by Leif Persson
‘I see what you’re thinking,’ Knutsson said. ‘You mean . . .’
‘I can’t imagine that you do,’ Bäckström interrupted, having already built up a head of steam. ‘I’m thinking about the tiniest scrap of paper on the road outside the crime scene, rubbish bins, skips, gutters and drains, nooks and crannies, stairwells, hiding places, other flats, attics and cellars, scrubland, and all the perfectly ordinary spaces in between. I’m thinking about peculiar neighbours, troublemakers in general, peeping toms, flashers, sex maniacs and psychiatric cases. And I’m thinking about all the ordinary citizens who might just have suffered a short-circuit in their little brains because it’s so fucking hot and it doesn’t seem to want to end.’
‘In that case, we haven’t found anything,’ Thorén said.
‘But we’re still looking,’ Knutsson said. ‘I mean, what you said in the meeting was clear enough. So I think everyone’s doing their best.’
‘But we haven’t found anything yet?’ Bäckström gave them a questioning look.
‘No,’ Thorén said.
‘No,’ Knutsson agreed, shaking his round head in confirmation. ‘Doesn’t it seem a bit odd that a nutter can run away from the crime scene without his underwear, jumping out of a window just because the paper comes through the letterbox, not to mention all the semen and blood traces and fingerprints he seems to have left behind him, only to disappear into thin air the moment he gets outside?’
‘It’s certainly a bit strange,’ Thorén said.
‘That struck me as well,’ Knutsson concurred. ‘But I don’t suppose his underwear was all he was wearing when he attacked the victim. Only joking,’ he added quickly when he saw the look on Bäckström’s face.
‘You never know,’ Bäckström said. ‘You never know. Considering what he evidently spent a couple of hours doing to her, and what he did after he’d killed her. Because he seems to have taken a shower and done a bit of thinking.’
‘He seems more than crazy enough, I agree with you there,’ Thorén said.
‘But apparently not crazy enough to leave any evidence outside the crime scene?’ Bäckström said.
‘Maybe he felt better once he’d relieved the pressure,’ Knutsson said with a chuckle.
‘I find that hard to imagine,’ Bäckström said. ‘If I see something that looks like a glow-worm, and moves like a glow-worm, and gives off a mysterious glow, what am I looking at?’
‘A glow-worm?’ Thorén said, looking at his boss quizzically.
‘Excellent, lad,’ Bäckström said. ‘Have you ever thought about joining the police?’
Before they went back to the hotel that evening, Bäckström and Rogersson took a detour via the crime scene to have a look at the flat. A number of representatives from the media were naturally in position behind the extensive cordons, and to judge from the number of telephoto lenses in evidence they were clearly prepared for all eventualities. Bäckström had sat behind the wheel without changing his expression at all even though one of the photographers was practically up on the bonnet before he backed off. At last they moved through the cordon and Bäckström parked the car immediately in front of the building to avoid having to walk too far and have his picture taken unnecessarily.
‘Fucking vultures,’ Rogersson said as soon as they entered the building. ‘I’m surprised they haven’t set up a fast-food kiosk as well.’
‘It’s probably too hot,’ Bäckström chuckled. Mind you, an ice-cream would have been nice, he thought.
The two forensics technicians there were taking a break when they arrived, but when both Bäckström and Rogersson declined a cup of coffee they quickly put theirs down and offered to show them round.
‘Do you want the large or the small tour?’ the younger one asked.
‘The small one will do,’ Bäckström said, pulling on plastic gloves and, with some difficulty, protective plastic covers over his shoes, using the wall to stop himself from losing his balance.
‘Four rooms, kitchen, bathroom, a separate lavatory, plus the hall we’re standing in. In total eighty-two square metres.’ The older of the two technicians gestured as he spoke. ‘The living room’s straight ahead. Approximately twenty-five square metres, in the centre of the flat. Facing the road we’ve got the kitchen and an adjoining room that the victim’s mother evidently uses as a workroom. By the way, you’ve had the plan of the flat, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Bäckström said. ‘We’ve seen it, but it isn’t the same as putting your ear to the rails yourself.’
‘Quite. I couldn’t agree more,’ the older one said with a smile. ‘At the back of the building we’ve got the bedroom where she was found, leading off the living room. Alongside the bedroom is a fairly large bathroom with a bath, shower cubicle, toilet and bidet, reached through a door in the bedroom. On the other side of the bathroom is a smaller room that the mother seems to have used as a sort of junk room or storage space. There’s an ironing-board and a couple of big laundry baskets in there as well, among all the other clutter, and you reach that through this corridor,’ he said, pointing with his arm. ‘The passage also contains a number of built-in cupboards.’
Neither too flash nor too poor, Bäckström thought as he walked round the flat with the others. Neither tidy nor particularly messy when you considered what the forensics team had already been up to. It looked just as he imagined the home of a middle-aged, middle-class female teacher would look like. A single woman with a twenty-year-old daughter who seemed to have stayed there sometimes.
A living room with a large sofa, with three removable cushions, the middle one of which was missing. In front of it was a coffee table and two armchairs. A small dresser stood against the wall beside the sofa, and because the flat was occupied by a woman Bäckström felt no great desire to inspect what was hidden behind the cupboard doors. Probably just glasses and napkins and other crap, he thought.
Bookshelves along the walls with a fair number of books, which was perfectly natural considering the woman’s profession, and of course a television, fairly large, strategically positioned in relation to the sofa. A small chandelier hanging from the ceiling, a couple of floor lamps, and a total of three rugs on the floor, some Oriental design that Bäckström didn’t recognize. A stereo with two separate loudspeakers positioned at chest height on the middle bookshelf. Pictures on the walls, all of them landscapes or portraits.
‘We’ve taken the middle cushion from the sofa away,’ the younger technician said. ‘And the now renowned pair of underpants, which I dare say we will shortly be able to read all about in our beloved evening papers, not merely referred to as a typical item of male clothing, were found crumpled up on the floor under the sofa.’
You’ve got a fine way with words, Bäckström thought. I wonder if you’ve been on a course? But there would be better opportunities for that sort of remark, so he contented himself with a nod of agreement, while his friend and colleague was as taciturn as usual.
In the bedroom their colleagues from forensics had evidently been busy. The mattress and bedclothes were missing from the wide pine bed, and there were traces of both fingerprint powder and various chemical substances on everything in the room. They had also removed a large section of the carpet covering the floor.
‘Well, this is where most of it seems to have happened,’ the older technician said. ‘The centre of events, if you like. Anything that hasn’t already been sent to the National Forensics Lab in Linköping is back at base, if you want to take a look at it.’
‘Well, thanks very much,’ Bäckström said, smiling collegially. High time for a lager or two, he thought.
Bäckström and Rogersson had ordered their dinner up to Bäckström’s room. A quick glance at the dining room had been enough to confirm that it would be the very worst place to be in the whole of Växjö if you were a police officer from National Crime who simply wanted to get a bite to eat in peace and have a beer or two, with maybe the odd chaser.
‘Well, cheers, then
,’ Rogersson said, raising the little glass even before Bäckström had had time to pour out their beers.
He seems considerably happier now, poor old soak, Bäckström thought. He wasn’t the sort to argue about the fact that they were still drinking his vodka.
‘Cheers,’ Bäckström said. Saturday at last, he thought, draining the first short and feeling the warmth and peace spread through his stomach and head. I’m a fortunate man.
11
Växjö, Sunday 6 July
DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT JAN Lewin had never been to Växjö before on duty. Considering that in the almost twenty years that he’d been a murder detective at National Crime he’d visited almost all the towns in Sweden that were as large or larger, and some that were considerably smaller, this wasn’t an entirely irrelevant fact. Whatever. Now he was here. Finally Växjö, Lewin thought with a wry smile. Of all the places on the planet, he thought, shaking his head.
As soon as the initial meeting was over he had eaten a quick lunch and then sat down behind his desk to try to get some order in his growing piles of papers. He had sat there for almost twelve hours, all of Saturday, and when he was finally able to leave the police station on Sandgärdsgatan to take the short walk home to the hotel, it was already past midnight. And the piles on his desk were, if anything, even larger than when he started on them just after lunchtime.
In the hotel corridor where he and his colleagues were staying everything was quiet and shut up. Lewin had opened the locked door to the landing carefully so as not to disturb his sleeping colleagues. He had stopped for a moment outside Eva Svanström’s door, wondering if he should knock on it – a very light knock – to see if she was still awake and maybe wanted company. Not tonight, he thought. Some other night, one that was better than this.
Then he had crept into his room and washed in the basin with the help of a wet flannel. Face, armpits, crotch. Just the necessary, in that order, and even though he wanted nothing more right then than to stand under the shower and just let the water run. Early tomorrow morning, he thought. Not half past midnight when the others were already asleep.
Then he had got into bed. As usual at the start of a new case, he had trouble getting to sleep, and when he finally managed it he had been tormented by dreams, as he often was when beginning an investigation, or when he just felt anxious or miserable for reasons that he never quite understood. Dreams that were based on real events, but always assumed new meaning, new expression. And this time the dreams were about the summer just after his seventh birthday, when he got his first proper bicycle. A red Crescent Valiant.
He woke up for the third time at half past five in the morning, and that was when he made up his mind. He put on his shorts and a short-sleeved blue top with the National Crime emblem on the front, pulled on his jogging shoes, put the pass card for his hotel room in his pocket, grabbed the tourist map of Växjö, and quickly and silently went out of the door. Just as well to get it over and done with, he thought as he waited for the lift. Considering the state of his desk, it was bound to be some time until he was able to visit the crime scene while he was on duty, and in the world he lived in he should really have been out there before now.
Outside the sun was shining in a pale blue sky and it was almost twenty degrees, even though it was only quarter to six. The main square lay empty and deserted. No one in sight. Not even a solitary abandoned beer can to indicate any traces of earlier human life. He stopped in front of the entrance to the nightclub, and with the help of the map plotted the most direct route to Linda’s home. First he checked the time, so that he would be able to see how long it took, and then he started off at the pace he imagined she would have walked at, hopefully following the same route, even though that was still highly unclear.
Heading north-east. Diagonally across the main square, past the east wing of the district governor’s residence, on to Kronobergsgatan, heading due north. So far, this matched the bouncer’s statement.
But what next, Lewin wondered. He stopped and checked the time again. The quickest way home, he thought. Wasn’t that what she had said to her friend before she left the club, that she was going to go home and sleep? In the absence of any better ideas, he took the first turning on the right and emerged on to Linnégatan just a hundred metres further on. He turned north and after another four minutes he turned right once again and found himself on Pär Lagerkvists väg. He stopped to get his bearings and sum up his impressions.
Approximately six hundred metres from the nightclub, a six-minute walk for a young, fit and sober woman walking quickly in an area that she’d known since she was a child. Broad, quiet streets in the centre, still very light: only a madman would attempt to attack anyone on that stretch. Not to mention the fact that this was Växjö.
And on Pär Lagerkvists väg itself the chances of an undisturbed night-time walk were, if anything, even better. It was approximately seven hundred metres to the door of Linda’s building, and the whole length was a broad, straight road lined with small blocks of flats of three or four floors. Plastered façades, shiny HSB housing association signs that suggested careful, middle-aged, middle-class occupants, well-ordered lives and good neighbours. No undergrowth, no narrow alleyways, not even a little side road where anyone with evil intentions could potentially lie in wait for an unsuspecting victim.
His own victim lived at the end of the road, in a building that was as neat as all the others, although it lacked the HSB sign, as it was owned by a private association whose members all lived in the building. So this was where it happened, Jan Lewin thought, stopping at the blue and white cordon tape which still surrounded the scene of the murder. As the venue for a standard sexually motivated murder of a young woman, it seemed highly unlikely.
There’s only one explanation, he thought as he got back to his hotel room half an hour later. That was where Linda lived. That’s why the killer went there. Specifically to see her. Someone she knew, someone she trusted, someone she liked. Someone like her. Then Lewin took off his clothes, got straight in the shower and let the water stream over him for five minutes. And for the first time in a day and a half he felt completely calm and completely happy with the work that remained to be done.
12
AT HALF PAST six on Sunday morning – while Jan Lewin was standing under the shower in his hotel room just letting the water run – the county police commissioner’s mobile rang. The commissioner was asleep and had some difficulty putting on his glasses and locating his mobile before he could answer. Something must have happened, he thought after a quick glance at the alarm clock on his bedside table.
‘Nylander here,’ the voice at the other end said. ‘I presume I didn’t wake you.’
‘No problem,’ the commissioner said weakly. ‘No problem at all.’ Something terrible must have happened, he thought.
‘I’m calling to see how things are going,’ Nylander said abruptly. ‘What’s the current position?’
‘Everything’s going according to plan,’ the commissioner said. How am I supposed to know? I’ve been asleep all night. ‘Was there anything in particular you were wondering about, Nylander?’
There wasn’t anything Nylander was wondering about – ‘I’m not that sort of person’. But, in his capacity as head of the National Crime Unit, he had devoted himself to some ‘strategic considerations’ motivated by the current case. As a result of these, he had a proposal about ‘operational contributions’.
‘What were you thinking of ?’ the commissioner replied. Strategic considerations, operational contributions? What on earth’s he talking about?
‘As I see it, there’s a severe risk that there’s a genuine madman on the loose,’ Nylander said, ‘and in all likelihood he’s going to end up doing something even worse fairly soon.’
‘Is there anything in particular you’re thinking of ?’ the commissioner repeated weakly, whereupon Nylander embarked on a number of possible scenarios taken from his wealth of experience as the officer in charge of the
national police force.
‘Well, I’m thinking of the Samurai killer in Malmö who murdered and mutilated a number of his neighbours. The lieutenant in Falun who shot and killed ten people, most of them young women. And . . . who else?’ NHC sounded just as if he was stroking his chin. ‘There’s that one who ran amok with an iron bar on an underground platform here not too long ago. Three dead and half a dozen injured, if I remember rightly. And that madman in Gamla Stan who mowed down hundreds of pedestrians in his car early one morning. That’s just a few examples.’
‘I see,’ the commissioner said. Good grief, he thought. On my patch. In Växjö.
‘I’ve already spoken to our analysts,’ Nylander said, ‘and they’re in complete agreement with me. We’re talking about a serial killer who in all likelihood is capable of mass murder, or going on a so-called killing spree.’
‘You had a suggestion?’ the commissioner said. Bloody hell, he thought.
The Head of National Crime had all of three operational proposals. And he had already launched two of them and completed the preparations for the third to set sail.
‘I think we should let my CP group take a serious look at this madman before things get any worse. And send the case to the VICLAS unit. Forewarned is forearmed,’ he said.
‘CP group? VICLAS?’ the commissioner said. All these acronyms, he thought.
‘The criminal profiling group, to get a more exact picture of who he is. And VICLAS, the violent crime linkage analysis system, to connect him to all the previous attacks of a similar nature that he’s already carried out,’ Nylander explained curtly. Typical civilian, he thought.
‘And you mentioned a third option?’ the commissioner said defensively.
