“I’m listening,” said Johansson and nodded.
“Drop the thing with Palme,” said Persson with feeling. “That case was lost to us more than twenty years ago.”
“Sure. If I could choose I would like to boil the bastard who did it for glue,” said Johansson.
“Who wouldn’t,” said Persson. “The problem with us policemen is that we can’t do that sort of thing, and in this case we don’t even know who to put in the gluepot.”
Drop it, thought Johansson an hour later as he sat in the taxi on his way home to Söder. If you just stop thinking about it, then at least you’ve gotten something done, he thought.
61
Claes Waltin’s police biography was starting to get content and form. From the birth certificate to the certificate of death. From the announcement in Svenska Dagbladet and the picture of little Claes and his parents to the two investigations into his death by the Spanish and Swedish police that marked the end of his earthly life.
He had not been a shining light at school, as his father Robert Waltin had maintained. More like a rascal. The best schools but mediocre grades throughout. Except in behavior and neatness. He already had low marks for conduct in the second grade.
Only eight years old and even though he was going to private school. I wonder what kind of trouble he got himself into? thought Lisa Mattei.
During his time in the military he changed in an astonishing way. Waltin did his military service with the Norrland dragoons in Umeå, serving in an elite company, the army’s mounted riflemen. When he mustered out as a sergeant after fifteen months it was with the highest marks in all subjects. Then everything returned to normal. It took him eight years to finish his law degree instead of the usual four.
Didn’t Palme finish his degree in two? thought Lisa Mattei.
Waltin seemed to have had many things to occupy his time besides studies. Club activities, for one thing. As soon as he’d enrolled at the law school in Stockholm he became a member of the Conservative Law Students. He left them after only one year and asked to have his reasons added to the minutes. In short, the society was much too radical for his taste.
Along with a few like-minded students, he founded a new society, a breakaway faction that called itself Young Law Students for a Free Sweden. Complete with capital letters and everything, but as a society it was already dormant after three months.
In contrast, the small circle of four young law student friends who formed the Friends of Cunt Society were considerably more persevering than that. The society was established in September 1966, at the start of the fall semester, and remained active the rest of the decade.
Waltin appeared to have been a very active member. He was the society’s “Treasurer” and “Wine Cellar Manager.” He won the title of “Cuntmaster of the Year” in both 1966 and 1968. He was expelled in 1969 for reasons that had left no traces in the minutes and which, almost forty years later, it took the extremely competent detective inspector Lisa Mattei a couple of days to figure out. Without the help of one of the former members of the society, now in the Swedish parliament as a representative of the Christian Democrats and an esteemed member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Administration of Justice.
Mattei asked Johansson for permission to interview the member of parliament but got a point-blank no in reply.
“I’m getting worried about you, Lisa, when you talk like that,” Johansson answered, fixing his eyes on her. “Why do you want to talk with him? I assume you’re aware he worked as a chief prosecutor before he wound up in parliament.”
“To get some sense of Waltin’s personality, his background. I think it’s extremely interesting,” Mattei objected. “I can imagine-”
“That’s pure nonsense,” Johansson interrupted. “A few snotnosed kids and upper-class students in the sixties who totally lacked judgment. What relevance does that have for your case? Forty years later. Why do you think Palme was murdered? Do you think it was an attempted rape that got out of hand, or what?”
“No,” said Lisa Mattei. “I don’t think that. But I do believe interviewing his old friend may give us something about Waltin as a person. Besides, it was barely twenty years later that Palme was murdered. This society was founded in the fall of 1966 and Palme was shot at the end of February 1986.”
“Forget it,” said Johansson, shaking his head and pointing with his whole hand toward the door to his office. “Don’t contradict me,” he said sternly as she got up and left.
Mattei had not forgotten. Johansson’s way of treating her was a guarantee of the exact opposite. Quite apart from whether the issue was relevant or not. Besides, she’d had help from Waltin’s father, without his being aware of it as he sat and bragged about his son’s fine friends from high school and university, and about the one who was the finest of them all, the banker, financier, billionaire Theodor “Theo” Tischler.
May be worth trying, thought Lisa Mattei, and already an hour after the conversation with Johansson she had gotten hold of Tischler by phone and arranged a meeting the next day at his office on Nybroplan without asking Johansson for permission.
As an informant he was unbeatable and improbable. A little square bald man with wide red suspenders and very attentive eyes, who inspected her nonchalantly from the other side of his gigantic desk. The man who gave Tourette’s syndrome a face, thought Lisa Mattei while the tape recorder in the breast pocket of her jacket whirred for all it was worth.
“Claes Waltin,” said Tischler. “What has that pathological liar come up with this time?”
“I assume you know he died a number of years ago,” said Mattei.
“That’s no obstacle to someone like him,” Tischler observed, and within five seconds he brought up the Friends of Cunt Society.
Tischler had not had any contact whatsoever with Waltin since the spring of 1969, when Waltin had spread a malicious rumor about Tischler among the women who constituted the society’s foremost recruiting base: female nursing students from Sophiahemmet, the Red Cross, and Karolinska.
“It was there of course we got the most meat on the bone,” said Tischler. “If it had been today I would have sued him because he tried to mislead the market. I had a miserable time before I could get back in the game.”
“So what did he say?” asked Lisa Mattei.
“That I had a prick the size of Jiminy Cricket’s,” said Tischler, grinning.
Was there any truth to that? thought Mattei as she shook her blond head regretfully.
“Now you’re wondering of course whether there was any truth to that,” Tischler continued.
No truth at all, according to the informant. Just a wicked tongue; Waltin had done everything to prevent the future banker from becoming the rightful winner of the Cuntmaster trophy. Which was why Tischler had ganged up with the society’s two other members and pooled their already considerable economic muscles to bring about the fall of the slimy rumor-spreader Waltin.
“A lie from beginning to end,” said Tischler. “If you don’t believe me I’ll give you the names of a few of my old friends from the Sea Scouts, so they can tell you what I was called back then.
“All the scout leaders at that time were old queers and pedophiles, so we little boys were always forced to swim naked when we were at camp. That was when my buddies nicknamed me the Donkey,” Tischler clarified.
“The donkey?” asked Mattei.
“I’ve been accused of many things but never of having been stupid,” Tischler observed. “It wasn’t the upper part of the donkey, by the way,” he said, nodding in the direction of his crotch, which was hidden by his desk.
Was Waltin a sexual sadist?
Of course, according to Tischler. Yet another reason that he was expelled. Waltin hated cunt, hence his insatiable sexual appetite and the expressions that it took.