Nice to have colleagues who understand, thought Mattei, whereupon she returned to her binder.
The first letter had come in to the Palme investigation about a month after the murder. Nothing in particular seemed to have happened. A special file had been opened and entered under what was already-even in the building-being called the police track. But there was nothing else.
Not until the second letter was received, which arrived a month later. Only a few days after the TV news program Rapport had aired a major feature on what the TV journalists were also now calling the police track. The letter was postmarked Stockholm, May 7, 1986. This time the envelope had been saved. Even examined for fingerprints, on both the letter and the envelope.
Dear uncle blue. I think uncle gets things a little slowly but I already knew that. Maybe ought to write direct to Rapport and tell about your dear colleague who was sitting in the bar and hoping for better times until he sneaked away and clinched the deal himself. If he really did it? What do you think yourselves? He is damned like the one who did it in any event but the witnesses must have seen wrong if it really is a cop they’ve seen. So of course it’s cool for the sonofabitch who worked at the bureau in Solna before he became a fine fellow and ended up at SePo. Guess I’ll have to call the complaint department on TV. Anonymous from personal experience.
After a week there was already a response from the tech squad. A number of fingerprints had been secured on the envelope. On the other hand none on the letter. Probably someone had wiped it off before it was put into the envelope. Of the prints that were found, one produced a result. A female drug addict with numerous convictions for narcotics crimes, theft, and fraud, Marja Ruotsalainen, born in 1959.
Maja Svensson, although in Finnish, thought Mattei. Sweet name, she thought.
Holt called Berg. Arranged a meeting at the same café as the first time. As soon as they sat down with their coffee cups, she pulled a Johansson.
“Claes Waltin,” said Holt. “Former police chief superintendent with SePo. Drowned on Mallorca fifteen years ago. Is that anyone you knew?”
“Claes Waltin,” said Berg, who had a hard time concealing his surprise. “Why are you asking?”
“You don’t want to know and I can’t say,” said Holt. You knew him, she thought.
“Okay by me,” said Berg, shrugging his shoulders. “Knew him is probably putting it too strongly. I met him twice. That was at the time when your boss was messing with me and my associates. Right after New Year’s, the same year Palme was shot. Sometime in January or February. We were back on duty, in any event.”
This time things had happened, thought Mattei. The case seemed to have wound up with one of those officers who would be described by all other completely normal colleagues as “a zealous bastard.” As soon as he found out that Marja Ruotsalainen’s fingerprints were on the envelope things had happened. He realized she didn’t work as a letter carrier as soon as he searched for her in the police registry.
In the summer of 1985 Ruotsalainen had been sentenced to two years and six months for felony narcotics crimes. A conviction that was never appealed and which she started serving at Hinseberg women’s prison the week after the conviction. Ruotsalainen was tired of sitting in jail on Polhemsgatan and longed for the relative freedom at the country’s only closed facility for women.
After six months she had been granted leave. She absconded and kept out of sight from the end of January until the middle of May, when she was arrested during a police raid on an illegal club in Hammarbyhamnen. She had been taken to the jail and had to go back to Hinseberg the following day. When the two anonymous letters had been placed in the mailbox she was on the run. Two days after the last one she was sitting in the jail on Kungsholmen.
Because the zealous colleague from SePo had the idea that it was a man who had written the two anonymous letters he searched for her male contacts in the police surveillance registries. Without success. Not because she lacked such contacts, but because none of those who were in the register could have sent the letter.
For lack of anything better he pulled out the papers from the police operation in Hammarbyhamnen during which she was arrested. Besides Ruotsalainen, who was wanted and immediately recognized by the Stockholm police detective squad who led the effort, another half a dozen individuals ended up in jail. One of them was a known criminal with twenty or more previous convictions for serious crimes, Jorma Kalevi Orjala, born in 1947, and at that point in time he was strangely enough neither on the run nor suspected of anything else. About the same time that Ruotsalainen took a seat in the jail’s blue Chevrolet to be transported to Hinseberg, Jorma Kalevi Orjala stepped out onto Kungsholmsgatan a free man.
The zealous colleague with SePo called the police inspector with the central detective squad who had led the raid against the club in Hammarbyhamnen. To save time and out of personal curiosity, because this was the first time he had crossed paths with one of the Stockholm police’s great legends, Bo Jarnebring.
He had two questions. Why had Orjala ended up in jail? Was Orjala involved with Marja Ruotsalainen? On the other hand he never asked the third question. One that with reasonable probability might have led to his solving the murder of the country’s prime minister barely four months after the event. The secrecy surrounding his work was so high that those ordinary questions, between fellow officers, were never asked.
Berg had met Waltin twice. The first time he had been alone. The second time four of his associates from the riot squad had been there.
A woman he knew had called him. She had been out with Waltin on one occasion. Then Waltin started pursuing her. Called her place of employment. The usual wordless panting. Sat in a car out on the street. Followed her. She called Berg to get help.
“I caught him in the act,” said Berg. “He was sitting in one of SePo’s service vehicles outside her workplace.”
“I told him to lay off,” he continued. “Unless he wanted a beating, of course.”
“So what did he say?” asked Holt.
“He did as I said,” said Berg, shrugging his broad shoulders. “Lucky for him, you know.”
I can very well imagine that, thought Holt and nodded.
“The second time,” she asked. “When you and your associates met him?”
The zealous colleague’s conversation with Jarnebring had gone wrong right from the start. If not, it is very possible that the third question would have been answered anyway.
“I see then,” said Jarnebring when he was asked the first one. “So which of my associates is it you’re going to grill this time?”
“I can’t go into that, as you understand,” answered the zealous colleague.
“Imagine that,” said Jarnebring. Then he replied to the two questions that were asked.
Orjala ended up in jail because Jarnebring always put people like Orjala in jail, as soon as he had the chance, and he got the chance because Orjala was in a place where there was both illegal serving of alcohol and illegal gambling. In addition Jarnebring had taken Orjala’s keys from him, squeezed his address out of him, and had gone there while Orjala was resting up in a cell at Kronoberg.
“I didn’t find anything in particular,” said Jarnebring. “Other than Marja’s bag and baggage. She was living with him while she was on the run. In principle I could have locked him up for protecting a criminal, but I guess I didn’t have the energy to write up that kind of shit.”
“Thanks for your help,” said the zealous colleague. “I’ll have to talk with Orjala.”
“I’m afraid you’re a little late,” said Jarnebring. “The fire department fished him out of the Karlberg Canal yesterday morning. We thought about celebrating with cake on our next coffee break.”
The second time was a few weeks later. Midmorning outside the police building on Kungsholmen. Waltin came walking up Kungsholmsgatan. They eased up alongside him. Waltin stopped them, got into the van, and told them to drive him down to Stureplan. If they didn’t have anything better to do, of course.