by Leif Persson
‘Why do you say that?’ Olsson said. For the past few days he had been back in his place at the head of the table.
‘To start with, the pilot doesn’t have a son, he’s never had one, doesn’t want one and won’t even entertain the idea of one. All he’s got is a son-in-law. He’s a flight officer for SAS, and he’s in Australia with the pilot’s younger daughter, to whom he’s been married for years. They left Sweden on Wednesday 18 June, two and a half weeks before Linda was murdered. They’re due home about a week from now, so the kid can start school. Anyway, he got cross when I phoned and went on about his son. Wondered what the hell we were up to. He’d already explained to one of my colleagues that he had two daughters, a granddaughter and a son-in-law, but no son.’
‘The other daughter,’ Lewin said. ‘What about—’
‘Thank you, Lewin,’ Rogersson interrupted. ‘She’s thirty-seven years old, works as a lawyer in Kristianstad and for the past fifteen years has been living with her partner, who is also a lawyer and whom she met when they were both studying law in Lund.’
‘What do we know about him?’ Lewin asked.
‘Well, we know that he’s a she, and I’m sure you don’t want to hear what the father said when I began to ask him about her.’
‘Mind you, that business about the birthday is quite striking,’ Lewin persisted.
‘That’s what I thought, as did Anna, who was the one who spoke to her,’ Rogersson agreed. ‘Until we discovered that the old woman was born on 4 June, not 4 July. At least she was if we’re to believe her ID number.’
‘Maybe she was celebrating some other anniversary? Who knows, maybe she makes any excuse to have a bit of cake. The old bag’s probably one of those sugar addicts,’ Bäckström said, laughing so much his stomach was bouncing.
‘Point taken,’ Lewin said with a sigh. ‘What about the description, then?’
‘You mean the way he was so similar to the son that doesn’t exist?’ Rogersson said. ‘Well, seeing as I had nothing better to do, I’ve spoken to the old woman’s optician. He wasn’t exactly impressed, let me say. I’m no expert, but I got the impression that she’s practically blind. He also told me to remind her that she’s overdue for a check-up. She hasn’t been to see him for the past six years.’
‘I don’t think we’re going to get any further, are we? What do you think, Lewin?’ Bäckström said with a grin.
After the meeting, Eva Svanström went to Lewin’s office to console him.
‘Don’t worry about those two. Bäckström’s never been right in the head, and Rogersson drinks like a fish, so I dare say he was just hungover as usual. I don’t know how many times I’ve said this to you.’
‘You came to console me?’ Lewin said with a smile.
‘And what’s so wrong with that?’ Svanström said, sounding the way she usually did again. ‘But that’s not the only reason. I’ve got something to tell you.’
What’s so wrong with a bit of consolation? Lewin thought.
About three years ago, at roughly the same time as she moved from one flat to another in the building she lived in, and her daughter moved back to her father’s, Linda’s mother had changed her phone number. Normally people took their existing number with them when they moved the way Lotta Ericson did, but for some reason she got a new one. Ex-directory. Up until then she had been in the phone book, like most other people.
The old number had reverted to Telia, and after the usual quarantine period it had been re-allocated to one of their new customers, a female anaesthetist who had transferred from a post at the university clinic in Linköping to a better position at the hospital in Växjö. Her name was Helena Wahlberg, she was single, forty-three years old, and lived on Gamla Norrvägen, approximately half a kilometre north of the crime scene, in a part of town that was conveniently called Norr.
The old open-access number now also became ex-directory, which wasn’t so strange given the nature of the new customer’s work. Svanström had tried to get hold of her at the hospital, but it turned out that she had been on holiday for the past month. She was due back at work on Monday, and the only thing that was significant about all this – and even this was probably just an irrelevant coincidence – was that her holiday had started on Friday 4 July, the day Linda was murdered.
‘Do you want me to request a list of calls to and from her number?’ Svanström asked.
‘I think we should wait,’ Lewin said. ‘The easiest thing would be for me to call and ask her first. But there is something else I’d like to ask you to do,’ he added.
In spite of the fact that their 92-year-old witness had evidently got her birthday wrong by a whole month, Lewin still wasn’t inclined to let go of her. The explanation for this lay in his own background, which could be regarded as a common police affliction. And possibly also in his nature, although that was something that he hadn’t considered at all, even though the woman on the other side of the desk did so pretty much every time she thought about him.
‘My old grandmother – she’s dead now, but if she was still alive she’d have been about a hundred – well, according to the population register she was born on 20 February 1907, but we always used to celebrate her birthday on 23 February.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘According to the story we told as a family, the priest was supposed to have been drunk when he was entering her name in the church register, and simply wrote the wrong date. Admittedly, it’s only a few days rather than a month, but there’s something about June and July that bothers me.’
‘It’s fairly easy to get them mixed up,’ Svanström agreed.
‘That’s why a lot of old lawyers emphasize the difference when they speak. To avoid any confusion. I remember how surprised I was the first time I heard one of them do it. We had a dotty old lecturer in criminal law at the Police Academy. His weird way of pronouncing July was pretty much the only thing he taught us. That lawyers pronounce July weirdly. Otherwise it was mainly the usual nonsense about making sure you held on to your sword tightly when you took a swing at a criminal. The fact that the police had switched to batons several years before seemed to have escaped his notice. On one occasion he devoted an entire lecture to the legal consequences of hitting someone with the edge instead of the flat of the blade, until one of us summoned up the courage to mention batons.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘He got angry.’
‘It’s probably easiest if you just ask her. The witness, I mean.’
‘Maybe I should.’ Maybe I should have a word with her optician as well, Lewin thought. The problem with officers like Rogersson, however fundamentally decent they were, was that they preferred to see reality in black and white.
When Eva got up to leave, he was suddenly struck by the elusive thought that had crossed his mind a couple of hours before.
‘One more thing,’ Lewin said. ‘Something that struck me during the meeting. What Enoksson said about anyone stealing a car in that way probably being an habitual thief. I don’t think that’s necessarily true.’
All you needed was a bit of technical expertise, he said. A car mechanic, or even just someone interested in cars, good with their hands generally. Or maybe the perpetrator picked it up from someone else. Maybe he worked in the remand system, youth custody, something like that.
‘Or the police,’ Svanström said.
‘Yes, maybe,’ Lewin agreed. ‘Although I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do, and I’ve been in the police for almost thirty years.’
‘Someone who knows what they’re doing, but didn’t necessarily end up in our database when they learned how to do it,’ Svanström summarized.
‘Exactly.’
‘So we’re basically talking about the exact opposite of that disgusting librarian Gross. Someone who isn’t particularly cultured.’
‘Exactly,’ Lewin repeated. Definitely not someone like Gross, he thought.
Once Svanström had left, naturally he co
uldn’t resist. Without having any idea that he was confirming Eva Svanström’s most recurrent thought about him, he dialled the home number of the female anaesthetist. She wasn’t yet back at work, but people were surely just as likely to come home before the end of their holiday as to wait until the very last day? At least, that was what he usually did.
‘I can’t answer right now, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,’ the voice on the answer machine said.
Lewin hung up. That must have been her voice on the machine, he thought. She sounded just like a forty-something female anaesthetist. Correct, well-meaning, alert. Single, according to the population register, and an acting consultant at Växjö Hospital according to the taxation records that the conscientious Eva Svanström had dug out from their computers.
59
ABOUT A WEEK earlier Bäckström had deputed two younger colleagues from Växjö Police to try to trace the origin of the blue cashmere fibres that for the sake of simplicity he had decided to call the fabric line of inquiry. The fact that they were both women was no coincidence. It was pretty much in the nature of the task, and Bäckström thought it was excellent that the little things had something to do, so that they didn’t cause any serious trouble for him and the real police officers.
Nevertheless they appeared to have taken the task seriously. According to the National Forensics Lab, they were probably dealing with a thin pale blue sweater, and the officers searching for it had spoken to everyone who might, in the light of their professional experience, be able to help them find it. They had spoken to fashion designers, fashion journalists, fashion photographers and fashion experts generally, to manufacturers, wholesalers and representatives of a large number of boutiques selling more exclusive clothes. One of them had even begun by talking to her aunt, who was almost obsessed with what she wore.
Assuming that they were dealing with a man’s jumper, there were ten possible designs to choose between. The most likely, a V-neck sweater with long sleeves made in Britain, Ireland, America, Italy, Germany or France, had a price tag of between two and twelve thousand kronor, depending on the label. If it had been bought in a sale, or possibly at a factory outlet, or anywhere other than a boutique, the price would have been lower. But anything under a thousand kronor was unlikely, and would have been a serious bargain, according to the people they had spoken to.
But it didn’t appear to have been sold anywhere in Växjö or the surrounding area. None of the shops there had stocked a man’s sweater of that sort in recent years. All they had, or had had in the past, were a few for women, but to judge from the available delivery notes and stock figures none of them had been the right colour. Which left some twenty shops and department stores in Sweden, almost all of them in Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö. Unless it had been bought abroad. That was just as likely, according to the people they had spoken to, and, considering the price, often a better buy. Both supply and demand were considerably larger abroad than they were in Sweden. But that was about as far as they had got.
Which left the possibility that it had been stolen. With the help of the police computers they had brought up lists of all thefts of exclusive clothes reported by importers, wholesalers, warehouses, department stores and boutiques in the south of Sweden in recent years. Then they had looked through all the normal household burglaries, thefts and lost property reports which had found their way into police files. No men’s cashmere sweaters.
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t look like we’re going to get much further than that,’ one of the two fabric detectives said when she and her colleague reported to Bäckström.
‘It’s not the end of the world,’ Bäckström said with a cheery smile. ‘The main thing is that you girls have had some fun while you were at it.’
Women have no sense of humour. A couple of proper attack-dykes, Bäckström thought when they left his office a minute or so later. He glanced at his watch, which already showed almost three o’clock. It was Friday and high time for the first beer of the weekend. But certainly not for that little poof Olsson, who was suddenly standing in his doorway, wanting to talk to him.
‘Have you got a couple of minutes, Bäckström?’ Olsson asked.
‘Of course,’ Bäckström said, smiling warmly. ‘We’ve got a long way to go before we can think of calling it a day.’
Olsson was evidently up for spending half the evening discussing the voluntary DNA samples, unless Bäckström managed to put a stop to him at an early stage. Olsson was worried, and the county police commissioner shared his concerns. So to settle his anxieties he had decided to go round and, in true democratic spirit, find out what the key members of his team thought about the matter.
‘We’re actually getting close to seven hundred voluntary DNA samples now,’ he said, having just received the current figure from Thorén.
‘Yes, it’s going very well,’ Bäckström agreed enthusiastically. ‘We’ll soon have the bastard. Any time now.’ So there, you little coward, he thought.
‘I’m sure you’re right, of course,’ Olsson said, even though he didn’t seem to have been listening to what Bäckström said. ‘The problem is that both JO and CJ are on to us. I’m not particularly concerned about what gets written in the papers, of course, but I have tried to take account of the criticism.’
‘Yes, well, you are the head of the preliminary investigation,’ Bäckström emphasized cheerily.
‘What do you mean?’ Olsson was looking at him suspiciously. ‘Well, you’ll be the one sitting up to your ears in shit if they get it into their heads to cause trouble for someone, and that can’t be much fun,’ Bäckström said, smiling his most sympathetic smile.
‘Well, of course that’s not the main reason why I think we should adjust our approach on this matter, at least for the time being,’ Olsson said nervously.
‘What about proceeding on a broad front, relentlessly?’ Bäckström asked innocently.
‘Naturally I’ve taken that into consideration, Bäckström, but I’m also starting to get a definite sense that the investigation is starting to point in a more focused direction, if I may say so.’
‘So you’re giving up the idea of getting DNA samples from the whole town?’ Bäckström said brightly. ‘In that case, I—’
‘What I mostly had in mind was the car,’ Olsson interrupted. ‘That we should suspend the DNA sampling programme in order to focus hard on the line of inquiry offered by the car.’
‘You mean that hundred-year-old who’s forgotten when she was born?’
‘Ninety-two,’ Olsson said. ‘Maybe not her, exactly, but we’re far from finished with the door-to-door enquiries out in Högstorp, and Enoksson and his colleagues usually have something to offer us once they’ve finished their examinations. What do you think, Bäckström?’
‘I think we should send in the heavies to deal with the old woman. Maybe the Sala League.’
‘The Sala League?’ Olsson said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.’
‘Charming characters, very busy in central Sweden back in the thirties,’ said Bäckström, who had garnered all his esoteric knowledge from the Crime-Police Yearbook. It was the only book he read, mainly to check that he was mentioned in sufficiently flattering terms in the case descriptions that certain of his half-demented colleagues insisted on sharing with the general public. And all at no cost, seeing as he usually stole a copy from work.
‘Yes, I know that. But what have the Sala League got to do with our witness?’ Olsson was looking doubtfully at Bäckström.
‘Nothing, sadly,’ Bäckström said. ‘Besides, they’re dead now, but back in the thirties they gassed an old woman to death before robbing her. They got a sum total of six kronor and thirty öre that she kept hidden under her mattress. A lot of money in those days, Olsson.’
‘You’re joking,’ Olsson said.
‘You never know,’ Bäckström said. ‘You never know.’ Maybe we should let Rogersson loose on the old bag, he
thought.
60
BÄCKSTRÖM’S ULTIMATE SUPERIOR, Lars Martin Johansson, hadn’t given a thought to looking at the time, even though it was already past three o’clock on Friday afternoon, and a nervous chief superintendent had been sitting outside with his secretary and sweating for the last half hour. He hadn’t even read the editorial in Svenska Dagbladet, since he had spent the past hour trying to get to grips with what Bäckström and his colleagues had actually been doing down in Växjö for the past month.
‘You can send him in now,’ Johansson said over the intercom, and whether it was because it was almost the weekend or for some other reason, it took no longer than ten seconds before the chief super-intendent was sitting in the visitor’s chair on the other side of his large desk.
‘I’ve read the files you gave me,’ Johansson said.
‘I’m listening, boss,’ the chief said.
‘I want someone in the finance office to take a look at them. I’ve indicated the main question marks in red,’ Johansson said, nodding towards the folder lying on the desk between them.
‘When do you want it done, boss?’
‘It’ll be fine if I can have it first thing Monday morning. It is the weekend, after all,’ Johansson said generously.
‘I’d better have a word with them at once. Before they disappear, I mean,’ the chief said nervously, starting to stand up.
‘One more thing,’ Johansson said. ‘I want to take a look at the investigation as well. If I’ve understood correctly, our colleagues in the CP group have copies of most of the files?’
‘And when do you want those, boss?’
‘Quarter of an hour will do fine,’ Johansson said.
‘I’m afraid they may already have finished for the day,’ the chief said, glancing nervously at the time.
‘I find that hard to imagine,’ Johansson said. ‘It isn’t even half past three yet.’
