Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

“It’ll be ready soon,” said Holt. “Just wait till you hear—”

“Easy, easy,” said Martinez, raising her hand in a gesture meant to hold off further discussion. “I’m completely starved. I was thinking about ordering a little junk food, the sort of thing our male colleagues are always stuffing themselves with in all the detective movies. You know, hamburgers and hot dogs and doughnuts. What do you think?”

“Maybe not hot dogs,” said Mattei. “That’s pure poison. Can’t we have sushi instead? I’m trying to eat as little meat as possible. I can run down and get some sushi.”

“Sushi,” said Martinez. “Real detectives don’t eat sushi.”

“We do,” said Holt. “I want sushi too.”

“Okay then,” said Martinez, shrugging her shoulders. “I’ll get sushi.”

When Martinez returned half an hour later bringing sushi and mineral water, the three of them held their first war summit.

“I think you’re on the right track,” said Martinez after she had listened first to Holt and then to Mattei. “For one thing you’ve managed to connect Stein with Eriksson. For another you’ve produced a plausible motive for Stein to stick the kitchen knife in Eriksson. I hardly think Johansson is going to do the wave when he hears what you’ve come up with,” said Martinez, smiling broadly. “Do you want to know what I’ve been thinking?”

“Yes,” said Holt.

“Yes,” said Mattei.

“All right then,” said Martinez. “I’ve been looking through the technical reports. But you should know I did it without even glancing at Stein. It was before I knew about that conference where she ran into Eriksson. But while I was waiting for all the rice balls you just stuffed yourselves with I happened to keep thinking about her.”

“Yeah,” said Holt.

“Yeah,” echoed Mattei.

“We have to be able to place her in Eriksson’s apartment,” said Martinez. “I think there are two good chances. For one thing there are a few prints that were picked up but couldn’t be identified. A few of them could be the perpetrator’s. They belong to the same person, and both are sort of semi-good if I can put it that way. One is on the kitchen counter and the other on the inside of the cupboard door under the sink where he kept the wastebasket.”

“Sounds good enough,” said Holt. You can’t have everything, she thought, and before her she saw the bloodied Sabatier brand kitchen knife.

“The other thing I was thinking about was that hand towel,” said Martinez. “That’s good too. If the perpetrator threw up in it, it should still be possible to lift DNA from it, because that hasn’t been done. It wasn’t done at the time.”

Helena Stein’s vomit on Eriksson’s hand towel, thought Holt, and suddenly it became so tangible as they sat talking that she felt slightly nauseous.

“Assuming that the hand towel has been preserved in a freezer as it should have been, it’s worth a try,” Martinez said.

“Both the fingerprints and the hand towel are probably down at the tech squad in Stockholm,” said Mattei.

“Then we’ll have to bring them here so our own technicians can look at them,” said Martinez. “Who’ll call Johansson and ask for permission?”

“I can do that,” said Holt, feeling instantly more energetic.

“I guess it will have to be tomorrow anyway,” said Mattei hesitantly. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”

“Sure,” said Holt. “Personally, I was thinking about going home to see the sandman.”

“Me too,” said Mattei. “I got up at six this morning. Fridays are my jogging day.”

“If we were real detectives we would go down to the bar and knock back eight beers, do a little arm wrestling, and bring home a real hunk,” said Martinez. “Either of you ladies in the mood for that?”

Holt and Mattei shook their heads.

“Typical girls,” Martinez sighed. “Shall I take this to mean that we continue to be useful idiots and meet here first thing tomorrow at eight o’clock? Before you fall asleep you can ponder a practical problem, by the way.”

“Which is?” said Holt.

“How we get hold of Helena Stein’s fingerprints and DNA without Johansson having a hissy fit,” said Martinez.

“You look tired,” said Johansson’s wife.

“I am tired,” said Johansson. “There’s a little too much going on at work right now.”

“Anything you want to talk about?” said his wife, who seemed both energetic and suddenly curious.

Peppy Pia, thought Johansson, smiling unwillingly.

“Do you want me in jail?” he asked.

“Let’s assume,” said his wife as she served herself the last drops from the bottle of red wine, “let’s assume that you told me about your job the way I tell you about everything that happens at my job — the sort of ordinary, harmless stuff you tell each other when you live together — about what so and so said and did and what you’re up to right now — what would happen then? Could you end up in jail?”

“Without a doubt,” said Johansson. Which would have been completely justified considering the rules that applied to him and the papers he’d signed, he thought.

“That doesn’t make sense,” said his wife, shaking her head with astonishment.

“Actually, it’s better that way,” said Johansson, who had already started to feel a little happier. I’m going to forget about that damned Holt, he thought. Your own wife is better looking, smarter, and funnier, he told himself, so stop feeling sorry for yourself because one of your coworkers doesn’t unreservedly agree with you all the time. “It’s a little hard to talk about,” Johansson continued, clearing his throat. “But let me put it like this: There are even situations where I could end up in jail just for answering yes to the question you just asked.”

“That still doesn’t make sense,” said Johansson’s wife. “That’s crazy. Do you get any financial compensation for that? Special bonus for marital silence?”

“I think it’s completely okay if I argue with you,” said Johansson, smiling contentedly. “Just as long as I don’t do it over something that happened at work. Try to imagine the opposite. That we sat here and I babbled about everything to do with my job and it was completely okay for me to do that. That could have terrible consequences. For you personally.”

“Tell me,” said his wife, putting her head to one side with her right hand as support. “Give me an example,” she said, twirling her wineglass.

“You can’t get around me that easily,” said Johansson, smiling. “But okay then — I’ll try to describe what I mean. It’s true that I’m tired. I’m worried too — and I think you’ve already figured out that it has to do with work — so I don’t need to answer either yes or no to that. But if I were to be more specific, it would have consequences for a number of individuals, one of whom might also be you.”

“Enemy agents would carry me off and torture me to get me to tell what you said and then they would murder me,” said his wife, sounding almost expectant as she said it.

“Definitely not,” said Johansson, “but regardless of whether what I told you was true or false — I don’t know myself, because that’s what I’m in the process of finding out and that’s what’s worrying me. But regardless, if I told you, it would completely change the way you saw certain individuals.”

“So it’s someone I know about,” said Johansson’s wife, looking slyly at Johansson. “It’s some celebrity then. Some politician of course. It can’t very well be Carola or Björn Borg.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Johansson with a deprecating smile.