Backstrom: He Who Kills the Dragon

by Leif Gw Persson

  “I’m starting to think that you might be rather tempted yourself,” she went on as her hand made its way up Bäckström’s well-cut yellow trousers.

  Why the hell hasn’t she rung? Bäckström thought, glancing at his watch. Fucking attack dyke, he thought, just as a cell started to bleep somewhere in the room they were sitting in.

  “Yours or mine?” Bäckström said. He pulled his phone out and held it up just to be sure.

  “Not mine,” he said, shaking his head and putting it back in his pocket.

  “Probably a wrong number,” Britt-Marie Andersson said, although just for a moment her eyes looked as narrow as his colleague Annika Carlsson’s. The same colleague who had just called the third cell, the one that only seemed to be used to take incoming calls from Karl Danielsson and Septimus Akofeli. At precisely the time that Bäckström told her to call.

  “Do you know what, Bäckström?” Britt-Marie said, suddenly sitting down in his lap, her left hand caressing his shirt collar and chest. “I’m starting to think that maybe you and I should join forces.”

  “Tell me,” Bäckström said. He didn’t feel at all concerned, even though she had put her hand on his tie. Forewarned is forearmed, he thought.

  “We’re the same age,” Britt-Marie Andersson said. “I could offer you one or two trips to a place you’ve never been before, and I’m talking about sex here, not any ordinary trips. We can share Danielsson’s money. The money he stole from crooks like those awful Arabs who tried to kill you. We can—”

  “How much are we talking about?” Bäckström interrupted, as cool as a cucumber even though the woman in his lap was already stroking his tie with both hands. Suntanned, strong hands, big hands for a woman, like a man’s hands.

  “Just curious,” Bäckström clarified.

  “We’re talking about almost a million kronor,” Britt-Marie Andersson said, as her hands stroked Bäckström’s tie, blue with yellow lilies on it.

  “Are you sure about that?” Bäckström said. “I spoke to the prosecutor this morning and my colleagues went down to look at your safe-deposit box in the SE Bank in Solna shopping center just a couple hours ago. They found Karl Danielsson’s briefcase in the box, and inside they actually found two million. Thousand-kronor notes, in bundles of a hundred thousand each.

  “That phone call, by the way,” Bäckström said. “When the cell in your handbag started to ring a couple minutes ago, the call was made by one of my officers. It’s the same phone that Danielsson and Akofeli used to call. Danielsson because he wanted to pay you for sex, and little Akofeli because he probably loved you.

  “Do you know what, Britt-Marie Andersson?” Superintendent Evert Bäckström said. “I’m starting to think that I’m talking to a very unusual person, considering my line of business.”

  “And who might that be?” Britt-Marie Andersson said, her eyes now even narrower than Annika Carlsson’s had been when she was considering whether to slap officer Stigson for talking about the selfsame Britt-Marie Andersson in a misogynistic way.

  “A female double murderer,” Bäckström said. “Right now we don’t have a single woman serving a life sentence for that,” he declared. “Actually, we haven’t had one for forty years,” he added. “The last time it was a Finnish prostitute. And this time it’s her Swedish counterpart.”

  At that very moment she struck. Probably out of anger and as a reflex following what he had just said, and because she must have realized that the game was up. She grabbed the knot of his tie. Pulled as hard as she could and fell backward onto the floor when the little plastic clip holding it came away.

  The classic police tie, he thought, even though it had cost him ten times as much as the one his alcoholic father always used to wear. Always the ready-knotted blue one on duty, to stop crooks from being able to strangle him when he was knocking them about and locking them up in the Maria district’s old police box. He used to wear it at home at weekends too, since he had forgotten how to tie an ordinary knot.

  “Okay, Bea,” Bäckström said, pulling out the handcuffs from his pocket and taking hold of her hands to cuff her. “Nice and easy does it.”

  Not the least bit nice and easy. She spun round on the floor. Kicked his legs out from under him, sat astride him, and took hold of his tieless neck. And squeezed with hands that were both bigger and stronger than his.

  Her little dog had leapt out of its basket and come to the aid of its mistress, chewing and snarling at his expensive yellow trousers. Then Britt-Marie Andersson, a woman, over sixty, and—from a criminological perspective—an impossible criminal, grabbed the cognac bottle from the table and smashed him in the face with it.

  “Fuck, Annika!” Bäckström roared, as lightning and darkness alternated inside his head. And he’d rather die than scream for help even if a woman was trying to kill him.

  Detective Inspector Annika Carlsson came racing into the room with the speed of a cannonball from the olden days. She kicked Little Sweetie, launching him across the room, then set about his mistress with her extending baton, twice over her shoulders, twice on her arms. Then she put a pair of handcuffs on Britt-Marie Andersson. She grabbed her by the hair, pulling her face up, to give her the only message that counted in a tricky situation between women.

  “Okay, bitch, behave yourself or I’ll kill you,” Annika Carlsson said, sounding neither like a true sister nor a female police officer.

  Then she turned her tender attentions to her boss, Superintendent Evert Bäckström.

  “I’m afraid the bitch has broken your nose, Bäckström,” Annika Carlsson said while Felicia Pettersson and Jan O. Stigson led Britt-Marie Andersson out of her flat.

  “That’s okay.” Bäckström sniffed as blood streamed from both nostrils. He felt beneath his shirt and pulled out the tape recorder he had taped to his stomach under his well-cut yellow linen jacket.

  “That’s okay, as long as the tape recorder’s still working,” Bäckström said. “Just get me a plaster so we can get back to the station,” he said, pinching his nose between his chubby fingers.

  93.

  Bäckström had hardly had time to put a plaster on his broken nose and get back to his own office before his colleague Niemi came rushing in.

  “What the hell happened to you, Bäckström?” Niemi said. “You look like someone’s dragged you through a thornbush.”

  “Never mind that,” Bäckström said. “What can I do for you?”

  “A breakthrough in the case,” Niemi said. “Our colleagues at the National Forensics Lab have just called to say that they’ve found DNA traces in the washing-up gloves that Polish bloke found in the trash bin. A woman’s DNA,” Niemi said.

  “Danielsson’s cleaner?” Bäckström suggested. He had known better for several days now.

  “I thought that too,” Niemi said.

  The poor Finnish bastard must be soft in the head, Bäckström thought. He’s spent several days in Danielsson’s flat, and who the hell would employ a blind cleaner? he thought.

  “Until we found the same DNA under Akofeli’s fingernails,” Niemi said. “The only problem is that we aren’t getting any matches on the database. We don’t know who she is.”

  “Yesterday’s news, Niemi,” Bäckström said, leaning back in his chair even though his nose was hurting like hell. “We’ve got her locked up,” he went on. “I’m glad you’re here. Can you pop down and get a sample from her? Then I want you and your South American partner to go and examine her apartment. Because that was where she killed Akofeli. And if you have any spare time after that, the car she used to get rid of his body is down in the garage.”

  “What the hell are you saying, Bäckström?” Niemi said.

  “I’m a police officer,” Bäckström said. “So I already worked it out a fortnight ago.”

  And then Toivonen.

  “Congratulations, Bäckström,” Toivonen said. “I’m starting to think that if you can manage to keep your mouth shut, we might even be able to have a civi
lized relationship.”

  “Thanks,” Bäckström said. “You should know that you’re warming the cockles of an old constable’s heart,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it,” Toivonen said with a grin, then walked out.

  I’ll kill you, you fucking little fox, Bäckström thought.

  Then the prosecutor rang.

  “Hello, Bäckström,” the prosecutor said. “I’ve just heard that you picked up our perpetrator.”

  “Yes,” Bäckström said.

  “Then I spoke to Niemi,” she went on. “So I was thinking of pushing through the formal arrest procedures tomorrow morning. We’ve got sufficient grounds now.”

  “That’s nice for you,” Bäckström said, and hung up.

  Anna Holt had even come down to his office.

  “Congratulations, Bäckström,” Holt said, nodding and smiling. “You’ve killed the dragon for me.”

  “Thanks,” Bäckström said. “Are we doing a press conference?”

  “I think we’ll hold back,” Anna Holt said, shaking her dark cropped hair. “There’s been a bit too much of that lately. I think we’ll make do with an ordinary press release. Tomorrow, after the formal arrest procedures.”

  Of course, Bäckström thought. First you take the honor away from me. Then you take the glory away from me. And I’ve got a pair of shredded linen trousers, a smashed coffee table, a blood-soaked carpet, and bullet holes in the walls and ceiling of what was once my home. As a thank-you I’ve been given a cut-glass vase that I’ve given to my alcoholic neighbor and an old police badge that’s supposed to have belonged to a mad old ass bandit who wasn’t even man enough to come out of the closet and was forced to wrestle other singlet-wearing trolls to stay happy.

  “What do you think, Bäckström?” Anna Holt said.

  “Fine with me,” Bäckström said, giving her the full Sipowicz as she left. Run away, now, you scrawny little nightmare, he thought.

  “What the hell are we going to do about Seppo Laurén?” Alm said. His face was deep red, and it was just two minutes after Holt had left the room.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Alm,” Bäckström said. “This is what we’re going to do. Now listen carefully.”

  “I’m listening,” Alm said.

  “First I want you to gather together everything you’ve written about little Seppo. Then I want you to roll it all up and put some elastic bands round it. And then I want you to shove it up your ass.”

  Not only is he soft in the head, Bäckström thought, as he watched Alm leave. The bastard hasn’t even got a sense of humor.

  “Respect, boss,” Frank Motoele said. He turned his gaze outward and nodded to Bäckström.

  “Thanks,” Bäckström said. “I really appreciate that.” If I had those eyes I wouldn’t need little Siggy, he thought. I could just stand and stare at them while they beg for mercy.

  “One left,” Motoele said, turning his gaze inward again. “We’ll get little Afsan after the trial. I’ve got friends out in the prison system. On both sides. Easy.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” Bäckström said. One left, what the hell is he saying? he thought.

  “Respect,” Motoele repeated. “If we had more people like you, boss, we’d already have this sorted.”

  “Take care, Frank,” Bäckström said. Congratulations, Evert, he thought. You’ve just made friends with the creepiest person ever to have become a police officer in the western hemisphere.

  “So this is where you’re sitting and sulking, is it, Bäckström?” Annika Carlsson said. “How’s your nose, by the way?”

  “Fine,” Bäckström said, fingering the plaster tentatively.

  “How about going and getting a beer? I’m buying, if that helps.”

  “Okay,” Bäckström said.

  94.

  And with that he took his colleague Annika Carlsson to his favorite bar. Which was fine, since his blond tornado had gone home to Jyväskylä to see her family and had taken her glowering partner with her to be on the safe side.

  What normal man would risk his monthly cleaning plus a decent lay once a week for a standard-issue dyke? Bäckström thought. Whether or not she claimed to be open to all comers?

  In spite of everything, things had been perfectly fine until toward the end of the evening.

  “Do you know what, Bäckström?” Annika Carlsson said. “I’ve actually never fucked in a Hästens bed. So how about it?”

  Then she had suddenly grabbed his arm and squeezed with her long, sinewy fingers. It was as if someone had put a metal clamp round it.

  “Shit,” Bäckström said. His nose was hurting so much that he might as well get his jaw broken before he lost consciousness in his bed at home. In the bullet-riddled flat that had once been his home.

  “Well, if we’re going to be completely open,” Bäckström said.

  “Go on,” his colleague Annika Carlsson said.

  “For the fucking life of me, I don’t know if I’m brave enough,” Bäckström said. There, it was said and his jaw was still intact, he thought.

  “Like I said before, Bäckström, I keep an open mind when it comes to sex,” Carlsson said. “If you like, I can be really, really sweet. But if you were to change your mind and decide you’d like to try something else, then I can be really, really mean.”

  “Let me think about it,” Bäckström said, already feeling the sweat running down his back under his yellow linen jacket. A woman talking like that. Terrible, he thought.

  “Absolutely fine,” Annika Carlsson said, shrugging her broad shoulders. “As long as you make your mind up before we leave here.

  “It’s fine, Bäckström,” she assured him, scraping her nails across his hand. “Anyway, I’ve already said I’m paying.”

  And she put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a thousand-kronor note. Strikingly similar to the ones they had been staring at a week or so before down in the vault of Handelsbanken on Valhallavägen.

  Oh, so it’s like that, is it? Bäckström thought. He had lost any faith in humanity more than fifty years before.

  “How did you get them out of the vault?” Bäckström asked.

  “The usual way, the way girls always have throughout the ages,” Annika Carlsson said, smiling at him. “Besides, you were kind enough to run upstairs to call Toivonen, so it was easy. I took a bundle from the pile, rolled it up, put it inside the plastic glove, and inserted it in the usual place.”

  “In your snatch,” Bäckström said, although he already knew the answer.

  “Mind you, I got it wet with saliva first,” Annika Carlsson said. “Some old advice I was once given. I worked as a prison guard in the women’s unit before I got into the Police Academy. You have no idea what I found between the legs of my clients while I worked there.

  “Mind you, it was a nightmare when we had to go and see Niemi,” Annika Carlsson said. “I’m quite tight down there, so it was chafing badly,” she clarified.

  “What do you think, Bäckström?” Carlsson said. “I’ve got it into my head that we’d make the perfect couple,” she said, running her nails along his arm once more to underline her point.

  “I need to think,” Bäckström said. Where’s humanity heading? Where’s Sweden heading? What the fuck is happening to the force? Bäckström thought.

  And what the fuck happened to the princess and half the kingdom? he thought.