Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

“Perhaps,” said Johansson. “I don’t know. I think that’s something only you can answer. But because I know who gave you that advice, there’s one thing you should probably know,” he continued. “In case you were to turn to the undersecretary again for advice.”

Then Johansson told her about the suspicions currently harbored by the secret police that there were advanced preparations “by a foreign power and domestic interests close to this same power” to exert pressure on her in the event that she was given any position worth the trouble. And that it was highly probable that one of those who had helped make the intrusion possible was the very person she had asked for advice.

“Are you completely sure about all this?” Stein asked, looking doubtfully at Johansson.

“Yes,” said Johansson. “As sure as you can be in this business.”

“Good Lord,” said Stein, shaking her head indignantly. “How do you put up with yourself? With the job you have?”

“It’s my job,” said Johansson. “I knew before I took it that it wouldn’t be easy.” Although I never imagined this, he thought.

“Fine then,” said Stein. “What do I have to worry about? I have people like you and your colleagues to protect me from people that in my stupidity I thought I could rely on.”

“There’s one more problem,” said Johansson. For there is something that can’t be put off any longer, he thought.

“Imagine that,” said Helena Stein. “I suspected as much.”

“It concerns Kjell Göran Eriksson, whom you also got to know over thirty years ago,” said Johansson.

“I’d already figured that out,” said Stein, looking hard at Johansson. “He’s the only truly evil person I’ve met in my entire life, including both of those insane Germans who later made their way into the embassy. Compared to Kjell Eriksson they were almost respectable. At least they were driven by political conviction.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Johansson, gently raising his hand in a forestalling gesture. “But before you say anything else there are actually a few things I have to remind you of, and which I presume you as an attorney are familiar with. I’m a police officer,” Johansson continued, “so if people say certain things to me I can be forced to do certain things regardless of whether I want to or not. Therefore I thought I should inform you that we have concluded the investigation of your possible involvement in the murder of Kjell Eriksson. The prosecutor is of the firm opinion that you have nothing to do with his death, and the case has been dismissed. That is his firm, legally grounded opinion. And, true, I’m not much of an attorney, but I share his opinion as far as the law is concerned.”

“And in your actual role — you are a police officer, aren’t you?” asked Stein. “What is your opinion as a police officer?”

“Let me put it like this,” said Johansson. “The only possibility of getting you indicted and convicted of Kjell Eriksson’s murder, or even reporting you on reasonable grounds for suspicion, would be if you decided to confess. I know that as a police officer, because it’s as a police officer that I’ve inspected the existing material on the murder of Eriksson. But what I think about it, and this is my purely private opinion, is completely uninteresting.”

“Not to me,” said Stein, shaking her head firmly. “I really would like to hear what you believe about my involvement in the murder of Kjell Eriksson. And considering that this is about me — and only me, really — I would be very grateful if you would tell me. Strictly privately, and I can assure you that I would not dream of using anything against you, if that’s what worries you. And note that I clearly trust you, despite the fact that we’ve never met before.”

“Personally, I’m not the least bit worried,” said Johansson, shaking his head. “You’re not that type.” And we have actually met once, at a distance, he thought. I saw you but you didn’t see me, and that’s the difference between us.

“Okay then,” said Stein. “I want to hear what you think.”

“On one condition,” said Johansson. “That you just listen. I don’t want you to say anything.”

“I promise to be completely silent,” said Helena Stein. “I’m used to listening to men,” she added with an ironic grimace.

And I to women, thought Johansson. Or at least to one woman in particular, he thought.

Okay then, thought Johansson, and then he told Helena Stein what had happened when she murdered Kjell Göran Eriksson.

“Because you’re asking now, I think it probably was you who stuck the knife in him,” said Johansson, and his Norrland dialect immediately became more apparent as he spoke. “But it was not a murder, and if you had only pulled yourself together and called the police yourself, I am completely convinced that no one would have convicted you of anything more than assault and manslaughter. If the knife wound hadn’t been where it was, I even think you would have had a good chance of getting off completely by maintaining that you administered it in self-defense when he tried to attack you or rape you.”

“But that wouldn’t have been true,” Helena Stein interrupted. “Because he didn’t — he was completely incapable of any sexual feelings whatsoever—”

“Sweet Jesus, woman,” Johansson said very slowly and very clearly. “I thought we agreed that I would talk and you would listen. This is for your own sake.”

“Forgive me,” said Helena Stein and she suddenly looked just as desperate as she had sounded on the almost twenty-five-year-old audio surveillance tape Johansson had listened to a few days before.

“If I were to begin with the act itself,” Johansson continued, “it occurs about eight o’clock. Eriksson is sitting on the couch in his living room, spewing out his usual foulness. He has sent you out to the kitchen to cut up fresh lemon slices for his gin and tonic. He has probably already suggested that you can be his new, unpaid maid, so he can save on the Polish woman who’s been cleaning under the table for him. And as you’re standing with your lemon slices and his tonic on the threshold between the kitchen and the living room, where he sits with his back to you, waving his glass demandingly without even condescending to turn toward you when he’s talking to you, you suddenly discover that you’re still holding his kitchen knife in your hand, and without even consciously making a decision you simply take a step forward and stick it in his back.”

Helena Stein kept her promise. She did not say a word. She simply sat up straight in her chair, without leaning against the back and without looking at him. No expression on her face or even a shift in her eyes, very present and yet very far away.

“When you’ve done that you back a step out of the room still holding the knife in your hand and you hardly know what’s happened, for it took only a fraction of a second, and Eriksson seems to have barely reacted. He turns around and looks at you with surprise, then he runs his left arm up along his back toward the place where it’s starting to hurt, and when he sees all the blood he has on his left shirt sleeve he sets down the glass he’s been holding in his right hand and gets up and suddenly he’s completely furious and starts to yell.

“Then he tries to get hold of you,” Johansson continued, “and you back straight out toward the window in the living room, because maybe you have the idea that you might be able to get help by calling out to the street, but Eriksson gets tangled up in his own furniture. After following you a few steps to the left he turns in place and takes another few steps back, yelling at you the whole time. Then suddenly — just like that — he collapses between the couch and the coffee table, which turns over, and the glasses and bottles land on the floor. And now he’s lying there — and he’s not screaming anymore. He’s only moaning faintly and he’s hardly moving, but a lot of blood is running out of the wound on his back and out of his mouth. And then you run back into the kitchen, throw the knife in the wastebasket, rush into the bathroom, lock the door, and vomit into a hand towel you grab...