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the scene. In the normal course of things, it might have been possible to save the life of the victim, or at least arrest the culprit and thus avoid a lot of inconvenience. But things were not normal, and so it turned out the way it did. At Stockholm Police Department’s command center it was agreed, however, that it was not Charles XII’s fault.
    A few days earlier the legal department of that same police agency had granted permits for two different demonstrations, and both decisions had been preceded by considerable legal and mental exertion and extensive strategic and tactical consideration.
    In the first application to arrive, various “patriotically minded organizations and individual Swedish citizens”—which was how they described themselves—wanted to “pay homage to the Swedish heroking on the anniversary of his death.” This was to occur in the form of a torchlight procession from Humlegården to the statue of Charles XII in Kungsträdgården, with massed standards, the laying of a wreath and speeches at the statue itself, and the whole thing was planned to start at 1900 hours and be finished at 2100 hours at the latest.
    The very next day another application arrived. A number of political youth organizations, representing with one exception all of the partiesin parliament, wanted to conduct “a broad, popular manifestation against xenophobia and racism.” So far so good. But for reasons that were not completely clear, in any case not evident from their request, the intention was to conduct this demonstration on that very same Thursday, the thirtieth of November, between 1900 and 2200 hours. There would be a gathering in Humlegården, a march down Birger Jarlsgatan and up Hamngatan, concluding “with speeches and a joint proclamation” at Sergels Torg, all of 400 yards from the statue of Charles XII in Kungsträdgården.
    As far as political opinions were concerned, the participants in the two demonstrations were, to put it mildly, dissimilar, to the point where they could easily be sorted into two different piles based solely on their appearance. And this nonexistent common interest would evidently be expressed at the same time and the same place. The sharp minds in the legal department were struck by this. In brief, trickery was suspected, and in order to prevent difficulties, the good old police rule of thumb was followed to separate even presumptive troublemakers.
    This plan primarily affected the group of the “patriotically minded.” There was no question of playing political favorites—of course, no official authority could support such things. The decision was made solely on the basis of police department estimates of the relative size of the two groups. Democratic decisions were after all in many respects made based on a question of size, and the friends of the fatherland were considerably fewer in number. As the chief inspector on the detective squad in charge of estimates summarized the matter, it concerned at the most a few hundred, “a few old queers from the Finnish Winter War plus their younger, skinhead comrades,” which was not “very much to hang on the Christmas tree if it’s democracy we’re talking about here.”
    So true, so true. And in a time of severely strained police resources the patriotically minded demonstrators were thus granted permission to gather at the pier below the Grand Hotel at 1800 hours, walk in formation about a hundred yards to the statue of Charles XII, where of course it was fine both to lay wreaths and to give speeches, provided that the event was over at 1900 hours at the latest and that the crowd then “dispersed in good order.” They could even sing the national anthem if they wanted to, despite the fact that, probably due to a simple omission, this activity had not been included in the application.
    On the other hand, they could forget about the torches. “You don’t really think we’re dim-witted,” as the same chief inspector remarked in