Linda - As In The Linda Murder

by Leif Persson

  ‘Good,’ Johansson said. ‘Send them in at once.’

  For reasons that remained unclear, Holt and Mattei weren’t happy when they came in to discuss their new roles with Johansson, even though he had asked his secretary to organize coffee, Danish pastries and biscuits. Holt just shook her head when he offered her the plate. She had her hands full with her new job, and wasn’t the least bit amused at having to clean up Bäckström’s mess. Mattei admitted that it all sounded very interesting and exciting, but pointed out that as she was on leave from 1 September in order to complete her studies at university, she might have certain practical problems. Not least considering that she was already on secondment.

  ‘There’s almost a fortnight until then. A perfectly ordinary murder investigation. You girls will solve it in a week,’ Johansson cajoled, taking another Danish pastry. ‘Besides, it might be nice for you to get out into the fresh air. Put your ear to the ground, put one thing together with something else and come up with two, work out that it fits, go and get the suspect that evening, when it’s just started raining and you have to turn up the collars on your coats when you get out of the car, and see him watching television, totally unsuspecting, already getting used to the idea that he might have got away with it. Then you ring on the door, you hear him heading towards it . . . We’re from the police. There’s something we’d like to talk to you about,’ Johansson said, with a deep sigh of longing for a bygone age.

  ‘That’s all very well, Lars, but this really isn’t about us, is it?’ Holt said.

  ‘So what is it about?’ Johansson said warily.

  ‘Really you’d like to be able to go yourself,’ Holt said, as if she was talking to a restless child. ‘But seeing as you can’t go, you have to send us instead.’

  ‘You’re a proper little psychologist, aren’t you, Anna?’ Johansson said with a crooked smile. ‘I may not have been expecting a standing ovation, but a discreet nod of approval might not have gone amiss.’

  ‘Of course,’ Holt said. ‘Make the best of things, don’t complicate things unnecessarily, and never trust coincidence. Lars Martin Johansson’s three golden rules for every murder detective. Lisa and I are practically down in Växjö already.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Johansson said. ‘Although in this particular instance, and bearing in mind that it’s Bäckström you’re cleaning up after, there’s a fourth rule that you should also be aware of.’

  ‘I’m listening, boss,’ Lisa Mattei said, looking like the class swot who doesn’t even have to put her hand up any more.

  ‘Beware the demon drink, girls. A piece of advice from an old man who’s been around the block a few times,’ Johansson said, grabbing another biscuit from the well-stocked plate.

  71

  HOLT AND MATTEI spent the next two days preparing for their trip to Växjö. Holt had made the practical arrangements in thirty minutes with the help of Bäckström’s boss. Getting up to speed with the case that they were to investigate had taken some twenty hours, and to that extent everything was pretty much the same as usual. The only odd thing was the conspicuous absence of their boss throughout. Right up to Friday afternoon, when he suddenly appeared in the doorway of their office.

  ‘I hope I’m not interrupting,’ Johansson said as he sat down. ‘So tell me. What do you make of it?’ He nodded towards the documents on the table between them.

  ‘What do you make of it?’ Holt said, who had known Johansson for several years and had been through this before.

  ‘Since you ask, Anna,’ Johansson said, because he had known Holt just as long, and had been through considerably more, ‘I think the whole thing seems pretty straightforward. It was someone she knew. Probably someone her mother knew as well, or at least had met. She let him in voluntarily, it all began consensually, then it got out of hand and he killed her.’

  ‘That’s pretty much what Lisa and I think,’ Holt agreed.

  ‘Glad to hear it. Seeing as we’re talking about Växjö here, and since both the victim and her mother seem to be ordinary, decent, normal people, there can’t be that many to choose from. Go down and arrest the bastard. We can’t have someone like that on the loose. It shouldn’t be much of a challenge to find him.’

  ‘So why haven’t they managed so far? To find him, I mean?’ Mattei asked, looking curiously at her boss. ‘They seem to have checked out a number of people already.’

  ‘Bäckström, probably,’ Johansson said with a sigh.

  ‘What about Lewin, then?’ Holt said. ‘He’s there too. And the others. There’s nothing much wrong with any of them, as far as I’m aware.’

  ‘They probably just haven’t thought of him yet,’ Johansson said, with another sigh. ‘Because he’s the sort of ordinary, decent, normal person that doesn’t spring to mind in this sort of context. Or else they haven’t had time, because they’ve been running round with those damn cotton-buds the whole time.’

  ‘Considering what he did to the victim, there seem to be other sides to his character as well,’ Holt said. ‘Sides which aren’t quite as nice.’

  ‘That’s just what I mean,’ Johansson said. ‘On this occasion all the safety barriers gave way, he lost control and things went the way they did. I had a case once, many years ago now. The Maria murder. She was a teacher too, just like Linda’s mother. Have I ever told you about that one?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Holt said. He’s just like a child, she thought.

  ‘Tell us, boss,’ Mattei said, looking as interested as she actually was.

  ‘Okay, if you really want me to,’ Johansson said.

  Maria had lived in Enskede outside Stockholm and worked as a teacher in a high school on Södermalm. Single, ordinary, decent, normal, friendly, well liked by her friends, acquaintances, workmates and pupils, and everyone else the police talked to. She didn’t seem to have even the tiniest skeleton in her closet, not even a secret vibrator in the drawer of her bedside table. But still she was found raped and strangled in her flat. Even though it was the middle of the week, in the middle of winter. Even though she hadn’t been out to a bar, and had just been sitting and marking essays when it happened.

  ‘First we did all the things you always do,’ Johansson said. ‘Men she’d been seeing, ordinary friends and acquaintances, workmates, neighbours, anyone she might just have bumped into shortly before it happened. As well as the old classics that always show up whenever the police look into a case like this. All the usual suspects, from rapists to flashers, and anyone else who might have been in the area and had left a trail in police records in the past.’

  ‘And what did that tell you?’ Holt asked, even though she already knew.

  ‘Nothing,’ Johansson said. ‘Then one of us started thinking about a mysterious car that had been seen a couple of days before it happened, and just twenty-four hours later the penny dropped,’ Johansson declared, looking very pleased with himself.

  I wonder who that could have been? Anna Holt thought, even though a child could have guessed the answer.

  The car had been badly parked, in front of a driveway, and the second time it happened the owner of the driveway had called the police, annoyed, and filed a complaint against the car’s owner. The complaint had been among the heaps of surveillance material, but because the owner was an ordinary, decent, normal man in his forties with no criminal record, no one had paid it any attention. Until ‘one of us’ in the investigating team started to think about what he was actually doing there.

  ‘After all, the victim lived in an ordinary residential area. And he had been there late at night. The car’s owner was married and had two children, and worked as an engineer for an energy company out in Råcksta, and they lived in a rowhouse in Vällingby on the other side of the city. Obviously, I wondered what he was doing there at that time of night,’ Johansson said, finally deciding to take off his mask.

  ‘So what happened?’ Holt asked, even though she had already worked it out, and mostly to pre-empt her breathlessly listening
younger colleague.

  The usual tragic little story, according to Johansson. And in its most common form. ‘I said he had a wife, didn’t I? When we checked her out, it turned out that she worked with the victim, which, to put it mildly, was a remarkable coincidence. The perpetrator had met the victim when he picked his wife up from a staff party at the school. Eventually the victim had got fed up with him and his endless empty promises, and ended the affair. So he switched to watching her in the evening and at night, to see who her new man was. One evening he went up and knocked on the door, and unfortunately she let him in and things went the way they did. I suppose he just lost control.’

  ‘Did she have a new man, then?’ Holt asked.

  ‘No, she didn’t, but he had evidently got it into his head that she did, and that was presumably where it all started. Simple, basic police work,’ Johansson said modestly, shrugging his shoulders. ‘None of that modern hocus-pocus where you seem to need an entire laboratory to work out the most obvious things.’

  ‘So what advice can you give us for our trip to Växjö?’ Holt wondered innocently.

  ‘I’m sure you and Lisa don’t need any advice from an old man like me,’ Johansson said.

  ‘Just trying to be polite,’ Holt said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Johansson said, evidently not the least bit put out. ‘But seeing as you asked, I’d probably suggest you start by talking to Linda’s mother.’

  ‘Our colleagues have already interviewed her three times,’ Holt said, nodding towards the files on the desk. ‘One of them looked very thorough, if you ask me.’

  ‘She’s probably still in shock,’ Johansson said with a shrug. ‘I think she’s trying to protect herself, in some subconscious way. Sooner or later I think she’s going to work out what happened, if she hasn’t already done so.’

  ‘You think we should interview her again?’ Mattei said.

  ‘Definitely,’ Johansson said. ‘Anything else would be a dereliction of duty. Preferably before she gets it into her head to do anything stupid herself,’ he added.

  Johansson and his wife spent the weekend with good friends out at their summer house in Södermanland. They had had a very pleasant time, not getting home until Sunday afternoon, which had the fortunate side-effect of stopping Johansson from plaguing Holt with questions about their preparations for the Linda case. But no sooner had he got through the door of the flat on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan than he was calling her on her mobile.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re sitting on the train to Växjö,’ Holt said. ‘The signal’s not very good.’

  ‘Call me on my mobile as soon as you arrive.’

  ‘Of course,’ Holt said. She switched her mobile off with a sigh.

  ‘Who was that?’ Mattei asked.

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘That man’s amazing,’ Mattei sighed. ‘Lars Martin Johansson. The man who can see round corners.’

  ‘Mind you, I think he’d feel better if he could see his own feet,’ Holt said. And I wonder what your relationship with your father is like, she thought.

  ‘Watch what you’re saying, Anna,’ Mattei said, hushing her with a finger to her lips.

  ‘You’re worried he can hear what I say?’

  ‘That man can hear what you and I are thinking.’

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem very taken with him.’

  ‘Taken!’ Mattei giggled. ‘I’ve got a huge crush on Lars Martin Johansson.’

  ‘Well, I still think he needs to watch his weight,’ Holt said. He ought to lose fifty kilos or so, she thought.

  ‘I think’s he’s very sweet just as he is. Mind you, twenty or thirty kilos wouldn’t hurt,’ Mattei said with a twinkle.

  When Holt and Mattei arrived in Växjö on Sunday afternoon, they were suddenly very busy. It didn’t occur to Holt to call her boss and engage in pointless small talk over the phone, and when she did finally get a minute to herself, he got there before her.

  ‘You haven’t called,’ Johansson said, sounding almost hurt. Even though it’s almost nine o’clock in the evening, he thought.

  ‘I’ve been pretty busy,’ Holt said. And how can I say this without him having a heart attack, or a stroke, or both at once? she thought.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Johansson said, because he wasn’t the sort to bear a grudge, except when he felt like it. ‘So how’s it going?’

  ‘Fine,’ Holt said. ‘It’s already over.’

  ‘What do you mean, over?’ Johansson said.

  ‘Bäckström and his colleagues caught the perpetrator this morning. The prosecutor has already remanded him in custody, and tomorrow she’s going to declare him a formal suspect on the grounds of reasonable probability.’

  ‘Bäckström? Are you pulling my leg?’ What’s she saying? he thought.

  ‘Bäckström and his colleagues.’

  ‘Bäckström’s never cleared up a case in his life,’ Johansson snorted.

  ‘If you promise to sit down and stop interrupting, I’ll tell you,’ Holt said.

  ‘I’m already sitting down,’ Johansson said. He had been lying on the sofa when he called, but was now sitting bolt upright. Bäckström, he thought.

  ‘Good,’ Holt said. ‘Well, everything has pretty much happened during the course of the day, and, to be brief . . .’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Johansson said. What’s going on? he thought.

  ‘Yes, I rather assumed you were,’ Holt said. ‘But it would be good if you could stop interrupting me the whole time.’

  When she ended the call with Johansson she took Lewin to one side.

  ‘I’ve already congratulated you,’ she said. ‘Now, would you mind rewinding a bit for me and Lisa, and tell us what happened. Things must have changed dramatically since we last spoke.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Lewin said. ‘Well, in broad strokes, this is how it was. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that things move fast once they start happening, so it’s certainly not as if we’ve been holding anything back.’

  ‘Tell us,’ Anna Holt said.

  72

  AS TIME PASSED, the murder of Linda Wallin was occupying less and less space in the columns of the Småland Post, and over the course of the past week they had made do with merely saying that there wasn’t much to report about the actual investigation. No particular progress, and definitely no breakthrough. Yet it still didn’t look as though the investigation had ground to a halt, or even noticeably slowed down. It was more like it had entered a ‘calmer and more systematic phase’, where the police were working ‘on a broad front, with no pre-conceived ideas’, all of this courtesy of the unnamed sources inside the investigation to whom the paper had spoken.

  On Wednesday, however, local crime was back on the front page of the paper, with the tantalizing headline ARGUMENT OVER MUSKRAT SLIPPERS LED TO VIOLENCE.

  The incident in question had actually taken place in January, six months before the murder of Linda Wallin, but because the investigation had been complex and protracted, the case had only just reached the district court in Växjö, where the previous day a 45-year-old man had been fined and given a suspended sentence for the physical abuse of his former partner, forty-two.

  Jan Lewin read the article with interest. It was both entertaining and thought-provoking, and, having a professional interest and being able to read between the lines, he worked out what had happened.

  At some point after New Year the accused and his partner decided to split up, and, because the flat was registered in her name, he was the one who had to move out. The Småland Post skimmed over the reasons for their separation, but Lewin none the less got the impression that she had got fed up and simply thrown him out.

  In any case, it seemed to have been she who packed his things so that she finally had the run of her own flat, and when the accused had unpacked them in his new temporary abode, shared with a female work colleague, 33, who had evidently taken pity on him, he had discovered that his most tre
asured possessions were missing. A pair of sixty-year-old muskrat slippers that he had inherited from his father, who in turn had inherited them from the accused’s grandfather.

  The accused had gone to see his former girlfriend at once to ask her about them. When she told him she had thrown them out he had become violent, grabbing her by the arm, knocking her to the floor, slapping her face several times, and attempting to kick her as she lay on the floor. The neighbours had called the police, who had broken things up, hauled the man off to the police station, and taken the woman to hospital so that she could be patched up and her injuries documented. Then things had followed their usual course, and the reason it had all dragged on so long was that the stories of those involved had been different, there were no witnesses to the attack itself, and several accusations and counter-accusations had been made during the course of the investigation.

  The accused worked as a salesman for a large car company in Växjö. His father had worked for the same company, from the mid-fifties until he retired forty years later, and his grandfather had sold agricultural machinery for a firm outside Hultsfred until he died just after the end of the war.

  Apart from their interest in cars and tractors, the accused, his father and his grandfather also shared a common passion: hunting. A relatively large proportion of the trial in the district court had been devoted to exploring this, and amongst other things the accused and his defence lawyer had called two character witnesses to explain what the discarded muskrat slippers really meant to their friend and hunting partner. This certainly wasn’t a matter of just any old slippers.

  According to the story that was told in the accused’s family, during the long years of the war his grandfather had shot some dozen muskrats in the ditches and wetlands around Hultsfred. He had skinned his prey himself, prepared the skins and then taken them to a local shoemaker, who made a pair of very comfortable, warm slippers out of them. They had been greatly appreciated by their owner, and were invaluable during the cold winters towards the end of the war.