Nasir’s eldest brother, Farshad, was being lifted into an ambulance. Two paramedics carrying the stretcher, a female nurse holding a drip, Farshad moaning in a language that Honkamäki couldn’t understand, his trousers round his ankles, drenched in blood.
His cousin Hassan Talib had just left in another ambulance. Unconscious, wearing a neck brace, carried by three paramedics, with a doctor and nurse trying to keep him alive.
The one who seemed to be in the best shape was Nasir’s other brother, Afsan. Admittedly, his nose was broken, he was covered with blood, his hands were cuffed behind his back, and he didn’t seem to want to walk, but otherwise he seemed pretty much the same as usual.
“I’m going to fuck you in the ass, you fucking pigs,” Afsan yelled as two of Honkamäki’s colleagues put him inside one of the riot squad’s vans.
What the fuck’s going on? Honkamäki thought, shaking his head.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Superintendent Toivonen repeated a minute later as he got out of his car and caught sight of Honkamäki.
67.
As soon as the obviously embarrassed Talib had looked away—such weakness in a man, as weak as a woman—Bäckström had made his move. He grabbed hold of his ankles with lightning speed and pulled as hard as he could.
Talib had toppled backward like a sawn-off fir tree, however that could be possible considering where he was from, Bäckström thought. He just tumbled backward, straight back, his arms flailing, before his neck and the back of his head smashed into Bäckström’s coffee table, cracking the slab of finest Kolmården marble.
Bäckström had pulled out Siggy in the twinkling of an eye—getting up with some difficulty, admittedly—before closing his left eye to be on the safe side and taking careful aim.
Farshad had also stood up, raising his hands in a defensive gesture, dropping the flick-knife, point down, onto Bäckström’s expensive carpet.
“Take it easy, Superintendent,” Farshad said, waving his raised hands.
“Make my day, punk!” Bäckström roared, firing off a proper salvo with not the slightest intention of causing any scratches in his newly laid parquet floor.
68.
Bäckström’s neighbor didn’t actually need to call the emergency number, since the police had been there all along.
Shortly after eleven that evening the white Mercedes, Alfa 3, had suddenly begun to move on Sandra Kovac’s computer screen. Earlier in the evening it had been parked on the top floor of the same multistory as the abandoned Lexus.
The surveillance vehicle containing Kovac, Hernandez, and Motoele had been in the vicinity and just a couple minutes later they were a hundred meters behind the Mercedes, which was evidently heading for Kungsholmen. Afsan was driving, Farshad was in the passenger seat, and Hassan Talib was in full command of the backseat.
Kovac had contacted Linda Martinez over the radio. Martinez had called for assistance from another unit that had been watching Bäckström earlier that evening and that was now taking a break in McDonald’s, just a few blocks from Bäckström’s local bar.
Detective Inspector Tomas Singh, adopted as a child from Malaysia, and his colleague Detective Sergeant Gustav Hallberg, who in spite of his name had been adopted from South Africa, had thrown themselves into their car and returned to the bar where they had left Bäckström a quarter of an hour before, happily attached to a large cognac. He was still there. Probably with the same cognac, since the glass on the table in front of him was now empty.
“What do we do now?” Hallberg asked.
“We wait,” Singh said.
Five minutes later Bäckström had called over a blond waitress, got up, pulled a sizable bundle of notes from his pocket, crumpled up the receipt, peeled off a five-hundred-kronor note, and shook his head when the waitress evidently tried to give him his change.
“It doesn’t look like our colleague Bäckström is short of cash,” Sergeant Hallberg concluded.
“What the hell do you think we’re sitting here for?” Detective Inspector Singh said. He had been in the job five years longer and was already a hardened young man.
As Bäckström stood up to pay, the white Mercedes had stopped twenty meters from the door of the building where Bäckström lived. Farshad and Talib had got out. Afsan had parked, turned off the lights, and stayed inside the car, as his brother and cousin disappeared through Bäckström’s door. Kovac pulled up fifty meters farther up the street, switched the engine off, turned off the lights, and rolled to a stop.
“What do we do now?” Magda Hernandez asked.
“Bäckström is evidently on his way,” said Kovac, who could hear their colleague Singh through her earpiece. “Tomas and Gustav are following him on foot,” she said, nodding to Hernandez.
“There’s something not right,” Motoele said, shaking his head.
“What do you mean, not right?” Hernandez said.
“Just a feeling,” Motoele said. “I’ve got a feeling that Bäckström doesn’t know they want to see him.”
“Dirty cop,” Kovac said, and snorted. “Of course he knows.”
“Bäckström has had his phone switched off since this afternoon,” Motoele objected.
“So either he’s got another one or they agreed on a time some other way,” Kovac said.
Four minutes later Bäckström disappeared through the door of the building he lived in.
“You can forget any ideas about sneaking in and listening through his mail slot,” Kovac said, with a warning glance at Motoele. “We’re not taking any unnecessary risks.”
“It’s fucking hot in the car. Is it okay if I open the window, Mom?” Motoele asked as he wound down the rear window.
“I thought people like you liked the heat?” Kovac teased. “Just don’t catch a cold, Frank.”
“So what do you mean, ‘agreed on a time’?” Motoele said, as he heard a muffled crack in the distance. As he leapt out of the car and started running down the street there was a constant stream of cracks. Muffled cracks, the same sound he had heard thousands of times when he had been at the firing range with ear protection on, practicing with his own service revolver.
Afsan Ibrahim neither saw nor heard anything. He was listening to music on his iPod, humming in time to the music, enjoying it with his eyes shut until it all went wrong when someone suddenly yanked open the car door and grabbed him by the throat. He snatched at the knife between the seats out of sheer reflex. A moment later he was on his stomach in the street, with someone standing on his hand, kicking the knife away, and kicking him hard in the side when he tried to get up. The man grabbed his hair, pulling his head up, then broke his nose with a chop of his hand that made Afsan see stars. Then another, and another, then the darkness enclosing him, voices he could hardly hear any longer.
“Stop it, Frank!” Sandra Kovac shouted. “Do you want to kill him?” Then she had pushed her colleague aside. She sat on the small of Afsan’s back, twisted his hands behind his back, and cuffed them, first the right, then the left.
“Fucking hell, you’re mad,” she repeated.
“The Arab bastard was trying to stab me,” Motoele said, nodding toward the knife in the gutter on the other side of the street.
“Get a grip on yourself, Frank,” Kovac said. “He didn’t have a knife on him when you let loose on him.”
Frank Motoele didn’t seem to be listening. He had just shrugged, drawn his pistol, and vanished through Bäckström’s door.
69.
Farshad had crumpled like an empty sack after the first shot. It had evidently hit his left leg, even though Bäckström would never have dreamed of even aiming at such a stupid place.
Bäckström had fired off a few more shots just to be on the safe side, rather randomly, then everything calmed down. Talib was lying motionless on his back, his eyes half open but the light had gone out of them; his jaw was no longer grinding; blood was dripping out of his ears and nose; and his legs were twitching weirdly. Bäckström leaned over and
grabbed the black pistol that was tucked in Talib’s belt and tucked it into his own.
Then he went over to Farshad, who was lying whimpering on the floor, clutching his left leg with both hands. He was bleeding like a freshly stuck pig all over Bäckström’s expensive carpet, noisily lamenting his lot.
“Okay, you’re going to shut up now, you fucking crybaby,” Bäckström said, and because he was passing he took the chance to give him a hefty kick in the same leg that little Siggy had already had a go at.
Farshad’s eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness. Bäckström pocketed the bundle of notes and surveyed the situation. Finally a bit of peace and quiet, he thought, but at that moment the telephone rang.
“Bäckström,” Bäckström grunted as he looked at the destruction around him.
“What’s the situation, Bäckström?” a woman replied. “This is Kovac from surveillance,” Sandra Kovac explained.
“It’s okay,” Bäckström said.
“I’m standing in the stairwell outside your flat with some colleagues and was wondering if you felt like letting us in,” Kovac said.
“No morons from the rapid-response unit?” Bäckström asked. He had no intention of making the same mistake twice.
“Just perfectly ordinary fellow officers,” Kovac reassured him.
“Okay,” Bäckström said. “Just give me a minute.”
Then he put the money away in his secret place. Poured himself a stiff whiskey. And stuck the Sig Sauer under his belt as well, even though it was starting to get a bit crowded there.
I think that’s everything, Bäckström thought, looking around at the destruction one last time. Just to make sure, he thought.
Then he opened the door and let them in, and went and sat on the sofa with a stiff drink. He poured another, just to be on the safe side. Where the hell is this force heading? he wondered. Here he was, in mortal danger for at least a quarter of an hour, until eventually he single-handedly managed to restore order and harmony around him. The best his employers could offer him was evidently five snotty-nosed kids who showed up when it was all done and dusted. Two women, two Negroes, and one poor sod who was evidently only a mulatto and probably got bullied by his colleagues. What the hell is happening to the Swedish Police? Bäckström thought.
When Peter Niemi arrived half an hour later he stopped in the doorway to take a deep sigh. This was once the scene of a crime, Niemi thought. In the formal sense, it was still a crime scene, he thought. Even though by that time it had been visited by fifty or so different people, from paramedics to police officers, who had probably moved anything that could be moved and put their fingerprints all over anything that couldn’t.
“Okay,” Niemi said. “I’ll have to ask everyone to leave the apartment so that my colleague and I can get to work.”
“Forget it, Niemi,” Bäckström said. “I live here.”
“Bäckström, Bäckström,” Niemi said. Must be in shock, he thought.
“Here’s Talib’s pistol,” Bäckström said, laying it on the tragic remains of what had once been a coffee table with a top made of Kolmården marble. “And here’s mine,” he said.
“What about the knife on the floor?” Niemi said with a nod.
“Belongs to Farshad Ibrahim,” Bäckström said. “Feel free to take it away with you.”
“Bullet holes,” Niemi said.
“Everything that happened, happened in here,” Bäckström said. “The bastards must have picked the lock and were waiting in here for me when I got home. Then all hell broke loose,” he said with a shrug. You can work the rest out for yourself, he thought.
“Did anyone apart from you fire any shots, Bäckström?” Chico Hernandez asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Bäckström lied. “It all happened so damn quickly, and it got a bit muddled, if I can put it like that.
“Now, you gentlemen will have to excuse me,” he went on. “Make yourselves at home. I just need to take a little lie-down.”
Then he had gone into his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Niemi and Hernandez looked at each other and shrugged.
One hour later Bäckström got a visit from Anna Holt and his colleague Annika Carlsson.
“How are you feeling, Bäckström?” Holt asked.
“On top form,” Bäckström said, even though he had felt better. Besides, he felt peculiarly distant. It was as if none of this was really happening to him.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Holt said. “A medical examination, debriefing, and I’ve booked a hotel room for you as well, by the way.”
“Forget it,” Bäckström said, shaking his head to underline the point.
“Is it okay if I stay and keep an eye on you?” Annika Carlsson said. “Then I can get the worst of the mess in the living room cleared up for you. I’ve spoken to Niemi and he’s okay with it,” she cajoled.
“If you like,” Bäckström said, looking at her in surprise. An attack dyke offering to clean up for someone like me. Where the hell are we heading? he thought.
“And I promise to sleep on the sofa,” Annika Carlsson said with a smile.
“Fine,” Bäckström said. What the hell is she saying? he thought.
“There must be at least fifty journalists out in the street,” Holt said. “I imagine you won’t have anything against me putting some uniforms on the door?”
“Absolutely fine,” Bäckström said with a shrug.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Holt said. “Call me if you feel like it.”
Bäckström got into the shower. He stood there letting the water run over him. He dried himself, put on his dressing gown, took one brown and one blue from the pill bottles the police’s own Dr. Mengele had prescribed for him. Then he went to bed. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, and when he woke up it was to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and fresh rolls with cheese and butter.
“Good morning, Bäckström,” Annika Carlsson said with a broad smile. “Would you like breakfast in bed or in the kitchen?”
“Kitchen,” Bäckström said. Not worth taking any risks, he thought.
70.
On Tuesday morning Anna Holt and Toivonen tried to get an overview of the situation.
Hassan Talib had undergone two operations during the night in the neurosurgical department at the Karolinska Hospital. Severe bleeding in the brain, and the doctors were fighting to save his life. He was now in intensive care.
Hassan Talib was two meters tall, one hundred and thirty kilos of muscle and bone, feared throughout Stockholm’s underworld and even among people who looked the same as him. He had tumbled backward and hit his head on a coffee table. If he had been an ordinary crook, in a film or on television, he would have shaken his head, got up, and made mincemeat of Bäckström. But because he belonged in the real world, it was unclear if he was going to survive.
Farshad Ibrahim had also spent the night on the operating table even though the only bullet to hit him had struck exactly where police regulations demanded, just below the left knee. First it had broken both of the bones in the lower leg, the tibia and fibula, which was only to be expected and exactly as intended. Then several unexpected things had happened. The bullet was the new sort that expanded when it hit its target, the intention being to minimize the risk of the bullet going straight through or ricocheting, against the surmountable price of a larger hole in the body of the person who was shot. This time the casing had splintered and a fragment had travelled along the thighbone and damaged the femoral artery. By the time Farshad Ibrahim arrived at hospital he had lost three liters of blood. His heart had stopped twice in the ambulance. Ten hours later he was lying in intensive care. Prognosis unclear.
His younger brother had been subjected to a quick diagnosis on the street outside Bäckström’s door. Broken nose, possibly broken bones and fingers in his right hand. Nothing that prison medical staff couldn’t handle. During the short journey to police headquarters in the riot squad’s van he had fain
ted and collapsed on the floor. To start with, they thought he was playacting, then decided to take him to Karolinska as well, and within an hour Afsan was also lying on an operating table. Several broken ribs on his right side, a punctured and collapsed lung, but in considerably better shape than his older brother and cousin.
“He’s definitely going to make it,” the surgeon who spoke to Honkamäki confirmed. “Unless anything unexpected happens, of course,” he added, the way doctors usually do.
Nasir Ibrahim was dead, tortured by what looked like an ordinary soldering iron. His skull had been crushed by the classic blunt object, although precisely what sort was used on this occasion was unclear. Just to make sure, he had also been strangled with the cord with which the address label had been tied to his neck. The body was expected to arrive at the Solna forensics lab later that day. In case the Swedish coroners wanted to take a look at what their Danish colleagues at Rigshospitalet’s forensics department had already taken care of.
Just to be on the safe side, arrest warrants for Farshad Ibrahim, Afsan Ibrahim, and Hassan Talib had all been issued on the grounds of probable suspicion a couple hours earlier. Two cases of the attempted murder of Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström and Detective Inspector Frank Motoele, weapons offenses, and more to come. Considerably more.
Even though none of the three could move without help, even in their hospital beds, they were under an impressive amount of police guard. Twenty uniformed officers from the National Rapid-Response Unit, the riot squad, and the ordinary force. Half a dozen detectives who suddenly had time on their hands.
Backstrom: He Who Kills the Dragon Page 28