“I agree with Anna,” said Lewin.
“Your old parking ticket,” said Johansson.
“Yes,” said Lewin. “Waltin has the weapon in his possession. Don’t ask me how. He gives it to the perpetrator before the deed. Takes it back the day after the deed. The perpetrator spent the night at one of SePo’s secure addresses up at Gärdet.”
“Not a bad conspiracy theory, Lewin,” said Johansson.
“No,” said Lewin. “So we really have to hope it doesn’t add up.”
When Holt returned to her office she had an unscheduled visit from Bäckström. He was sitting on her desk, and presumably trying to read the papers lying there.
“I’m furious,” said Bäckström, glaring at her threateningly.
“Please sit down,” said Holt.
Bäckström was not only furious. He was also disappointed. In Holt, in her associates, in all of humanity, actually. So disappointed that it had affected his health. He had been struck by a heart attack or possibly a minor stroke the evening before, spent the night at the ER, and now he was on sick leave. As soon as he recovered he intended to contact the union to get help with his complaint against the police administration in Stockholm, the bureau, and not least Anna Holt.
“I think you look spry, Bäckström,” said Holt, who did not appear to have been listening.
“For a real policeman like me an informant’s anonymity is sacred,” said Bäckström indignantly. “You and Mattei have gone behind my back. Gustaf Henning called and gave me a good dressing-down, and you should know that I understand him. But I’m not the one who tricked him. You’re the one who tricked me.”
“You’re worried about the reward,” said Holt.
Not really. It was deceitful colleagues that bothered him. The general decline of the police force. A society on a fast track to destruction, a society where an honorable, hardworking person like him could no longer rely on anyone. That was the kind of thing that worried Bäckström. He had never counted on any reward for his drudgery. That’s one thing he’d learned during his more than thirty years with the police.
“Who gave you the tip about the weapon? Who gave you the name of Waltin? Without me you wouldn’t have squat. I was even the one who put you on the track of that secret sect of sex abusers. Friends of Cunt. You can count with your feet what they’ve been up to all these years. A society of perverse lunatics! You can hear it in the name, can’t you?”
“It’s ugly to read other people’s papers without permission,” said Holt, putting the interview with Henning in her desk drawer to be on the safe side.
“What do you have to say in your defense?” asked Bäckström, fixing his eyes on Holt.
“That I’m doing my job,” said Holt. “In contrast to you, who are only running around sticking your nose in other people’s business. Besides, you’re supposed to be on sick leave. Go home and go to bed and rest, Bäckström. And stop reading my papers without permission,” she concluded, fixing her eyes on him.
“War,” said Bäckström, getting up out of the chair and pointing a fat index finger at Holt.
“War?”
“War,” Bäckström repeated. “Now this is war, Holt.”
59
After lunch Holt and Mattei took a flight to Kristianstad to hold an interview with Claes Waltin’s elderly father.
“I had a visit from Bäckström,” Holt reported. “He was sitting in my office when I came back after the meeting with Johansson.”
“That horrible little fatso,” said Mattei with feeling. “So what did he want?”
“Unclear requests,” said Holt. “On the other hand he did declare war against us.”
“In that case I’ll ask Johan to give him a thrashing.”
“Johan?”
“Johan,” nodded Mattei. For the rest of the trip she talked about Johan, and she would have been happy if the flight to Kristianstad had lasted even longer.
Little Lisa is in love, thought Holt with surprise as they got off the plane.
Large estate in Skåne. Whitewashed exposed-timber house, complete with thatched roof, pond, and lane of birches.
So there are people who live like this, thought Anna Holt as their airport taxi stopped on the gravel yard in front of the main building at the “Robertslust” estate.
“The Waltin family has lived here at Robertslust for generations,” their host explained when he’d led them into the “gentlemen’s room” and seen to it that the “ladies” got coffee. Large desk, crossed swords on the wall above, suite of furniture in worn velvet with crocheted antimacassars on the chair backs, old portraits in gold frames, and a hundred years later life still went on.
A really cozy old place, thought Holt.
“Is it named after director Waltin himself?” asked Mattei with a friendly, inquisitive smile.
“Not really,” snorted Robert Waltin. “It’s named after the family ancestor, my great-great-grandfather, estate owner Robert Waltin. Originally the family had the estate as a summer place.”
And you look like you’ve been here the whole time, thought Lisa Mattei. Mean old man, but far from harmless, she thought. Despite the skinny neck sticking up out of a frayed, oversized shirt collar. Certainly an expensive shirt from the days when Robert Waltin was in his prime. Those days were gone; now he seemed mostly interested in complaining about everything and everyone.
“The reason we’re here is that we want to ask a few questions about your son,” said Holt with a formal smile.
“It’s about time. I’ve never believed in that so-called drowning accident. Claes was completely healthy. Swam like a fish too. I taught him myself.”
Before he turned five and you left him to go to Skåne and marry your secretary, thought Holt.
“Taught him when he was just a little tyke and I was still living with that crazy woman who was his mother,” said papa Robert. “Then he used to come here in the summer and we sailed and swam quite a bit, he and I. He was murdered. Claes was murdered. I’ve thought so all along.”
“Why do you think that?” asked Holt.
“The socialists,” said the old man, looking at her slyly. “He knew something about them so they were forced to murder him. He worked with the secret police. He probably knew almost everything about their illegal deals with the Russians and Arabs. Why do you think they were forced to shoot that traitor Palme, by the way?”
“Tell us what you think, director Waltin.”
“Palme was a traitor. Spied for the Russians. It was no more complicated than that. Russian submarines had secret bases far inside our inner archipelago. It was a corrupt political leadership, in which the one at the top was simply a spy for the enemy. Who betrayed the class he came from besides.”
“What makes you think that Olof Palme was a spy for the Russians?” asked Holt. Keep out of the way, she thought.
“Every thinking person understood that,” said Robert Waltin. “Besides I got it confirmed early on, from a secure source. My own son. There were even papers about it with the secret police. Papers they were forced to destroy on direct orders from the highest political leadership. It’s a terrifying story of abuse of power and treason.”
Really, thought Holt, and now how do I get the old guy to change track?
“Really,” Holt concurred. “It would be of great help if you would tell us about your son.”
His dad was happy to do so. His son had been very talented. Had an easy time in school. Always best in the class. Good-looking besides. As soon as he was big enough he didn’t have a quiet moment, because of all the women running after him.
“They were crazy about him. But he handled it with good humor. Was always polite and charming to them.”
“But he never married,” Holt observed. “Never had a family and children of his own.”
“How would he have had time for that kind of thing,” his father tittered. “Besides, I warned him. I knew what I was talking about. I was married to his mother, after all.”