The Dying Detective

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘I know,’ Johansson said, ‘but I’m not talking about standard down pillows, or ordinary cotton pillowcases.’

  ‘No, you’re talking about—’

  ‘If you could just shut up for a minute and stop interrupting the whole time, I’ll explain the difference between an ordinary down-filled pillow and an ordinary white cotton pillowcase, and the pillow our perpetrator used to smother Yasmine.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Jarnebring said. He leaned back and folded his hands over his flat stomach.

  The whole thing was really pretty simple, according to Johansson. The stuffing of most so-called down-filled pillows was mainly feathers. Feathers and a bit of down from farmed birds, usually ducks and geese that were bred for the purpose. The main producers of feathers and down for pillows were based in Asia, and the country that exported most was China.

  Ordinary pillowcases, with the exception of the most basic and cheapest ones, were made of cotton. Almost all pillowcases were made of cotton, not linen.

  ‘So what you’re trying to say is that this pillow was pretty damn unusual,’ Jarnebring said with a grin.

  ‘Have you got any idea what a pillow like that would cost today? If you even managed to get hold of one, that is. A pillow stuffed with eiderdown with a pillowcase of the finest linen?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ Jarnebring shook his head.

  ‘Twenty thousand, thirty thousand, maybe even more. If you wanted a duvet to match, you’re probably looking at a hundred. A hundred thousand, I mean. That’s if you could actually find any pillows and duvets like that now.’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Jarnebring said. ‘Who the fuck would pay a hundred grand for a pillow and a duvet?’

  ‘Not your average child-killer,’ Johansson said. ‘Not someone like John Ingvar Löfgren, Anders Eklund or Ulf Olsson. None of the others either, for that matter. And not even Yasmine’s murderer, the sensitive and considerate paedophile described by Professor Sjöberg.’

  ‘You’ve lost me now,’ Jarnebring said. ‘You’re going to have to explain.’

  ‘It wasn’t his pillow,’ Johansson said.

  Jarnebring considered this for almost a minute. Then he nodded to Johansson, straightened up on his chair, leaned forward and nodded again.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Margaretha Sagerlied,’ Johansson said. ‘Is that a name you remember?’

  ‘Doesn’t ring any bells,’ Jarnebring said. ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘She cropped up in your investigation. Widow, seventy-one years old at the time of the crime, former opera singer – posh old lady, if I can put it like that. Died in ’89. Considering that her husband was twenty years older than her – he died in 1980, by the way, at the age of eighty-five – and bearing in mind what I’ve heard about the woman in question, I’d say she had a fair bit of money. That was her house we stopped in front of. When Yasmine was murdered she was living at Majblommestigen 2. She was away when it happened. Left a few days before and got back about a week later. She was ruled out of the investigation fairly early. By Bäckström, of course.’

  ‘I understand. I get it now.’ Jarnebring suddenly looked delighted.

  ‘Splendid,’ Johansson said.

  ‘So we can forget her bloke. Far too old. And dead. What about children or grandchildren?’

  ‘A problem. Neither she nor her husband appear to have had any.’

  ‘None born on the wrong side of the blanket, as they used to say?’

  ‘No,’ Johansson said. ‘I can’t find any, and I’m of the opinion that there aren’t any illegitimate children, or grandchildren, at all. On his side or hers. It must be some younger, male acquaintance of hers. Someone you missed.’

  ‘Well,’ Jarnebring said. ‘I don’t think you should get too hung up on that confused witness who said he saw the red Golf. After all, he withdrew his statement altogether.’

  ‘Sure,’ Johansson said, shrugging his shoulders. We live in a free country, he thought.

  ‘But I buy the idea of the pillow,’ Jarnebring went on. ‘There were a fair number of rich people living in the area, you know. Quite a few with sons of the right age. I see what you’re thinking. Nice parents, nice little sons. We might well have missed someone there.’

  ‘Forget them,’ Johansson said. ‘The red Golf was parked where the witness first said it was. The old woman’s house is our crime scene: Majblommestigen number 2. Can you pass me that bag over there?’ he said, pointing. ‘The one with my stuff from the hospital. The one with your files in it.’

  ‘Sure,’ Jarnebring said. ‘But you’re not very likely to find anything we missed in those files.’

  ‘No,’ Johansson said. ‘You missed something else that I was thinking of showing you.’ The sort of thing you miss doesn’t usually end up in a folder, he thought.

  After some difficulty he found the plastic bag containing the red hairgrip. He fished it out with his working left hand and passed it to Jarnebring.

  ‘Do you recognize this?’ Johansson said.

  The look in Jarnebring’s eyes suddenly changed. They were narrow and wary as he carefully held the bag up in his right hand.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m definitely with you now, so you’d better bloody well explain yourself.’

  35

  Wednesday afternoon, 21 July

  Johansson merely shook his head.

  ‘Later,’ he said.

  ‘What’s wrong with now? That hairgrip caused us a lot of problems. A hell of a lot of problems.’

  ‘Later,’ Johansson repeated. ‘Why did the hairgrip cause you problems? Because you never found it, did you?’

  ‘That was the problem. Yasmine had long, black hair. Maybe twenty centimetres below her shoulders, and she always used to wear it tied up with a hairgrip or band of some sort. She had loads of different hairgrips. If she wanted to look really good she used to ask her mum to do her hair for her. I even saw a photograph where she’s got it in that Farah Diba style. You know, the woman who was married to the Shah of Iran.’

  What’s she got to do with anything? Johansson thought. Married to the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlevi; he remembered that.

  ‘Yes, I’m listening,’ he said.

  ‘It was our colleague Sundman, the one who lived next to the mother, who put together the first description. He did it the night she disappeared, along with her mother. According to that description, she had her hair tied up with a red plastic hairgrip in the shape of one of those little monkeys—’

  ‘Monchhichi. A Monchhichi.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Jarnebring said, holding up the inventory of Yasmine’s clothes and other belongings. ‘Sundman was a perfectly sound officer, and when we found her his description matched almost exactly. As you’ll recall, the perpetrator had put her clothes and other things in a parcel of their own. They were found wrapped in two plastic bags a couple of hundred metres from the body.’

  ‘I remember,’ Johansson said.

  ‘It was all there. Even her two rings and her watch. Her local-transport pass, everything. Everything except the hairgrip that her mother and Sundman claimed she’d had with her.’

  ‘How was she dressed?’ Johansson asked.

  ‘White leather moccasins – Indian shoes, I think they used to be called in those days. White socks, white underpants. Pale blue jeans, a pink T-shirt – the one she changed into after she’d spilled her drink at her mum’s – a small Adidas rucksack, also pink, the same colour as the T-shirt. She’d tied her jacket around her waist. A thin blue one from Fjällräven, then her watch, two rings, transport pass. In her rucksack she had a mixture of things. A magazine, chewing gum, a bag of throat sweets, her purse, also pink, made of leather. I have a vague memory that her mum told me during one of the interviews that red and pink were Yasmine’s favourite colours.’

  ‘And it all matched the inventory?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jarnebring said. ‘Everything matched, with the exception of the hairgrip.’

  ‘So w
hat did you think?’

  ‘Our first thought was that she’d forgotten to put it on, like the necklace with her keys on it, when she changed her damp white blouse for the pink T-shirt. Everything else was there, after all, so why would the perpetrator have kept her hairgrip? If anything is ever missing in a case like this, it’s usually the victim’s underwear. So the general idea was that she’d forgotten to put it on. Just like she’d forgotten her keys. Bäckström was convinced that was the case. He couldn’t understand the problem. So we never followed it up.’

  ‘I see,’ Johansson said. ‘So why wasn’t the hairgrip found in the bathroom, then? Seeing as her keys were there.’

  ‘Exactly. Anyway, Sundman was certain she’d been wearing it when she went past him towards the underground.’

  ‘She was wearing the hairgrip. You’re holding it in your hand.’ I’ve already given it back to her, he thought.

  ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Jarnebring said. ‘I’m even inclined to believe you. Which makes me seriously bloody worried. How the hell could you have got hold of it twenty-five years later? Because you surely haven’t been sitting on it all this time until that blood clot prompted a pang of conscience?’

  ‘No cause for concern,’ Johansson said. ‘I got it yesterday.’ It was yesterday, wasn’t it? he wondered.

  ‘You got it yesterday. Who from?’

  ‘An anonymous source,’ Johansson said. ‘Don’t worry. Your unidentified perpetrator isn’t my source, so there’s no need to worry about that.’

  ‘So who is it, then?’

  ‘For the time being, an anonymous informant, and because you and I have exactly the same thoughts about those, you can stop going on about who it is. Anyway, give me the hairgrip back.’

  Jarnebring shrugged, handed the hairgrip to him, apparently somewhat reluctantly.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Lars,’ he said. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong. You have a stroke. You end up in the Karolinska, and while you’re in there for a fortnight an anonymous source appears and hands over a hairgrip that a little girl was wearing when she was murdered twenty-five years ago.’

  ‘More or less,’ Johansson said with a nod. She thanked me when she got it back, he thought.

  ‘If you only got it yesterday,’ Jarnebring said, ‘I can’t help wondering why you started going on about this case a week ago.’

  ‘It’s not at all strange,’ Johansson said. ‘My anonymous source needed time to find it. She didn’t even know what she was looking for.’ Bo isn’t his usual self, he thought. Seems to have lost his edge.

  ‘I don’t agree with you. This is probably the strangest story you’ve ever told me, and I can only assume that you’ve got a damn good explanation.’

  ‘I have,’ Johansson said. The best one going, he thought.

  ‘So what is it, then?’

  ‘Divine providence.’

  36

  Wednesday afternoon, 21 July

  Before they parted they dealt with a number of practical issues. First, Johansson signed the papers handing his Audi over to his best friend, but he felt far from comfortable as he did so.

  ‘Are you sure this is such a good idea?’ he asked. ‘You’re letting yourself in for some fairly steep monthly repayments.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Jarnebring said. ‘Your brother promised I could buy myself out.’

  ‘Just out of curiosity, what did he want for it?’

  ‘Two hundred.’

  ‘Wow. That doesn’t sound like my brother.’ Wonder if he’s had some sort of crap going on in his head, too? he thought.

  ‘I’ve promised to take on a bit of chauffeur work, running simple errands for an old acquaintance. Isn’t that the point of being retired?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Johansson said, already thinking about something else. ‘You don’t fancy calling in on Herman and asking if I can look at everything he’s got about that opera singer in your old investigation?’

  ‘Margaretha Sagerlied.’

  ‘That’s it. That was her name. And all the records of the door-to-door inquiries you conducted.’

  ‘That was all done in June and July ’85. With some follow-ups in August, and later that autumn, once people had got back from their holidays. That’s a lot of paper. But sure, I’ll sort it out.’

  ‘Is there anything I’ve forgotten?’ Johansson asked.

  ‘That red Golf you won’t let go of. There’s a whole box of printouts from the vehicle registry and the records of any owners who stood out. Previous convictions, or people living nearby.’

  ‘That, too,’ Johansson agreed.

  ‘You’ll have it tomorrow. Anything else I can do for you?’

  ‘Yes, you can get out of here. I was thinking of having a little nap.’

  ‘Is that wise? I was thinking of waiting until Pia got home. I can go and sit somewhere else, if you like.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Johansson was tired, all of a sudden. No energy, he thought. Have to sleep. His headache was already hammering at his temples.

  ‘I’ll go and sit in the kitchen,’ Jarnebring said. ‘Shout if you want anything.’

  ‘I just thought of something. Do you think it’s possible to solve a twenty-five-year-old murder case if you’re forced to lie on a sofa the whole time?’

  ‘We’ll just have to take another trip out into the field,’ Jarnebring said with a smile. ‘We can take the sofa along if you like. No need to worry on that count.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Johansson said. It ought to be possible, he thought. That bloke, the one who was Sherlock Holmes’s elder brother, he could have done it. Whatever his name was, he thought.

  Then he fell asleep.

  37

  Wednesday afternoon, 21 July

  It was the smells that woke him. The smells of the food she was cooking for him, then her hand gently stroking him on his cheeks and temples. It made the pain in his head disappear.

  ‘Jarnebring,’ Johansson said. ‘Is he still here?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Pia said. ‘I threw him out an hour ago. I’ve made you something to eat,’ she added, nodding towards the large tray she had put down on the table beside the sofa.

  Home at last, decent food at last. Maybe not the meal he would have chosen for himself, but still from a different, better world than the one in which they had chosen to build a huge health-service kitchen. A lukewarm salad with brown rice and fried salmon, just pink enough in the middle. Perhaps a little too much salad to be entirely to his taste, but at least it had asparagus and mushroom. No beer, wine nor even a sneaky vodka, of course, but the chilled mineral water was good enough. And proper coffee. A double espresso, with warm milk on the side.

  You’re alive, Lars Martin Johansson thought. So stop feeling sorry for yourself.

  ‘You’re far too good to me, Pia,’ Johansson said. ‘If you were the main character in an everyday novel of our times, your sisters in the arts sections of the press would rip you to shreds for betraying the feminist cause.’

  Now I recognize you, she thought. ‘And if it had been the other way round?’ Pia said. ‘What if I’d been the one who got ill?’

  ‘That would probably be just as bad,’ Johansson said.

  ‘For better or worse,’ Pia said, raising her glass.

  ‘For better or worse,’ Johansson repeated.

  ‘Do you feel up to going through some practical details?’ Pia asked when they’d finished eating.

  Johansson made do with a nod. He felt a sudden anxiety, the source of which he couldn’t trace. Things were the way they were, after all. What had happened was irrevocable. But it was still possible to do something about what was yet to come.

  The best solution for all parties, according to Ulrika Stenholm, and even for her patient and Pia Johansson’s husband, would have been if Johansson had been transferred to a care home specializing in aftercare and rehabilitation of patients like him.

  ‘Out of the question,’ Pia had said, shaking her head. ‘He’d never agree t
o that.’

  ‘Do you think it might be possible to reason with him? We might only be talking about a month or so.’

  ‘I’m not even going to try,’ Pia had said. What the hell is the woman suggesting? she’d thought.

  ‘In that case, there’ll be quite a lot of toing and froing. And he’ll need supervision. He’s got the right to ambulance transport, but I’d be surprised if he could get much home care. Especially seeing as it’s summer and people are away on holiday.’

  ‘Give me the times of his appointments and who he needs to see, and I’ll sort that out.’

  ‘And of course there are a number of private alternatives. But I’m afraid that’s where we are. Don’t be cross with me, Pia, but that’s all I can offer.’

  ‘I’m not cross,’ Pia had said. ‘But I’m seriously pissed off that you’ve got the nerve to suggest putting him in a care home. You’ve had him as a patient for a couple of weeks now, but you don’t seem to have given any thought to the sort of person he is.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ulrika Stenholm had said. ‘I didn’t mean to make you unhappy.’

  ‘I’m not a bit unhappy. Just give me his appointments and who he needs to see, and I’ll sort out the rest.’

  When Pia spoke to her husband about it, she didn’t mention that part of her conversation with his doctor.

  ‘I spoke to your doctor, Ulrika Stenholm. She’s happy for you to carry on being her patient. Or I can organize another one. There are several at Sophia Hospital who are excellent. We use them at the bank.’

  ‘What for?’ Johansson said, surprised. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Stenholm, is there?’ Besides, we’re working on a case together, he thought.

  ‘In that case, you’ve got an out-patient appointment with her on Monday.’

  ‘Good,’ Johansson said. I wonder what they fell out about? he thought.

  ‘And you’ll need help during the day as well. I’ve sorted that out. We use a private care company at the bank when things such as what you’ve suffered happen.’