After a few more years Ignacio had to install a butane grill on board Esperanza. There was no better stove for meat, vegetables, fresh fish, or seafood. For Esperanza’s owner, his guests, and idle, sunlit days at sea. The grill folded against the bulkhead to take up less room when it wasn’t being used, and it was equipped with a stainless-steel cover that resisted weather and wind. The tank was hidden below the deck. Ignacio had to run the hose from the five-gallon butane container inside the wall of the bulkhead to keep the outside nice and clean.
After that not much remained to do on Esperanza. Every spring Ignacio drew her up on the slip, made the annual inspection, and scraped the bottom, which was necessary for all wooden boats and especially in these snail-infested waters.
Esperanza was a very beautiful little boat, and her owner had always taken good care of her.
52
Wednesday, September 12.
Four weeks remaining until October 10.
Headquarters of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation on Kungsholmen in Stockholm
The big boss’s own conference room. At the table sit the usual four. Lars Martin Johansson, Anna Holt, Jan Lewin, and Lisa Mattei. Outside the window autumn has arrived after a long, hot summer that seemed like it would never end. Suddenly, surprisingly, without advance warning. Cut the temperature in half and struck with gale-force winds. Like a street robber pulling and tearing at the trees in the park across the street and throwing itself against the outside of the building.
“A question,” said Holt. “Why does he leave SePo so hastily and strangely? Waltin, that is. According to my papers he is supposed to have applied for and been granted dismissal in May 1988 and left formally at the end of June the same year. He seems to have already left in early June. That’s when he turned in his police ID, his keys, his service weapon and signed all the papers. The only thing I’ve produced is that he applied for and was granted dismissal by his own request.”
“He had no choice,” said Johansson. “The alternative would have been that he would be fired.”
“Why?” said Holt.
“Okay then,” sighed Johansson, looking like the former head of SePo he was. “Assuming that this stays in this room. Briefly and in summary. Lots of financial oddities and some real irregularities. Waltin was also head of the so-called external operation, where the secret police had, among other things, started a private company to use as a cover and control instrument. Waltin seemed to have mostly been interested in making money. The parliamentary auditors went crazy when they found out about it. Justice did an investigation and decided that the whole operation had been illegal from the start. Apart from Waltin’s own efforts as an entrepreneur.”
“So how has SePo solved that today?” said Mattei with an innocent expression.
“Excuse me,” said Johansson. What is it she’s saying? he thought.
“I’m joking with you, boss. Excuse me,” said Mattei, who didn’t seem the least bit repentant.
“Don’t do it again,” said Johansson sternly. What has happened with Mattei? he thought.
“I have a question myself, by the way,” he continued after a moment.
Had they thought about Waltin’s motive, if things were really so bad that he was involved in the murder of the prime minister? True, Johansson himself was no friend of motives. He considered them almost a source of entertainment for the judicial upper classes, and the sort of thing that real police officers seldom made use of when they tried to advance a murder investigation. In fact, or simply in his experience, the motives he had encountered during his life as a police officer were almost always obvious or crazy. Concerning Waltin, however, he could imagine making an exception.
“Possibly he had a role model,” Lewin replied with a cautious glance at Mattei. “Lisa and I are looking at that.”
Then he talked about Claes Waltin’s middle name, the date he was born, and his father’s background. Holt filled in with the story about his to say the least strange will, and his statement that he had murdered his mother.
“Absent father, dominant mother, idealizes the father, hates the mother, classic psychology,” said Holt. “If you want more-”
“Thanks, thanks,” Johansson interrupted. “That’s good enough. I want something to sink my teeth in. Get to the bottom of this fellow. Trace his contacts. Find out who he associated with. How he thought, felt, and lived. Where he stood politically, who and what he loved and hated. What he read, what he ate, what he drank. I want to know everything about the bastard. His dad, by the way. How old is he now?”
“He’ll soon be eighty-eight,” Mattei interjected alertly, before Lewin had time to leaf through his papers.
“Find out if there’s any sense in interviewing him,” said Johansson. “If he was crazy enough to christen his boy Adolf at that point in time, it might very well be worth the bother. People like that usually like to hear their own voice. Who knows? Maybe he was the one holding the revolver. Frisky, happy retiree. Looked considerably younger than he was.”
“I think you can forget that,” said Holt. “He’s too short, for one thing. Five foot eight according to his passport from that time.”
“Good, Holt,” said Johansson. “Embrace the situation. Give me the name of the bastard.”
“Sometimes I get the idea that you have it,” Holt objected.
“Not him,” said Johansson, shaking his head. “Not Waltin. Give me the name of the bastard who did the shooting.”
That evening after dinner Johansson and his wife, Pia, watched a film by Costa-Gavras. It was about a leading left-wing politician who was murdered by the Greek junta’s police. Johansson had borrowed it from Mattei, who in turn had borrowed it from an acquaintance who was studying film. Z-He lives on, thought Johansson, and well worth watching, according to Mattei.
Personally he had a hard time concentrating. Probably because he would soon have bigger problems than any of the others. His suddenly, inexplicably happy co-worker who dared to test his democratic captaincy. What is happening? thought Johansson.
Pia, he thought. Soon he would probably have to talk with her. Although not now. Not now when they were curled up in their separate corners of the couch with legs interlaced, watching a film about a murdered politician while the wind picked up and howled against his very security there in front of the TV in the building where they lived. He and his wife and everything that his life was ultimately about.