The Falling Detective (19 page)

‘I know it's weird,' he says, obviously uncomfortable, as though he doesn't really know how to deal with the situation. ‘But try.'

‘It escalated. That's just what happens. We know it; they know it. It's been pretty calm for a while, but it's just a matter of time before something else happens and it gets in the papers again.'

‘How did it escalate? In what way?'

‘Well, they stole money from us, for one. I think it must have been a couple of days after our last interview. It probably doesn't sound too bad, compared to the barn and everything, and it wasn't a lot — a couple of thousand — but, you know, we have such tight margins. That money could have paid for ten of us to get the train to a demo, or three times as many if we took cars. They really went for the heart of our operation. Of course, on paper,
RAF
's money doesn't get spent on demos and stuff like that — it wouldn't look good. But organisations like Swedish Resistance and People's Front, they know what we do with our money. And they exploit it. It won't be long before someone ends up getting seriously hurt.'

‘I understand.'

‘Since then we haven't attempted any counter-attack, mainly because we haven't been able to. It's pretty quiet at the moment — no big demos or anything coming up. But soon. I've heard that the hate is stronger than it has been in a long time. Th—'

A ringtone interrupts her, so loud that it masks the other sounds and makes the Dictaphone's little speaker crackle horribly. The phone must have been lying right next to it.

‘Sorry,' her voice says through the racket. ‘I need to take this, it's someone I …'

The sentence remains unfinished. The ringing suddenly stops.

‘Hello?'

The voice on the other end is surprisingly audible. It's a man.

‘Yeah … I don't know,' Lisa Swedberg says. ‘Eh? How the fuck did you find that out? You fucking … I'm sick and tired of this now. You can… can we talk about this some other time? No. It's not like that at all. Nothing. I'm putting the phone down now. Don't call again.'

She hangs up.

Only now, when the voice has gone, does it sink in, who it belonged to.

Goffman.

‘Goffman,' I say. ‘It was him, wasn't it?'

‘I think so. The voice doesn't turn up in any of the other clips, so that's all we hear from him. But, yes, it's pretty fucking similar.'

‘In that case, what has he got to do with her?'

‘Who knows? She did mention that Goffman had been on her case, but surely she meant
after
Heber's murder, as part of the investigation.'

‘That's what I thought, too.' I glance at the Dictaphone, as if it were about to reveal everything, at any moment, fit all the pieces of the puzzle where they belong. ‘What happens next?'

‘Well, it's a while later. It's autumn. It's November before they meet for an interview again.'

We're parked by the water down by Hornsbergs beach on Kungsholmen. It's quiet, almost deserted here. A row of parked cars lines the street. The imposing bulk of Karlberg Palace sits across the water from us. Birck shifts position in his seat. I think he's content, feeling almost peaceful.

He clicks the Dictaphone, next file,
PLAY
.

And it starts with Heber, alone. He's speaking right into the microphone, as though he were afraid that someone was standing close by and listening in.

‘She called this morning,' he says. ‘And I thought she seemed scared. I don't know what's going on, or whether something's happened.' Short pause. ‘We haven't done an interview since May. I've got a few questions for her, and I was going to call her. But then she got in touch, wanted to know if we could meet up. Something was wrong — she sounded agitated.' There's another deliberate pause. ‘I might be imagining it.'

There's a crackle and then silence, and then she's there. She kisses him loudly. The interview starts just like the others, with Heber asking questions and then listening to her long, thorough answers, but there's something between them that wasn't there before. Heber's questions are posed more delicately, and her answers are more ardent — the kind of answers that people give when they're deliberately ignoring whatever is actually occupying their thoughts.

‘You sounded different on the phone,' he says. ‘There was something you wanted to talk about, wasn't there?'

‘No, nothing special.'

‘I don't really believe that.'

‘Why not?'

‘I know what you're like when you're hiding something.'

‘Er, no you don't.'

I wish I could see Lisa Swedberg's facial expression. She breathes in and clicks her lighter, but without doing anything else.

‘I heard something that … rattled me a bit.'

‘What was that?'

No answer.

‘Okay,' Heber continues instead. ‘Who did you hear it from?'

‘Someone I know from
RAF
.'

‘Do I know who this person is?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Is it a man or a woman?'

No answer.

‘When did he or she tell you about this?' he says.

‘This morning. We met in Café Cairo, and then we left together.'

‘Do you know this person well?'

‘No, but I trust what they tell me.'

‘Right. So you think that what you've heard is true?'

‘Exactly. That's the thing … that's why I can't just forget about it.'

‘I'm going to ask you one more time,' he says. ‘Then I'll drop it, because I've no right to demand answers from you. But it feels as though you want to tell me.'

‘I do,' she says. ‘That's why I rang. I felt that I needed to tell you, but I still don't know if I can.'

‘Because?'

‘Because I don't know how far your professional confidentiality stretches.'

‘A long way,' Heber says, with no obvious effort to convince her. ‘If you were to tell me you've committed a serious crime, I still wouldn't be allowed to pass that information on. The only circumstances where I might possibly be entitled to do so — by which I mean the only time I wouldn't be reprimanded by an ethics committee — would be if you were to tell me about a serious crime which will definitely take place. If there was a chance, I could try to prevent the crime. But not even then would I be obliged to do so. It is the researcher's prerogative to determine whether or not they choose to report it, and I would choose not to. So, in effect, my professional confidentiality is absolute.'

‘Are you sure you wouldn't tell anyone, even if that was the case? If you knew that a crime was going to be committed?'

‘Is that what it's about?'

She doesn't answer.

‘I am certain,' Heber says. ‘I wouldn't say anything. Not even then.'

‘I think,' she says slowly, ‘that someone might be about to get hurt. That's it — I don't know who or where.'

‘Is this a person on the “other side of the fence”, as you call it? Who's going to get hurt?'

‘I think so. It's really tense between the groups at the moment. There's a small faction within
RAF
— well, not even really a faction, just a few people who've got together and started pulling in their own direction.'

‘How many of them are there?'

‘Roughly ten people, maybe one or two more, or less. Only three of four of them are involved in this, according to my contact.'

She breathes out in the way that people who've just betrayed someone, or something, do. It's taken a toll on her, and Heber's noticed.

‘This group,' he says. ‘They've started pulling in their own direction.'

The window creaks as someone opens it, and the sound of the city sweeps into the apartment, like a wave. The lighter is being clicked — quick, hard clicks this time. She pulls in smoke, and then lets it out. Heber moves the Dictaphone closer to her.

‘They're more extreme; they advocate more violence. They think everyone in
RAF
should arm themselves. I mean firearms — we've already got baseball bats, and knuckledusters, and stuff like that.'

She takes a drag.

‘Do you know whether they've already got guns?'

‘I think so. I've not seen them myself, but the person I spoke to said they did.'

‘I wonder,' he says, ‘whether you think they're prepared to use them? The far right have also been doing loads of this sort of thing, posing with Swedish flags and automatic weapons outside schools in immigrant areas — it's a kind of propaganda. Very few, if any, of those organisations are actually ready to use them. Might the same thing apply to this grouping within
RAF
?'

‘Yes. But I'm certain that at least two or three of these people are capable of using guns. There's something about them, just how brutal they are.'

‘You've no idea who it is that's going to get hurt?'

‘No. No idea.'

Lisa Swedberg takes several drags on her cigarette. Someone blasts their horn in a car on the street below. That sound is followed by voices, an argument happening at a distance.

‘How high up might this person be?' Heber asks. ‘Do you know that?'

‘No. But I'm guessing it's not someone too high up, nor very low down in the organisation, whichever organisation it is. Too low down is pointless, really. People at the top are impossible, they're too well protected. Where's your ashtray?'

‘I don't have one — I usually use a saucer. I can get a new one. Hold on.'

Heber gets up and goes off. A cupboard opens. She smokes more of the cigarette. The tobacco hisses and sizzles. She puts the saucer by the window with a slight clink.

‘Personally, I don't give a fuck if some Nazi bastard dies,' she says. ‘I've nothing against that, might even enjoy the thought of it. The higher up, the better. Sorry, it's just … that's how strong my hatred is. On the other hand, it would be an absolute disaster if it actually did happen. You remember in September, when The Party of the Swedes marched through town and people were throwing water-bombs at them? They kicked up a big fuss about that. Their support would increase.'

Heber says nothing for a long time. Nor does she. Something is tapping away, maybe a fingernail on a glass.

‘Are you going to try and find out more about this?' he asks. ‘About this … threat?'

‘I don't know if I want to.'

‘That's not what I asked.'

‘Can you turn that thing off?'

‘Of course,' he says, but now he's wary. ‘But why?'

‘Because I want to say that I need to have sex now, and I don't want it to end up on tape.'

This makes Heber laugh.

‘I'll cut that bit out,' he says.

The clip ends.

‘The next clip is the last one, and it's short,' Birck says. ‘But it could be the most important of the lot. If she's actually telling the truth, that is. I think it's some time in early December.'

Birck's phone buzzes. He reads the text.

‘Fuck.'

‘What is it?'

‘We'll do this later. Soon.'

They're outdoors, in central Stockholm. The sound of the city almost tells you how low the sky is hanging, how thick the air is. Cars rumble past. It's daytime, one rush hour or the other, either early morning or late afternoon.

There's the sound of rustling and crackling, and only when a thick rug seems to have been placed over all the sound do you realise that Heber's put the Dictaphone in his coat. The snow crunches under his boots as he moves.

Another set of footsteps emerges from the background hum, growing in intensity, crunching just like Heber's. It's Lisa Swedberg.

‘Hi,' she says.

‘Hi.'

‘Have you got a fag?'

‘No, ‘fraid not.'

‘Shit. I'm all out.'

‘We'll go and buy some in a bit, okay?'

‘I'm … we shouldn't really be meeting like this.'

‘Why not?'

‘I have … I've been asking around, since we met last time, about what we talked about, and I think that some people think I've been a bit too curious, nosy. At times I've felt like I was being followed. It's not good for your research, what with all the confidentiality and all that, if we're seen together.'

‘Are you thinking about my research?'

‘What else would it be?'

‘Your own safety, for example.' Heber sounds genuinely worried now. He lowers his voice. ‘Have you found out something else?'

‘I might have done,' she says.

‘But this thing is still on? That they're going to … that something's going to happen?'

‘Yes.'

‘And when?'

‘Don't know.'

‘But who? You know who the target is?'

Silence.

‘Can you say it? The name?'

A pedestrian crossing switches to green, and the slow ticking is replaced by an intensive rattle. A car beeps.

‘Martin Antonsson.'

‘The guy who used to be in the Sweden Democrats?'

There's no hint of surprise in Heber's voice, no emotion whatsoever. He sounds very matter-of-fact.

‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

‘I know someone you can talk to who can tell you more about this than I can.'