by Leif Persson
What the hell has that got to do with you and me? Bäckström thought.
But the former sports coach was an entirely different matter. Olsson knew him personally, and was prepared to vouch for him. He was innocent, the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
‘I don’t want his death on my conscience,’ Olsson explained. ‘He’s still seriously depressed, as I’m sure you can understand.’
‘Of course, who isn’t?’ Bäckström said. ‘But I thought it was common place for youngsters to lie about sexual abuse?’
Olsson was the first in line to agree with that. It was quite true, and the fact that his colleague and good friend had been accused even though he was innocent – assuming the girl had made everything up – simply proved the rule. However, in this instance it looked as though her parents were behind the whole business, which increased the seriousness of the whole affair. ‘I hope you appreciate that, Bäckström.’
‘Of course,’ Bäckström said. ‘I’m sure we all hope we can find a perpetrator that we’re happy with. Was there anything else?’ I wonder if we ought to get a sample from you as well, he thought.
Olsson did have something else on his mind: the maniac from Dalby who was still on the loose, even though the NRRU had cordoned off the area and was systematically conducting a thorough search, metre by metre.
‘You don’t think he could be our man?’ Olsson said, looking at Bäckström hopefully.
‘I saw that the same idea has occurred to our beloved evening papers,’ Bäckström said. ‘With reference to someone in a position of authority inside this building. If that’s what you’re asking, I’m not the one they spoke to.’
‘Of course not,’ Olsson assured him. ‘But what do you think about the hypothesis itself, I mean?’
‘I think that the person in a position of authority inside this building is as stupid as his friends in the press,’ Bäckström said.
That evening Carin called and asked why he hadn’t been in touch. She’d been away for the weekend, visiting her aged mother, but he could have left a message on her machine.
‘Things have been a bit busy lately,’ Bäckström said evasively. What does she mean, visiting her aged mother? Blimey, Bäckström thought.
‘Anything you’d care to tell me about?’ she asked, sounding just as she always did when she asked that question.
‘Well,’ Bäckström said, ‘it’s mainly a personal matter. My pet died. I asked a friend to look after him while I was on this case, but it didn’t go well.’
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ Carin said, sounding upset. ‘Was it a dog or a cat?’ What the fuck does she take me for, Bäckström thought. Only old women and poofs have cats.
‘A dog,’ Bäckström lied. ‘Quite a little character. Very lively. His name was Egon.’
‘That’s so sad,’ Carin said, and judging by the tone of her voice she was both fond of animals and a deeply empathetic person. ‘A little dog, and such a cute name. I appreciate how upset you must be. Can you bear to talk about it? About what happened, I mean?’
‘He drowned,’ Bäckström said. ‘If you’ll excuse me . . .’
‘I understand, you can’t talk about it,’ she said.
‘Let’s speak tomorrow,’ Bäckström suggested. ‘Call me if you feel like getting something to eat.’ Crazy women, he thought.
Bäckström had avoided Rogersson for a couple of days, since there was considerable evidence to suggest that he had murdered little Egon. Rogersson, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have noticed that Bäckström was avoiding him. He was his usual self. That’s what they’re like, real psychopaths, Bäckström thought. They don’t think of anyone but themselves. Although Rogersson did seem to be a slightly more complicated sort of murderer, seeing as he’d just knocked on Bäckström’s door. A very gentle knock for Rogersson, probably because of his guilty conscience, Bäckström thought. And as a conciliatory gesture he had brought a crate of cold beers and an almost full bottle of whisky.
‘So you’re sitting here moping,’ Rogersson declared, and since Bäckström wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge they had gradually and in the usual manner managed to normalize their relationship and restore the camaraderie that had always existed between them.
‘Here’s to Egon,’ Rogersson proposed.
‘Cheers, mate. Here’s to Egon,’ Bäckström said solemnly. And he stood up and raised his glass.
The day after his second wake for Egon, he finally caught a glimpse of a suspect worthy of the description. It’s almost enough to make you a bit religious, Bäckström had thought as he felt the familiar tingling.
28
BEFORE THE WEDNESDAY morning meeting, Thorén had called his colleague in Gothenburg and asked for his help in getting a DNA sample from their fellow officer, Randy Karlsson. His friend had promised to do what he could and get back to him as soon as he had done so, then called Randy Karlsson on his mobile, and got through to him straight away.
In spite of the early hour, Randy Karlsson was already at a terrace café in Marstrand, looking at girls. Thorén’s acquaintance had asked how the summer had been so far, seeing as he always thought it best to start cautiously no matter what subject you wanted to talk about. Brilliant, according to Randy Karlsson. He’d spent his holiday travelling round the west coast. He had started in Strömstad in the north, and had worked his way down through Lysekil, Smögen and a few smaller places that he’d already managed to forget the names of. And now he was sitting by the water in Marstrand, a few kilometres north of Gothenburg.
‘It’s incredible,’ he said happily. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of girls. There’s no end of them. And the weather . . . talk about saving time!’ He didn’t have any problem providing a DNA sample voluntarily. He had already done so on numerous occasions in relation to various paternity disputes in Sweden and elsewhere, and he had always been okay. ‘It’s great,’ he said, sounding even happier. ‘I haven’t got caught once. It looks like I’m immune to that shit.’
To save time they had agreed that Karlsson – as soon as he had a gap in his packed schedule – would visit the local police station in Marstrand and provide the promised sample there. Whatever the point of that was, Thorén’s acquaintance thought when he hung up.
Adolfsson and von Essen didn’t attend the morning meeting, because they had been appointed as the team’s DNA-sampling specialists, and had begun the day in a particularly successful way. First they managed to get hold of the shooting instructor, who was an old acquaintance of Adolfsson’s, being a member of the same hunting party. Bolstered by this success, they had gone to find the officer who had been at the nightclub and was refusing to cooperate. He was sitting at home polishing the text of his complaint to the judicial ombudsman, but once Adolfsson and von Essen had talked some sense into him he had made the right decision.
‘What do we do next?’ Adolfsson asked. After all, Gustaf’s still the boss, he thought.
‘Now we deal with the trainee who seems to be refusing to answer his phone,’ von Essen said. ‘Then we’ll have got everyone who was at the club with Linda.’
At the meeting they had first discussed the current state of the case, then mainly talked about the DNA samples. For once, everyone there seemed to be in complete agreement. If they didn’t find him any other way, sooner or later their perpetrator would get caught in their DNA net. The only person to express any doubt was Lewin.
‘There are risks in this sort of thing,’ he said cautiously, nodding towards the chart on the notice board saying how many samples had been taken.
‘How do you mean?’ Olsson asked.
‘There’s a risk that you lose control of an investigation,’ Lewin said. ‘It’s happened before, and it’ll probably happen again, and in spite of the fact that we’ve got the perpetrator’s DNA we still haven’t found him. I can give you half a dozen recent examples off the top of my head.’
Speak for yourself, bloody conspiracy theorist, Bäckström thought. Personally, he was h
appy to get samples from the whole world if necessary.
‘What do you think, Bäckström?’ Olsson said.
‘I’ve heard that before,’ Bäckström said curtly. ‘And from the same person, strangely enough,’ he added, harvesting a number of smiles. ‘This is all about discounting people who don’t have anything to do with the case as quickly as possible, and if you ask me there’s no better way of keeping control of an investigation.’ You look after your own business and I’ll deal with the rest, he thought, glowering at Lewin.
Everyone else round the table nodded in agreement, and Lewin made do with a shrug of the shoulders. Then they changed subject, to discuss the reward that Linda’s father wanted to announce.
‘He’s called me and the county police commissioner,’ Olsson said, stretching himself up for some reason. ‘But I’m concerned it might send the wrong message . . . at this early stage, I mean, because it’s not even a fortnight yet . . . to announce a reward.’
What a load of crap, Bäckström thought. If he didn’t want to have to sit here half the day it would be just as well to do something about it now.
‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘If it’s someone she knows we’ll get him anyway, whether or not he’s said anything to someone who might consider telling us for a bit of money. And if it’s a complete nutter, as some people seem to think, then he probably hasn’t got anyone he could tell, so we’d have nothing to gain from a reward whenever it was offered. If it’s your standard junkie, then all his friends probably know about it by now, so it might speed things up a bit. Either way, sooner or later we’ll find out anyway.’
‘Should I interpret that to mean that you don’t think it would actively harm the investigation?’ Olsson said carefully.
‘What sort of money are we talking about?’ Interpret it whatever fucking way you want to, you poof.
‘Her father suggested a million kronor. To start with,’ Olsson said, and the room suddenly fell silent.
‘What?’ Bäckström said. Her dad must be mad. Give me the money instead, he thought.
‘What does it cost to get a fix in this town?’ Rogersson asked suddenly, nodding towards one of the officers who usually worked in the Växjö drug squad.
‘Depends what you want,’ the officer said. ‘Same as in the big city, I guess. Five hundred or more if you want heroin. You can get amphetamines for a couple of hundred. Hash costs next to nothing if you take a trip to Copenhagen.’
‘Christ, we’ll be deluged with a load of crazy junkies trying to sell a load of crazy stories. No reward,’ Bäckström said, getting up. ‘Well, if there’s nothing else, I suggest we try to get some work done.’
After lunch Bäckström shut himself away in his room and switched on the red lamp so he would be left to think in peace. I ought to get them to put a bed in here, he thought. He’d stopped stretching out on top of his desk years ago, and he didn’t even have a decent cushion in the room. Maybe I ought to fix up somewhere closer than the hotel, he thought, but these encouraging thoughts were interrupted by a discreet knock on the door.
‘Come in,’ Bäckström roared. And I’ll rip you to shreds, you colour-blind bastard, he thought.
‘It’s not that I’m colour blind,’ Adolfsson said apologetically. ‘Nor my colleague here either,’ he said, nodding towards von Essen, who was standing just behind him. ‘But there’s something we’d like to talk to you about, boss. Could be of interest, actually.’
This lad’s going to go far, Bäckström thought, pointing amiably at the only spare chair in the room. ‘Take a seat, lad,’ he said. ‘And get another chair from the corridor,’ he said to von Essen. If you don’t want to sit on the floor, you stuck-up bastard.
‘So what is it?’ he said encouragingly to Adolfsson.
‘There was something that struck us,’ Adolfsson said. ‘What Enoksson said that woman at the forensics lab told him. That our perpetrator didn’t have standard Nordic DNA. The fact that we’re looking for a darkie, basically.’
‘Adolf’s thoughts often fall into this pattern,’ von Essen said lightly as he examined his fingernails.
‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said, giving von Essen the evil eye. And you can shut up, he thought.
‘It’s about her colleague at police college, the one who was at the same club as Linda the night she was murdered, the one we haven’t managed to get a sample from. His name’s Erik Roland Löfgren.’
‘Erik Roland Löfgren? He sounds really exotic.’
‘He seems to live in town, mainly. We’ve tried to get hold of the young man at his home address, to offer him a little cotton-bud, but he wasn’t there,’ von Essen said, apparently not having noticed Bäckström’s evil eye.
‘Okay, shut up, von Essen,’ Bäckström said in his most polite voice. ‘Go on,’ he continued, nodding to Adolfsson.
‘It’s actually better than it sounds,’ Adolfsson said, passing a photograph to Bäckström. ‘This is the picture on his ID card at college. So it isn’t all bad news,’ he added, looking quite pleased with himself.
Black as night, Bäckström thought, looking at the photograph. And at that moment he started to feel the familiar old tingling. ‘So what do we know about him, then?’
He was in the same class at police college as Linda, twenty-five years old, adopted from French west Africa at the age of six, ending up with Swedish parents and getting a couple of older Swedish siblings into the bargain.
‘His adoptive father’s a senior consultant at Kalmar Hospital, the mother’s head of a high school somewhere in Kalmar. The finer sort of folk, to be blunt. Not like some poor sods who have to grow up out in the middle of nowhere,’ Adolfsson said. He was the son of one of the biggest farmers in the area, and grew up on the family farm outside Älmhult.
‘What else do we know?’ Bäckström asked. Six years old when he arrived from deepest Africa, and probably only someone like Brundin could work out the sorts of things he learned there. This just gets better, he thought.
‘Decent grades – nothing outstanding, but good enough for someone like him to get into police college,’ Adolfsson said. ‘If you get what I mean, boss.’
‘So what are his interests, then?’ Bäckström gave von Essen a warning glance as he sat there looking up at the ceiling.
‘He’s got a weakness for the ladies, and he’s evidently brilliant at football,’ Adolfsson said.
‘Plays in the college team,’ von Essen added. ‘Supposed to be their best player. So although he prefers Roland, everyone just calls him Ronaldo, presumably after that Brazilian who plays professionally.’ Von Essen looked as if he preferred rather more cultured activities.
‘Everyone calls him Ronaldo,’ Bäckström said slowly, and because the penny from the diary had already dropped inside his head, the whole room was suddenly tingling now. ‘Okay, this is what we’re going to do, lads.’ To emphasize the point he leaned over his desk and looked them in the eyes one at a time.
‘Number one,’ he said, holding up a stubby index finger, ‘not a word about this to anyone but me. This building’s leaking like a fucking sieve. Number two, I want you to find out everything you can about him and his contact with Linda. Without anyone working out what you’re doing. Number three, don’t do anything that could alarm him. Leave him alone. Don’t try to track him down, because we’re going to find him anyway.’ When it’s time, he thought.
‘Understood, boss,’ Adolfsson said.
‘Sure,’ von Essen said.
As soon as Adolfsson and von Essen left, he called in Knutsson and Thorén. He explained what it was about, and how they were going to proceed.
‘Not a problem for me,’ Knutsson said.
‘It’ll be nice not to have to read everything we’re doing in the papers,’ Thorén agreed.
‘Okay, let’s get going.’ Finally, we’re getting somewhere, Bäckström thought.
‘You don’t think he could have taken off already?’ Knutsson said. ‘If it is him, I mean.’
‘Bearing in mind that he doesn’t seem to be at home and isn’t answering his mobile,’ Thorén added.
‘And that’s why I thought we could start by taking a look at his call register,’ Bäckström said. Fucking morons.
A good boss must be able to delegate, Bäckström thought, putting his feet up on his desk as soon as he was alone in the room. And he must be able to make decisions as well. Like picking the right automated message for his phone, sneaking back to his hotel room, having a cold beer and spending a couple of hours in the land of nod. In an emergency, if everything kicked off, his faithful associates would just have to call him. After all, he was their boss.
29
AFTER THE MEETING on Thursday morning everything was looking very promising. The business of collecting DNA samples in Växjö and the surrounding district was still going better than expected. Almost three hundred men had volunteered to provide samples, and about half of them had been discounted already. And the investigation into Linda’s classmate Erik ‘Ronaldo’ Löfgren had got going nicely. Adolfsson had already called Bäckström to say that he and von Essen had got hold of a fair amount of good information that they would present later that day. Even Hans and Fritz seemed to have made a bit of progress.
‘I think we’ve worked out that business of the football match,’ Knutsson said.
‘Not with anyone in this building, I hope?’ Bäckström said.
‘Absolutely not,’ Thorén said, looking almost shocked.
‘That would be stupid. We checked with one of our own experts,’ Knutsson explained. ‘With an officer we both know and trust.’
According to the officer in National Crime’s information division, 28-year-old living legend Ronaldo had acquitted himself with honour on Saturday 17 May when he and his teammates at Real Madrid played a La Liga match against their sworn arch-enemies, FC Barcelona. But he hadn’t scored three goals. He scored one, and set up another, and after the match he was picked by the international television audience as man of the match, as on so many occasions before.