The Sword of Justice

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘I don’t,’ Stigson said with a grin. ‘He doesn’t feel right, so I’m hoping Bäckström can sort that bit out for us.’

  ‘Anything else I ought to know?’ Felicia went on.

  ‘Eriksson doesn’t seem to have been anyone’s idea of an ideal neighbour. I can’t remember ever hearing people say so many negative things about someone who’s just been murdered. Not the way his neighbours have, anyway. Noisy parties in the middle of the week, strange visitors showing up at all times of the day and night, double parking on the street and slamming car doors. And Eriksson himself seems to have been a bit lacking in the charm department. And there’s that dog of his, which seems to have terrorized the neighbourhood.’

  ‘But probably not a good enough reason to smash his head in.’

  ‘No, probably not,’ Stigson said. ‘But if one of them did do it, I don’t suppose it’s the sort of thing they’d be likely to tell us about.’

  39

  Annika Carlsson had decided to show Ara Dosti the pictures herself, even though it wasn’t her job, and despite the fact that she’d already worked a fourteen-hour shift. Before she started she went into the bathroom, rinsed her face with cold water, did some stretches to shake off the feeling that she’d been sitting behind her desk for far too long, and took several deep breaths. Then she went and got her laptop containing the almost two hundred photographs that Nadja had loaded on to it for her.

  No nonsense, no pissing about, because I’ll drag you off to the cells myself, she thought as she opened the door to the interview room where Ara was waiting for her.

  ‘It’s good of you to volunteer, Ara,’ Annika said. ‘I promise to do my best to make sure this won’t take any longer than necessary, and I’ll see to it that you get compensation for the work you aren’t able to do. And if you can identify the right bloke for me as well, I promise to sort out a small reward as thanks for your help.’

  ‘Okay, no problem,’ Ara said with a nod. Good-looking girl, he thought. If it weren’t for those black eyes that saw straight through him.

  Then they had looked at the pictures together. Photographs of a total of one hundred and eighty-five different men in the police database. Just to make sure, three of them were of the same man, Fredrik Åkare, who had of course made threats against Eriksson, and they had been taken several years apart and in different contexts. About thirty of the others were pictures of Åkare’s friends in the Hells Angels, his business associates, or just criminal colleagues.

  The investigating team’s attention had also been drawn to Afsan Ibrahim and his circle, known locally as the Brotherhood of the Ibrahims. Eriksson may have represented the Ibrahim family and been their confidant for a number of years, but things could change quickly. Every officer worthy of the badge knew that.

  That left about a hundred crooks who bore some resemblance to the descriptions that Ara Dosti and Jan Stigson’s witness, the female neighbour, had given the police, and who, to judge by their previous behaviour, had what was required to murder Eriksson.

  The process had taken almost three hours, and Ara Dosti had recognized about twenty of the people he had been shown. The first of them was one of the Ibrahim family’s associates, the same age as Ara.

  ‘Okay,’ Ara said, pointing at the picture Annika had just brought up on her computer. ‘That’s Omar. We were at school together down in Gnosjö. He was a great bloke. Came here from Morocco. Head of the student council. Top of the class. How come he’s in your files?’

  ‘No idea,’ Annika said, shaking her head. I ask the questions around here, she thought.

  ‘Weird,’ Ara said, apparently genuinely surprised. ‘All I know is that he got into the Institute of Technology here in Stockholm. He told the rest of us he was going to be a chemical engineer.’

  ‘But he’s not the man you almost ran over in your taxi?’ A chemist? Possibly, before he got in with the wrong crowd, Annika Carlsson thought.

  ‘Nope,’ Ara said. ‘But I probably wouldn’t have said anything if it was him. Omar was a decent bloke. We were good mates at school.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Annika said with a smile, even though the photographs of the people she was showing him hadn’t ended up on her computer by accident, and certainly not in this instance. Good mates. Great, she thought.

  In several cases Ara knew the names of the other people he recognized. No more schoolmates, just people he’d had in his taxi, and several he happened to know because they did the same job. There were others he’d seen out and about, in the bars around Stureplan, and the one he recognized most clearly was Fredrik Åkare, who he identified in all three different pictures.

  ‘That’s Fredrik Åkare. He’s president of the Hells Angels. Not nice. If you pick an argument with him, I mean. But he’s never messed with me. Always gives a decent tip.’

  ‘When did you meet him?’

  ‘I’ve had him in the taxi several times. Mostly when he’s going to the pub. That lot often hang out at Reisen, in Gamla stan. That’s supposed to be where they hold their meetings with Hells Angels from other countries. Then they go and eat at that American diner up on Södermalm, where they serve those massive steaks. Once I drove him to their clubhouse out in Solna. The one out near Bromma Airport.’

  ‘But he’s never come close to your front bumper?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be sitting here if he had,’ Ara said with feeling. ‘That man must be lethal when he gets angry. Two metres tall, hundred and fifty kilos. Must be over fifty, but definitely not the sort of person you want to get on the wrong side of.’

  An hour later they were done, and Ara had signed the nondisclosure agreement that Annika’s older and considerably more weary colleague had evidently forgotten. Then he signed to acknow ledge receipt of five hundred kronor that she had taken from the tip-off account and, in parting, she had given him a piece of advice.

  ‘You need to be aware of one thing, Ara,’ Annika Carlsson said. ‘I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, but the men who killed Eriksson aren’t very nice people. It’s important that you don’t tell anyone else what you’ve just told me. No one in your family, no friends at work, and definitely no journalists. Understood?’

  ‘No problem,’ Ara agreed. ‘I looked Eriksson up on Google. Seems to have been a proper little consigliere if you can believe the talk online.’

  ‘Take my card,’ Annika Carlsson said, getting one out. ‘If anything happens, call me on my mobile, no matter what time it is, and I’ll help you. If there’s an emergency, call our control room. I’ve written the direct number on my card. Agreed?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Ara said. ‘No problem. You have my word on it.’

  ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ Annika Carlsson said. ‘I’m afraid you might have to look at a few more pictures.’

  ‘Same compensation?’ Ara said, and smiled. Now she’s starting to sound human. Even if she’d only given him five hundred and not a grand.

  ‘I promise I’ll do my best. What are you going to do now? Work? Or home for some sleep?’

  ‘Home and sleep,’ Ara said. ‘It’s been a tough day.’

  ‘Good,’ Annika said. ‘Give me a call as soon as you wake up tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Will do,’ Ara said.

  40

  As soon as Ara got into the car to drive home to Kista, he switched his phone on. In his voicemail he had three calls on a similar theme from the journalist he had met just a few hours before. Now he had evidently spoken to his boss, and he wanted to make Ara a new offer for a description of the man and the car he had seen, on the condition that he looked at some pictures the newspaper had picked out. Ten thousand kronor for his trouble, and he could remain anonymous. If he wanted to go a step further and agreed to be interviewed and let them publish his name and photograph, the paper would offer more – at least double – and if he could actually identify the man he had almost run over in his taxi, they could imagine doubling that again.

  What the fuck do I do now? Fifty grand, cas
h, Ara thought. Two months in Thailand or Dubai while the cops did their job, until things calmed down enough for him to come back home again.

  When Ara got back to his little flat out in Kista he had decided to make a cup of tea and then sleep on the matter. There was something about that female police officer he had met that had made a deep impression on him. She seemed the sort who knew what she was talking about, and would stand by what she said. Fifty thousand compared to five hundred, he thought, with a wry smile. Then he had filled the kettle and, just as he was pouring boiling water into his cup, someone rang on his door.

  Shit, what’s going on now? he thought. Then he put his hand in his pocket and took out Annika Carlsson’s card and tapped the handwritten number into his mobile before padding silently over to the front door and looking at his visitor through the peephole.

  His new acquaintance from the biggest evening paper evidently wasn’t the sort who gave up easily, no matter what answer you gave him. Eventually, Ara let him into the flat, before his neighbours started to wonder why he had a visitor in the middle of the night, to explain to the reporter that he didn’t want any more contact with either him or his paper. Not for five or ten thousand, anyway.

  It didn’t go terribly well, even though he started by talking about the non-disclosure agreement he had signed.

  ‘They always try that crap,’ his visitor said, shrugging his shoulders dismissively. ‘At worst you’d get a fine, and I promise the paper would pay that for you. And we’ll get you a lawyer if they start to make things difficult.’

  ‘I get it,’ Ara said. ‘Sorry, but I’m not interested.’

  ‘Okay,’ the reporter said. ‘Here’s what we do. You stay anonymous, and you can be a hundred per cent certain of that, because I’d never dream of blowing one of my sources. You talk about the bloke you saw, and his car. You can have ten thousand in cash. Right now. I saw there’s a cashpoint just round the corner.’

  ‘Not interested,’ Ara said.

  ‘And if you can identify him from the pictures I’ve got with me, I promise you’ll get fifty thousand for your trouble, and you can still be anonymous. It’ll take five minutes at most, I promise. Then I swear I won’t bother you again.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ara said. Fifty thousand, he thought.

  The reporter from the biggest evening paper had brought about twenty pictures with him, of half a dozen different people, all of them apparently taken in connection with various stories the paper had run. Six people, compared to the almost two hundred the police had shown him. He had spread them out on Ara’s kitchen table so he could look at them all at the same time, and all Ara needed was a quick glance to recognize the man he had almost run over barely twenty-four hours earlier.

  He had been looking straight into the camera when the picture was taken. The same look he had given Ara in the street outside the house where the lawyer was murdered. Now he was seeing him again, for the second time in one day, and there was something in his eyes that made Ara realize what Annika Carlsson had warned him about.

  ‘No,’ Ara said. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize any of them. None of these ones, anyway.’

  ‘Okay,’ the reporter said, patting his shoulder. ‘Let’s stay in touch. Give me a call if you change your mind.’

  Then he had gone at last, leaving Ara in peace.

  41

  From the crime scene, Bäckström had gone straight to his local bar for a well-earned dinner and no sooner had he stepped in through the door than he was welcomed by his favourite Finnish waitress, who had just got back from holiday in Thailand. Bäckström sat at the bar to study the menu in peace, as he soothed his throat with a cold lager. There weren’t many customers, no one he recognized, which suited Bäckström fine, seeing as he needed to unwind – besides, he was also hoping to have a few words with the Finnish waitress. She was a busty blonde whom he’d known for several years, and she also used to clean his flat in exchange for a good seeing-to afterwards on his Hästens bed. That’s probably why she’s as well preserved as she is, even though she must be almost forty, he thought.

  ‘So how was Thailand?’ he asked, and took a large gulp of beer.

  It had been excellent, according to his interviewee. On the third day her dear husband had fallen asleep in the sun, got sunburned and ended up in hospital in Bangkok. He had had to stay there for a week, leaving her to relax.

  Then she and her husband had returned home and, as far as the cost of his stay in hospital was concerned, that was covered by their insurance, so there was nothing to worry about there.

  ‘Bloody lucky he didn’t die,’ Bäckström said with feeling.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the Finnish waitress said. ‘A real man like you should never have to provide for a widow. What do you want to eat?’

  After further consideration, Bäckström had decided on a light evening meal, as he had to be up early, so that was what he ordered. Småland sausage, beetroot and potatoes in parsley sauce. A couple of lagers and two large shorts to aid his digestion. Then he rounded off the meal with a cup of coffee and a small cognac, paid the bill and went home.

  ‘Call if you want any cleaning done. It must have built up while I was on holiday,’ the Finnish woman said, smiling and nodding pointedly at his groin before going over and giving him a goodnight hug.

  They’re mad about you, more and more of them all the time, Bäckström thought as he stepped out on to the street.

  Home at last, Bäckström thought, and five minutes later he was in his Japanese silk dressing-gown, sitting on his big black leather sofa in front of the television with a thirst-quenching vodka tonic, with his feet up on his antique Chinese coffee table as he looked around the room with satisfaction.

  You live pretty well, he reflected happily. The only thing that really bothered him was the large gilded birdcage on the table over by the window. High time to flog that crap on the internet, he thought, seeing as the cage’s former occupant had spent the past three weeks in animal hospital, where, with any luck, he was going to die. Mourned and missed by no one, least of all Bäckström. This in contrast to Egon, his beloved goldfish, who had passed away almost ten years ago as a consequence of his colleague Jan Rogersson neglecting him so shamelessly while Bäckström was away investigating a murder in the south of Sweden.

  But Bäckström had never actually owned a stick insect. That was a deliberate lie he had thrown at his colleague, Detective Sergeant Rosita Andersson-Trygg, with the intention of confusing her still further and bringing the already utterly pointless discussion to a rapid conclusion.

  A goldfish called Egon and a parrot he had named Isak, that was it. All those cats and dogs from his childhood were a complete fabrication. His simple-minded mother had a load of pot plants to which she devoted her tender attentions each day, watering, dusting and talking to them constantly, but he came no closer than that to anything that was actually alive. His crazy mum, who socialized with her plants. His dad, the severely alcoholic senior constable, had managed to make things even easier for himself, seeing as he had a deep dislike of people, plants and animals and never had any problem choosing between a litre of vodka and his firstborn son, Evert.

  His childhood, in summary. A happy childhood, because it was long since over, and ‘single is strong’ only applies when you’re big enough to defend yourself, he thought philosophically, nodding thoughtfully to himself. But he still missed Egon, even though it had been ten years since he slipped off this mortal coil. Egon, he thought, and raised his glass in a silent toast to absent friends.

  Bäckström had been given Egon and his aquarium as a gift from a woman he had picked up on the internet. He had replied to a contact advert, and what had prompted him to reply was partly the advertiser’s description of herself but mainly the way she signed off: ‘uniform a plus’.

  To start with, it had all worked very well. Her description of herself as ‘a liberated and broad-minded woman’ hadn’t been entirely unfounded. Not at the beginning, but afte
r a couple of weeks she turned out to be remarkably similar to all the other whining women who had passed through his life. So he had sent her packing, but not Egon, who stayed on, and after a while Bäckström began to feel attached to him.

  When he got home at last after a long and difficult day at work. When he sat there on the sofa in the evenings, sipping a well-earned drink and feeling a sense of well-being spread through him as he watched Egon swimming back and forth and up and down in his own little world, apparently not the slightest bit bothered about all the cruelty and misery lurking round the corner from where he and Bäckström lived.

  Egon had been a real treasure, and his only friend in this life, Bäckström thought, refilling his almost empty glass. Isak, on the other hand, was a common hooligan with wings and a hooked beak. The result of an extremely unfortunate impulse purchase he had made a couple of months earlier when he happened to be passing a pet-shop on his way to work. In the window was a parrot, with an attractive mix of blue and yellow feathers, which appealed to his prospective owner for the obvious ideological reasons, and when Bäckström stopped to take a closer look at him, he tilted his head to one side and said something to him, which he had, unfortunately, been unable to hear.

  Must be one of those ones you can teach to talk, Bäckström thought. Then he had gone into the shop, explained his specific requirements to the assistant, been given the usual assurances in reply and, fifteen minutes later, it was all sorted out. Bäckström was now the owner of a parrot, and had been given the cage into the bargain, but the misery he was soon to find himself in hadn’t yet begun. But with a bit of luck the little fucker will soon have fluttered his last, he thought happily, turning on the television to watch the latest news on TV4.

  After ten minutes he switched off, shook his weary head and was obliged to pour himself a sturdy nightcap to stop himself losing all faith in humanity. The only thing they were all going on about was the brutal murder of the renowned lawyer Thomas Eriksson. He appeared to be mourned and much missed by pretty much the whole of humankind. They had even interviewed an astonishingly skinny and stupid woman, who, to judge by the on-screen caption, was chair of the Bar Association. She had lost both a close friend and a highly gifted colleague. Eriksson’s murder was also an attack on the entire justice system, and threats and violence against lawyers were a serious and rapidly growing problem which demanded immediate action from the government.