by Leif Persson
‘Lewin and the others are working on it. I’m sure they’ll find it in the end.’
‘I suppose so. Only I’ve already done it.’ He passed her the photograph he had been given by the victim’s father. That made you sit up and take notice, you bitter little bitch, he thought with delight as he watched her stare at the picture in her hand.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘The girl in the middle is our murder victim. To her left is her mum, and on the right is our perpetrator. The reason they all look so happy and relaxed is that the picture was taken at a midsummer party out at the victim’s father’s estate approximately three years ago. Apparently Månsson was getting his regular exercise on top of the victim’s mother. Why he’d want to kill the daughter is still a bit hazy, but I’m sure her mother could help with the details if you bring her in.’
‘You got this from Linda’s father,’ Holt said, more as a statement of fact than a question.
‘I got it from an anonymous source. Well, if there’s anything else you need any help with, just give me a call.’
‘Thanks,’ Holt said. ‘I promise I’ll be in touch if anything interesting comes up.’
As soon as Bäckström was safely concealed behind the door of his hotel room, he counted the contents of the brown envelope he had never received. The same result both times, so it was probably correct. The bastard must be rolling in money, he thought, once he had stopped counting.
Then he packed his belongings and put his three remaining chilled beers and the bottle of malt whisky in a little rucksack at the top, as a bit of simple sustenance on the journey for an exhausted police officer. When he handed his key in at reception he took the opportunity to pass on some thoughts about the service offered in the hotel.
‘Try to sort out the people who do the laundry for you,’ Bäckström said. ‘And get the bar staff to speed up a bit. And fire the blind bastards working in the kitchen.’
The receptionist promised to have all this sorted before his next visit, and wished him and Rogersson a pleasant journey.
80
Stockholm, Monday 25 August
ON THE WAY home Rogersson had sat behind the wheel taking care of the simple, manual tasks while Bäckström lay stretched out on the back seat, having drunk his beers while they were still chilled and then gone on to sample the fine malt whisky. Every so often he put his hand inside his jacket pocket and let his fingertips play over the contents of the brown envelope while he daydreamed about the newspaper headlines he could see in front of him. The man who solved the Linda murder, Bäckström thought with a deep sigh of contentment. Just before Nyköping he had switched to dreaming properly, enjoying the Warrior’s Well-Deserved Rest until Rogersson pulled up outside the door of the building he lived in on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. As he had done so many times before after completing a mission, Detective Superintendent Bäckström of the National Crime Unit had returned home in triumph.
As a result, the following morning it was a good while before he realized that the bastard Lapp on the other side of the desk had entirely other ideas. No flowers, no cake, not even a basic cup of coffee, even though it was only eight o’clock in the morning and he had had to get up in the middle of the night to have time to shower, brush his teeth, buy throat sweets and prepare a suitable response to his supreme leader’s heartfelt thanks for his efforts. What the hell’s going on? What on earth is this police force coming to? he thought.
Johansson was entirely uninterested in the case. The murder of Linda Wallin and how Bäckström had managed to get all the pieces to slot into place, against all the odds, by using a tried and tested combination of routine, hard work, fingertip sensitivity and guile. Instead he had banged on about a load of mysterious expenses, cash withdrawals, porn films added to the bill for Rogersson’s room, excessive overtime and all manner of irrelevancies which all the so-called experts around him had messed up, misunderstood and laid the blame for on him.
‘You’ll have to deal with this directly with the finance office,’ Johansson concluded with a stormy expression. ‘If you have a word with my secretary, she’s arranged a time for you to see them straight away.’
‘With all due respect, boss, I’m actually a policeman, not some number-cruncher,’ Bäckström objected. ‘And all those things that other people—’
‘I was just getting to that,’ Johansson interrupted, opening the next file on his vast desk. ‘It’s about the complaint that was filed against you last week.’
‘Do you mean the complaint with no complainant, boss?’ Bäckström said cunningly.
‘I wasn’t aware that there was more than one complaint,’ Johansson said dryly. ‘The case I’m thinking of concerns sexual harassment, and the complainant’s name is Carin Ågren. She filed the complaint herself. It was received on Thursday, and an interview was conducted with her that same day.’
‘So how come I haven’t seen it?’ Bäckström said in an aggrieved tone.
‘The simple explanation is probably that they haven’t had time. There’s no need to worry, Bäckström. I’ve spoken to them, and they’ve promised to get in touch with you some time today.’
‘So what does she say?’ Bäckström asked, glowering coldly at Johansson and the report he was holding in his hand.
‘According to her, you’re supposed to have waggled your little sausage at her. You can go through it in more detail with the internal investigation unit.’
What the hell’s the man saying? Bäckström thought. What little sausage?
Apart from that, there wasn’t much to add, according to Johansson. The finance department would talk to Bäckström about the expenses, their lawyer would talk to him about the legal aspects, the complaint against him would be dealt with in the usual manner, and Bäckström’s immediate superior would take care of the practical details. As far as Bäckström himself was concerned, just one decision remained: whether or not he would prefer to be on holiday, on sick leave, or on leave of absence during the investigation into his conduct.
‘Sick leave?’ Bäckström said hotly. ‘I’m not the slightest bit sick. I’ve never felt better. This sounds like something I should talk to the union about.’
‘Good luck, Bäckström,’ Johansson said.
81
BETWEEN MONDAY 25 August and Friday 12 September, Acting Detective Superintendent Anna Holt conducted a total of twelve interviews with Bengt Månsson, some long, some shorter. Deputy Chief District Prosecutor Katarina Wibom and Acting Detective Inspector Lisa Mattei took turns to sit in as the official witness. The first interview was the shortest, and Anna Holt was on her own with Bengt Månsson.
‘My name is Anna Holt, and I’m a superintendent in the National Crime Unit,’ Anna Holt said. And I’m forty-three years old, Holt thought. Single mother of Nicke, now twenty-one, fairly happy with life in general, even if a few things could be better, and the future will no doubt reveal whether there’s any need to get into any of that.
‘Then maybe you can explain to me how I come to be sitting here?’ Månsson said.
‘You’re here because you’re suspected of having murdered Linda Wallin.’
‘Yes, that woman Wibom already told me that. That’s what’s so grotesque. I’ve got no idea what you’re even talking about.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘Surely I ought to remember? If I’d murdered someone? Surely that’s not the sort of thing that you can just forget?’
‘I’m sure such things have happened,’ Anna Holt said. ‘Do you know what? I suggest we leave that bit for now.’
‘So why else would we be sitting here?’
‘Perhaps you could tell me how you got to know Linda,’ Holt said. ‘Start with the very first time you met her.’
‘Sure,’ Månsson said. ‘If that will help. I’m happy to tell you how I got to know Linda. It’s certainly not a secret.’
The interview was suspended after forty-three minutes, according to the protocol, and just half an hour late
r a curious Katarina Wibom just happened to be passing Holt’s office.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked.
‘It’s going exactly as I planned and completely according to my expectations,’ Anna Holt said. ‘He doesn’t remember anything of the event itself, but considering what happened anything else would have been something of a surprise, to put it mildly. He’s told me how he got to know Linda’s mother and Linda. And he talks to me. He’s even pleasant. Accommodating, considering the circumstances. Which is considerably more than one might usually expect. Perhaps you’d like to hear what he said?’
‘If you’ve got time,’ the prosecutor said.
The first time Månsson met Linda’s mother was at a conference in May about three years ago. The subject of the meeting had been various projects with a social and cultural focus, managed by the local council and aimed primarily at young people from an immigrant background. Lotta Ericson was there in her capacity as a high-school teacher with a lot of non-Swedish pupils. He himself had been project manager on behalf of the cultural department of the council. They had evidently taken a liking to each other during the first coffee break. They went out for dinner together a couple of days later, and the evening had ended in Månsson’s bed in his flat on Frövägen. Things had carried on in the usual way, and the first time he met Linda was at the midsummer celebrations out at her father’s manor house outside Växjö about a month later.
‘What happened after that?’ the prosecutor asked eagerly.
‘I don’t actually know,’ Anna Holt said. ‘I suggested we might take a break there and continue tomorrow, and because he didn’t object that’s what we did.’
‘That was smart.’
‘I’m not so sure. I got the distinct impression that he prefers women who play hard to get. So I’m trying to appear slightly distant.’
‘Is he hitting on you?’
‘Well, he’s certainly trying to make a case for himself. I dare say the future will reveal how our relationship develops.’
‘Goodness, how exciting,’ the prosecutor said, shivering in anticipation.
‘Yes, it’s always rather exciting,’ Anna Holt agreed.
The day Anna Holt began her interviews with Månsson there was a press conference, one which turned out to be the most well attended in Växjö’s history. At the centre of the platform sat the legal head of the preliminary investigation, Deputy Chief District Prosecutor Katarina Wibom, flanked by Detective Superintendent Bengt Olsson and the press officer of the Växjö Police. On the far left sat a reluctant Jan Lewin, who wasn’t asked a single question but still ended up on television because of his expressive body language. He had been edited into a lengthy item on the main television news. Lewin had twisted his neck in a very odd way which suggested that he was extremely uncomfortable, and for some reason he had been used to illustrate Detective Superintendent Olsson’s response to the only straight question Olsson had been asked.
First there had been a torrent of questions about their perpetrator, most of which the prosecutor had handled while the press officer did her best to maintain some sort of order among the journalists, and to pick questions as fairly as possible from the ones shouting loudest. Without going into any detail, the prosecutor anticipated that she would be able to charge him formally on grounds of reasonable suspicion the following day, or on Wednesday at the latest. They were still awaiting the results of certain forensic analysis, and beyond that she had no comment. And certainly not about the person who had been remanded in custody as a suspect.
After the routine follow-up questions about him and who he was, they had soon given up. There wasn’t a journalist in the room who didn’t already know his name, where he lived, and where he worked. His photograph, name and address had already been made public on the internet, and Dagens Nyheter and the four biggest evening papers would all be following suit the next day. The hunt was on for relatives, friends, acquaintances, neighbours and anyone and everyone who had anything at all to contribute, true or not, and no matter what.
So they had let go of the prosecutor and moved on to the police, going back to the beginning again. To start with, Bengt Olsson was asked to comment on the introductory phase of the investigation, but for some reason he had chosen to reply about something else. The question concerned the criticism that the Chancellor of Justice and the Justice Ombudsman had levelled at the decision to collect DNA samples from almost a thousand innocent Växjö citizens. According to Olsson, the recent reduction in the number of officers working on the case from approximately thirty to about a dozen illustrated that they had moved on to an entirely new phase of the investigation.
Was it the DNA samples that had led them to the perpetrator, the reporter from the main television news asked. No details there, either, but Detective Superintendent Olsson was at least able to say that DNA technology had played a decisive role in the final stages of their detective work. And it was here, for some reason, that Lewin and his skinny neck had made their appearance on television.
As soon as the press conference was over, Lewin returned to his office to try to forget what had just happened, and instead carry on with the hitherto fruitless search for the exclusive sweater that was the probable source of their blue fibres. Sandberg’s idea of asking the retired pilot hadn’t been entirely useless. Some years before he had actually bought just such a sweater in an airport terminal. A special offer, reduced price, and to top it all in Hong Kong of all places, where you could sometimes come across the most exclusive brands for next to nothing.
‘If I remember rightly, it was reduced from nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars to ninety-nine,’ he said.
Then he had been shown pictures of various sweaters, and had immediately picked out the pale blue one, V-necked and long-sleeved.
‘It was just like that one. Brilliant quality. Cool in the summer, warm in the winter, my favourite sweater all year round,’ the pilot said.
What had happened to it? One day he just couldn’t find it, and that remained the case to this day.
Might he by any chance have given it to his younger daughter’s boyfriend at the time? Definitely not, according to the pilot. The only thing he would have given him was a kick up the backside. And if he’d known then what he knew now, he’d have made a good job of it. As far as the rest of Bengt Månsson’s dealings were concerned, he referred Sandberg to his daughter, although he would appreciate it if she could leave her alone for a couple of days, until she’d come to terms with what had happened. During the period they were talking about, he had tried to limit his own dealings with Månsson to the absolute minimum required by politeness. The great mystery, in the pilot’s opinion, was that certain women, no matter how talented, beautiful or delightful they might be – like his younger daughter, for instance – still didn’t seem to understand the first thing about certain men.
‘Might Månsson have borrowed, or even . . . well, stolen your sweater?’ Sandberg had asked. She was already looking forward to meeting the pilot’s daughter for a really long conversation about unfathomable men.
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ the pilot snorted. ‘I always thought he was capable of all manner of things.’
‘How do you mean?’ Anna Sandberg asked.
Well, not murder, exactly. When he and his family had been informed about the matter late the previous evening they had all been extremely shocked, and still were, but he had worked out what sort of person Månsson was fairly early on.
‘Do you have anything in particular in mind?’ Sandberg asked.
The first time he had realized what sort of man his daughter was living with was when she was seven months pregnant and he had bumped into Bengt Månsson with another woman in a restaurant in Växjö. Månsson had actually had the nerve to come over and introduce her as a colleague from work.
Utterly unreliable, notoriously unfaithful, told lies about absolutely everything, useless with money, made no distinction between what was his and what was other peop
le’s, was incapable of looking after his own child and showed no desire to do so, and seemed largely to use the pilot’s daughter as an excuse to borrow her father’s old Saab. The great mystery was still the fact that it had taken her two years to realize what he himself had started to suspect from day one.
‘I’m sure he stole my sweater,’ the pilot said. ‘I’ve suspected him all along. And that was probably the least of it.’
However, the search of Bengt Månsson’s flat that was currently under way had failed to find the sweater. If it had ever been there, then it wasn’t there any more. Nor had they found much else that was of interest. Månsson’s flat was surprisingly tidy. Considering the neighbours’ unanimous testimony about the stream of young women that had passed through during the years he had been living there, they had left surprisingly few traces behind them. Most interesting were the things that weren’t there. For instance, a month ago Månsson had thrown away the old hard drive in his computer and bought a new one.
‘He must have got rid of the sweater already,’ Enoksson said to Lewin. ‘If you ask me, I reckon he ditched it when he was getting shot of the car.’
After the conversation Lewin made a note about the pay-as-you-go mobile phone that Månsson had called on the morning Linda was murdered. ‘Who was the last call made to?’ Lewin wrote on the to-do list on his computer.
82
‘TELL ME ABOUT the second time you met Linda.’ It was the start of the second interview with Månsson. As Holt asked the question she leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, with an interested smile, curious eyes . . .
‘Well, the first time was at that midsummer party out at her dad’s, when I was—’
‘I know. You told me yesterday,’ Holt interrupted. ‘But what about the second time?’
The second time had been a complete coincidence, according to Månsson. It was a month later. They had bumped into each other in town. Not unusual if you lived in Växjö. They had started talking, and went to have a cup of coffee. Before they split up he had given Linda his phone number.