“You have to wonder where they get all this from,” sighed Johansson, shaking his head to further his point, even though he was still all alone in his office.
Then he had a meeting with the national police chief’s information director and his own information department to firm up the media strategy. According to Johansson it was very simple. He had not formed a new Palme investigation. He had not even made the slightest change in the investigation that had been ongoing for the last twenty years. In other words the Palme investigation wasn’t his responsibility but rather the leader of the preliminary investigation’s responsibility, and as they knew she was chief prosecutor in Stockholm.
“What this is about,” said Johansson as he leaned forward, supporting his elbows on the table, “is that I’ve asked three investigators here at the bureau who have particular experience in how to handle large quantities of preliminary investigation material according to the latest methods-computer technology goes forward with giant leaps, to say the least, and you youngsters know that better than I do, by the way-how we could store the material so that the Palme group can work with it without our needing to build an extra floor here in the building. It was Flykt’s idea by the way, if anyone’s wondering.”
“Yes, I realized that the case files have been packed up in boxes for years,” said the information director with a sly expression.
“Exactly,” Johansson agreed. “We can’t have it that way. The stuff has to be easily accessible for the people in the group so they can work with it. Otherwise we might just as well carry it down to the basement and close the case.” Clever boy, he thought.
“What do we do with the media?” asked his own information manager.
“Usual press release. I want to see it before it goes out. I’m sure the police chief wants to see it too,” said Johansson, checking with a glance in the direction of the police chief’s information director.
“What do we do about TV?” his colleague at the bureau wondered. “Should I set a time for interviews this afternoon here with you, boss?”
“So they can sit in their fucking studios and cut and paste the tape as they like? Definitely not,” said Johansson, letting his own media manager taste the old police gaze he’d learned from his best friend Bo Jarnebring. “If they’re still interested, I can be available for a live broadcast this evening, on channels one, two, and four. Just me, no one else, and above all no so-called experts.” I’ll have to keep an eye on you, he thought.
Flykt can wait, thought Johansson two hours later after he’d cleared the papers off his desk, had lunch at a Japanese restaurant in the vicinity of police headquarters, and was starting to feel that he was regaining a firm grip on the rudder of his own boat. On the other hand perhaps I should have a conversation with little Anna, he thought. True, she can be annoyingly pigheaded, but you can count on her saying what she thinks.
Five minutes later “little Anna,” that is, Police Superintendent Anna Holt, forty-seven, was sitting in the visitor’s chair in his office.
“How’s it going?” said Johansson with a friendly smile and interested blue eyes.
“You mean with our overview of the data processing of the Palme material,” said Holt acidly. No “boss” this time, she thought. They were alone in the room, had known each other well for many years, and to be honest she wasn’t in the mood for it.
“Exactly,” said Johansson. “Have you found the bastard who did it?”
“I don’t think you need to worry about me, Lisa, or Lewin,” Holt replied. “True, the media have been chasing us like madmen, but none of us has talked with any of them. We won’t either.”
“So you know that?” said Johansson.
“Yes,” said Holt.
Then it’s probably that way, thought Johansson. Holt was not one to lie. It was probably so bad that she didn’t even know how to. And Mattei was, well, Mattei. And Lewin? That coward didn’t talk with a living soul unless he was forced to.
“On the other hand there are two other things that perhaps you ought to think about,” said Holt.
“I’m listening,” said Johansson, leaning back in his chair.
“First,” said Holt, “I think the whole idea is crazy. How can three pairs of so-called fresh eyes find anything new of value when hundreds of our colleagues haven’t, in more than twenty years? You can’t really mean in complete seriousness that everyone who has worked with the Palme case for all these years is a nutcase, featherbrain, blind bat, nitwit, and glowworm, to use a few of your own favorite epithets.”
“No, not all,” Johansson agreed. Favorite epithet, he thought. Anna’s starting to become an educated woman. Must be the association with little Mattei, the string bean who got her PhD a few years ago. True, she wrote an incomprehensible dissertation on what a shame it is about women being killed by their boyfriends, but in any case it was good for tossing into the jaws of hungry media vultures when needed, he thought.
“The material is gigantic,” said Holt. “It’s a mountain, not a regular haystack where there might be a needle. Regardless of whether it’s there, we’re not going to find it. Although I’m sure you already know that.”
“Sure,” said Johansson. “So that means we really have to like the situation. The other thing you were talking about? What’s that?”
“Okay,” said Holt. “Assume that we do it anyway. Assume that we find something decisive that could give us a breakthrough in the investigation. Then I would say that you’re going to have major problems with a number of people in your vicinity. Considering that you’ve actually been lying to their faces. Not to mention the media. I went past our information department before lunch and happened to see a draft of your press release. I don’t understand how you dare.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson, whose thoughts already seemed elsewhere.
“I learned something from my father,” he continued.
“Yes?”
“When I was a little boy at home on the farm, Dad had a visit from an insurance agent who wanted to sell him a policy on a forest parcel he’d just bought. It was an iffy location if the wind was strong, and windfalls and trees with their tops lopped off aren’t good business. The problem was that the insurance cost more than he’d paid for the parcel. So that wasn’t a good deal either. Do you know what my old man said?”
Here we go again, she thought. One-way trip fifty years back in time. From the Palme investigation, a current, very concrete problem, to yet another of Johansson’s childhood memories.
“No,” said Holt. How could I know? I guess that’s the point, she thought.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Johansson. “That’s what he said. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ So there was no insurance, but on the other hand when he cut down the forest after twenty years there was a tidy profit. You don’t seriously believe I would be a social outcast if-granted, against all odds-we could put some order into this story? The only risk I run in that case is that they’d erect a monument to me outside the entryway down on Polhemsgatan.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Holt.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Johansson, shrugging his shoulders.
5
Chief Inspector Flykt’s wait was not over until a quarter past six. He’d already made three calls to soothe his increasingly sarcastic golf buddies, when suddenly his boss opened the door and just strode right in.
“Knock, knock,” said Johansson, smiling and waving his big right hand. Wonder where the asshole put his golf bag? he thought after a quick inspection of Flykt’s office.
“Well, I realize you’ve been very busy, Chief,” said Flykt, trying to sound as unperturbed as Johansson. “This is a sorry story but I did try to warn-”