by Leif Persson
‘I hardly ever spoke to her,’ Gross said. ‘How could I have any opinion of her? She seemed a bit self-absorbed, spoiled and badly brought up, like every other young lady of her age.’
‘Self-absorbed, spoiled, badly brought up. What do you mean by that?’ Salomonson asked.
She’d hardly said hello to him on the few occasions when they had bumped into each other. She had avoided meeting his eyes and seemed to made a big deal of being completely uninterested the only time he could recall actually talking to her. And on that occasion her mother had also been present.
They hadn’t taken a break for lunch until two o’clock. Gross himself had determined the late timing, presumably mainly to make things difficult for them. While Salomonson organized the food, Rogersson had gone to the bathroom. When he emerged, Bäckström was the first person he encountered.
‘So how’s it going with our Polish sex pest?’ Bäckström asked.
‘Had to ease the pressure,’ Rogersson said. ‘I seem to spend half my time in there these days. I’m finished as a lead interviewer. The only time I don’t have to run to the toilet is when I’m drinking a load of beer. Then I don’t even think about going. It’s all very strange.’
‘Yes,’ Bäckström said with a grin. ‘I only go when I wake up and before I go to bed. Twice a day, in fact, regardless of whether or not I need to.’
‘In answer to your question, it’s going pretty much as expected,’ Rogersson said, ignoring Bäckström’s last remark.
‘Has he given a DNA sample?’
‘We haven’t got to that yet,’ Rogersson said with a sigh. ‘We’ve had our hands full listening to how badly we’ve been treating him. If you’re interested, I can tell you how this is going to end.’
‘So how’s it going to end, then?’ Bäckström said.
‘We’ll spend the next three hours listening to him droning on. Then Olsson will show up and decide that we need to listen to the same thing for another six hours. Then he’ll refuse to give us a DNA sample, and then Olsson will back down because he hasn’t got the balls to declare him an official suspect and ask the prosecutor to remand him in custody so that we can take the sample without his permission. Then Gross, Salomonson and I will all go home in our separate directions.’
‘Well, at least you can have a couple of beers then,’ Bäckström said sympathetically. ‘To stop you having to run to the toilet, I mean.’
‘Sure,’ Rogersson. ‘Gross didn’t kill Linda, he didn’t see anything, he hasn’t heard anything, and he hasn’t worked anything out for himself, so what’s he doing here? In summary, it’s just another perfectly routine day lost from a detective’s life. So what are you up to?’
‘I’m going to the madhouse,’ Bäckström said.
15
BECAUSE BÄCKSTRÖM DIDN’T like driving, he’d organized a driver. The person accorded this honour was young Adolfsson, and they had got the introductions out of the way on the way down to the garage.
‘I understand that you and your partner were the ones who found her?’ Bäckström said.
‘Yes, boss,’ Adolfsson said.
‘So how come you’re in the investigating team?’ Bäckström asked, although he already knew.
‘They’re short of people, what with the holidays and everything,’ Adolfsson said.
‘I spoke to Enoksson,’ Bäckström said. ‘Sounds like he’d like to adopt you.’
‘Yeah, that’s probably not far from the truth. Enok’s a good bloke. He and dad go hunting together.’
‘Holidays and a shortage of people and Enoksson. So things went the way they did no matter what our esteemed Superintendent Olsson thought about the matter,’ Bäckström summarized.
‘Yes,’ Adolfsson said.
‘That just about covers it, boss.’ ‘That’s not the first time either,’ Bäckström said, squeezing into the passenger seat with some difficulty. Nice lad. Reminds me of myself at that age, Bäckström thought.
‘Can I ask you a question, boss?’ Adolfsson wondered politely as they were heading up out of the garage.
‘Go ahead,’ Bäckström said. Nice and polite as well, he thought.
‘To what does our madhouse owe the honour of a visit from you, boss?’ Adolfsson asked.
‘We’re going to take a look at a proper nutter,’ Bäckström said. ‘And we’ll take the opportunity to have a look at the person taking care of him. If we’re lucky, we’ll get two nutters in one afternoon.’
‘The Tanja man and Professor Brundin,’ Adolfsson said. ‘If I’m allowed to guess.’
A talented young man, Bäckström thought. But what else could you expect?
‘That’s pretty much it,’ Bäckström said. ‘Have you met either of them?’
‘Both,’ Adolfsson said. ‘I’ve heard Brundin when he gave us a lecture. And the other one was wounded by another inmate on the ward a year or so ago, and had to be taken to hospital to be stitched up. My partner Essen and I oversaw the transfer.’
‘So what are they like?’ Bäckström asked. ‘Brundin and the Tanja man, I mean.’
‘They’re both more than crazy enough.’ Adolfsson nodded emphatically.
‘Which one’s craziest?’ Bäckström said, looking at his new-found young friend curiously.
‘Horses for courses,’ Adolfsson said, shrugging his big shoulders. ‘They’re crazy in different ways, if I can put it like that. Mind you . . .’
‘Shoot,’ Bäckström said encouragingly.
‘If I had to share a room with either of them, I’d probably prefer the Tanja man. No question.’
Sankt Sigfrid’s Hospital was just a couple of kilometres from the police station, a mix of old and more modern buildings surrounded by a fairly large park which sloped towards a lake. It was airy and green, with shady trees, and well-kept lawns in spite of the summer drought. More than anything, it reminded Bäckström of the Grand Hotel in Saltsjöbaden outside Stockholm, where National Crime usually held their conferences and staff get-togethers. Professor Brundin’s office was in an old, respectfully restored nineteenth-century building of white-plastered stone. Doesn’t look like our criminal lunatics suffer too much, Bäckström thought as he and Adolfsson got out of the car.
‘Wonder what all this cost?’ he said as they rang the entry-phone at the entrance. ‘The lunatics have got their own tennis courts, mini-golf and a fuck-off great swimming pool. What the hell’s wrong with a bit of basic barbed wire?’
‘Yes, our criminal lunatics don’t exactly go short of anything in this country,’ young Adolfsson agreed.
This boy’s going to go far, Bäckström thought.
Professor Robert Brundin was rather reminiscent of a young Oscar Wilde, although unlike the original he had perfect teeth that he was happy to show off when he smiled. He was sitting comfortably, leaning back in the big chair behind his big desk in his big office, and appeared to be in complete harmony with both himself and his surroundings.
Bloody hell, he really is like that English poof who wrote stuff, the one who ended up in prison, Bäckström thought, temporarily unable to think of the name of the film and its lead character. Hardly surprising, he thought. It was a shit film and there weren’t even any decent arse-bandit scenes, even though the TV supplement had said it was about poofs.
‘So the police are anxious that I might have let my little Leo out into the town’s streets and squares?’ the professor said, showing all his white teeth.
‘Well, unfortunately it’s happened before,’ Bäckström said.
‘Not here, and not with me,’ Brundin declared. ‘If you like, I’d be happy to explain why.’
‘We’re listening,’ Bäckström said. Young Adolfsson had already taken out his little black notebook and a pen.
Leo, Leszek Baranski, thirty-nine years old, was an extremely dangerous individual, and the crown jewel in Professor Brundin’s remarkable collection of dangerous individuals. Leo alone had inspired him to write a number of articles in academic psyc
hiatric journals, and he had been the central character in countless lectures.
‘A unique example of a sexual sadist with highly developed fantasies,’ Brundin declared happily. ‘Each week we have several conversations on the subject, he and I, and I’ve never encountered anything like it before. Generally speaking he’s very intelligent – his IQ is over 140, enough to get him into NASA’s training programme for astronauts, for instance – but in terms of tormenting young women for his own sexual gratification he’s an absolute genius. When it comes to thinking up new ways of expressing his sexual sadism, his creativity knows no bounds.’
‘So you’re not planning on letting him out,’ Bäckström said. Sounds like a charming bloke, he thought, not quite sure if it was Leo or his doctor that he had in mind.
Brundin wasn’t planning on letting Leo out. The idea had never even occurred to him. But his boss, in contrast, an older colleague who was – admittedly – ‘a decent person but I’m sorry to say badly afflicted by the liberalism of his generation, generally lethargic in his attitudes and with occasionally clear signs of a refractory personality’, had suggested various measures which could eventually, in his opinion, facilitate Leo’s rehabilitation for a life outside the goldfish bowl in which he was currently being kept.
‘Such as?’ Bäckström said. Why not just boil him down and make glue out of the bastard?
‘Voluntary castration,’ Brundin said, with a broad smile. ‘My boss suggested that if Baranski agreed to let himself be castrated, then over a long period of time he could gradually be let out on supervised excursions.’
‘Castration?’ Bäckström asked. ‘Do you still do that?’ Fucking hell, he thought, unconsciously crossing his legs.
‘Voluntarily, of course. Voluntarily,’ Brundin said, leaning back comfortably and letting his fingers form a tall steeple.
‘So what did he think about that, then?’ Bäckström asked. There had to be some limits, surely? Boiling him down into glue seemed lenient by comparison.
‘He wasn’t exactly keen,’ Brundin said. ‘After all, it would completely extinguish his considerable sexual drive – he usually masturbates between five and ten times a day. And patients like that normally suffer dramatic weight gain, particularly when they’re in an environment like this. Obviously, he’s worried about losing both his urges and his looks, because he’s a very vain man. I myself was strongly – I might almost say categorically – opposed to the idea of castration.’
‘Why?’ Bäckström said. Because the bastard probably looks like you, he thought.
‘Extinguishing his sexual desires would obviously also affect his sexual fantasies. In the worst case, he’d be lost to psychiatric research,’ Brundin said, without a trace of a smile.
‘I see,’ Bäckström said, who for once wasn’t sure what he thought.
‘I presume that you gentlemen would like to see him,’ the professor said.
‘Why not?’ Bäckström said. If nothing else, it would give him something to talk about in the staffroom at work, he thought. Adolfsson contented himself with a nod, a youthful and expectant glint in his deep-set blue eyes.
‘He’s been in isolation since yesterday evening,’ Brundin said. ‘We had to sedate him and put him in a straitjacket, so I’m afraid you won’t be able to talk to him. It’s entirely likely that he just heard one of the staff say something about the Linda murder and it got him extremely excited.’
Leszek ‘Leo’ Baranski seemed anything but excited, even though he looked like an illustration from one of the fantasies that usually occupied his mind, possibly even now when he appeared to be fast asleep. He was lying in a ten-metre-square room in the secure unit’s corridor of isolation cells. The only furnishing was a metal bunk that was bolted to the floor. Leo lay immobile on top of it, flat on his back, his head to one side so that he was lying on his right cheek. Small and thin, dark curly hair and sensitive, almost feminine facial features. The only thing he was wearing was a pair of hospital boxer shorts, stamped with the logo of Sankt Sigfrid. His arms were fastened to his sides by thick leather straps. His legs were stretched out, apart, and held down at the ankles by leather straps fixed to the end of the bunk.
‘It normally takes about six hours before he comes round,’ Brundin told them. ‘We usually start by untying his right arm so he can relieve the worst of the angst.’ He smiled.
‘That sounds practical,’ Bäckström said. While you and your colleagues stand here watching him through this pane of glass, he thought.
When they left, Professor Brundin wished them luck with their work, and hoped that he would soon have an opportunity to meet them again. He had already started to sketch out a future research project about a new and very interesting group of young men with foreign backgrounds who committed serious sexual offences because they themselves had suffered similar abuse in their childhood or youth. Chaotic and severely disturbed, of course, yet still capable of holding things together, and not to be confused with men like Leo.
‘I’m looking forward to meeting the Linda man. Especially as he represents an entirely different category of offender from the one Leo belongs to,’ Brundin said, smiling warmly at them.
‘Who isn’t looking forward to meeting him?’ Bäckström said, with feeling.
‘Do you mind if I make a personal remark, boss?’ Adolfsson said as they were driving out through the hospital gates.
‘Shoot,’ Bäckström grunted. ‘That Brundin seems an odd character. Right man in the right job, I’d say.’
You’re going to go far, lad, Bäckström thought, contenting himself with a grunt of agreement.
16
WHEN THEY GOT back to the police station, Bäckström asked young Adolfsson to write a report of their visit to Sankt Sigfrid, while he got to grips with the various piles that had built up on his desk. Nothing exciting, and none of the others in the room appeared to be in need of a kick up the backside to get something done. High time for the hotel and a little glass of beer, Bäckström decided after a quick glance at his watch. But of course that was when his mobile phone rang. It was the long-winded colleague from the VICLAS unit, wanting to hear how things had gone with Leo.
‘We met both him and Brundin,’ Bäckström said.
‘Is Brundin in charge of looking after him?’
‘Yes,’ Bäckström said, glancing at the time again. ‘He says hello, by the way.’
‘In that case there’s no need to worry,’ his colleague assured him. ‘Brundin’s the only person in that entire profession who’s completely normal. So how was Leo?’
‘Fine. Having a great time. He says hello too,’ Bäckström said, and ended the call.
On the way out he went past Rogersson’s room to see if he was done for the day, but the red light outside the interview room was still on. Six hours, plus six more, Bäckström thought. Oh well, he could always order a taxi. Who has the energy to walk in this sort of heat? He fished up his mobile from his pocket again, but before he had time to make the call the investigation’s very own crisis therapist popped up and almost threw herself at him even though she was skinny as a golf club and not much taller.
‘I’m so pleased I’ve found you, Superintendent,’ she said, smiling warmly and tilting her head to one side. ‘Can you spare me a few minutes?’
‘What can I do to help you, Lo?’ Bäckström said, smiling just as warmly back. Probably makes sense to deal with the old cow while I’ve built up a head of steam, he thought.
Once they reached her room it took several minutes before Lo got to the point. But because Bäckström already knew exactly how he was going to handle this, it was a pleasure watching her put her scrawny neck in the noose he had set up for her. He leaned back comfortably in the armchair she kept for visitors, folded his hands over his protruding stomach and nodded encouragingly at her.
‘You’re practically the only person I haven’t spoken to, superintendent,’ she began.
‘Well, Lo, as I’m sure you appreciate, I�
��ve had quite a bit to do,’ Bäckström said, with a thoughtful nod. So much so that I haven’t had time to sit here babbling with a nagging old cow like you, he thought.
‘I certainly do appreciate that,’ Lo agreed, tilting her head a few more centimetres and flashing him an almost vertical smile.
‘That’s good to hear,’ Bäckström said tranquilly, simultaneously trying out the contemplative nod that he usually saved for just this sort of situation.
According to Lilian Olsson, Bäckström, because of his long experience as a murder detective with National Crime, must have been confronted with more misery than almost any other officer in the force.
‘How have you managed to handle all that?’ she asked. ‘You must be carrying around some terrible experiences.’
‘How do you mean?’ Never give them a millimetre, because then you’re fucked, Bäckström thought.
All the awful things he’d seen in the course of his duty? A lot of police officers, not to say most, or even all, ended up getting burned out because of the job. Marching in file towards the wall until they hit it, while they tried to struggle through to their next shift by abusing alcohol and sex.
‘And that’s probably the very worst way to try to deal with psychological problems,’ Lo said.
Fucking good fun though, Bäckström thought as he nodded in agreement. ‘It’s tragic,’ he said, shuddering with distaste. ‘Tragic,’ he repeated. Maybe I ought to tip her the wink about Lewin and little Svanström, he thought.
‘I’ve even come across young officers who developed eating disorders while they were still at police college,’ Lo went on.
‘Tragic,’ Bäckström repeated. ‘Young people too. Terrible.’ He sighed deeply. Considering the food they served there, the big mystery was how any of them managed to eat anything at all.
In Lo’s firm opinion, based on the many years she had spent working as a psychologist with the police, the problem was hidden within the culture of the police itself, in the spirit of ‘machismo, denial, silence and destructive behaviour patterns, all acting together’, which had for so long governed the working environment within the force, and handicapped the people who were forced to work within it. Even she could feel it flowing towards her, from the floor, walls and ceiling, each time she set foot inside a police station.