“We’re talking about sex,” Bäckström interrupted.
“Sex,” said GeGurra, looking at Bäckström, confused. “I really don’t understand what you mean. Waltin talked a great deal about sex. About his own efforts in that area. But never in connection with Palme.”
“But he must have known him,” Bäckström persisted. “It’s completely obvious that someone like Waltin must have known someone like Palme.”
“Why?” said GeGurra. “If you ask me I think they never met each other. Why would someone like Palme associate with someone like Waltin?”
“How did you know Palme yourself?” said Bäckström.
“You’re just going to have to give up, Bäckström,” said GeGurra, putting up both hands to be on the safe side. “I never met Olof Palme.”
“I think you should think about that,” said Bäckström with an ambiguous smile. “On a completely different matter.”
“Yes,” said GeGurra, sighing. “I’m listening.”
“Friends of Cunt. That perverse society Waltin was chairman of. Who were the other members?”
“Well, not Palme in any event,” said GeGurra. “As far as the age difference is concerned he could have been their father, but I strongly doubt he could have had such children. Even if he had been a spy for the Russians.”
“Names? Give me names,” said Bäckström.
“Okay then, Bäckström,” said GeGurra. “On one condition. That you leave me alone from here on.”
“The names?”
“There were apparently four members in this illustrious little group of friends. All were studying law at the University of Stockholm. This was sometime in the mid-sixties. For one there was Claes Waltin. Then there was someone who became a well-known business attorney but he died rather young. I think his last name was Sjöberg, Sven Sjöberg. Died sometime in the mid-nineties.”
“Waltin, Sjöberg…”
“Yes,” sighed GeGurra. “Then there was Theo Tischler. He’s a private banker and very-”
“I know who he is,” Bäckström interrupted. “We know each other.”
“I see,” said GeGurra, who had a hard time concealing his surprise.
“The fourth man,” said Bäckström. “Who was the fourth man?”
“Alf Thulin,” said GeGurra, sighing again. “Nowadays a member of parliament for the Christian Democrats, although to start with he was a prosecutor.”
Now this is starting to resemble something, thought Bäckström. A crazy SePo boss, a high-ranking prosecutor, a billionaire, and a so-called business attorney. Four pure sex lunatics. True, two were dead, but two were still alive and could be questioned. Now this is starting to resemble something, he thought again.
66
On Thursday the twentieth of September the coin dropped into the slot in Lisa Mattei’s head. Some gray cell up there had been holding back for more than a day, and as soon as she stopped thinking about it, suddenly the answer came.
For many years SePo made use of four-digit codes to protect their co-workers’ identities from the outside world. Their names would remain secret, and even when they testified in court they did so using their numerical code.
One of all the thousands of police officers who worked with the secret police during the past thirty years apparently had code 4711 until the early eighties. The person whom SePo’s personnel department checked and removed from the investigation when their zealous colleague asked a question arising from an anonymous tip, employee 4711. Who had already quit in 1982, moved abroad, and for various unexplained reasons was not of interest in connection with the investigation’s police track.
The coin dropped into the slot in Mattei’s head and she suddenly recalled where she had most recently seen the same four-digit code. Not on the bottles of German eau de cologne her father bought as presents for her mother when Mattei was a little girl and long before a Swedish prime minister was shot in the street. Much later. Only a week ago. On a paper from the secret police tech squad, where an employee with an illegible signature and his four-digit service code, 4711, acknowledged receipt of the revolver that Detective Inspector Göran Wiijnbladh had given to Claes Waltin.
The same paper about which almost everything suggested that Claes Waltin had forged it. A chance coincidence, without the least relevance for their investigation? Or an unrestrained Claes Waltin, who could not resist the temptation to send a secret message that would never be discovered?
Johansson’s third rule in a murder investigation, thought Mattei. Learn to hate the chance coincidence. Besides, it was time for another conversation with dear Mom, who had worked at SePo for over twenty years.
“Why do you want to know that?” asked Linda Mattei, giving her daughter a searching look. It was their second lunch together in a week and this time at a restaurant a good distance from the building. What is she up to? she thought, feeling slightly uneasy.
“I can’t say,” said Lisa, shaking her head.
“You’ve worked with us,” said Linda Mattei. “For several years. You know what rules apply. What questions can be asked.”
“Sure,” said Lisa Mattei, shrugging her shoulders. “A simple rule. Someone like me may not ask any questions the moment I’m no longer working there, and someone like you may not answer questions because you’re working there.”
“Okay then. So why are you asking?”
“Because you’re my mother,” said Lisa Mattei. “What did you think?”
“If the person who had that identity code quit twenty-five years ago, I don’t think it will be very easy to find out who he was,” said Linda Mattei. “You have a code as long as you’re working there. When you quit, the code becomes inactive for a number of years. Then someone else might get it. When sufficient time has passed so that no misunderstandings can arise. Just like when you change telephone numbers. And the only reason I’m saying this is because you already know it.”
“Of course,” said Lisa Mattei. “But I would like to know the name of the colleague who had that code up until 1982, when he quit. For reasons I can’t go into, I cannot address a direct question to SePo.”
“Your boss can,” said Linda Mattei.
“Maybe he doesn’t want to,” said Lisa Mattei.
“Have you asked him?”
“No,” said Lisa Mattei.
“Then do that,” said Linda Mattei. “I can’t answer. If it’s any consolation, no one else can either. This is not information that we keep for twenty-five years.”
If we’re going to put any order into this a miracle will probably be required, thought Lisa Mattei when she returned to her binders after lunch. Only fifteen minutes later she experienced it. Or at least the hope of a miracle.
Feeling at loose ends, she did a search on Marja Ruotsalainen. Born in 1959 and almost fifty years old, if she was still alive. Heavy drug abuser since her teens. Criminal. Prostitute. Sentenced to several prison terms. Half of her life in foster homes, youth detention centers, institutions, and prisons, when at the age of twenty-seven she showed up in the papers of the Palme investigation. How great was the chance that she was alive today? Zero or one percent, thought Lisa Mattei while she entered Marja’s social security number on her computer.
Marja Ruotsalainen. Forty-eight. Single. No children. Disability pension. No notations in the police registry in the past fifteen years. Living in Tyresö, a few miles southeast of Stockholm.
She’s alive. A miracle, thought Lisa Mattei, shaking her head. Wonder if it would be possible to talk with her? she thought. The time before it hadn’t gone so well, when the zealous colleague had visited her while she was incarcerated at Hinseberg.
67
Lewin read the two investigations into cause of death with regard to former chief superintendent Claes Waltin. One that the Spanish police had done at the scene on Mallorca in October 1992. One supplementary investigation that the Swedish police carried out as soon as his remains arrived back in Sweden in mid-November the same year.