“So how did he take that?”
“He had some long explanation about this being due to the inbreeding in our royal family. He knew they weren’t related, naturally. It was about some kind of genetic depletion, and that one reason Gustav III had been shot was that it had been discovered that he was homosexual.”
“But he still got a small a as a final grade.”
“Yes, he did,” Ossian Grahn observed and sighed. “It was mostly that he knew those lists of monarchs and all the dates, and then I guess I was cowardly, to put it simply.”
“His grades in gymnastics,” said Mattei. “Something happened there when he was in eighth grade. Is that something you remember?”
“Yes,” sighed Ossian Grahn. “I was his homeroom teacher, so I got more than my allotted share of that story. From Kjell, his father the pilot, and his gymnastics teacher.”
“So what happened?”
“When Kjell started eighth grade he got a new teacher, and already in the first class they were quarreling like two roosters in a henhouse that’s too small.”
“Why?”
“If you ask me I think it was because they were too much alike. Not that I know much about gymnastics and sports and such, but Kjell probably deserved the grades he always got. Considering his age he was unbelievably agile and strong. Best in school in soccer, handball, and ice hockey. Not to mention running and swimming and everything else.”
“Was there anything in particular that happened?”
“I think the whole thing started when our school team was playing soccer against the team from Vallentuna. It was at the start of the fall semester. Kjell’s new gymnastics teacher was the coach, and in some situation things must have heated up between them. One thing led to another, and in the first half his teacher told him to leave the field and sent in one of his teammates instead. Kjell seems to have gone straight to the dressing room, showered, changed, and hitchhiked home to Vaxholm. That’s the way it was. Constant controversies.”
“But the last year in school he was back on track again,” Mattei observed. “I noticed he got his capital A back in the fall semester. Were they finally on good terms?”
“No,” said Ossian Grahn, shaking his head. “He got a new teacher he got along with better.”
“So what happened to the other one?”
“He was forced to quit,” said Ossian Grahn.
“Quit? Why?”
“Only a few days before the fall semester was to begin he was in a serious car accident. He lived a few miles north of Vaxholm, out by Österåker, and one morning when he was driving to school to attend a meeting, where the teaching staff was getting ready for the start of the semester, he was in an accident. Drove into the ditch. It could have been really bad. Severe concussion and a number of broken bones. He was in the hospital for several months and he never came back to us.”
“So what happened?”
“He seems to have lost a front wheel,” said Ossian Grahn. “True, he drove like a maniac, but there was a lot of talk.”
“About Kjell Hedberg?”
“Not as far as I recall,” said Ossian Grahn, shaking his head. “He was only sixteen years old. It was the usual gossip about infidelity and jealousy, here and there. There was a lot of that out here in the country, you know. At the same time I have the definite impression that the police here wrote it off as an ordinary accident. That he is supposed to have been careless when he changed the tires on his car. Didn’t tighten the lug nuts properly. You know what,” said Ossian Grahn, looking seriously at Mattei, “perhaps you should talk with Gertrud, since you’re here anyway. I’ll give you her number.”
“With Gertrud Rosenberg? About the car accident?”
“No,” said Ossian Grahn, shaking his head. “If it were only that good.”
81
The devil can stick it up his you-know-what, thought a contented Lisa Mattei as she drove onto the highway toward Stockholm three hours later. At the same moment her cell phone rang.
“My office in half an hour,” said Johansson, sounding like he meant it.
“You have to give me at least an hour, boss,” said Mattei. Goodness, she thought.
“For Christ’s sake, it doesn’t take an hour to drive from Vaxholm,” said Johansson.
Goodness, goodness, thought Mattei.
“There’s a lot of traffic, actually, and driving is not exactly my strong suit,” Mattei lied.
“My office,” said Johansson. “As soon as you set foot in the building go straight to my office,” he repeated, whereupon he hung up without further ado.
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, thought Mattei, giving it a little extra gas to manage what she intended to do before she met her top boss.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him furious, she thought a little more than an hour later when she sat down in the visitor’s chair in front of his large desk.
“How did you know I was out in Vaxholm, boss?” she asked.
“Our colleague Wiklander happened to see you down in the garage. Don’t come in here and say you don’t know we have GPS and tracking equipment nowadays in almost all our vehicles. I know to the last inch what you’ve been up to.”
Didn’t think of that, thought Mattei, shaking her head strenuously to stop the attack of the giggles she felt was on its way.
“You’ve been parked for over five hours outside Båtmansvägen 3 in Vaxholm, and I assume it’s pure chance that Kjell Göran Hedberg’s old homeroom teacher-that light-haired little bastard who looks like his pupils in that photo I was stupid enough to send you-has lived at the same address his whole life.”
“I actually had no idea about that,” said Lisa Mattei. That he’d lived there his whole life, that is.
“Forget about that now,” said Johansson, glaring at her acidly. “Despite what both I and Wiklander said to you, you’ve been sitting chatting with him for hours. Despite the most obvious risk of a leak. What do you know about him and Hedberg? Maybe they’ve been involved since they met in junior high?”
“I don’t think they’ve spoken to each other, actually. Not since Hedberg finished school.”
“No,” said Johansson. “And why do you think that?”
“I talked with one of Hedberg’s classmates too. She was pretty convinced it was that way.”
“You did what?” said Johansson, looking at her in amazement. She’s sitting here fucking with me, he thought.
“I talked with one of his classmates,” Mattei repeated. “She lived right in the vicinity, so I left my car and walked to her house. In case Wiklander wonders,” she clarified.
“I hope,” said Johansson. “I hope…that you have an extremely good explanation,” he repeated, leaning heavily on his elbows.
“It’s actually better than that,” said Lisa Mattei.
“Lisa, Lisa,” sighed Johansson half an hour later. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I was hoping for another gold star,” said Lisa Mattei. “A giant one,” she clarified.
82
The following morning the transcript of the interview with district physician Gertrud Rosenberg, born in 1945, was on Johansson’s large desk.
The interview had been held in her home in Vaxholm. The interview leader was Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei. It was recorded on tape and already approved by the woman she had interviewed the day before. It took less than an hour to conduct, according to the times listed on the report. It was introduced with a brief summary by Mattei and concluded with her conveying to Gertrud Rosenberg a so-called disclosure prohibition.
Gertrud Rosenberg states by way of introduction and in summary in part the following.
She was a classmate of Kjell Göran Hedberg from the seventh to ninth grades in the comprehensive school in Vaxholm, from September 1957 until the beginning of June 1960. After completion of public school, Gertrud began at the high school in Djursholm. There she got her diploma in natural sciences with a biology major in May of 1963, after which she was admitted to the medical school at Karolinska Institute in September of the same year. In connection with this she also, about six months later, moved to a student apartment in Östermalm in Stockholm. Gertrud got her MD degree and was certified as a physician in June of 1970.