Bloody brilliant, Bäckström thought. The old bag must have a good memory, he thought.
“Why didn’t you report it?” Carlsson asked.
“Report it? What for? Because of what he did with his tongue?”
“Sexual harassment,” Annika Carlsson clarified.
“No,” Mrs. Andersson said. “From what I’ve read in the paper, there’s no point.”
Abort, abort, abort, Bäckström thought.
“Well, thank you very much indeed for your help, Mrs. Andersson,” he said.
“You can calm down, Nadja,” Bäckström said half an hour later when he returned to his office. “About that business with the diary, I mean. We’ve got a witness who’s identified both Farshad and Talib, says she saw them talking to Danielsson outside his house the same day he was murdered.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Bäckström,” Nadja Högberg said.
Maybe she isn’t always so shrewd, Bäckström thought, giving his trousers a shake just to be on the safe side.
62.
Before he went home for the day Bäckström looked into Toivonen’s office to tell him about what Mrs. Andersson had seen. The poor Finnish bastard probably needs all the help he can get, Bäckström thought. Besides, he had his old supervisory role to consider.
Toivonen had been strangely uninterested.
“Yesterday’s news,” Toivonen said. “But thanks anyway.”
“Just let me know if you need any help,” Bäckström said, giving him one of his most good-natured smiles. “I heard over lunch that you’ve got a hundred people working on this, but that you’re not making much progress.”
“People talk a lot of crap,” Toivonen said. “We’re doing okay, so don’t you worry about the Ibrahim brothers and their little cousin. How are you getting on yourself?”
“Give me a week,” Bäckström said.
“I look forward to it,” Toivonen said. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll give you a medal, Bäckström.”
I wonder what the fat little bastard really wanted? Toivonen thought, when Bäckström had left. I must have a chat with Linda Martinez, he thought.
If you give a bastard Finn your little finger he usually tries to take your whole arm, Bäckström thought, as he left Toivonen’s office. But not this time. I wonder what he’s really up to? he thought.
In spite of all of Toivonen’s informants, in spite of Bäckström’s witness in Hasselstigen, Nadja Högberg hadn’t been able to let go of Karl Danielsson’s pocket diary. Besides, she had had an idea.
You don’t only give money to people, Nadja thought. You pay for goods and services as well. Almost always without paying any attention at all to who produced or provided them.
It’s worth a try, Nadja thought. Just to be on the safe side she knocked on Bäckström’s door, in case he was still playing cops and robbers with himself. Empty, and his phone was switched off, as usual.
I’ll have to try to talk to him first thing tomorrow, Nadja thought. It’ll have to be the first thing I do when he shows up, she thought.
In actual fact it would be almost a week before she had the chance. That evening things would take place in Evert Bäckström’s home—in his cozy abode on Kungsholmen—that would shake the whole nation and put Detective Superintendent Bäckström’s name on the lips of every man and every woman, and that would almost cost Chief Superintendent Toivonen his life, because, even though he was in perfect shape, he came close to having both a stroke and a heart attack simultaneously.
63.
This time Hassan Talib was there from the start when the black Lexus left the villa out in Sollentuna at eight o’clock in the evening. The surveillance vehicle had kept a couple blocks away and followed them along a parallel road, since they could track the target on the computer screen in their car and had no need to take unnecessary risks.
Only when they had passed the old tollgates in toward the center did they creep closer. The traffic was heavier, Sandra Kovac was driving, and when the black Lexus turned left at the end of Sveavägen she realized at once what was going on. The biggest multistory carpark in the center of Stockholm, she thought. Several blocks of it, with three stories underground. Four exits, and dozens of ways in and out for pedestrians.
“Shit,” Sandra swore. “The bastards are going to run.”
Magda Hernandez had grabbed a portable radio, jumped out of the car, and stopped by the ramp into the carpark in case they did a U-turn and drove out again.
Kovac and Motoele had chased around the garage trying to locate the black Lexus, and when they finally found it, it was empty, neatly parked on the lowest level beside one of the many exits. By then Kovac was already talking to Linda Martinez on their own encrypted radio channel.
“Calm down, Sandra,” Martinez said. “This sort of thing happens. It isn’t the end of the world. Take a turn round the area, see if you can’t get a glimpse of one of their other cars.”
“So what do we think about this?” Toivonen said half an hour later. “Are they planning to go abroad and get a bit of sun?”
“I don’t think so,” Martinez said. “It’s been quiet all day, no increased activity on the two cell phones we cracked yesterday. Since they left the garage it’s been completely silent on their phones, which probably means they’re together and don’t need to call each other. But they’re obviously up to something. The question is, what?”
“Airports, ferries, trains?” Toivonen asked.
“Already sorted,” Martinez said. “Our colleagues there have been warned and have promised to do what they can.”
“Damn,” said Toivonen, who had suddenly had an idea. “Bäckström, that fat little bastard, we have to check—”
“Toivonen, you must think I’m soft in the head,” Martinez interrupted. “We’ve had him under full surveillance since he left the police station four hours ago, four hours and thirty-two minutes, to be precise.”
“So what’s he doing?”
“He got home at seventeen minutes to five. What he got up to inside the flat isn’t clear, but to judge from the noises he seems to have taken a long nap. An hour and a half ago he turned up in his local bar, and he’s still there.”
“Doing what?” Toivonen said.
“Drinking beer and shots, eating frankly dangerous quantities of vegetable mash and knuckle of pork, all the while hitting on the waitress. A fine blonde, name of Saila, a compatriot of yours if you’re wondering.”
Life isn’t fair, Toivonen thought.
At about half past eleven that evening another call was received on the Stockholm Police emergency number, 112. One of several thousand that had come in over the past twenty-four hours, and sadly all too similar to far too many of its predecessors.
“Hello, here’s another call to spoil your quiet evening,” the voice on the telephone said.
“So what’s your name, and how can I help you?” the operator said. Drunk, he thought.
“My name’s Hasse Ahrén,” the voice said. “Director Hasse Ahrén, I used to be head of TV Three,” the voice explained.
“And how can I help you?” Hammered, the operator thought.
“Someone’s shooting like a fucking madman inside my neighbor’s flat,” Ahrén said.
“What’s your neighbor’s name?”
“Bäckström. A little fat bastard who’s some sort of policeman. Drinks like a fish, so if you’re wondering, Constable, I reckon he’s responsible for the shooting.”
64.
Bäckström had been obliged to postpone on three different occasions until he finally got back the weapon that was his fundamental human right as a Swedish police officer.
The first time he hadn’t even had a chance to fire a single shot.
Bäckström had taken a taxi out to a firing range south of the city. He met his shooting instructor, the altogether-too-common sort whose furrowed brow naturally merged with a shaved head. He was given his weapon, inserted a loaded magazine, reloaded, and then turned to ask
which of the targets he was expected to blow holes out of.
The instructor had thrown himself to one side, suddenly pale as a headache pill, and screamed at him to put his weapon down immediately. Bäckström had done as he was told.
“I would appreciate it, Bäckström, if you didn’t wave a loaded weapon with the safety off toward my navel. In fact, I’d be really, really happy,” the instructor said, his voice sounding strained.
Then he had grabbed the pistol, clicked the bolt action, removed the cartridge from the chamber, pulled out the magazine, and checked with his finger just to make sure before putting the gun in his pocket.
“Because otherwise you’ll shit yourself,” Bäckström said, as politely as he could.
It hadn’t helped, because he wasn’t allowed to shoot. The instructor had merely shaken his head and walked away.
The second time he had a female instructor, and as soon as he caught sight of her he realized what his adversaries were up to.
The bitch had even put on a padded vest and a helmet, and stood behind him the whole time while she told him what to do. Bäckström couldn’t be bothered to listen. How could he, since he had already put on the ear protectors like she had told him to. Instead he had tried to focus on his real task, and had raised his gun, carefully taken aim, closed his left eye, and even squinted with the right one before firing a well-aimed salvo at the cardboard cutout in front of him.
Splendid, Bäckström thought, as he looked at the results a minute later. At least half his shots had hit their target, and even though he was no doctor, he could see at once that most of them would have been fatal.
“So where do I pick up my service revolver?” Bäckström asked.
At first she had merely shaken her head, her face the same color as her colleague’s had been previously, and, when she finally spoke, her voice sounded exactly the same as his.
“A Swedish police officer who has been attacked and runs the risk of suffering serious violence—in other words, when he is in a so-called extreme situation—is expected to aim at his attacker’s legs. Below the knee, since even a shot to the thigh has a high risk of being fatal,” she explained.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Bäckström said. “If some crazy bastard is running at you with a knife and intends to stab you, you try to shoot him in the knee?”
“Below the knee,” the instructor corrected him. “The answer is yes, because that’s what firearms regulations say.”
“Speaking personally, I’d ask him if he’d like a kiss and a cuddle,” Bäckström said with a grin. Then he had merely shaken his head and walked away. As soon as he was in the taxi he called a cousin of his who worked at the Police Officers’ Association.
“So your employer is still refusing to give you the right to embrace little Siggy?” his cousin said, suddenly sounding as bloodthirsty as Bäckström felt.
“Exactly,” Bäckström said. “And what the fuck are you going to do about it?”
Everything necessary, according to his cousin. Including talking to an old and reliable associate who had once been an ombudsman in the association, and who was now working as a shooting instructor out at the Police Academy, and who had the authority to sign all the certificates that might be required.
“I’ll talk to him, and get him to call you and arrange a time,” his cousin said.
“Is there anything else I need to think about?” Bäckström asked.
“Take a bottle with you,” his cousin replied.
To save time Bäckström had handed over a bottle of his finest malt whiskey when he first arrived at the firing range at the Police Academy.
“Thank you very much indeed,” the reliable associate said, licking his lips. “Well, it’s time to embrace little Siggy,” he said, handing over his own Sig Sauer to Bäckström.
“Do you feel it?” he went on, nodding as Bäckström felt the weapon in his hand.
“Feel what?” Bäckström said.
“The only time you get a real hard-on is when you hold little Siggy,” the instructor said, looking as happy as he had when Bäckström handed over his gift.
Probably mad, Bäckström thought, checking that he wasn’t standing behind him with another gun that he’d had hidden somewhere.
Then he had taken careful aim, closing his left eye just to be sure, squinting with the right, and fired the usual well-aimed shot, which hit where it usually did.
“Bloody hell,” his instructor said, finding it hard to conceal his admiration. “That would make him shut up.”
Before Bäckström left him, a signed certificate in his pocket, his new friend had given him a few words of advice.
“One thing that’s struck me, Bäckström …”
“Yes?”
“Even though you’re aiming low, you end up hitting just a bit high, if I can put it like that.”
“Okay,” Bäckström said.
“Maybe you should try aiming at the ground just in front of the target?” the instructor suggested. “Considering all those old women who work in the disciplinary department, I mean.”
Forget it, limp dick, Bäckström thought. Now a full citizen and police officer. If anyone so much as raised a hand against me, I would blow their head off, he thought.
65.
Bäckström had left his beloved local bar before midnight. His blond tornado from Jyväskylä had been prevented from accompanying him, since her more routine companion had suddenly shown up in her place of work. He had also glowered at Bäckström. So Bäckström had lumbered home, opened the door to his cozy abode, yawned indulgently, and stepped right in.
I’ll just have to make do with squeezing little Siggy, Bäckström thought, at the very moment when he realized he had unexpected company.
“Welcome home, Superintendent,” Farshad Ibrahim said, smiling amiably at his host.
His gigantic cousin didn’t say anything. Just glared at Bäckström with his black, deep-set eyes. A face that could have been carved in stone, were it not for the slow grinding of his jaw.
“And what can I do for you gentlemen?” Bäckström said. What the hell do I do now? he thought.
“Perhaps I could offer you a little drink?” he suggested, nodding toward the kitchen.
“Neither of us drinks,” Farshad Ibrahim said, shaking his head. He was leaning back comfortably in Bäckström’s favorite armchair, while his cousin was standing in the middle of the room, glaring.
“Don’t worry, Superintendent,” he went on. “We’ve come in peace, and we have a little business proposal.”
“I’m listening,” Bäckström said, as he shook his yellow linen trousers as discreetly as possible, even though they suddenly felt drenched with sweat and his legs started trembling of their own accord in a mysterious way.
“We’re interested in what your colleagues are up to,” Farshad said, “and as I see it, there are two possibilities,” he continued, sounding like he was thinking out loud.
Then he had put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a bundle of thousand-kronor notes, and put them on Bäckström’s coffee table. A bundle that bore a striking resemblance to all the others Bäckström had himself found in a perfectly ordinary pot of gold. Then for some reason he had pulled out a stiletto knife from his inside pocket, unfolded the double-edged blade, and started to pick at his nails.
It’ll have to be a Bäckström double, Bäckström decided. And because there wasn’t much choice, he gave it his all from the outset.
“Spare me, spare me!” Bäckström exclaimed, his big round face twisting and his clasped hands rising in supplication. Then he had slumped to one knee in front of the gigantic Talib, as if he were thinking of proposing to him.
Talib’s jaw stopped grinding and he took a step back, looking down sympathetically at the pleading Bäckström who was on one knee at his feet. Then he had shrugged, turned his head, and looked at his boss. Evidently embarrassed, or so it seemed.
“Act like a man, Bäckström, not a woman,” Farshad sa
id in a tone of warning, shaking his head and pointing the knife at him.
And at that moment Bäckström struck.
66.
More or less at the same time as Bäckström had sat himself down in his beloved local bar on Kungsholmen in Stockholm, the police in Copenhagen received a tip-off. An anonymous male individual, a native Dane—middle-aged, to judge by his voice—had called the emergency number and left a message.
At the end of the large carpark on Fasansvejen, a couple of hundred meters from the old SAS hotel and just five minutes from the center of the city, stood a trash can. In the trash can there was now a body wrapped in an ordinary hessian sack that had once contained pig feed. The man in the sack hadn’t crawled in there of his own accord, and, to help even the Danish police to find him, the people who had put him in there had left his naked feet sticking out.
“Well, I think that was everything,” the man who had called said before ending the call, made from a pay-as-you-go cell phone, impossible to trace and the obligatory accessory for a certain type of call.
Three minutes later the first patrol car had arrived at the scene, and a half hour later the two uniformed officers had the company of a number of their colleagues from the crime and forensics units of the Copenhagen Police.
More or less at the same time as Bäckström ordered a little chaser to go with his double espresso, they reached the point where they could open the trash can and take a closer look at the naked body inside it. A perfectly ordinary address label had been tied round its neck with string: “Nasir Ibrahim, please forward to Stockholm Police.” Someone had stuffed a parking ticket down the corpse’s throat, and to judge by the wounds on the body, his death had been both drawn out and painful.
As a message to a Muslim robber who had messed up when he abandoned his getaway vehicle, it could hardly have been any clearer, and because the police in Copenhagen had already been alerted in advance they called their Swedish colleague, Superintendent Jorma Honkamäki of the Stockholm riot squad. When Honkamäki took the call he was standing in the street outside the building where Bäckström lived, supervising the aftermath of Bäckström’s efforts.
Backstrom: He Who Kills the Dragon Page 27