‘Nazdrovje! Peace, boss,’ Max said. I’m going to make sure you rest in peace, boss, he thought.
Just before midnight on the day of the funeral, a patrol car in the Western District found an abandoned car out on the islands in Lake Mälaren. It was parked by the side of the main road between Färingsö and Stockholm. A grey Renault, mid-range, clean and well looked after, definitely not a troublemaker’s car, but they still decided to check it out. In the boot they found the badly beaten corpse of a man stuffed into a large blue sports bag. From then on, everything unfolded according to the usual routines.
The dead body was identified the following morning. A fifty-year-old man, the registered owner of the vehicle, and when Solna Police entered his home out in Frösunda they were immediately fairly certain that that was where he had been killed. There were large quantities of blood in the hall, kitchen, living room and bathroom. He had been beaten almost beyond what seemed humanly possible, but because he had evidently been alive for the majority of it, it was a mystery that none of his neighbours had heard a sound from the flat.
Superintendent Peter Niemi, head of Forensics at Solna Police, called his colleague Evert Bäckström. A Bäckström who sounded surprisingly perky when he eventually answered.
‘I’ve got a body for you, Bäckström,’ Niemi said. ‘His name’s Staffan Nilsson, born in 1960. Estate agent, single, no wife or children, lived out in Frösunda. Our officers found him in the boot of his car, which was parked at the side of the road out to Färingsö. I’m in his flat now, and it looks like a slaughterhouse, so I daresay this was where it happened.’
‘Really?’ Evert Bäckström said. Not a bad start to a new day, he thought. ‘So how does he look, then?’
‘To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything worse,’ Niemi said. ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, if I can put it like that. But, according to our pathologist, our perpetrator did that in reverse order, to keep the poor bastard alive as long as possible.’
Single. Obvious, Bäckström thought. Sounds like a typical faggot murder, he thought. Those arse-bandits can be fucking lethal when they really let loose on each other.
‘Typical fag murder,’ Bäckström declared a few hours later when he had his first meeting with his investigative team. Not a particularly bright bunch but, seeing as he was the one in charge, it would doubtless turn out okay.
‘How do we know that?’ asked an officer who had been seconded from patrol. Judging by the length of his hair, he was of the same persuasion.
‘I found an old case against him, for child porn. He admitted to being queer back then,’ Bäckström said. ‘And I also found an old boyfriend who looks pretty promising.’ How the fuck can someone like that get into the force? he thought.
‘Why does he look so promising? The boyfriend, I mean,’ asked the long-haired constable, who clearly wasn’t about to give up.
‘He’s an Arab,’ Bäckström said, his voice resounding with the solemnity that naturally befitted one of the great legends of the force. ‘His name’s Ali Hussein.’ Probably one of your mates, he thought.
Early in December, two months after Johansson’s funeral, Evert’s little lad, Max, handed in his notice so he could move to the USA. He had been offered a new job, his new employer had already sorted out a green card for him, and he would also have the opportunity to study as part of his job. Max was very secretive about what his new job entailed but, because he seemed happy and pleased, Evert saw no reason to investigate more closely. When Evert said goodbye to him out at the airport, he handed him a handsome bonus and gave him an old-fashioned bear-hug. Nothing could possibly have expressed more emotion between two real men.
‘It’s probably a good idea for you to see a bit more of the world, Max,’ Evert Johansson said. ‘Experience new things, not just hang around the farm with me and the wife. But if you ever change your mind, you know you’re always welcome to come back home.’
On the Friday of the week in which Maxim Makarov flew from Sundsvall to Stockholm and then on to New York – his final destination remained something of a mystery – Anna Holt, police commissioner out in the Western District, cut back the size of the investigative team looking into the murder of Staffan Nilsson.
Superintendent Evert Bäckström had, admittedly, found a number of Ali Husseins, but because he didn’t appear to have found the right Ali Hussein, all the air soon went out of the investigation.
‘You know what it’s like, Anna,’ Bäckström said when he explained the case to his boss. ‘Sooner or later the bastard will show up, and then we’ll have him.’
Investigation unsuccessful, Holt thought as she signed the documents that Bäckström had given her. But she had far more important things to think about because, that weekend, she was going to become a godmother for the first time. Godmother to Lisa Mattei’s two-month-old daughter, who was going to be christened Anna Linda Elina. Anna Linda Elina Mattei. Anna after Anna Holt, Linda after Lisa’s mother, and Elina in memory of someone the girl’s mother didn’t want to talk about.
Alongside his will, Johansson had left a private letter to his wife, Pia. Three short lines and, to judge by his signature, it had been written some time after 11 July that year. ‘Stop snivelling, old thing. Find a new man. Take care of yourself.’ Signed ‘Lars’. Pia followed his advice and embarked on a new relationship shortly after New Year. Not anyone she was thinking of marrying, nor even of living with, but life went on, and she had to start somewhere.
A few weeks later, towards the end of January, Ulrika Stenholm moved to the USA. She got married in great secrecy to a man who was sixteen years older than her, and whose child she was already expecting. A girl, a love-child, whom she and her new husband had decided to call Yasmine. In the sixth month she suffered a miscarriage and their daughter died in the ambulance on the way to hospital.
The judges and their hangmen. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
About the Author
Leif G. W. Persson is Scandinavia’s most renowned criminologist and a leading psychological profiler. He has also served as an advisor to the Swedish Ministry of Justice. Since 1991, he has held the position of Professor at the National Swedish Police Board and is regularly consulted as the country’s foremost expert on crime.
He is the author of ten bestselling crime novels, three of which feature the irrepressible Evert Bäckström. He is also the recipient of many prestigious awards, including The Piraten Award, The Glass Key for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel, The Swedish Academy of Crime Writers’ Award (three times), The Finnish Whodunnit Society’s Annual Award for Excellence in Foreign Crime Writing, The Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel, and The Danish Academy of Crime Writers’ Palle Rosenkrantz Prize.
Also by Leif G.W. Persson
The Story of a Crime series
Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End
Another Time, Another Life
Falling Freely, as if in a Dream
The Bäckström series
Linda – as in the Linda Murder
He Who Kills the Dragon
The Sword of Justice
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First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Doubleday
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Copyright © Leif G.W. Persson 2010
Translation copyright © Neil Smith 2016
Cover photographs © Alamy.
Design by R. Shailer/TW
Originally published in Sweden as Den döende detektiven in 2010 by Albert Bonniers Förlag
Leif G.W. Persson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
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fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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