by Leif Persson
‘What did I say?’ Löfgren said triumphantly, patting his lawyer on the arm. ‘Five minutes, not two. What did I say?’
‘Excuse me for interrupting, gentlemen,’ Lewin said, looking at Rogersson for some reason. ‘Have I got it right if I say that you’re refusing to give the name of the person you claim could provide you with an alibi?’
‘Good that you finally get it,’ Löfgren said. ‘Absolutely right. That’s actually your job, not mine.’
‘Well, it’s good to know that we agree on something, at least,’ Lewin said. ‘In that case I would also like to inform you that the time is now 14.05 on Friday 25 July, and that the prosecutor has decided to remand you in custody. This interview is thereby suspended, and will recommence at a later point. The prosecutor has also decreed that we should take your fingerprints and a DNA sample.’
‘Hold on a moment,’ the lawyer said quickly. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if I could have a few moments to discuss matters alone with my client, so that we can try to find a more practical solution to this little problem?’
‘I suggest that you take the matter up directly with the prosecutor,’ Lewin said.
‘Bloody hell, Lewin, you were suddenly in a hell of a hurry,’ Rogersson said sourly five minutes later when they were alone in the room.
‘So would you have been,’ Lewin said.
‘What for?’ Rogersson said. ‘If you’d given me another hour I’d have got the name of his so-called alibi out of him, if there is one, and got him to stick the cotton-bud in his mouth.’
‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ Lewin said. ‘That we’d end up having to deal with a hell of a lot of paperwork.’
‘I don’t actually understand what you mean,’ Rogersson said.
‘Let me explain,’ Lewin said.
‘I can hardly wait,’ Rogersson said with a crooked smile, leaning back and making himself comfortable. ‘Bloody hell,’ he grinned five minutes later. ‘When are you thinking of telling Bäckström?’
‘Now,’ Lewin said. ‘As soon as I can get hold of him.’
‘I want to be there,’ Rogersson said. ‘Then we can both try to hold the fat little bastard down before he starts attacking the furniture.’
This is going to be a wonderful day, Bäckström thought. Only ten minutes before he had seen Adolfsson and von Essen go past in the corridor on either side of a crestfallen Löfgren, clearly heading towards the cells. As if that weren’t enough, Thorén had turned up in his office with the results of the check on committee member Bengt Karlsson, from Växjö Men Against Violence to Women.
‘This Karlsson looks like he used to be a really nasty piece of work. Not a very nice person at all,’ Thorén said.
‘How do you mean?’ Bäckström said. Not that I know what I’m going to do with him, seeing as the black guy’s already locked up, he thought.
‘He’s got a total of eleven offences on record,’ Thorén said. ‘And his speciality seems to have been abusing women he was seeing.’
‘Right man in the right job,’ Bäckström declared happily. And definitely the right man to use to take the wind out of little Lo and that idiot Olsson’s sails, he thought.
‘The only problem is that the most recent entry is nine years old,’ Thorén said.
‘I suppose he’s learned his lesson,’ Bäckström said. ‘He probably wraps a towel round his fist before he hits them now. Dig up all the shit you can find,’ he concluded, seeing Lewin and Rogersson standing in the doorway looking like two egg-bound hens. ‘Come in, lads, come in. Young Thorén here was just leaving.’
‘So, tell me,’ he said eagerly as soon as Thorén had closed the door behind him. ‘Did you get him to talk himself into a corner? I saw Adolfsson and that stuck-up poof he drags around with him taking him off to the cells.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, Bäckström,’ Lewin said. ‘But both Rogersson and I are fairly convinced that Löfgren isn’t the man we’re looking for.’
‘I love it!’ Bäckström said, chuckling happily. ‘So what the hell’s he been locked up for, then?’
‘I’ll get to that,’ Lewin said. ‘But you should probably start getting used to the idea that he’s innocent.’
‘What for?’ Bäckström said, leaning back in his chair.
‘He’s got an alibi,’ Rogersson said.
‘An alibi,’ Bäckström snorted. ‘Who the fuck would give him an alibi? Martin Luther King?’
‘He doesn’t want to say,’ Lewin said. ‘So we thought we’d lock him up before he had time to change his mind.’
‘But Lewin’s worked it out anyway,’ Rogersson said happily.
‘So who are we talking about, then?’ Bäckström said, leaning forward and peering at them through narrow eyes.
‘We think this is what happened,’ Lewin said. ‘Young Löfgren leaves the Town Hotel at quarter to four in the morning. He makes a big deal out of the fact that he’s leaving alone, to go and get some sleep. He stops and waits a couple of blocks away for the woman he secretly arranged to meet while they were inside the club. She shows up just after four, and they both go back to Löfgren’s flat and get on with the sort of thing people usually get on with in circumstances like that.’
‘So who is she?’ Bäckström said, even though he had already guessed the answer.
‘Our colleague Anna Sandberg, according to a witness that we’ve spoken to,’ Lewin said.
‘I’ll kill the little bitch!’ Bäckström roared, getting up from his chair with a jolt. ‘God help me, I’ll—’
‘No you won’t,’ Rogersson said, shaking his head. ‘You’re going to sit down, nice and quietly, before you give yourself a stroke or something worse.’
Whatever the hell that might be, Bäckström thought, sinking back on to his chair. She has to die.
Trainee police officer Löfgren was allowed to leave the holding cell in Växjö police station before the door had even had time to close properly. An hour or so later he was in the car with his lawyer, on his way back to his parents’ summer house on Öland. He had also sworn to the prosecutor that he would be there for the foreseeable future, and would answer his phone if the Växjö Police needed to talk to him for any reason. The prosecutor had even given him a few words of advice before he left. Without going into detail, she had suggested that he might like to take some time to think about his plans for his future career. Löfgren had left behind him a set of fingerprints, a cotton-bud containing his DNA, and, as an extra bonus, a couple of strands of hair. All of it in all likelihood completely worthless to the current murder investigation.
While the local custody officer took care of the practical details concerning Löfgren’s prints and cotton-bud, Lewin was busy tidying up after himself and his colleagues. First he had exacted a promise of silence from those most closely involved in Bäckström’s secret operation, and then he had sat down with officer Sandberg to have a serious chat with her.
Bäckström had eventually calmed down. The worst of his anger had passed even though he was still up to his neck in the wreckage of the promising case that his useless – not to say criminally incompetent – colleagues had utterly ruined. For once Bäckström felt deeply miserable, because he had been so sorely and unfairly maltreated. He was surrounded by idiots, and it was high time he found something better, he thought as he stepped out into the shimmering heat outside the police station, on his way to the soft bed in his air-conditioned hotel room, with a stop to buy some drink on the way.
He began by forcing down the two chilled lagers that were already in his minibar, mainly to make room for the ones he had just bought. However, the customary pleasant sense of wellbeing failed to settle over his mind and body. Things might just be so bad that that little Sandberg bitch had sabotaged not only his investigation, but also his inner peace, he thought. In the absence of any better options, he switched on the television and lay there half watching a cultural discussion programme which the listings said would deal with the murder of Linda Wallin, but was actually just
the usual poofs blowing smoke up each other’s arses.
Shipwrecked-Micke, famous from both ordinary Shipwrecked and Celebrity Shipwrecked, and a second-year student at the Institute of Drama in Malmö, had applied for funding for a drama-documentary about Linda’s murder. The cultural department of Växjö Council had turned him down flat, but he had managed to find a private investor willing to support the project. The script was pretty much ready, and the role of Linda would be played by a young woman called Carina Lundberg, better known to most people in Sweden as Big Brother-Nina. She had taken part in Big Brother and in Young Entrepreneurs on the new financial channel, had spent some time at theatre school, and was now making a name for herself in the cultural offerings of the state-funded broadcaster. She and Micke had known each other for a long time, and she trusted her director implicitly, even though the role of murder victim was far from easy. She was particularly anxious about the lesbian scenes, especially the ones in which she and her female co-star would be wearing police uniform.
What the fuck’s she saying? Bäckström thought, turning the volume up and sitting up on the bed.
‘Of course, a lot of young female police officers are dykes,’ Nina explained. ‘Almost all of them, actually. I’ve got a friend in the police, and she told me.’
‘I’ve set it up as a classic triangle drama,’ Micke explained. ‘You’ve got Linda and the woman she loves, who’s also a police officer, called Paula, and then there’s the man, the killer, full of hate and jealousy and rejection. His castration anxiety. It’s Strindberg, it’s Norén, it’s . . . classic male drama, basically.’
‘Yes, it certainly sounds like it,’ the presenter chimed in enthusiastically. ‘And of course that’s what this is all about. Another castrated man.’
Boiling these cretins down to make glue would be doing them a favour, Bäckström thought, switching off the television just as his phone rang, even though he had made it very clear to reception that he didn’t want any calls.
‘Yes,’ Bäckström grunted.
Fucking hell, he thought as he hung up.
Bengt Karlsson, committee member of Växjö Men Against Violence to Women, had piqued Detective Inspector Peter Thorén’s interest to the point where, even though it meant breaking the promise of confidentiality he had given Bäckström, he had felt obliged to let Knutsson into the secret. Mind you, it probably doesn’t matter much, considering what Bäckström was doing to that poor student, Thorén thought.
Bengt Karlsson was forty-two years old. Between the ages of twenty and thirty-three he had collected a total of eleven convictions for violent behaviour against seven different women of his acquaintance aged between thirteen and forty-seven when the crimes were committed. The convictions were for aggravated abuse, physical abuse, unlawful threats, unlawful compulsion, aggravated sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and sexual harassment. These had led to Karlsson’s being given seven different terms in prison, totalling four and a half years, of which he had served approximately half.
‘An interesting character,’ Knutsson agreed when he had read through the summary Thorén had produced from all the various registers and databases and electronic paraphernalia that the judicial system had at its disposal these days.
‘But why does he stop?’ Thorén asked. ‘The last conviction was nine years ago. Since then there hasn’t been a single complaint against him.’
‘Maybe he changed his modus operandi?’ Knutsson suggested. ‘Do you remember that thief who moved on to blowing up cash machines? He must have managed about a dozen before we worked it out. And all the while he was going round schools giving lectures about how he’d managed to break away from his criminal past.’
‘He might have moved away from women he knows, ones he lives with or has gone out with, to women he doesn’t know at all?’ Thorén said, as if he were thinking out loud.
‘Quite possible,’ Knutsson said. ‘Extremely possible, in fact. But there’s something else that’s struck me. Do you remember that lecture out at the Police Academy back in the spring, from that FBI officer?’
‘I remember the one,’ Thorén said. ‘Nothing but sex crimes. That was the FBI bloke’s speciality, if I remember rightly. Seemed to be pretty much the only thing in his head. Sex crimes.’
‘Then maybe you remember what he said about the sort of sex offender who plays cat and mouse with the people trying to investigate him? Who gets a really big kick out of standing very close to the people chasing him?’
‘Not really,’ Thorén said. Could it really be that simple, he thought, and at that moment he felt the tingling sensation that his older colleague Detective Superintendent Bäckström had felt about trainee police officer Erik Roland Löfgren.
‘We need a DNA sample,’ Knutsson said. ‘That man definitely has to be tested. God knows how we’re supposed to manage that without the rest of the committee and Superintendent Olsson finding out.’
‘It’s already sorted,’ Thorén said, not without a certain degree of pride. ‘It turned out that a sample of Karlsson’s DNA was already on record down in Malmö. He got caught up in some routine search in conjunction with the Jeanette murder five or six years ago. Mind you, that one’s still unsolved, so he must have been okay.’
‘So why didn’t they get rid of the sample?’ Knutsson asked.
‘That’s not the sort of thing you throw away just like that,’ Thorén said indignantly. ‘The National Forensics Lab obviously discarded their sample, because they had to, but our colleagues in Malmö kept a copy of the results in their files relating to the case. I’ve already got hold of it and faxed it through to the National Lab.’
Bäckström was still lying in bed, with a couple of extra pillows stuffed behind his back, looking like a perfectly ordinary overweight patient in a cardiac ward. She deserves no better, the little bitch, he thought, as he gestured towards the minibar with a fat, limp hand.
‘If you’d like a chilled lager, Anna, there’s one in the minibar,’ he said. Suck on that, you criminal little bitch, he thought.
‘You haven’t got anything else?’ Anna Sandberg asked. ‘I’ve finished work for the day, and I’m staying over in town. I could do with something stronger.’
‘Whisky, vodka, on the shelf over there,’ Bäckström said, pointing. What the fuck’s going on?
‘Thanks,’ Anna said, pouring a measure almost worthy of Rogersson himself in her glass. ‘Do you want one?’ she asked, waving Bäckström’s own bottle of whisky enquiringly.
What the fuck’s going on? Bäckström thought again. First she sabotages my investigation, then she comes bursting into my room, and a minute later she’s offering me my own whisky.
‘Maybe just a little one,’ he said.
Police Constable Anna Sandberg had come to apologize to Bäckström. She had made a damn fool of herself – her own words – and Bäckström was the first stop on her hike to Canossa. In so far as she had anything to say in her own defence, it was that Löfgren had promised over the phone that he would behave like a gentleman and immediately provide a DNA sample. Entirely voluntarily, and obviously completely unnecessarily, but, in light of what had happened, the simplest solution for both of them.
The reason she hadn’t been to see Bäckström to lay her cards on the table when Löfgren, in spite of his promise, had refused to come up with the goods was simply yet another example of human frailty. Partly because she had kept hoping that Löfgren would come to his senses, or at the very least help her out of a tricky situation, but largely because she had no idea what Bäckström and his colleagues were planning. Her chat with Lewin had changed all that.
‘There are quite a few people I need to talk to. You, Bäckström, and Olsson, and my husband. Not least my husband,’ she said, shaking her head and taking a deep gulp from her glass.
What? Bäckström thought. Women really aren’t right in the head. ‘Are you stupid? Surely you’re not thinking of telling Olsson about this?’
Evidently that was exactl
y what she was thinking. It was just as well to take the bull by the horns, get to grips with the shame and, if it came to it, leave the police force and do something else instead.
‘That’s none of my business,’ Bäckström said. ‘But I can’t see why you want to tell Olsson.’
‘Before he works it out for himself,’ Sandberg said sternly. ‘I’m not going to give him that satisfaction. Nor anyone else, for that matter.’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ Bäckström said, ‘but I’m talking about Detective Superintendent Bengt Olsson. The Ritual Killer detective from the backwoods of Småland, who ends up deep in troubled thought every time he gets up from the toilet and finds he’s holding a piece of paper in his hand.’
‘So you don’t think I should tell Olsson?’ Sandberg asked, suddenly looking much happier.
‘No,’ Bäckström said, shaking his head. ‘Nor anyone else. Lewin and Rogersson have already talked to anyone who knows anything, so they’ll just shake their little heads if you try to talk to them. Forget it.’ Women are just crazy, he thought.
‘What about my husband?’ Sandberg asked. ‘He’s also in the force, but of course you know that.’
‘Does he get turned on by hearing stuff like this, then?’ Bäckström asked with a look of mild distaste. But, considering her husband was a neighbourhood officer, there was every reason to fear the worst, he thought.
‘I find that very hard to believe,’ Sandberg said.
‘Well, then,’ Bäckström said with a shrug. ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you.’
Anna Sandberg nodded thoughtfully. ‘Can I have another?’ she asked, indicating her empty glass.
‘Sure,’ Bäckström said, holding out his own. ‘Get me one as well. Just a small one.’
It’s a shame little Lo isn’t here. She could have picked up a few tricks from an old professional, Bäckström thought. Sandberg already looked like a different, better person. Even her tits had perked up and were starting to look like their old selves. After just a couple of stiff drinks and few wise words, he thought.
‘Well, bollocks to all that, Sandberg,’ Bäckström said, raising his glass. ‘No one becomes a police officer. It’s just something you are, and a real police officer never shops a colleague.’ Even if it’s a woman who should never have been allowed to join the force in the first place.