Linda - As In The Linda Murder

by Leif Persson

  ‘Things are heating up,’ Adolfsson said to von Essen, who was lying on the sofa watching a film on their colleague’s television.

  ‘Has he rigged up a block and tackle from the ceiling?’ von Essen asked, changing to TV4 so as not to miss the latest news.

  ‘He’s opening a bottle of wine,’ Adolfsson said. ‘And now he’s fetched two glasses.’

  ‘Aha!’ von Essen said. ‘Mark my words, Adolf, he’s expecting female company.’

  At ten o’clock a blonde woman in her thirties pulled up in a small Renault and disappeared in through the front door of Månsson’s building. She had a large handbag hanging from her shoulder, and in her left hand a plastic bag which looked as if it contained a large wine box. Two minutes later she had reached Månsson’s flat, and at ten past ten they were sitting on the sofa pulling each other’s clothes off. After another five minutes they were having sex. Adolfsson took the opportunity to complement the surveillance log with numerous excellent photographs, and used the spare time to note the registration number and model of the visitor’s car.

  The sexual activities on the sofa continued until just after midnight, with some short breaks for food and drink. After an hour Bäckström called to ask what was happening, and Adolfsson gave him a quick update.

  ‘He’s got a girl there. They’re hard at it on the sofa, although right now they’re taking a break for some food,’ he said.

  ‘Has he tied her up yet?’ Bäckström said eagerly.

  ‘No, just the usual,’ Adolfsson said.

  ‘What do you mean, the usual?’ Bäckström said suspiciously. ‘No neckties, no knives?’

  ‘Just normal sex. So far they haven’t done anything I haven’t done myself,’ Adolfsson said. ‘Mind you, Månsson seems fairly energetic for his age,’ he added. He himself was ten years younger.

  At fifteen minutes past midnight things calmed down. Månsson and his guest finished the plate of food. They drank the last of the bottle. His guest went into the kitchen and returned with a three-litre box of white wine while her host selected a film on one of his many film channels. Nothing remarkable, an ordinary romantic comedy, Adolfsson noted after a quick glance at the television section in the evening paper. At half past two they left the living room, heading for the bedroom which faced the other side of the building.

  Adolfsson woke von Essen, who was lying on top of their colleague’s bed snoring. Von Essen went outside to take a discreet look, and returned to confirm that the subject had evidently gone to bed. Then he took over from Adolfsson, who lay down on the same bed and fell asleep at once. Everything had been carefully noted, and the name and date of birth of the car’s registered owner seemed to match Månsson’s guest. Even if it didn’t, they had numerous photographs of her in case there was ever any problem with identification.

  For once, Bäckström was having trouble sleeping. First he and Rogersson had sat in his room talking, and when he finally managed to get rid of his parasitic colleague it was already two o’clock in the morning. Three hours later he woke up, and only after another little drink was he able to settle down and get back to sleep. But by seven o’clock he was awake again, and in the absence of any better options he wandered down to the dining room to get some well-deserved nutrition after a hard and trying night.

  First he piled up his plate as usual with headache pills, anchovy fillets, scrambled egg and sausages, and after washing down the first of these with several large gulps of orange juice he finally started to feel like a human being again, and set about the sausages with some vigour. He also managed to grunt in the direction of Lewin, who nodded politely and even deigned to lower his morning paper a fraction, while little Svanström for some reason got an attack of the giggles that only got worse and worse until, red-eyed, streaming with tears and holding a napkin over her mouth, she got up from the table and rushed out towards the ladies’ room.

  What the fuck’s got into her? Bäckström thought suspiciously as he crammed another little sausage into his mouth. ‘What the fuck’s got into her?’ he asked, peering at Lewin, who didn’t seem to have noticed that an hysterical woman had just left them.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Lewin lied, even though he had worked out the day before that Bäckström was probably the only person in the entire police station who hadn’t read the report of the interview with Carin Ågren. And who was he to ruin the day for a fellow officer so early in the morning, notwithstanding the officer in question’s personal failings and other human shortcomings?

  Lewin excused himself and got up from the table, to make sure that Eva Svanström was kept at a safe distance from Bäckström for the rest of the day.

  77

  MÅNSSON AND HIS guest didn’t appear to have had any trouble sleeping. It wasn’t until almost ten o’clock in the morning that von Essen had reason to make any new notes in the surveillance log. First a naked Månsson appeared in his hallway and then disappeared into his bathroom. A couple of minutes later his similarly naked guest followed him, and evidently they were both very careful with their hygiene seeing as it was almost an hour before they emerged, Månsson with a towel wrapped round his waist and his female guest wearing a dressing-gown, and went into the kitchen to have breakfast.

  By then even Adolfsson was up on his feet, freshly showered and busy making coffee and boiling eggs, mixing juice and making sandwiches. Then Bäckström called once more to hear how things were going.

  ‘Well? Is she alive?’ he said.

  ‘In the peak of health, apparently,’ von Essen asserted. ‘Right now she and her host are having coffee, oatflakes with yoghurt, a crispbread sandwich with a lot of salad and a slice of low-fat cheese.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Bäckström said with distaste. ‘Sick bastards. Let me know if he makes a move for her throat.’

  Von Essen promised they would. Then he took the chance to grab a quick shower while Adolfsson took over the surveillance and note-taking. Activities in the flat opposite seemed to suggest that their subject was thinking of leaving it and heading somewhere unknown.

  Lewin and his colleagues had spent a day and a half trying to find a connection between Bengt Månsson on the one hand and Linda or her mother on the other. And they hadn’t succeeded. Even though they had combed every accessible database with all the care, thoroughness and inventiveness they had picked up over the years, they hadn’t found anything.

  The most likely conclusion was usually depressing. There were no straightforward connections which had anything to do with their family circumstances, working lives, upbringing, education or accommodation. Nor any mutual networks, interests, hobbies, friends and acquaintances that could link them. Which left only more coincidental encounters, and what little consolation there was to be had from the fact that they all seemed to be ordinary, decent, normal people, and that Växjö was a small enough town for them to have been bound to bump into each other sooner or later.

  Yet this was meagre consolation, and a nagging doubt was growing inside Lewin that everything he had believed would turn out to be wrong. Where would someone like Månsson have learned to hotwire cars and break a steering lock? Where would someone like him have picked up any druggie contacts? And how common were people like him, when it came to what this was ultimately all about? Raping, torturing and strangling a woman fifteen years younger than himself ? The only real consolation so far was von Essen and Adolfsson’s reports about his substantial sexual appetite, albeit a need that he appeared to satisfy within the frame of conventional sexual behaviour. On the one hand, on the other hand, Lewin reasoned, mainly to subdue his own anxieties.

  At five o’clock that afternoon Bäckström rang Adolfsson and von Essen again, and his first question was why they hadn’t contacted him. According to von Essen, the reason was that they had nothing to report that was important enough for them to trouble their esteemed boss, who was bound to be occupied with more important matters.

  ‘Don’t talk crap, Essen,’ Bäckström interrupted.
‘Just tell me what the bastard’s doing.’

  After they had finished breakfast, Månsson and his female guest had got dressed and packed a few things in a bag, which, suggested that they were planning to go on a short excursion, if nothing else then to enjoy this fantastic summer. When they reached the hall, however, something must have arisen, since they had suddenly pulled off all their clothes again and conducted various sexual activities on the hall carpet. The details of these were, however, unclear, as the surveillance team had only been able to observe the participants’ naked legs and feet.

  This somewhat unexpected interlude had been concluded relatively quickly, and just quarter of an hour later Månsson and his female guest had set off in her car. To judge by their behaviour, they were both in a very good mood. Adolfsson and von Essen had followed at a safe distance, and after ten kilometres or so the subjects had stopped at a beach on the northern shore of nearby Lake Helgasjön. There they had spent the whole afternoon lying on a blanket, chatting to each other, sunbathing and swimming. They had also enjoyed a simple picnic. Twenty-seven degrees, twenty-four in the water, and even von Essen and Adolfsson had taken turns cooling off as best they could with a few discreet swims at a safe distance from their quarry.

  Then they had returned to Månsson’s flat, stopping to buy some groceries on the way. They took farewell of each other in the road outside Månsson’s block, and the guest had left. Månsson had returned to his flat, where he threw off his clothes and disappeared into the bathroom, emerging after half an hour with the same blue towel wrapped round his waist. After that he lay on the sofa in the living room reading the evening papers.

  ‘First Aftonbladet, then Expressen,’ von Essen stated in a neutral voice.

  ‘And nothing else in all that time?’ Bäckström asked suspiciously. ‘No alfresco fucking while they were at the beach?’

  Nothing like that, von Essen said, with a possible reservation for anything Månsson might have got up to while he was on his own in the bathroom.

  What the fuck’s the fucker really up to? Bäckström thought, glancing angrily at his wristwatch. Already six o’clock, and he hadn’t had a single beer all day. But at least that was something he could put right fairly soon. Thorough as always, that morning he had sent Rogersson to restock their supplies in advance of what would probably be his last night in Växjö. Although if the lazy bastards up at the National Forensics Lab didn’t manage to live up to their own promises, there would be nothing for it but to stay another night, he thought. Surrounded by cretins and mere incompetents as he was, it took a hell of a time to get the smallest thing done. The bastard Lapp that the socialists had put in charge of him and his fellow unfortunates would just have to console himself by shoving the party manifesto up his fat Norrland arse. No one could say that Bäckström was the sort who left a job half done, Bäckström thought, already feeling considerably brighter.

  Bengt A. Månsson, A. as in Axel, seemed to be a man of fixed habits and regular routines. And a man with a fundamentally liberal attitude and a good deal of flexibility when it came to his choice of partner. Saturday evening had begun exactly like the day before. First he lay on the sofa watching television for a couple of hours. Then he made a couple of phone calls, after which he went out into the kitchen and prepared the usual tray at half past nine or so. Bread and various toppings, side plates, two wine glasses, and the three-litre wine box that his guest the previous night had evidently left behind. Wise man, trying to keep costs down. I wonder who gave him the bottle he shared with the blonde? Patrik Adolfsson thought. Born and bred in Småland as he was.

  Half an hour later a woman appeared along the road outside his door. In contrast to the blonde, this one was brunette and considerably younger, which might explain why she arrived on foot rather than by car. Whatever, five minutes later she was sitting on the sofa in the living room together with her host, and after that things proceeded as per usual.

  ‘Anything interesting to report?’ von Essen asked from his seat at the kitchen table, where he was reading that morning’s Svenska Dagbladet while Adolfsson covered the surveillance.

  ‘Brunette, about twenty, much bigger tits than the blonde,’ Adolfsson summarized. ‘And it looks like she’s shaved down below, maybe because of the heat.’

  ‘Let’s see,’ von Essen said, getting up from the kitchen table and taking the binoculars from Adolfsson without further ado. ‘Looks less sophisticated,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe Månsson’s tired of getting hairs in his mouth,’ Adolfsson suggested.

  ‘You’re a true romantic, aren’t you?’ Von Essen handed back the binoculars and went back to reading the financial pages of Svenska Dagbladet in the hope that his investments might give him the chance to repair all the leaking roofs that he’d inherited from his parents.

  ‘How are things?’ Bäckström asked over the telephone an hour later.

  ‘Same as last night,’ von Essen summarized.

  ‘Same woman?’ Bäckström asked. What’s happened to the check on her background? he wondered. He hadn’t heard a peep from Lewin and his so-called colleagues all day, even though he’d asked them for both pictures and background of the woman in question.

  ‘Different woman, brunette, about twenty, seems less sophisticated,’ von Essen said, trying not to go into the sorts of details that might get a man like Bäckström excited.

  ‘How many times has he been at her, then?’

  ‘Three times in two hours,’ von Essen said after a quick glance at the log. ‘Mind you, they’re at it again now, so there’s every chance of more.’

  ‘Fucking hell, what a sick bastard,’ Bäckström groaned. ‘And in this sort of heat as well.’

  Von Essen and Adolfsson spent the rest of the night taking turns to rest on their colleague’s bed. At seven o’clock in the morning Månsson’s most recent female company left him. Alert and well, apparently, and probably because the poor thing worked as a nursing assistant or something, the baron in von Essen thought, while the acting police inspector made a note in the log. Månsson, on the other hand, seemed to be sleeping the sleep of the just, and he didn’t even seem to have seen his lady friend out. By this point von Essen was starting to feel rather weary, and more than a little irritated by the sound of his partner’s snoring that was issuing from the bedroom. High time something happened, he thought with a deep yawn, glancing at his watch just as their mobile phone began to ring.

  ‘Has something happened?’ von Essen said as he answered it.

  78

  Växjö, Sunday 24 August

  HALF AN HOUR earlier, Enoksson’s phone had rung. Because he was a morning person, he had already read the paper and made breakfast, which he was about to serve to his wife, who was rather less of a morning person.

  ‘Enoksson,’ Enoksson said.

  ‘Are you sitting down?’ his contact at the National Forensics Lab asked, and at that moment he knew what she was going to say.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said two minutes later when she had finished. The age of miracles is not yet past, he thought, even though in his mind’s eye all he could see was a little fat officer from National Crime in Stockholm.

  ‘Has something happened?’ von Essen asked.

  ‘We’re going to crucify the bastard and dunk him in boiling oil,’ Bäckström snarled at the other end of the line, and at that moment von Essen knew that his waiting time was over. For this case, at least.

  Bäckström and Rogersson joined the surveillance team within the space of half an hour, parking their car at the back of the building and behaving as surreptitiously as possible. Bäckström was wearing shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses, sandals and socks, and could easily have been an extra in an old spy film set in the Caribbean. Rogersson, in contrast, looked the same as usual, but because he had entered the building sixty seconds after Bäckström he might as well have been invisible.

  Von Essen quickly updated them on the current position. Månsson seemed to be in bed still. Proba
bly asleep. Assuming he didn’t jump from the balcony or either of the two small windows at the back of his flat, that left the main door to the building and the entrance to the cellar, which was also at the front.

  ‘Okay, let’s go up and get the bastard,’ Bäckström said eagerly. ‘Can anyone lend me a pair of handcuffs? I managed to leave mine behind.’

  ‘With all due respect, boss, I wonder if this is such a good idea,’ Adolfsson said.

  ‘You’re thinking about calling the rapid-response unit?’ Bäckström asked. Typical. It’s always the least likely ones who wimp out at the last minute. And this lad could have gone far, he thought.

  Adolfsson hadn’t had any notion of calling the rapid-response unit. But he did have some practical operational thoughts. Månsson would probably recognize all of them, with the exception of Rogersson. He certainly ought to recognize Bäckström, considering they had spent a couple of hours together in the same room, and Rogersson’s irredeemably cop-like appearance didn’t work in his favour in this sort of situation. Besides, Månsson had a peephole in his door, and if they just showed up and rang the bell in the hope that he’d open up he would have plenty of time either to cut his throat with a bread knife or to jump from the third floor.

  ‘I’ve seen both of those happen before,’ von Essen added. ‘It was an extradition. First he cut his throat, then he jumped from the balcony. Probably wanted to cover his bets. Sad business. Here in town, too, of all places.’

  ‘I’m still waiting for suggestions,’ Bäckström said, glaring at his team.