by Leif Persson
Knutsson and Thorén evidently hadn’t spent all weekend at the cinema. After the Monday morning meeting they came into Bäckström’s office and showed him their latest findings.
‘We were thinking about what you said, Bäckström. About not being able to rule out the possibility that we’re looking for a fellow officer,’ Knutsson said.
‘Yes, or someone training to become an officer,’ Thorén added.
‘What are you getting at?’ Complete idiots, Bäckström thought.
According to Knutsson and Thorén, the basic idea had some substance. Among American serial killers there were several who had managed to entrap their victims by pretending to be police officers. The most famous example in modern criminal history, they went on, was Ted Bundy.
‘It must be an unbeatable tactic if you want to win a girl’s trust,’ Knutsson said.
‘Saying you’re a police officer,’ Thorén clarified.
‘Yes,’ Bäckström said. ‘But why not start with people who actually are police officers? So we don’t have to worry about whether a fraudulent officer managed to pay a visit to a future officer in the middle of the night,’ he added sourly. Fucking morons, he thought.
Even among real police officers there was a fair bit to go on. Going back in time, there was the renowned Hurva Man, a former officer named Tore Hedin, who had murdered eleven people, and the whole thing had started when he was suspended from duty for using his handcuffs on his girlfriend.
‘You probably remember that case, Bäckström. It must have been after you started, 1952,’ Knutsson said innocently.
‘How about looking at Växjö in the present day instead?’ Bäckström replied curtly.
‘In that case, here are ten names of current and future officers,’ Thorén said, handing him a list.
‘Six of them were at the same club as Linda the night she was murdered,’ Knutsson said. ‘Three current officers, and three in training, two of whom have already contacted us and given a DNA sample. They’ve been discounted already.’
‘They’re the ones whose names have been crossed out, with a tick in the margin,’ Thorén explained.
‘We put them on the list just to make sure,’ Knutsson said.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Bäckström said. ‘What about the others? Why haven’t we got samples from them?’
The reasons weren’t clear, according to Knutsson and Thorén. The most likely explanation, emerging from the short interviews their colleague Sandberg had conducted with them all, was that they were still in the club after three o’clock, when the perpetrator showed up in Linda’s flat. The third trainee had said that he had left the club just before four o’clock. He was alone and went straight home. Nice and sober, of course. The three current officers, on the other hand, had stayed until the club closed. They had split up outside and each gone home alone. There was no mention of their level of sobriety, nor any other details, but by then it must have been closer to five o’clock than four.
‘Fuck me,’ Bäckström said with feeling. ‘Are they all poofs, then, or what?’
‘How do you mean?’ Thorén asked.
‘That’s what it says in the interviews, anyway,’ Knutsson said. ‘What they said, I mean.’
‘Four police officers going home alone from a nightclub? Are you thick, or what?’
‘One of them was actually still in training, the one who went home first,’ Thorén corrected. ‘But I understand what you mean.’
‘Yes, that’s never happened to me,’ Knutsson said. ‘But then this is Växjö, of course.’
‘Yes, so it is,’ Bäckström said. ‘You haven’t shown Sandberg this list, have you?’
To judge from their simultaneous and immediate headshakes, they hadn’t, and the main reason was probably because the remaining four names on the list were not unknown to the internal investigation unit.
‘So what have these lads been up to, then?’ Bäckström asked, glancing intently at the list. No one I know, he thought.
A bit of a mixed bag, according to Knutsson. The first of the four worked as a uniformed officer in the neighbouring district, but had also had a number of secondments to the police college in Växjö as a shooting instructor. A couple of years ago one of his female students had reported him for sexual harassment: letters and phone calls with the usual offers. The complaint had been withdrawn just a month later, and the female student had left the course. When the internal investigators contacted her, she refused to cooperate and the investigation was dropped. But the instructor was still there, and as recently as May he had been at the shooting range with Linda and her fellow students.
‘He’s supposed to be highly regarded, both as an officer and as an instructor,’ Knutsson said. ‘Mind you . . .’ He shrugged.
The complaint against the second officer was even older. Around the time of his divorce five years ago, his ex-wife had reported him for physical abuse. But that complaint had also been withdrawn, and the investigation eventually abandoned.
‘But he was suspended for a month or so,’ Thorén said, ‘while the investigation was still going on. Then it looks like he got compensation from the force with the help of the union. They’re divorced, by the way. Him and his ex-wife.’
‘So what’s he doing these days?’ Bäckström said. Women are all the same, he thought.
‘Well, he’s back at work, of course,’ Knutsson said, with a look of surprise.
‘Next one,’ Bäckström said. Good to hear, he thought.
The third officer did voluntary work as a sports coach for local youngsters: football, ice hockey and handball. In his younger days he had been a promising sportsman, and had played football and ice hockey professionally. One of the teams he coached was a girls’ football team, with players aged from thirteen to fifteen. The parents of one girl had reported him for exposing himself in front of their daughter on several occasions. Sometimes in the changing room after training, and also when he and the girls and some of the parents had spent a week away at a training camp.
The whole thing had developed into a big story, even ending up on the front of the evening papers. The legal evidence was fairly meagre, however, and that case was ultimately dropped as well. The girl who had identified him stopped playing football, and she and her family had moved to another town. The officer coach gave up training, despite a groundswell of support from the other youngsters and their parents. After that he had been on sick leave for eighteen months before returning to work. Nowadays he worked in the police station in Växjö, where he only had administrative duties.
‘Looks like a really sad story,’ Thorén said. ‘They took his service revolver away from him because they were worried he’d shoot himself when his wife took the kids and left.’
‘What about the last one?’ Bäckström said. So that’s how it went. His wife took the kids and left, he thought.
‘Seems to have been one of our simpler colleagues, if I can put it like that,’ Knutsson said. ‘To be brief, two years ago he was reported by his then fiancée. She worked in a hairdressing salon in Alvesta some twenty kilometres from here, and she doesn’t seem to have been the only one, to put it bluntly. His fellow officers called him Randy Karlsson, or Randy Kalle.’
‘His name’s Karl Karlsson, by the way,’ Thorén explained.
‘So what was she so upset about?’ Bäckström asked. Sounds like a good bloke, he thought.
‘According to the report, our colleague Karlsson used to handcuff her when they were going to be intimate, and apparently he used his service cuffs,’ Knutsson said.
‘Oh, that’s terrible,’ Bäckström said with a grin. ‘Didn’t he have a pair of his own?’
According to Knutsson and Thorén, that wasn’t clear from the preliminary report, where only his service handcuffs were mentioned. The hairdresser had moved to Gothenburg, where apparently she had her own salon and a new fiancé. The oddest thing about the story was that officer Karlsson followed her six months later, and now worked for th
e police in Mölndal, on the outskirts of Gothenburg.
‘I spoke to a colleague I know in Gothenburg, and he knew perfectly well who Randy Karlsson was. He works in the patrol cars, and is still known as Randy Karlsson, or Randy Kalle. It doesn’t look like he’s calmed down at all,’ Thorén said.
‘What’s he been doing this summer? Apart from shagging around,’ Bäckström said.
‘Holiday since midsummer,’ Thorén said.
‘Get a DNA sample. Doesn’t sound like Linda’s type, but better one too many than one too few. And those four who were at the club, plus the other three, the shooting instructor, the wife-beater and the flasher. Get samples from them all, and I don’t give a damn what little Sandberg thinks. And one more thing,’ Bäckström said before they had the chance to escape from his room. ‘Make sure we get a sample from that fat little Polack as well.’
‘Lewin is working on that,’ Thorén said. ‘He had an idea of going through a prosecutor.’
Lewin, Bäckström thought. Little Svanström must have livened him up a bit.
After the unpleasant conversation with the head of the National Crime Unit, the county police commissioner had sat deep in his own thoughts for a long time. Nylander seemed completely unbalanced, he thought. As he reflected on the matter, he strolled down towards the jetty and looked at his wife.
‘You’re not going to fall asleep in the sun, are you, my dear?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You’ve got cream on, haven’t you?’
She seems completely exhausted, poor thing, he thought.
Then he had called his colleague, Olsson, to find out about any potential links between the tragedy in Skåne and his own ghastly case up in Växjö. Olsson said it was quite a coincidence, because he had been about to call his boss to say that he had been in touch with their colleagues down in Skåne to look into that. He was expecting to hear from them later that day.
‘Good to hear,’ the commissioner said. Olsson’s a rock, he thought as he hung up. One of those rock pillars on Gotland, even though he was from Småland. Standing firm no matter what the wind and weather threw at him, the commissioner thought, feeling almost poetic as he did so.
Bäckström summoned officer Sandberg to see him, even though he was starting to get thoroughly fed up with her by now. He nodded towards the free chair.
‘Please, sit down,’ he said. ‘I want us to get DNA samples from the police officers who were in the club, and the trainee who hasn’t already given one as well.’
Naturally, Sandberg had objections. Women are all the same, Bäckström thought, and on closer inspection this one was starting to look a bit saggy as well. In more than one place.
‘But none of them left the club before half past three at the earliest,’ Sandberg said. ‘If you read my interviews. Besides, I was there as well, and I spoke to all of them during the evening. Several times, and when I left at four o’clock all three officers were still there, and the trainee had only just left. He came and said goodbye before he went.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Bäckström said. ‘But I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything?’
‘According to what was said at the morning meeting, you and Enoksson both seem to believe that the perpetrator arrived at Linda’s flat at three o’clock,’ Sandberg said.
‘But we don’t actually know that,’ Bäckström said. ‘The only thing our esteemed medical officer can say is that she must have died between three o’clock and seven o’clock.’
‘But if he made his escape at five o’clock, when the newspaper arrived?’ Sandberg persisted. ‘Considering everything he did. How could he have had time for all that?’
‘We don’t know that either,’ Bäckström said. ‘It’s what we believe. Make sure we get samples from all of them. Voluntarily, of course, and as soon as possible.’
‘I hear what you’re saying, Bäckström.’ Sandberg was glowering at him sullenly.
‘Good,’ Bäckström said. ‘Then there are three more men we need samples from.’ Our colleagues in Gothenburg can take care of the randy fucker there, he thought.
‘Who?’ Sandberg said, looking at him cautiously.
‘Andersson, Hellström and Claesson,’ Bäckström said. ‘Are the names familiar to you?’
‘I’m afraid we may run into problems,’ Sandberg said. ‘I hope you realize that there’s a serious risk of Claesson’s committing suicide if you drag him into this case.’
‘That’s why it’s an excellent idea to give him the chance to prove himself innocent as soon as possible,’ Bäckström said. ‘Then he won’t have to hear a load of small talk in the corridors.’
After a light lunch of a green salad, fish, sun-dried tomatoes and a bottle of mineral water, the county police commissioner had finished thinking and called an old acquaintance who worked in the constitutional protection group of the Security Police.
‘This isn’t an easy thing to discuss,’ he began. Ten minutes later he had told the whole story. ‘He seemed completely unbalanced,’ he concluded.
His acquaintance said that it was good that he had got in touch. Without breathing a word about why, he said it was both professionally justified, interesting in and of itself, and significant from the perspective of constitutional protection.
‘The best thing would be for you to write a few lines covering what you’ve just told me,’ he said. ‘Naturally, anything you wrote would be strictly confidential, so there’s no need for you to worry about that at all.’
‘I’d rather not,’ the commissioner said, sounding as dubious as he felt. ‘I had hoped that this conversation would suffice.’
‘I certainly appreciate that,’ his acquaintance said, sounding almost jovial. ‘Well, never mind, then. This informal conversation will be sufficient.’
‘If things get complicated, naturally I shall stand by everything I’ve said.’
‘Of course, of course. I wouldn’t dream of expecting anything else,’ his acquaintance said, sounding, if it were possible, even more jovial than before.
After they ended the call, the county police commissioner went back down to the jetty to reassure himself that his wife hadn’t fallen asleep in the sun. She hadn’t. But she had turned over.
His acquaintance, on the other hand, switched off the recording device attached to his phone, pulled out the memory chip containing the conversation, took it to his secretary, and asked her to produce a certified printout.
27
THE NEXT DAY they finally managed to get hold of a DNA sample from Linda’s neighbour, the librarian, Marian Gross. No one in the investigating team actually thought he could be the perpetrator, but this was a matter of principle. No one, and least of all someone like Gross, could be allowed to get away with anything just by kicking up a fuss. Detective Superintendent Jan Lewin had spoken to the prosecutor who was in charge of the existing inquiry into Gross. He had pointed out the legal openings that the old case still offered, and she hadn’t been the slightest bit difficult to persuade. On the contrary, she had expressed surprise that the matter hadn’t already been taken care of. So now it was simply a matter of going to pick him up, and if he didn’t want to provide a sample voluntarily they would take one anyway.
Von Essen and Adolfsson were given the task, and after the customary preparatory kick Gross had opened the door of his own accord, put on his shoes and accompanied them to the police station. And just like the last time, he hadn’t said a word all the way there.
‘Well, Gross,’ Lewin said, looking at him amiably. ‘The prosecutor has decided that we need a DNA sample from you. As far as I understand, we can do it two ways. Either you put this little cotton-bud in your mouth yourself and wipe it against the inside of your cheek, or we call a doctor who will come and stick a needle in your arm while my colleagues supervise the procedure.’
Gross hadn’t said anything. Merely glared at them sullenly.
‘I shall interpret your silence to mean the latter,’ Lewin said, still sounding just as amiable. ‘Ok
ay, boys, take Dr Gross down to one of the cells while we’re waiting for the doctor to arrive.’
‘I demand to be allowed to do it myself,’ Gross shouted, reaching for the test-tube containing the cotton-bud on Lewin’s desk. When it was over, he declined Lewin’s offer of a lift home, and quickly left the police station.
A few hours later he sent a courier to hand in a complaint of gross judicial misconduct directed at the prosecutor, Detective Superintendent Olsson, Detective Superintendent Jan Lewin, acting Police Inspector von Essen and Police Constable Adolfsson. The receptionist had put it in the internal mail for onward passage to the police complaints office. Everything was pretty much back to normal.
Taken as a whole, the work of gathering DNA samples was going much better than expected. One of the younger members of the investigative team who was interested in statistics had pinned up a large chart on the notice board where they could follow developments. The total number of samples taken from residents of Växjö and the surrounding district was already over a hundred. Half of them had been checked by the National Forensics Lab and eliminated from the inquiry. No one except Gross had put up any serious resistance. A couple of local hooligans had even been in touch themselves to volunteer samples.
The only clouds in the forensic sky were their fellow officers.
The three who had been in the nightclub had refused at first. After individual meetings, two of them had fallen into line, while the third had contacted his union representative and was still refusing. And, if what he said was true, he was considering reporting Bäckström and his colleagues from National Crime to the judicial ombudsman, if only to force them to learn some of the legal basics. The trainee officer was more straightforward. In spite of several phone calls to both his home and his mobile, they simply hadn’t managed to get hold of him. They had left a number of messages, but he hadn’t got back to them yet.
Olsson was worried about the three officers Bäckström wanted to get DNA samples from because of their past behaviour. From his own personal point of view, Olsson had no problem with the officer who had hit his wife or the shooting instructor who had harassed his student with grubby suggestions. Not if he were speaking confidentially to Bäckström. ‘Just between us, I’d happily have seen them both dismissed from service,’ he said.
