Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End: The Story of a Crime Read online

  . . .

  Johansson had set a new record on the route from his residence on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan when he entered the National Police Board on Polhemsgatan. Must be the swimming, thought Johansson with surprise and checked his watch one more time as he came into his secretary’s office. Same cool smile, he thought as she handed over the day’s mail and various other things. Nothing that seemed threatening, however.

  “The chief of the national police has let it be known that he is very satisfied with your statement,” she said.

  Obviously, thought Johansson.

  “There’s an Inspector Bo Jarnebring who has called several times,” she continued. “He phoned yesterday afternoon and he’s called twice already this morning. It sounded very urgent.”

  Jarnebring, thought Johansson with mixed feelings. Still his best friend, although things hadn’t gone too well last time.

  “Phone him, and I’ll take the call,” said Johansson. Boss’s privilege, he thought as he sat down behind his desk.

  “Long time no see,” said Jarnebring. He sounded unexpectedly cheerful. His voice is almost exhilarated, thought Johansson with surprise.

  “Yes, perhaps we should meet,” said Johansson.

  “Exactly,” said Jarnebring.

  “When did you have in mind?” Johansson asked, taking a quick glance at the calendar on his desk. Just as well to clear the air, he thought.

  “In fifteen minutes in my office,” said Jarnebring. “I can ask one of the boys to drive you if you want a change of pace and a ride in a police car instead of a taxi.”

  “Has something happened?” asked Johansson with surprise.

  “Frankly speaking I don’t really know,” answered Jarnebring. “I hope you can help me on that. So if the police superintendent will be so kind as to convey himself here I’ll put the coffee on in the meantime.”

  Someone or something must have touched his heart when he saw his best friend coming toward him in the corridor, and the bear hug he got instead of a handshake didn’t make things better.

  “We’ll go into my office,” said Jarnebring with a wolfish grin. “I don’t want the personnel to see me if I start blubbering.”

  “You’ve grown, Lars,” said Jarnebring, looking at his visitor. “You’re starting to get real superintendent muscles. If that button on your suit coat should pop loose and hit me in the skull, Bäckström and those other geniuses in homicide will suspect you of murder.”

  Johansson set his coffee cup aside and smiled more neutrally than he’d actually intended.

  “Okay, Bo,” he said. “Let’s skip the bull, as the Americans say. Tell me now. Before you burst.”

  Jarnebring nodded and took a thin case folder from the pile on his desk.

  “John P. Krassner. Jonathan Paul Krassner, born in fifty-three, American citizen, according to as yet unconfirmed sources some sort of freelance journalist from Albany in the state of New York, said to be a few hours north of the city with the same name.” Jarnebring took a fresh look at his papers. “Came to Sweden six weeks ago.”

  “I see,” said Johansson with surprise. And what does this have to do with me? he thought.

  Jarnebring leaned forward over the desk, supported on his burly arms, while he looked at Johansson.

  “How do you know him?” he asked.

  What’s the point? thought Johansson.

  “Not the faintest idea,” said Johansson. “No one that I know, as far as I know no one I’ve met, and I don’t even recall having heard the name. How would it be if you—”

  “Easy, Lars.” Jarnebring smiled and raised his hand with a defensive gesture. “Forget it, and before you get as mad as last time I suggest you lean back, listen to me, and we’ll help each other out.”

  “Why is that?” said Johansson as he made himself comfortable in the chair.

  “This is going to take all of five minutes,” said Jarnebring, “but I actually need your help.”

  “Okay,” said Johansson. “Tell me.”

  . . .

  “Approximately five minutes before eight last Friday evening the aforementioned Krassner fell from his room on the sixteenth floor in that student skyscraper up on Valhallavägen. He was subleasing it—it seems some international housing agency for students arranged it. Got the name of it in my papers. Anyway,” said Jarnebring and looked at the ceiling while trying to collect his thoughts.

  “Murder, suicide, accident,” said Johansson. “What’s the problem?”

  “Most likely suicide,” said Jarnebring. “Among other things he left behind a letter. Tech called this morning and let it be known that his prints are on the letter. Right where they should be if he’d written it himself.”

  “You mean the corpse’s fingerprints,” said Johansson. “You mean that the corpse’s prints are where they ought to be, but how do you know that the corpse’s prints are his?”

  “They’re his prints,” said Jarnebring. “I already got that on the fax from the embassy yesterday.”

  “They had Krassner’s fingerprints? Does he have a record?”

  Jarnebring shook his head.

  “No, but they seem to have taken prints on almost everyone over in the States. They’d taken his when he was working extra at check-in at some airport. They haven’t said a peep about whether or not he might have some criminal past. Seems to have been a completely ordinary gloomy bastard.”

  “Suicide,” repeated Johansson. “What’s the problem?”

  Jarnebring shrugged his shoulders.

  “If there is one,” he said. “For one thing I don’t know who he is, although I’ve asked the embassy to help me with that. They promised to talk with the police where he was living and find out if they knew him.”

  “Okay,” said Johansson.

  “Then he seems to have been running in and out where he was living.”

  Jarnebring quickly recounted Krassner’s movements and his own conversation with Professor Lidman.

  “Lidman says that this isn’t at all uncommon. Goes around happy and energetic and smiles at everyone he meets—smiling depression I guess it’s called. And then just bang, no, that’s enough now, now I’m going to take my life. Can be quite irrational at the same time as they seem completely normal.”

  “I’ll buy that,” said Johansson, who’d had a cousin who had left his youngest daughter’s birthday party in the best spirits to go out to the garage and hang himself.

  “And then there’s a shoe,” said Jarnebring and recounted his and Hultman’s theories without mentioning the latter by name.

  “Seems highly plausible,” said Johansson. “I’m in agreement with you, suicide.”

  He glanced furtively at his watch. The shoe bumped against a window ledge or a balcony railing or perhaps even a birdhouse that some biology student has nailed up outside his little window, thought Johansson and smiled.

  “Sure,” said Jarnebring. “Up until yesterday afternoon when that damn shoe started haunting me again.” He nodded at Johansson and seemed both serious and sincerely concerned.

  “How so?” said Johansson.

  “Have you ever seen this rag here?” replied Jarnebring, handing over the August issue of the American monthly magazine Soldier of Fortune.

  “Soldier of Fortune,” said Johansson, making a grimace at the camouflage-wearing characters rushing across the cover against heavy gunfire. “Isn’t that one of those American neo-Nazi rags?”

  “Yes,” said Jarnebring. “It was one of the younger officers in the department here who tipped me off. There was a whole pile in their break room. Soldier of Fortune, The Minuteman, Guns & Ammo, The Survivalist,” he explained. “That kind of American extreme right-wing rag aimed at gun nuts and old Klan members and the type who just want to go out and make war in general, not exactly socialist rags, if you know what I mean.”

  No, thought Johansson, for how would that sort of thing wind up in a break room in a Swedish police station?

  “Contains a ton of advertisem
ents for weapons and survival gear and what you should know if the Russkies come, on how you become a mercenary and how you can fuck with the police and how you evade taxes. Yes, every kind of shit imaginable,” concluded Jarnebring.

  “Where does the shoe come in?” asked Johansson judiciously.

  “If you look in the ad section, page eighty-nine. There’s an ad for a company which is called StreetSmart, shortened SS.”

  Johansson had already found the ad in question; it offered all the necessities for the person who wanted to survive in the “jungle where we humans are forced to live.” For reasons that, considering the context, didn’t appear particularly murky, the ad had the same typeface as the two “S”s that the German Nazi Schutzstaffel had worn on their uniform lapels.

  “I still don’t understand,” Johansson persisted.

  “The damn shoe,” said Jarnebring, holding out a strong left boot of brown leather with a high upper. He looked almost cheerful. “The same damn shoe that the mutt took on the head, although surely that must have been a coincidence,” he thought out loud.

  Jarnebring pressed his thumb against the sole, and at the same time he tugged hard with his right hand against the sturdy heel. Out fell a metal-colored key, and after that floated a small scrap of paper the size of a business card.

  “Open sesame,” said Jarnebring with a satisfied smile. “Shoe of the well-known brand StreetSmart with a hollow heel.

  “The key appears to be for a safe-deposit box or some type of safe, most likely back in the States,” Jarnebring continued, holding it up. “The embassy is working on that too, so I’m taking it easy.”

  “I see,” said Johansson. What should he say? He’d heard and seen worse. “What was in the other shoe?”

  Jarnebring shook his head.

  “That one was empty,” he said. “I’m guessing that he was right-handed.”

  Johansson nodded. That seems plausible, he thought.

  “Don’t you want to know what was on the paper?” Jarnebring looked at him expectantly.

  Johansson showed a poker face and shrugged his shoulders. Jarnebring pushed the paper over and Johansson read the two lines of handwritten text.

  An honest Swedish Cop. Police Superintendent Lars M. Johansson Wolmar Yxkulls Gata 7 A, 116 50 Stockholm.

  Johansson looked at the paper again. He was holding it carefully by the edges between the nails of his thumb and index finger, from old habit. Although this time it appeared to be unnecessary. Judging by the gray-black specks, someone had already dusted it for fingerprints.

  Like a calling card, thought Johansson, about five by eight centimeters. Folded in the middle.

  He looked at Jarnebring, who wore the same expression that his children used to have when they were little and it was Christmas Eve.

  “It’s someone trying to pull our legs,” said Johansson. “My leg,” he corrected.

  “I thought so too. At first I thought so. Now I’m pretty sure it’s Krassner who wrote what’s there.”

  “Tell me,” said Johansson, leaning back in his chair. At the same time he couldn’t help sneaking a glance at the little scrap of paper.

  At first, Jarnebring had thought along the same lines as Johansson. When, after duly efficient investigations, he found out that the same police trainee, Oredsson, who had fetched Krassner’s shoes and clothes and left them in his office had also been one half of the “first patrol car on the scene,” as well as the half that had placed the aforementioned shoe in its plastic bag, sealed the bag, and sent it with the hearse to the forensic-medicine office, the matter was signed, sealed, and delivered. I’ll boil that bastard for glue, thought Jarnebring, and ten minutes later Oredsson and Stridh were each sitting on a chair in the corridor outside Jarnebring’s office, and it was Oredsson who got to come in first.

  Calamity, thought Stridh gloomily, glancing at the closed door. Wonder if he intends to kill him, he thought. He’d heard a great deal about Jarnebring over the years, so that seemed highly likely, although no particular sounds had been heard from the other side of the door. Karate expert, thought Stridh, becoming even gloomier. One of those silent executioners.

  . . .

  Jarnebring had grilled Oredsson for a quarter of an hour, without mentioning the contents of the heel. Oredsson was red, sweaty, and before long, truly frightened. One thing was certain. He didn’t have a clue what Jarnebring was talking about. I have listened to the voice of innocence, thought Jarnebring with surprise, sent Oredsson out, and asked him to take Stridh with him, obviously without either explanations or apologies.

  “Then I called Rosengren,” said Jarnebring.

  “Rosengren,” said Johansson. “Isn’t he retired? He must be almost a hundred.”

  “Discretion a point of honor,” said Jarnebring briefly. “I don’t trust those bastards who work in tech,” he explained. “Babble and gossip and leak like sieves. Besides, Rosengren is the best I’ve met. And he’s not a hundred, he’s seventy-five. And he can keep his mouth shut.”

  “But how did you get into the tech squad?” asked Johansson with surprise. “The paper’s been dusted. For prints.”

  “I can tell you’ve never been home with Rosengren. He doesn’t live in an apartment, he lives in a crime tech laboratory. The old guy makes a mint doing investigations for private clients. The whole range from employees who’ve left fingerprints on the company jam jar to letters from husbands who’ve found themselves a little beaver on the side.”

  “I thought he was a handwriting expert,” said Johansson.

  “He’s that too, the best,” said Jarnebring with a nod that brooked no contradictions, “and he can dust off a normal fingerprint in his sleep. I took Krassner’s fingerprints along and various handwritten notes that I found among his papers.”

  “And?” said Johansson.

  “Those are Krassner’s prints, only his, and they’re sitting in the right place, where they should be.”

  “Handwriting?” wondered Johansson.

  “Also Krassner’s, typically American.”

  Johansson looked at the paper one more time and nodded. He understood what Jarnebring meant; the way his title, the numbers, the address were written.

  “Krassner seems to have liked you,” said Jarnebring, grinning. “You have no idea why he did?”

  “Not the foggiest.” Johansson shook his head. “Might one be allowed to read that letter he wrote?”

  “Obviously,” said Jarnebring generously and handed over a white A4 paper in a plastic sleeve. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Did Krassner know Swedish?” asked Johansson with surprise when he saw the typewritten text.

  “Nada,” said Jarnebring, shaking his head. “That’s a translation. I haven’t gotten the original back from the tech yet. I got the information on the prints by phone. Fucking lazy asses,” snorted Jarnebring. “Why didn’t they take his clothes along when they were there already checking out the prints?”

  “Who did the translation?” asked Johansson.

  “Hultman,” said Jarnebring.

  “Hultman? Our Hultman?” asked Johansson.

  “Yes,” said Jarnebring, “and he’s even more fiendish in English than you are, so you can be completely at ease.”

  I am, thought Johansson, and read the short text.

  I have lived my life caught between the longing of summer and the cold of winter. As a young man I used to think that when summer comes I would fall in love with someone, someone I would love a lot, and then, that’s when I would start living my life for real. But by the time I had accomplished all those things I had to do before, summer was already gone and all that remained was the winter cold. And that, that was not the life that I had hoped for.

  Strange, thought Johansson. Exactly like those poems I used to write when I was young and I burned when I got older.

  “Seems to have been the sensitive type,” said Jarnebring.

  “He seems to have had good judgment, though, when it comes to Swe
dish policemen,” said Johansson and got up from his chair with a jerk. “How about having dinner tonight?”

  “Gladly,” said Jarnebring. “If you promise not to start throwing the china.”

  “Seven-thirty at my neighborhood restaurant,” said Johansson. “I’ll pick up the check so you can relax.”

  . . .

  “So this is where you drag all your women,” said Jarnebring, when at the appointed time they were seated at Johansson’s usual table in his favorite restaurant.

  “Actually there aren’t that many,” said Johansson.

  “So they have Italian chow here,” said Jarnebring, glancing furtively at the menu on the large slate board. He didn’t seem entirely enthusiastic.

  “Yeah,” said Johansson, “and you actually ought to try it sometime, but since you’re the one eating with me, I’ve made some special arrangements. You’re going to get barbecued entrecôte with au gratin potatoes and a dessert that I know you’ll appreciate. On the other hand, you don’t get any herring as a starter, that went beyond the restaurant owner’s threshold of pain, but instead a very fine marinated lox. Perfect with aquavit, by the way.”

  “I thought they’d never heard of aquavit at a dive like this,” said Jarnebring.

  “I come here,” said Johansson, “and I’ve done so since they opened, so they’ve heard of aquavit. I brought a couple of my own aquavit glasses here too, those crystal ones with a tall base that you’ve drunk out of at my place. I inherited a couple dozen from my great-aunt, have I told you about her?” he asked.

  In spite of the fact that he’d surely done so more than once, Jarnebring nodded at him to continue.