Another Time, Another Life

by Leif G. W. Persson

  “Track down and arrest the perpetrator,” said Holt. “Sounds like an excellent idea.”

  When Wiijnbladh finally left the medical examiner’s office in Solna he was worried, agitated, and confused. The first thing he did when he sat down at his desk was to call his old friend Dr. Engel to find out how he was doing.

  Under the circumstances, well, according to the patient himself. Wiijnbladh told him about the unfortunate meeting with his colleague Birgit—“simply Birgit”—and the serious concerns for the progress of the investigation he had subsequently felt. Unfortunately the more he thought about his concerns the more serious they looked, and it was even more gratifying to find that Milan completely shared both his perception and his apprehensions.

  “You are completely right,” Engel agreed. “She is not sane. She is crazy. She lives with other women. She is a fucking dyke. She is totally lacking in judgment. She is—”

  “If you want I can bring the documents over and see you,” Wiijnbladh interrupted cautiously.

  Which he did. Half an hour later he was sitting with Dr. Engel in his pleasant bachelor’s pad on Sveavägen, analyzing the particular circumstances of Bureau Director Eriksson’s woeful demise only twenty hours earlier. Just as Wiijnbladh had suspected all along, Engel shared his view of how it had happened down to the slightest detail. Translated into comprehensible Swedish, in any event, according to the doctor’s opinion—based on science, common sense, and proven experience—the victim was “a typical closet gay who picked up a big, strong and above all very tall, violence-prone bum boy who stabbed him from behind with one of his own kitchen knives.”

  In addition Engel had made a completely unique, independent contribution to the investigation that not even Wiijnbladh himself had thought of.

  “You said him Eriksson lived Rodmansgatan op by ze church?” Engel asked, squinting sharply at Wiijnbladh.

  “Exactly,” said Wiijnbladh. “At the corner at Karlavägen.”

  “Hommelgarden,” Engel said emphatically.

  “Hommelgarden?” What does he mean? thought Wiijnbladh.

  “Hommelgarden where all ze bum boys go pick up closet gays. Rodmansgatan is right in the vicinity.”

  “You mean Humlegården,” said Wiijnbladh, suddenly feeling the same familiar excitement he had felt so many times before when a breakthrough in an investigation was near at hand. Why didn’t we think of that? he thought.

  “An interesting thought you have there, Milan,” said Wiijnbladh carefully, because he was reluctant to relinquish anything unnecessarily.

  “It vas nothink,” said Dr. Engel modestly. “Dat’s my treat.” After his nourishing lunch in town, Bäckström spent the remainder of the afternoon in peace and quiet, going through the victim’s apartment on Rådmansgatan. It was an interesting experience in a number of ways, and productive in at least two. Bäckström was no expert on interior decorating, but he did understand that the furniture in Eriksson’s apartment did not get there by chance and that it must have cost a lot of money. Everything from the paintings on the walls and the draperies on the windows to the gleaming copper pans in his kitchen and the thick terry-cloth towels in his bathroom. It was hardly surprising considering how types like Eriksson usually were, thought Bäckström.

  Besides looking through shelves of books and neatly organized binders of papers in what was evidently his office, items that Blockhead or another one of his simpler colleagues could start digging through after the weekend, Bäckström contented himself with a quick sweep in his hunt for more interesting artistic works. Strangely enough he did not find the least trace of what he was looking for: no videocassettes in anonymous packaging with innocuous handwritten labels, no videocassettes whatsoever. No scrupulously concealed bundles of magazines with oiled-down butt princes in leather, chains, and shiny four-color printing. Nothing at all in that line, actually.

  Wonder where he hid them? thought Bäckström, for they must be somewhere. But because he found so many other things of interest he decided to let this matter rest until after the weekend.

  In the victim’s bathroom he made his first discovery. A rather refreshing detail that had evidently escaped that blind bat Wiijnbladh the evening before. The fact that Bäckström’s sensitive police nose had put him on the trail didn’t hurt either.

  At the bottom of the laundry basket was a dark blue terry-cloth hand towel with a yellow border, soiled with vomit. It was of the same color and pattern as the ones hanging on the hooks in the bathroom. What was strange was that it was farthest down in the large, woven laundry basket, despite the fact that the vomit appeared fresh. It was under a lot of other dirty laundry, including a number of similar hand towels, all brick red with wine red borders, probably put into the laundry basket when someone replaced them with a new, clean set in dark blue with yellow borders.

  So that’s how it is, thought Bäckström with delight. Someone’s been sick and tried to conceal that he’s been sick; as a weekend present for a blind technician this couldn’t be better.

  Bäckström fished the hand towel from the basket and set it to one side for the time being, in order to devote himself to more essential things, namely the corpse’s quite unbelievable stocks of alcoholic beverages. I’ll be damned if he doesn’t have liquor everywhere, Bäckström thought excitedly.

  In the clothes closet there were cases of alcohol. Some were unopened cases, others had only a single bottle missing, and still others had been nipped at longer and harder and most recently by Bäckström himself. Rows of bottles lined up on the floor: cognac, whiskey, gin, vodka, aquavit, as well as a lot of mysterious liqueurs and other shit that ladies and types like Eriksson pour down their throats.

  Likewise in the kitchen: a whole pantry and two overhead cupboards full of wine and dessert wine. A number of full wine racks on the kitchen counter and alongside the stove. In the living room was an antique peasant sideboard which, judging by the contents, evidently functioned as a liquor cabinet. On the desk in the office there was a large tray of hammered silver with several carafes filled with amber-colored drinks.

  Bäckström made a careful, very discreet culling of this unrestrained excess, but despite the fact that he was exceedingly moderate in what he took, he was forced to borrow an empty suitcase from the victim, as well as a pile of his clean hand towels, so that the contents wouldn’t rattle too terribly much when he drove home.

  On his way out he remembered the soiled hand towel and went into the kitchen and rooted among the bags under the sink to find something to put it in. What the hell do you do with soiled hand towels? thought Bäckström. Should they be stored in paper or plastic? Whatever, he thought. Eriksson appeared to have paper bags, and why should he have to do Wiijnbladh’s job? He crumpled the hand towel into a paper bag and called for a taxi on the victim’s phone. What else would you expect? This was a murder investigation, and he had signed for a whole book of taxi vouchers just in case.

  On the way home he stopped at the tech squad and asked the taxi to wait on the street while he left the hand towel on Wiijnbladh’s desk along with a collegial, friendly note and wishes for a nice weekend. Then he could finally call it a day and go home.

  It was nice to be able to avoid thinking about the liquor store on a Friday, thought Bäckström.

  Paperwork was not Jarnebring’s strong suit, and if he had the choice he would rather use his hands for something besides thumbing through binders. At the same time he was not one to desert a colleague either, so it was actually on Holt’s own suggestion that he decided to swing by the homicide squad and check out the situation, see if anything interesting had come in. Nothing had.

  Besides, homicide was basically deserted. The only one there was a young colleague from the uniformed police who was sitting by the tip phone, reading a tabloid and looking rather down in the mouth.

  “Has anything happened?” Jarnebring asked.

  Not much, according to the tip taker. A few bag ladies and drunks had called, but he had kept
it short and was able to get rid of them pretty quickly, jotting down the names of anyone who wanted to provide them. Two individuals had also called and reported that they had known the victim. He had given their names to Gunsan for further processing. He’d be going home soon. His supervisor, Detective Inspector Alm, had promised him he could, when Alm had disappeared on urgent duties in town a few hours earlier.

  “He said the duty desk would take over the tip line starting at six o’clock,” he explained to Jarnebring.

  “Go home and sleep, kid,” said Jarnebring, nodding. “So that you’re wide awake on Monday.”

  Then Jarnebring talked with Gunsan, who would soon be done with the entries on the neighbors that had come in after the additional door-to-door inquiries. It had gone unexpectedly well, considering that it was Friday. That was because almost everyone who lived in the victim’s building was conscientious middle-aged or elderly.

  The most interesting thing that had happened was that two individuals had called to say they knew the victim.

  “Fine folks on the go,” said Gunsan, smiling. “One of them is even a B-list celebrity you may have seen on TV.”

  Jarnebring did not have the faintest idea who either of them were, but he took all of Gunsan’s papers with him anyway to read through in peace down in his own office.

  “Isn’t it time for you to go home too?” said Jarnebring, smiling at his female civilian colleague. She was the only real police officer in this place since Danielsson lowered the flag, thought Jarnebring. Why hadn’t she ever applied to the police academy?

  “Pretty soon,” said Gunsan, smiling. “How about you, old man? Isn’t it high time you went back to your little fiancée and looked after her?”

  “It’ll work out,” said Jarnebring, and then he went down to his own office and his new colleague. Gunsan is actually an extremely attractive woman, he thought as he went through the door to the detective squad. It’s a shame she’s not twenty years younger, he thought. If nothing else this showed how prejudiced he was, as Gunsan was only a little older than he was.

  “Okay,” Jarnebring said energetically as he poured yet another mug of black coffee. “If we were to summarize the day, what do we know about our victim? So far?”

  He didn’t have a large social circle, or so it seemed. At the same time it was large enough to include—in all likelihood—at least one person who had murdered him.

  He was unpopular with his coworkers, to say the least. You could read that between the lines of what his boss and closest coworkers had said. It came through pretty clearly in the doorman’s story. At the same time there was nothing concrete to go on.

  “He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy you’d want to share an office with,” Jarnebring summarized.

  “It would be nice to have something more concrete,” said Holt. “An example, I mean. The man can’t just have been born bad.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Jarnebring.

  • • •

  Holt had been struck by one thing as she was plowing through all the papers. Considering his rather modest salary, for it was no more remarkable than her own or Jarnebring’s after the customary police overtime, he seemed to have astonishingly good finances. According to income statements for the last five years, which was what she had produced up to now, he had capital income that widely exceeded his income from his job. He also owned a condominium worth at least a million Swedish kronor, and according to the tax form he had a fortune of the same magnitude in stocks, bonds, and regular bank balances.

  “You saw his apartment,” said Holt. “Strange as it may sound, I do actually know a bit about art and antiques, and I’d guess there’s another million in the contents of his apartment. Which would mean he must have been worth three or four million.”

  “Maybe an inheritance,” Jarnebring suggested. “Didn’t he have an old mother who kicked the bucket in the mid-eighties? Art and antiques, isn’t that the sort of thing you inherit if you’ve chosen the right parents?”

  Holt just shook her head. The mother had died in 1984, and according to the estate inventory that the excellent Gunsan had already produced, the old woman had left behind four thousand kronor.

  “His old man,” Jarnebring suggested.

  “Father unknown,” Holt shot back. “Eriksson seems to have grown up with a single mother and a completely absent father. Poor thing. Think how that must have been.” For some reason she sounded almost ready to burst into laughter.

  Shit, thought Jarnebring. He hated cases like these. The victim at home with a knife in the back and someone he or she voluntarily let in usually involved drunkenness, agitated emotions in general, or jealousy and ordinary insanity in particular, and regardless of whether the latter was temporary or permanent, he and his colleagues would seldom need more than a week to put the pieces together and land the perpetrator in lockdown. But when money was involved it was almost never that easy, and if there was anything he wished for it was that Eriksson’s inexplicable good finances had nothing to do with his death.

  “It’ll work out,” said Jarnebring, smiling and nodding with more conviction than he really felt, as he rocked back in his chair.

  “On Monday,” said Holt, and she smiled too.

  “On Monday we’ll turn his apartment inside out,” said Jarnebring, “and then I’m willing to bet a month’s pay we find our perpetrator too. When we’ve got the telephone lists and all the entries and have gone through all his notebooks and scraps of paper and photo albums and old letters and God knows what.”

  “So isn’t it time to step on the gas now?” Holt was still smiling, but the question was serious enough. “You’ve heard about the twenty-four-hour rule and all that, haven’t you?”

  “You watch too many of those American detective shows,” said Jarnebring. “Let me say this,” he continued. “Our colleague Bäckström is definitely no bright and shining light, but he does have a certain instinct for self-preservation. Besides, his boss has been around awhile and doesn’t usually pull his punches when things get too far off course.”

  “Jack Daniels,” said Holt, smiling.

  “Yes, sure,” said Jarnebring. “I understand what you mean. But assume we’d found Eriksson outside his apartment. Knifed in the entryway or out on the street. Then we would have had an all-out effort, and I can assure you it wouldn’t have been colleague Bäckström behind the wheel.”

  “The murder of Eriksson isn’t so difficult that it can’t wait until after the weekend?” Holt looked at him inquisitively.

  “I really don’t think so,” said Jarnebring. “At least it doesn’t feel that way. Unplanned, not premeditated. A perpetrator who must have made lots of mistakes, and who knew the victim besides. We almost always nail that. And if we have really good luck then the culprit comes to us on his own when his conscience gets to him.” Although it’s a bitch that Lars Martin isn’t here, he thought with irritation. Then we could have probably taken the weekend off because the perpetrator would already be sitting in jail crying his eyes out. Someone other than Jarnebring usually took care of that part.

  “Sounds good,” said Holt. “Then I can see my guy.”

  “What does he do?” said Jarnebring, smiling despite the fact that he had a rather hard to place and not altogether pleasant feeling about what she had said.

  “The handsomest guy in town,” said Holt. “Niklas Holt, six years old. Generally known as Nicke.”

  “Please send him my greetings,” said Jarnebring, and then they called it a day. And it was just in time if he was to have any hope of making peace with his fiancée before darkness settled far too deeply over the city.

  6

  Friday evening, December 1, 1989

  When Wiijnbladh and his good friend the doctor finished their discussion, he borrowed the telephone and called home to find out if he should get anything for dinner on his way back. But his wife had evidently already gone out or else she wasn’t bothering to answer. Instead he drove past the office one more
time, and on his desk he found a vomit-soiled, foul-smelling hand towel, bunched together and shoved into a paper bag from Lisa Elmquist in the Östermalm market, as well as a shameless letter from Bäckström. He remained at the office until far into the night.

  First he had to complete a new form for the seizure of the hand towel. Then, after an initial preliminary inspection, he decided to conduct various chemical investigations of the same hand towel, and this too had required a tribute of forms. Last and finally he made sure the hand towel was packed correctly before it was sent on to the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping.

  Then he made coffee and had the sandwich he had intended to have for lunch but that had remained sitting back at the office because he had simply forgotten about it. True, he was not particularly hungry now, but still he had paid for it. And when he finally mustered enough strength to get on the subway and go home, the usual thoughts started grinding in his already tired head.

  I have to do something, thought Wiijnbladh. I can’t live like this. It can’t go on. He was thinking about his wife who had openly cheated on him and thereby robbed him of any possibility of a respectable life.

  • • •

  When Jarnebring arrived home he called his fiancée to mediate peace, but the conversation did not start particularly well. Icy voice on the other end.

  “Hi honey,” said Jarnebring. “Your old man is home again after a long day’s struggle against crime. Soon to be a full day’s invigorating murder investigation.”

  “So now my old man is hungry and wants me to cook dinner,” she answered, and the way she said it was enough for frost to form on the receiver he was holding against his ear.

  “Are you nuts, honey?” said Jarnebring, who had planned the whole thing with care. “Just start powdering your little nose, I’ll be there in half an hour. I have a table reserved at your favorite dive, three courses, candles, and live music. I’ve arranged a tango orchestra, and I’m sure they’re already on their way.”