Another Time, Another Life

by Leif G. W. Persson

  “No idea,” said Jarnebring.

  “Me neither,” said Holt, “so I thought I would take them to the office while I think about it.”

  Whatever this has to do with the case, thought Jarnebring, for it did seem pretty far-fetched.

  “Do that,” he said. “Put the shit in a sack, then we’ll call it a day and pick up again tomorrow.”

  • • •

  When Jarnebring returned home to his and his prospective wife’s cozy little den he had to eat dinner alone. No big deal in itself, because his beloved worked nights, but before she left the house she had prepared food for him, put a dish of delicacies in the oven and set a loving list of instructions on the kitchen table.

  When he had eaten he sat down in front of the TV to watch sports after the news, but he didn’t get any real peace because Eriksson kept on showing up in his thoughts.

  Strange character, thought Jarnebring. What had he really been up to? And having come that far in his thoughts he happened to think of his best friend, police superintendent Lars Martin Johansson. Have to call Johansson, thought Jarnebring. It had been over a month since they had seen each other and there was a lot to discuss.

  But no one seemed to be home at Johansson’s, and apparently his friend had still not acquired an answering machine. I’ll have to call him at work tomorrow, Jarnebring decided. Wonder if he’s still at the Ministry of Justice. The last time they had met Johansson had told him he had an urgent investigation assignment for the department.

  Before Bäckström left the homicide squad to scout for gays on his own, he had first considered taking his service revolver with him, but that was a weakness he almost immediately pushed aside. Besides, it would have been stupid considering that he’d decided to slink down to the usual dive afterward and knock back a beer or two and eyeball the ladies a little. If there’s trouble you can crumple the fairies with your left hand, thought Bäckström, flexing his fat shoulders before he pulled on his big coat and put a photo of Eriksson in his pocket.

  He took a taxi. This was a murder investigation after all, and he had more than enough taxi coupons. For investigative reasons he told the taxi driver to stop a little way down the street so he could walk discreetly to the address in question. And what normal person would take a taxi to a gay club?

  There was evidently an entrance directly from the street, but the windows were shuttered, and the place appeared to be closed with the lights off inside. Not being one to immediately fall for such simple tricks, he pushed the doorbell for a while, and just as expected a man finally came and opened the door. He was a big, burly type in a checked flannel shirt, worn blue jeans, and a crew cut. A little reminiscent of those boys on the Marlboro ads minus the hat and horse, so he was probably the building manager or something, thought Bäckström.

  “We’re closed,” said the man, glaring at Bäckström.

  “I’m a policeman, so leave it,” said Bäckström, glaring back. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

  Apparently that was enough, for the man suddenly became interested and seemed almost exaggeratedly courteous as he held open the door for the detective inspector.

  “Come in then,” said the type. “I’ll see if I can help you, Constable.”

  Something doesn’t add up, thought Bäckström.

  Oh hell, what a place, thought Bäckström, looking around the dark room. A real torture chamber. What kind of a country are we living in? Hooks on the ceiling, chains and cables and dangling shackles, the walls chock-full of whips and a lot of other shit the use of which he preferred not to guess. This kind of thing should be prohibited, Bäckström thought indignantly.

  The man sat down on a thronelike chair, nodded toward a stool at his feet, and looked at the detective with interest. Something here is damn strange, thought Bäckström.

  “Sit down,” said the man, nodding toward the stool.

  “As I said, I’m a policeman,” Bäckström repeated. “And there’s something I’m wondering if you can help me with.” Who the hell does he take me for? he thought.

  “I’ve helped a lot of policemen,” said the man, and suddenly he looked rather amused.

  Maybe he’s a normal informant, thought Bäckström. This place must be a gold mine. Although there seems to be something mysterious going on.

  “Do you recognize this person?” Bäckström asked, giving him the photo of Eriksson.

  The man took a proper look. Even turned and rotated the picture. Then he shook his head and handed it back.

  “Not my type,” said the man. “I have a hard time with anything that skinny. He looks like Jiminy Cricket, poor thing.”

  “So this is not someone you recognize,” said Bäckström. Damn, he thought, glancing at the door behind his back, for there was definitely something here that didn’t add up.

  “No,” said the man, devouring Bäckström with his eyes. “I like to have a little something to work with.”

  “Let’s take it fucking easy here,” Bäckström shouted, holding up his hand to stop a possible attack. “Fucking easy!”

  “I’m calm,” said the man, grinning. “It’s the little cop who is upset.”

  What a fucking place, thought Bäckström, taking a deep breath as soon as he had escaped onto the street again. And just as he was standing there breathing out, that fucking Lars Martin Johansson came striding down the street with some dark broad on his arm. What the hell is he doing here? thought Bäckström confused. And if he was on his way here, this is no place you’d drag a broad to, is it?

  Johansson stopped and looked at him, and for whatever reason Bäckström suddenly remembered that some of his colleagues in police headquarters called him the “Butcher from Ådalen.” Safest to lie low, thought Bäckström.

  “Good evening, Bäckström,” said Johansson, and he was grinning too, the bastard. “Are you out cultivating your more sensitive side?” Johansson nodded meaningfully toward the closed door behind Bäckström’s back.

  Bäckström collected himself lightning fast.

  “Murder investigation,” Bäckström said curtly. “We’re working on a gay murder right now.” Bäckström nodded to give further emphasis to what he had just said.

  “Yes, I thought I saw something in the newspapers,” said Johansson with a sneer. “You’d better take care, Bäckström.” And then the bastard simply nodded and kept going with the girl on his arm. And as if that wasn’t enough, she started giggling violently a little farther down the street, but what Johansson had said to her Bäckström never heard.

  Lapp bastard, thought Bäckström with feeling, and then he hailed a taxi and went down to the bar.

  10

  Wednesday, December 6, 1989

  Eriksson’s office held lots of papers, neatly arranged in binders, organized chronologically with small labels on the spine indicating what they contained. As far as his extensive stock holdings were concerned, there were twenty or more binders that took up two entire shelves on the bookcase in the office. Binder after binder with sales notes and account statements from his good friend Tischler’s brokerage firm, showing that in recent years he had made hundreds of stock trades large and small, and that he almost always managed to do so at a profit. Large trades with very small margins, and as a rule done in the course of a day.

  “The guy seems to have been a real financial genius,” Jarnebring observed. “Buys and sells shares the same day for hundreds of thousands, even millions of kronor, and when he hits the sack in the evening he’s always earned a few thousand-kronor bills. Talk about taking risks.”

  “We must have misjudged him,” said Holt smiling. “He seems to have been a real stock exchange matador. Completely unrestrained.”

  “I have a friend who works in the fraud unit at the crime bureau,” Jarnebring said meditatively.

  “Call him then,” said Holt, “and ask him to come here.”

  “Brilliant, Holt,” said Jarnebring. “Then you won’t have to carry sacks of binders to the office.�
�

  • • •

  The colleague at the fraud unit had nothing better to do. He had been working on the same tax case for the past seven years, so the prosecutor he worked for should allow him a morning off here or there. Besides, he didn’t intend to tell her about it. Within an hour he was sitting at the kitchen table in Eriksson’s apartment, thumbing through his binders while Holt made coffee and Jarnebring snooped around in the victim’s office.

  “Coffee’s ready,” said Holt, and evidently the colleague from the fraud unit was too.

  “Is it okay to smoke in here?” he asked, nodding toward a crystal ashtray on the kitchen counter.

  “Talk,” said Jarnebring, nodding and sipping his fresh-brewed coffee. “Go ahead and smoke,” he said. “I doubt if the corpse will have any objections, and my colleague Holt here is loaded with cigarettes.”

  “I’m dying of curiosity,” said Holt, smiling. “No thanks, I’ve quit,” she said when the colleague from the fraud unit politely extended his own pack.

  The whole thing was not particularly complicated according to the colleague from the fraud unit. For an ordinary person like Eriksson, over the long haul it was impossible in principle to earn any money on short-term stock deals.

  “It’s a zero-sum game,” he explained, taking a thoughtful puff. “You can make a profit, or even several in a row, but sooner or later you take a loss, and over a longer period it evens out so that in the best scenario you avoid ending up in the poorhouse.”

  “But if he was sitting on a lot of important information,” Holt objected, “then he should have been able to—”

  “I thought you said he worked with labor market statistics at the Central Bureau of Statistics,” the colleague interrupted. “Forget that. That’s completely irrelevant for anyone involved with these kinds of deals.”

  “His best friend owns the brokerage firm that he used,” said Jarnebring.

  “Why didn’t you say that up front?” said the colleague from the fraud unit, sighing. “Then we could have done this on the phone.”

  “I’m listening,” said Jarnebring.

  “This operation is basically a player piano if you’re a broker,” the colleague explained. “You buy a block of shares. If the price goes up you sell them and take the money and all’s well and good. If the price goes down you dump them with one of your clients who put in a purchase order and let him make a bad deal. If you made a really lousy deal there’s probably some old endowment or foundation you manage where you can bury the shit. At least you’re holding the cards during the day, and sometimes the stock exchange can turn quite sharply.”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Holt. “Say that—”

  “I’ll give you an example,” said the colleague from the fraud unit. “Let’s assume that you’re my client and I’m your broker.” The colleague pointed his fingers at Holt and himself for emphasis.

  “In the morning, before the stock exchange opened, you called me and said that you wanted to buy a block of a thousand shares at a price of a hundred kronor maximum per share—let’s call the company Mutter & Son—a well-known Swedish engineering firm.” The colleague smiled.

  “Sure,” said Holt. “It happens every day, though I usually use Nordbanken because they take care of my salary of ten thousand a month after taxes.”

  “Let me make this simple for myself,” the colleague continued. “Naturally there are unlimited variations that are both smarter and more profitable, but if I were to make this easy on myself, I’d start by looking through a bunch of sales orders from other clients that are sitting on my desk. Assume that I find someone who wants to sell a block of a thousand shares in Mutter & Son for at least ninety kronor. If I make it easy for myself I’ve already earned five thousand.

  “He’ll have his shares sold for ninety, you can buy them for a hundred. I keep the difference minus sales tax and commission, which comes to five thousand in round numbers.”

  “I’d keep the dough myself,” said Jarnebring, grinning. “No way would I share it with someone like Eriksson.”

  “And that is exactly what they’re doing the whole time,” said the colleague with feeling in his voice. “Except for those few occasions when they want to help a buddy. And maybe help themselves at the same time.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Holt. “Help myself at the same time?”

  “Say you earn a million per year for yourself like this. That’s about where Eriksson seems to have been during the eighties. After tax you have about seven hundred thousand left. You give me an under-the-table commission of half. Three hundred fifty thousand right into my own pocket.”

  “This can’t be legal, can it?” Holt objected.

  “No, but basically it’s risk-free,” their colleague stated. “As long as both keep their mouths shut the risk that both will wind up in the slammer is nonexistent. And if anyone were to start talking with someone like me, then he would have to count on keeping the other one company when it was time for jail—and, by the way, it almost never comes to that. There are no special penalties for this kind of thing.”

  “Is this how Eriksson made his deals?” Holt asked. “Tischler was nice to an old buddy and made some cash on the side for himself.”

  “Pretty much.” The colleague nodded.

  “Tischler made use of Eriksson and gave him some cash for the trouble,” Holt clarified.

  “Hardly likely,” said the colleague, shaking his head and lighting another cigarette. “Tischler must be good for at least a billion if the business pages can be believed. What would he do with a few hundred thousand? It would only be taking an unnecessary risk.”

  “So he helped an old friend,” said Jarnebring. Wonder how much Lars Martin is good for, he thought. With all that old inherited forest money—and he did look out for himself where that was concerned—but it was probably not a question of a billion, far from it, thought Jarnebring.

  “So people like us have picked the wrong friends, ’cause we only associate with each other,” said the colleague from the fraud unit, squinting down into his coffee cup. “Is there any more coffee, by the way?”

  “Tell me about it,” said Holt as she poured. “My salary runs out on the twentieth and the month ends on the thirtieth. Why hasn’t the union done something about it?”

  “The interesting question”—their colleague from the fraud unit nodded thoughtfully—“is of course why someone like Tischler helped someone like Eriksson. Everyone has a buddy, don’t they?”

  “Maybe he was in love with him,” said Jarnebring, grinning.

  • • •

  “They must have played hide the sausage with each other,” said Bäckström when the investigation team met after lunch and Holt reported the latest results of their efforts.

  “Tischler seems to have at least eight children, and he’s married for the fourth time,” said Gunsan, shaking her head doubtfully. “Not that I’ve met him, but it still doesn’t seem especially likely, does it?”

  “He probably doesn’t know which locker room to use,” said Bäckström jovially. “Rich and horny and jumps on everything that moves regardless of what it is, and because little Eriksson couldn’t squeeze any kiddies out through his ass he slipped him a little dough as consolation. A million here or there is all the same to a billionaire, isn’t it?”

  “Well,” said Gunsan, pursing her lips, “as far as that’s concerned Tischler’s ex-wives don’t seem to be lacking for anything either.”

  “A generous earwig,” Bäckström decided. “What else do we have?”

  A number of loose ends that had to be tied together, Jarnebring summarized. Plus a number of question marks that had to be straightened out. But nothing that seemed simple and obvious and good enough for them to pick up the phone and call the prosecutor.

  “We estimate being done with his apartment soon,” he concluded. “This week we hope.”

  “Then there are a few people we thought about talking to again,” said Holt. �
��A few people at his office, among others.”

  “Do that,” said Bäckström, “then I’ll scare the shit out of both of his friends, that horny banker and the red-bearded one at socialist TV.”

  There were four apartments on the floor where Eriksson lived. A few of the loose ends were also hanging there. The closest neighbor, Mrs. Westergren, was one of them, so Holt and Jarnebring went to talk to her again. Upon more careful consideration—and in answer to a direct question—Mrs. Westergren recalled that Eriksson had had a cleaning woman. She had even talked with her on one occasion. “I think she said she was from Poland,” she said, apologizing that she had completely forgotten about this. She had hardly seen her, and the natural explanation was that on Fridays Mrs. Westergren visited her ninety-year-old mother at the rest home. “Which was when you said that she was here and cleaned,” Mrs. Westergren declared, and otherwise she had not thought of anything since they had spoken the first time.

  “You mentioned that you thought Eriksson had started drinking a lot recently,” said Holt. “Have you thought any more about that, Mrs. Westergren?”

  It was an impression she had, that was all. One time a month ago she thought she smelled alcohol when he greeted her on the stairway. Another time a week or so later she saw him get out of a taxi and thought he’d walked a little strangely when he disappeared into the entryway. She was already outside so they hadn’t even said hello to one another. It had made her think because these were new observations that didn’t jibe with her previous image of her reserved, well-ordered, and clearly sober neighbor.

  An elderly couple also lived on the same floor. Despite repeated attempts by younger colleagues from the uniformed police, they could not be reached. But by talking with their neighbors Holt and Jarnebring found out that they lived in Spain during the winter and left Sweden as early as the beginning of October.

  “Not so hard to find out,” Jarnebring muttered.

  “We did it,” said Holt happily. “Didn’t take us more than half an hour.”