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“That politician,” said Holt. “You don’t remember what his name was?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It must have been one of those conservatives. May have been in the summer of seventy-seven. When I got busted in Solna that time it was seventy-six. I remember that.”

“Why do you remember that?” asked Mattei.

“Because it was my seventeenth birthday,” said Marja. “Talk about a birthday present.”

The nameless policeman from the restaurant she remembered. He had been sitting there when they came in. The time was about nine-thirty. He left after an hour or so. The rest she had figured out later when she read about the murder of Olof Palme.

“He pretty well matched that physical description. Dark, good condition, forty-ish. About six foot one. Dark jacket. I remember that, because he had it on in the restaurant. On the other hand I don’t remember what kind of pants he had on. I guess I didn’t think about it.”

Then they showed her pictures. Ten portrait photos of police officers taken twenty to thirty years earlier. The originals had been on their police IDs. One of them was of Kjell Göran Hedberg and was taken the same summer he was supposed to have accompanied an unknown politician into the Parliament Building.

“Not the foggiest,” said Ruotsalainen. “They look like blueberries, the whole pile. How the hell do you tell one blueberry from another?”

“What do you think about this then?” asked Mattei, pushing a typewritten page over to her. A list of ten names of male police officers, the majority of which she gathered from the national bureau’s personnel list, and one of them was named Kjell Göran Hedberg.

Pettersson, Salminen, Trost, Kovac, Östh, Johansson, Hedberg, Eriksson, Berg, Kronstedt. Ten names, and the surnames were not in alphabetical order.

“I recognize Östh,” said Ruotsalainen. “That was another one of those Solna detectives. Also a fucking creep, but what his first name was I don’t remember.”

“Take all the time you need,” said Holt. “We’re in no hurry.”

“Me neither,” said Ruotsalainen. “These days I have all the time in the world. Before it was a lot of running around.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not the foggiest. They’re all cops, I suppose, so I’m sure I’ve met them too.”

“After the arrest out in Solna in 1976 you and your guy at the time were convicted of narcotics crimes. It happened in Solna district court in April of 1976. I have the conviction here,” said Mattei, pushing a plastic sleeve over to Ruotsalainen. “What you said, that you were seventeen when you were arrested. That adds up; it says so in the conviction. Before you look at it I want you to think one more time about the name of that policeman who testified against you back then.”

“Is this one of those psych things you learned at the police academy?” asked Ruotsalainen.

“Think now, Marja,” said Mattei. “Think about that policeman who testified against you. Look at the list of names in front of you.”

“Kjell Göran Hedberg,” said Ruotsalainen suddenly. “That was his name. Damn, girlfriend. You’re a fucking magician.

“That name,” she continued. “I remember it. When that Nazi was sitting up there on the stand about to lie through his oath before he stepped on it for real. I, Kjell Göran Hedberg, do promise and assure…Guess whether I remember. How many people do you think there are who call me Marja Lovisa Ruotsalainen? Not even my mom.”

Before they left they talked with her about her then boyfriend, Jorma Kalevi Orjala, who had been struck by a hit-and-run driver and drowned in the Karlberg Canal a few months after the murder of the prime minister.

“Cully,” said Ruotsalainen and sighed. “He was a real fucking crazy, he was. Although I doubt that’s why you came here.”

“No,” said Holt, who did not like lying, even to someone like Marja Ruotsalainen. “But we’ve read the investigation. According to the report, it was most likely a so-called hit-and-run accident. Someone hit him from behind with a car. He was thrown over the edge of the pier and down into the water where he happened to drown.”

“Happened to,” Ruotsalainen snorted. “Cully wasn’t the sort that things ‘happened to.’ He was murdered. You must have realized that anyway?”

“In that case we’ve come for his sake too,” said Holt, looking at her seriously. “So who do you think murdered him?”

“I wish I could say it was that fucking Hedberg,” said Ruotsalainen. “But I don’t really think so. There were a fucking lot of people who wanted to kill Cully. That evening, for example, he was at home with a girlfriend of mine, drinking and screwing her. He needed to I guess, and I was sitting in jail,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

“Do you have any names?” said Mattei. “For example, what was the name of your girlfriend that Cully visited? Maybe you have some idea who may have run him over?”

“Course I have,” said Ruotsalainen. “The problem is that they’re all dead. Cully’s dead, my girlfriend is dead. Her guy at the time, who possibly ran over Cully after he came staggering out of his girl’s pad, is dead too. You should have been here twenty years ago. Why weren’t you, by the way?”

“Good question,” said Anna Holt as they sat in the car on the way to the police building. “Why didn’t we hold that interview twenty years ago?”

“I couldn’t hold any interviews at that time,” said Mattei. “I was only eleven when Palme died. It was Mom who did the interrogating at home with us. I used to sit on the edge of my bed in my room, and Mom squatted down in front of me and held my hand. Besides, that colleague of ours did make an attempt. To be fair,” said Mattei, nodding emphatically.

“Although he wasn’t as sharp as we are,” said Holt. “So he can just go to hell. An ordinary fucking pig.”

“Guys,” said Mattei, shrugging her shoulders. “There’s only one thing you need them for.”

What has happened to little Lisa? thought Holt. Is she becoming a grown woman?

“But not Johan, exactly,” said Holt.

“No, not him,” said Mattei. “He’s actually good for several things. You can talk with him, and he’s really good at cleaning and cooking too.”

“Can he see around corners too?” asked Holt for some reason.

“No,” said Mattei and sighed. “Only Johansson can.”

Not quite yet, perhaps, thought Holt.

77

The day after the meeting at the Turing Society Johansson decided to figure out who had dissuaded private banker Theo Tischler from investing his personal money in the pursuit of Olof Palme’s murderer. It was just a sudden impulse, and as so often before he immediately gave in to it. Whatever this might be good for, really, he thought as he called the woman he wanted to talk with.

“I would like to speak with attorney Helena Stein,” said Johansson as soon as her secretary answered.

“Who may I say is calling?” asked the secretary.

“My name is Lars Martin Johansson,” said Johansson.

“What does this concern?” asked the secretary.

“We know each other,” said Johansson. “Say hello to her and ask if I can meet her. Preferably immediately.”

“One moment,” said the secretary.

Know each other, thought Johansson. That’s one way to put it. To be exact he’d spoken with her only once before. Just over seven years ago, when he was operations head of the secret police and responsible for carrying out a background check, because then undersecretary Helena Stein was going to be appointed minister of defense. At the time he discovered that she had a history that threatened to catch up with her after twenty-five years and would definitely put an end to her political career. He regretted having made this discovery and then congratulated himself for having rescued her from a fate that would have been considerably worse than that. In another time, when both she and he had been living another life.