“Something they read in the newspaper,” answered his secretary. “About a new secret investigation of the assassination of Olof Palme you supposedly set up yesterday.”
“So who are they? Who called, I mean.”
“Basically everyone, it seems,” answered his secretary as her eyes searched the paper she held in her hand.
“Give me a few names,” said Johansson.
“Well, Flykt of course. He’s already been here twice. He wanted to see you personally to work out any misunderstandings that might result from what’s in the article.”
“Imagine that,” said Johansson. “I had no idea Flykt was working at Dagens Nyheter. Tell the SOB he can wait,” said Johansson.
“Yes, perhaps not word for word,” answered his secretary. “Because in that case it’s best if you say it yourself. I’ll let him know you’ll call him during the day and that you want him to be in his office.”
“Excellent,” said Johansson, because he knew that Flykt preferred to end his workday early, especially on days like this when the weather promised to be excellent for playing golf. “Make sure he remains here in the building until I call him.”
“I understand exactly what you mean,” said his secretary, who knew her boss and right now did not envy Inspector Yngve Flykt with the Palme group.
“So who are the others?” Johansson repeated.
“Basically everyone, as I said. Everyone from the media at least, because they’re calling like crazy, so I’m forwarding them to our own press department. But if we start here in the building, we have the chief of national police who contacted us through our communications director, you know, the new one. The police chief is on a visit to the police in Haparanda. Our director general also called and wondered if there’s something she needs to know about or can help with. I promised to relay that. Then Anna Holt called and asked if there’s anything new that she and her colleagues ought to know about. Your best friend called too, if you haven’t had a falling out again, of course.”
“Jarnebring,” said Johansson. “Did Bo call? What did he want?”
“Yes,” said his secretary. “What did he want? Well, he wanted to talk with you. Said he’d read the morning paper and he was worried about you.”
“Word for word, please,” said Johansson.
“Okay,” she sighed. “He wondered if you’d had a stroke. If he could help you with anything, and that you should call him as soon as you had the time.”
“So that’s what he said,” said Johansson.
“The chief prosecutor in Stockholm called. Twice already. She’s very anxious to talk with you. If I remember correctly she’s the head of the preliminary Palme investigation, so it may very well have something to do with that case.”
“That’s what you think,” said Johansson. “Okay then. Let’s do this. Call that skinny woman at the prosecutor’s office and say that if she still wants to talk with me that’s fine of course. Otherwise you can just inform her that she shouldn’t believe all the shit she reads in the papers. I can meet with our own media gnomes in fifteen minutes, and that can be here in my office. The others can wait until I contact them. Was there anything else?”
“We can start with this,” his secretary agreed.
First in and first out on Johansson’s phone was the female chief prosecutor in Stockholm. The head of the preliminary investigation and in a formal sense the highest-ranking person responsible for the investigation of the assassination of the prime minister, if one were to be precise and look at the formalities more than the circumstances. Why would anyone do that? Johansson’s role in this context was more modest and consisted of supplying her with the police resources she thought she needed to carry out her assignment. He was obviously well aware of all this, and before he made his decision to go forward he had thought many hours about how he would handle this issue. How he would see to it that something was done and that those who did it got peace and quiet around them while they were doing it. The high risk of leaks decided the matter. That’s how he’d thought, and everything else could advantageously wait until later, but then it hadn’t turned out the way he’d hoped and now it was high time to regroup.
“I see in Dagens Nyheter that you’ve appointed a new Palme investigation,” the chief prosecutor began in a well-controlled, suspiciously courteous tone of voice. “What I’m wondering about is simply-”
“Yes, I saw that too,” Johansson interrupted gently. “What fucking nutcases! Where do they get all this from?”
“Excuse me?”
“Slow news day,” said Johansson. “Pure fantasies. Typical slow news day story. Although at that rag it’s like they have slow news days all year long.”
“So I should interpret this as meaning that you haven’t appointed a new investigation or gone in and made any changes to the investigation that I’m actually leading?”
She was not as controlled now. Not as courteous. It is high time to put a stop to it, thought Johansson.
“How would that look?” said Johansson with a resentful face, even though he was alone in his office. “I think you know that even better than I do. You’re the head of the Palme investigation. Besides, between the two of us you’re the one who’s the lawyer, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Then I really don’t understand a thing.”
“Me neither,” Johansson agreed with emphasis. “As I’m sure you know, all the case files have been packed up in boxes for years, and it was only a few months ago that we were able to make room for all of them and put them on the shelves again. You do know about that?”
“Of course,” she said. “I was the one who made that decision, in consultation with Flykt and the others in the group.”
“Exactly,” Johansson agreed. “But then they’ve been on me about that. They said they need even more room, and if the rest of us who work here aren’t going to end up on the street because we have no place to put our rear ends, then I thought it was high time to take a look at the case indexing. Find a better, more modern system, simply. Maybe transfer it onto those little diskettes, you know, and move all the papers to the basement. Or some of them, at least. It was Flykt, by the way, who pointed that out to me. I thought it was an excellent idea, and so I asked a few of my younger officers to see if they had any good ideas. Modern computer processing and data storage, and all that, you know, which old geezers like me have completely missed despite all the courses we have to take.”
“Lewin then?” asked the chief prosecutor, who still did not sound completely convinced. “True, he’s not ancient, but describing him as a younger colleague is still a stretch.”
“He knows the material from before, and the people who work for you seem to be busy with other things,” Johansson clarified. You must have talked with someone here in the building, thought Johansson. In the article there wasn’t a word about Lewin. At the bureau there are more than seven hundred police officers, but only one with that surname, and it’s lucky for you you’re not sitting in an interrogation with me, he thought.
“Obviously it would be out of line for me to intervene in your administrative procedures,” the prosecutor agreed.
“No, how would that look?” said Johansson, sounding as happy as someone who hadn’t heard what he just said.
The rest went like a dance where Johansson was leading. For the sake of a good cause he set aside five whole minutes for the usual courtesies and concluded the conversation by expressing the hope that they would meet again soon for social activities. For a long time Johansson and his wife had talked about inviting the chief prosecutor and her husband to dinner. Eat and drink well, and as far as the media was concerned she wasn’t the least bit worried. He would take care of the media himself because it was his table, and no one else’s, they’d had the bad taste to shit on.