He also answered the phone on the second ring.
In front of her Lisa Mattei saw a small, energetic retiree with cheerful eyes and unruly blond hair, which meant that playing with anything other than open cards was inconceivable.
“My name is Lisa Mattei,” said Mattei. “I’m a police officer and work at the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Stockholm. I need to talk with you.”
“Now I’m really curious,” Grahn replied, sounding just as cheerful as his photo promised. “When did you have in mind?”
“Preferably right away,” said Lisa Mattei.
“Shall we say in an hour?” said Grahn. “Because I’m assuming you drive a car and work in that ugly big brown building on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. The one you always see on TV as soon as some poor soul gets in trouble.”
Lisa Mattei gathered up the papers she thought she would need with the class photo from 1960 at the top of the pile, borrowed a service vehicle, drove to Vaxholm, and met former secondary schoolteacher Ossian Grahn. He was seventy-seven, but judging by his eyes not a day older than in Mattei’s almost fifty-year-old photo. The same Ossian Grahn who won her heart as soon as they sat down in his tidy living room and he served her the first cup of coffee.
“A question out of curiosity,” said Grahn. “Is this Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei or Doctor of Philosophy Lisa Mattei who does me this honor? I looked you up on the Internet, in case you’re wondering.”
“Good question,” said Mattei. “I actually think you’re having a visit from both.”
Then Mattei took out the class photo from 1960. The same photo that aroused Dr. Mattei’s curiosity and made her want to ask certain questions. For reasons that inspector Mattei unfortunately was prevented from going into more closely, but which essentially concerned one of his pupils in the graduating class at Vaxholm school in 1960.
“I brought the class photo with me,” said Lisa Mattei, giving it to him.
“There’s one thing you should know, Lisa,” said Ossian Grahn. “I was a teacher for over forty years. I have had thousands of pupils over the years. As far as this class is concerned I want to recall that I was their classroom teacher for three years, in grades seven, eight, and nine. I had them in Swedish and history, and one more reason I remember that is that the same autumn I started working at Norra Latin in Stockholm. It was there I got my first permanent position as an assistant principal.”
“Do you remember any of the ones in the picture?” asked Mattei.
“Two,” said Ossian Grahn. “And I sincerely hope it’s not Gertrud who’s the reason I’ve had a visit from Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei.”
Gertrud stood in the back row to the left. Cute and well-dressed with long dark hair hanging over her shoulders. A shy smile toward the camera, fifteen years old but judging by her eyes considerably more mature than that. A father who owned the ICA grocery store in the middle of town and a mother who was a teacher and colleague of Ossian Grahn. She was one pupil among the thousands he had taught during a long life as a teacher.
“One of the best pupils I’ve ever had,” Ossian Grahn observed. “If we’re talking about such simple accomplishments as those that can be summarized in so-called grades,” he added.
“More then,” said Mattei.
“Gertrud is a very remarkable individual,” said Grahn. “She’s something as rare as a very charming person. She is educated, she is talented, and she is both kind and decent to others. She’s good-looking too. Always has been, by the way. I’ve known her since she was a little girl.”
“Do you still see her?”
“She’s a doctor. Head of the district medical center here in Vaxholm,” said Grahn. “Until a few years ago she worked at Karolinska in Stockholm, but then her new husband got sick and took early retirement and she moved back here. They actually live just a few blocks away. In her parents’ old house, by the way. We usually say hi to each other a few times a week. Her name is now Rosenberg. Since she remarried. Her new husband also worked as a doctor. Although now he’s on a disability pension, as I said.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about Gertrud,” said Lisa Mattei. “Who was the other one who-”
“Let me guess,” said Ossian Grahn. “You’ve come here to talk about Kjell? About Kjell Hedberg.”
“Why do you think that? Why do you remember him?”
“Usually there are two kinds of pupils that someone like me remembers. On the one hand those like Gertrud, whom you always remember with joy, and there are not all that many of them, you should know. Yes, and then there are your problem children. And unfortunately there are usually quite a few more of them. Ordinary rowdy kids, although some of them can be really charming, and, unfortunately, there is the occasional little gangster. But the great majority of them were only the kind you really felt sorry for.”
“Hedberg was a rowdy kid?” asked Mattei. Let’s start there, she thought, because it was the last thing she could imagine.
“If it had only been that good,” said Grahn, shaking his unruly light hair.
“It was worse than that?” said Mattei. Now this is starting to resemble something, she thought.
“I hope he was unique,” said Grahn, squirming uneasily in his chair.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Kjell Hedberg is actually the only pupil, during my entire life as a teacher, that I was afraid of. Even though he never misbehaved. Not in my class in any event. Even though I was his homeroom teacher and even though I was twice his age. There was something about his eyes and his body language, his way of looking at you, that could be terrifying, to put it bluntly. As soon as something didn’t suit him.”
“Now I’m the one who’s getting curious,” said Mattei. “You have to explain.”
“I don’t think it’s as simple as that he was an evil person. No fifteen-year-old is evil in that way. I think they only get that way later in life.”
“So what was it?”
“I think he didn’t understand the difference between good and bad,” said Grahn. “The only thing that meant anything in Kjell’s world was how he perceived you and whether he thought you were against him. It was probably my good luck that I instructed him in his favorite subject, history.”
“He was interested in history?”
“Yes, in the way the very worst sorts are. He could rattle off lists of monarchs like running water even if you woke him up in the middle of the night. He knew the time and place of every battle, and his view of history was frankly deplorable. It was only about major personalities. Alexander the Great, Hannibal and Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, Napoleon and Hitler. Great men who determined the fate of the world and in passing, so to speak, gave content and meaning to the lives of the rest of us ordinary mortals. I remember when we were reading about Gustav III. He came up to me after a lecture and told me that he was convinced that Gustav III was homosexual. He already knew that Gustav V had been. His father, the master pilot, told him that. About the old king who tried to rape his chauffeur, who drove into the ditch and nearly killed them both. Who had a curve in the road south of Stockholm named after him…I tried to reassure him by pointing out that they were not even related to each other.”