Free Another Time, Another Life by Leif G. W. Persson

home a whore who liked to clean and could get laid for clearing away the worst of it, but all in all he had it good enough. We’re drinking the same alcohol, the corpse and I, thought Bäckström and sneered. Although I’m alive while he’s dead. So he poured another ample shot before taking a pee, and just as he swallowed the last swig he saw the light. Suddenly he understood exactly the way things were, clear as water, the motive, the whole nine yards. Lit up like a plain under a flaming sky he saw the truth spread out before his eyes. Hell, thought Bäckström with delight. This is going to be fun.

3
Friday morning, December 1, 1989
    Jarnebring’s day had not started out well, but it got much better as it went on. At the end of the day things got a little shaky again, and if he hadn’t pulled himself together as evening approached and showed some determination the day might have ended really badly. But there was finally a good end to it and a very promising weekend lay ahead. The reasons for this were complicated but were in all essentials connected with his love life, and personally he preferred not to think about it, much less talk about it.
    For almost four years Jarnebring had been engaged. His fiancée worked as a uniformed police officer at Norrmalm. She was beautiful to look at, fun to be with, had considerable household talents, and led an orderly life. Besides, she was very much in love with Jarnebring, and so far all was well and good. The problem was the engagement, and time’s more and more rapid flight, drawing him into some kind of strange union that he couldn’t seem to get a handle on.
    To start with, everything had been peace and harmony. Jarnebring moved in with his sweetheart. He had been extraordinarily well taken care of and seen their engagement as an omen of an imminently approaching marriage, eternal future harmony, and peaceful domestic happiness. Then he put on ten pounds, the ring on his left hand suddenly felt irritatingly tight, and their relationship started to flounder.
    Unfortunately he had also discovered new sides to his “girlfriend,” such as the fact that it annoyed her when he called her his “girlfriend” insteadof his “fiancée.” If that was how things stood for him, she had said, if he saw their engagement as just a ploy to gain time, he might just as well “come out with it immediately” so she’d have the opportunity to arrange something else instead. So he’d moved back home again, they had reconciled, he’d moved back in, moved home, and so on as time literally rushed onward. At the moment he was living at home, but their plans were no more definite, and personally he would have preferred not to think about the future. But on this particular morning he had no choice, as soon as he opened the refrigerator door at a quarter past six in the morning.
    Jarnebring never slept more than five or six hours even when he’d partied. When he got out of bed he was always alert and rested, but above all hungry and in need of an ample breakfast. Even as he was standing in the shower he had unpleasant premonitions, and when he looked in his refrigerator those premonitions were confirmed.
    It did not look good. Yesterday’s roll lay collapsed in a bag—who could be so dense as to put bread in the fridge?—in the company of a wedge of cheese, a trickle of apple juice, and a very tired, soggy tomato that had clearly given its all. The only consolation in this wretched state of affairs was an almost full carton of eggs. When he saw the miserable prospects for a dizzyingly brief moment he considered calling his girlfriend despite everything—she lived on the way to work after all—but then he steeled himself, pushed that thought aside, and made the best of the situation.
    As a policeman I have to approve of the situation, thought Jarnebring, without really feeling convinced of that. They’re not like we are, and the ones he had in mind were the great human collective among