Kajsa's Last Bullet

By Rolf Söderlind

An English journalist is in Stockholm to find out how the Swedes are handling a record influx of refugees and economic migrants. He finds himself in personal danger reporting on riots and is appalled by reports of gang rapes and murders. He encounters an intolerant liberal-left society where anyone who opposes the politically correct order is br

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rolf Soderlind
• Release date: Apr 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781527208223

Rolf Söderlind

Rolf Söderlind, a Swedish national, is a retired foreign correspondent who reported world news from twenty countries on four continents for Reuters, the Associated Press and United Press International. He now lives in England.

Book preview

Chapter One  

The detective inspector, a brunette in her mid-30s, removed the blanket that covered the body of a man found beaten to death with a blunt object. He had been murdered in Lill-Jansskogen, a forest bordering on northeast Stockholm, and the scene had been cordoned off. Monika Persson examined the body in the glare of spotlights. It was close to midnight and there was a chill in the air although spring was here. She could tell the man had been hit repeatedly on the head with what appeared to have been perhaps an iron bar. The attacker had used tremendous force. The skull was cracked.

      The victim was in his 40s, normal build and wearing jeans, a short-sleeved shirt and a suede jacket, but the police had found neither a wallet nor an ID on him. A man walking his dog had come across the body and rung 112 on his mobile. But who was the victim? His identity could take the police to his killer. 

      There was another aspect that worried Persson; the dead man was of mixed race and she could easily imagine the screaming headlines in some newspapers and agitated word on social media that would now follow. The refugee crisis had led to a polarised political debate in the country where anyone who criticised the government’s open-door policy on asylum seekers was branded a racist by the liberal and left-wing political elite. The murder of a mixed-race man could easily be blamed on white supremacists in an effort to score political points. An aggravating factor was a hand-written note Persson had found in the dead man’s chest pocket, the contents of which she had decided to withhold from the public for now.

…

The detective inspector explained the details of the murder investigation at a press conference the morning after at police headquarters. There wasn’t much to say, or rather, not much she was prepared to reveal at this stage.

     We have at the moment no idea about the identity of the victim, said Persson, who wore her thick hair in a ponytail, so characteristic of policewomen in this country. It goes without saying we haven’t got a clue about any motive either, or who the murderer is.

      A tabloid journalist raised his hand. You speak of a murderer, but could there be more than one?

      Possible. Next question.

       The same journalist again. You said the victim was of mixed race, a man of colour in other words. Can you see a racist motive behind the murder?

      Persson, who oozed calm authority in her smart police uniform and spoke with a dark,  melodious voice, said it was too early to make any assumptions. She was about to leave when an excitable TV journalist stuck his microphone in her face. But could the murder have anything at all to do with the refugee situation?  

      Why would it? We’ve got nothing to go on, but we keep an open mind.

      She returned to her office where she had left the hand-written note in a drawer.

…

Erik was writing a news story at the Daily Sentinel in London when the phone rang. It was his mother, Ulla, calling from home in Thames Ditton, Surrey. 

     Erik, I’m afraid I’ve got terrible news.

     The cancer?

     No, not that. I’m clear of it, although it could come back. No, your uncle Karl was killed today. Her voice cracked with emotion. 

    Killed? What happened? Erik sat up in his swivel chair.

    Looks like he was murdered by Moroccan teenage street fighters at the central railway station in Stockholm. They simply kicked my own brother to death in front of shocked bystanders and were gone before police or security guards showed up. Just wanton murder apparently. The police can’t find the killers.

      Erik, a 30-year-old bespectacled Londoner with floppy fair hair, didn’t really know Karl that much, but was horrified at the brutal manner in which he had died aged just 55.   

      Moroccan street fighters? What the hell were they doing in Stockholm?

      Google Sweden and refugee crisis and you’ll find hundreds of stories. Now, I am calling you not just to give you the bad news, but also to ask you a favour. You know I’m not quite well and your father needs to be by my side. I want you to represent the family at the funeral. It’s a week on Friday. Will you do that?

…

Ed Skinner, the city editor, a bearded man in his 50s with a penetrating stare and receding hairline, tossed an invitation to a press conference at the Treasury at Erik’s desk. He looked at it, seeing it was something about revised pension terms for some civil servants. Nothing much to write home about, but he had to go to the press conference. It was his job.

       Erik, who wore smart black flannel trousers, a grey jacket and a blue shirt, stood on the cramped  Jubilee Line from Canary Wharf to central London. His thoughts were on Sweden rather than the press conference he was about to cover. He realised the country had problems with mass immigration of real and pretend refugees from the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan. Crime was apparently on the rise, authorities had difficulties housing the asylum seekers and integration was a huge headache. Yes, some Muslim immigrants were causing problems in Britain, and his newspaper had written about them. But Sweden appeared to have a liberal refugee policy based on political correctness. This was the country of his mother. Erik wanted to write the whole story, including the bit about those Moroccan street gangs.

       He presented his press card at the ministry; Erik Baker, reporter at Daily Sentinel, one of the largest tabloids. After the press conference he returned to the office in Canary Wharf, locked his laptop into the docking station for access to the internal editorial system and wrote a 250-word piece. It was subsequently spiked by the sub editor.  Erik was concerned because, as the saying goes, you are no bigger than your latest headline in the cut-throat tabloid press on Fleet Street.  Except of course, the press no longer presided on Fleet Street with all its pubs where journalists would go and have a pint or two during and after work. The only half decent pub in Canary Wharf was All Bar One at the Reuters Plaza, but it was big and loud. Most journalists yearned for intimate locals such as the Punch Tavern on the cherished old ground next to St Bride’s, the journalists’ church where Erik’s parents had married.

      Coming home to his flat in Wapping in East London that Friday evening, he grabbed a book, stepped outside and crossed the street to the Prospect of Whitby, an old pub on Wapping Wall. The book was in Swedish, one of those Nordic Noir creations that had become so popular in Britain. He liked keeping up with his Swedish. 

     Having had dinner he was back in the flat, which he rented at an astronomical monthly fee. He picked up his mobile phone and rang his father, a retired journalist. Hi Dad, you’re all right? I’m fine too thanks. Awful to hear about Karl. I’ll definitely go to his funeral, but was thinking of combining the trip with writing a story or two about the Swedish refugee crisis. You must have read about the influx of refugees to Sweden and how it could be creating social problems. Didn’t you visit Sweden in the 60s? I seem to recall you told me.

        Gosh, that was ages ago. His dad chuckled down the line. We used to pay virtual pilgrimage tours to Sweden from Fleet Street.  Sweden was the future and we went there to catch a glimpse of what we thought was going to become our future here in Britain.

       Erik smiled. Thanks dad. Just what I wanted to know. Please say hello to mum. By the way, can I come and visit you guys tomorrow?

      Sounds great. His father was cheerful. We could have lunch in Ye Old Swan, have a pint or two.

     Before going to bed, Erik picked up his sunburst Fender Stratocaster and played a blues on it through the Hughes & Kettner, a boutique valve amp. He did this most evenings as playing the guitar was a passion of his – he found it soothed his mind.

…

The scene at the Malmö central railway station was chaotic with hundreds of refugees from Syria and other countries in the Middle East and young men from as far as Afghanistan waiting to be transferred to makeshift asylum centres. Dark-haired men with maybe a rucksack or shoulder bag as their only belongings squatted on the railway platform under a banner proclaiming REFUGEES WELCOME while waiting to be attended to by dozens of Swedish volunteers working for the Red Cross and other organisations. The influx of refugees and what some observers controversially termed economic migrants was taking on huge proportions that tested the readiness of the Swedes to accommodate them.

     Ebba Jansson, a reporter in her late 20s with straight long brown hair who worked for Synvinkel, a left-wing newspaper in Stockholm, had just arrived in the south Swedish port with the photographer, a bearded man of Chilean origin whose name was Fernando Rodriguez. Now in his late 40s, he happened to be one of the wave of refugees who had fled to Sweden following the unseating of the Allende government by a right-wing junta in 1973.  

      Fernando was zooming in on a group of moustachioed men who took selfies of each other with grinning faces, obviously relieved to have made it to their end destination after having journeyed through Europe from overflowing refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

       Stop that! Ebba almost tore the camera from him. We don’t want photos of men for the story. That is not OK. We want photos of exhausted women and children.

      Fernando’s eyes swept over the crowd. Sorry, but it’s mostly men here.

      He shot off in search of the right pictures while Ebba surveyed the scene. She knew it was extremely important to present a picture to the Swedish people of vulnerable refugees that under the Geneva Convention had to be accepted and looked after with taxpayers’ money. A photo of grinning men with camera phones would send the wrong signal to people and play into the hands of the much-hated Sweden Democrats. The racists mustn’t win the day.

       After a while Fernando sidled up to Ebba with a wink in his eye. I do have the photos you wanted. Have a look.

      He flicked through the View function on the back of his Canon. Ebba looked satisfied at seeing photos of women and children. Take me to them. Where is my Arab translator?

       Fernando couldn’t help popping a question to his bossy colleague as they made their way across the train station. Isn’t Sweden making a mistake now, taking on thousands and thousands of refugees at a time when most of them would probably be better off in local refugee camps? I mean they are travelling to northern Europe where the climate is different and where the food is also something they’re probably not used to.

     Ebba turned on him with a look that could not just kill but also mutilate him. That’s a racist thought the Sweden Democrats would love to propagate.

      Fernando shrugged. Ebba, all I’m saying is that maybe Sweden is taking on more than it can swallow. I came here as a young refugee from Chile as you know and I am so happy to live in this country, the best in the world, but maybe the boat is full at some point.

      Ebba put a hand to her mouth. Fernando, forgive me. You’re a victim yourself.  I cannot accuse you of having racist thoughts. Victims are not racists. But if you want to understand the bigger picture I could help you get a place in an educational programme run by the Party. It’s an evening course called Refugees – Sweden’s Cultural and Economic Future.

…

Persson sat in her office and read the note over and over again. It wasn’t long, just seven words, which read: A good n***** is a dead n*****. 

     She put the note in an envelope, sealed it and left for a messenger to take it to an in-house graphologist. Persson had conferred with her boss who had agreed that it was best to keep the note a secret for now, not just because it was politically sensitive but also because the murder investigation had barely started. Another thing Persson hadn’t told the journalists was that footprints of two people had been found on the murder site in addition to those of the victim. Her answer to the question of whether there could be more than one killer should have been an unequivocal yes, but the police wanted to keep some cards close to their chest in the investigation. 

      The lab came back with a report that DNA and fingerprint checks had yielded nothing. But the police had released a photo in the hope that someone would recognise the dead man. The newspaper headlines predictably suggested that right-wing extremists were behind the murder, which a criminologist classified as a racist attack without anything to go on other than the colour of the man’s skin. Social media was full of rumours and had gone into overdrive at the prospect that the far-right had blood on their hands. One troll suggested the Sweden Democrats were to blame.

     Persson ignored all the speculation, which she saw as simply politically driven. She would like to think of her work as politically neutral, but she knew that the national police commissioner was a stooge for the government who hated the Sweden Democrats. Not that she would vote for them, but she would never denigrate herself by making political statements. The boss had publicly declared that he would resign if the Sweden Democrats came to power. The man should be fired in her view.  She suddenly had a call on her mobile, a distress call from police officers in a nearby area full of Somalian gangs. Here we go again, she thought, donned her gear and off she was in her patrol car, blue lights flashing.

…

Karam, a thirty-year-old Syrian, got off the bus and set foot on a dusty street in Basmania, a run-down neighbourhood in Izmir, a Turkish coastal resort where refugees from Syria convened to meet human traffickers. He sat down at an outdoor café.

     I came to Turkey two years ago, but this looks like Syria, Karam told a man at the next table, referring to the many Syrian men drinking tea and smoking. 

     The neighbourhood he had just entered was buzzing with anticipation as people spent their days preparing for a late night trip across the sea in rubber dinghies they hoped would get them to Greece.  Although most of them had never seen the sea before, they were on a quick learning curve, discussing sea routes and currents.     

     The trip is safer in summer than in winter, a smuggler reassured Karam, who had temporarily left his family in a nearby refugee camp. 

      The smuggler, a swarthy, moustachioed man in his 40s with the exaggeratedly honest look on his face that conmen usually put on, had a sip of Turkish coffee. The price for crossing, he said, was $1,100 per person, with children getting a discount depending on age. Life vests were included in the price. 

       Since the war in Syria broke out hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees had gathered in camps in nearby regions to escape the barrel bombs, chemical weapons and other atrocities rained down on its population. Among the refugees were Karam and his wife and two children, a boy and a girl. Their third child, another girl, died in a hail of gunfire in their village near the city of Homs and the family had spent two years in Izmir, hoping the war would end so they could return home and rebuild their lives.  But the bombs kept falling and Karam thought Europe the future for his family. A classical guitarist, his favourite composer was J.S. Bach, but in the hasty escape from Syria, he had left his guitar behind. 

     Crossing the Aegean waters to a Greek island such as Lesbos or Kos wasn’t a long journey, maybe a few hours, but the rubber dinghies with their flimsy outboard engines were unreliable and dangerous. Hundreds of refugees, if not more, had drowned in the past year.

     The thought of the sea journey troubled Karam. Sensing his hesitation, the smuggler bought him a cup of coffee and offered him a cigarette. For the price, we do offer you safety. There are the life vests, the durable four-stroke outboard engine with enough petrol to get you to the other side. And we won’t crowd the boat. You will be safe.

     When would we set out? 

     At night, at full moon. Easier to navigate. And think of it, you make it to Greece, then up through Europe. You can go for Germany, most do, but Sweden is your best bet. The Swedes are the kindest people in the world and the most stupid too because they won’t ask for anything in return. They will give you a home, a Volvo, a job, free health care and free schools for your children. You said you had two kids? They will be sorted. And if you want a mistress, don’t get me wrong, I am sure you have a lovely wife, but if you want an adventure, the blonde Swedish women will queue up for the chance to serve you in bed. I understand they are not happy with their Swedish menfolk. Too equal you understand.

     Despite his concerns, Karam had to laugh. The man must be exaggerating, especially about mistresses, but a house and good schools were important. And maybe he could find a job in a classical music orchestra. He looked again at the sea in the distance, thought of his family. He had to make a decision. He had savings, but was it worth the risk? He had lived in a limbo for two years and wanted to break out. But they were landlubbers and what if the boat sank and something went wrong with the life vests? Nobody in the family could swim.

…

The Swedish establishment was shocked to learn one morning that the Sweden Democrats had scored 18.2 percent in an opinion poll. In other words, the anti-immigrant party had gained more than five percent in popularity since the 2014 election.

    Despite all our efforts, the racists keep gaining ground. The chief editor at Synvinkel took in the news floor with a gloomy look in his eyes. We must double our efforts to expose the Sweden Democrats. This is about agenda journalism. Let’s not be shy about it. Our job is not just to present facts, but also to make our readers conform with the democratic values.

     Ebba Jansson raised her hand. But what more can we do to expose them?

      The chief editor gave her a grateful smile. Good question! Dig up whatever dirt about them you can find and publish it, every day if possible. Let’s brand them Nazis from now on, not just fascists and racists but Nazis. That should make ordinary people stay clear of them.

       An older guy from the archive raised his hand. But what about objectivity? What if our campaign will drive voters even more into the arms of the Sweden Democrats? There is talk on social media of cover-up in the press you know. I mean, readers will see through lies.

     The chief editor stiffened. If you don’t like the policy here, then leave. How about your children asking you in twenty years what you did to fight the fascists when they tried to take over? I know what my reply will be. I fought them all the way.

      The news floor broke into thunderous applause. The chief editor silenced the room with a gesture. One more thing. There can be no negative reporting on the refugees coming here. We must give them our support. Remember they have all fled from war.

      Journalists made approving noises. They were all on message. The archivist made an apologetic gesture and shuffled back to the archive.

…

As Monika Persson rounded the corner and came into the backstreet, she saw about thirty teenage migrants attacking two policewomen. A Somalian youngster threw himself through the air and landed with his feet on the hips of one of them. He almost knocked her over, but she regained her balance and hit him with her baton. Another lunged at the other officer with a knife and it was only through her evasive action that he stabbed her in the armpit rather than in the chest, which could have killed her. Meanwhile, the crowd were chanting anti-Sweden slogans and throwing stones at the officers. What struck Persson was the pure hatred displayed by the attackers, who allegedly had fled to Sweden from war, only to create war-like situations in their host country. Time to stop this nonsense. She cocked her Sig-Sauer service pistol with a determined look on her face. She was proud to be a Swedish police officer, in charge of the law.

      The detective inspector got out of her patrol car and ran towards the scene, her ponytail flying. She fired a shot into the air. The sound dispersed the crowd, but one migrant challenged her with a bloodied knife. 

     Shoot me, whore. Shoot me if you dare, Swedish whore. I fuck you! 

     Persson didn’t hesitate. Showing no emotions, she shot the man in the leg. That proved the end of his challenge and she put the pistol back in its holster. She handcuffed him and called ambulances for her stabbed colleague and for the attacker.

     Her two colleagues, women in their 30s, walked up to her, one of them bleeding from the armpit and the other with a cut in the head. Persson brought bandage from the patrol car. 

     Thanks Monika, the stabbed policewoman said. You came in the nick of time

     What happened? How did you get into this trouble?

     The policewomen, who had been on foot patrol, explained that they had stopped an asylum seeker after catching him stealing a moped. They had been questioning him when they were set upon by the crowd, which had emerged out of nowhere.

     The wounded teenager interrupted their conversation, shouting abuse and calling them names. The policewoman who had been kicked pulled out her baton and hit him on the wounded leg. He screamed in pain. While his mouth was wide open, she stuffed the rest of the bandage into it, gagging him.

     Good wheeze with the bandage, Anna, but you shouldn’t have hit him like that. Persson gave her junior colleague a mild rebuke. He posed no threat anymore.

     But none of you two saw me do it or?

     They shook their heads. Of course not. 

Chapter Two

I recall writing in a story that I never saw a Swede with a ring of dirt on his collar. George, Erik’s father, a short man in his 60s, mused. So unlike grimy old England with its coal mines. It was like Utopia you know, but things have changed.

      Erik and his parents, who lived in a semi-detached Edwardian house on Station Road, strolled in sunny weather to Ye Old Swan, an old pub on the river Thames. They found a table near the pier and George went inside to order food and drinks. Erik glanced at his mother, a frail woman in her mid-50s with short hair she’d kept on dying blonde to give an impression of her youth in Sweden. Except she was wearing a wig now.

      So, what about the cancer?

      Nothing to worry about, she reassured him. The chemotherapy was successful. I have one and a half lungs, but I breath normally, just about. Now let’s hope it doesn’t come back.

     George returned with pints of lager for himself and Erik, but lime and soda for Ulla. 

     I’ve ordered fish and chips for all of us. Now where were we? Ah yes, good old Sweden, or what’s left of it now that it has an open-door policy for all takers it seems.

     Erik grabbed the beer. I’ve read that some Swedes nowadays seem to be in denial of their own culture. Could it have something to do with this mass immigration?

     Possibly. His mother addressed the issue. There was once a Social Democratic party chairwoman who told a Turkish magazine that she had no idea what Swedish culture was about. She said Swedes envied immigrants from the Middle East because they had a culture, while the Swedes had none.

      His father pitched in. Don’t forget the former premier. He may be a conservative, but he once told the Swedes they must open their hearts to immigrants, let them all in.

      But why? Erik was astounded.

     The Swedes always want to take the moral high ground, be the champions of human rights, the ultimate do-gooders on Earth. In the 70s, Olof Palme presented Sweden as the conscience of the world. Another reason for the current open-door policy was probably that the premier wanted to annoy the Sweden Democrats, who are against uncontrolled immigration.

      Erik had heard of  the Sweden Democrats.