Linda - As In The Linda Murder

by Leif Persson

  ‘Get DNA samples. The whole lot of them get to stick a cotton-bud in their mouths to help the nice police.’ Bäckström nodded happily. Finally, this is starting to look like something, he thought.

  ‘Sure,’ Knutsson sighed, suddenly seeming considerably less happy. With a bit of luck we’ll already have some of them on file, he thought.

  Which left the neighbours. In total almost a thousand people, approximately half of whom had contacted the police or happened to be at home when they went door-to-door. Considering that it was summer, and the holiday season, and that the area was primarily inhabited by the elderly or middle-aged middle class, the high level of absenteeism was hardly surprising.

  ‘I don’t care if they’ve spent the whole summer out in the country and haven’t got anything useful to contribute, I still want them questioned and ticked off the list,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘I can’t disagree with that,’ Knutsson said, ‘but I’m assuming that you don’t want us to get DNA samples from the lot of them.’

  ‘Doesn’t do any harm to ask,’ Bäckström said, shaking himself. ‘How many of them did you pick up on the criminal record check, by the way?’

  ‘I thought I told you,’ Knutsson said, glancing at his list. ‘Seventy-nine, minus seventy public order offences, leaving a total of nine.’

  ‘And what did they do?’

  ‘Three drunk-drivers. One of them with four convictions in twelve years – one of our colleagues from Växjö described him as a gay old dog. Bearing in mind that one of them is fifty, another fifty-seven and the gay old dog himself seventy, then . . .’ Knutsson sighed once more and shrugged expressively. ‘Then there’s one who had his hand in the cookie jar at work. He got probation for embezzlement. Another one hit his wife nine years ago, but we didn’t catch him on the door-to-door; he’s evidently at his place in the country. There’s one who was caught dodging tax, plus a couple of youngsters, sixteen and eighteen respectively, who’ve done most of the usual stuff, shoplifting, graffiti, throwing a brick through a shop window, fighting with other kids.’ Knutsson sighed again.

  ‘The one who beat his wife?’ Bäckström asked curiously.

  ‘Supposed to be in the country with his wife. Happily married according to the neighbours our officers spoke to in the door-to-door,’ Knutsson said.

  ‘Then he won’t have anything against volunteering a DNA sample,’ Bäckström said. Happy people usually don’t, he thought.

  ‘There might just be one that I think could be interesting,’ Knutsson said. ‘His name’s Marian Gross, originally from Poland. He’s forty-six, arrived with his parents as a child, they were political refugees, he’s had Swedish citizenship since 1975. He was reported last winter for threatening behaviour, sexual harassment, and a number of other offences. Single, no children, works as a librarian at the university here.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Knutsson,’ Bäckström said, raising his hands to slow him down. ‘He’s a poof. You can tell just from the description, can’t you? Marian. Who the fuck’s called Marian? Librarian, single, no kids.’ He stuck his little finger out. ‘We’ll have to have a word with the arse-bandit who reported him.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Knutsson said. ‘The person who made the complaint is a female work colleague, fifteen years younger than him.’

  ‘Sigh,’ Bäckström said. ‘Another librarian. So what’s he done to her, then? Shown her his Polish bratwurst at the Christmas party, or what?’

  ‘He sent a load of anonymous emails and other messages that strike me as quite offensive. Just the usual dirty stuff, admittedly, but there’s something threatening about them.’ Knutsson shook his head with a look of disgust.

  ‘The usual dirty stuff ?’ Bäckström looked questioningly at Knutsson. ‘You couldn’t be a bit more . . .’ Bäckström waved his right hand expressively.

  ‘Of course,’ Knutsson said, with a heavy sigh, as if he were taking a deep breath. ‘I’ll give you a few examples. We’ve got the old classic of the dildo sent to her workplace. The biggest size, in black, with an anonymous note in which the sender says it was modelled on him.’

  ‘I thought you said he was Polish?’ Bäckström grunted. ‘Maybe the bastard’s colour-blind. Or else it’s about to drop off.’ He was laughing so much that his bulging stomach was bouncing up and down.

  ‘The usual emails and notes, saying he’s seen her in town and at the library, expressing an opinion on her choice of underwear. Will that do?’

  ‘Sounds like a perfectly normal dirty old man,’ Bäckström said. So what’s made little Hans reveal the softer side of his character? Maybe he’s been to see the crisis therapist?

  ‘Well, that’s not really what interests me,’ Knutsson said sullenly.

  ‘So what is it, then?’ Bäckström asked. ‘The fact that he’s Polish?’

  ‘He lives in the same building as the victim,’ Knutsson said. ‘In the flat immediately above.’

  ‘Get a DNA sample,’ Bäckström barked, then straightened up and pointed a stubby index finger at Knutsson. ‘You could have said that straight away. Send someone out to get a sample from him, and if he doesn’t want to give one we’ll just have to bring him in.’ Finally, this is starting to look like something.

  It was late in the afternoon when they finally received the promised preliminary report from the medical officer. It arrived on the forensic team’s fax and was addressed to the chief technical expert on the case, Enoksson from regional crime in Växjö, and as soon as he’d read it he went to find Bäckström to discuss what it said.

  ‘According to the medical officer, she died between three and seven in the morning. Suffocation as a result of strangulation,’ the forensics officer said.

  ‘You don’t need a white coat to work that out,’ Bäckström said. ‘If you ask me, she died between half past four and five o’clock at the latest.’ Typical medical officer, he thought. Bloody cowards.

  ‘I agree with you about the timing,’ Enoksson concurred. ‘As far as the rest of it goes, it looks like she was raped at least twice. Once vaginally and once anally, and probably in that order. Possibly more than twice. And the perpetrator ejaculated both times.’

  ‘Does he have anything to say that we haven’t worked out for ourselves?’ Bäckström asked. ‘Those stab wounds on her . . . lower back, then?’ You can’t even say backside any more, he thought. Where the hell have I ended up?

  ‘Stab wounds is putting it a bit strongly,’ Enoksson said. ‘More like cuts, even though she did bleed a fair bit. Yes, he’s measured those for us. That’s not part of our job, of course. But even we managed to count them, and we agree with him. Thirteen cuts, curving up towards her midriff and the middle of her body, probably made from the left-hand side to the right.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘A non-serrated knife, probably the one we found at the crime scene. The cuts are between two and five millimetres deep, with the deepest about a centimetre. They seem to have been made with some degree of control, considering that she must have resisted and been thrashing about. They’re deeper on the right than they are on the left. We can probably deal with the restraints and gag, and the marks they made on the body, when we get the final report from the National Forensics Lab.’

  ‘I don’t have any objection to that,’ Bäckström said. ‘After all, everything our esteemed medical colleague has had to tell us so far is what we already knew.’ Well, me at least, he thought.

  ‘Yes, to a great extent. But he’s happy to come and talk to us if you like,’ the forensics officer said. ‘I thought it might be best if he did that once I and my colleagues have finished our bit and had the results back on all our tests. It’s possible that there’s something he’d like to talk to us about in person when we meet him. So we can take everything at once. Unless you’d rather not?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Bäckström said. But preferably before the end of the summer, he thought.

  After that, Bäckström
took his colleague Sandberg to one side to orientate himself a little further regarding the victim’s character, but mainly to rest his weary eyes.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m being a nuisance, Anna,’ he said, smiling amiably, ‘but I’m sure you realize that this business about who the victim was is possibly the most important aspect of the whole investigation.’ Softly, softly, he thought. Goodness, the lengths he went to for their sake.

  ‘I don’t think you’re being a nuisance at all,’ Anna replied. ‘On the contrary, I like hearing what you’ve got to say. Far too many people here don’t take the victim seriously.’ She looked at him solemnly.

  Nice to hear that there are a few sensible officers even in Växjö, Bäckström thought, but he had no intention of saying so.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘I understand that you’ve spoken to the father? To Linda’s father?’

  ‘That’s putting it a bit strongly,’ she said. ‘I was there when we visited him and told him what had happened. An older colleague did most of the talking. He was a vicar before he joined the police, and he’s been a neighbourhood officer here in town for years. He’s very good at that sort of thing. It’s terrible, when you think about it. It was an awful shock to her father. As soon as we got back to the station we had to get a doctor.’

  ‘Terrible,’ Bäckström said. Now she’s got that look on her face again. I’d better speed up before she starts crying. Women are all the same – women, vicars, and neighbourhood officers. Bloody babies. ‘I thought she was registered as living with her father? I presume she has her own room there?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Anna said. ‘It’s a huge place, a manor house. Lovely, actually.’

  ‘So did you find anything interesting when you searched her room out at her father’s place? Diaries, personal notes, calendars and so on, old letters, photos, videos from family occasions. Well, all that sort of thing. You know what I mean.’

  ‘We didn’t actually have time for that,’ Anna said. ‘We didn’t get much further than the hall before we drove away. Her dad was in pieces. But we have got her pocket diary. It was in the bag she had with her when she went out on Thursday evening.’

  ‘Is there anything interesting in it, then?’ Bäckström asked.

  ‘No,’ Anna said, shaking her head. ‘Just the usual. Meetings, lectures at college, friends she was seeing, and so on. You’re welcome to take a look at it, if you like.’

  ‘Later,’ Bäckström said. ‘What about after that? Have you been back?’

  ‘No,’ Anna said. ‘I raised it on Friday with Bengt – I mean, Superintendent Olsson – after her father had left here with a doctor and a couple of family friends, but Bengt thought we should wait. Leave him in peace, in light of what had happened, I mean.’

  ‘So we still haven’t searched her room in her father’s house?’ Where the hell have I ended up?

  ‘No, not as far as I know,’ Anna said, shaking her head. ‘Forensics have had their hands full with the crime scene. But I see what you mean.’

  ‘I’ll raise it with Olsson tomorrow,’ Bäckström said. That’ll give him another half-day to fuck things up in, he thought.

  Rogersson was sitting with his office door shut, a pair of headphones over his ears and a tape machine on the desk in front of him, when Bäckström walked into his room.

  ‘And how can I help you, detective superintendent?’ Rogersson said, taking off the headphones and nodding gloomily as he switched off the tape machine.

  ‘You can come back to my hotel room with me, have a bite to eat, and then help me drink a couple of lagers,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘I think I’m getting eczema in my ears after spending all afternoon and half the evening listening to a load of utterly meaningless interviews,’ Rogersson said. ‘Right up until my dear colleague Bäckström comes in, when all I hear is the sweetest music.’

  ‘Bollocks to that. Let’s go,’ Bäckström said. The bastard’s starting to get all sentimental. Must be the alcohol.

  ‘Aaah,’ Rogersson said. He gave a deep sigh of contentment and wiped away the head of the beer from the corner of his mouth with his left hand. ‘Whoever invented lager ought to get all the Nobel Prizes there are. Everything from the Peace Prize to that one in Literature. He should get the whole lot.’

  ‘I dare say you’re not alone in thinking that,’ Bäckström said. ‘And the only thing better than a cold beer would probably have to be a free cold beer. So he should probably get the Prize for Economics as well, considering the amount you’ve managed to get through, you tight bastard.’

  Rogersson ignored the insult. But he did change the subject suddenly.

  ‘That Polack, the one Knutsson’s trying to get us to go for,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘We’re thinking of talking to him again first thing in the morning, and doing a DNA test,’ Bäckström said. Let’s talk about all the free beer you’re putting away instead, he thought.

  ‘I’m not getting it,’ Rogersson said. ‘He just doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘Really?’ Bäckström said. ‘Why doesn’t he feel right?’

  ‘I’ve read the interviews with both the newspaper bloke and the Polack. And I’ve spoken to our colleague Salomonson down here, the one who was in charge of the sexual harassment case. He actually seems pretty normal, by the way. The Polack just doesn’t feel right. That’s all.’ He emphasized his point by taking a deep gulp of free lager.

  According to Rogersson, there were three good reasons why Linda’s Polish neighbour, Marian Gross, wasn’t the murderer. The first was the interview with the man who delivered the morning papers at the same time every day to the people who paid to receive it.

  ‘He should have realized,’ Rogersson said. ‘I mean, that it was just the paper being delivered, not someone coming home. He even gets the same morning papers as the victim’s mother. The Småland Post and Svenska Dagbladet.’

  ‘Maybe he’s normally asleep when the papers arrive,’ Bäckström countered.

  The second reason was the interview conducted with Gross by the police when they were going door-to-door on Friday afternoon, when Gross volunteered that earlier that week he had spoken to Linda’s mother, and that she had said she was going away, but her daughter would be living in the flat.

  ‘Surely that implicates him, if anything,’ Bäckström said. ‘He knew there weren’t any obstacles.’

  ‘So why would he have gone out through the window?’ Rogersson repeated. ‘Surely the simplest solution would have been to go the normal way, out through Linda’s door and up to his own flat?’

  ‘But there was someone outside the door,’ Bäckström objected.

  ‘Yes, delivering the papers,’ Rogersson said emphatically. ‘All he had to do was wait until he’d gone.’

  Sigh, Bäckström thought, and contented himself with a nod.

  The third reason concerned Gross’s physical condition, combined with the perpetrator’s choice of escape route. According to the forensic report, the windowsill was almost four metres above the lawn below. Gross was one metre, seventy centimetres tall, and weighed approximately ninety kilos. Not particularly agile, and out of shape.

  ‘According to Salomonson, he’s a fat little bastard, and bloody unpleasant with it. Salomonson says he’s completely out of shape as well. Pants like a steam engine after just half a flight of stairs,’ Rogersson said. ‘So he’d probably have killed himself if he went out that way. If he managed to get himself out of the window in the first place.’

  A fat little bastard, Bäckström thought. He was scarcely any taller and not much thinner himself, and had a considerably more athletic perpetrator in mind. Hm. ‘There’s something in what you say,’ he agreed. ‘But there’s no harm in taking a sample, is there?’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ Rogersson said. ‘From what I’ve heard, Gross is a uniquely difficult character.’

  14

  Växjö, Monday 7 July

  DAY FOUR, AND still no perpetrator, Bäckst
röm thought as he sat down at the large meeting table. And Detective Superintendent Olsson had evidently decided to play at being in charge of the preliminary investigation, and was waving his flag. What was more, they were still reporting on the basic state of an investigation that hadn’t given them much to go on so far, Bäckström thought. Olsson was in charge, the usual arse-lickers were agreeing with him, and time was passing. He tried to shut his ears as he pretended to read some documents.

  To start with, they had decided to end the search for evidence in the vicinity of the crime scene and along the perpetrator’s presumed escape route. They’d been at it for three days already, and if they hadn’t found anything by now the chances were that they weren’t going to.

  ‘I think it makes more sense to focus our resources elsewhere,’ Olsson said, and was rewarded with nods of agreement.

  Like for instance a little search of her room in her father’s house, Bäckström thought, but he didn’t say so out loud because he was planning to take that up with Olsson in private.

  ‘Well, I’d just like to thank everyone involved in this case,’ Olsson went on. ‘You’ve all done a fantastic job.’

  Don’t mention it, Bäckström thought. All I did was find a sur veillance camera that the other idiots managed to miss.

  The door-to-door enquiries were also being scaled back. The neighbours who still hadn’t been interviewed had received notes through the letterbox, and the most interesting ones – whoever those might be – would have to be tracked down to their places in the country.

  ‘That will mean that we can free up a number of colleagues who are needed elsewhere,’ a cheerful Superintendent Olsson declared.

  Like for instance a little search of her room in her father’s house . . .

  Then it was time to go through the investigative capital that they had somehow managed to scrape together from the crime scene and in the forensics lab down in Lund.