Linda - As In The Linda Murder

by Leif Persson

  After she had finished exercising, Anna had joined her in the shade to do some reading. With the help of telephone records, witness statements and various forensic information, Lewin had constructed a timeline covering the perpetrator’s movements during the twenty-four hours in which he raped and strangled Linda Wallin. Anna needed it for her impending interviews, and she intended to learn every single time and every tiny detail by heart.

  From about 18.00 on Thursday 3 July, Månsson had been at home in his flat on Frövägen in the district of Öster, approximately one kilometre from the centre of Växjö. Just after 22.00 he had been visited by their witness, who had refused to have sex. She had left him at half past ten in the evening, and as soon as she had walked out of the door Månsson had started making phone calls.

  Between half past ten and midnight he had made a total of eleven calls from the landline in his flat. All of them to female acquaintances. Nine of them hadn’t been home, and he didn’t seem to have left any messages on any answering machines. One had spoken to him but couldn’t see him because she was already busy. Another had answered but had slammed the phone down when she realized who it was.

  Månsson had headed into town, and because the documentation of the next two hours was based upon various witness statements it was far from as solid and precise as the details gained from an ordinary landline, or even a mobile phone. Soon after midnight Månsson had said hello to one of the most common sort of witness at that time of day, a neighbour who was on his way back into the building after walking his dog. The witness was certain of the date, time and person in question. And that Månsson had been heading towards the centre of town on foot. Anna couldn’t know it, but Lewin had sighed as he noted what the witness had said in his report.

  After that there were two statements which indicated that Månsson had visited at least one pub in Växjö. The bartender who had served him a beer at about half past twelve, and again one and a half hours later, had recognized him from previous visits, and on this particular occasion he had noted that Månsson had no female company, and that he appeared ‘agitated and wound up’. Lewin had sighed twice, and then noted the witness’s information in his report. The next witness claimed to have observed Månsson at another watering-hole in the vicinity of the first some time between one o’clock and two o’clock in the morning. Because he had recognized Månsson in the pictures he had seen in the paper – ‘I’m absolutely certain it was him’ – Lewin had given an extra sigh this time.

  At quarter past two things improved significantly. That was when Månsson had called Lotta Ericson’s old number on his mobile from somewhere in the centre of Växjö. And because Lewin had both met and listened to the witness, and had seen the printout listing the calls with his own eyes, he hadn’t needed to sigh at all.

  Just after three o’clock in the morning, according to their own analysis of the murder of Linda Wallin, he had appeared at the building where Linda’s mother lived. Linda’s car was parked outside, and he must have recognized it. Månsson had probably acted on impulse and gone inside the building in the hope of being able to see Linda. Nothing odd about that, seeing as the coded lock had been broken for the past couple of days.

  Then he had probably gone wrong, for the same reason as he rang the wrong number, and gone to the door of Linda’s mother’s old flat at the top of the building. He went downstairs again when the dogs started to bark, and carefully checked the list of occupants in the entrance hall. There he saw an L. Ericson, with the right initial and the right spelling, took a chance, rang the bell, and was let in by Linda, who had just got home.

  The latter parts of this were all speculation, but seeing as they were Lewin’s own speculations he had no problems with their credibility. On the contrary, his assumptions provided the basis for further conclusions which he had inserted into the log as notes. That Månsson hadn’t visited Linda’s mother since she had moved, three years before. That she probably hadn’t informed him of that fact. That Linda didn’t seem to have told him either, and that his visit to see Linda was spontaneous, not premeditated.

  Between approximately quarter past three and five o’clock that morning Månsson had been with his victim at the scene of the crime. At approximately five o’clock he had jumped out of the bedroom window, and in all likelihood walked home on foot. He ought to have been back home before half past five.

  Then he had packed a few essentials in a sports bag and decided to leave Växjö. Exactly why remained unclear. He already had tickets to see the Gyllene Tider concert on Öland that evening, but a great deal had happened since he got hold of them. A half-hearted attempt to flee? An attempt to get himself an alibi?

  That was probably when he decided to steal the pilot’s old Saab, Lewin thought. Taking the bus at such a sensitive time didn’t seem terribly advisable. Better to travel independently.

  So he sets off on foot from his home on Frövägen to the car park on Högtorpsvägen, one kilometre from his flat. At some time around six in the morning he is observed by the 92-year-old witness, steals the car and drives off. All entirely possible, since a brisk walk would get him from his flat to the car park in time.

  At approximately quarter past six he sets off towards Kalmar, and some ten kilometres from the town he decides to get rid of the car. By then it ought to have been just before eight o’clock, assuming he stuck to the speed limit, Lewin thought.

  Getting rid of the car shouldn’t have taken long, and then he must have made his way to Kalmar on foot. No one had seen him catch a bus or said they had given him a lift. Then he spent the rest of Friday either in Kalmar with the nurse or on Öland at the concert, until midnight or just after. They hadn’t managed to trace the young woman with whom he was believed to have left the concert, despite appeals in the media for her to contact them.

  Where he spent the rest of the weekend was unclear. But on Monday morning he was back at work in Växjö.

  ‘Jan Lewin is a very thorough man,’ Anna declared once she had finished reading.

  ‘A bit too long-winded for my taste,’ Lisa retorted. ‘And he has a terrible angsty way of conveying facts as well. I think he uses facts as a way of combating his own angst.’

  ‘Unlike Johansson, with all his stories of his own triumphs and everyone else’s idiotic failures?’ Anna said, looking curiously at Lisa.

  Not according to Lisa. Lars Martin Johansson wasn’t remotely like Jan Lewin, even though they were a similar age. Quite the contrary. Lars Martin Johansson’s stories had taught her more about police work than almost anything else she had done, read, seen or heard. Besides, he was extremely entertaining, and there was always a pedagogical point to the stories he told.

  ‘And of course they’re all true as well,’ Anna said, smiling in delight.

  Completely true, according to Lisa, and quite remarkable, in the sense that Lars Martin Johansson was one of the few people who had realized that there was a way of seeking the truth by conducting an internal dialogue with yourself. Something which Skinner, of all people, had developed in his scientific essays about introspection as a way of finding the truth and the light. And which didn’t have anything in common with our mundane and dull view of the difference between truth and lies.

  ‘Because Johansson never lies, of course,’ Anna teased.

  ‘Not in the usual way,’ Lisa said. ‘He’s not the sort. Johansson never lies to other people.’

  ‘What sort is he, then?’

  ‘Maybe he lies to himself,’ Lisa said, her voice suddenly sounding rather abrupt.

  ‘I can’t think why you don’t marry him, Lisa,’ Anna said.

  ‘He’s already married. Besides, I don’t think I’m his type,’ Lisa concluded with a sigh.

  91

  ON THE MONDAY following that weekend, Anna Holt decided to go on the offensive and confront Bengt Månsson with Lewin’s summary of what he had been up to. The friendly, listening Lisa Mattei was to be replaced by Anna Sandberg, if only to remind him of his grea
t, and only, interest in life.

  ‘How were you thinking of doing this, Anna?’ Sandberg asked.

  ‘I talk, you listen. If I want you to say something, you’ll notice in advance.’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  ‘No threats, no promises, no rush. Otherwise you can be as bitchy as you like.’

  ‘I don’t think that last bit will be too much of a problem,’ Anna Sandberg said.

  ‘Seeing as I’ve tried to be honest with you all the way through, Bengt, I thought I should show you this summary,’ Holt began, passing him a copy of Jan Lewin’s timeline.

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate that,’ Månsson said politely.

  ‘Good,’ Anna Holt said with a friendly smile. ‘Then I suggest you read it through quietly. Everything there is what we already know without having to ask you, but it would still be very interesting to hear your explanation.’

  ‘Well, of course I can see what it says,’ Månsson said five minutes later, when he had finished reading. ‘And when I see it like that I remember that I probably did meet Linda that evening . . . that night,’ he corrected. ‘I remember that to start with we sat and talked, and then we had sex with each other, on a sofa, I think it was . . . but after that I don’t remember a thing.’

  ‘You don’t remember a thing?’ Holt repeated.

  ‘It’s like a black hole,’ Månsson said.

  ‘What’s the next thing you do remember, then?’ Holt asked.

  Månsson remembered meeting an old girlfriend. In her home. She lived in Kalmar. They had spent the day having sex. They went to a concert that evening. Gyllene Tider. He remembered that. He had actually bought the tickets before midsummer, through a personal contact from work.

  After that it was all black. All he knew was that he had felt a great sense of angst. He remembered that. And he had simply walked out. Left his friend there. Left the concert. And gone home to his flat. He seemed to remember catching the bus from Kalmar to Växjö. A black hole, terrible angst, home again. He didn’t know when, but it must have been some time during the day because there were people about.

  ‘So you got home again some time on Saturday, in the middle of the day?’

  ‘If you say so.’ Månsson shrugged. ‘It’s all just a black hole.’

  ‘Is there anything you’re wondering about, Anna?’ Holt said, turning to her colleague.

  ‘So all you can remember is that you can’t remember?’ Anna Sandberg said acidly.

  ‘Yes,’ Månsson said, looking at her as if he’d only just realized she was in the room.

  ‘But you remember that you have a lapse in your memory, you’re sure about that?’

  ‘Yes. It’s all just a black hole.’

  ‘Between four o’clock on Friday morning and some time later that day, it’s all just a black hole?’

  ‘Yes,’ Månsson said. ‘Exactly. I can’t explain it.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you can,’ Sandberg agreed. ‘I’ve never heard of such a precise memory lapse before. It’s funny that you remember it so clearly, as well. That you remember what you don’t remember, I mean, and that it just happens to cover the period when you raped and strangled Linda.’

  ‘You can’t think I’d sit here and lie about something like that?’ Månsson protested.

  ‘You probably daren’t confess,’ Sandberg said with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘You’re simply too much of a coward. I suppose you’re the one we should all be feeling sorry for.’

  ‘That black hole,’ Holt said, changing the subject. ‘You couldn’t try to describe it? What does it look like?’

  Like an ordinary hole. Which made him feel terrible angst without him knowing why.

  ‘Terrible things seem to have happened when you were down in that hole,’ Sandberg pointed out. ‘How about trying to climb out of it?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Månsson said.

  ‘By telling us what you were doing down there. While you were down there.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Månsson said. ‘I just found myself there.’

  They didn’t get any further than that, even though they carried on all day. Towards the end Månsson himself had several things that he wanted to say to them. Important things. It was important that they understood them. First, he hadn’t killed Linda. They had had sex with each other. Entirely voluntarily. He hadn’t harmed her in any way.

  ‘How can you know that?’ Sandberg interrupted. ‘After all, you don’t remember anything, do you?’

  Månsson knew, even though he couldn’t remember anything. He could never do anything like that. He couldn’t even imagine contemplating anything like that.

  ‘Well, give it some thought,’ Holt suggested, and then she concluded the session.

  ‘Okay, we’ve got him inside the flat now. We’ve got him on the sofa, having sex with Linda,’ Anna Sandberg said, sounding precisely as bloodthirsty as she had been feeling all the way through.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Anna Holt said with a shrug. ‘But we’re not the ones he’s telling.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not with you,’ Sandberg said.

  ‘We’re never going to get him any further than that,’ Holt said, shaking her head. ‘He just wanted to launch the idea of his black hole.’

  ‘At least he’s admitting that he doesn’t remember.’

  ‘He’s not stupid. He’ll have learned everything that Enoksson and his colleagues came up with off by heart. His lawyer will have seen to that.’

  ‘There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about,’ Sandberg said. ‘Why doesn’t he try the other tactic? The sex game that got out of hand?’

  ‘I expect his lawyer has advised him against that in no uncertain terms,’ Holt said.

  92

  ON HIS PENULTIMATE night in Växjö, Jan Lewin dreamed of that summer when his dad taught him to ride a bicycle. The summer he got his first proper bike, a red Crescent Valiant. The summer his dad died of cancer.

  When he woke up, and emerged from the bathroom, he had to open the window to get some air. It was raining outside. A gentle rain under dark skies. And it had turned cold as well.

  What am I doing here? he thought. It’s over now. It’s time to go home.

  93

  IN THE MIDDLE of the week Jan Lewin and Eva Svanström left them. They had done their bit and were no longer needed. Not in Växjö, anyway. On the way up to Stockholm Lewin sat there trying to summon the courage to suggest to Eva that it was high time they got their relationship sorted out. That he should divorce his wife and she her husband. That they should move in together. That they should start planning a future together. High time, at least for him, because his life was getting shorter quickly now.

  It never got said, and considering what was going through Eva Svanström’s head, perhaps that was just as well. As soon as she got back to Stockholm she was planning to make a real effort to sort out her marriage, and to thank Jan Lewin for their time together. In hindsight, it had gone on for far too many years, but each one of those days with him had made the years bearable. But how do you explain that? she thought. When your heart stops beating and all that’s left in your chest is a black hole that you can’t even bear to look into. Still less to talk about what you find there.

  No memories before he started school. A mother he refused to talk about. An adoptive father resting under a gravestone that he didn’t even think it worth paying a visit to in order to piss on it. An unshakeable conviction that he hadn’t harmed Linda. The very thought that he might have done was unbearable, therefore he couldn’t have done so.

  Six more interviews on this subject, the last four of them attended by the prosecutor. On one occasion he had been surrounded by three women who took it in turns to talk to him: Katarina Wibom, Anna Holt, and Anna Sandberg.

  ‘Three against one,’ Månsson declared, even if his gallows humour and smile seemed extremely forced.

  ‘We were under the impression that you preferred the company of women,’ Katarina Wibom said. ‘The more
the merrier, we assumed.’

  There was still the black hole, in which Bengt Månsson – according to their forensic evidence – must have spent the hour or so in which he raped, tortured and strangled Linda Wallin. And the car that he stole an hour or so later, to get away from there and leave it all behind him, was of limited judicial interest.

  ‘A black hole,’ Anna Holt summarized.

  ‘Plus forensic evidence amount to something like a hundred and twenty per cent certainty,’ Katarina Wibom added.

  ‘If only he’d just denied it outright,’ Holt said. ‘Or at least tried the story of the sex game that got out of hand.’ Well, you can’t have everything, she thought.

  On the afternoon of Friday 5 September Knutsson and Thorén left Växjö as well. Other murder victims were queuing up for their services. And the piles that were mounting up on their desks in Stockholm needed to be dealt with. Being both polite and well brought up, they said goodbye to Detective Superintendent Bengt Olsson before they left.

  ‘Thanks for having us,’ Knutsson said.

  ‘If things go badly, we might meet again,’ Thorén said. ‘Well, you know what I mean, Bengt,’ he added apologetically.

  ‘I understand exactly,’ Olsson said with a smile. ‘Without you, I’m sure we’d have had trouble solving this one. Mind you, I suppose we’d have found him sooner or later thanks to his DNA.’

  ‘Without us, Olsson and little Månsson would probably have moved in together,’ Knutsson mused in the car on the way up to Stockholm.

  ‘And lived happily ever after,’ Thorén agreed.

  ‘I wonder what’s going to happen to Bäckström,’ Knutsson said.

  ‘Bäckström will manage. He always does,’ Thorén said.

  94

  ON FRIDAY 12 September, Anna Holt and Lisa Mattei left Växjö and travelled home to Stockholm. Holt would be returning to her secondment as superintendent of the national co-ordination office of the National Crime Unit. Johansson had already tried to lure her into his team by waving the newly instigated post of his staff officer, reporting directly to him. The thought of having to listen to all his stories wasn’t exactly enticing, and she had turned the job down. Firmly, but obviously as amiably as she could. Johansson had reacted exactly as she had expected. He had sulked like a child for a few days, but just a week later he was back to normal, greeting her with almost demonstrative friendliness whenever they bumped into each other in the corridor.