The Dying Detective

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘So what happened after that, then?’

  ‘I had a chat with the prosecutor and Bäckström. The prosecutor was already having doubts by this point – he had the custody proceedings to worry about, and there wasn’t a lot of hard evidence against the father. Bäckström was his usual self: anyone with a brain could see that the father did it – unless you were thick in the head, like me. And those witnesses who had just appeared were obviously lying to protect him.

  ‘The day the father was due to be charged we got the results back from the National Forensics Lab. They’d managed to secure samples of sperm from Yasmine’s body and clothes. The perpetrator’s blood group didn’t match her father’s. There was no DNA technology back then, of course, but the blood group was more than enough.’

  ‘So the prosecutor backed down and the father was released,’ Johansson said.

  ‘Exactly. I can tell you’ve been through this before. The only one who didn’t back down was Bäckström. If it wasn’t the father who’d raped the daughter, then it must have been one of his friends having a bit of fun with her. The result of this whole mess was that it took more than fourteen days from when she went missing for us to have any reasonable grasp of the nature of what we were dealing with. Not to mention the fact that the holiday season was in full swing and we couldn’t get hold of anyone. We were about a third the strength we usually were. That we should have been, and needed to be to make any progress. And that’s without even taking into account the little fat bastard who was in charge of it all.’

  ‘Bäckström carried on being difficult?’

  ‘Of course,’ Jarnebring said. ‘He told anyone who was prepared to listen that he now knew there were at least two perpetrators involved. The father and an as yet unknown friend of his. There were plenty of journalists who bought the story as well. But there were a few legally responsible editors who didn’t, which is probably another reason why there wasn’t much media coverage of Yasmine’s murder. There was the fact that the family were immigrants. And those accusations the mother made against the father. Honour killing and violence against women and incest and immigrants and God knows what else. All of a sudden it was a bloody sensitive story.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Johansson said. ‘And all of it a load of crap that had nothing to do with the facts and just confused things.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that, but trying to explain that to Bäckström was a complete waste of time. He refused to listen.’

  ‘What were you expecting?’

  ‘It turned into a complete disaster, the whole case.’

  Johansson sighed deeply and shook his head.

  ‘The investigation into little Yasmine’s murder isn’t a happy story. Not a happy story at all.’

  Johansson made do with a nod. He sat in silence for so long that Jarnebring got worried and had to sneak a glance at him to make sure he hadn’t fallen asleep. Or, even worse, had another stroke. But he hadn’t. He looked like he was thinking. As if he were somewhere deep inside himself, thinking.

  ‘Give me the really long version,’ he suddenly said. ‘I want to hear more about the start of the investigation. I want to know more about that little kid and her family. We’ve still got plenty of time.’ He nodded towards the clock hanging above the door of his room.

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ Jarnebring asked. I’m starting to recognize you again now, he thought. Even though you look a right mess and your face is all lopsided.

  ‘Never felt better,’ Johansson said. Even though I really feel like apple sauce that someone’s just crapped out, he thought.

  ‘Okay. But you’ll have to give me some paper and a pen and five minutes to gather my thoughts.

  ‘Have a word with the nurse. And I can have one of your bananas in the meantime?’ At least they’re the same shape as Günter’s magnificent Polish bratwurst, he thought. But there the resemblance ends, sadly.

  14

  Wednesday afternoon, 14 July

  ‘Are you asleep?’ Jarnebring asked.

  ‘No,’ Johansson replied, shifting position on the bed. ‘Just shut my eyes for a minute.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jarnebring said. ‘Off we go, then. I think we’ll start with the weather on the day she went missing.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘High summer in Sweden, not a cloud in the sky, barely any wind. Between twenty and thirty degrees. The weather stayed pretty much the same all week and, naturally, I was stuck at work, sweating my arse off. My usual luck.’

  ‘At least little Yasmine was fortunate with the weather,’ Johansson said. Because where his heart usually sat in his chest there was suddenly nothing but a black hole, but there was no chance of him bursting into tears because there was also, just as suddenly, a hatred so strong that it shut out love, sadness and common human decency.

  Jarnebring looked at him, barely able to hide his surprise.

  ‘How are you doing, Lars?’ he said. ‘Maybe we should wait with this, after all?’

  ‘No,’ Johansson said. ‘I’m listening,’ he repeated. ‘Tell me what happened the day she disappeared. You said it was a Friday.’

  ‘Friday, 14 June 1985,’ Jarnebring confirmed.

  ‘Friday, 14 June 1985,’ Johansson repeated. A hot summer’s day in Sweden. He tried to disregard the hatred he was feeling. Just remember that you can’t see around corners any more, he thought.

  15

  Friday, 14 June 1985

  Twenty-five years earlier, and the last time Josef Ermegan, thirty-four, spoke to his nine-year-old daughter Yasmine, he lied to her.

  It was around six in the evening when he dropped her off outside the door of the house on Hannebergsgatan in Solna where her mother lived. He kissed her on the cheeks and forehead, made her promise not to argue with her mother, and himself promised to phone her as soon as he got time, but that it might be a few days because he had a lot to do at work. Then he drove out to the archipelago, to a house he had borrowed from a work colleague, with a young woman with whom he had just embarked upon an affair. A different woman from the one he had been sharing his home and bed with for the past couple of years, the woman Yasmine sometimes called ‘Mummy’ when she was tired and sleepy, or just forgot.

  When he told Jarnebring about this a week or so later, he was sitting in custody in the police station in Solna suspected of having murdered his daughter. He was sobbing uncontrollably, like an abandoned child, and Jarnebring didn’t know what to do. He patted him on the shoulder and said he believed him. Josef grabbed his hand, squeezing it hard between both of his, then pressed Jarnebring’s hand to his face. Jarnebring felt ‘seriously fucking awkward’, even though he had seen most things and was used to all sorts of body language. He pulled his hand free, as gently as he could, then leaned across the table and took hold of Josef Ermegan’s shoulders. He squeezed hard to get him to listen. Josef whimpered, pressed his knuckles into his eyes and dropped his head to the table between them. Jarnebring patted him on the back. Told him he needed to pull himself together so he could help Jarnebring find the man who had killed his daughter. Josef straightened up and removed his hands from his face.

  ‘I promise,’ Josef Ermegan said. ‘I promise to toughen up, to summon up the worst in me. I swear I’ll help you. I swear on my daughter’s life.’

  If only Yasmine had managed to keep her promise to her father, then what ended up happening would never have happened. Instead, she and her mother Maryam, thirty-two, started arguing before they even sat down to eat. Yasmine had taken a can of Coca-Cola from her rucksack, sat down at the table and started to read a comic she had brought with her. Her mum started nagging her, saying she wasn’t allowed Coke, it wasn’t good for her teeth, and that she, a dental nurse, knew better than Yasmine’s dad. When she made to take the can from her daughter, Yasmine spilled the drink on her blouse and they started shouting at each other. Yasmine pulled on the little rucksack containing all her things, rushed into the bathroom and locked the door beh
ind her.

  Her mum decided to pretend it hadn’t happened. Only when she had finished preparing the meal and the table was set did she knock on the bathroom door and say it was time to eat. Yasmine came out. She had swapped her white blouse for a pink T-shirt and pale blue jeans and went and sat at the table, where she started to eat in sullen silence. Her mother ignored that as well. Then the phone rang, and her mum went into the living room to answer. It was one of her colleagues at work. Maryam explained that she and her daughter were in the middle of eating and promised to call back later, but as she put the phone down she heard the front door close. Just before seven o’clock, on the evening of Friday, 14 June 1985. And if she had never started arguing with her daughter, what ended up happening would never have happened.

  At first she rushed into the bathroom, although she was unable to say why when she was asked about it later. Yasmine’s keys were on the floor in front of the basin, an ornate, plaited leather necklace that she usually wore round her neck with one key to her mum’s flat, and one for the house where her dad lived. She had evidently taken it off when she changed her soaked white blouse for the pink T-shirt and forgotten to put it back on again when her mum told her food was ready.

  Then Maryam ran out on to the balcony to call to her daughter. But the street was empty. Just a few adults walking past, staring up at her on the balcony in surprise as she called her daughter’s name.

  Then she put her shoes on and ran down the stairs, and just as she was about to run out into the road she bumped into a neighbour who lived in the same building, a police officer. He was considerably older than her but, to judge from the way he looked at her whenever they said hello to each other, he liked what he saw, maybe even had a bit of a crush on her and could imagine getting together with her. Even though he was Swedish and blond and a police officer and considerably older than her, a refugee from Iran who had only just been granted Swedish citizenship.

  ‘You’re in a rush!’ Police Inspector Peter Sundman said, smiling broadly at the woman who had just run into his arms.

  ‘Sorry, Peter,’ Maryam apologized as soon as she saw who it was. ‘It’s Yasmine, my daughter, she’s just run away from home.’

  ‘Only just, surely?’ Peter Sundman asked. ‘I passed her a couple of minutes ago when she was on her way to the underground. She looked the way kids do when they’ve had a row with their mum. I waved to her, but I don’t think she saw me. If you ask me, she’s on her way back to her dad’s to tell him how awful her mum’s been and to get a bit of sympathy.’

  He already knew about the situation between Maryam and her former husband. She had told him, and he had also heard about it at work. A beautiful young woman, seemed educated and smart, and if she fancied trying something new he was prepared to bide his time.

  ‘She didn’t take her keys,’ Maryam said.

  ‘If her dad’s home, I’m sure he’ll let her in.’ Peter Sundman patted her arm sympathetically. ‘If only to give him a reason to yell at you.’

  ‘What if he’s at work?’

  ‘Then she’ll call him there. If I had to guess, I’d say she’ll phone you first because she’s already regretting what she’s done and wants to say sorry for being so silly. How about a cup of coffee?’

  ‘In my flat,’ Maryam said. ‘So I’m there if she calls. When she calls, I mean.’

  And if Yasmine hadn’t forgotten to take her keys with her, it would never have happened.

  Yasmine never phoned. After a couple of hours and numerous cups of coffee, Maryam and Peter started making phone calls. First, Peter called her ex-husband at home, because she refused to, then he tried calling him at work. Then Maryam called a few of Josef’s work colleagues, and Yasmine’s best friend. But they either got no answer or the person they spoke to had nothing to tell them. They didn’t know where Josef was. If he wasn’t at home, then he was probably at work. Maybe he was out getting something to eat, even though it was late. He was probably somewhere between home and the laboratory, a journey he had to make often because of the laboratory animals, which needed looking after the whole time.

  If she hadn’t started arguing with Yasmine, if her husband hadn’t given her that can of Coca-Cola even though he knew she wasn’t allowed it, if her daughter hadn’t left her keys behind . . . If, if, if.

  Over the course of the next few months Maryam and Josef would come up with hundreds of different explanations as to why what ended up happening shouldn’t have happened. If only . . . They tormented themselves, and each other.

  Just before midnight Peter Sundman called the officer at the Solna Police who had relieved him on the duty desk at Solna police station at half past six that evening. The duty officer put him through to the detective who was on call for the crime unit in Solna that evening and, when Peter Sundman heard who it was, he groaned silently to himself.

  ‘Bäckström,’ Bäckström said. ‘What is it?’

  16

  Saturday, 15 June

  Bäckström and Sundman had begun to squabble almost immediately. Bäckström had considerably more important things to do than take care of ‘a little brat who’s had a row with her mum and run off to her dad’. Surely even someone like Sundman could understand that? Sundman ended the call and rang the duty officer again. He got him to send a patrol car to the villa where the father lived. The car arrived just after midnight, but the house was locked and dark, no car in the drive, and the letterbox was empty. The officers drove around the neighbourhood, but the whole area was quiet and dark and seemed almost abandoned.

  On the way back to the station in Solna the patrol car stopped off at the father’s place of work out at the Karolinska. There were a few lights on in various windows, but when they rang the bell no one responded over the entry-phone. And they hadn’t spotted anyone who looked remotely like Yasmine when they drove round the hospital grounds a few times just to be sure.

  Before they finished their shift the following morning, they repeated the procedure, but in reverse. Same result as before. No one replied on the entry-phone at the father’s workplace. The house where he lived was as before. Drive empty, letterbox empty, no morning paper, even though the man delivering them was on his way down the street. They stopped to talk to him, and he checked his list. The paper had been cancelled from Monday that week, for a fortnight. He had nothing else of note to contribute.

  ‘Most people who live here have already gone off to their summer cottages,’ he explained.

  While his younger colleagues drove to and fro, the duty officer called the father’s home and workplace. According to him, he tried at least three times during the night, at intervals of a couple of hours. No answer. What Bäckström had been doing was unclear. He didn’t answer when the duty officer tried to call him at three in the morning. All of this was according to what the duty officer told Jarnebring when they discussed it just over a week later.

  ‘Mostly to wind up the fat little bastard. When it comes to that man, Sundman and I are of the same opinion. If I had to choose, I’d pick haemorrhoids over him.’

  On Saturday morning Peter Sundman talked to his boss, who talked to Bäckström’s boss, who in turn saw to it that Bäckström at least filed a formal missing-person report for Yasmine Ermegan, nine years old. But, in principle, he shared Bäckström’s opinion. ‘Voluntary disappearance. No crime suspected.’

  In a few days’ time she and her father would doubtless show up in the best of health and then all hell would break loose again between him and the girl’s mother. In the usual way, with the air thick with accusations and counterclaims. The way things always turned out when kids of that background and with that sort of parents ran away from home. Any proper police officer knew that.

  But not this time.

  17

  Wednesday afternoon, 14 July 2010

  ‘So, basically, not a damn thing happened during the whole of the first fucking week. Not until she was found on Midsummer’s Eve, on the evening of 21 June,’ Jarnebring said, g
lancing at his notes.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Johansson said.

  ‘It was the usual,’ Jarnebring went on. ‘A dog-owner taking his mutt out for an evening piss. Wonder how many dead bodies have been found by them over the years?’

  ‘You’re right, there,’ Johansson said. ‘You can never go wrong with a dog. Dogs are good.’

  Jarnebring glanced at him, slightly warily. Something’s definitely happened to Lars Martin, he thought. Not that he could do much about that. No more than he was already doing, of course.

  ‘Anyway,’ Jarnebring said, ‘he was renting a cottage out near Skokloster Castle, and when he was walking along the shore of the lake his dog suddenly races off, straight out into the reeds, and then starts barking like buggery. The poor girl was wrapped in some of those big plastic bags, but the dog was standing there tearing at them, so the owner saw what was inside. That put a rocket under him, naturally. He put the dog on the lead and rushed home to call 90000 – that was still the number in those days – and said he’d found a dead body wrapped in black plastic. It was a standard poodle, by the way,’ Jarnebring said. ‘The dog, I mean. Called Old Bosse, I seem to recall. Why the fuck would anyone call their dog Old Bosse?’

  ‘Isn’t your name Bo?’ Johansson said.