cemetery on December 24, 1977.
“On Christmas Eve,” said Lisa Mattei, her eyes widening.
The suspicions against Hedberg could never be proved. What decided the whole thing was that the minister of justice gave him an alibi for the time when he was supposed to have robbed the post office on Dalagatan, and with that all the evidence collapsed like a house of cards.
“The whole thing ended with him being taken out of outside service,” said Johansson. “He got to sit at SePo and shuffle papers. He sat there for four years before he resigned. Where he went then is unclear. According to the little there is, he’s supposed to have moved to Spain a year later. That was in the fall of 1983. At the same time I have reason to believe he continued working for SePo during the following years. As a so-called external operator.”
According to Johansson there was more to it than that. The only one who seemed to have made use of this particular external operator was then police chief superintendent Claes Waltin. It is probable that he had employed Hedberg in a mission that went wrong. A secret house search of a student apartment on Körsbärsvägen in Stockholm, Friday the twenty-second of November 1985.
“Waltin took care of the practical details. The target was an American journalist who was living there on a sublease. I had reason to believe that the operator he made use of was Kjell Göran Hedberg.”
“Friday the twenty-second of November,” said Mattei. “That’s the day Kennedy was shot.”
“Twenty-two years earlier,” said Johansson. “This is probably one of those rare, chance coincidences.”
“So what went wrong?” asked Holt.
“The journalist suddenly showed up. Surprised Hedberg. Hedberg killed him. Feigned a suicide by writing a farewell letter and throwing him out the window from the twentieth floor.”
“This can’t be true,” said Mattei. “My first, real serial murderer. At least three murders on at least three different occasions. If he also shot Palme he’s leading by a wide margin.”
“Glad I can make you happy, Lisa,” said Johansson. “But this particular bastard is not exactly fun to deal with.”
“You must have met him,” said Lewin. “How would you describe him?”
“I ran into him numerous times in service in the good old days. What’s he like? Psychopath, ice-cold, shrewd, rational, dangerous. Everything you want. When I was operations head for the closed operation I entertained myself by reading his personal file. It was not fun reading. Someone like him should never have become a police officer. Nor is it so simple as being an ordinary sex murderer or a sadist. Hedberg has a distinctly practical nature. If a lightbulb burns out you put in a new one, and most of us can manage that. If a person threatens Hedberg’s existence, he does away with him. In the same simple, obvious way as the rest of us change lightbulbs. So the part where he supposedly gets a kick out of killing someone I think you can forget. This is considerably worse than that.”
“Is there any psychological evaluation of him?” asked Holt.
“All the usual stuff that everyone who started at SePo was subject to at that time. Where they obviously only have good things to say. To start with at least. Very good self-control, very high stress thresholds, constructive, rational, highly effective. After what happened in 1977, on the other hand, changes were made. The big boss at the time, Berg, had a very extensive psychiatric assessment done on Hedberg. Everyone sitting here surely knows what I think about such things, but for once I was inclined to agree with the doctor.”