The Sword of Justice

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid he does. As soon as he’s finished the preliminaries, as I’ve just outlined, he takes out a flick-knife or stiletto. The victim describes him as suddenly standing there with a knife in his hand. His right arm jerks, then suddenly the knife is there. Well, I think it sounds like a flick-knife or stiletto. She also says he’s wearing black gloves. This is the first time she mentions the fact that he’s wearing gloves and, according to what she says, this is when she starts to feel convinced that he’s going to murder her, or at least rape her.’

  ‘But he doesn’t.’

  ‘No, he just grins. Looks at her and says that if she doesn’t follow his advice he’ll make sure she has room for a whole pet-shop up her cunt, holding up the knife at the same time, so the message is pretty clear. Then he leaves. Picking up the flowers on the way. He shuts the door and vanishes, just like that. No witnesses. No one saw anything, no one heard anything.’

  ‘And she’s not making it up?’

  ‘No, you should have seen and heard her. That was more than enough to convince me.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘She sits there on the sofa, shaking, until she pulls herself together enough to phone a friend, the same friend she spoke to at about seven o’clock. The time of the call, according to her mobile, is twenty-one minutes past eight in the evening. The friend comes over and picks her up, then they drive down here to file a report with us. The report is lodged at quarter past nine that evening.’

  ‘What about this friend, then? Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘No, the victim refuses to give her name. The friend sat in on the interview, of course, and said her name was Lisbeth Johansson, and she even gave ID and mobile phone numbers, but I’m afraid none of that turned out to be genuine. This is the friend who’s supposed to have been married to the policeman who assaulted and raped her. Naturally, I’ve asked the victim why she, or rather both of them, are behaving like this. According to her, it’s because neither of them trusts the police.’

  ‘A description, then? Has she given us anything to go on?’ They refuse to say what their names are and where they live but they still expect us to sodding well protect them, Bäckström thought. Bull-dykes, he thought.

  ‘Yes, and it’s actually pretty good. Unfortunately, it matches rather too well with rather too many men who are active in this branch. The perpetrator was dressed in dark trousers and a blue, mid-length hooded jacket in some nylon-like material. No logos or stickers on the jacket, she’s quite sure of that. Black gloves, but she’s not sure what he had on his feet. If she had to guess, she’d say a pair of ordinary trainers. White plimsolls, as she put it. He’s about one metre ninety tall. Well-built, in good shape, looked strong. Thin face, prominent features, short black hair, dark, deep-set eyes, a large, slightly crooked nose, defined chin, three days’ worth of stubble, spoke perfect Swedish with no accent, didn’t smell of tobacco, sweat or aftershave. Somewhere between thirty and forty years old.’

  Annika Carlsson moved her pen over her notes as she spoke.

  ‘Well, that’s about all. I was thinking of digging out some pictures for her to look at – if she’s willing to be interviewed again. As soon as we’ve finished this meeting, I’ll email you the initial report and transcript of the interview.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Bäckström said, raising his hand to avert questions or any other sort of unnecessary nonsense. ‘If you take care of her, I’ll deal with what our colleagues in the City Police have offloaded on to us. Which leaves the second matter,’ he went on. ‘You said you had two cases. What’s the second one about?’ Just as well to get it out of the way, he thought.

  ‘Of course,’ Annika Carlsson said, and for some reason pursed her lips. ‘But I think it might be best if Jenny here went through this one for us. She’s the one who’s been dealing with it.’

  Jenny, Bäckström thought. Jenny Rogersson, his most recent and youngest colleague, and one he had recruited all on his own. Jenny with the long blond hair, dazzling white smile and generous bust. Jenny, who these days was the only breath of fresh air in the madhouse where he was forced to spend his days. Jenny, a delight to the eye, balsam for his soul, who gave his fantasies wings and offered him the opportunity to escape to a different, better world, even on a Monday like this one.

  6

  ‘Thanks, Annika,’ Jenny Rogersson said as she leaned over the bundle of papers in front of her on the table.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said curtly. I decide who gets to speak in here, he thought.

  ‘Thanks, boss,’ Rogersson said. ‘Well, I should probably start with a report we received last Monday, on the afternoon of Monday, 20 May,’ Jenny went on. ‘It was filed at reception here in the police station, but it’s a bit unclear who reported it because there were so many people who wanted help with passports and a whole load of other things. The report’s anonymous. It consists of a letter addressed to the police here in Solna, and the text at the top of the letter reads “To the Crime Department of the Police Authority in Solna”. Below this there’s a heading: “Report of an assault that took place in the car park in front of Drottningholm Palace on Sunday, 19 May just after eleven o’clock in the evening”. End of quote. So the event in question is supposed to have taken place the evening before we received the report. Which is pretty much all there is to say about that.’

  Acting Detective Inspector Jenny Rogersson nodded to emphasize what she’d just said.

  ‘So what does it say in the report, then?’ Bäckström asked.

  ‘It’s a long story, almost two pages, in which the complainant describes what happened. It’s been written on a computer, neatly printed out. Well formulated, no spelling mistakes, maybe a bit lacking in structure, and concludes with the complainant saying she wants to remain anonymous, but that she swears on her honour that everything she’s written is true.’

  ‘She? How do you know that? That it’s a woman, I mean?’ Bäckström asked. Sweet Jesus, look at the tits on that, he thought, and crossed his left leg over the right one just in case the super-salami decided to stir. And then there was the little black top that was stretched across everything.

  ‘That’s the impression I get. Reading between the lines, I think it’s fairly clear, if I can put it like that. Among other things, she mentions in passing her dead husband. An older, well-educated woman, a widow, who also happens to live in the vicinity of the palace. I’m fairly sure about that but, if you like, boss, I could give more examples,’ Jenny Rogersson said to Bäckström.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said. Dear God, he thought, as the super-salami had definitely worked out what was going on and had decided to turn his beautifully fitted trousers into a circus tent.

  ‘According to the complainant, she takes her dog out for its usual evening walk. She heads south-east, through the section of the park that’s just outside the fence surrounding the palace grounds, and as she approaches the car park she hears two agitated male voices. Two men are standing on the north side of the car park, close to the tennis courts, having an argument. One of them is extremely upset and is shouting and swearing at the other.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Bäckström, who had now taken the extra precaution of moving his chair closer to the table so that the super-salami was completely hidden from view.

  ‘Well, there’s also a car parked beside them, but she doesn’t know what make. Only that it’s black and looks expensive – a Mercedes, BMW, something like that. But, otherwise, the car park is completely deserted, and there’s no one else around. When she hears them she stops and, if I’ve understood correctly, takes cover behind the fence surrounding the tennis courts, about thirty metres or so away from the two men. So she wouldn’t be seen, basically.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Bäckström said, experiencing an increasing need to have something else to think about apart from the deep chasm between Jenny Rogersson’s breasts. Especially as she had turned to face him and the distance between them was negligibl
e.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ he went on. ‘Two men are arguing, and one of them is very aggressive and shouting and swearing at the other one. Then our witness comes along with her dog and hides behind a fence so as not to be seen.’

  ‘She’s actually on her own – our witness, I mean,’ Rogersson replied. ‘Her dog’s dead. Died last autumn, apparently. It was a standard poodle, by the way. Called Sickan. She says so in her letter.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Bäckström said. ‘Just hang on. Are you saying the old bag is wandering about in the park outside Drottningholm Palace in the middle of the night, dragging a dead dog behind her?’

  ‘I can see what you’re thinking,’ Rogersson said, cautiously firing off another smile. ‘If I’ve understood correctly, our witness went out with her dog for exactly the same evening walk for years and, apparently, Sickan was fifteen when he died. Always the same route. South from her house, then south-east, round the car park outside Drottningholm Palace, then back again. It became something of a routine for her, and she seems to have carried on with it even after Sickan died. But on her own now, of course.’

  ‘I still don’t get it. Sickan’s a he? A male dog, I mean?’

  ‘I know, how cute is that?’ Jenny Rogersson grinned, flashing her white teeth and full red lips. ‘It was his nickname, apparently, and—’

  ‘Right, I see,’ Bäckström said. ‘But if we could—’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, but is it too much to ask to hear what actually happened?’ Annika Carlsson said with ice in her voice and sharp eyes that for some reason were drilling into the entirely innocent Bäckström.

  ‘Yes, sorry, this is all getting a bit muddled,’ Jenny Rogersson said, not seeming unduly upset. ‘The short version is that we have a male perpetrator who is extremely upset, shouting and swearing at the other man – our victim, in other words – while he’s waving something in his hand, something that our witness at first thought was a sturdy piece of pipe. Then he walks over and hits the other man in the face, knocking him to the ground, and then, as the man’s crawling about the car park on all fours, he starts kicking him and hitting him with the length of pipe. Then he apparently tries to stick it between the victim’s legs at the same time as he gives him one last kick in the backside. Then he simply walks away, gets in his car and drives off, wheels spinning. Simultaneously, his victim gets to his feet and runs away from the scene.’

  ‘Did she see the car’s registration number?’ Annika Carlsson still sounded abrupt.

  ‘No. She didn’t have time. But she’s fairly sure the last digit was a nine, and she thinks the penultimate number might have been nine as well. Two nines at the end, and it was a big, black car that looked expensive. She’s sure about that.’

  ‘What about the length of pipe, then? The weapon. If I’ve understood correctly, that was left in the car park?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Rogersson nodded happily. ‘The best thing about this is that it wasn’t a length of pipe after all.’

  ‘Not a length of pipe?’ Annika Carlsson didn’t sound anywhere near as happy.

  ‘No, it was an art catalogue which the perpetrator had rolled up, which is why she thought it was a length of pipe. It’s from a famous English auction house. World famous, in fact. The auction house, I mean. I googled it: it’s called Sotheby’s; it’s in London. They sell expensive paintings and furniture and carpets and antiques, and this catalogue contains pictures of a whole load of things that were sold at auction in London in early May. Just two weeks before our perpetrator decides to use it to assault his victim. I’ve got it here, actually,’ Jenny Rogersson said, holding up a transparent plastic folder containing a green catalogue with the Sotheby’s logo on the cover. ‘Our anonymous witness sent it in. She found it in the car park and realized that it must have been what she saw. The catalogue and her letter were in one of those padded envelopes you can get from the post office. There are traces of blood on it – the catalogue, I mean. Spots, and a few smears. Presumably, the victim’s blood, in light of the witness’s statement.’

  ‘How do you know it’s blood?’

  Annika Carlsson was evidently refusing to back down. Not much sisterly love there, Bäckström thought.

  ‘I asked Hernandez in Forensics to check it out. The traces tested positive for blood. He also sent a sample to the National Lab for DNA testing.’

  ‘You think our victim might be in the database?’ Bäckström asked. What’s the point of that? The whole thing’s an open and shut case, he thought. One arse-bandit assaults another arse-bandit. Typical fag-fight – they’d probably fallen out about the price of some antique dildo belonging to a third arse-bandit. What sort of normal person would ever think of using an auction catalogue as an offensive weapon?

  ‘Well, he isn’t,’ Rogersson said. ‘That’s what’s so incredible about this report. Because our witness says she recognized the victim. He’s one of her neighbours. She’s known him for years, so she’s quite sure. She says they only live a few blocks from each other. I’ve checked him out. No criminal record. Seems to be a thoroughly decent person. A friend of the king’s, maybe. You never know.’

  ‘Go on,’ Bäckström said. His friend the super-salami seemed to have calmed down. Must have been the dead dog, he thought. Unless it was those anal acrobats that had made him lose his concentration.

  ‘His name is Hans Ulrik von Comer, a baron, one of those aristocratic types, sixty-three years old. Married with two grown-up children – two daughters, both married. He lives in a house that he rents. It’s only a few hundred metres from the palace, evidently owned by the Court Administration. He also seems to have a connection with the court. He’s some sort of art expert, he’s got a PhD in art history, looks like he helps the court take care of their art and antiques. He’s also got a business that trades in works of art, provides valuations, helps people to buy and sell art, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Has he filed a complaint?’ Bäckström asked, even though he already knew the answer. Married with two daughters, and why upset his little wife unnecessarily? Lovely!

  ‘No, that’s the funny thing,’ Rogersson said. ‘I can’t find any complaint from him. So I called him and said we’d received an anonymous report suggesting that he’d been assaulted and asked if he had anything to say about that. He denied it emphatically. Said he hadn’t even been in the area when it happened. He sounded pretty upset, actually.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise,’ Bäckström said, glancing demonstratively at his watch. ‘Okay, okay,’ he went on. ‘If you ask me, this sounds like a typical case for no further action. Write it off as “No crime committed” so we don’t mess up the statistics unnecessarily. I’ll nod it through. Well, let’s close the meeting there. If anyone else has anything that’s troubling them, I’ll be in my room until lunchtime. After that, I’m afraid I shall be at a meeting with Regional Crime, so you’ll have to try to manage without me.’

  7

  The first thing he did when he was safely behind the closed door was press the do-not-disturb button. Then he took three deep breaths before unlocking the top drawer of his desk, taking out his office bottle and pouring himself a good stiff drink, rounded off with two throat sweets as soon as the fine Russian vodka had settled nicely in his stomach. Only then did he begin to take stock of his morning.

  Something that had started with an old dear forgetting to feed her pet rabbit had spawned a dozen reports of serious offences in which the perpetrator was an old woman who was clearly well into her second childhood, and all that remained was to get them written off without them spoiling his own department’s clearance rate.

  Unfortunately it looked as if the old dear had got hold of a seriously unpleasant character, one that he had no intention of dealing with the way his moronic colleagues in the rabbit and hamster unit over in the City Police had. How in the name of holy hell could someone like her know someone like him? It doesn’t make any sense, and she hasn’t got any kids of her own either. What
else have we got? he thought, sighing deeply and pouring himself another little shot for good measure, even though he usually avoided such modest indulgences before noon.

  Two arse-bandits of the posher variety having a girly squabble outside His Royal Majesty’s palace. Where the unknown assailant had evidently made use of an art catalogue, and where the victim, some sort of court faggot, denied all knowledge of the incident. What the fuck’s wrong with a baseball bat or an old-fashioned axe? he thought, sighing again as someone knocked on his door in spite of the red light.

  There’s only one person in this building who ignores that, he thought. He cleared his desk and locked the drawer just seconds before Annika Carlsson marched into his room.

  ‘Make yourself at home, Annika,’ Bäckström said, without looking up from the papers he was pretending to read.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, putting a far too large plastic folder of case-notes on his desk. She’d already sat herself down.

  ‘The collated material concerning the travails of the animal protection unit,’ she explained. ‘You promised to sign them off.’

  ‘Mostly for your sake,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘In that case, allow me to give you a piece of advice,’ she said, leaning back in her chair.

  Annika Carlsson had spoken to her uniformed colleagues in Solna who had finally persuaded Mrs Linderoth to open the door to the two male officers from animal protection, as well as the two female officials from the county council, and let them into the flat. They had also told her about Mrs Linderoth’s next-door neighbour, who had been extremely upset on her behalf at the miscarriage of justice she believed that Mrs Linderoth had been subjected to.

  ‘According to what our colleague Axelsson says – he’s the one whose mother is an old friend of Mrs Linderoth – neither the officers from animal protection nor the two council women were wearing uniform, or anything else that indicated who they were. According to Mrs Linderoth’s neighbour, at first they rang on Linderoth’s doorbell, then started banging on the door, before one of them began to shout through her letterbox, telling her to open up. After a while she opened the door slightly, with the security chain on, stuck that old pistol out, and that’s what put a rocket under our colleagues and sent them running for cover.’