by Leif Persson
Another one, Bäckström thought. He grunted between mouthfuls and went on reading.
‘Why don’t the police ever do anything about them?’ Knutsson said. ‘There should be legislation covering this sort of thing. Abuse like this is just as bad as . . . well . . . as what the victim went through.’
Yes, imagine. Why don’t the politicians do something? Stop the editors from publishing a load of crap, Bäckström thought as he continued to eat, still glancing through the papers.
They carried on like this for a good five minutes while Bäckström let his food stop him talking, and finished both his breakfast and his reading. The only one who hadn’t said a word was Rogersson. But then he usually didn’t say much at this time of day.
But at least there’s one of them who’s got the sense to keep quiet, Bäckström was thinking as the first representative of the fourth estate came over and introduced himself and wondered if he could ask a few questions. Then Rogersson finally opened his mouth.
‘No,’ he said, and together with the look in his eyes, this was clearly an exhaustive reply, because the man who had asked disappeared instantly.
Rogge’s good, Bäckström thought. He hadn’t even had to growl and bare his teeth, which was usually what he was best at.
‘There’s something else worrying me more,’ Bäckström said. ‘But we can deal with that when we’re alone.’
The first opportunity for that didn’t arise until they were all standing in the car park behind the closed gates of the police compound.
‘I presume you’ve all had time to read the evening papers,’ Bäckström said.
‘I took a look at breakfast television, and that wasn’t much better,’ Lewin said.
‘Not to mince words, this is just bloody vile,’ Thorén repeated. He was evidently learning to overcome his reluctance to use at least the milder oaths.
‘What worries me,’ Bäckström said, ‘is that everything we talked about yesterday evening is already in the papers. Never mind about the hypotheticals and all the fucking speculation, just concentrate on the facts in there. The only reasonable conclusion is that this ship is already leaking like a sieve.’ He nodded towards the police station that was about to become their base for the foreseeable future. ‘If we can’t sort that out, we’re going to end up far deeper in the shit than we deserve.’
None of the others contradicted him.
First Bäckström had met the county police commissioner and the officer from Växjö who was going to be the lead detective in the preliminary investigation, and thus his immediate superior. At least in theory, Bäckström thought. It always happened whenever he and his colleagues from National Crime went around the country trying to mop up the mess made by the local sheriffs.
‘In spite of the tragic circumstances, I’m still pleased and relieved that you and your colleagues are able to be here to assist us. As soon as I realized what had happened, I called HNC Nylander and asked for help . . . we’ve known each other since we studied together . . . so if I’ve cried wolf for no reason, I apologize. Thank you for coming, detective superintendent. Thank you very much.’
Bäckström nodded. What a fucking moron, he thought. Take two Valiums and go home to your little wife, and nice Uncle Bäckström will skin the wolf for you.
‘I can only agree unreservedly with my boss,’ Olsson concurred. ‘You and your colleagues are very welcome, and your arrival keenly anticipated.’
Another one, Bäckström thought. Where do they all come from?
‘Thanks,’ he said. Two little poofs sitting on the same branch twittering in tandem, he thought. Now how about trying to get a bit of work done?
Before they could get to work, the division of labour had to be agreed, as well as the formal set-up for the investigation.
‘We’ll be doing it all according to the book, as usual,’ Bäckström said. Because I presume you know how to read, he thought.
‘Unless you have any objections, Bäckström, I thought I might look after external communication . . . contact with the media and so on, plus personnel issues and other administrative details. There’ll be quite a few of us. Six of you, and about twenty from our side. We’ve brought in some people from Jönköping and Kalmar, so in total there’ll be something like thirty of us on the case. You don’t have any objections?’
‘None at all,’ Bäckström said. Not as long as they do as I say, he thought.
‘Then there’s one practical problem as well,’ Olsson went on, exchanging a glance with the commissioner. ‘Do you want me to take it, boss?’
‘Go ahead, Bengt,’ his boss said.
‘This is a terrible event, a real tragedy, and it’s the height of the holiday season and a lot of the officers we’ve called in are younger and perhaps not so experienced . . . So the commissioner and I decided yesterday that we should have a dedicated crisis therapist attached to the investigating team, so that anyone working on the case can have the opportunity to get professional advice at all times, to help them deal with the whole business . . . debriefing, basically,’ Olsson concluded, sighing deeply, as though he were already in need of this particular service.
Christ, this can’t be happening, Bäckström thought. But he managed not to say so out loud.
‘Do you have anyone in particular in mind?’ he asked, in a brave attempt to appear as sympathetic as the others in the room.
‘A very experienced female psychologist who’s worked for us before, who also runs the modules on debriefing on the police training course here in Växjö. She’s also worked for the council for a number of years. And she’s greatly admired as a speaker.’
‘What’s her name?’ Bäckström asked.
‘Lilian . . . Lilian Olsson, known as Lo,’ Olsson said.
‘No relation.’ No, you’re just bloody similar, Bäckström thought. And wouldn’t it be practical if all morons could have the same surname?
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘I presume that she won’t be part of the investigative team itself ?’ Just as well to get that clear from the start.
‘No, of course not,’ the county police commissioner said. ‘But she thought she might sit in on your preliminary meeting and introduce herself, so that everyone knows how they can get in touch with her and so on. We’ve organized a room for her here in the building.’
Well, that wasn’t so bad, Bäckström thought once the meeting with the police commissioner was finally over. All his colleagues were in the positions that really mattered. Lewin would be directly subordinate to him, checking all the material relating to the case as it came in. Separating the wheat from the chaff, picking out the important details. Making sure anything that looked promising was followed up, and relegating all the nonsense to the files at the far end of the shelves.
Rogersson would be in charge of interviews, while Knutsson and Thorén would get to stick together looking after internal and external surveillance. He had even managed to sort something out for little Svanström. Because of her great practical experience of the documentation involved in a murder investigation, she was going to be in charge of the local civilian employees, with responsibility for registering the paperwork that was already threatening to overwhelm the investigation.
And, most important of all: Bäckström was in charge. Not bad, he thought, as he walked into the large meeting room where they were going to be based from now on, where most of his colleagues were already sitting and waiting. Not bad at all, in spite of the fact that yet another madwoman was going to be poking her nose into his and his colleagues’ business even though she shouldn’t have been allowed to set foot inside the building. Not in my book, anyway, Bäckström thought.
It had begun the usual way, with each of them telling everyone else what their name was and what they did. Because there were thirty-four people in the room, this had taken a fair bit of time, but even Bäckström could put up with that seeing as he was going to get rid of two of them as soon as the introductions were finished.
The female press officer for Växjö Police, and the investigation’s own spiritual adviser. Practically enough, these two were the last to introduce themselves, and the press officer had been surprisingly concise and clear: she, and she alone, would manage all contact with the media, after consultation with those in charge of the investigation.
‘I was a police officer for almost twenty years before I took this job,’ she said. ‘I know most of the people in this room, and those of you who know me as well know better than to mess with me. After reading today’s evening papers, it appears that I must issue a sharp reminder to everyone here about the confidentiality that is essential in this case. If it’s slipped anyone’s mind, you’ve got some revising to do. But best of all would be to keep your mouths shut and only talk about the case with people working on it, or when there’s a reason to talk. Any questions?’
No one had any questions, so she simply nodded to them and walked out. She had a fair amount to do, after all. Bloody hell, Bäckström thought. I wonder what she was like when she was a police officer? Quite good-looking too. But at the top of the age range. Must be almost forty-five, poor old thing, thought Bäckström, who was himself ten years older.
Their very own crisis therapist, trained psychologist and psychotherapist Lilian Olsson, had, unsurprisingly, required rather more time. Seeing as she matched Bäckström’s expectations down to a T, a small, skinny blonde who must have seen at least fifty rainy autumns, he wasn’t the least bit surprised.
‘Well, my name’s Lilian Olsson . . . but everyone who knows me just calls me Lo, so I hope you will as well . . . Well, I’m a trained psychologist and psychotherapist . . . and a lot of you are probably asking yourselves what one of those does. As I said, I’m a psychologist . . . a therapist . . . I give lectures and run courses . . . I work as a consultant . . . and in my free time . . . voluntary work for a lot of different charities . . . the women’s helpline . . . the men’s helpline . . . the crime victims’ helpline . . . and I’m writing a book as well . . . and most of the people sitting here . . . it’s okay to feel upset . . . a lot of us seem sensitive, confused, badly affected by crises . . . whereas others take refuge in macho attitudes and denial, not saying anything and . . . some people abuse alcohol and sex . . . themselves and those around them . . . a lot of us have eating disorders . . . we’re all human . . . we have to affirm . . . we have to raise our consciousness . . . we have to take the step . . . free ourselves from all the heavy baggage that holds us back . . . we have to dare to show our weaknesses . . . dare to cry for help . . . dare to step outside all this . . . this is what it’s all about, really . . . the liberation process, to put it simply . . . it’s really no more than that . . . so really it’s all fairly simple and straightforward. And my door is always open to you,’ Lo concluded, letting her gentle smile embrace each and every person in the room.
Blah, blah, blah . . . blablah. Bäckström adjusted his position and snuck a glance at his watch. More than ten minutes of the investigation’s limited and valuable time had already gone up in smoke because yet another in the endless parade of morons needed almost quarter of an hour to let everyone know that she had a door and that it was wide open, he thought.
‘Well, then,’ he said as soon as she’d shut the door behind her. ‘Maybe the rest of us should think about getting something done. We’ve got a madman on the loose, and we need to get him locked up. The sooner the better.’ And ideally we’d boil him down to make glue, he thought but didn’t say. Every proper police officer knew that anyway. They didn’t need to have it spelled out under their noses, and during Ms Crisis Therapist’s performance he had already checked out a couple of the younger officers who, to judge by the looks on their faces, seemed very promising. Maybe there was even a future Bäckström in the room, Bäckström thought. However incredible that might seem.
9
‘OKAY, LET’S GET going,’ Bäckström said. He leaned forward over the head of the long table where he was sitting, resting on his elbows and jutting out his chin almost as far as if he were head of the entire National Crime Unit.
‘I thought we could start by outlining the current position,’ he went on. ‘What we know about the victim, and what she got up to. Everything we know so far.’
Their murder victim was called Linda Wallin. She was twenty years old and would have been celebrating her twenty-first birthday exactly one week after she was murdered. That autumn she had been due to start the third term of the police course in Växjö. She was 172 centimetres tall and weighed 52 kilos. Natural blonde, short hair, blue eyes. An attractive girl, if you happened to like the skinny type that does a lot of exercise, Bäckström thought as he looked at a photograph of her. It was an enlarged version of the picture on her ID card from police college, and showed an openly smiling Linda looking straight into the camera, absorbed in the moment and full of expectation about the life ahead of her. Like this summer, for instance, when she had been working as a civilian employee for the police in Växjö, where she seemed to spend most of her time behind the reception desk, a job she had handled with great efficiency. Not just good to look at, but good at her job, competent and appreciated by visitors and colleagues alike.
She was described by people who knew her as talented, charming, sociable, clever and keen on sport. Possibly not too surprising considering the circumstances, but for once there was documentary evidence to back it up. Top grades from school and police college in both practical and academic subjects. She was also the fastest female student in her year round the assault course, and the second-best shot in her school’s female football team. And she still appeared to have been socially and politically active, in the approved way. At school she had written a project on Crime, racism and xenophobia. Not your typical female murder victim, but probably the sort of girl who could take home anyone she liked, and it was probably no more complicated than that, Bäckström thought.
Like all children, Linda had two parents, and, like many children in her generation, those parents were divorced. In her case, for the past ten years. Linda was the only child of the marriage, and the parents had shared custody after the divorce. Just before they split up, the family had spent a couple of years living in the USA, because her father had started his own business in New York. When her parents’ relationship broke down, her mother had brought Linda back to Sweden with her.
The mother was forty-five years old and had spent the past fifteen years working as a teacher in a secondary school in Växjö. The father was twenty years older, a successful businessman who had started to take things a bit easier now. He had returned to his roots in Småland a few years after Linda and her mother, and now lived in a large manor house by Lake Rottnen, a short distance south-east of Växjö.
He had two sons from a previous marriage, approximately twice the age of the daughter he had just lost. According to their information, Linda had very little contact with her two older half-brothers. But she got on well with both parents even though the parents themselves didn’t appear to have met each other since the divorce. Sounds like the usual marital mess, Bäckström thought. It was high time for a question.
‘So she lived with her mother in the flat where she was murdered?’ he asked.
‘She seems to have lived with both parents. But recently mostly with her mother,’ replied the female officer from Växjö Police who was putting together the profile of the victim.
‘So what was she doing before she met her tragic fate?’ Bäckström said, sounding both friendly and interested. That’s what they should look like if they have to be in the police, he thought. Dyed blonde hair, a nicely pulled out top drawer, happy and friendly and in good shape for thirty. The only problem was that she was doubtless seeing some idiot country sheriff who might even be in that very room. Approach with extreme caution.
‘You’ve asked the right person,’ the policewoman said with a smile. ‘We were actually in the same place, the victim and I. We were at Grace, the nightclub at the Town Hotel, b
ecause there was a big club night there on Thursday evening. But Linda left before I did. I was there until they closed. You have to make the most of it when your husband and kids are safely out of the way in the country,’ she clarified, apparently not feeling the slightest bit embarrassed. Nor did anyone else either, judging by the suppressed smiles that suddenly spread through the team.
‘Really?’ Bäckström said, still sounding just as friendly and interested. Maybe this town is a bit desperate after all, he thought. Especially if he was going to make a move on someone in his own team. Like, for instance, officer Anna Sandberg, 33, of the Växjö Police. That was evidently her name, according to the list of team members he had on the table in front of him.
‘We’re making progress,’ Sandberg declared. ‘Gyllene Tider were playing on Öland yesterday, so there were considerably more people in town than usual, and I certainly wasn’t the only member of the force, or future member, at Grace . . . well . . . I think we’re starting to get a grip on who was there. If you’d like me to run through it briefly?’ She glanced questioningly at Bäckström, and was rewarded with a friendly and interested nod.
Go ahead, my dear, he thought. We can deal with the details when we’re on our own.
On Thursday, the day before she was murdered, Linda had spent the day working in reception in the police station. She had left the building with a friend who was also employed in a civilian capacity by the police just after five o’clock in the afternoon. They had spent some time looking in a couple of shops, then at half past six they went into a pizza restaurant in the centre of town, where they each had pizza, salad and mineral water. That was also where they decided to meet later that evening at the Town Hotel.
When they had finished their meal they split up and Linda walked home. On the way she made three phone calls on her mobile. The first of these, just after half past seven, was to her mother, who was at her summer cottage south of Växjö. A short, chatty conversation during which she told her mother about her plans for the evening.
