“I have to talk with you, boss,” said Mattei as she stood in the doorway to Johansson’s office.
“It can’t wait until Monday?” said Johansson. “I have a lot of things to do. Have to pick up my wife. We’re going away this weekend.”
“I’m afraid it’s important,” said Mattei.
“What’s more important than my wife?” said Johansson.
“Nothing, I’m sure,” said Mattei. “It’s just that I think I’ve found the bastard who did it.” The one the boss is harping about all the time, she thought.
“Close the door,” said Johansson. “Sit down.”
“4711,” said Johansson five minutes later when Mattei was through talking. “Wasn’t that some kind of mysterious German perfume?”
“That was why I happened to think of it,” said Mattei. “That was when I remembered the service code on the so-called receipt that Waltin gave to Wiijnbladh.”
“Although you don’t know what his name is,” said Johansson.
“Someone must have known. Someone at SePo must have known. Considering the answer from their personnel department that was in the file. I asked Linda, my mother that is, but she didn’t want to talk about it. She thought it could be hard to produce. So long afterward, that is.”
“Do you have any description of that mysterious perfume man?” said Johansson.
“The anonymous informant provided a description. The informant, who I think was Orjala, Jorma Kalevi Orjala. A known thug at that time who was run over in a hit-and-run accident involving an unknown perpetrator, and found drowned in the Karlberg Canal only a few months after the Palme murder. Doesn’t seem as though Orjala liked our colleague from SePo, but maybe we shouldn’t worry about that.”
“What should we worry about then?” interrupted Johansson.
“He says that the person he saw at that Chinese restaurant on Drottninggatan the same evening that Palme was murdered had worked at the bureau in Solna, but that he had quit a number of years before and started at SePo instead. He is supposed to have left there in 1982 according to what SePo itself says in its response to the officer who had the question about the anonymous tip.”
“Hell,” said Johansson, sitting straight up in his chair. “Hell’s bells. Why didn’t I think of that? How could I have forgotten that bastard?”
“Excuse me,” said Mattei.
“Hell,” Johansson repeated. “It’s Kjell Göran Hedberg you’re talking about, of course.”