by Leif Persson
‘How do you deal with all these traumatic experiences, Bäckström?’ she repeated, bobbing her head encouragingly.
‘With the help of our Lord,’ Bäckström said, and raised his pious face towards the ceiling. Suck on that, bitch, he thought.
Lo smiled hesitantly. ‘Sorry, I don’t think I quite follow you, I’m afraid,’ she said.
‘Our Lord,’ Bäckström repeated in an inviting voice. ‘Our Almighty Lord, ruler of heaven and earth, and also my guide and salvation during my time on earth.’ Is that what someone looks like just before their ears and jaw drop off, he wondered.
‘I had no idea that you were born again, Bäckström,’ Lo said, looking at him weakly.
‘It’s not the sort of thing you go round talking about,’ Bäckström said, giving her a look of admonition and shaking his head. ‘It’s between me and my Lord.’
‘I understand that so well,’ Lo said. ‘But these things aren’t mutually exclusive, of course. You’ve never considered altern— well, trying other ways of achieving mental peace, I mean?’
‘Such as what?’ Bäckström said grimly, giving her his police stare. Time to turn the screw, he thought.
‘Well, like different forms of therapy, such as debriefing, which is itself actually a form of therapy,’ Lo said, smiling stiffly at him. ‘My door is always open, and I have a lot of ordinary believers . . .’
‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me!’ Bäckström thundered, pointing at her with his outstretched hand as he stood up from the armchair. ‘This arrogance that you and your colleagues exhibit by trying to put yourselves in the place of our Lord. Are you aware that you’re breaking the first commandment?’ Unless it was the second? Well, what the fuck.
‘I really didn’t mean to upset you—’
‘The deeds of men are mere fragments,’ Bäckström interrupted. ‘Ecclesiastes twelve, fourteen,’ he went on, staring hard at her. A shot in the dark, and a bit of a gamble in Småland, of all places, but she didn’t seem the churchy type.
‘Well, I really do apologize if I’ve upset you at all,’ Lo said with a weak smile.
‘My door is always open,’ Bäckström said, as he opened hers as if to underline what he was saying. ‘Just think about one thing, Lilian,’ he said cajolingly. ‘We human beings . . . we are but fools . . . for our dear Lord rules.’
Gently, he closed the door behind him. And now to lock myself in the toilet and laugh until I give myself a hernia.
As soon as he reached his room he poured himself a cold lager. There must be something wrong with people who drink direct from the can. No damn better than monkeys, Bäckström thought, taking a few deep gulps and greedily licking the froth from his upper lip. Then he threw himself on to the bed, turned on the television and began looking through all the phone messages that had been left for him down in reception. There were quite a lot, mostly from little Carin from local radio. In one message, left just a couple of hours ago, she had even sworn that ‘we don’t have to talk about work’, and to show she meant it she had left her home number. ‘Can I offer to get you a bite to eat at a discreet little place?’ A woman in dire straits, Bäckström thought as he reached for the phone on the bedside table. She seems completely desperate.
The ‘discreet little place’ was a small inn with an outside terrace overlooking yet another Småland lake. It was a fair way out of town, but since his employer would be paying for the taxi he didn’t much care. Not a single damn journalist as far as my detective’s eye can see, he thought as he pulled out the chair for his companion.
‘Finally alone, superintendent. Hint, hint,’ Carin said, smiling with her mouth and eyes. ‘What would you like? My treat.’
‘Absolutely not.’ Bäckström had already decided in the taxi to award himself overtime for meeting another secret informant, and obviously he would need the receipt to prove that the meeting had taken place. ‘I want something nice,’ he went on, glancing at Carin’s tanned arms and legs. She was wearing a thin summer dress, and she must have forgotten to do up the top three buttons. Maybe a bit too easy, he told himself.
Very pleasant, he thought as he dropped her off three hours later. He had put a stop to all attempts to get him to talk about the Linda case. To keep the conversation going, and to tell her a bit about himself in an unforced way, he had offered her the usual police classics, and had concluded with a fat promise about the future.
‘Still, you have to appreciate how I feel,’ Carin had sighed, fingering her wine glass. ‘We’re sitting down here, and all the news keeps coming out in the Stockholm papers. That’s where you find out what’s going on. Even though it’s our murder. I mean, the girl who was killed did actually live here. One of our own, if you like.’
‘Most of what they print is rubbish, if that’s any consolation to you,’ Bäckström had said. Ah, the things I do for the poor wee souls, he thought.
‘Really?’ she said, with a glint of hope in her eyes.
‘Okay, this is what we do,’ Bäckström said, leaning forward and just happening to touch her arm. ‘When I’ve got the bastard and am convinced it’s him, I promise I’ll let you know ahead of all the others. Just you. No one else.’
‘You promise? You really mean it?’ she said, staring at him.
‘I really mean it,’ he lied, and left his hand touching her arm. ‘You, and only you.’ This is way too easy.
As soon as he got back to the hotel he headed straight for the bar. Only three beers throughout a whole meal, and he was as thirsty as a camel that had gone on a pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Mecca. And Rogersson was sitting towards the back of the bar with a huge glass in front of him, looking more than usually miserable even though there were plenty of empty tables around him. The two dozen reporters and other civilians in the room had for some reason chosen to sit as far away from him as possible.
‘I said I’d break the arm of the first vulture who tried to sit down, so everything’s okay,’ he explained. ‘What do you want? It’s my round.’
‘Beer, a large one,’ Bäckström said, waving over a waiter who for some reason looked reluctant. You’re always so diplomatic, Rogge, he thought.
‘So what have you been up to?’ Rogersson asked when Bäckström had got his beer and had had a chance to dull the worst of his thirst.
‘I had a long talk with our very own crisis therapist,’ Bäckström said with a grin. ‘Then I had to go to the toilet. So that’ll make three times today.’
‘And I thought you were a normal person. What the fuck are you talking to someone like that for?’ Rogersson sighed, shaking his head.
‘Just listen,’ Bäckström said, and leaned over the table to tell Rogersson the whole story. Rogersson livened up considerably, and they sat there and drank their way through several more rounds of beer and chasers, which Bäckström told the staff to put on the bill for their rooms which, along with everything else, would be paid by their employer.
When it was time to go upstairs and get some sleep, the bar was practically empty. Rogersson was considerably happier, and had even said goodnight to the few reporters who were still sitting there, evidently determined to drink their heads off.
‘Go home, you stupid fuckers,’ he said.
17
Växjö, Tuesday 8 July
EVIDENTLY NOT ALL the reporters had followed Rogersson’s advice the previous evening, because over breakfast Bäckström and his colleagues were able to enjoy the latest scoop in the largest evening paper. HE TRIED TO KILL LINDA’S NEIGHBOUR, screamed the headline, referring to the three-page article inside, on pages six, seven and eight: ‘Police murderer tried to kill me too.’ Linda’s neighbour Margareta tells her story.
‘What the fuck’s all this?’ Bäckström said to a silent Rogersson, who was driving them the four hundred metres from the hotel to the police station. ‘At three o’clock in the morning I was woken by someone trying to break into my flat,’ he read out loud. ‘But my two dogs started barking furiously and he r
an off. I heard him running down the stairs. What the fuck is this?’ he repeated. ‘Why hasn’t she mentioned this before? We’ve questioned her a couple of times at least, haven’t we?’
‘She’s been questioned three times,’ Rogersson confided. ‘I’ve read them all. To begin with she spoke to the first patrol on the scene. Then our colleagues in regional crime had a long interview with her, when she was also issued with a disclosure ban. Then she was questioned a third time during the door-to-door enquiries.’
‘And not a single word about him trying to break into her flat?’
‘Not a peep.’
‘Go and see her, and question her again,’ Bäckström said. ‘Straight away. Take young Salomonson with you.’
‘Sure,’ Rogersson said.
Could it simply be the case that this is the truth, Bäckström thought. That the same crazy bastard knocked on Linda’s door and she was stupid enough to let him in?
The morning meeting was a dull affair, even though it was led by Bäckström. Most of them seemed to be waiting for the forensics report of what had happened at the crime scene, particularly the long anticipated results from the National Forensics Lab about the perpetrator’s DNA profile. Most of the meeting had been devoted to a discussion of what they had read in that morning’s paper, which upset Bäckström so deeply that he had no intention of saying why: that the media had taken the initiative in his murder investigation.
As so many times before, opinion had been divided.
‘I think it could simply be that she didn’t dare tell us when we questioned her. She was just scared,’ said the first person who spoke.
‘Another possibility is that she’s made it all up to make herself more interesting, or that the reporters put words in her mouth,’ the next said.
‘Maybe the truth is somewhere in between,’ the third said. ‘That her dogs started barking in the middle of the night, but not necessarily because someone was trying to get into her flat. Could have been a car, or a drunk out in the road?’
Things had carried on in that vein until Bäckström straightened up and raised his hand to interrupt the discussion.
‘It’ll sort itself out,’ Bäckström said, then turned to Enoksson, who hadn’t said anything either. ‘Is there any point sending you and you chums to dust down her door?’
‘They’re already on their way,’ Enoksson said.
Finally, Bäckström thought. A proper police officer.
After the meeting Bäckström had taken officer Sandberg to one side to rest his weary eyes once more, and to see how far they had got with the profiling of people connected to the victim.
‘How’s it going, Anna? Are we starting to get an idea of who was at the nightclub on Thursday?’
According to Sandberg, they were looking at a total of approximately two hundred people who were either inside the club when Linda showed up just after eleven o’clock, or arrived later that night while she was still there. Of these, almost a hundred had already been questioned. Most of those had contacted the police themselves after members of the investigating team appeared in the local media and appealed for them to get in touch. This group included six of Linda’s colleagues from police college, the friend who was also a civilian employee at the police station, and four other police officers, including Anna Sandberg herself.
‘And you haven’t got any suspicions about any of our colleagues, or any of the students?’ Bäckström said cheerfully.
‘No,’ Anna said, apparently less amused by the subject. ‘At least, not from what I’ve been able to find out. So: no.’
‘What about the rest, then? Were there many troublemakers there? And all the weirdos who haven’t contacted us? What do we know about them?’ Bloody hell, don’t any women have a sense of humour? he thought.
Nothing unusual, according to Anna. A few local troublemakers, but anything else would have been odd considering the time and place. They’d managed to speak to a number of them, and they were as upset as everyone else that Linda had been murdered.
‘So there are at least fifty people we haven’t got a clue about?’ Master Detective Anna Blomkvist, like Astrid Lindgren’s young detective, Bäckström thought.
‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘At most, if we’re only talking about men. But I don’t think it’s as many as that.’
‘So how do we get hold of them, then?’
According to Anna, it was bound to take a bit of time. Partly because it was the middle of the holiday season, and partly because a lot of them simply didn’t want to admit that they were in the club, even if they hadn’t seen or spoken to the murder victim. Besides, officer Sandberg also had an idea of her own that she wondered if she could mention.
‘I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and to be honest I’m wondering if it’s worth the trouble.’
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Bäckström said. So she’s lazy as well, he thought.
There were several reasons, in Anna’s opinion. It involved a great deal of work, yet no matter how hard they tried they weren’t going to get hold of everyone who was there.
‘Any other reason?’ Bäckström said. Sigh, he thought.
‘Is it really that interesting?’ Anna said. ‘Nothing suggests that anyone went home with her from the club, or followed her home. Or even that she agreed to meet up with someone she met there. If what the neighbour said in the paper is true, it looks like she just got caught by a maniac, doesn’t it? I think that looks most likely.’
‘We don’t actually know that,’ Bäckström said curtly. ‘You don’t, and I don’t,’ he added. Least of all you, he thought.
‘So we carry on?’ Anna said.
‘Exactly,’ Bäckström said. ‘I want everyone in that club identified and questioned, and if we happen to find the perpetrator somewhere else in the meantime, then we’ll stop. I’m not that stupid.’
‘Understood,’ Anna said curtly.
‘One more thing,’ Bäckström said. ‘You said I could take a look at her diary?’
‘Of course,’ Anna said. ‘Although I’m afraid that doesn’t contain anything interesting either. At least not that I’ve been able to find.’
‘Are forensics finished with it?’ Bäckström asked. What do you mean, either? he thought.
‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘Just Linda’s prints. No one else’s.’
‘Thank goodness,’ Bäckström said with a grin.
‘What do you mean?’ Anna looked at him warily.
‘I won’t have to wear those damn plastic gloves,’ Bäckström said.
‘No, you won’t,’ Anna said curtly. ‘Are we finished?’
‘Sure,’ Bäckström said with a shrug. How can a woman with such decent tits be so fucking miserable? he thought.
18
A REMARKABLE SUMMER. The most remarkable both in living memory and in perfectly ordinary memory as well, assuming people were old enough, of course. It had started as early as May, day after day of scorching hot sun with new record temperatures being set all over the country, fairly evenly distributed.
And on Tuesday 8 July it was time for a new national record. The previous Swedish record had actually been set in Småland almost sixty years before. On 29 June 1947, a temperature of 38 degrees was reached in Målilla, and if our Lord was actually in charge of the weather, then he was certainly taking care of his own. What other explanation could there be for the fact that at three o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday 8 July, the pious village of Väckelsång, a short distance south of Växjö, recorded a temperature of 38.3 degrees Celsius? In the shade, naturally.
In Växjö it was relatively cool. When Jan Lewin and Eva Svanström left the police station just after one o’clock for a late lunch out in town, Oxtorget was quivering with heat haze, even though it was only a modest 32 degrees outside. Lewin had spent most of his waking hours in his air-conditioned office inside the police station, so he wasn’t exactly prepared.
‘Maybe we should stay inside?’ he suggested, smiling hes
itantly at Eva Svanström. What’s going on, he wondered. In Sweden, in the middle of the summer?
‘I think it’s lovely,’ Eva replied with a happy smile, throwing out her arms in an extremely un-Swedish gesture. ‘Come on, Janne, let’s go. I promise you can sit in the shade.’
The news the previous evening and that morning had focused largely on the weather, and in the local media there had been a fair degree of local pride. The warmest part of Sweden was still in the Småland of our Lord. The Barometer in Kalmar had even seen fit to declare Småland the Riviera of northern Europe, although the Småland Post was, as so often, more restrained: after all, every right-thinking Småland resident knew the penalty for false pride.
Just as in the bigger papers, various experts had been asked for an opinion, both those who warned of the greenhouse effect and those who dismissed it, referring to historical and long-term variations in temperature, such as the fact that grapevines had been grown way up in Norrland during the Bronze Age. And of course there was plenty of medical advice. People should stay in the shade, avoid unnecessary physical exertion, drink a lot and cover their heads with a cap or a hat. This was particularly important for the elderly and the very young, and for people with high blood pressure or heart problems. And obviously under no circumstances should dogs or small children be left inside locked cars, even for a short while.
The evening papers had followed their usual tradition. After doing their duty and getting the meteorological details out of the way, they had focused on the really important aspects, such as the link between the unbearable heat and the increase in violent crime – not forgetting the Linda murder, of course.
