at lunchtime on Sunday. He was hungry and exhausted. He took the tunnelbana to City Hall, walked to police headquarters on Bergsgatan, and went up to Inspector Bublanski's office. Modig and Andersson had already arrived. Bublanski had called the meeting on Sunday because he knew that preliminary investigation leader Richard Ekstrom was busy elsewhere.
"Thanks for coming in," said Bublanski. "I think it's time we had a discussion in peace and quiet to try to make sense of this mess. Jerker, have you got anything new?"
"Nothing I haven't already told you on the phone. Zalachenko isn't budging one millimetre. He's innocent of everything and has nothing to say. Just that - "
"Yes?"
"Sonja, you were right. He's one of the nastiest people I've ever met. It might sound stupid to say that. Policemen aren't supposed to think in those terms, but there's something really scary beneath his calculating facade."
"O.K." Bublanski cleared his throat. "What have we got? Sonja?"
She smiled weakly.
"The private investigators won this round. I can't find Zalachenko in any public register, but a Karl Axel Bodin seems to have been born in 1942 in Uddevalla. His parents were Marianne and Georg Bodin. They died in an accident in 1946. Karl Axel Bodin was brought up by an uncle living in Norway. So there is no record of him until the '70s, when he moved back to Sweden. Mikael Blomkvist's story that he's a G.R.U. agent who defected from the Soviet Union seems impossible to verify, but I'm inclined to think he's right."
"Alright. And what does that mean?"
"The obvious explanation is that he was given a false identity. It must have been done with the consent of the authorities."
"You mean the Security Police, Sapo?"
"That's what Blomkvist claims. But exactly how it was done I don't know. It presupposes that his birth certificate and a number of other documents were falsified and then slipped into our public records. I don't dare to comment on the legal ramifications of such an action. It probably depends on who made the decision. But for it to be legal, the decision would have to have been made at senior government level."
Silence descended in Bublanski's office as the four criminal inspectors considered these implications.
"O.K.," said Bublanski. "The four of us are just dumb police officers. If people in government are mixed up in this, I don't intend to interrogate them."
"Hmm," said Andersson, "this could lead to a constitutional crisis. In the United States you can cross-examine members of the government in a normal court of law. In Sweden you have to do it through a constitutional committee."
"But we could ask the boss," said Holmberg.
"Ask the boss?" said Bublanski.
"Thorbjorn Falldin. He was Prime Minister at the time."
"O.K., we'll just cruise up to wherever he lives and ask the former Prime Minister if he faked identity documents for a defecting Russian spy. I don't think so."
"Falldin lives in Ås, in Harnosand. I grew up a few miles from there. My father's a member of the Centre Party and knows Falldin well. I've met him several times, both as a kid and as an adult. He's a very approachable person."
Three inspectors gave Holmberg an astonished look.
"You know Falldin?" Bublanski said dubiously.
Holmberg nodded. Bublanski pursed his lips.
"To tell the truth," said Holmberg, "it would solve a number of issues if we could get the former Prime Minister to give us a statement - at least we'd know where we stand in all this. I could go up there and talk to him. If he won't say anything, so be it. But if he does, we might save ourselves a lot of time."
Bublanski weighed the suggestion. Then he shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that both Modig and Andersson were nodding thoughtfully.
"Holmberg... it's nice of you to offer, but I think we'll put that idea on the back burner for now. So, back to the case. Sonja."
"According to Blomkvist, Zalachenko came here in 1976. As far as I can work out, there's only one person he could have got that information from."
"Gunnar Bjorck," said Andersson.
"What has Bjorck told us?" Holmberg asked.
"Not much. He says it's all classified and that he can't discuss anything without permission from his superiors."
"And who are his superiors?"
"He won't say."
"So what's going to happen to him?"
"I arrested him for violation of the prostitution laws. We have excellent documentation in Dag Svensson's notes. Ekstrom was most upset, but since I had already filed a report, he could get himself into