Another Time, Another Life

by Leif G. W. Persson

  “Did he throw up in the bathroom?” said Jarnebring, looking questioningly at Wiijnbladh.

  “We have secured a vomit-soiled hand towel,” said Wiijnbladh evasively. “It has gone to the lab for analysis.”

  “Depends on what you mean by ‘we,’ ” said Bäckström.

  “I see,” said Jarnebring. There was actually a lot in what the fat little toad was saying, he thought. Eriksson did not exactly seem to have been a normal man, not like Jarnebring and the other guys on the squad. “You’re the boss,” said Jarnebring. “How do you want us to proceed?”

  “Let’s do this,” said Bäckström, leaning on his elbows, balancing forward on his seat. For a moment he almost looked like a bulldog, thought Jarnebring.

  “I think we’ll hold off on his social circle,” said Bäckström. “We have to try to get more meat on the bones first. It’s meaningless to go after types like this if you don’t have anything substantial to beat them up with.”

  Couldn’t have said it better myself, thought Jarnebring.

  “You guys from tech done with the crime scene?” asked Bäckström, looking inquisitively at Wiijnbladh.

  “Yes,” said Wiijnbladh. “We’ve been done since Saturday.” What is he looking for now? he thought.

  “You seem to be a whiz at finding things, Jarnebring,” said Bäckström. “Take Holt with you and turn his pad inside out. Who was Eriksson, who did he get together with, and which of them stabbed him to death? It’s high time we find that out, and since we haven’t gotten anything for free, it’s probably best to start at his home.”

  “Sure,” said Jarnebring. Just what I would have done myself, he thought.

  “And in the meantime, we should see if the rest of us can’t produce something more about his so-called orientation.” Bäckström grinned and wiggled his fat little finger meaningfully. “You can bet your sweet ass that if we still had our old fag files we would have cleared this up already.”

  “Talk with the parliamentary ombudsman,” said Jarnebring. “He’s the one who told us to toss them.”

  “I should damn well think so,” said Bäckström. “Typical gay lawyers. If it had been me I’d have carried them down to the basement without letting on. Fifty years of police work gets sent to the dump because the fairies don’t want us to keep tabs on them.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir,” said Jarnebring abruptly, making a move to get up. “If that’s everything … who has the keys to Eriksson’s pad?”

  “You must have them, Wiijnbladh,” said Bäckström innocently. Which is why I gave them to you before the meeting, he thought with delight. So that you could give them to Jarnebring. He was already done with what he had to do, at Eriksson’s home at least.

  “Okay then,” said Jarnebring, taking the extended keys from Wiijnbladh, nodding curtly, and leaving the room along with his new colleague Holt.

  “Have you ever done a proper house search?” Jarnebring asked when he and Holt were on the scene in the hall of Eriksson’s apartment.

  Holt shook her head.

  “I’ve been around and helped out a few times but …” She shook her head again. “Nothing like this, no.”

  “The whole thing is simple as hell,” said Jarnebring, “and there’s only one important part. It’s going to take time, because if we don’t do this properly we might just as well forget about it. When you and I leave here, there shouldn’t be a dead louse we haven’t found and checked.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Holt, smiling.

  “I’ll show you what I mean,” said Jarnebring. “Come here.” He went ahead of her to the door to the living room and pointed at the draperies over the two windows facing the street.

  “You see those curtains?” said Jarnebring.

  “Yes,” said Holt, nodding.

  “Any idiot can peek behind the curtains and feel with his hand that there isn’t something stuffed into a fold. We’ll do that too, so don’t misunderstand me … but in contrast to all the lazy asses, of which there are thirteen to the dozen, you and I are also going to unscrew the knobs on the curtain rods and look to see if anything was stuffed inside. They’re hollow. See what I mean?”

  “I see what you mean,” said Holt, nodding.

  “Everything we need is in my bag,” said Jarnebring, tilting his head toward the large gym bag he had set down on the floor. “Drawings of the apartment with all the measurements indicated, flashlight, mirrors, folding rule so we can measure that the space we’re checking matches the drawing, carpet hammer for tapping out hollow places, jigsaw, regular saw, and everything else we need to peek behind something. Feel free to tear off wallpaper if you think we need to, but make sure you have plastic gloves on, and if you find anything interesting, yell at me first before we even poke at it. Everything of interest we gather up on the table in the living room, write down where it comes from, take it along to the office, and later on we’ll go through it in peace and quiet. Always allow for a margin of error. Better to be safe than sorry and have left anything behind. Report forms and bags and sacks are in the bag. Any questions?” Jarnebring looked at his new colleague and nodded.

  “Strategy,” said Holt. “Where do I start?”

  “I’ll start here at the outside door,” said Jarnebring. “I’ll take the coat closet, guest toilet, the hall, and the living room, in that order. You start in the bedroom, then take the bathroom, and when you’re done there it’ll be time for coffee. Then we take the kitchen and finally the office. I’m thinking that’s our best bet because he seems to have his papers in there.”

  “And everything that can tell us something about Eriksson, who he was, how he lived, and who he associated with is of interest. Notes, notebooks, loose slips of paper, diaries, old calendars, photo albums, videos, books in his bookcase, the color of his socks,” Holt summarized.

  “That’s not enough, Holt,” said Jarnebring, trying out his wolf grin. “When we leave here we’ll know how he thought. So help me God, we will have peeked into his head.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Holt, and then they went to work.

  Jarnebring and Holt had a late lunch at a nearby snack bar. Jarnebring was done with the coat closet, the hall, the guest toilet, and the living room minus the large bookcase, and he hadn’t even found a dead louse. Why would he have? The order was pedantic, everything was in its right place, and in the victim’s clothing in the coat closet he had found only an invitation to a gallery opening and a three-week-old, neatly folded receipt from the book department at NK.

  Cheerless type, thought Jarnebring and sighed.

  Holt was through with the victim’s bedroom and bathroom, and had gone through an antique dresser and his closets. Neat, clean, tidy and well organized, expensive and tasteful trousers, shirts, jackets, and suits. Underwear, undershirts, socks, sweaters, ties, suspenders, belts, cuff links, three different watches, and a gold money clip which, in light of everything else, was almost indecent. All of the best quality and arranged in a way that would have made an old submarine officer feel hope and enthusiasm.

  Holt had made the find of the day. At the very back of the drawer in Eriksson’s nightstand was a neatly folded handwritten paper containing five hundred-krona bills, attached with a paper clip, and with a few notes made in a slightly crabbed but legible handwriting revealing that the person who kept things clean at Eriksson’s was probably named Jolanta, that she apparently cleaned for him under the table one day a week, that she was due twenty hours’ pay for the month of November, and that her compensation of twenty-five kronor an hour would hardly make her rich. She had a telephone and could probably be identified: “Give directions regarding Christmas cleaning,” Eriksson’s handwriting plus a phone number.

  Jolanta, thought Holt. The neighbor Mrs. Westergren had not said a peep about her. Because she was a cleaning lady and didn’t, in Mrs. Westergren’s world, count as one of those Holt and Jarnebring had asked about? Because Mrs. Westergren wasn’t aware of her existence? But
why hadn’t Jolanta herself made contact? Judging by the notes, Friday was her regular cleaning day. Had the police scared her away when she came to work? Or was there some other, much more tangible reason that she hadn’t come forward?

  “Check this out,” said Holt, handing the paper to Jarnebring, who was trying to screw loose the mirror in the guest toilet.

  “Good, Holt,” said Jarnebring. “Call Gunsan and ask her to start with the searches, then we’ll break for lunch. I’m about to starve to death.”

  Five hours times two and they had already found a Polish woman who cleaned under the table. We’ll take care of this, thought Holt.

  • • •

  “Tell me about these ‘fag files,’ ” said Holt, pushing aside her coffee cup and looking expectantly at Jarnebring.

  “That was before my time,” said Jarnebring evasively as he shook his head. “It’s an old story.”

  “Tell me anyway,” said Holt.

  Okay, thought Jarnebring, and then he did.

  A very long time ago, in the forties or fifties—the history was vague—someone in the big police headquarters on Kungsholmen had set up a registry of male prostitutes and their customers. The reason was that the former sometimes robbed and assaulted the latter, and every year there would usually be at least one murder with such a pedigree.

  “Seems to have been a popular sport among the hooligans at that time—knocking off gays,” Jarnebring said, taking a gulp of coffee and continuing.

  The registry had consisted of a growing number of boxes with file cards. At first it had been kept in the crime department in the old police headquarters on Kungsholmen, then it had grown legs and wandered over to the homicide squad before finally ending up in the early seventies at the office of the central detective squad, at which stage it contained at least a few thousand names.

  “A few thousand names,” said Holt. “Of individuals who amused themselves by knocking off gays?”

  Unfortunately it wasn’t as simple as that. Over the years maintenance of the registry had become a bit iffy, and toward the end, before the parliamentary ombudsman suddenly popped up like a bad omen, it mostly contained names of victims as well as any homosexual men who for some reason had attracted interest from at least one member of the force.

  “Maybe they just wanted to do some preventive work,” said Holt with salt in her voice.

  “It’s said that in the early fifties some playful colleague put Gustav V in the fag files … the old king, you know. It was in connection with those business deals the newspapers were rooting around in at the time. There was a real ruckus so of course they took him out again. But it’s clear … I understand that Bäckström is grieving.”

  “Why?” asked Holt.

  “He worked in the burglary squad before he wound up in homicide, and he was one of the most diligent suppliers of names to the old fag files. He must feel his work was in vain … Speaking of work by the way,” said Jarnebring, looking at his watch.

  “What do we do about Eriksson’s cleaning woman?” said Holt as she got up, finished her coffee, and put on her jacket in a single coordinated motion.

  “First we call Gunsan and see if she has produced anything. Then we take the rest of his apartment tomorrow. If there was any justice in this world, little Jolanta would already have been questioned.”

  Gunsan had produced the address of the apartment that the telephone number belonged to. It was in Bredäng in the southern suburbs, and the tenant was a Polish woman who had come to Sweden about ten years earlier at the age of thirty and become a Swedish citizen just a few years ago. Her first name was Jolanta and as for her surname, it would not have made Danielsson happy in any event.

  “Okay,” said Jarnebring. “Now we’ll go and question her.”

  “I have to make a call first,” said Holt, looking at the clock. It’s almost five. What do I do now? she thought.

  “In that case, I have a different proposal,” said Jarnebring. “You go and fetch Nicke at day care and I’ll go and question Eriksson’s cleaning woman. Then I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  “Are you sure?” said Holt, looking at him.

  “Quite sure,” said Jarnebring.

  “Watch out you don’t upset my worldview too much, Bo,” said Holt. “But thanks in any case.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Jarnebring. I’ve had three kids myself and had to pick them up at day care all the time, he thought, which proved that his memory treated him with a large measure of indulgence. Bo, he thought. She actually used my first name.

  First he had checked that she was at home. This he had done in the usual way, without needing to look into the barrel of a shotgun either.

  Good-looking, smart, vigilant, he thought as she opened the door after the second ring.

  “My name is Bo Jarnebring,” said Jarnebring, holding up his police ID. “I’m a police officer and would like to talk with you about an individual for whom you work.”

  Jolanta smiled weakly, shrugged her shoulders, and held open the door.

  “Police,” she said. “I never would have thought. Would you like some coffee?”

  The rest had been like a dance.

  When and how had she come into contact with Eriksson?

  Two years ago through an acquaintance of Eriksson’s she was already cleaning for. He worked at TV. What his name was didn’t matter, did it?

  “I know what his name is,” said Jarnebring, smiling his wolf smile. Welander, he thought.

  “Let’s do this,” Jolanta suggested. “If you don’t tell him that you’ve talked with me, I won’t call him and tell him that I’ve talked with you.”

  “Just what I was going to suggest,” said Jarnebring. “Tell me about Eriksson instead. What was he like?”

  Apart from the fact that he had been her stingiest and most finicky client there wasn’t much she could say, for the simple reason that she almost never saw him. Their contacts had been managed primarily through the little messages that he posted in the drawer of his nightstand. On a few occasions he had been at home when she came to clean. A few times he had phoned her at home because he wanted to change the time when she would come. Any other practical matters he usually addressed to her answering machine, for she was seldom home.

  “Why didn’t you quit if he was so stingy?” Jarnebring asked.

  Because she had Friday morning free anyway, and an old, considerably better client later in the day who lived right in Eriksson’s vicinity. She cleaned his office, and he didn’t know Eriksson, and what his name was didn’t really matter.

  • • •

  “He never tried to make a pass at you?” Jarnebring asked with an innocent expression.

  Not Eriksson. Never Eriksson, but of course it had happened and it happened all the time with men other than Eriksson.

  “Why didn’t he?” Jarnebring asked. “I would have.”

  “He wasn’t interested,” said Jolanta, giving Jarnebring an appraising look. “He wasn’t interested in women. He wasn’t like you or other men.”

  You don’t say, thought Jarnebring, but before he had time to ask the next question she anticipated him.

  “And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because he was interested in men instead of women.”

  “What was he interested in then?” asked Jarnebring.

  “Himself,” said Jolanta. “Power, money, bragging about how well he lived. Not sex. He simply wasn’t interested in sex. Some men are like that, you know.”

  Actually I didn’t, thought Jarnebring. Not at Eriksson’s age in any case.

  “I believe you,” said Jarnebring. Now it gets sensitive, he thought.

  “How did you find out that Eriksson was murdered?” asked Jarnebring.

  “You want to know what I was doing on Thursday evening,” said Jolanta.

  “Yes,” said Jarnebring. “What were you doing on Thursday evening?” Here we go, he thought.

  “That’s a little sensitive,” said Jolanta. “I have an alibi,�
�� she continued, “but it’s a somewhat sensitive alibi.”

  Sigh, thought Jarnebring.

  “What is his name and what does he do?” said Jarnebring.

  “He’s someone like you,” said Jolanta. “Besides, he’s married.”

  Jolanta’s alibi was a police officer who worked with the uniformed police, and where didn’t matter. About Jarnebring’s age, married to another police officer, two teenage children. No intention of getting a divorce. They had met three years earlier when Jolanta reported her car stolen. On Thursday the thirtieth of November, when Eriksson was murdered, they had been in Jolanta’s bed in the bedroom next to her living room, where she and Jarnebring were sitting drinking coffee. Before that they’d had dinner in her kitchen. When he left her it was already past midnight. At seven-thirty on Friday morning—she was about to go into town to clean at Eriksson’s—he had called her and told her. That’s why she hadn’t gone there that day.

  “Though I suspected you’d show up,” said Jolanta, smiling. “Would you like more coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” said Jarnebring, holding out his cup. “How did he get out of the general call-up?” Jarnebring asked. “I thought there wasn’t a single uniformed policeman who wasn’t in service last Thursday.”

  “He didn’t have to work,” said Jolanta. “He had some kind of overtime cap. But his wife had to work.”

  She smiled weakly, shaking her head.

  “What’s his name?” asked Jarnebring.

  “I would rather not say, as you understand,” said Jolanta.

  “I understand,” said Jarnebring. “But unfortunately I need to know who he is. And if it’s as you say, I’ll do what I can so that this stays between you and me and him.”

  “Okay,” said Jolanta. “I understand. Let me think.”

  “Another thing while you’re thinking,” said Jarnebring. “Do you have any idea who might have murdered Eriksson?”

  Not a clue apart from the fact that she hadn’t done it. She had never met anyone that Eriksson knew, apart from the man at the TV company she already cleaned for. She didn’t even know if Eriksson knew anyone else, but she had a definite idea that he didn’t know very many people. So she had no idea who might have done it. Not even who might conceivably have done it if it necessarily had to be someone who knew Eriksson. How could they be so sure, incidentally, that he hadn’t been robbed and murdered by someone completely unknown? Such things happened all the time in her old homeland.