Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [118]
The media and the public assumed for the most part that the main function of the Constitutional Protection Unit was to keep track of Nazis and militant vegans. These types of group did attract interest from the Constitutional Protection Unit, but a great many institutions and phenomena also fell within the bailiwick of the division. If the king, for example, or the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, took it into their hearts that parliamentary government had outlived its role and that parliament should be replaced by a dictatorship, the king or the commander-in-chief would very swiftly come under observation by the Constitutional Protection Unit. Or, to give a second example, if a group of police officers decided to stretch the laws so that an individual’s constitutionally guaranteed rights were infringed, then it was the Constitutional Protection Unit’s duty to react. In such serious instances the investigation was also assumed to come under the authority of the Prosecutor General.
The problem, of course, was that the Constitutional Protection Unit had only an analytical and investigative function, and no operations arm. That was why it was generally either the regular police or other divisions within the Security Police who stepped in when Nazis were to be arrested.
In Edklinth’s opinion, this state of affairs was deeply unsatisfactory. Almost every democratic country maintains an independent constitutional court in some form, with a mandate to see to it that authorities do not ride roughshod over the democratic process. In Sweden the task is that of the Prosecutor General or the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who, however, can only pursue recommendations forwarded to them by other departments. If Sweden had a constitutional court, then Salander’s lawyer could instantly charge the Swedish government with violation of her constitutional rights. The court could then order all the documents on the table and summon anyone it pleased, including the Prime Minister, to testify until the matter was resolved. As the situation now stood, the most her lawyer could do was to file a report with the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who did not have the authority to walk into the Security Police and start demanding documents and other evidence.
Over the years Edklinth had been an impassioned advocate of the establishment of a constitutional court. He could then more easily have acted upon the information he had been given by Armansky: by initiating a police report and handing the documentation to the court. With that an inexorable process would have been set in motion.
As things stood, Edklinth lacked the legal authority to initiate a preliminary investigation.
He took a pinch of snuff.
If Armansky’s information was correct, Security Police officers in senior positions had looked the other way when a series of savage assaults were committed against a Swedish woman. Then her daughter was locked up in a mental hospital on the basis of a fabricated diagnosis. Finally, they had given carte blanche to a former Soviet intelligence officer to commit crimes involving weapons, narcotics and sex trafficking. Edklinth grimaced. He did not even want to begin to estimate how many counts of illegal activity must have taken place. Not to mention the burglary at Blomkvist’s apartment, the attack on Salander’s lawyer – which Edklinth could not bring himself to accept was a part of the same pattern – and possible involvement in the murder of Zalachenko.
It was a mess, and Edklinth did not welcome the necessity to get mixed up in it. Unfortunately, from