The Treacherous Net (25 page)

He sighed, gazing into the distance once more. It was as if the old man could see people who were long dead standing here in the room. Andersson took a sip of his Cognac to chase away the ghosts.

“During the years in Moscow, I think Calle managed to suppress the memory of what had happened pretty well. However, when we came back after the war, it caught up with him. My dear cousin had already developed a distinct fondness for the bottle when we were students in Uppsala, and unfortunately the situation hadn’t improved as time went by. On top of that, Aunt Vera was insisting that he get married; it was his duty to ensure that the family line continued. He was in despair when he came to talk to me, but unfortunately he didn’t have the same inclinations as me; he was strictly homosexual. The solution was a very young, very shy girl called Greta Bergman. She was barely twenty when they got engaged just after the end of the war; Calle was ten years older. He liked her very much, but kept putting off any attempt at intimacy. Greta wasn’t stupid, and I think she knew it wasn’t going to work. She left him, blaming his drinking. Poor Calle had inherited his father’s intermittent alcoholism.”

“He never mentioned the murder to you while you were working in Moscow?” Fryxender asked.

“No. He never said a word. As I said, I think he managed to suppress the memory completely. But there was something he couldn’t suppress: his love for Sverker. They started seeing each other again when Calle came home, and he was devastated when, after a year or so, Sverker said he was engaged. Sverker married in ’47 and had three children in quick succession. Calle married at the beginning of the 1950s; Lilly Hassel was an opera singer who was a few years older than him. It ended in divorce after eighteen months; the only thing they had in common was a fondness for booze.”

“Divorce . . . was that why Calle stopped going out with women?” Andersson asked. It was the first time he had spoken since Oscar started his story, but he was genuinely curious; that particular detail had been bothering him.

“No. It was because Sverker killed himself. He couldn’t cope with the deception any longer. Calle was devastated, and for a while I was afraid he might go the same way. Instead he decided to stop pretending to be heterosexual in the public eye; he became asexual, blaming his attitude on his failed marriage to Lilly. He threw himself into his work, and made a real effort to stop drinking. He succeeded most of the time, but occasionally he fell off the wagon. We were working in different countries, so sometimes we didn’t see each other for quite a while. Poor Calle became a very lonely person beneath all that
bonhomie
. During his last few years in active service the relapses became more frequent, and in the end he was encouraged to take early retirement. He was given a very generous financial package, and was extremely relieved. He had already renovated Aunt Vera’s apartment, and he moved back to the house he loved so much.”

By now Winston was snoring loudly on his master’s knee. Andersson was beginning to feel pleasantly drowsy, thanks to the Cognac and the warmth of the fire.

“What happened to Mats Persson?”

For a long time it seemed as if the former diplomat hadn’t heard Fryxender’s question.

“Mats Persson,” he repeated eventually. “It was all so unfortunate. My telephone rang at about seven o’clock one evening, and it was Calle. It was almost impossible to work out what he was saying, but he kept on repeating: “The son is dead! The son is dead! And he’s lying on your rug!” I was convinced he was in a bad way. I did my best to calm him down. Eventually I realized what he meant. I had given him several rugs when he moved into his newly renovated apartment. By now I was seriously worried; I told Calle not to touch anything, and said I would be right over. Never has a seventy-year-old man run through Näckros Park as fast as I did that evening. When I arrived, there was no denying that Calle was right. There was a dead man lying on the rug in the hallway. He had been shot in the head and chest, and Calle said he had done it.”

Andersson’s drowsiness disappeared in a second. So this was the explanation for Mats Persson’s disappearance almost twenty-five years ago: He had been murdered by an ex–Foreign Office employee who happened to be an alcoholic. The same man who had murdered the dead man’s own father.
Jeez, what a mess!

“We went into Calle’s room and I gave him another drink to calm him down. That was when he told me what had happened to Elof Persson in 1941. It had haunted him over the years, but as time went by he had begun to feel safer. Until the telephone rang on the morning of November ninth, 1983. A male caller introduced himself as Elof Persson’s son, Mats. He wanted to meet to discuss the murder of his father. It came as a terrible shock to Calle. He managed to say that he wasn’t available until after six o’clock in the evening, then he spent the whole day pacing around the apartment, getting more and more agitated. He came up with a nightmare scenario: Mats Persson had found his father’s photographs from Midsummer’s Eve 1941, and now he too was going to start threatening and blackmailing Calle. He might even accuse him of killing Elof. Being the man he was, my cousin attempted to fortify himself with a considerable amount of alcohol during the course of the day. Just before Mats was due to arrive, Calle went down to the cellar where he had hidden the Tokarev pistol and the ammunition after Elof’s death. It had been lying there since 1941; he checked that it was still working, and loaded it. By the time Mats rang the doorbell, Calle was on the brink of hysteria. He shot the poor guy as soon as he stepped inside, then he wandered helplessly around the apartment. Eventually he started thinking a little more clearly, and called me.”

“How do you think Mats Persson got a hold of your cousin’s name?” Fryxender asked.

“I don’t know. I suppose the most likely explanation is that Elof Persson had written it down somewhere, and Mats found it when he was going through his father’s things. Bearing in mind that Elof was blackmailing Calle, it’s not an unreasonable assumption.”

Fryxender nodded, then said, “So you helped your cousin to wall up the body.”

“Yes. What was I supposed to do? I realize now that it was wrong, of course, but in the heat of the moment . . . Calle was in such poor shape because of his drinking. I couldn’t bear the thought of him ending up in jail. I found the bricks and mortar lying around in the cellar, then I went back upstairs. We each grabbed one end of the rug and carried the body down; it was easy to push the whole thing into the old wood store. We put the gun and the ammunition in first, then the rug and the body. Calle must have forgotten the bag Persson had been carrying with his library books in it. I didn’t know anything about it until you told me. Presumably he whisked the bag away into his apartment and put it somewhere. He did give me books for my eighty-fifth birthday—that’s true. But he didn’t tell me those three came from Mats Persson. If I’d known, obviously they wouldn’t have been sitting on the shelf where you found them.”

He pulled a face and shook his head. “We spent the whole night walling up the opening in the chimney breast. It took a long time, because neither of us had any experience of that kind of work. But we managed it. In the morning I tidied up and cleared away all trace of what we had done. Then I hurried home through the park. It was so early that I didn’t even meet anyone out walking their dog. I had a shower and went to bed; strangely enough, I slept for several hours. When I woke up I called Calle. He had calmed down, and we agreed never to mention what had happened the previous evening and night. And we never did.”

“Did your sister know that cousin Calle had killed two men?” Fryxender asked calmly.

The old man gave a start and glanced at him sharply.

“No. Astrid has no idea about any of this. And I hope it will stay that way. Things will be difficult enough for her . . .”

He broke off and put the cat on the floor, in spite of Winston’s noisy protests. Oscar got up and made his way somewhat unsteadily toward the library. There was the sound of a drawer opening, and he came back with a piece of paper in his hand.

“I got this report from my doctor at Carlanderska Hospital the day before yesterday. I lied when I told you I’d been playing tennis. The truth is that I was being given my death sentence.”

He handed the paper to Fryxender, who didn’t look at it; instead he said, “Tell us what it says.”

Oscar sank back into his armchair. Suddenly he looked immensely old and weary. “It says I have a brain tumor. Inoperable. I have only a few months left. Personally I’m kind of okay with that; we all have to die some time. But I’m worried about Astrid; she’ll be so lonely when I’m gone. I haven’t told her yet; I’m going to wait until we get back from Mauritius. My doctor says I can travel, as long as I take my medication with me.”

He sat in silence for a long time, gazing into the fire. The wood crackled as the flames began to die down.

“It’s a relief to have told Calle’s story,” he said quietly.

It was as if Andersson had been waiting for the right moment, and now it had come. He straightened up in his chair, wide awake and firing on all cylinders.

“So it’s not your story?” he said sharply. “Are you sure you didn’t carry out the murders together?”

Oscar Leutnerwall stiffened. Slowly he turned his head and met Andersson’s gaze. The sapphire-blue eyes were cloudy now, like half-frozen pools.

“Can you give
me a ride home?”

“Of course. But three glasses of Cognac—what the hell were you thinking?”

“I’ve retired.”

“You certainly have not—you’ve got just over a month to go.”

“In my head I’ve retired.”

Andersson folded his hands over his stomach and shut his eyes.

“Case closed,” he murmured.

My thanks to:

Erik Lemchen
, who recently retired from his role as detective inspector with the Police Authority in Västra Götaland. He has been a great help to me over the years, and has always come through when I have needed to consult him. He spent the last two years leading up to his retirement working on the Cold Cases Unit, which is an important aspect of this particular book.

Karin Alfredsson
, my fantastic editor, who has been there ever since my debut novel.