Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

“I’m dying of curiosity,” said Holt, smiling. “No thanks, I’ve quit,” she said when the colleague from the fraud unit politely extended his own pack.

The whole thing was not particularly complicated according to the colleague from the fraud unit. For an ordinary person like Eriksson, over the long haul it was impossible in principle to earn any money on short-term stock deals.

“It’s a zero-sum game,” he explained, taking a thoughtful puff. “You can make a profit, or even several in a row, but sooner or later you take a loss, and over a longer period it evens out so that in the best scenario you avoid ending up in the poorhouse.”

“But if he was sitting on a lot of important information,” Holt objected, “then he should have been able to—”

“I thought you said he worked with labor market statistics at the Central Bureau of Statistics,” the colleague interrupted. “Forget that. That’s completely irrelevant for anyone involved with these kinds of deals.”

“His best friend owns the brokerage firm that he used,” said Jarnebring.

“Why didn’t you say that up front?” said the colleague from the fraud unit, sighing. “Then we could have done this on the phone.”

“I’m listening,” said Jarnebring.

“This operation is basically a player piano if you’re a broker,” the colleague explained. “You buy a block of shares. If the price goes up you sell them and take the money and all’s well and good. If the price goes down you dump them with one of your clients who put in a purchase order and let him make a bad deal. If you made a really lousy deal there’s probably some old endowment or foundation you manage where you can bury the shit. At least you’re holding the cards during the day, and sometimes the stock exchange can turn quite sharply.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Holt. “Say that—”

“I’ll give you an example,” said the colleague from the fraud unit. “Let’s assume that you’re my client and I’m your broker.” The colleague pointed his fingers at Holt and himself for emphasis.

“In the morning, before the stock exchange opened, you called me and said that you wanted to buy a block of a thousand shares at a price of a hundred kronor maximum per share — let’s call the company Mutter & Son — a well-known Swedish engineering firm.” The colleague smiled.

“Sure,” said Holt. “It happens every day, though I usually use Nordbanken because they take care of my salary of ten thousand a month after taxes.”

“Let me make this simple for myself,” the colleague continued. “Naturally there are unlimited variations that are both smarter and more profitable, but if I were to make this easy on myself, I’d start by looking through a bunch of sales orders from other clients that are sitting on my desk. Assume that I find someone who wants to sell a block of a thousand shares in Mutter & Son for at least ninety kronor. If I make it easy for myself I’ve already earned five thousand.

“He’ll have his shares sold for ninety, you can buy them for a hundred. I keep the difference minus sales tax and commission, which comes to five thousand in round numbers.”

“I’d keep the dough myself,” said Jarnebring, grinning. “No way would I share it with someone like Eriksson.”

“And that is exactly what they’re doing the whole time,” said the colleague with feeling in his voice. “Except for those few occasions when they want to help a buddy. And maybe help themselves at the same time.”

“What do you mean?” asked Holt. “Help myself at the same time?”

“Say you earn a million per year for yourself like this. That’s about where Eriksson seems to have been during the eighties. After tax you have about seven hundred thousand left. You give me an under-the-table commission of half. Three hundred fifty thousand right into my own pocket.”

“This can’t be legal, can it?” Holt objected.

“No, but basically it’s risk-free,” their colleague stated. “As long as both keep their mouths shut the risk that both will wind up in the slammer is nonexistent. And if anyone were to start talking with someone like me, then he would have to count on keeping the other one company when it was time for jail — and, by the way, it almost never comes to that. There are no special penalties for this kind of thing.”

“Is this how Eriksson made his deals?” Holt asked. “Tischler was nice to an old buddy and made some cash on the side for himself.”

“Pretty much.” The colleague nodded.

“Tischler made use of Eriksson and gave him some cash for the trouble,” Holt clarified.

“Hardly likely,” said the colleague, shaking his head and lighting another cigarette. “Tischler must be good for at least a billion if the business pages can be believed. What would he do with a few hundred thousand? It would only be taking an unnecessary risk.”

“So he helped an old friend,” said Jarnebring. Wonder how much Lars Martin is good for, he thought. With all that old inherited forest money — and he did look out for himself where that was concerned — but it was probably not a question of a billion, far from it, thought Jarnebring.

“So people like us have picked the wrong friends, ’cause we only associate with each other,” said the colleague from the fraud unit, squinting down into his coffee cup. “Is there any more coffee, by the way?”

“Tell me about it,” said Holt as she poured. “My salary runs out on the twentieth and the month ends on the thirtieth. Why hasn’t the union done something about it?”

“The interesting question” — their colleague from the fraud unit nodded thoughtfully — “is of course why someone like Tischler helped someone like Eriksson. Everyone has a buddy, don’t they?”

“Maybe he was in love with him,” said Jarnebring, grinning.

“They must have played hide the sausage with each other,” said Bäckström when the investigation team met after lunch and Holt reported the latest results of their efforts.

“Tischler seems to have at least eight children, and he’s married for the fourth time,” said Gunsan, shaking her head doubtfully. “Not that I’ve met him, but it still doesn’t seem especially likely, does it?”

“He probably doesn’t know which locker room to use,” said Bäckström jovially. “Rich and horny and jumps on everything that moves regardless of what it is, and because little Eriksson couldn’t squeeze any kiddies out through his ass he slipped him a little dough as consolation. A million here or there is all the same to a billionaire, isn’t it?”

“Well,” said Gunsan, pursing her lips, “as far as that’s concerned Tischler’s ex-wives don’t seem to be lacking for anything either.”

“A generous earwig,” Bäckström decided. “What else do we have?”

A number of loose ends that had to be tied together, Jarnebring summarized. Plus a number of question marks that had to be straightened out. But nothing that seemed simple and obvious and good enough for them to pick up the phone and call the prosecutor.

“We estimate being done with his apartment soon,” he concluded. “This week we hope.”

“Then there are a few people we thought about talking to again,” said Holt. “A few people at his office, among others.”

“Do that,” said Bäckström, “then I’ll scare the shit out of both of his friends, that horny banker and the red-bearded one at socialist TV.”

There were four apartments on the floor where Eriksson lived. A few of the loose ends were also hanging there. The closest neighbor, Mrs. Westergren, was one of them, so Holt and Jarnebring went to talk to her again. Upon more careful consideration — and in answer to a direct question — Mrs. Westergren recalled that Eriksson had had a cleaning woman. She had even talked with her on one occasion. “I think she said she was from Poland,” she said, apologizing that she had completely forgotten about this. She had hardly seen her, and the natural explanation was that on Fridays Mrs. Westergren visited her ninety-year-old mother at the rest home. “Which was when you said that she was here and cleaned,” Mrs. Westergren declared, and otherwise she had not thought of anything since they had spoken the first time.