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explaining the rejection when one of the organizers phoned him to discuss that particular detail. And as far as flag-waving was concerned, it was assumed that this would be kept within reasonable bounds.
    On the other hand, because the participants in “the broad popular manifestation,” exactly as promised and according to a similar police department calculation, could be assumed to amount to several thousand, based on the same democratic principles the authorities had been considerably more generous. On the condition that the gathering really commenced at 1900 hours, and in no event earlier, it was fine for the demonstration to set off from Humlegården. And the demonstration could end at Sergels Torg if the crowd took Kungsgatan and Sveavägen instead of Birger Jarlsgatan and Hamngatan.
    All available police personnel were then called up, and to be on the safe side they were reinforced with a few hundred men from around the country. An “iron ring” was formed around Kungsträdgården, and the route of the counterdemonstrators was secured yard by yard and well supplied with mobile reserves behind the front lines. Literally everything was being done, it was being done by the book and in the best way, and already by eight p.m. complete chaos prevailed in Stockholm City: rock throwing, window breaking, battered cars … swollen lips, bloody noses, black eyes, broken arms, scraped knees, even a knife cut. There were howling sirens, flashing blue lights, yet at the command center they managed to keep a straight face when in the midst of it all an elderly woman phones and maintains that someone is murdering her neighbor.
    Between 2005 and 2020 hours, she calls the emergency number 90 000 a total of three times. She is quickly transferred to the police command center. Already during the first call she sounds very upset but nonetheless she starts by saying in good order what her name is and where she lives: “Rådmansgatan … up by Engelbrekt Church, you know.” After that she says, verbatim, according to the police department’s time-logged recording of the conversation, “You’ve got to come at once. Someone is murdering my neighbor. I think he’s dying.”
    The female radio dispatcher tries to calm her as best she can and asks her to stay on the phone while she dispatches the alarm on the radio, but while she tries to find someone to send out, the call is cut off. Probably because the woman who called hung up.
    The next call comes at 2014 hours, and the old woman’s voice sounds close to tears. “You’ve got to come. You’ve got to come,” and in the midst of the general muddle that prevails this call too is cut off and no available patrol car has yet been reached.
    The third and final call comes at 2020. Now the woman is screaming loudly into the telephone that “the murderers are knocking on my door,” and this is the situation when detective inspector Bo Jarnebring has mercy on his colleague, the radio dispatcher, who has started to sound more and more stressed, takes the microphone out of its holder on the instrument panel, breaks his radio silence, and responds to the call from central command.
    Inspector Bo Jarnebring was a few miles from the center of events. At eight p.m. on Thursday the thirtieth of November, he had been sitting for a couple of hours along with a female colleague in one of the detective squad’s most discreet cars, keeping an eye on a restaurant fifty yards farther down the street. The first hour they had been accompanied by an additional surveillance vehicle, but then the growing chaos down in City had forced the officers to respond to more pressing assignments instead.
    Jarnebring and his partner were sitting there because of a tip that had come in the day before. This was, incidentally, the most common reason for anyone’s spending time in this way, and if any one of the growing number of bureaucrats in police headquarters ever got the notion to produce statistics on this