Mammon in malmo, p.34
Mammon in Malmö, page 34
They were through Värnhem quickly despite the conditions.
‘I think he’s heading for Lund,’ said Anita as she leant forward as far as she could to see through the windscreen. If Berg got onto the E22, he’d leave the Skoda for dead.
‘Why Max Berg?’ asked Falk, whose inquisitiveness overcame his fear. ‘How did you know it was him?’
‘Lübeck. Martin Glimhall traced his father. Berg lied about him being a left-winger. His name was Berger and he was a high-ranking SS officer in one of the paramilitary death squads responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews and Romani in Belarus and Latvia.’
Berg was now pulling away under the railway bridge and up the incline towards Segevång.
‘Berger fled to Malmö, and Per Engdahl got him a job at Kockums. Dropped the ER at the end of his name and blended in. Glimhall found out he’d helped organize the Malmö Conference back in fifty-one.’ She broke off as she tried to coax more effort out of her shuddering, swerving vehicle. ‘Once a Nazi... Max was just carrying on the old man’s work, reviving his father’s dream. Haglund had already found out too much, or so Max thought, and it must have come out that he’d also been to Lübeck. So he had to kill him.’
‘Bugger! We’re going to lose him,’ Falk muttered bitterly.
Then they heard a patrol car’s siren some way behind.
Berg must have heard it, too, and realized he had no chance in an open chase. He veered off to the right, ignoring the junction lights. Anita followed him, just avoiding an oncoming truck. The trucker’s furious horn-blowing added to the cacophony of screeching brakes. Then Berg wrenched his car to the left in the hope of losing his pursuers in the warren of streets.
‘Yes!’ Anita exclaimed triumphantly. ‘He’s gone the wrong way. We’ve got him!’
‘Have we?’
‘This is Segevångsgatan. It’s a cul-de-sac. There’s only a school at the end.’
The thick snow forced Anita to slow down. The road was crescent-shaped and had tall apartment blocks all along the inner curve. As they reached the turning area at the end in front of the school, they could see Berg’s black sedan rammed up against a hedge. The wheels were spinning as he frenziedly tried to reverse.
Anita slammed on the brakes and they skidded to a halt immediately behind him. In an instant, she jumped out and was ripping open Berg’s car door and dragging him out. He looked broken and stunned. She threw him unceremoniously over the bonnet and yelled at Falk.
‘Come on! Bloody arrest him! I can’t!’
Ten minutes later, three patrol cars, blue lights flashing, were wedged into the narrow street. Uniformed officers were moving around the crash scene. The snow had abated. Anita was standing with Theo Falk when Max Berg, wrists cuffed in front of him, was brought over.
He looked at Anita with sadness in his eyes. ‘I tried to warn you off, Anita. Getting Lockhart to switch his painting... God, the price of his vanity! The swastika in your apartment... I didn’t want you to end up like Magnusson... or Haglund. You wouldn’t let it go. Why?’ He was almost pleading for an explanation. ‘You’re not even in the police.’
It was a fair question. She could have said something trite about a free world, human rights, and moral beliefs. But maybe, in the end, it was as simple as not being able to face Magda Forsell if she hadn’t found out the truth.
An officer pressed Berg’s head down as he was bundled into the back seat of the nearest patrol car.
‘What was that about a painting?’ Falk asked.
‘It was one of the artworks I was trying to track down. The Movement sold a Steiner painting to help finance the Liberty Conference and, presumably, to pay for their gunman. All organized by Morten Skipper. You’ll need to get the Danish police to pick him up.’
‘I’ll get on to them straightaway.’
‘I got Niclas Almqvist all wrong. I think he probably broke his daughter’s engagement off because of Skipper’s dangerous political views. He probably knew about the Movement without realizing how extreme it was, and didn’t want to be tainted by association through Skipper. As for the other paintings; I’ll never know for sure what happened to them.’
‘You’re quite something, Anita Sundström.’ Falk patted her on the shoulder. ‘Want a lift, or will that old bucket get you home?’
‘Do you mind?’ she laughed. She was tired and relieved.
‘Look, Anita. That offer to return to the force is still open.’
‘What about Alice Zetterberg?’
‘After this, she’ll be issuing parking tickets to sledges in Lapland.’
Max Berg was driven away. More snow threatened. Home sounded like a good place to be.
‘Will you come back as chief inspector?’
EPILOGUE
Liv was quite happy for Anita to push her wheelchair into the art gallery in the Malmöhus Museum. She was basking in the knowledge that she was pregnant. Even an initially troubled Hakim now couldn’t wipe the stupid grin off his face.
There was the painting. Sitting in front of it was a young art student in a multi-coloured jersey and ripped jeans. She was sketching. They wandered up behind her and watched as she worked on her version of the original.
‘He was good, wasn’t he?’ Anita observed.
The girl squinted up at her.
‘Oh yeah! You can’t beat Jacob van Ruisdael. Great landscapes. You can almost hear that waterfall. Poetic yet melancholic at the same time.’ Anita was impressed by her enthusiasm. ‘Did you know that, though he was Dutch, van Ruisdael painted masses of Swedish scenes like this one? But he never left Holland,’ she said in wide-eyed amazement.
‘Really?’
‘This just turned up recently. Been missing for ages. I bet it has a story to tell.’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
The student gave Anita a quizzical look.
They lapsed into silence as the girl returned to her sketch, and Liv took in the painting. Anita’s eyes lingered on the wall label next to the new, ornate frame:
Torrent in a Mountainous Landscape
Jacob van Ruisdael
1628-82
Donated by the late Magda Forsell in grateful thanks to Sweden for saving the life of her mother, Irma Steiner.
NOTES
NOTES
Hermann Göring and Sweden
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, for a time the second most powerful man in Hitler’s Germany, had a long association with Sweden. After the First World War, blaming the politicians for the humiliating peace deal, he fled to Scandinavia. During that period, while flying the postal service to and from Warnemünde in Germany, he briefly lived at Linnégatan 12 in Limhamn. After Hitler’s failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, he once again fled to Sweden. He is believed to have returned to Limhamn during this time, when he was involved in the aircraft factory on Ön.
Göring was wounded in the groin during the botched rising, and to cope with the pain, he was given morphine, to which he became addicted. So bad was his addiction that he was twice sent to Långbro Asylum, a mental hospital in Stockholm. He remained in exile until 1927.
Göring’s Swedish wife, Carin, was clearly the love of his life. The account of their meeting in Rockelstad Castle in 1920 is true. Three years after her death in 1931, he built a vast hunting lodge in the Schorfheide forest north of Berlin and named it Carinhall. There, he had a mausoleum built to house her remains. On the occasion of his second marriage to actress, Emmy Köstlin, he was given a luxury motor yacht as a wedding present. He named this after his first wife, as well. Carin II still exists and has passed through many hands. Its colourful post-war history includes a spell with the Royal Navy, ferrying the British Royal family, the location of the negotiations over the hoax Hitler Diaries in 1981, and being impounded by Colonel Gaddafi in 1987. It is now named the Prince Charles and is registered in Valetta, Malta.
Even after Carin’s death, Göring continued to be closely associated with Sweden and prominent Swedes: among them King Gustav V; Sven Winquist, head of the ball-bearing company SKF; and the owner of Electrolux, Alex Wenner-Gren, who was a friend of the Duke of Windsor (the former British monarch, Edward VIII) in the Bahamas during the war. Churchill referred to Wenner-Gren as ‘that odious Swede’ and suspected he might be a Nazi spy because of his close connections with Göring.
Göring was a rapacious collector of artworks for his Carinhall home, and both Alois Miedl and Bruno Lohse helped him in his quest. The six Steiner paintings are made up but would have appealed to Göring if they had existed, particularly the one by Cranach the Elder, who was a particular favourite. The galleries that the fictional Ferenc Steiner bought the paintings from – Nathan Katz and Jacques Goudstikker – did exist.
Hermann Göring committed suicide on October 15th, 1946 during the Nuremberg Trials.
Raoul Wallenberg
“To me there is no other choice. I’ve accepted this assignment and I could never return to Stockholm without the knowledge that I’d done everything within human power to save as many Jews as possible.” So said Raoul Wallenberg to his friend, Per Anger. That assignment would cost him his life.
Raoul Wallenberg was born in 1912 into one of the richest families of financiers and industrialists in Sweden, though he was raised outside its fiercely exclusive core. The plan was for him to go into banking, but instead he went to study architecture at the University of Michigan in the United States in 1931. Finding that his qualification didn’t allow him to practice in Sweden, he did actually end up being employed in the branch office of the Holland Bank in Haifa in modern-day Israel. On his return to Stockholm, he joined the European Trading Company, owned by Koloman Luaer, a Hungarian Jew. This job took him to Germany and Nazi-occupied France, and he soon became familiar with how German bureaucracy worked, knowledge which would prove useful when he arrived at the Swedish Legation in Budapest.
Wallenberg wasn’t an obvious candidate to be sent to Budapest as the representative of the War Refugee Board set up by President Franklin D Roosevelt to aid civilian victims of the Axis powers, but he turned out to be the right choice. He is credited with saving thousands of Hungarian Jews – estimates vary wildly from 9,000 to 30,000. What is not in dispute is the determination and ingenuity Wallenberg showed to help those in direst need. He was not only a skilled negotiator but also, where necessary, resorted to more unconventional methods such as bribery and threats of blackmail. He recruited 350 volunteers, rented 32 safe houses covered by diplomatic immunity, organised vital supplies of food and clothing, and issued thousands of ‘letters of protection’ (official-looking documents that had no legal authority but were widely accepted by Hungarian and German officials, often with the aid of a bribe). He couldn’t have achieved what he did without the help of other diplomats, including fellow Swedes, Per Anger and Carl-Ivan Danielsson; Swiss, Carl Lutz; Portuguese representatives, Sampaio Garrido and Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho; as well as the Italian businessman, Giorgio Perlasca, who posed as a Spanish diplomat.
Wallenberg’s death still remains a mystery to this day. Invited to the Soviet military HQ in eastern Hungary on January 17th, 1945, he was arrested. The Russians appear to have believed he was a spy because he’d been sent to Budapest by the Americans. No one knows for sure what happened to him afterwards. In 1957, Moscow produced a document dated July 1947. Signed by the governor of the Lubyanka prison infirmary, it claimed Wallenberg had died of a heart attack and that his body had been cremated. Some people believe he was executed in the same year, while others believe the rumours circulating as late as the 1980s that he was still alive
Raoul Wallenberg may have become a legendary figure around the world, but the Wallenberg family and the Swedish state abandoned him to his fate and have done little since to discover the truth. One of Sweden’s former ambassadors to Hungary told the Wall Street Journal in 2009: ‘They did not want him back.’
Per Engdahl
Given today’s multicultural population, Malmö seems to be an unlikely centre for European post-war fascism. The reason for this paradox was Per Engdahl, who fostered his right-wing beliefs before, during and after the Second World War.
Born in Jönköping in 1909, Engdahl went on to study at Uppsala University. This is where his political career began and his extreme views took root, though his inspiration was Benito Mussolini’s brand of fascism rather than Adolf Hitler’s. Engdahl formed his own group before merging with the pro-Nazi National League of Sweden to promote ‘new Swedishness’. He and his supporters advocated Swedish entry into World War II on the side of Germany. His post-war activities, for which he is best known, are described in the story. His strident anti-Semitic standpoint appealed to Nazis like Johann von Leers, and leaders of other fascist groups throughout Europe. After the war, Engdahl provided an escape route for such people and claimed he had ‘saved’ 4,000 Nazis, many of whom were shipped off to South America. Some later returned to West Germany.
The Malmö Movement was born out of the Malmö Conference of 1951. It was a secret network of fellow believers who aimed to keep fascist and Nazi ideas alive. They advocated that the government of Europe should be autocratic, masculine and strong, as opposed to being democratic, which Engdahl considered feminine and weak. This new Europe would be a white continent free from foreign elements like Jews and ethnic minorities. The word ‘race’ was replaced by the more acceptable ‘culture’. However, within a few years of its formation, some of its leaders began to leave the Malmö Movement, as it was too prone to compromise and vague messaging. Despite this, its influence has lasted and can be seen today in the rise of the right throughout Europe. Engdahl remains a much revered figure within these factions.
During his prominence, Engdahl managed to attract the support of the rich and the privileged in Swedish society. One of his ardent followers was the founder of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad, who said after Engdahl’s death in Malmö in May 1994 that he was ‘a great man’.
I would recommend Elisabeth Åsbrink’s book, 1947 When Now Begins. It deals with the events of that year and their consequences on an international scale, including some interesting sections on Per Engdahl and the Malmö Movement.
The Holocaust Museum
Throughout history, Malmö has had mixed relations with its Jewish population but recently, there has been a positive turn of events with the news that the city is favourite to become the home of the proposed state Holocaust Museum. In September 2020, the Swedish Prime Minister announced the allocation of over a million dollars for the creation of the new museum. The city is also due to host the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Anti-Semitism; an initiative enthusiastically supported by the mayor, who said that it showed the government was aware of Malmö’s history and its determined work to counter anti-Semitism. (The conference should have been part of the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the freeing of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany’s concentration camps; and the White Buses operation which brought survivors to Malmö. However, it has been postponed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.) Furthermore, from March 2022, Sweden will take over the Presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which promotes education, research and remembrance.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my ever-reliable medical brains trust – Bill and Justine Foster – for information which I hope I’ve interpreted correctly. And to Nick Pugh for yet another striking cover design. I haven’t been able to buy him the lunch I promised due to Covid.
A huge thank you to Zoë Anderson at Eden Eyecare in Penrith for all her help in answering questions to do with how an optical practice operates. They also do a great job of ensuring that I have the right glasses needed to write my books.
Though I haven’t been able to get to Sweden in recent times, I’ve had my usual help from Karin Geistrand on policing and other matters; though, sadly, no face-to-face discussions over a bottle of red wine. Fraser and Paula are also a constant source of interesting insights into Swedish life.
Thanks to Matt, Elizabeth and the team at eBookpartnership for their excellent service and back-up.
Finally, I want to thank Susan for her forthright editing and determined efforts to keep me from straying too far from reality.
About the author
Torquil MacLeod was born in Edinburgh. After a brief career as a teacher and an even briefer one in insurance, in which he didn’t manage to sell a single policy, he worked as an advertising copywriter in agencies in Birmingham, Glasgow and Newcastle before turning freelance. He lives in Cumbria in northern England with his wife, Susan. The idea for a Scandinavian crime series came from his frequent trips to Malmö and southern Sweden to visit his elder son. He now has four grandchildren, equally spread between Sweden and Essex.
Torquil Macleod, Mammon in Malmö
