The Sword of Justice

by Leif G. W. Persson

  Dirty Pelle had given the green light. There was nothing at all in his records, and if anything cropped up to suggest the opposite he promised to get in touch at once. Bäckström had thanked him for his help and sent him the customary bottle of malt whisky.

  Only then had he called to book a personal appointment. Aching shoulders and joints, the sort that could afflict a prominent businessman like him, a fully booked diary and therefore as late as possible before closing on a Friday afternoon, if that was feasible? A chirruping masseuse at the other end of the line: of course it was absolutely fine if Director Bäckström was the last customer of the day.

  Little Miss Friday’s real name was Ludmila, she had an hourglass figure and was a genuine redhead, which it took Bäckström only three visits to find out. Even if, from her side, it was surely love at first sight, though she had done her best to hide the fact.

  On his first visit, Bäckström’s treatment had begun with him lying on his stomach, covered by nothing but a towel, while Little Ludmila set to work on his stiff muscles and joints. She kneaded, pushed and pulled, and all the stiffness in his muscles and joints vanished straight into the super-salami, and in the end Bäckström was forced to lie like a set square until he rolled over and removed the tent canvas round his waist.

  ‘Goodness!’ Ludmila said, wide-eyed, when she saw the result at the front of a perfectly ordinary massage at the back.

  ‘Indeed,’ Bäckström said, giving her a half Clint. ‘You’ve got your work cut out there.’

  Love at first sight, he thought as he pulled on his trousers after the end of his session. Even if it had begun with simple manual work, albeit requiring two hands in this instance, the job had been accomplished in a very satisfactory way.

  The following week, his very own Little Miss Friday had started with a hug and a peck on the cheek the moment he walked in and concluded with a first-class blowjob that Bäckström was able to reciprocate with interest the following Friday. First, he had offered her a light picnic in the lady-garden, confirming that she was a genuine redhead, as well as a real woman, before allowing her to conclude with a quick ride on the super-salami.

  Youthful infatuation, he had thought as he pulled down his trousers for the third time in three weeks in the same premises. His very own Little Miss Friday and, over the course of the next few months, she had become the way in which he always rounded off another week of hard work in the service of justice.

  19

  It may have been a week full of hard work, but now it was Saturday at last, and time for a simple warrior like Bäckström to slide the sword of justice back in its scabbard and enjoy some well-deserved rest. It was also high time to investigate the issue of little Jenny’s origins, so as to forestall any unpleasant surprises of an incestuous nature. If he was going to allow her to ascend the super-salami, he wanted to reassure himself in good time that her supposed father, Detective Inspector Jan Rogersson, wasn’t going to get anywhere close to it, not even through the agency of his daughter.

  The very thought of that was enough for horrifying images to come into his head. Even though it was only eleven o’clock in the morning, he had been forced to suppress them with the help of an emergency dram, before summoning the strength to call Rogersson and suggest that they meet up for a bite to eat.

  ‘I’ll get the first round, you can get the second,’ Bäckström added generously, just to make sure that the notorious skinflint didn’t get any ideas.

  Rogersson thought it sounded like an excellent plan, and had even suggested that they go to his own local restaurant over on Södermalm. It was run by a couple of Serbs, Marko and Janko. They served excellent fried meat, the prices were pretty reasonable and, because they knew what line of work Rogersson was in, he and his guests could always count on the odd drink or two that didn’t end up on the bill.

  ‘They’re good blokes,’ Rogersson said. ‘If you order a short you can be sure of getting a double. All above board, some decent birds at the bar, no need to worry about any of those arty faggots. If anyone shows up who’s obviously there by mistake, Janko usually chucks them out at once.’

  They’ve been sitting there for half an hour now. They’re already on their second free lager and a generously sized chaser, because the manager was practically beside himself that his humble establishment was being honoured by the legendary Evert Bäckström.

  ‘Cheers, Bäckström,’ Rogersson said. ‘So, how’s my daughter getting on?’

  ‘Fine,’ Bäckström said. ‘I think things could turn out very well in the long term,’ he added cautiously. Just not the way you imagine, he thought.

  ‘She’s a chip off the old block,’ Rogersson said proudly. ‘A chip off the old block,’ he repeated, raising his glass and taking a couple of long swigs.

  ‘Maybe, but you don’t look terribly similar.’ The ugly bastard ought to get himself a mirror.

  ‘She’s got the same head as me.’ Rogersson tapped his right temple with his forefinger to show what he meant. ‘That girl’s like you and me, Bäckström. Daddy’s little Jenny’s got a proper cop’s head on her shoulders. You know she changed her name to mine when she started at Police Academy?’

  ‘I seem to remember you mentioning it, yes,’ Bäckström nodded.

  ‘She gets her looks from her mum, if that’s what you’re wondering. They’re like peas in a pod. Gun – that’s her mum’s name – she’s a good girl, works as a hairdresser down in Jönköping. That’s where she’s from. Forty-five, but you wouldn’t think it to look at her. Looks more like thirty, at most. She’s not that bright, but she’s definitely one of the best shags I’ve had in my life. That’s often the way with birds who are a bit thick. They make up for it once they’re in the sack, if I can put it like that. She’s still got it, if you’re wondering. I happened to be passing Jönköping a few months back, and we had a repeat performance.’ Rogersson nodded happily, apparently mostly to himself.

  ‘Really?’ Bäckström said. This is sounding better and better. Who knows, maybe it’ll end up as a double sandwich?

  ‘How did you meet her? Jenny’s mum, I mean?’

  ‘I just happened to be passing,’ Rogersson said with a grin. ‘It was back in the eighties, around the time when our as yet unidentified perpetrator took down the sign with Palme’s name on it. I was seconded from the drug squad in Stockholm to National Crime, because they were seriously fucking short of people, as you know. Then they got a murder down in Jönköping. The manager of a petrol station got stabbed and killed. A robbery that got out of hand, and the backwoods cops got interested in one of Gun’s old boyfriends. She was a bit wild in those days. Not that surprising, really, given the way she looked.’

  ‘Was it him, then? The boyfriend?’ A bit wild, that sounds pretty good, thought Bäckström. There was a good chance that some local benefit-scrounger with shiny white teeth had got Gun up the duff and left Rogersson to take the blame.

  ‘No,’ Rogersson said, shaking his head. ‘It turned out to be another local talent. No one who knew little Gun, anyway. It only took us a week to sort it out. So things had to move pretty quickly with Gun, if you get my meaning. She’d only just turned eighteen,’ Rogersson said with a sigh. ‘Those were the days, Bäckström. There was never any question of us getting together properly. I had my life up in Stockholm. Both my work, and a fiancée. And the first kid, must have been a couple of years old then, and another on the way.’

  Imagine, Bäckström thought, but contented himself with a nod.

  ‘But we stayed in contact over all these years. Jenny and me mainly, but Gun as well. They’ve never gone short. Things turned out well for Gun, really well. She runs a couple of her own beauty salons now. Earns more than either of us.’

  Really? Speak for yourself.

  ‘Well, here’s to Jenny. Cheers!’ Rogersson said, and raised his glass. ‘And to her old mum as well.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Bäckström responded. This sounds really promising, he thought. Mother and d
aughter. Could definitely turn out to be a memorable double.

  After that, they dropped the subject and enjoyed a very good meal, before moving to the bar and letting the evening degenerate in the traditional pleasant way, as befitted two no-nonsense officers of the law. In fact, things had gone so well that the precise details were shrouded in mist, but, at least when Bäckström came round, he discovered that he was lying in his Hästens bed at home.

  He stayed there for most of the day then pulled himself together enough to take a stroll to his local bar and have an early Sunday dinner.

  It had turned into a properly lazy Sunday, and when he got back home he sat down at his secret computer, the one whose IP address couldn’t be traced back to him, and did some work on his own online fan club, with the help of the profiles ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Curious Blonde’, who shared the fact that they each seemed to have experienced both the super-salami and a downstairs picnic. That would give the other ladies something to think about, he thought as he turned off the computer, once he’d let Little Red Riding Hood reveal in confidence the true extent of their idol’s assets.

  It was still early when he went to bed with a couple of measures of malt whisky to help him prepare for Monday. He nodded off and slept the sleep of the righteous for all of five hours before the phone woke him up to a new day. To Monday, 3 June, which would turn out to be the best day of his life, and proof that the age of miracles wasn’t yet over.

  III

  The investigation into the murder of Thomas Eriksson the lawyer.

  Preliminary phase

  20

  When Bäckström stepped into the hall of his latest victim’s home, Annika Carlsson was standing waiting for him. She handed him a pair of shoe-covers and gloves and nodded towards the broad staircase leading to the upper floor.

  ‘Upstairs,’ she said. ‘That’s where it all seems to have happened. He was found on the landing. It’s big, something like fifty, sixty square metres, and he seems to have used it as a mixture of an office and a living room. There’s a large terrace outside.’

  ‘The body’s still there?’ Bäckström interrupted.

  ‘Of course, I assumed you’d want to see it in situ. But our medical officer has been and gone, he left quarter of an hour ago. Niemi and Hernandez are still up there, but they’re done with the stairs so you can go ahead.’

  ‘What did he say, then? Our nice old doctor?’ Bäckström wanted it clarified.

  ‘Murder,’ Carlsson said. ‘Hit over the head with a blunt instrument, but you don’t have to be a doctor to see that. The back of his head has been smashed in, his skull’s completely flattened. He looks bloody awful, frankly.’

  Bäckström restricted himself to a nod. Then he sat down on a chair and slipped the shoe-covers on, with some difficulty, before standing up and putting on the plastic gloves.

  ‘I can hardly contain myself,’ he said.

  ‘One more thing,’ Annika Carlsson said, lowering her voice.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said. What’s she come up with now? he thought.

  ‘Eriksson’s got a computer up there,’ she said, nodding towards the ceiling. ‘On his desk. When I was up there a little while ago Niemi told me that it was switched on, and that the security lock wasn’t activated.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I suggested that he take the opportunity to copy the hard drive, but—’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘There’s a sticker on it, saying it belongs to the law firm Eriksson and Partners, so Niemi wanted to check with the prosecutor first.’

  ‘Fucking coward,’ Bäckström snorted.

  ‘So I did it instead,’ Annika Carlsson said, handing a small red memory stick to Bäckström.

  ‘What did Niemi have to say about that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Annika Carlsson said with a smile. ‘He and Hernandez went off to get coffee.’

  ‘Very wise,’ Bäckström said, putting the stick in his pocket. The best day of my life, he thought. The sort of day when everything goes like clockwork and there’s nothing that can get in your way.

  Bäckström had stopped at the top of the stairs and looked around at the landing that was now his crime scene. In the middle of the room was a big, old-fashioned, English-style desk made of polished hardwood, a sort that Bäckström didn’t recognize, with a green leather top. The desk chair was in the same style. A wooden chair with arms, its seat and back upholstered in leather, the same colour as the desktop.

  On the floor between the stairs and the desk lay Bäckström’s murder victim. He was on his back, parallel to the desk, arms by his sides, wearing black slippers, loose grey trousers and a white linen shirt with the collar undone and the sleeves rolled up. Comfortably and casually dressed for the final meeting of his life, with the grim reaper, and in all essential respects matching Annika Carlsson’s description. His face was covered in blood. Blood had run down through his hair to his chin and neck, and a fair amount had soaked into the front of his white shirt, while his smashed-in skull rested flatly on the floor.

  ‘Well, then,’ Bäckström said, nodding towards Niemi, who was standing on the other side of the desk and seemed fully occupied taking prints from a black mobile phone. ‘What do you think, Peter? Is this an unfortunate accident or just an ordinary suicide?’

  ‘Well,’ Peter Niemi said with a weak smile. ‘I don’t think you need have any concerns there. According to the medical officer who was here to take a look at him, it’s a textbook example of how to kill someone with the classic blunt object. In this case, to the victim’s head and neck. The back of his head has been beaten in with at least three or four blows, and his neck’s broken.’

  ‘Murder weapon?’

  ‘Nothing we’ve found in the house, even though there are plenty of pokers and candlesticks. If you ask me, I’d guess it was a piece of metal pipe or a baseball bat, the more compact sort. Something rounded, hard, oblong, thick enough to hold comfortably, something that would do serious damage when you set to work. You can probably rule out axes, hammers, anything else with a sharp edge.’

  ‘Was he lying like that when we found him? On his back, I mean?’ Bäckström nodded down towards the dead body.

  ‘No. He was lying on his stomach with his right arm under his chest. Left arm curved up over his head. But otherwise his head was in the same position as now, and the body was at the same angle as now, parallel to the desk. One of our uniformed colleagues who was first on the scene took a picture of him on his mobile phone while his partner confirmed the victim was dead. Apparently he used to work as a paramedic before joining the police. When Hernandez and I got here an hour later he was still lying the way he was when they found him. We turned him over when the medical officer was here. That’s when we found the mobile,’ Niemi said, holding up the black phone. ‘It was lying under the body, but it wasn’t in his hand. I suppose he must have dropped it when he went down for the count.’

  ‘Strange,’ Bäckström said. Strange, he thought.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘No splatters,’ Bäckström said, gesturing towards the polished parquet floor around the dead body and nodding up towards the white ceiling above his head. ‘Considering the blows to the back of his head, there ought to be blood everywhere. An explosion of blood. The floor in here ought to be spattered with it, the ceiling too, if you ask me, but all I can see is the pool under his head.’

  ‘You’re not the only person to be bothered by that,’ Niemi said. ‘Hernandez and I both noticed it when we arrived.’ He indicated his white-clad colleague at the other end of the room, who was busy moving a large sofa that was set against the wall.

  ‘He couldn’t just have been attacked somewhere else, and that was where his head was smashed in, and then his body was moved here?’

  ‘That was our first theory,’ Niemi said with a nod. ‘The problem is that we can’t find anywhere else in the house where it could have happened. Nor any sign th
at the body has been moved. No drag-marks, no drops of blood along the way – if he was carried, I mean. Another possibility is of course that someone put a bag over his head before he was hit, so the blood ended up in the bag, which the perpetrator took with them when they left.’

  ‘Sounds a bit far-fetched,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘Well, I daresay the truth will out,’ Niemi added with a shrug.

  ‘Strange,’ Bäckström said. Strange, he thought.

  ‘I’m afraid that isn’t the only thing that’s strange about this case,’ Niemi said with a wry smile.

  ‘Okay, I’m listening.’ Bäckström gave him an encouraging nod.

  ‘There’s a bullet in the ceiling, right above the desk.’ Niemi pointed up at the white ceiling.

  ‘Is there, now?’ Bäckström said, leaning forward to see better.

  ‘Judging by the angle, it was fired straight up at the ceiling. It’s a few centimetres into the plaster. I’ve seen it – it’s visible when I shine a light into the hole – but I haven’t pulled it out yet.’

  ‘Bingo! I’ve just found bullet number two,’ Hernandez announced. ‘Over here in the sofa.’

  Hernandez indicated a hole in the back of the sofa, fringed with white fluff where the stuffing had spilled out.

  ‘Damn, this is starting to look like a gang war,’ Bäckström said with feeling. This is getting better and better, he thought.

  ‘Yes, but we’ve still saved the best till last,’ Niemi said with an innocent expression.

  ‘What’s that?’ Even better? Surely that’s impossible? Bäckström thought.

  ‘We’ve found another body, out on the terrace,’ Niemi said, gesturing towards the glazed double doors that led out to the large wooden deck with the waves of Lake Mälaren in the background, sparkling in the sun.

  ‘Another dead body,’ Bäckström said. ‘Are you having me on?’

  ‘No.’ Peter Niemi shook his head. ‘He seems pretty dead.’