When at long last Edklinth concluded that he had to act on Armansky's information, he called Figuerola into his office. She had been at Constitutional Protection for less than three years, which meant that she was still more of a real police officer than a fully fledged desk warrior.
She was dressed that day in tight blue jeans, turquoise sandals with a low heel, and a navy blue jacket.
"What are you working on at the moment, Monica?"
"We're following up on the robbery of the grocer's in Sunne."
The Security Police did not normally spend time investigating robberies of groceries, and Figuerola was the head of a department of five officers working on political crimes. They relied heavily on computers connected to the incident reporting network of the regular police. Nearly every report submitted in any police district in Sweden passed through the computers in Figuerola's department. The software scanned every report and reacted to 310 keywords, nigger, for example, or skinhead, swastika, immigrant, anarchist, Hitler salute, Nazi, National Democrat, traitor, Jew-lover, or nigger-lover. If such a keyword cropped up, the report would be printed out and scrutinized.
The Constitutional Protection Unit publishes an annual report, Threats to National Security, which supplies the only reliable statistics on political crime. These statistics are based on reports filed with local police authorities. In the case of the robbery of the shop in Sunne, the computer had reacted to three keywords - immigrant, shoulder patch, and nigger. Two masked men had robbed at gunpoint a shop owned by an immigrant. They had taken 2,780 kronor and a carton of cigarettes. One of the robbers had a mid-length jacket with a Swedish flag shoulder patch. The other had screamed "fucking nigger" several times at the manager and forced him to lie on the floor.
This was enough for Figuerola's team to initiate the preliminary investigation and to set about enquiring whether the robbers had a connection to the neo-Nazi gang in Varmland, and whether the robbery could be defined as a racist crime. If so, the incident might be included in that year's statistical compilation, which would then itself be incorporated within the European statistics put together by the E.U.'s office in Vienna.
"I've a difficult assignment for you," Edklinth said. "It's a job that could land you in big trouble. Your career might be ruined."
"I'm all ears."
"But if things go well, it could be a major step forward in your career. I'm thinking of moving you to the Constitutional Protection operations unit."
"Forgive me for mentioning this, but Constitutional Protection doesn't have an operations unit."
"Yes, it does," Edklinth said. "I established it this morning. At present it consists of you."
"I see," said Figuerola hesitantly.
"The task of Constitutional Protection is to defend the constitution against what we call 'internal threats', most often those on the extreme left or the extreme right. But what do we do if a threat to the constitution comes from within our own organization?"
For the next half hour he told her what Armansky had told him the night before.
"Who is the source of these claims?" Figuerola said when the story was ended.
"Focus on the information, not the source."
"What I'm wondering is whether you consider the source to be reliable."
"I consider the source to be totally reliable. I've know this person for many years."
"It all sounds a bit... I don't know. Improbable?"
"Doesn't it? One might think it's the stuff of a spy novel."
"How do you expect me to go about tackling it?"
"Starting now, you're released from all other duties. Your task, your only task, is to investigate the truth of this story. You have to either verify or dismiss the claims one by one. You report directly and only to me."
"I see what you mean when you say I might land in it up to my neck."
"But if the story is true... if even a fraction of it is true, then we have a constitutional crisis on our hands."
"Where do you want me to begin?"
"Start with the simple things. Start by reading the Bjorck report. Then identify the people who are allegedly tailing this guy Blomkvist. According to my source, the car belongs to Goran Mårtensson, a police officer living on Vittangigaten in Vallingby. Then identify the other person in the pictures taken by Blomkvist's photographer. The younger blond man here."
Figuerola was making notes.
"Then look into Gullberg's background. I had never heard his name before, but my source believes there to be a connection between him and the Security Police."