The Falling Detective Read Online Free PDF Page A

thinks to himself, how we end up becoming the people we are.
    As instructed, he avoids the tube and its CCTV, and makes his way out to the university by bus instead. He makes a few detours, changes several times so as not to arrive too early. At each bus stop, he’s freezing cold. The buses come coughing out of the darkness, and none of their drivers are Swedish. He passes The Vasa Real School, where someone has written JEWISH SWINE, followed by the number 1488. He wonders who held the pen. Snow has started falling. By Odenplan, a Saint Lucia procession made up of students winds past him, laughing and stinking of alcohol.
    Stockholm University’s large sheet-metal complex towers over him as he steps off the last bus into the darkness. He is waiting in the shadows by one of the corners of the complex, Christian can sense it as he gets closer. And, sure enough, there he is, eyes fixed on one of the windows above — the only one with the lights on.
    â€˜Any joy?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜You don’t sound sure.’
    â€˜I’m not.’
    â€˜Give it here.’
    Christian pulls down the zip on his coat, and gets out the plastic bag. Michael takes it from him.
    â€˜What were you goi—’
    â€˜Get out of here. We’ll get to that later.’
    â€˜But I …’
    â€˜No. Not this time. See you tomorrow.’
    Michael looks up at the window again. The lights are still on. A second’s hesitation gets stretched and becomes unnaturally long. Thoughts are washing through Christian like a strong current.
    â€˜Alright,’ he says, and turns to leave. The snow crunches under his feet. In front of him, the Statoil signage shines large and orange. Traffic swishes past, but it is strangely quiet. It’s an evening where old feelings come back.
    They were fifteen years old, fifteen years ago. We’re moving forward, they’re standing still.
    Christian turns his head one last time, looking for the window with the light on, but doesn’t see it. The lights are off, and, by the corner of the complex, Michael isn’t there anymore.

13/12
    There’s a lot of things said about Gabriel Birck, and most of them are contradictory, like splinters of evidence pointing towards different stories, different fates.
    Some say he has no sense of smell, yet others say he can smell a person’s saliva. That he’s gay, but that he once dated a woman from the Hamilton clan. The same person claims that Birck changed his surname when he did National Service and that he actually comes from a wealthy aristocratic family. Others say he comes from a poor background — that he grew up on the estates with a loner alcoholic father who beat him every weekend. That he once married an Estonian woman to save her from a trafficking league. That he was approached by the Security Service while he was still training, but that he’d never been tricked into joining them. Others are convinced that he does in fact have a murky past in that very organisation.
    And so it goes on, and nobody knows for sure. I believe about half of what is said, but which half changes from day to day, depending on what sort of mood Gabriel Birck is in. I think he lives a fairly solitary life, that Birck is a loner. We have that in common, and that’s why we can work together.
    By some kind of unspoken agreement, we decide to walk to Vanadisvägen 5. We become silhouettes as we move through the night in the capital. As we leave the crime scene, Birck stops dead.
    â€˜Hmmm,’ he says. ‘Look at that.’
    The contents of my stomach that I expelled less than an hour ago are already covered by a layer of ice crystals.
    â€˜Is it yours?’
    We’re inside the cordon. They’re going to do tests on it. There’s no point in lying.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Are you ill?’
    â€˜I don’t know, but I was nauseous. It might have been the body.’
    Birck leans forward and