For the third time in a month Lewin pulled out his old boxes from the winter and spring of 1986. The same boxes that contained every random piece of evidence that might be—at best—of doubtful value to the police.
On Saturday the first of March at 9:15 a.m., Police Superintendent Claes Waltin got a parking ticket on Smedsbacksgatan up at Gärdet. The car was his own 1986 BMW 535.
When he got the ticket it had not been parked there very long. According to the meter maid Lewin spoke with, she and her associate followed a special Saturday routine. They made two rounds in the area. First they made note of illegally parked cars, and when they returned between fifteen minutes and half an hour later for the second round, cars were ticketed if they were still there. Simple and practical, considering the grace period of at least ten minutes this gave the owners.
Considering that Waltin was parked in a spot requiring a disability permit, it couldn’t have been there during the first round. Cars parked like that were ticketed immediately. Based on the address and the time of the ticket, it could hardly have been parked illegally before 8:45. All according to the meter maid, who was quite understanding.
Lewin bought her line of reasoning. It was logical and had the stamp of probability, and there was little that argued for this parking violation having the slightest relevance to a murder that had been committed ten hours earlier and several miles away. Nevertheless he had still sent a written inquiry on Monday, March 24, 1986, to his colleagues at SePo who were responsible for the police track.
The written response had not arrived for over a month. It was dated Tuesday, April 29, 1986, signed by an inspector with the secret police, brief in its wording and surrounded in certified secrecy. “The vehicle in question has been used on duty in the supervision of the object of protection who was staying at one of our addresses in the area.”
In all likelihood both of these letters should be in one of Mattei’s binders, Lewin thought.
“Have you found it?” asked Lewin an hour later when Mattei returned to their office with a sizeable bundle of computer lists under her arm.
“No,” said Mattei. “Neither your inquiry nor their answer. There aren’t even any notes in the ongoing registration.”
“So how do you interpret that?” asked Lewin. “I mean, you’re the one who’s the computer nerd among us ordinary mortals.”
“Nice of you,” said Mattei. “Because I have a hard time believing you’re the one who’s been careless, I also think they received your question. Then for some reason they didn’t register it. Sent a reply a month later with one of their own serial numbers, which to be sure is in their registry, but which refers to a completely different case and a completely different file.”
“So what is this about?”
“I’ve managed to trace that file. It’s in the case files and concerns an inquiry to Ryhov’s mental hospital about one of their patients who tipped off SePo about a police officer in Gothenburg who is supposed to have murdered Olof Palme. Moreover, that lead file was already written off in May 1986.”
“But—”
“It doesn’t have the slightest to do with your case,” Mattei interrupted. “If I were Johansson I’d say it’s one of the most phenomenally wacko tips I’ve seen.”
“Extremely peculiar,” said Lewin. “So what do you think happened?”
“I think that someone set aside your question to them without registering it. Then the same someone presumably waited a month and then sent a reply with a serial number that references something else. If you had received a reply without a serial number, I’m sure you would have reacted.”
“And the colleague at SePo who signed my answer? Inspector Jan Andersson. Could Waltin have persuaded him to do something like that?”
“Sounds highly unlikely that he would have succeeded in persuading someone to reply to a letter that doesn’t seem to exist and supply the response with a serial number that refers to a completely different matter besides.”
“Andersson, our colleague Jan Andersson. True, it’s been over twenty years, but—”
“Dead,” Mattei interrupted. “Died in 1991 of a stroke, and there doesn’t seem to have been anything strange about the death. Worked with SePo and in the Palme investigation. Moreover he was the one who took care of the kind of matters relating to your question.”
“This is getting stranger and stranger,” said Lewin. “What do you think about all of this?”
“At best what’s happened is that someone, in that case probably Waltin, committed at least two crimes to get out of a parking ticket.”
“And in the worst case?”
“In the worst case, it’s really bad,” said Mattei.
Lewin devoted the rest of the day to unpleasant musings. He did not like the fact that one and the same person showed up in several places in the same investigation without there being a common reason for him or her to do so. A natural, human explanation. Not the kind that had already started to torment him.
Mattei continued as if nothing had happened. As of twenty-four hours ago there were other things going on in her head, and work had to go on as pure routine. First she prepared a page of reminder notes about the mysterious parking ticket that would certainly interest her boss. Then she went to work on the strange special assignment he had given her. Sent a friendly e-mail to the administrative assistant at Magdalen College in Oxford from her private e-mail address, signed by Lisa Mattei, PhD at the University of Stockholm to be on the safe side. And that is really me, she thought.
An hour later she got an answer. Goodness, things are moving fast, she thought.
Dear Dr. Mattei,
Thank you for your kind e-mail. It’s a nice old tale, but I am afraid it’s not true, and there’s never been any actual evidence for it. I rather suspect that it’s a legend that’s been passed around by other colleges—and perhaps even colleagues. It’s true that our deer herd is occasionally culled. However, this has nothing to do…
Good or bad and what is he really looking for? thought Lisa Mattei, and because it was Lars Martin Johansson, and urgent as usual, she called him on his cell phone.
“Lisa Mattei,” said Mattei. “I have an answer to your questions, boss. I’m afraid the whole thing is a tall tale.”
“Brilliant,” said Johansson. “Come over at once, and I’ll tell Helena to put on the coffeepot.”
“Two minutes,” said Mattei. And I’ll tell Helena to put on the coffeepot, she thought, shaking her head.
Lars Martin Johansson was on his thinking couch and waved at the nearest chair.
“I’m listening,” he said.
Not the slightest sign of any coffeepot, fortunately, Mattei thought after a quick look around.
“According to the administrative assistant at Magdalen, a Mr. Edgar Smith-Hamilton, whose official title by the way is bursar, which means he’s in charge of the change purse so to speak, there are presently thirty-two deer in the park behind the college, and they’ve had approximately that many for a number of years. On the other hand the number of fellows is considerably greater than that. More than a hundred, if you include honorary fellows. The deer park is over three hundred years old, but there has never been any rule that the number of deer must tally with the number of fellows. In the old days it seems to have been the case that there were considerably more deer than fellows, but for the past fifty years it’s been the other way around.”
“Phenomenal,” said Johansson, glowing with delight. “Go on, Mattei. Go on.”
Nor was it the case that a deer was shot when a fellow had died. On the other hand a certain amount of shooting was done for reasons of game management, as a rule after rutting, which happened in October each year.
“Although you know about that sort of thing better than I do, boss,” said Mattei.
“Just a guess,” Johansson smiled. “Do continue.”
The part about the dinner didn’t add up either. Dinners in memory of deceased fellows were held twice a year. One in early summer and one in late autumn. To be sure, exceptions had occurred, but then it was for very esteemed members of the college. Most recently a deceased Nobel Prize winner had been honored with a dinner, a theme day with lectures and seminars to discuss his scientific work, plus a Festschrift from Oxford University Press.
“So what do they eat?” asked Johansson eagerly.
“As far as the menus are concerned it does happen that deer from the park may be served at college dinners, but it’s not a mandatory feature of the memorial dinners. Varied menu, in other words. Usual banquet food, as I understood it.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Johansson, sighing contentedly from the couch.
“You’re satisfied with the answers I got, boss?”
“Satisfied,” said Johansson. “Do we celebrate Christmas Eve on the twenty-fourth of December?”
“Yes, that was all I guess,” said Mattei, making an attempt to stand up.
“Just one more thing,” said Johansson, stopping her with a hand gesture. “How did these rumors arise?”
“From what I understood between the lines it was a story that was tended very carefully by those most closely affected. Well, not the deer, that is.”
“I’ll be damned again,” Johansson grunted.
Wonder if he’s checking information in some old interrogation or what, thought Mattei as she left. Johansson was still Johansson, despite his highly suspect view of women, she thought.