The Sword of Justice

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘If you think of a scale of one to ten, where ten is a completely identical likeness, where would you put this picture?’ Ek said.

  ‘Ten,’ Ara said firmly. ‘It’s as good as a passport photo.’

  ‘A ten,’ Ek repeated. He was still smiling amiably, but he didn’t seem completely convinced.

  ‘Okay,’ Ara said. ‘Maybe a nine, just to be safe. The man in the photofit looked really mean, not nice at all. Maybe it’s hard to capture that particular expression. But I don’t suppose he goes round looking like that the whole time.’

  ‘No, hopefully not,’ Ek said with a slight smile. ‘I seem to recall you said he was tall. About one metre ninety, if I remember rightly? I’d say you’re about one seventy-two yourself, at a guess?’ Ek said.

  ‘Yes,’ Ara said, unable to conceal his surprise. ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘I’m one seventy-five myself,’ Ek said, smiling again. ‘And I looked you up in the passport register, if I’m going to be completely honest.’

  ‘Well, I certainly got the impression that he was much taller than me,’ Ara said.

  Then Ek had excused himself and asked Ara to wait for fifteen minutes while he did another search of their database. When he returned fourteen minutes later he had several more photographs of the man Ara had already shaken his head at. Not just the usual police mugshot, but the sort that must have been taken when he was under surveillance. Getting out of a car, going into a doorway, even some pictures of him exercising in a gym.

  ‘Yes,’ Ara said. ‘That could well be him, actually. I think I recognize him. I didn’t miss him when we were sitting here yesterday, did I?’ What the hell am I doing now? he thought. If the cops get it into their heads to show his picture on Crimewatch tonight, I won’t get a single krona from that journalist.

  ‘That sort of thing happens,’ Ek said, patting him on the shoulder. ‘If you ask me, it happens all the time. Sometimes the memory just needs a bit of time, that’s all,’ he added, because he had no intention of revealing what he thought was really going on.

  ‘How sure are you?’ he went on. ‘If we use the same scale from one to ten, where ten means you’re absolutely sure?’ Ek said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ara said with a hesitant shrug. ‘Seven, maybe. Possibly six, even.’

  ‘Seven, possibly six,’ Ek repeated. ‘Even though the photofit picture was a nine, possibly even a ten.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ara said. ‘I see what you’re saying, but the problem is that a lot of them look the same, if I can put it like that. It gets a lot harder. When you have to pick out one of them. This bloke actually looks pretty cool. Can I ask, who is he?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ Ek said. ‘But I have to say that I agree with you. He’s not a nice person at all, which makes it all the more important that none of this goes outside the police station,’ he went on with a nod. For the first time without any trace of a smile.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ara said, even though he himself suddenly felt anything but calm.

  ‘If there’s any cause for concern at all, call the number my colleague gave you,’ Ek said, looking at him seriously. ‘Promise.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ara said with a smile. ‘I’ll lie low, I promise.’

  What are you playing at? Ara Dosti thought as he drove away from the police station a quarter of an hour later. He had spent pretty much all of the last three days working for the police, had received two five-hundred-kronor notes for his trouble, and now there was a lethal madman who wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if he got the chance. Definitely time to get out of here, he thought. Dubai, Thailand, anywhere he could relax for a while until things got back to normal.

  Then he had called the reporter from the big evening paper to suggest that they meet right away, at the same place in the city where they met the first time two days before. He also told him to take with him the pictures he had shown him when he showed up at his home.

  ‘I know who it is,’ Ara said. ‘I’m absolutely certain.’

  ‘Great,’ the reporter said. ‘Just give me fifteen minutes. See you shortly.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Ara said. ‘I want fifty thousand. That’s nonnegotiable. And I want it all in cash, in five-hundred notes.’

  ‘In that case I’ll need at least two hours,’ the reporter said. ‘How about an ordinary banker’s draft? That’s just as anonymous as cash. Besides, I’m going to need time to check your story. If you point him out, you can have half the money. I check it out and, if it all fits, you can have the other half as soon as I’m done.’

  ‘Cash,’ Ara repeated. ‘Two hours is okay. Half is okay as well, but I’ve got to have cash.’

  ‘I promise,’ the reporter said.

  There was no way he could take on any big jobs while he was waiting. Not if he had an appointment to keep. So he had signed out on the computer and went to get something to eat at his usual café. Anxiety was starting to get the better of him, and he drove to the appointed meeting place in the same backstreet on Södermalm half an hour early. He sat in the car, thoughts racing through his head. None of them was particularly appealing, and for a while he contemplated just driving off and forgetting about it all.

  Pull yourself together, he thought. In a day or two you’ll be on the other side of the planet, sitting on a beach checking out the girls. I should go to Thailand, he thought. More girls, better beaches. And fewer checks on people like him who just wanted to be left alone until everything got back to normal and he could start living his usual life again.

  54

  At twelve o’clock on Wednesday, 5 June the investigative team held its third meeting, and Bäckström felt he was starting to get a bit of order around him. Which was more than overdue, so he could finally ease his inhuman workload and go back to business as usual.

  The door-to-door inquiries were now a closed chapter. They had gone better than usual and had resulted in one suspicious vehicle and two, possibly three, individuals who could be assumed to have something to do with the murder. Useful information that gave good grounds for hoping they might be able to find both the car and the individuals they were looking for.

  The tip-off line also seemed to be working, and the initial torrent of information from the public had now dwindled to the usual more manageable trickle. It was now possible to register the calls as they came in, rather than having to transfer people from more proactive duties. As far as this particular murder victim was concerned, the task of evaluating, sorting and registering incoming information was also considerably easier than usual. The vast majority of the tip-offs concerned Eriksson’s close contacts with organized crime, and they had already received the names of a hundred different perpetrators who, according to twice that number of informants, all had one thing in common: they had all killed Eriksson. Otherwise, it was much the same as usual. Good advice about the importance of taking a closer look at this or that, and the usual moronic tip-offs from the soothsayers and diviners.

  They had also made good progress with other aspects of the investigation, including the mapping of the victim and his closest associates, routine checks of the usual suspects, and analysis of mobile-phone traffic around the time of the crime. But some things appeared to be taking longer. Their medical officer had been in touch again to inform them that he needed another few days so he could get a second opinion from a colleague who was regarded as one of the world’s leading experts in more complicated instances of injuries inflicted with a blunt object. The only consolation was that he saw no reason ‘to change my preliminary diagnosis at the present time’.

  It was the usual story with the National Forensics Laboratory. They had sent in almost one hundred different samples for analysis. They would receive a response within a month at the latest, and the first results from the samples they had identified as most urgent by the beginning of next week. The search of the victim’s home was also taking longer than expected and, according to Niemi, he and his colleagues would need the r
est of the week at least before they could hand over the crime scene to Eriksson’s colleague, Danielsson, who was named in Eriksson’s will as his executor.

  Despite this, Bäckström was happy. Things are happening, he thought, and the most important thing right now was to make sure he got enough food, drink and rest, then the sudden flash of decisive insight would come to him.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, leafing through the thick bundle of papers in front of him for the sake of appearance. ‘How are we getting on with the silver Merc, Nadja?’

  According to Nadja, things were going as expected. After two days, she and her colleagues had managed to halve the original number to approximately two hundred possible vehicles, even though they were proceeding with caution.

  ‘If there’s any doubt at all, the information stays live until we can make more conclusive checks. So far, we’ve only done a rough sort-through, so you’ll have to give us another week,’ Nadja said. ‘Although, if we get lucky, it could all be over in a matter of hours,’ she added, throwing out her hands demonstratively.

  ‘Good,’ Bäckström responded, seeing as he had no intention of getting bogged down in details, certainly not when it came to Nadja’s work.

  ‘How about that character the taxi-driver almost mowed down?’ he went on, nodding towards Ek.

  ‘He and I have put together a photofit picture,’ Ek said. ‘If you’re wondering why you haven’t seen it yet, that’s because there’s a degree of doubt about it. Our witness says it’s a six or seven on the usual scale of one to ten, and it’s certainly a pretty good match for one of the men he’s seen a picture of from the database. Unfortunately, that’s also where the problem arises.’

  ‘What do you mean? What sort of problem?’ Hate problems, Bäckström thought.

  ‘Well, it can’t be the man who’s the best match with the photofit,’ Ek said, ‘because he’s got an alibi for the time of the crime. If we were to make public the photofit picture, I’m convinced that most of the tip-offs we received would be about him. Even though I know he had an alibi for the time when Eriksson was murdered. And, if I’ve understood correctly, we’re fairly confident about the time of the murder.’

  ‘Alibi,’ Bäckström snorted. ‘They always have alibis. Have you talked to him, then?’

  ‘No, definitely not,’ Ek said, sounding almost horrified. ‘I’ve talked to the intelligence service, obviously in the strictest confidence, and with our colleagues in Stockholm who are working on that Nova Project, trying to keep tabs on the very worst suspects. Apparently, Regional Crime has had him and his associates under surveillance for some time.’

  ‘So they’re the ones giving him an alibi, our colleagues at Regional Crime?’

  ‘Two of them,’ Ek said with a blithe smile. ‘Plus several thousand others. Maybe not your usual civic-minded citizens exactly, but a few thousand of them anyway.’

  ‘Several thousand others? Was he live on telly then, or what?’

  ‘Rather the opposite, actually,’ Ek said with the same gentle smile. ‘No, he was taking part in a martial arts competition at the Globe Arena. At ten o’clock he entered the ring, and for the next ten minutes he was fully occupied kicking the hell out of his opponent. After being applauded in the customary manner, he returned to the changing room to be patched up, by which point it was about half past ten. That’s the main reason why I think we should wait before releasing the photofit picture.’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Bäckström sighed. ‘Does anyone else have anything that the rest of us should know about now?

  ‘Excellent,’ he went on, needing just a quick glance around the room to note an adequate number of headshakes. ‘Okay, do any of you have a good answer to my earlier question? How come one or more individuals kill Eriksson at approximately quarter to ten in the evening, and then one or more individuals give the body a new going-over some four hours later and cut his dog’s throat?’

  Considerably more headshakes this time, Bäckström noted.

  ‘Okay,’ he continued. ‘Then I suggest we throw some ideas around. Tell me what happened on the night when Eriksson the lawyer shuffled off this mortal coil. What do you say, Peter?’ he said, quickly pointing at Niemi to forestall Alm and Andersson-Trygg and all the other mentally handicapped incompetents who made up his investigating team.

  ‘Throwing around ideas about what happened,’ Peter Niemi said with a faint smile. ‘Sweet music to someone like me.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Bäckström said encouragingly. ‘Tell us.’

  ‘At nine o’clock that evening he receives a visit from at least two people he already knows. The meeting has been arranged in advance and, bearing in mind its time and location, I think these people are important to our victim. I don’t think Eriksson is the type to let just anyone into his home on a Sunday evening. These are people he trusts, they’re important to him.’

  ‘Quite agree with you, Peter,’ Bäckström interjected. By now he was looking forward to a decent lunch and could even contemplate listening to a bastard Finn like Niemi as a way of honing his appetite.

  ‘Then something goes wrong. Approximately half an hour later things get out of hand. I don’t think this was premeditated, although of course it bothers me that we haven’t found our blunt instrument. The situation spins out of control. Eriksson tries to call SOS Alarm, manages to pull out his revolver and fire off at least one shot at one of his visitors, the one sitting on the sofa a few metres away. I think the bullet in the ceiling ended up there when visitor number two wrestles the gun off him, and that’s when Eriksson gets killed. I’d prefer not to speculate about the finer details surrounding the phone call, the shooting and the blunt object he gets struck with for the time being, but we’re talking about a period of a few minutes around quarter to ten in the evening. The call to SOS Alarm was made at twenty to ten, after all.’

  ‘There’s one problem with that,’ Annika Carlsson interrupted. ‘There’s our female witness who sees the well-built character loading boxes into the boot of the silver Mercedes, and there’s our male witness who sees the elderly man sitting on the steps outside Eriksson’s house. Their observations were made a quarter of an hour earlier. At about half past nine. That bothers me.’

  ‘It bothers me too,’ Niemi said. ‘I understand exactly what you mean. First the fight, Eriksson gets killed, then they take their things and leave the scene of the crime. That would be the natural chain of events, so to speak.’

  ‘The simplest explanation has to be that our witnesses got the time wrong,’ Stigson suggested. ‘That happens all the time. When they say half past nine, they could easily be talking about quarter to ten. The fight kicks off seriously when Eriksson’s visitors are getting their things ready and are about to leave. That’s when they start to argue, Eriksson takes out his revolver and tries to phone for help, but instead gets beaten to death and the perpetrators grab the things they came for and leave. That seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly sounds logical,’ Niemi said with a nod. ‘The idea that one of his visitors would have stayed in the house while one or two others leave seems both risky and pretty far-fetched. Because it’s around that time, just before ten, when Eriksson’s dog is first heard barking and, according to our witnesses, it carries on for quite some time. And we haven’t found any evidence in the house to suggest that anyone was there all the way through to two o’clock that night. There are no signs that anyone needed time to search the place, because why would they leave almost a million kronor in cash at the scene of the crime when all they had to do was pull out a few drawers to find the envelope it was in?’

  ‘And while Eriksson’s dog was standing out on the terrace barking,’ Felicia Pettersson agreed. ‘What about those shots, though?’ she added. ‘Wouldn’t anyone passing the house have heard them?’

  ‘No,’ Peter Niemi said. ‘Hernandez and I checked that with a test shot. It was a .22 calibre revolver, so it doesn’t make that much noise. And Erik
sson’s study up on the first floor has no windows facing the street, so no noise would have reached that far.’

  ‘What about later on, then? That’s when it all gets completely unbelievable,’ Annika Carlsson declared. ‘Why take the risk of returning to the crime scene four hours later? And why attack someone who’s already dead, and cut the dog’s throat, the same dog that’s now standing out on the terrace howling. That sounds like a pretty suicidal thing to do.’

  ‘Maybe they forgot something,’ Hernandez said. ‘Something that was so important it was worth the risk of going back. And when they still fail to find whatever it was on the second attempt, our perpetrator loses it and attacks both the dog and its dead owner. How about that?’

  A few half-hearted headshakes, a few isolated murmurs, and Rosita Andersson-Trygg’s hand in the air.

  ‘Yes, Rosita,’ Bäckström said. ‘The floor is all yours.’

  ‘I don’t think we should get too hung up on the gap between events,’ Andersson-Trygg said. ‘The worst sort of animal abusers can be extremely irrational people, very impulsive, and they’re driven by entirely different motives to normal people. If you ask me, Bäckström, it could very well be the case that our perpetrator originally intended to attack Eriksson’s dog, but in the commotion during which Eriksson was killed, he didn’t have time to do it. He’s forced to leave the scene anyway, waits somewhere nearby, then when everything has calmed down he returns to do what had been his true intention right from the start. To attack an innocent animal.’

  The old bag is clearly in a class of her own within the Swedish police, Bäckström thought. Not even Alm could come up with something like that.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said with a nod. ‘Well, we’ll just have to think about it a bit more. Keep an open mind, don’t assume anything, if I can put it like that. We’ll meet up again tomorrow, same time, same place.’ Andersson-Trygg is very good for working up an appetite, Bäckström thought. High time for a proper lunch and a restorative nap.