Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime

by Leif Gw Persson

  “We’ll find him,” said Bäckström credulously. “There’s some little fairy out there that Eriksson had contact with or just picked up when he had the chance, and sooner or later we’ll run into him.”

  The hell we will, thought Jarnebring doubtfully, and if a murder investigation could be compared to a soup, then this was pretty thin.

  The checks on Eriksson’s telephone were done and had not produced anything in particular. The calls he made from his home phone usually went to the switchboard at the brokerage firm that managed his stock transactions. There were also occasional calls directly to Tischler, Welander, or his cleaning woman’s home phone.

  The autopsy was complete, but if you disregarded Esprit and Wiijnbladh’s so-called interpretations of the victim’s personality, it basically conveyed no more than what Jarnebring had understood with his own eyes when he found Eriksson dead on the floor in his living room.

  Same thing with the technical investigations. Prints from a small number of persons of which the two most common samples had already been identified as Eriksson’s and his cleaning woman’s. But none that could be found in the police files, and other clues were sparse as well. The hand towel that had been found in the laundry basket in Eriksson’s bathroom was still at the crime lab. As usual they were overworked and a report was unlikely to arrive before Christmas, despite the fact that Wiijnbladh had called to nudge them.

  Instead the team members sat around arguing about a lot of irritating details that would certainly prove to be completely uninteresting once things got to the point. A safe-deposit box key that was missing, for example. An entire half hour of sometimes animated discussion had been devoted to this, and it was Jarnebring who brought it up, although this had not really been his intention.

  Supposing it was the case that Eriksson had been killed by a male prostitute he had picked up. Why was there nothing to indicate he had been robbed? As far as Jarnebring and Holt and even Wiijnbladh and his colleagues had been able to ascertain, nothing particular was missing from Eriksson’s apartment. Apart from a suitcase, probably a few hand towels, and possibly a number of papers. Despite the fact that there were various things that ought to have tempted an ordinary robber. Three expensive watches and a number of other personal items, such as a gold currency clip.

  “We don’t actually know that,” Bäckström objected. “I’m a hundred percent sure that he emptied his safe-deposit box that day, so he could have had piles of dough at home.” Although it doesn’t need to be that bad, he thought, almost feeling a shudder as he did so. That would be simply too annoying, he thought.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Jarnebring doubtfully. “If there’s anything that has disappeared it’s probably some of his papers that someone has taken. That thing with the hand towels is far from certain, and as for the suitcase it may just be that the perpetrator needed it to carry away the papers he may have taken.”

  You really are a true detective, Jarnebring, thought Bäckström, nonetheless deciding to mess a little with the big ape-man, since he still had the victim’s suitcase in his possession, although he had always intended to put it back as soon as things had settled down.

  “What papers?” asked Bäckström, suddenly seeming rather contentious. “What kind of papers would they be?”

  Jarnebring just shrugged his shoulders. He had never brought up the empty drawer in Eriksson’s desk, though he had thought about it, while stupidly he had mentioned the missing safe-deposit box key instead. Eriksson had signed out two safe-deposit box keys from Handelsbanken. One had been found but one was still missing, despite Jarnebring’s and Holt’s dogged searching. Where was it?

  The proffered suggestions ranged across the whole field, from that it had ended up in the murderer’s own pants pocket to that it had simply been lost. Which by the way was often how things turned out when you had two identical keys, despite the fact that you only needed one. Didn’t everyone know that from their own experience?

  When they were finally done and everyone had had their say, the day was basically over. In a few hours it would have been a week since Eriksson had been murdered, and they still did not have their hands on any culprit worthy of the name.

  12

  Friday, December 8, 1989

  On Friday morning Inspector Alm provoked his colleague Bäckström’s displeasure.

  Without talking with Bäckström, he phoned TV reporter Sten Welander at the national television news to set a time for a conversation about Welander’s old acquaintance Kjell Eriksson.

  Welander was friendly and businesslike; he looked forward to meeting with the police and pointed out in passing that he had called them first, as early as Friday morning a week ago, as soon as he had heard about the tragic event. Not because he thought he could contribute much in particular, but he could scarcely be the judge of that. If he himself could propose a time, it would be either within an hour or two or else in fourteen days, because he would be traveling abroad in connection with a major news story he was working on. And if they wanted to meet with him immediately it had to be at his office in the TV building as he had a number of other meetings later in the day that were already scheduled and could not be changed.

  Alm excused himself and asked to call back within five minutes, after which he went into Bäckström’s office and gave him the available alternatives. Bäckström was naturally sour as vinegar, but as he did not have anything else to propose, he gave in after some grousing. A pleased Alm returned to the phone, called Welander, and said that he and a colleague by the name of Bäckström would be at Welander’s office within half an hour.

  • • •

  Welander met them down in the reception area and led them to a small conference room he had reserved for their meeting. He was a lean, sinewy fellow in his forties with a well-groomed, full beard and dark, intelligent eyes, and his first action when they sat down was to pull out a small tape recorder from his pocket and place it in front of him on the table. After that he leaned back, clasped his hands over his flat stomach, and nodded to them that he was ready to start.

  It was Bäckström who had planned their tactics. He would run the questioning while Alm kept in the background and stepped in as needed. Alm had no objections whatsoever. He remembered Welander’s TV program about the police department and was really looking forward to seeing how Bäckström’s “interrogation victim” would massacre his fat little colleague.

  Bäckström took his sweet time before he started. Arranged his own tape recorder, notebook, and pen, tested the recorder, asked Welander to say something, rewound it, and played it to check that everything was working.

  “I’m going to talk roughly like this,” said Welander, leaning back comfortably and speaking in a normal, quiet conversational tone.

  “Okay then,” said Bäckström, nodding curtly. “Interview for informational purposes with Sten Welander with regard to the murder of Kjell Eriksson. Welander will be questioned about—”

  “Excuse me,” Welander interrupted, smiling courteously at Bäckström. “I forgot to ask whether you gentlemen would like anything to drink? Water, coffee? I don’t know if we have tea, actually …”

  “What the—” said Bäckström, but before he even had time to answer, Welander had done it for them.

  “If not, then I’m ready to begin,” said Welander, nodding suavely at Bäckström.

  Welander versus Bäckström, 1–0. thought Alm delightedly as he noted that Bäckström’s face had already turned a shade redder.

  How did Welander know the murder victim Kjell Eriksson? How long had he known him?

  Welander had become acquainted with Eriksson more than twenty years ago, when he was teaching sociology at the university. Eriksson had been one of his students. A diligent one, so Welander had arranged a few side jobs for him at the department, in the mail room, as a test proctor. A little of everything.

  “He was actually a few years older than me,” said Welander. “Worked part-time and studied on the
side. Came from simple circumstances, so I tried to help him as best I could. He was really exerting himself; he really wanted to change his life.”

  The friendship had persisted and even developed. Welander had worked less and less at the university and more and more as a researcher and reporter at the TV news department. By and by Eriksson finished his degree and got a job at the Central Bureau of Statistics.

  How often did they see each other?

  Not that often, according to Welander, but certainly considerably more often if viewed through Eriksson’s eyes.

  “Kjell was a very solitary person,” Welander explained. “He didn’t really have too many friends. We saw each other from time to time. Went out and had a beer together, talked about old times at the university, had dinner now and then … and we’ve continued that over the years. How often we saw each other? Yes …” Welander looked as if he was thinking deeply. “Spread out over all the years then maybe it was once a month.”

  “Once a month,” said Bäckström with palpable doubt in his voice.

  “On one occasion I recall that he helped me by producing statistics for a series of programs on unemployment that we did. That must have been ten years ago, and then I think we saw each other considerably more often. Perhaps once or twice a week for a few months.”

  “But otherwise you saw each other once a month,” Bäckström repeated. “Once a month? Always?”

  “No, not really,” Welander objected, smiling and shaking his head. “There could be six months when I didn’t even talk to him. Once a month is an average. Say that I met him approximately two hundred times in twenty years. That’s two hundred and forty months. Two hundred divided by two hundred forty is approximately once a month. Less than once a month.”

  “Thanks, I can count,” said Bäckström sourly.

  “That’s nice to hear,” said Welander amiably.

  Welander versus Bäckström, 2–0, thought Alm, noting the change of color in his colleague’s face.

  Did Eriksson have any other close friends? Anyone he saw more often than he saw Welander?

  Welander looked as though he was thinking deeply.

  “I’m afraid I don’t really understand the question,” Welander said.

  “Why’s that?” said Bäckström. “That shouldn’t be so hard, is it?”

  “You say ‘close,’ then you say ‘more often,’ ” said Welander, almost sounding as if he were savoring the words.

  “Yes? What’s the problem?”

  “Closeness is a question of feelings while on the other hand ‘how often’ is a question of frequency, and in these kinds of contexts that’s far from the same thing, wouldn’t you say?”

  Bäckström did not reply. He was content to glare at Welander who, however, seemed quite unaware of this.

  “Take your colleague Alm, for example,” said Welander pedagogically, smiling at Alm, who took the opportunity to smile back. “I am certain that you see each other several times a day … on average … but are you best friends too?”

  No, God help me, thought Alm.

  Fucking asshole, thought Bäckström. Fucking assholes both of them, he thought.

  Welander versus Bäckström, 3–0. This is a real walk-over, I should have brought along the white gloves and ammonia bottle, thought Alm delightedly, old amateur boxer that he was.

  If it was frequency of contacts that Bäckström meant, then Welander could imagine that his and Eriksson’s mutual friend Theo Tischler met Eriksson more often than he did, because Theo Tischler helped Eriksson with various private financial questions. Obviously he was taking into account the fact that all three of them sometimes met, and it was he, by the way, who had introduced Eriksson to Theo Tischler. He and Theo had known each other since school days. They had been in the same class both in elementary school and in high school. Norra Real at Jarlaplan, if Bäckström was wondering.

  On the other hand, as far as the emotional aspect was concerned he was less sure. His impression was that Eriksson did not have any really close friends whatsoever.

  “I know that he was tremendously attached to his old mother,” said Welander, sounding almost mournful as he said it.

  This guy is phenomenal; look at the footwork, thought Alm.

  “No women?” said Bäckström slyly.

  “Excuse me,” said Welander, as if he had not really understood the question.

  “Eriksson,” Bäckström clarified, and suddenly his voice almost sounded friendly. “Do you know if Eriksson had any women? Did he meet any women?” Bäckström repeated.

  “Socially?” Welander looked at Bäckström as if he still did not understand the question.

  “Exactly,” Bäckström agreed smoothly. “Yes … sexual contacts … with women … if you understand what I mean.”

  “No,” said Welander, shaking his head. “As far as I know, Kjell never met any women. Not in that way.”

  “He didn’t,” said Bäckström. “Why didn’t he … do you think?”

  “I guess he wasn’t interested,” said Welander.

  “He wasn’t,” said Bäckström. “He wasn’t, not interested in women you say.”

  “No,” repeated Welander. “To be honest I think he was completely uninterested in women … in that way.”

  “Men then,” said Bäckström. “Was he interested in men?”

  “Not as far as I know,” said Welander neutrally. “In any event he never expressed any such interest in either me or Theo.”

  “But you must have wondered about it, didn’t you? Both you and Tischler must have talked about it,” Bäckström persisted.

  “De mortuis nihil nisi bene,” said Welander, smiling to himself.

  “Huh?” said Bäckström.

  “De mortuis nihil nisi bene,” Welander repeated. “Say nothing but good about the dead,” he translated.

  You don’t say, thought Bäckström contentedly, before he asked the routine last question.

  Welander was obviously not a suspect in Eriksson’s sudden demise, but for the sake of formality and saving time and so forth, Bäckström was nonetheless compelled to ask what Welander had been doing on Thursday evening the thirtieth of November.

  It seemed there was no problem whatsoever. Welander had had dinner at the Lidingöbro inn together with eight of his coworkers from the TV station, among them his immediate supervisor and the station manager. Dinner had begun with a welcome drink at seven o’clock and gone on until just after eleven, when they had moved on to the home of one of the participants for “a little follow-up gathering.” This had gone on until two, and then Welander had taken a taxi home to his wife and their two children in their townhouse out in Täby. If Bäckström spoke with the secretary at the TV office she would see to it that he received a list of all the dinner guests as well as their telephone numbers. Welander had already forewarned her to expect such a request.

  The guy is a world-class champion, thought Alm.

  Wonder what that idiot is grinning about, thought Bäckström as he and Alm were driving back to the police station.

  Absolute massacre, thought Alm. This I have to tell Jack Daniels.

  Jarnebring and Holt had devoted the day to routine business, which unfortunately took considerably longer than they had counted on.

  “We’ll have to deal with the rest of the apartment on Monday,” Jarnebring decided as the clock started dragging toward five. It was Friday and he had to have time to shower and change before he met his best friend, police superintendent Lars Martin Johansson.

  13

  Friday evening, December 8, 1989

  If Welander had stuck to the truth when Bäckström questioned him about his acquaintance with Kjell Eriksson, there would have been at least certain similarities between the relationship he had with Eriksson and the one Jarnebring had with his best friend, Lars Martin Johansson.

  Johansson and Jarnebring had also known each other for more than twenty years; in the last ten years they had socialized on average once or twice a mo
nth, and when they did so they usually met at a restaurant. During the early years it had not been that way. They had met at work at the central detective squad at the Stockholm Police Department, each one being half of a team of two, and for several years they had spent more time with each other than with their own families. But then their paths had separated. Johansson had made a career and disappeared straight up to the top of the police pyramid while Jarnebring stayed put in the detective squad and was still working with the same sort of crimes and the same sort of crooks as he had been twenty years ago.

  In contrast to Welander and Eriksson, they had a relationship that was grounded in a very strong, close friendship, and if anyone had asked either of them who his best friend was, they would have had no problem at all with the answer. And as is so often the case with close friends, they were like each other in everything that really counted and unlike each other in other respects that were mostly superficial, personal characteristics that didn’t really matter much when it came time to settle accounts.

  Their most important common quality was that they were both—in an environment almost exclusively made up of police officers—unanimously described as “real policemen.” They were heroes in a large number of so-called police station stories of at best varying degrees of veracity, and in contrast to their colleagues in the world of fiction—who associate with female intellectuals, listen to opera and modern jazz, and prefer nouvelle French cuisine—Johansson and Jarnebring liked regular ladies, preferably female colleagues, dance band music, and Swedish home cooking.

  But of course there were also differences. If anyone had asked Jarnebring, for example, if he could imagine stopping the bullet meant for his best friend with his bare chest, he would have flashed his wolf grin and said that if it was his friend they were after the question never would have come up—he would have shot first. And if Johansson got the same question he would probably have smiled evasively, said that the question was far too sentimental for his taste, but that he might possibly imagine loaning Jarnebring the money for a new car.