Råstam was the first journalist to gain Bergwall’s trust. He had a rare capacity to listen and to keep an open mind, and the two men became friends. ‘Hannes was a very intense person with an ability to really listen to other people and also to share,’ said Bergwall when I met him. ‘It was the first time that I remember thinking, Something’s going to happen. I felt Yes! Something’s going to change, and I was ready to come clean . . . It was so liberating to finally tell the truth.’
In order to establish Bergwall’s innocence, Råstam spent years ploughing through thousands of documents, re-interviewing key players and putting together a complex timeline of events on the Quick case. His friend and journalistic colleague, Mattias Göransson, recalled that it took nine seconds for Råstam’s laptop to calculate the size of his Quick archive. By the end of his investigations, the folder contained 12.5 gigabytes of data and 5,218 documents. To have been able to shape all of that into this coherent and gripping narrative is, in itself, an incredible feat.
Some of what you will read in this book will be discomfiting. A few of the psychiatric transcripts, for instance, are deeply unsettling and border on the bizarre. But this is the language that was used; this is how confused and desperate the whole process had become.
When you read further, you begin to wonder why the close-knit group of people around Quick seemed so eager to believe what he was telling them, and so unwilling to voice dissent from the prevailing view. Råstam would no doubt say it was because they wanted to believe their charge was guilty – the more entwined they became in the case, the more their professional reputations were at stake. In stark contrast, Råstam refused to believe anything until it was shown, beyond doubt, to be the truth. He would keep digging until he got there.
Jenny Küttim, Råstam’s researcher on the Quick case, says that all his work displayed ‘an obsessiveness towards journalistic truth’. ‘He taught me to read all the pages and the footnotes and to read the articles referred to in the footnotes,’ she explains. ‘He taught me to speak to the people responsible and always keep an open mind – never stop collecting facts. He always questioned the context, the conclusions and people’s agendas. That was his strength.’
I wish I had met Hannes Råstam. I wish he could be writing this foreword instead of me. But in April 2011 he was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and pancreas. He was in the middle of writing this book when it happened. For a while, no one wanted to believe the worst. He kept working, with the help of his literary agent, Leyla Belle Drake and Mattias Göransson, who would often sit by his bedside while he dictated key passages. In January 2012, the day after he completed the manuscript, Råstam died.
‘The most vivid memory I have is the last time we saw each other,’ recalls Thomas Olsson. ‘It was early summer and I had gone down to his summer house outside Gothenburg to discuss the manuscript. He had cooked some food and we sat in the sunlight in his garden, drank a beer and discussed the Quick case. After a pause, I asked him how he felt over the uncertain outcome of the treatment of the cancer. He answered, “You know, Thomas, I have lived a good and interesting life. I want to live, but I am not afraid to die . . . and I want to finish the book.” In that moment I understood that he knew he was going to die and that he would do so happy with all the things life had given him.
‘I think it shows that he was not only a devoted journalist, he was also a person who loved life. Only if you love life is it possible to die happy over the things you had, instead of being furious over the things you will miss.’
His death at the age of fifty-six is not a just ending to Råstam’s life story. But he would be the first to say that justice can often be elusive. It’s asking the questions that counts.
Elizabeth Day
London, April 2013
‘We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.’
From Doktor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg
PART I
‘Once you know the terrible truth of what Thomas Quick did to his victims – and once you have heard his deep, bestial roar – only one question remains: Is he really human?’
Pelle Tagesson, Crime Correspondent, Expressen, 2 November 1994
SÄTER HOSPITAL, MONDAY, 2 JUNE 2008
THE SERIAL KILLER, sadist and cannibal Sture Bergwall had not been receiving visitors for the past seven years. I was filled with nervous anticipation as I was let into the main guarded entrance at the regional forensic psychiatric clinic in Säter.
‘Hannes Råstam, Swedish Television. I’m here to see Sture Bergwall . . .’
I dropped my press pass into the little stainless-steel drawer under the bulletproof glass between me and the guard. He confirmed that my visit had been logged and approved.
‘Go through the security gate. Don’t touch the door!’
I obeyed the scratchy voice from the speaker, passed through an automatic door, then a couple of metal detectors and finally through one more automatic door into a waiting room where a care assistant rummaged through my shoulder bag.
I followed my guide’s firm steps through an inexplicable system of corridors, stairs and elevators. Her heels tapped against the concrete floors; then silence, the rattling of keys at every new steel barrier, the bleep of electronic locks and slamming of armoured doors.
Thomas Quick had confessed to more than thirty murders. Six unanimous courts had found him guilty of the murders of eight people. After the last verdict in 2001 he withdrew, announced a ‘time out’, reassumed his old name – Sture Bergwall – and went quiet. In the seven years that followed, a heated debate about whether Quick was a serial killer or a pathological liar had bubbled up at regular intervals. The protagonist’s own thoughts on the matter were unknown to all. Now I was meeting him, face to face.
The care assistant led me into a large, deserted ward with plastic floors so polished that they shone. She took me to a small visiting room.
‘He’s on his way,’ she said.
I felt unexpectedly uneasy.
‘Will you wait outside the room during my visit?’
‘This ward is closed, there are no staff here,’ she answered curtly, then as if she had read my mind she fished out a little device. ‘Would you like an attack alarm?’
I looked at her and the little black device.
Sture Bergwall had been detained here since 1991. He was considered so dangerous that he was only allowed to leave the grounds every six weeks for a drive, on the condition that he was accompanied by six warders. A case of letting the madman see the horizon to keep him from getting even madder, I thought.
Now I had a few seconds to determine whether the situation called for an attack alarm. I couldn’t quite bring myself to reply.
‘There’s also a panic button next door,’ said the care assistant.
I almost had a sense that she was teasing me. She knew just as well as I did that none of Quick’s victims would have been saved by a panic button next door.
My train of thought was cut short by the appearance of Sture Bergwall in the doorway, all six foot two of him, flanked by two care assistants. He was wearing a faded sweatshirt that had once been purple, worn-out jeans and sandals. With a nervous smile he offered me his hand, leaning forward slightly as if not to force me to come too close to him.
I looked at the hand that, according to its owner, had slain at least thirty people.
His handshake was damp.
The care assistants had gone.
I