The Sword of Justice

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘So what can I do for you, then?’ Bäckström asked.

  ‘You can’t wriggle out of it any longer, Bäckström,’ Lisa Lamm said, making herself comfortable on her chair.

  ‘In that case, I’ve got two things to tell you as well. As far as the two men we’re looking for are concerned, I’m fairly certain I’ve found them. Considering the amount of evidence they left behind them, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find out if I’m right or wrong.’

  ‘I interpret that to mean that you’re absolutely certain.’

  ‘You can never be absolutely certain,’ Bäckström said with a carefully judged shrug of the shoulders. ‘I’ve occasionally been wrong in the past.’

  ‘How often does that happen, then?’

  ‘To be honest, I can’t remember. It’s so long ago that I’ve forgotten. I’d like you to bear with me for just a few more hours. There are a couple of things I need to check first.’

  ‘The tension is quite unbearable …’ Lisa Lamm said.

  ‘I’m afraid this so-called murder has simmered down to a rather dull business, and that’s where I’m in serious need of your legal expertise. If you’ll excuse me, I was thinking of approaching it as a hypothetical case.’

  ‘Shoot,’ Lisa Lamm said. God, this is exciting, she thought.

  ‘Just before nine o’clock someone rings on the door of Eriksson’s house,’ Bäckström began, sinking deeper into his chair. ‘The meeting’s been arranged in advance, but his visitors are in the process of pulling a fast one on Eriksson … so when he opens the door and lets them in, he doesn’t suspect that there’s anything wrong …’

  ‘What do you make of that?’ Bäckström asked a quarter of an hour later as he concluded his outline of the hypothetical case. ‘More particularly: what crime has been committed?’

  ‘There isn’t one,’ Lisa Lamm said, shaking her head. ‘Assuming everything happened the way you described, there’s no punishable offence. It’s a different matter with Eriksson, of course, but given that he’s dead …’

  ‘That’s what I suspected,’ Bäckström said, just as his mobile started to ring.

  ‘Bäckström,’ he said. He had already worked out who was calling.

  ‘Felicia here,’ Felicia said, sounding just as happy as she had done an hour earlier. ‘We’re in position.’

  ‘See you in a quarter of an hour,’ Bäckström said. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, Senior Prosecutor.’ Bäckström got to his feet. ‘I promise to call you in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Time to take the bull by the horns,’ Lisa Lamm said, more as a statement than a question.

  ‘Yes.’ You don’t know how right you are, he thought.

  An unusual man, a very unusual man, Lisa Lamm thought as she watched Bäckström go.

  Not bad-looking, really, Bäckström thought as he stepped out on to the street and got into the waiting taxi.

  132

  Felicia met Bäckström at the door, and told him his guest was sitting in the back room, waiting with a large glass of beer and a whisky on the side.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He seems happy. When I told him what it was about, he seemed pretty surprised at first. But after that there were no problems. And he has to have lunch somewhere, after all.’

  ‘Do you think he knows why I want to meet him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Felicia said with a nod. ‘He even said he was looking forward to talking to you, boss, and explaining what really happened. He was surprised it had taken you so long to contact him.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘He seems like a cool guy,’ she said, looking up at the ceiling. ‘That business about him being a legend isn’t hard to understand. If he was fifty years younger I’d have clambered through his bedroom window myself. By the way, boss, do you want me to stick around?’

  ‘Stay in the vicinity,’ he said. Brazilian women, he thought. It’s the only thing they’ve got on their tiny minds.

  ‘Superintendent Bäckström,’ Roly Stålhammar declared. ‘Little Felicia told me you wanted to buy me lunch. You haven’t found the Lord, have you, or anything like that?’

  ‘There’s something we need to talk about, you and me,’ Bäckström said. The rest of it is none of your business, he thought.

  ‘Well, yes, I realize that, even if it took a hell of a time for you to get in touch.’

  ‘What do you want to eat?’ Bäckström asked by way of a diversion.

  ‘Steak and onions,’ Roly said. ‘And when it comes to drinks, I was thinking of carrying on the way I’ve started.’

  ‘Steak and onions, sounds good,’ Bäckström agreed, nodding to the waiter who had just appeared. ‘And I’ll have the usual to drink.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Roly Stålhammar said. ‘Before we start eating, I mean. If you’ve got it into your head that I killed Eriksson, you can forget all about this little meal.’

  ‘No,’ Bäckström said. ‘The reason we’re sitting here is that I’ve got it into my head that the exact opposite is the case. I thought I’d give you a chance to tell me what happened so I can write it down.’

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ Roly said, looking like he meant it. ‘Mind you, if you ask me, it’s a total fucking mystery,’ he added, shaking his head.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said, gesturing with the glass that had just arrived.

  ‘When I said goodbye to Eriksson, there was nothing much wrong with him. Okay, so he was shouting and screaming and generally being uncouth, and he had a bit of a nosebleed, but that’s not the sort of thing that kills you. Especially not if you’re used to working for gangsters the way he was. Definitely not the sort of thing that kills you.’

  But on this occasion it evidently did, Bäckström thought, and nodded.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

  133

  A sad business, and a complete mystery, according to Roly Stålhammar. Considering what had happened, he regretted getting involved at all. Quite regardless of the fact that it concerned his best friend, and that that was what life was really all about when it came down to it.

  ‘You can forget all that crap about right and wrong when it’s your best mate,’ Roly Stålhammar explained.

  In this particular instance, a lawyer – ‘nothing but a gangster, a massive arsehole’ – had tried to con his best friend out of an art collection that was worth a fair bit, and once Mario Grimaldi had realized that he decided to get it back without delay. To help with the practical details he had contacted an old acquaintance who owned a security company which, among other things, dealt with this sort of thing. Fredrik Åkare and Åkerström Security, whom Mario had used on various previous occasions when he had had to sort out similar situations.

  ‘When Mario told me he’d contacted Åkare and his friends I just shook my head. To start with, it would be lethal taking them to Eriksson’s house, because there was no way Eriksson was going to let them in if Mario showed up there with blokes like Åkare and García Gomez. He’d have pulled up the drawbridge and called his mates in the Taliban, and then you’d have had even more to deal with, Superintendent – I can assure you of that,’ Roly said, fortifying himself with a couple of deep swigs.

  ‘So you offered to go instead,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘Of course. What would you have done?’

  ‘If it’s a mate, then obviously you volunteer,’ Bäckström lied. If you’re really that stupid, he thought.

  ‘Yes, well, this time it didn’t turn out too well.’ Roly sighed.

  ‘One question, out of curiosity,’ Bäckström said. ‘How come Eriksson agreed to meet Mario?’

  ‘That’s not so strange,’ Roly said, having trouble concealing his surprise. ‘If Mario gets in touch and wants to meet you, that’s what happens. That’s all there is to it. Mario isn’t the sort of man you say no to. All the same, I’m fairly sure he hadn’t told Eriksson what it was really about. I reckon he spun him some yarn about a few bits of business. A bit of buy
ing and selling – random stuff, you know,’ Roly Stålhammar said, raising his huge right hand.

  Roly Stålhammar had gone round to Mario Grimaldi’s at eight thirty that evening. Because Mario didn’t have a driving licence, Roly drove. Just before nine they rang on Eriksson’s door, and Eriksson opened it and asked them inside. No problem at all. They sat down in Eriksson’s office upstairs, and the pictures they had really come to collect were standing against one wall of the room they were sitting in.

  ‘If you’re wondering why he had them out, I think it was pure coincidence. He didn’t seem to have a clue that Mario had come to pick them up.’

  ‘So what happened after that?’

  ‘Eriksson offered Mario a whisky. He took one himself, and if you ask me, I think he’d been on the bottle before we arrived. Not that he was hammered, exactly, but he’d certainly had a few. I declined the offer. I was driving, after all. Well,’ Roly said, then sighed deeply and flexed his broad shoulders. ‘There were no problems for the first five minutes. It was all nice and relaxed, if you ask me, a bit of chit-chat about this and that, then all hell broke loose. The minute Eriksson realized why we were there.’

  ‘How did he realize?’

  ‘Mario got out the power of attorney Eriksson had been given. He explained that it was no longer in force, with immediate effect, and that we’d come to take back the pictures.’

  ‘How did Eriksson react to that?’

  ‘He went crazy, started shouting and yelling. But Mario was perfectly calm, as usual. He just explained that that was the situation now. Nothing more to discuss.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I started to put the pictures in a couple of boxes that were over in the corner. Ordinary white removal boxes. I wasn’t going to get involved in all that talk. It was none of my business, after all. I was supposed to drive Mario there, then take him home. Carry the stuff out. That was all. Eriksson must have been mad. To contradict Mario? You might as well save yourself a whole load of suffering and cut your own throat.’

  ‘Eriksson refused to listen?’

  ‘Are you kidding? He went totally fucking batshit crazy. When Mario wanted him to sign the power of attorney to acknowledge that he’d just been relieved of it, he suddenly pulled a revolver out of his desk and started waving it about. Yelling at us to get out of the house.’

  ‘So what did you do then?’

  Roly Stålhammar’s old reflexes had kicked in. The same reflexes that had made him a legend both in every police station in the country and among all their adversaries. As soon as Eriksson started waving his revolver about, Roly had put down the box he was about to carry downstairs, walked straight up to Eriksson, and loudly and clearly told him to put the gun down.

  ‘And do you know what the bastard does then?’ Roly asked. ‘When I go up to him and tell him to put his piece down, nice and calmly?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘He points at me and raises his left hand, like some fucking traffic cop, while he raises the revolver above his head, then he yells at me: Stop! Stop, or I’ll shoot.’

  ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot?’

  ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot,’ Roly repeated, shaking his head. ‘What the hell did he think he was playing at? That he was one of the guards at the Royal Palace, or what?’

  ‘So what did you do next?’

  Stolly the legend had let his reflexes take over. He threw himself at the lawyer. Grabbed his right arm and tried to twist the gun from his hand. Eriksson fires a shot straight up at the ceiling. Roly slaps him in the face. With his hand open, right across the nose. Eriksson refuses to give in. Another shot goes off.

  ‘I started to get a bit annoyed then, so I gave him a few serious right hooks in the jaw, twisted his wrist again and got the gun off him. I put it in my jacket pocket. Then I sat him down on his chair behind the desk and explained the situation to him.’

  ‘What was the situation, then?’

  ‘That he needed to be nice and polite, unless he wanted me to start breaking bones,’ Roly said.

  ‘And he followed that advice?’ Weird that Eriksson didn’t shit himself as well, Bäckström thought.

  ‘Yes, although I may have given him a little reminder while he was sitting there.’

  ‘A little reminder?’

  ‘I twisted the bastard’s nose. Cheers, by the way,’ Roly said, raising his glass of beer.

  ‘So that was how it all happened?’

  ‘Pretty much, as I remember it. Is there a problem?’

  Quite a few, Bäckström thought. Among them the fact that you might just have talked your way into a prison cell, where I really don’t want you. Not this time round, anyway.

  ‘What do you say to a bit of food?’ he asked.

  ‘Definitely,’ Roly said. ‘And another beer each, and a couple of proper drinks to go with the food.’

  134

  Steak and onion and fried potatoes, another large beer and a small vodka, the worst of his hunger sated and high time he made some proper sense out of Roly Stålhammar’s story, seeing as – unfortunately – it might well be completely true.

  Bäckström dealt with it piece by piece, taking care to emphasize his pedagogical intent. As a general observation, he was prepared to buy Roly’s version of events. That just left a few minor details that he feared Roly might have misinterpreted. With all due respect, of course, because, naturally, the situation was highly charged and chaotic, and all that.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Roly asked, looking the way honest people usually do when they don’t understand what everyone else is talking about.

  There were a number of things that didn’t match what Niemi and his colleagues and their forensic medical officer had said. Nor with Bäckström’s own thoughts about what had happened. Because there was actually a lot of evidence to suggest that Eriksson had suddenly pulled out a weapon, taken aim at Mario as he was sitting on the sofa and quite simply tried to blow his head off. That that was how things had really started. Like a bolt from the blue, so to speak.

  And then Roly, at risk of his own life, tried to disarm Eriksson, and Eriksson, while they were struggling for his gun, managed to fire a shot straight up at the ceiling before Roly finally managed to disarm him. And Roly had tried to distract Eriksson by slapping him across the face with an open palm that struck Eriksson on the cheek and nose, before eventually twisting the gun from his hand. And Bäckström really didn’t believe that business about Roly – after everything was over – twisting Eriksson’s nose. According to their medical officer, there was no evidence to suggest that had happened.

  ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Roly said with a nod, looking as if he were thinking hard.

  ‘Yes, it’s very easy to get the details muddled up,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘On reflection, I think it happened exactly the way you said it did,’ Stolly said, brightening up considerably and raising his glass. ‘Now I come to think about it, I’m totally sure that’s what happened. Cheers, Bäckström!’

  ‘Cheers, Roly.’ At last, Bäckström thought.

  As they drank their coffee and cognac, Bäckström and Roly Stålhammar reached the end of the sad tale. And also cleared up a few practical details. What had happened after Roly disarmed Eriksson and they left the scene?

  Not much, according to Roly. First, he helped Mario downstairs and out of the house. He left him sitting on the front steps. Mario hadn’t been feeling very well. He kept going on about a bullet whistling through his hair. Unfortunately, he had managed to piss and shit himself when it happened. Roly had gone back upstairs to fetch the two boxes of paintings they had come to collect.

  ‘There was nothing much wrong with Eriksson, if you’re wondering. His nose was still bleeding a bit, and I lent him my handkerchief so he could wipe it, then when I asked him if everything was okay he just yelled at me. Told me I could go to hell.’

  ‘What did you do after that?’

  ‘I left,’ Roly said. ‘What else was I going
to do? Then, as I was about to step out of the house, I realized I still had the bastard’s revolver in my pocket. So I went back into the hall and dumped it in some old vase of flowers in there. I wasn’t about to give it back to Eriksson, as I’m sure you can appreciate.’

  ‘Then what?’

  First, he had helped Mario to the car. He laid him down in the back seat before putting the boxes of paintings in the boot. Then they left and went back to Mario’s. He helped Mario up into his apartment, then carried up the boxes of paintings. He made sure Mario was feeling better, then left him and walked home.

  ‘What time was it when you left Eriksson’s house?’

  ‘Half past nine, pretty much on the button,’ Roly said. ‘If you’re wondering how I know that, it’s because I wanted to watch a programme about old boxing champions, from the days when I was active myself, and that was on at eleven o’clock. Quite a bit had happened, of course, if I can put it like that, so I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to miss it. That’s why I looked at the time when we left Eriksson’s.’

  ‘So what time did you get home, then?’

  ‘Half past ten. So I set out some goodies in front of the sofa before it was time to switch on the idiot lantern.’

  ‘Is there anything we’ve forgotten, do you think?’ Bäckström asked.

  ‘Possibly one last little cognac before we head up to the station and get all the forms filled in.’

  ‘I’d suggest we do that bit tomorrow. I was thinking that the Anchor could take care of the practical stuff with the interview and so on. Then I daresay the prosecutor will want a few words with you. I want you to talk to Mario as well. Explain that we’re going to have to interview him. Considering what good mates you are, that shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘No problem, not the slightest,’ Roly said, unable to hide his surprise.

  ‘There’s one thing I’m still wondering about.’

  ‘Go for it, Bäckström.’

  ‘I had no idea Mario was interested in art.’